Lewiston Council passes zoning amendments, parking fee hikes, and property sales

[6:05] Carl L. Sheline: And welcome to our Tuesday evening workshop, and we're here with director Roy and Ron. I'm sorry, what's your last name, Ron Smith? And Ron Smith from the auditing company. Thank you for being here. Yeah, please finish introductions. [6:24] Michael R. Roy: And take it away, Tracy Roy, city of Lewiston's finance director, and this is Ron Smith from our HR Smith. He's gonna go through a presentation for you on the audit. I just wanted to mention on page 27 is the management discussion and analysis. That's kind of like a brief overview of the whole financials for you to read, so I will give it up to Ron. So we're gonna [6:51] Ron Smith: take this 125 page document plus, you might just moving the mic a little closer to you here for our folks at home. Can you hear me now? So we're gonna take this 125 page plus document, we've condensed it down into like a 19 page presentation to hit all the highlights of it and answer any questions that you may have. And to tell you a little bit about me, my name is Ron Smith and I am the principal managing partner of our HR Smith & Company. I work with 90 other professionals. We do two-thirds of all the municipalities and school systems in the entire state of Maine and Vermont. So we know who you are and what you are, and certainly happy to answer any questions on the goings-on in our state out there as they may impact Lewiston. So we've got the presentation prepared for you and I'm going to go through the highlights of it. Just take a minute [7:41] Carl L. Sheline: Brian's getting them to put it up. Our technical difficulties are currently being resolved if [8:06] Ron Smith: you could use your microphone days here. I do this so it's and there's just so many crazy things going on out there right now with impact PACT-AID, THE LAST KIND OF THE FUNDING ROUND OF ALL THE COVID RELIEF FUNDS AND THE INFRASTRUCTURE PACKAGE, OUR STATE CHANGING A LOT OF OUTDATED ARCAIC RULES. I MEAN, IT'S CRAZY IN THE WORLD OF GOVERNMENT THERE. IT'S A FUN TIME. IT'S A TERRIBLE TIME FOR ME. [8:41] Carl L. Sheline: AN UPDATE FOR OUR FOLKS AT HOME. WE'RE STILL CURRENTLY MAKING PROGRESS ON TECHNICAL DIFFICULTIES. WE'RE GOING TO GIVE IT ANOTHER MINUTE OR TWO. [8:49] Lisa Jones: So [8:52] Michael R. Roy: in the presentation, you won't see any comparisons to other cities or towns because no other city in town around our size has done their audited financials. [9:04] Ron Smith: They haven't completed their audit yet, so that ought to tell you a little bit about something about your finance departments at the municipality and school. So all the people that we would typically compare, and you kind of saw it last year, they don't even have theirs available right now. So and I'm not saying that to minimize them, I'm saying that to praise you. No. [9:23] Carl L. Sheline: We're the best, we understand. Listen, director Roy, are we, is it, you know, beyond our folks at home, is there anything that stops us from [9:34] Michael R. Roy: continuing? You will not be able to see the presentation if he doesn't put it up. [9:39] Carl L. Sheline: Is that in our packet or no? Okay, we'll give it a couple minutes. Could we have [9:47] David B. Chittim: Could you email present take copies of the presentation to us after the meeting? Thank you. I'm [10:10] Ron Smith: banking on it going on that screen because I didn't bring my glasses in. [10:14] Andrew Jones: Is the [10:23] Carl L. Sheline: tv on? It is on. [10:27] Michael R. Roy: That came up last time too. [10:32] Scott A. Harriman: That's good, that picture. [10:41] Joshua L. Nagine: For a second maybe. [10:45] Susan G. Longchamps: It's just something, who knows, is there something going on, Ron? [11:07] Ron Smith: Where's your home office? Buxton Main, BUCHSTON. BUCHSTON. BUCHSTON. THAT'S OUR FLAGSHIP. AND THE CLAIM TO FAME TO THAT HOME OFFICE, IT'S ONE OF THE TEN OLDEST BUILDINGS IN THE ENTIRE STATE OF MAINE. VERY NICE. YEAH. WE'RE PROUD OF IT. WE'VE RESTORED THE WHOLE BUILDING FROM LITERALLY GROUND UP. [11:28] Carl L. Sheline: YOU CAN HAVE US OVER FOR THE SUMMER BARBECUE. [11:32] Ron Smith: SO ANYBODY EVER HEARD, JUST WHILE WE'RE WAITING, RUFUS PORTER, DOES THAT NAME RING A BELL TO THE ART WORLD? WE HAVE ONE OF HIS WORKS IN OUR BUILDING. And there's only less than probably 20 of them in this world that have survived. A lot of them are overseas. And just to tell you, Rufus Porter was the state of Maine's first welfare recipient. Oh, is that right? And what he used to do for a living is going around to some of the grandest oceanfront communities and painting murals of their main street on the wall. We have one in our conference room. Yeah, it's a great piece of art. That mural was done probably somewhere in the early 18, about 1830, sorry. [12:16] Carl L. Sheline: Gentlemen, deputy administrator, our director Roy, are we making copies? Okay, thank you, sorry, carry on. We will commence once [12:26] Ron Smith: Copies are copied and yeah so we deliver to us so we had an authenticated and we had an authenticated by the gentleman that lived at his house in Bridgeton Maine, who was the vice president of the State of Maine Historical Society, came into our office with stencils that lined up perfectly, and what he would do is customize the main street, you know, to fit your town, you know, so yeah, Sotheby's came in and, you know, did their authentication piece, so yeah, we're proud, we're proud of that piece of art. Have you been to the Rufus Porter Museum? I have in Bridgeton, yes, yeah, so that Rufus Porter Museum was his house, and they were gonna move it though I understood well they moved a big chunk of it inside [13:07] David B. Chittim: Yeah I mean they took the old house down yeah moved it exactly constructed it [13:12] Ron Smith: Inside them yeah and he's got a fan club too for sure a lot of people when you not like brought me great happiness to see yeah I know Rufus Porter a lot of people don't but he was the world's first foremost renowned muralist so that was a good way to kill five minutes you want to talk about something if you guys see me struggling looking at this presentation don't laugh because I'm gonna struggle because I don't have my glasses we take those things [14:02] Holden Ward: Seriously Mr. [14:08] Carl L. Sheline: Smith I can assure you that we will keep our laughter to a minimum so we appreciate your valiant efforts so [14:17] David B. Chittim: The hundred and thirty plus pages that you were distilling to 19 now that's down to 17 pages. I'll be down about five if we keep talking well pages [14:57] Carl L. Sheline: Thank you everyone please take it away [15:03] Ron Smith: So again, I 'm Ron Smith. So we have concluded the city of Lewiston's June 30th 2025 audit and as we were kind of talking about as we were waiting to put the presentation up be proud of it because a lot of your communities of your size and your neighbors they don't have their audits yet so be proud of the ones that you have right now and the effort that went into this so just to just kind of go through some of the ground rules of what an audit is your responsibility our responsibilities you give us information we make Sure that the information you know that you provide us is accurate correct we do that through a variety of things called testing sampling you know providing work papers, doing walk-throughs, the whole profession's changed, you know, really now. It's more of a risk assessment. What could go wrong at the City of Lewiston? And you, based upon the information, the questionnaires, things that we do during our field work, we ask these questions to obtain our understanding of how the numbers get on a piece of paper, and are they right? And that's your responsibilities up there for providing that. One of the things that I'll say that's different with the City of Lewiston and many other governments in the state of Maine is a lot of people don't realize the city of Lewiston is the exception. Maine's a rural, Maine is a very rural state. So what does that mean? City of Lewiston has a lot of infrastructure DNA internally designed to present and give you guys information that you can depend on as you put budgets together and make financial decisions. You actually prepare your own financial statements. I'd argue you're probably less than 3% of all the communities, maybe less than two percent in the entire state that's able to deliver us financial statements that we can audit to do a presentation like that, and that's something to be proud of as well. So you actually do something called an act for, it's an annual comprehensive financial report that's given to the government finance officers association. You actually prepare that, we guide you, we give you recommendations, you're one of very few governments in the entire state of Maine that actually do that exercise and be proud, because that helps you with bond ratings and things like that during the course of the year. And I'm just giving the city accolades because there's not many cities of Lewiston's out there that take the pleasure to try to excel in the excellence of financial reporting. So those are your responsibilities. You give us the product and we give it back to you as you present it to us with comments and suggestions. Next. Our responsibilities to do exactly what I just said, give you advice, tell you how the numbers get on the piece of paper, are there any problems, you know, and are they right, and we're pleased to present that they are right. In the next slide that you'll see will be our audit opinion. You got our highest professional audit opinion that exists out there. If we had any disagreements with management, if we had any fraud or defalcation that we saw within the city of Lewiston to address, we would share that With the with the city of Lewiston and I think to kind of go back with a ground rule is a few weeks ago I actually had the pleasures of having a conversation with your municipal school department officials you know on the presentation and I gave them a very similar report you know too as well good financial standing clean and unmodified opinion so you're going to see a graph of your balance sheet analysis kind of what you own, your cash, everything that you have with liquid, liabilities, fund balance, you'll see you're pretty consistent throughout the course of every year. Where the conversation really kind of takes place is going to be in a few more slides with your fund balance and really kind of how you base your budgets, current and future on, and really that's really the financial picture that I'll spend some time on in talking. But there is your there is that fund balance that's how important that you can see you know for the for the city the unassigned is obviously the biggest one you know the non spendable there's some attachments to that inventory things like that then you have your restricted in your assigned I can positively tell you that restricted fund balance is your school fund balance we take that and we isolate it and we by statute and law have to tell once school stays school until the wishes of the voters change. So that orange piece is your school fund balance. The assigned piece is your fund balance. That number is about 31 million dollars. I know this by heart. So that 31 million dollars is made up of variety of designations and it's a large increase over the last year of about 7 million dollars. 21 million dollars of that 30 of the 31 million dollars is for one-time purchases those supplemental budgets that you do based upon when your fund balance policy kicks in over 12% you don't like to spend it down to 12% you assign it for those future purchases you have bills timings things that you don't pay during the first week first for your fiscal year that you budgeted they overlap and go into another fiscal year that's that assigned fund balance and putting math to that I believe it's About 31 million dollars. The other two conversation pieces of that are your accrued compensated absences, I believe about 5.5 million dollars, that obligations that you have if people get sick, retire, those benefits that you're required to pay for. And then the other conversation piece is the workers comp audit that you have, and there's a current and a long-term piece of that. And as I recall last year you were not able to fund entirely the current and short-term piece, the current and long-term piece of it, current yes, long-term no. And I think that you have about three and a half million dollars put towards that. Good news is, okay, that you, that the number went down on the long-term piece about a half a million dollars this year. Bad news is you still haven't funded it completely. So improvement, but just not where you need to be. But certainly something that I think that you're well aware of. I just went through this literally, you know, with that because I know it by heart. Those unsigned those, fund balances, your general fund balance for the city, just for the city, largely went up, you know, and was able to mitigate so you could put some money away. Investment earnings is probably the best way I can say it. You, your investment earnings far exceeded what your estimates were, you know, in your estimates. And I would say that what you originally budgeted for it, I would, I'd say that's probably the biggest reason that you saw that increase of allowing you to fund more, you know, of those reserve accounts and certainly take care of some of those one-time projects that you guys have that you traditionally put that supplemental budget to. Next. Revenues. There's your comparison. You can see that your revenues are going to go up there, you know, for sure. And largely in part, the one thing that you're going to see is, whoa, our governmental revenues, you know, hugely, intergovernmental revenues hugely went up. Yeah, because of the school. Remember, this is a consolidated financial statement. The school literally is the biggest reason that I can explain because of just many things. Largely, in fact, state subsidy came in higher than what their expectations were with some additional subsidy that was sent their way. I had that conversation with the school a few weeks ago. That literally impacts your financial statements as well, but that's largely the increase along with the investment earnings that I had said before. And there it is. There's that increase. That intergovernmental, hey, good news is that it went up. Rest of the story, that's pretty much all school on why it went up. So expenditures. Expenditures. This is really kind of the, you know, this is really the thing that we're coming out of COVID. I'm still not sure what reality looks like, you know, in this post-COVID, you know, thing, because I still think that there's so much artificial money out of there. But I'm going to tell you, if there's one thing that I'm starting to see right now is the fact that when this artificial money, this COVID relief funds, as it's dried up, it's really made your budgets kind of get back to, I don't think they're ever going to get back to what it looked like before covid but with the with the absence of all this money going in a lot of the money that was subsidized by covert relief funds okay it's gone now that money's not there to subsidize so what's that mean those one time of expenses that you were able to pay for covert relief funds or opera funds it's gone so what's that mean general fund operating budgets are returning back to normal that's what we're seeing i just don't know what normal is now post covid so and there it is you know that is well all within your budget so really to kind of put this into context you know that education was really kind of a large reason why that's why we restrict that fund balance large reason why with expenditures You guys are pretty well right on the money, you know, in, your expenditures for city school certainly had that expectation, you know, they're of expenses that came in, some were funded by some of this extra subsidy. Certainly you didn't have a spending problem in Lewiston in education. I think is largely in part to the biggest contributor to your expenses coming in under what you thought that they would. Balance sheet water, these enterprise fund water, okay. So certainly, you know, you've got a healthy utility district. Usually that's the one thing we like to try to look at, you know, is your utility districts, water, waste water. Boy, I'll tell you, they're usually expensive telephone calls when that phone rings, and they could be budget busters. Really, we're not seeing that, you know, for Lewiston, and that's good, because I would expect to say, and I'll say this, I've said it to many other governments before this meeting, that's where I see a lot of money getting diverted to his water and wastewater. We see a lot of infrastructure money available, and we see a lot of money being directed towards infrastructure upgrades and renovations to utility districts. You've got two big ones, so, and there's your other one, sewer, tells me the same thing, nothing to be alarmed about. All I'm saying is I believe that the future, you know, certainly as far as capital thinking, and I think it's all about capital and infrastructure maintenance now, water and wastewater, pay attention, don't lose sight of those, because they are very expensive. Storm water again, you got healthy enterprise, you got healthy utility districts, you, that's the best way I can say it. Keep them that way. And I'll tell you, I think if you're going to see more artificial money and you're going to see it, 's all going to come at the heels of the last round of that COVID relief funds, that Build Back America package. And there's just kind of a summary of your rates. And if anything, that's consistent. And that's certainly something that I would look at to say, anything on there wrong we should talk about? Look, no, you've been consistent. I think your challenges are going to be keeping up with your infrastructure, maintaining your infrastructure upgrades. It 's more expensive to do than it was before COVID, and more resources you're going to need to do that. So do not defer maintenance, that's my advice. Next [Carl L. Sheline: and] Your expenditures, you know, really, you know, just nothing there that I would say, you know, as far as, you know, the certain areas of, you know, where you spend your money, nothing really there. And that depreciation number is really truly attached to future expansion, your wear and tear for the things above the ground, your transfer stations, your treatment plants, your pumping stations, and the information, the information, the infrastructure, structure below the ground, okay. That's depreciation. It's a real number and that's where i really think that you know that 's something that you as well as other government that's the one that i really feel that is going to need to be really paid attention to going forward and that's just your store again you're just seeing a similar model of consistency really you know as far as you know you all you know some rate increases you can clearly see in there you know this one you know particular one being stormwater but really nothing that says hey ron look at me you know what, would this conversation be consistent and pay attention going forward, really planning, so for infrastructure, the information that Tracy and her staff delivered to us was accurate, you know, really, you know, we don't have any things just to cry fire this to you all as the responsible officials, you know, we appreciate the effort that her and her staff gave us, and like I say, when we're having this conversation and many of your neighbors aren't, that ought to tell you, know, really, the level of service and commitment to your finances, you know, that you are receiving with this information. This will be my last presentation for the city of Lewiston. I wish you nothing but the best, you know, for future upcoming audits as you facilitate to a new auditor, will certainly help with that transition, but I am here now to answer any questions that you may have of me or us or what's going on around you. [28:59] Carl L. Sheline: Thank you very much. Yes, questions for Mr. Smith or Director Roy? [29:04] David B. Chittim: Councillor Chittim. Thank you, Mr. Mayor. Mr. Smith, you mentioned that the operating funds are going to see a rebound to pre-COVID levels because the ARPA money has dried up. I was under the impression that we had done an excellent job of using ARPA money for capital expenditures and not using that for operating expenses, so I'm a little confused about your statement. So my statement [29:25] Ron Smith: Is whatever you used it for, that op that option is now be off the table, okay? So you, whatever you used it for, some people used it to go fund that accrued comp, that accrued vacation pay increases, union negotiation settlements. Guess what? That was not, that was a terrible idea to do because now they got to cover that gap future and they don't have this funding to do it. All I'm saying is whatever you used it for, that money is now gone. I believe, and I think I said this last year, that you used it in the right areas. That's exactly where I would have used it for capital and infrastructure upgrades. I think that there's actually more of that money it's going to be made available to you in the world of government. Continue to use it for that, okay? I wanted to [30:08] David B. Chittim: clarify that point because it was a little, a little confusing to me. The enterprise funds for water, sewer, and water and storm water, we have three. One of the looming expenditures that we are always concerned about is the possibility that Lewis and Auburn is going to have to build a filtration plant. We're talking I think now in the order of $60 million for that facility. Do you have any suggestions as to how we ought to prepare for that? We do not have a timeline. So far we continue to obtain the waiver, but in the future there will be a time come when we 're gonna have to lay out a significant amount of capital [30:50] Ron Smith: for so big infrastructure. So proven, my suggestion is this, your name, you're already doing the right thing, you're having a conversation with your neighbor. May I suggest that there's going to be some agreement that's going to come out of that conversation to identify what it is you need and more importantly what it is it's going to take, what's going to take you both to maintain that going forward. Sounds like you're going to share a system there, that makes perfect sense, and there's statutes you know that exist to allow you to enter into these interlocal agreements. The boundary signs rip down, you found a very common service and for lack of a better word talking point, you know that's going to affect future budgets, can carry on, but i would suggest you engage in these conversations because over the next three years this infrastructure money that we're seeing for these exact projects, take advantage of them through the wastewater and stormwater programs that exist at our bond bank right now You'll never see money like this again, you know. I can't, that's not fair for me to say currently with what they have available for programs. Take advantage of these programs now because we don't know when they're going to come back. It's probably the best way to say that, okay. [31:59] David B. Chittim: Thank you. Didn't hear the word, I didn't hear the words I wanted you to say, and that is sinking fund. Can you talk to that about for a moment? I guess I would want to know. [32:08] Ron Smith: Counselor, what kind of sinking are you talking about? Like a bond sinking fund? Are we talking about like some like pollution control mitigation sinking fund? What kind of sinking fund are you thinking? Well, as I mentioned, we may well [32:22] David B. Chittim: be facing the prospect of building a 60 million dollar water filtration plant for our drinking water. Yeah, and I guess I'm looking at some guidance as to whether or not it would behoove us to start saving for that now and creating a fund of all the surplus money that we have. That was me being facetious, I have to clarify that these days, but I would like your thoughts on building a sinking fund to further those anticipated. I [32:48] Ron Smith: think before you use your own money, I'd understand what exists that you could tap into for resources, and may I suggest the bond bank through its revolving loan funds to the clean water drinking at and USDA and EPA usually partners out there with the bond bank. I think you've got great access to external money as you build this plan to do exactly this collaboration with your neighbor Auburn may suggest you see, you know, right now what's available to the city of Lewiston and Auburn to do so. There is a lot of money to do what you ask, and I think once you entertain and get through those conversations, then I think you're going to start answering your question on really kind of what the math looks like at the city of Lewiston in its budget and future budgets on how that would impact, but I think it's got to really start with what your plans looking like, what's available for resources out there, and there are a lot of resources available to you now before you start [33:40] Carl L. Sheline: using your own. I know we're running short on time here, but any further questions on the reporter presentation for our HR or our director? Anything further from you two? Thank you so much, we appreciate you being here. Thanks for sticking with us through some technical difficulties. A huge shout out to our mis department and if we have questions director roy we can always email you correct and i'm certainly more than [34:12] Ron Smith: Happy to answer and even send you some of those people's way that I would knock on their door. [34:17] Carl L. Sheline: Right now, excellent, thank you, thank you both so much. Madam Clerk, I think we're ready for an executive session. Madam Clerk, Mr. Mayor, executive session to [34:45] Speaker K (unidentified): discuss the acquisition or disposition of real estate of which the premature disclosure of the information would prejudice the competitive bargaining position of the city. Requested action to enter into an executive session pursuant to Main Revised Statutes Annotated Title 1 Section 405 6c to discuss the acquisition or disposition of real estate of which the premature disclosure of the information would prejudice the competitive bargaining position of the city. [35:13] Carl L. Sheline: Madam Clerk, please call, or may I have a motion, please? [35:16] David B. Chittim: Mr. Mayor, could we combine these two into one motion? [35:21] Speaker K (unidentified): Yes, so you have two executive sessions for the same topic as cited under state statutes, two separate projects, but the same motion regarding real estate. [35:31] Carl L. Sheline: So moved by Councillor Harriman, please call the vote. Councillor from Ward Three? [35:37] Speaker K (unidentified): Yes,, thank you very much, my clerk, we're heading into [35:49] Carl L. Sheline: executive session and then we'll be back for our as close as possible to 7 p.m. for our evening meeting. [Bryan Kaenrath: Hello.] Good evening and welcome to our Tuesday evening council meeting. Administrator Cain Rath, can you please lead us in the Pledge of Allegiance? [1:14:28] Bryan Kaenrath: You [1:14:34] Joshua L. Nagine: did [1:14:46] Carl L. Sheline: great, thank you very much. Let's see here, Madam Clerk, I think we're ready to begin. Yes, thank you, Mr. Mayor, all roll call. I understand we have minutes. You do. [1:14:58] Speaker K (unidentified): The minutes for the January 20th meeting. [1:15:00] Carl L. Sheline: May I have a motion, please? So moved. Second. Councillor Chittenden, seconded by Councillor Nagy. Madam Clerk, please call the vote. Councillor from Ward 3? Yes. Ward 4? Yes. Ward 5? [1:15:11] Speaker K (unidentified): Yes. Ward 6? Yes. Ward 7? Yes. Ward 1? Yes. Ward 2? Yes. Motion passed by vote of 7 to 0. [1:15:17] Carl L. Sheline: Thank you very much, Madam Clerk. We are now up to public comment. Any member of the public may make comments regarding issues pertaining to Lewiston city government. This period is reserved for non agenda items. Public comment is also allowed during individual agenda items. Public comment is limited to three minutes per person. Please state your name for the record and please indicate if you are a Lewiston resident. Because this is the business meeting of the City Council, all questions should be directed to the mayor. We'll ask staff to follow up at a future time. And it's illegal for the City Council to allow comments related to personnel matters. All personnel complaints should be made directly to the City Administration Office. [1:15:56] Amy Sussman: My name is Amy Sussman. I am NOT a resident of Lewiston. I'm from Maine. I went to UMaine. All of my friends, all my family lives in Maine. I spend months in Maine each year, and my residence is in Maryland. I emailed each member of the City Council last February concerning the fundraising done by the Maine Community Foundation following the Lewiston mass shooting. My nephew was one of the 18 murdered that night. I laid out for you the actions of the MCF that led to 29 nonprofits receiving over $65,000 each, while some who were shot and survived received thirty thousand or thirty two thousand dollars, and people who survived their attempted murder without being shot received seven thousand dollars of the six point six million dollars raised. These nonprofits were not required to help the survivors and family members of those killed in the worst violent event in this state's history. Mayor Chalene, you called me six days after receiving the email. You forgot how I was related to the shooting, but you stated that you would look into the matter and get back to me. You never did. President Chittum, you said you were, and I quote, "'Saddened to learn of your nephew's death "'in such a cruelly ironic way "'on the day he received his diploma,' end quote. And you call the issue that I presented to you a misunderstanding, but said that you would investigate. That investigation included looking me up on LinkedIn twice. I wonder what investigation did you do other than investigating me. What did you learn about the use of the 1.9 million dollars given to nonprofits? The behavior of the MCF is revictimizing to the survivors and families who did not even know that money was being raised for nonprofits from the fund that was originally set up for them. There were two tragedies here, the shooting and the MCF keeping 1.9 million dollars from those who are suffering and need it most. I'm not an elected leader, but I have used my voice, and now one of the nonprofits is giving their money to survivors and families. You could have made this happen, but you chose to do absolutely nothing. You left it up to me. So I ask you again, do you think it is acceptable to take advantage of people at the worst moment of their lives? Can you put yourselves in the shoes of those who lost a spouse, a child, a parent, a sister, a brother? The MCF used the tragedy of your constituents to raise funds for nonprofits. I've heard the survivors and families referred to as those poor people, those poor people, as though they are different from us. They are not. They are you. They are me. They are neighbors, friends, and family members. You represent them, and I ask you again, if I can speak up for them, why aren't you? Further [1:18:47] Carl L. Sheline: in the council chambers, please. Thank you. Further public comment. Good evening, mayor and [1:18:54] Dan Hanson: councillors. My name is Dan Hanson. I'm a 27 year old Lewiston resident, property owner, and taxpayer, and that matters because the city is funded by taxpayer dollars, not ideology, not political optics, not selective compassion, or diversity virtue signaling. Lewiston is struggling not because it lacks potential, but because too often this council's decisions appear disconnected from the needs of everyday residents and taxpayers. Those are the people who work here, who own businesses here, follow the law, and pay the bills. Before I continue, I want to acknowledge that some members of this council have indeed acted in the best interests of their constituents. My comments are not directed at them, but at broader patterns that are eroding public trust. In recent months, Lewiston has made national headlines for all the wrong reasons. Ballot eligibility failures, a deeply questionable council appointment process, and taxpayer-funded harm reduction policies that have coincided with open drug use, encampments, and declining safety downtown. These are not abstract issues. They're real decisions with real consequences for neighbors, small businesses, public safety, and property values. There's an old adage that I believe applies here, that is, take care of yourself first so you can take care of others. In city government, that means taking care of taxpayers first so the community actually has the capacity to help others. Public safety and responsible spending are not optional. They are the foundation that makes compassion and Progress possible. My purpose tonight is simple, to make clear that these decisions have not gone unnoticed and they matter. Lewiston in matters. This city belongs to the people who live here, work here, and pay for it. I urge this city, this council, to respect the city charter, enforce laws consistently, and put everyday residents and taxpayers at the center of every decision you make. Finally, I want to thank this council for making one thing clear. These choices matter because of the direction this body has taken and I am motivated to run for city council one day to truly represent the taxpayers and residents of Lewiston and ensure that our city is a safe, vibrant, and beautiful place to call home and raise a family. Thank you. If [1:21:33] Carl L. Sheline: we can have it quiet in the chambers. Thank you. Further public comment. [1:21:40] Brian Leclaire: Hello everyone, my name is Brian Leclaire. I'm a Lewiston resident. I was actually Ash Mangies. He's the night before the shooting, and I was helping my friend Arthur Strout warm up for his league night, which was the night he was killed. My cousin was at the bowling alley with his family where they had to be traumatized. They survived, but they were traumatized by this. I think it's, I personally think it's messed up that politicians have the ability to put their hands on the donation money for these victims and their families to be able to use them how they like to for their agendas. If that's the case, that's pretty messed up. And yeah, and counselor Martel, I just wanted to say I thank you for standing your ground and I got a, I got a message today from Ryan Melanson from Leeds with the Andrew Scoggin Republican Committee. He wants to say that he appreciates you as well. So it's all I have to say. Thank you guys. Matthew [1:22:54] Speaker P (unidentified): Edgerton, Ward 4 council. Do we know where we are as a city and Lewiston PD on the flock camera system? Are they going forward with it? Are they going to end it like many other communities have? If they are going to continue it, could you please ask that they come before you and us so they can explain the policies they're going to use to safeguard the camera system so that the abuses that have happened with other states where abusers have tracked down their exes using the cameras and gone to stalk them. Next, for our public works, please explain to me why run sidewalk plows up East Avenue before you're done plowing. Because gee, that when the sidewalk plows go back through, they fill back in that sidewalk. It's not usable anymore. There's as much snow in it as there was before the sidewalk plow came through, except now it's full of road sludge. And it would save money because you're only plowing, you're only running the units up through there once, not multiple times. Finally, the agenda packets, our agenda packets are designed the way you, the council, voted to have them set up, the way you guys wanted to do the business of the city. I get that there is times when it'd be nice to move items up because you see somebody sitting here, and the person's here for item 14, and it could be a long night and not wanting to make them wait possibly hours. Yet by moving item 14 up, you run the serious risk of disenfranchising people who were planning on coming and speaking on item 14 because that's where it is in the agenda that we all have. If you guys wish to regularly move things around, have the agenda adjusted before the meeting, or stop moving things around, because it's the public who doesn't get to speak when, okay, I was planning on showing up for item 14, you did item 14 right after the consent agenda, so it's not at nine o'clock at night or ten o'clock at night, it's at 730. People are still at work. People aren't here. You guys disenfranchise possible people coming in to speak on items by moving things around. Please stop that. Thank you. [1:25:49] Paula Michaud: Paula Michaud, Ward 3. I am the victim of false claims of harassment and stalking. The false claims are an abuse of the protection order, and the individual should be charged with making false statements to the police. In the beginning of March, I called the school where my grandchildren attend. I was hoping to speak with a counselor regarding concerns that my grandchildren's paternal relatives were being alienated. The phone call resulted in a complaint to the police, and I was arrested. Charge was stalking, and a temporary protection order was granted. I was arrested a total of five times by police officers due to these false claims, Lewiston police officers, one of them, one of the arrests involved the breaching of my door. Social media posts which I made despite Judge John Martin forbidding me to exercise my right of free speech in an effort to defend myself against the bogus charges was why I was arrested. Two officers arrested me when I went down to the police station on March 24 to pick up a police report that was not there. It was a trap to arrest me in the police station. That was March 24. Remember the big storm we had? I had to walk home two miles in that slush. It was very dangerous. Two days later, I appeared in court where my accuser presented 15 exhibits. Most of them actually proved that she was the one who exposed my grandchildren to my social media posts. They would not have been on the internet at ages 10 and 8 reading my social media posts. Her exhibits proved that she had one of the child, one of my grandchildren, holding the phone which my messages were on. They weren't harmful. I was the victim of yet another arrest on evening of March 30, which is when they breached my door. I was released into the streets of Auburn after midnight without a phone, in my PJs, two miles from home. There were no cabs open. That was, that's a public safety concern. And your officer, your chief, on July 15, I stood before this council and I handed him my complaint. He was in plain clothes. Guess what? Derek St. Laurent, I spoke with a few days ago, says there's no such complaint. So Chief St. Pierre, who announced his retirement soon after, 22 seconds left, I reclaim my time. I am talking about public safety meetings, which you guys made the members all, oh, most of the members are Lewiston officers or city government. Nobody's going to go to the meetings. There was only two held in two and a half years. I tried to get on the meeting. I could never get any information. That's time. By the way, St. [1:28:53] Carl L. Sheline: Pierre is trying to be a United States Marshal. That's time. Please stop, or we'll have you removed. Please continue, sir. [1:29:13] David Boyer: Mayor Chalene, distinguished members of the Lewiston City Council, my name's David Boyer. i'm a state representative from poland and i represent poland and mckinnick falls i know you're not supposed to believe everything that you see on facebook but i did see that it was counselor martel's birthday today so i did want to wish him a happy birthday the lewiston tragedy affected not just lewiston but lewiston auburn andrew scotten county and the whole state and new england and the country really and a lot of questions, I think, that are legitimate have been raised, and the response feels dismissive. And I think you heard that in Ms. Sussman's comment, and that's unfortunate. And I do tend to agree with her that these prolonged questions and conversations regarding the funds of the Lewiston shooting fund can retraumatize and revictimize the survivors. And I don't can the Lewiston City Council say that every survivors medical bills are paid, that no one owes any money, can that be said? I think it's a it's a good metric to see how the funds were going and if maybe there should have been a different disbursement ratio between the nonprofits and the victims. I think the council should be proactive on this, not dismissive. I think the Attorney General's investigation wasn't thorough and it sure hasn't satisfied the questions of people involved. I mean, at the end of the day, I think we should all be able to agree that the public should know who got the funds, what they did with it, how much they have left, and what do they plan to do with it. I think the council being proactive on answering those questions and getting that information to the public would help would help with the healing of survivors and help us and them move forward as a community. So please take a leadership role in this. We hear about transparency and accountability often in this room and lately in our state. And that means working it and answering and asking hard questions. And it's great to hear that one of the nonprofits is working to rectify the disbursement as Ms. Sussman in the news has announced. That should be rewarded. They shouldn't be afraid, they shouldn't be anonymous, we should reward good behavior and doing the right thing. Thank You counsel, thank you further public [1:32:16] Carl L. Sheline: comment it's [1:32:21] Quentin Chapman: always a treat following mr. Boyer. I wish I was so eloquent. Members of Lewiston City Council, mayor Shamim, and residents in this community, I [1:32:32] Carl L. Sheline: stand here today. I'm sorry, can you please say your name and where you're [1:32:35] Quentin Chapman: from? 51 Eastman Lane, Auburn, Maine, Quentin Chapman. I stand here today as a state representative from Auburn, as a voice for the how for the heartbroken families and survivors who continue to bear the scars of October 25th, 2023. 18 lives are stolen, 13 more were wounded, and countless others were left traumatized in the aftermath. The world rallied and donated generously to support those directly impacted, but now more than two years later, the painful truth is recognized, much of that money never Reached the victims and families who need it most. It's time for this council to take a stand, to demand that the non-profits return those funds to the people they were intended for. The main Community Foundation raised 6.6 mil with donors believing their contributions would go entirely to the victims and survivors. Yet it is claimed that 4.7 mil was distributed to 162 individuals directly affected, averaging around 30,000 per person, not nearly enough in most cases to cover the cost of medical. The remaining 1.9, it was quietly funneled to 29 nonprofits, each receiving $65,500, more than double what some of the shooting victims received. These organizations included groups with no direct connection to the tragedy. Some recipients have since gone out of business and others have failed to explain how they use the funds for shooting related recovery. This isn't just a numbers game, it's a betrayal of trust. Families like that of Max Hathaway, a 35 year old father, killed while celebrating his recent college degree. Auburn City Council Leroy Walker lost his son and a family close to mine, very close to mine were involved in that shooting. Emails to victims promised a hundred percent of all donations would go to the victims and survivors. What we now know, that is not what happened. Had the 1.9 million been redistributed directly, each victim or family could have received additional money to help with therapy, lost wages, or rebuild lives. However, change is possible and it's already starting. After national scrutiny one nonprofit has stepped up and is or has returned $65,000 grant to the victims, setting a precedent. As Lewiston's leaders you have the power to amplify the voices requesting the return of those stolen funds and I urge the City Council to pass a resolution today formally request that all 29 nonprofits return their grants to a victim centered fund overseeing transparently by survivors and city officials demand full audits of the main community foundation. The victims didn't choose this horror. They didn't deserve every penny raised on their name. Let's honor the loss [1:35:27] Carl L. Sheline: Point of order I got this counselor Herman. Thank you further public comment Mr. Mayor [1:35:41] David B. Chittim: The 18 minute limit that we've established by council rule has been exceeded. Thank you [1:35:47] Carl L. Sheline: Unless there's strong objection by the council I would like to proceed. Councillor Martel did you have something? Yeah I happen to remember a lot more [1:35:56] Bret Martel: than 18 minutes going on for some I don't know message to Palestine or something about a year and a half ago. So if we're gonna listen to the people, we should listen to the people. I don't see a whole lot of comments left. Yeah, it's [1:36:08] Carl L. Sheline: my intention to continue the public comment. Councillor Herman, did you have [1:36:12] Scott A. Harriman: something? Yes, I have no objection to continuing public comment. I'll remind THE COUNCIL THAT THE THAT WAS A AGENDA ITEM AND WAS NOT SUBJECT TO THE 18 MINUTE LIMIT. [1:36:22] Carl L. Sheline: OKAY UH COUNCILORS IF WE CAN PROCEED THAT'D BE GREAT UH PLEASE CONTINUE SIR INTRODUCE [1:36:27] David Jones: YOURSELF AND STATE WHERE YOU'RE FROM. GOOD EVENING MY NAME IS DAVID JONES I LIVE IN FALMATH AND HAPPY BIRTHDAY RIGHT COUNCILOR MARTELL YOU KNOW IT'S FOR ME I'VE BEEN COMING TO THESE MEETINGS AND I'VE BEEN LISTENING TO WHAT'S GOING ON AND I'VE ASKED I'VE BEGGED FOR YOU GUYS TO DO AN investigation you know obviously there's people here that are been negatively affected or still being negatively affected. I spoke to one of the shooting victims Justin Karcher and he said it was okay for me tonight to mention his name you know he has to go back in for surgery because the wounds are not healing properly there's air in the wounds and so this is gonna lay this young man up for a few more months you look at this and loss of income the pressure his one of his closest friends who was with him that night has lost the use of his right arm I mean and it goes on and on and on and you guys have the power to fix this you know so you got to get up in the morning look yourself in the mirror and say am I doing the right thing you represent these people this is disgusting what happened here it was the most horrible thing ever happened in the state of Maine and what was even worse is the misappropriation of funds you got 1.9 million dollars given to NGOs that absolutely nothing to do with it I think the YWCA built a wall all right with the money I mean how's that serve the community you know and I so we need to really look into and you know have an open investigation transparent but you owe it to these people your constituents to step up and do the right thing and find out one who these people are that were in charge of the NGOs who helped them apply for the grants when many of them may not have even spoken English language all right how long the businesses were set up I mean I have a ton of questions and you live here don't you have questions I know everyone I've spoken to in this city is disgusting. I've talked to Rick LaChapelle about it. I've talked to Janet Bowden. You've got Wren. You've got Lisa. These are all people that care about your community. You might not agree with their political position, but this is a moral position. This is something deeper than that. If you want to heal these wounds, and you look at Justin, I mean, he's He's got physical wounds to heal. But what about the mental wounds? What about the families that don't have the breadwinners, don't have the income? You think that 's a lot of money, $6.9 million in the picture of the rest of the lives of all those people that were killed and the ones who got to live with the tragedy? So, again, I'm begging you to please do the right thing. Do the investigation, and a real investigation, something that digs deep. [1:39:29] Carl L. Sheline: Thank you that's time thank you further public comment my [1:39:41] Lisa Jones: Name is Lisa Jones I live in Ward 2 and I own a business in Ward 7. I'm here tonight because I am seeking transparency is a word we frequently hear used by this council but instead of behaving in a transparent manner some members of this council choose to do things behind the scenes after hours and under the cover of darkness. I'm seeking answers as to how an applicant for the Ward 5 vacancy removed herself from consideration and then was put back in while City Hall was closed for their regular Friday closure and then the weekend when all municipalities are closed and then a holiday. I failed to understand how withdrawal of an application can be undone after a deadline. When the public walked into the last meeting it was common knowledge that Ms Noble had withdrawn her name from consideration. For her to then be the chosen nominee that night proves yet again to the community that this council works only in the best interest of itself and that being open with the public means nothing. I personally was shocked to see her take a seat at the table there and thought she may simply be making an announcement that she had withdrawn her name. I've emailed this body and other key players in this room to get an explanation for how and why this occurred and I've yet to receive WE HAVE AN ONGOING ISSUE WITH INELIGIBLE CANDIDATES BEING PUT FORWARD BY OUR CITY CLERK AND IT APPEARS TO BE GETTING WORSE INSTEAD OF BETTER. THIS COUNCIL CLAIMS TO WANT TO BE ABLE TO MOVE PAST ALL OF THIS AND ON TO THE IMPORTANT WORK THAT THEY WERE ELECTED TO DO, BUT THE WAY YOU ALL CHOOSE TO OPERATE IS WHAT BRINGS THE CONSTANT ATTENTION ON TO YOURSELVES. I'M GRATEFUL THAT MY HOME AND MY BUSINESS ARE REPRESENTED BY THE TWO ADULTS ON THAT DAIS WHO HAVE A HISTORY OF ACTING ON BEHALF OF ALL LOUISTON RESIDENTS INSTEAD OF THEIR OWN INTERESTS. [1:41:32] Andrew Jones: Andrew Jones, Ward 2. Before I get into what I came here to speak about tonight, I just want to say something about the two councillors who have not been paying attention to a single person speaking tonight. Scott Harriman and Mike Roy. You guys have been staring down at whatever it is that you're writing this whole time. Yeah, I see you're writing down stuff. It doesn't look like you're paying very much attention. Yeah, you didn't once look up at anyone until you were called out, Scott. Same thing. I don't know what you're doing. Maybe you're just writing another campaign speech or something, but yeah. So the reasons I came to speak tonight. First, I read an article online on January 30th, and it was about an interaction between Counselor Martell and Councillor Chittim regarding some comments that were made to a publication. David accused Bread of conduct unbecoming, potentially violating an ethics policy, and apparently exposing himself to some sort of liability. I read the ethics policy that's available on the city website, and I didn't see anything about any of those things. So I'm curious what policy you're actually referencing, whether it's that policy or the policy that governs the council. Nothing in there had anything to do with that. So it really seemed like you were trying to chill Brett's free speech when you did that. Also, the council laments about the lack of public trust the appointment of Kristi Noble does nothing to help that and no offense to her this isn't her problem she was just somebody who submitted an application but you know and scott harriman you 're included in this too because in the emergency meeting you specifically said that anyone who was appointed in this manner would be illegitimate so i'm curious how you reconciled that considering you voted for her and apparently were willing to vote for her before you even Went to the meeting, you know, and again, no offense to Chrissy, but you were appointed with no one on the council speaking for or against you, no member of the public sending any emails or coming in to talk, and yet five people decided to appoint you in with no fanfare, no discussion, no nothing. So I'm curious how they came to that discussion unless they were doing something behind closed doors, you know. This was something that the previous council or previous council had been accused of doing. SEEING THE COUNCIL HERE DO THAT, OR AT LEAST FIVE OF THEM, IS VERY DISHEARTENING AND DOESN'T DO ANYTHING FOR PUBLIC TRUST. THAT'S ALL I GOT. THANK YOU. [1:44:27] Carl L. Sheline: FURTHER PUBLIC COMMENT? PUBLIC COMMENT IS NOW CLOSED. ADMINISTRATOR KAENERATH, I BELIEVE YOU'VE WROTE A REPORT [1:44:35] Bryan Kaenrath: WITH YOU. THANK YOU, MR. MAYOR. I APPRECIATE IT. OUR FY27 BUDGET CONTINUES TO MOVE ALONG. WE'LL BE STARTING MEETINGS WITH DEPARTMENT HEADS THIS WEEK TO REVIEW THEIR BUDGETS. Looking forward to seeing down all of our departments to review operations and talk about their needs for the coming year, and as I've stated previously, the budget will be presented here, the proposed budget, by charter in March. The city did put out today a comprehensive timeline and record of the funds related to the mass shooting donations and their history. This is available on the city's website and our social media accounts. I want to thank Angie Amores, our communications director, who put this together with the assistance of Anderson Bank, the chamber, and MCF. So this is available. There is also a flow chart to hopefully just provide some clarity of not some of the things we heard about in public comment, but just of the timeline and who act as the fiscal agent when at different points in time, so that is available for everyone to take a look at. Update on some community events: Chief Connell and I were invited and attended a meeting and a tour at Sweetser's a Lewiston location this week. We met with staff, discussed some community trends, and looked for areas of collaboration as productive conversation, and we'll be staying in touch with them as we continue to serve the broader Lewiston community. Also, several city staff members and myself, we attended the opening night of Drawn in Light, a new exhibition by Charlie Hewitt at the Main Mill Museum, a really great event. Congrats to Charlie on that, and we applaud his continued interest and dedication to the city of Lewiston. So a great event. Last Friday Busking Festival 2026 to build on the initial festival that occurred last fall. We are having some initial meetings with community partners in the coming weeks to discuss Lewiston Live and multiple dates for 2026. Joe Grokmal in our office is again leading this effort with managing the festival. So looking forward to that, some exciting new events for our downtown again in 2026. The Loan Qualification Committee continues to meet to review and approve applications for the city's new Small Business Opportunity Grant Program. Really, there's been a wide variety of different businesses that have applied. I think it really shows some of the interesting and strong entrepreneurial spirit here in the city. We have gone through about a half of the available funding to date. If anyone is interested in this program or looking for more information, please contact our city's Department of Economic and Community Development or administration. We're happy to walk you through the process there. Just an update on some upcoming agenda items. On February 17th, we are going to be having the Attorney General's office here to conduct a FOA training. We'll possibly be looking at, I think from conversations, be looking at an ordinance regarding immigration enforcement. We may have a workshop on a charter commission. They'll be scheduled permitting with the workshop session time. We also have our LCIP adoption also on the 17th. Lastly, I just want to thank our city hall facilities crew, in particular Dandy. You may notice there's a fresh coat of paint in the executive conference room. We're doing some more painting upcoming, so thank you to them for all their hard work. They did a great job and some fresh new paint to look at for the next 20 or 30 years. Thank you. [1:47:58] Carl L. Sheline: Appreciate Administrator Ken Matthew. Appreciate your service to our city. Thank you very much. Mom Clerk, I'm number one. Item number one, public hearing on [1:48:06] Speaker K (unidentified): the city's fiscal year 2027 Lewiston Capital Improvement Program. Requested action to conduct a public hearing on the city's fiscal year 2027 Lewiston Capital Improvement Program and receive public comments. The public hearing is [1:48:20] Carl L. Sheline: now open. [1:48:23] Joshua L. Nagine: Yes, could I just ask that we either close the door for the hallway or thank you very [1:48:30] Carl L. Sheline: MUCH COUNCILOR UH IS OUR LIEUTENANT STILL AROUND? OKAY, DIRECTOR CONNOR JUST GOT TO THANK YOU. THANK YOU. UH, THANK YOU FOR THAT, COUNCILOR NAGINE. UM, OKAY, UH, YES, PUBLIC UH OR UM PUBLIC HEARING FOR LCIP be going once, going twice. Public the public hearing is now closed. I'm number [1:48:59] Speaker K (unidentified): two, item number two, public hearing and final passage regarding an amendment to the offenses and miscellaneous provisions ordinance to expand the area of prohibited use of tobacco products in the downtown area. Requested action that the proposed amendment to the City Code of Ordinances chapter 50, offenses and miscellaneous provisions, article 1 in general, section 50-19, prohibiting tobacco use in designated public rights of way, received final passage by a [1:49:26] Carl L. Sheline: roll-call vote. I have a motion. Please so moved, councillor Chittum, second by councillor Harriman. Discussion, councillor Nagy. I [1:49:37] Joshua L. Nagine: have a quick statement from the Public Health Committee concerning the request, and I also want to point out that I was contacted by a business person on the top of Park Street who is interested in seeing the no smoking area apply to both sides of Park Street to oak, and there's really only one business there on that stretch at the moment. Public health committee notes that the proposal to expand tobacco-free streets referenced in the agenda was not brought forward for committee consultation given the policy health and community impact implications of such initiatives. The committee believes this is precisely the type of proposal that would benefit from public health committee review and input prior to advancement. I just want to put that forward. I'm on the committee myself, so it is my mistake for not pointing it out, but when we're talking about issues that do relate to public health, the Public Health Committee is being asked that they be consulted. [1:50:46] Carl L. Sheline: Thank You councillor Nei Jean, councillor Chittum. [1:50:50] David B. Chittim: yes, Thank You councillor Nei Jean, that's an excellent idea, excellent suggestion. We have resources available to us. How do we ensure that going forward we are reaching out with decisions that the council is being asked to make that could be referred to various committees, boards and commissions for their recommendations? So i [1:51:11] Joshua L. Nagine: Think as far as the public health committee is concerned, part of that comes back to the counselor that's appointed to it communicating with the public health committee, but this would apply for any committee that any counselor serves on, just communication with those volunteer citizens to make sure that we're getting the feedback that is relevant. I know that Healthy Under Skagen, for instance, has some resources available for us that they could dedicate for signage, other pieces like that, so yeah. Thank [1:51:43] Carl L. Sheline: you further comments questions from the council public comment for this agenda item back to the council madam clerk please councillor [1:51:52] Joshua L. Nagine: Nagin, did you have something? I'm just wondering if we'd be willing to accept a friendly amendment meant to extend the non-smoking area to the other side of Park Street to Oak as well, so it's not [1:52:04] Carl L. Sheline: just one side of Park. One second, as we clarify, Madam Clerk, I think that this would be a substantial change. What do you think? I would agree, Mr. Mayor, because [1:52:18] Speaker K (unidentified): we've advertised it as this particular side so just for clarification counselor renee jean you would then under f add and southwest side is that what you'd be looking for yeah it would be both sides apart i think from a public disclosure mr america's we've already run the legal ad which you know referred back to this agenda item which had the designated area so a potential thought might be to ask the public health committee their thought and to look at maybe the whole zone area and see if they have other thoughts to expand it for different coverage in different areas, and then we could come back to council with an expanded area if that, if they had that recommendation, would [1:53:03] Carl L. Sheline: the council be amenable to that I think given that this is the second reading I think that makes some sense if you're okay with that I'd be absolutely fine with that yeah okay Further comments before we call the vote? Madam Clerk, please call the vote. Council from word three? Yes. Word four? Yes. Word five? Yes. [1:53:27] Speaker K (unidentified): Word six? Yes. Word seven? No. Word one? Yes. Word two? Yes. Motion passed by a vote of six to one. [1:53:35] Carl L. Sheline: Thank you very much, Madam Clerk. Item number three. [1:53:37] Speaker K (unidentified): Item number three, public hearing and final passage for an amendment to the zoning and land use code article two, definitions for changes to the definition of accessory dwelling unit and daycares and to add a definition for tree caliper. Requested action that the proposed amendments to appendix a of the Code of Ordinances zoning and land use code article 2 definitions regarding accessory dwelling unit daycares and tree caliper receive final passage by a [1:54:01] Carl L. Sheline: roll call vote. I have a motion. Please so moved, councillor Chittum. Second and by, okay councillor Longchamps. Yes, thank you. [1:54:15] Director Connor: Director Connor, please kick us off. Thank You mr. mayor and councillors. On the 20th we had the first reading of these five agenda items to make changes to the land use and zoning code. A lot of them being legislative driven. In your packets I provided some answers to some of the questions that some of the councilors had at the last meeting. Barring any further questions, nothing has changed on any of these agenda items. [1:54:41] Carl L. Sheline: Questions comments from the council? [1:54:44] David B. Chittim: Councillor Chittim. Thank you. Thank you director and thank deputy director Norton for her memo. The last paragraph of that memo makes a recommendation or suggestions for actions that we could take regarding minimum Heights. We have already moved this and we've discussed that removing a significant portion could be a significant change. It's been advertised as printed. I would like to confirm with the city clerk through you mr mayor if that's appropriate that removing the minimum height provisions of this on second reading would not be an appropriate action. I would concur because it would be a [1:55:29] Speaker K (unidentified): substantive change. Yes, so we need to come back for another amendment at a [1:55:33] Carl L. Sheline: future meeting. Was that everything councillor Chittum? Yes, that can that decides my vote. Thank you. Yes councillor Nagin. So first of all [1:55:48] Joshua L. Nagine: director Connor thank you for your follow-up email yesterday. That was very helpful. My concern here with ncb with the 20 foot height requirement is one i don't think that we've been in danger of anything being built in ncb in the past three years. Like i don't think anybody's pulled a new building permit and so therefore if we're limiting the structures that will allow being built in those areas it's problematic to me anyways. My house was built in 1893 it is barely 20 feet tall. The spring street variety on the corner of Spring Street and Bridge. That's a local, I mean, it's empty now, it's unfortunately not doing anything. But if you look at like Eddie's Variety in Portland, that is a one-story convenience store that serves a whole neighborhood. We've allowed neighborhood businesses and restaurants in NCB. It also has an accessory commercial unit in front of it, which is a 10 by 20 building that's a barber shop. There's a lot of possibilities for redevelopment in the neighborhood that when we talk about the character of the neighborhood, the 24-hour restriction, a two-story 400 square foot home is gonna increase the cost by 70%. And so if we're talking about courtyard cottages, or if we're talking about affordable housing that we desperately need, I think limiting the height arbitrarily is a problem. And so I can't support that portion of it, and unfortunately I'm gonna have to vote against the entire piece because of that one portion. And I understand the purpose, and I'm not criticizing anybody, I'm just saying when I go through my neighborhood and I see homes that are 12, 16 feet tall, as well as the fact that like, and I know that my neighborhood is not the only NCB neighborhood, but you look at the infab building, the infab building is 16 feet tall. A lot of times we're talking about space and NCB that it buts industrial space and these are not necessarily two or three story buildings. A lot of times they are one story buildings. [1:58:13] Scott A. Harriman: COUNCILOR HERMAN. Thank you. I have a similar concern. I just wanted to clarify which agenda item that height restriction is in. I think it's in item 6, but I just wanted to double check. [1:58:32] Director Connor: I believe you are correct, Councilor. OK. [1:58:36] Scott A. Harriman: All right. Thank you. Public [1:58:41] Carl L. Sheline: comment for this agenda and I'm bless you councillor public comment is now closed back to the council yes councillor Chittum thank you [1:59:02] David B. Chittim: councillor Harriman for pointing that out I was ready to vote improperly [1:59:11] Carl L. Sheline: anything further Director Connor? No sir. Madam Clerk, please call the vote. Yes [1:59:18] Speaker K (unidentified): yes, word four, yes, word five, yes, word six, yes, word seven, yes, word one, yes, or two, yes, motion passed by vote of seven to zero. I'm number four, item number four, public hearing and final passage for an amendment to the zoning and land use code article five, administration and enforcement, for changes to allow more than one principal structure on residential lots. Requested action that the proposed amendments to appendix A of the code of ordinances, zoning and land use code article 5, administration and Enforcement regarding the allowance of multiple principal structures on residential lots receive final passage by a roll call [1:59:57] Carl L. Sheline: vote. I have a motion. Please, so moved Councillor Chittim, second saying by [2:00:01] Director Connor: Councillor Harriman, Director Connor. Again, same thing, barring any further questions, happy to answer anything you may have tonight. Thank you. Questions [2:00:13] Carl L. Sheline: comments from councillors, public comment for this agenda item, back to the council. [2:00:22] Speaker K (unidentified): Madam Clerk, please call the vote. Yes,. Thank you very much, Madam Clerk. Item number five, public hearing and final passage for an amendment to the zoning and land use code article 9 appeals and variances for a change to set back variances for dwelling units. Requested action that the proposed amendments to appendix A of the code of ordinances zoning and land use code article 9 appeals and variances for a change to set back variances for dwelling units receive final passage by a roll call vote. May have [2:01:01] Carl L. Sheline: a motion. Please, so move Councillor Chittim, second by Councillor Nagine, Director Connor. [2:01:09] Director Connor: Again, same thing. This one was discussed on the 20th and happy to answer any further questions that the council may have. [2:01:17] Carl L. Sheline: Councillors, do you have any questions or comments? Public comment for this agenda item. Back to the council. Madam Clerk, please call the vote. Yes,, [2:01:34] Speaker K (unidentified): yes,. Number six, number six, public hearing and final passage for an amendment to the zoning and land use code article 11 district regulations for changes to the space and bulk table and land use table regarding mobile homes, daycares and used car dealers and new dimensional requirements. Requested action that the proposed amendments to appendix A of the code of ordinances zoning and land use code article 11 district regulations regarding mobile homes, daycares and used car dealers and new dimensional requirements receive final passage [2:02:13] Carl L. Sheline: by a roll call vote. I may have a motion. Please, so moved Councillor Chittim, second thing by [2:02:19] Director Connor: Councillor Nagine, Director Connor, and this is the agenda item that Council Hermann was to talking about and counseling aging, so barring any further questions I'm happy to answer what you have. Counseling aging, so one of the things I wanted to point [2:02:36] Joshua L. Nagine: Out is that reducing the lot size requirements in downtown residential is incredibly important. Unfortunately, I don't have a line-item veto that I can use here, but we have a lot of undersized Lots that could be developed. I would also say we can all go and look at pictures of historic Maine, right, the DeWitt building which was right out here, five-story building, right directly next to it was a one-story house, right. So it's not what I'm trying, what I'm trying to illustrate here is that the form for the community comes from whoever is going to put some investment in the land value in order to increase the usage, right. And so I'm unfortunately going to have to vote against this because of that high requirement. Also I would point out that the way that this is written seems to potentially set aside mobile homes from not being allowed with an NCB because there is no mobile home that's built as a two-story building, you know. And so I just, I also wanted to point that out as well, two mobile homes on one lot as a primary and a secondary house is two housing units that don't exist on that property right now. And again in a housing market where we're asking people to develop in our community, whatever you can afford is what i want to see happen. So that's my feedback on it and we are [2:04:04] Director Connor: definitely, if i may mr mayor, we are definitely open to having this conversation again with the planning board to talk about it. I know it came up at the last meeting and obviously again tonight, so we do have another round of ordinance changes coming through the, through the wickets right now. We can definitely bring this back to look at if that's the desire of the council, specifically the height requirement [2:04:27] Carl L. Sheline: Thank You director Connor, counselor Chittum. Yes, Thank You director Connor [2:04:32] David B. Chittim: yes and if you do and I hope you do go back to the Planning Board with specifically this 20 foot minimum height, if the Planning Board continues to THINK THAT THIS IS A GREAT IDEA IN THE NCB ZONE, I'D LIKE TO HAVE SOME EXPLICIT RATIONALE BEHIND [2:04:48] Scott A. Harriman: THAT. THANK YOU. UNDERSTAND. UH COUNCILOR HERMAN. YES, SO I'M ALSO CONCERNED ABOUT THE MINIMUM HEIGHT AND ITS POTENTIAL IMPACT ON HOUSING DEVELOPMENT. IT SEEMS LIKE IT WOULD ALSO NOT ALLOW ADUS FROM BEING BUILT UNLESS THAT IS ENLISTED AS AN EXCEPTION, BUT I DIDN'T SEE THAT, SO THAT WOULD BE ANOTHER VOTE AGAINST IT, IN MY OPINION. JUST IN A MARKET WHERE WE NEED SO MUCH HOUSING RIGHT NOW, I DON'T SEE ARTIFICIALLY RESTRICTING IT BASED ON A HEIGHT REQUIREMENT. [2:05:26] Carl L. Sheline: PUBLIC COMMENT FOR THIS AGENDA ITEM. BACK TO THE COUNCIL. COUNCILOR NAJING. [2:05:34] Joshua L. Nagine: ONE POINT THAT I WOULD LIKE TO BRING FORWARD TO IS JUST THAT THE ACCESSORY COMMERCIAL UNIT PIECE OR JUST COMMERCIAL UNITS IN GENERAL. Right, NCB, we worked very hard to make sure that we would allow neighborhood restaurants and businesses. Most of the times you're not going to build the two-story, you know, like for instance, if I have a corner lot, I'm not saying it's me that's going to do this, but I have a corner lot, if I wanted to put a Heath Coast there, it would not be allowed. And so, you know, I think these are the challenges that we're seeing with the height restriction. [2:06:13] Carl L. Sheline: Counselors, thank. [2:06:14] Director Connor: YOU ANYTHING ELSE FURTHER DIRECTOR CONNOR YES SIR I'VE GOT ALL THE NOTES THANK YOU THANK YOU UH. [2:06:21] Carl L. Sheline: UH MADAM CLERK PLEASE CALL THE VOTE ANSWER FROM WORD THREE NO WORD FOUR NO WORD FIVE NO WORD SIX NO. [2:06:30] Speaker K (unidentified): WORD SEVEN NO WORD ONE NO WORD TWO NO MOTION FAILED BY A VOTE OF ZERO TO SEVEN ITEM NUMBER SEVEN ITEM NUMBER SEVEN PUBLIC HEARING AND FINAL PASSAGE FOR AN AMENDMENT TO THE terminology for daycare facilities received final passage by a roll call. [2:07:17] Carl L. Sheline: Vote I have a motion please so move councillor Chittum second. [2:07:22] Director Connor: Turned by councillor Harriman director Connor again the majority of these were legislatively driven with the exception of the parking requirements that was done at the behest of the Planning Board and staff happy to answer any further questions that were not meeting councillor Nagin I just I apologize this. [2:07:42] Joshua L. Nagine: Is a comment for the last agenda item those other pieces are super important so if we could see that back before us as an agenda item it would be really appreciated further. [2:07:56] Carl L. Sheline: Comments questions from the council public comment for this agenda item back to the council anything further director connor yes sir madam clerk please call the vote council from word three yes word four yes word Yes. Board 6? [2:08:16] Speaker K (unidentified): Yes. Board 7? Yes. Board 1? Yes. Board 2? Yes. Motion passed with a vote of 7-0. [2:08:22] Carl L. Sheline: Dr. Conner, we appreciate you. Item number 8. [2:08:26] Speaker K (unidentified): Item number 8, amendment to the municipal parking fees policy regarding parking violation fines. Requested action that the proposed amendment to the parking fees policy, manual number 42, as recommended by city administration and the police department. [2:08:41] Carl L. Sheline: I have a motion, please. So moved. Councilor Harriman. Second. Seconded by Councilor Chittim. Chief Conley, thank you so much for joining us. Kick us off. [2:08:50] Speaker W (unidentified): You're welcome. Thank you for having me. So this is just a proposal. Our lieutenant of support services, he oversees our parking enforcement, took a look at our parking violations, and we really haven't seen them adjusted since 2012. 12. So there's a proposal in front of you. All should have the memo where we're looking to just increase the fines to make them more comparable with other municipalities. I think the highest increase we're looking at is 24 dollars on the double parking, and that's seems to be an issue with that. So other than that, I think we're looking at roughly 14 or so extra on each fine. [2:09:37] Carl L. Sheline: Thank you, Chief. Questions, comments? Councilor Chittim, yes. Yes, thank you. Chief, thank you. [2:09:44] David B. Chittim: A couple of questions. Do trucks that are delivering to businesses on Lisbon Street who are parked in the travel lane, does that constitute double parking? It can, yes, if they're [2:09:55] Speaker W (unidentified): double parked. There's specific loading zones and specific areas where they are allowed to park, but it can be considered double parking. [2:10:03] David B. Chittim: Okay, if they if they happen to be there when the enforcement officer is there then there may be a ticket issued there [2:10:09] Speaker W (unidentified): It's possible. Okay. Thank you [2:10:12] David B. Chittim: Second question maybe for administration the revenues from parking fees to those go into the general fund or is there a dedicated fund to receive? Those Finance director I answered general fund [2:10:29] Carl L. Sheline: Yes, Kielce and aging [2:10:31] Joshua L. Nagine: Thank you very much for Bring this forward. I have a just a quick question about the t2 parking solutions. Is that I know that's just a proposal in there the new enforcement system so that this isn't Directly connected to that, but it's in this agenda item. So I just wanted to talk to whether or not you have an understanding of if that system would actually be able to issue parking slips much like Portland does if we ever decide to go that way to start charging for parking again. Do you know if it's basically is it compatible I [2:11:08] Speaker W (unidentified): guess is the question. I'm not sure it's a new system that we're looking at that we've placed in the budget and there's there's some ability it's it's gonna help parking enforcement be able to enforce it quicker and there's an ability I believe to pay for it. Right sorry lieutenant st leon's the one that actually looked [2:11:28] Andrew Jones: into this. Sorry yes you are correct in your assumption that it does it can coincide with [2:11:33] Carl L. Sheline: parking enforcement and parking garages. Sorry can you speak into the mic for our friends at home [2:11:37] Scott A. Harriman: Sorry, yes, you are correct in your assumption that it does coincide with different parking regulations, and if we were to have on street pay for parking, it would enforce that as well. We'd [2:11:47] Joshua L. Nagine: be able to expand that system. Okay, perfect, that's that's all I need to know. These fees are, I assume, in line with what other communities are charging, right, is that the, yeah, I would say for the most part they're actually under, even with the update. Yes, okay, thanks. [2:12:08] Carl L. Sheline: Thank you counselors, further questions. So I've noticed on Lisbon Street that people make parking spaces out of, you know, not parking spaces. How is enforcement of that going? [2:12:23] Speaker W (unidentified): Our new parking enforcement employee is very proactive, I will say that. Excellent. [2:12:30] Carl L. Sheline: Thank you, public comment for this agenda item, back to the council, Councilor Chiddom. [2:12:39] David B. Chittim: Thank you Mr. MAYOR YOU'VE RAISED AN INTERESTING QUESTION IF THE BUMPER OF MY CAR OR EVEN THE FRONT WHEEL OF MY CAR IS STRATTLING THE LINE BETWEEN PARKING spaces is that worthy of a parking ticket i mean that's one of those discretionary things to be honest very often the only place the only way that the last car in a slot can park is to park straddling the division line between what would be two normal slots i would like not to see people who are parking that way being ticketed yeah and i don't think [2:13:15] Speaker W (unidentified): that 's that's common that as long as you're not taking up a space where another individual can't park we don't see that generally ticketed thank you chief i'm going to [2:13:27] David B. Chittim: admit that I may be considered a scofflaw. Well, I'm sure I am in other regards, but in parking, I will often pull up to the space in front of 93 Lisbon Street, which is a single spot, it is wide enough, long enough actually for two cars, and when I pull in and the space is empty, I will pull way up almost to the bollard, which leaves space for another car. If the parking enforcement officer sees that the only car in there is well outside the marked boundaries, am I subject to, my am I risking getting a ticket for that? I don't believe so. Okay. Thank you, I won't hold you to that, by the way, but I appreciate it. Thank you. [2:14:08] Carl L. Sheline: You know, anything we can do to ensure that Councillor Chittim receives a lot of parking tickets, that'd be great. [2:14:17] Joshua L. Nagine: I think this is directed towards administration, but I'm wondering when we update these fees, is there a possibility, if we decide to update these fees, is there a possibility that we can let the Chamber, the DLA, and possibly the tenants, the landlords list know, so that at least folks are, we're doing some type of communication to reach outreach. [2:14:40] Bryan Kaenrath: Yes, we'll work with communications on putting something together and getting that outreach. [2:14:43] Joshua L. Nagine: Out, sure, perfect, thank you, I. [2:14:48] Carl L. Sheline: And one thing else, Chief, I don't know, a little off-subject here, but if I may, so we have patrons of stores all up and down Lismas Street just, you know, either creating parking spots where there are none or simply just stopping in a lane and running in somewhere, you know, I don't know if education could be righted to businesses who could let their patrons know that it's not acceptable. I understand, but you have that happen, like, sometimes three and four times all up and down Lisbon Street, and it really becomes almost like a video game to make it down to Main Street. I guess any, I realize that we're dealing with, we have, what, one parking enforcement? [2:15:34] Speaker W (unidentified): Yeah, we only have one parking enforcement officer currently. Okay. [2:15:39] Carl L. Sheline: YEAH, SO I UNDERSTAND THERE'S STAFF LIMITATIONS AND EVERYTHING ELSE ABOUT ANYTHING THAT WE CAN UH DO TO ADDRESS THAT 'D BE THAT'D BE GREAT CERTAINLY UM FURTHER UM FURTHER QUESTIONS COMMENTS FROM THE COUNCIL AND COUNCILOR CHINNAM I WANT YOU TO KNOW I DEEPLY APPRECIATE YOUR CONCERN FOR PROCKING CORRECTLY SO THANK YOU UM I APOLOGIZE FOR MY EARLIER JOKE UM MADAM CLARK PLEASE CALL THE [2:16:06] Speaker K (unidentified): vote. Yes,, yes, thank you very much. [2:16:17] Carl L. Sheline: Chief, thank you. Lieutenant, thank you. Item number nine, item number nine, order [2:16:24] Speaker K (unidentified): approving the disposition of forty Robinson Gardens, requested action to approve the order approving the disposition of forty Robinson Gardens. [2:16:33] Carl L. Sheline: Councilor Chittim. Seconded by me. Councilor Nagine. Director Roy, is this your item? Correct. [2:16:45] Michael R. Roy: Okay, so we're requesting the sale of a 40 Robinson Garden for $399,000 to Joshua and Lorraine Wood. This is a property we bought for the easement piece and then remove the garage and put a mudroom on, so we are selling it now that we have the easement piece of it, put it back on the tax rolls. [2:17:15] David B. Chittim: Councilor Chittim. Thank you, Mr. Mayor, I realized, Director Roy, this may be putting you on the spot, but we rented that, we had tenants in there of the city, is that correct, for a period of time? Do we have any sense as to whether or not the city gained or lost money on the entire transaction? We purchased that in 2022 for 376,000. We're selling it for 6.1 more, four years later. We had revenues, we had expenses. Is there a way to tell whether or not this was a money maker or a money loser for the city? I could compile that and send that to you by an email. I'd rather that you didn't, but just do you have a sense of, is this too small to worry about? Did we lose $10,000? I will let you know that we had [2:18:04] Speaker X (unidentified): Dubois Realty do a market analysis of what would be a fair price. This, we do have to realize that the garage was removed and it cannot be rebuilt, so you have a home that no longer has a two-car garage to it, so that's I think part of the reason why we're not getting asking more. And the house has been vacant, we did have people writing about it, there's been nobody living in for at least seven, eight months, since the beginning of the summer, once they [2:18:28] David B. Chittim: started doing the work. Okay, that I appreciate that, thank you, Director Roy. Please don't do any work to get me detailed answers, and then forgive me if [2:18:40] Carl L. Sheline: you've mentioned this, Director Roy, but we didn't buy this building for fun, we bought it so we could do work on the chips and Brooke project, correct? Yeah, we needed to purchase this to do to finish that work, correct, for the easement, yes. Gotcha, thank you. Public comment for this agenda item, back to the council. I'm Clark, please call the vote. Council from word three, yes, word four, yes, word five, yes, word six, [2:19:07] Speaker K (unidentified): yes, word seven, yes, word one, yes, or two, yes. Motion passed by vote of seven to zero. I'm number ten, item number ten, order authorizing execution of waiving utility lien foreclosure on certain distress structures on leased land. Requested action to approve the order authorizing execution of waiving utility lien foreclosure on certain distress structures on leased land. I have a motion, please. So moved, [2:19:32] Carl L. Sheline: counselor Chittum, second saying by councillor Harriman, dr. [2:19:39] Michael R. Roy: Roy's, this you, so this is, you saw this last year, we're just waiving the rights of foreclosure because these properties are in mobile home parks, so we do not want to be responsible for paying rent. These items of course are put out there so that when they do sell the mobile home, if the individual sells the mobile home, we do get our funds for this. [2:20:06] Carl L. Sheline: Public comment for this agenda item back to the council. Madam Clerk, please call the vote. Council, from word three? Yes. Word four? Yes. Word five? Yes. [2:20:18] Speaker K (unidentified): Word six? Yes. Word seven? Yes. Word one? Yes. Word two? Yes. Motion passed by the vote of seven to zero. Item number 11. Item number 11, order proposing amendments to the Lewiston City Charter Article 2, subsections 2.06 and 2.06, forfeiture of office of councilor and Article 2, subsections 2.07 B and 2.07 C forfeiture of office of mayor requested action to approve the order proposing amendments to the Lewis and city charter article 2 subsections 2.6 C and 2.6 D forfeiture of office of councillor and article 2 subsections 2.0 7 B and 2.0 7 C forfeiture of office of mayor I have a motion please [2:21:04] David B. Chittim: So moved. Counselor Chiddom. [2:21:06] Carl L. Sheline: Second. Signed by Counselor Najing. Counselor Chiddom, would you like to kick us off? [2:21:12] David B. Chittim: This is a recognition of the errors that crept into the council to the charter during the 2021 amendments to the charter. The Charter Committee, the Charter Review Committee unanimously recommended that this issue be addressed. It was dropped. The council who approved it did not understand that. That material had been dropped this would put into effect the recommendations of the Charter Review Committee with one significant difference and that is the Charter Review Committee had in its recommendation is that the tipping point between appointment and election be halfway through a two-year term at 12 months this proposed amendment moves that tipping point closer to the next election so that it says that if there remain fewer than six months or less than I looked that up too it is less Than six months before the next election then it would be an appointment for the first 18 months of a term it would be a special election so that's the change that I have proposed over the recommendations of the 2021 charter review committee councillor [2:22:30] Joshua L. Nagine: Aging so considering the fact that we have to call a special election and there's a 30-day window there I don't know if we want to maybe look at seven months versus six months if the goal is six months because now we're talking five months right [2:22:48] Carl L. Sheline: Is our if he answers that question yeah I consult should [2:22:52] David B. Chittim: I'M THANK YOU AND I'M GONNA I'M GONNA BOOT IT OVER TO THE CITY CLERK. SHE AND I SPOKE ABOUT WHAT TIME IS NECESSARY FOR ELECTIONS AND PRINTING BALLOTS AND SO on, and my understanding of our conversation was that six months would allow plenty of time for that logistical process without crimping anybody's style. [2:23:12] Speaker K (unidentified): sure Thank You councillor so yes we have reviewed it. if the city calls for a special election it would be one polling place. most likely we would not have turnaround time to have voting machines programmed so it would be similar to a mayoral runoff. it would be paper ballots. it would be one race could be multiple candidates but it would be one race. in order to meet the six month window the council would also have to vote to shorten the period for the circulation of nomination papers which is allowed in the city charter. it can go as short as i believe two weeks for the circulation of nomination papers. they would still need the 50 signatures. Absentee ballots would still need to be available for the 30-day window. So we would be able to turn an election around once the council calls for it, because we can't hold a special election unless the council votes to have it. We could turn that around in about six weeks, six to eight weeks, depending upon the window available for the circulation of nomination papers. [2:24:24] Joshua L. Nagine: Okay, thank you for that clarification. Sorry One other point that I would just like to bring up is that I would prefer to see that we put to the voters A full Charter Review Commission. I know that there are folks that are hesitant to do that but again We do have to fix an error in the charter changes that were made before in 2021. I am hesitant to approve the six-month window with the two with basically a week gap. it seems hard when we had 43 years I believe it was 43 years of standing precedent for the one-year nomination more than one year [2:25:15] Speaker K (unidentified): is election right I mean the Charter was created in 1980 I believe it is 80 or 82 I can't remember offhand so it's been several years right okay so I would [2:25:26] Joshua L. Nagine: suggest myself personally that I would be comfortable with going back to what was supposed to be in the Charter originally and then talking about a Charter review Commission but I do recognize vision there's an error in the Charter that doesn't need to be fixed so I'm not gonna die on that Hill I may [2:25:42] Carl L. Sheline: May die on the charter review commission hill at some point, but if I can jump in, counselors, so yeah, I mean, I guess however it gets fixed, addressed, I do think we need to, you know, fix the error that we have now, and then I recommend that we have a workshop first about all the options available to us as the council, and then the public, you know, all the options that you know would allow for charter change, and then you know that be educational for us, and then the public, and then to Proceed with what makes sense from there. And yeah, and I certainly would support a charter review committee, but I just think we need to have a Workshop first to you know clearly lay out all the options Thank you. Yes concert should have thank you. Yes. I'd like to clarify there [2:26:36] David B. Chittim: there are several different and we'll talk about this in the workshop, but there is a charter commission and a charter review committee, they serve different functions, a charter review committee would be appointed by this council or the mayor, I'm not sure which, a charter commission is elected by the people at large, charter commission has free range to do whatever it wants to the charter, the charter review committee is limited to certain changes that it can make, I'm not at all opposed to that in fact I think we ought to have a workshop to discuss all of these things so that we're all up to speed on how we can approach this. I will warn the council there is another modification to the chart, another request for modification to the Charter coming down, there is a bad reference in section 2.11 I believe, which is the changing of a letter from D to B or D to C or C to a or something, but that's it, and we have to go through a whole long process to affect that simple change. I'm not married to six months, I do think that one of the arguments that was made with the situation we just found ourselves in is that we were not allowing the voters to have their say, and I'm not certain why a one-year window for that is acceptable, and I tried to make that as short as possible to give the voters as much chance for a SPECIAL ELECTION AS POSSIBLE IN THE EVENT OF A VACANCY. YES COUNCILOR HERRMAN. YES I JUST WANTED [2:28:06] Scott A. Harriman: TO CLARIFY THAT ANY OF THESE AMENDMENTS THAT COME BEFORE US WHEN IF THEY PASS THE COUNCIL THEY STILL HAVE TO BE VOTED ON BY THE PUBLIC AT THE NEXT REGULAR MUNICIPAL ELECTION, SO IF THIS PASSES TONIGHT IT JUST GOES ON THE BALLOT FOR NOVEMBER AND THEN IT GETS VOTED ON YES OR NO. THANK YOU FOR [2:28:27] Bret Martel: That, Council Martell. Yes, thank you, Mr. Mayor. I just, I think this is important. I think there's some other things that need to be addressed, the loophole or whatever you want to call it around residency, or maybe tightening up the language around residency, which I think is another issue. The one that Councilor, Chiddom just mentioned, also changing the letter, so if we're going to go into a workshop and we're going to work these out, why wouldn't we work them all out as a council, come back with all the changes and suggestions and send it as one package, one plan to the voters going forward, instead of peace mailing this together. [2:29:07] Carl L. Sheline: I'll, well, did you want to address that, Councilor? Well, and I did, one second, Councilor Chiddom, I didn't want to cut you off. Councilor Martel, are you, yes, I am, I finished, thank you. [2:29:17] David B. Chittim: Mr. Mayor. Excellent, Councilor Chiddom. Yes, thank you, and thank you for raising that, Councilor Martel. Tell one of the reasons, first of all, of these would have to go to the voters in November, and there is, I believe, a 30-day window after the vote has been tallied before the Charter becomes changed, so it's 2027 at the very earliest they were talking about any changes. One of the reasons I believe that these errors crept through in 2021 was that the council was presented with 10 specific charter amendment requests in one fell swoop it was overwhelmed and did not thoroughly review each of the 10 requests if these requests come in piecemeal over the course of the next summer or this coming summer then I believe that will give the council a better opportunity to look at each one INDIVIDUALLY AND I HOPE AVOID THE SITUATION THAT OCCURRED IN 2021 SO THAT 'S MY ANSWER [2:30:18] Carl L. Sheline: to your question, Councilor, Councilor Najing. Yes, so I would just say, to Councilor Martel's [2:30:26] Joshua L. Nagine: point, it's a very valid point, absolutely. my concern, with, changing it to six months from when it was 12 before is if we're putting this before the voters and it's a substantial change from what we all thought was going to happen, that could actually affect what they vote on. One point that I would like to bring up is that one, if we do a full Charter Review Commission or even a Charter Review Committee, those changes won't be put forward until long after this November election, so that's One piece and then the second piece is that whatever either a committee or a commission does, and I would suggest personally commission, because that is, we're not appointing those people, they're, they're elected. The state still has to approve whatever the charter is that put is put it in front of them, and a workshop can explain all this for sure, but it is a long process. I'm not quite sure that we'll be in a place to close this gap with what we know is wrong with the with the election versus appointment by November. I don't think that would be ready to go before the voters, and so that's why I would encourage that we either decide on the [2:31:52] Carl L. Sheline: six or twelve months and then move forward on this. Yes, thank you. Okay. OK, PUBLIC COMMENT FOR THIS AGENDA. [2:32:03] Michael R. Roy: MATT ROY, WORD 6. WELL, THE SOLUTION TO A PROBLEM CREATED BY PIECEMAIL IS NOT SOLVING IT BY A PIECEMAIL SOLUTION. COUNSELOR NERGINE IS RIGHT, JUST LIKE THE COUNCIL WAS IN OCTOBER 2021 FOR CHARTER REVIEW, OR CHARTER COMMISSION, NOT A REVIEW, NOT TO MENTION YOU CAN'T ACTUALLY DO A CHARTER, The charter only provides for a charter review committee in a year ending zero, so after the census. So that's not an option for another five years at this point. So the only solution is a charter commission. Of course, if you do pass this and send this in a referendum in November, it's going to be at the very,, very bottom of the election. because you we have a US Senate race gubernatorial legislative congressional the other half of city government that wasn't staggered last November and then this it's going to be a yeah not notwithstanding the next municipal election which is November of course you could argue that the a statewide primary does fit somewhere in a loose definition but you guys have got in trouble redefining vague terms but that's another yeah so the only solution is a charter commission that would be the non-hypocritical democratic way since apparently as people earlier tonight said you're just full of hypocrisy and non-transparency and see you know see the undemocratic way you actually fill this which again goes back to 2021 2022 and i would point out to the special council meeting you guys had last month one of those four counselors has apparently changed his mind so more reason to have a just put an order on the next meeting to go out you can do this at this with the state primary do we want a charter commission end of story and then by november these people could be elected. And then we can start this process, which we should have done four years ago. Thank you. [2:34:25] Speaker P (unidentified): Matthew Wigren, Ward 4. Councillor Chittim, let me give you great props for trying to patch the Charter and the obvious oversight that happened when we changed to the staggered terms for office. I have some comments on it. I know you're shocked, aren't you? Why is this rule not being applied to the school committee, if they had a vacancy? And if you're going to do this, could you please put in writing how the council shall fill an open seat if it has a vacancy, that it has to do this way? The city council will not be forced to make it up on the spot like you guys did, not that you guys truly needed to. There was recent precedent on how the council did a replacement for Luke Jensen when he resigned before his term amended. There was a major difference in the way the two were handled. In the case of Jensen's seat, the council openly debated the possible candidates among themselves before this entire room, but the candidates were not brought forth and asked questions of, nor were anyone allowed to speak on their behalf. There was no input from the public that was not sent via email on who the options were on the agenda. The difference is when you replace the recent Ward 5 counselor, there was very little public debate among all of you up there, but there was a large amount of public input from the group out here. So I hope that if you're going to put in that we fill a vacancy up to six months, that you'll have a plan so that we can look at it, so that next time when it comes up, hopefully 15 years from now, someone just has to look at the Charter and go, okay, this is how we're gonna do it, not make it up that night. Thank you further [2:36:19] Carl L. Sheline: public comment back to the council. Yes, Councillor Chittim, if I may, Mr. Mayor, I [2:36:28] David B. Chittim: have just looked at the periodic Charter review. It does stipulate that the mayor SHALL APPOINT A CHARTER REVIEW COMMITTEE ON YEARS ENDING IN ONE. I DON'T SEE THAT AS BEING PROHIBITIVE OF THE COUNCIL APPOINTING A CHARTER REVIEW COMMITTEE AT ANY OTHER TIME. AS TO THE SCHOOL COMMITTEE, MY UNDERSTANDING AND READING OF THE COUNCIL IS THAT VACANCIES ON THE SCHOOL COMMITTEE ARE FILLED BY THE MAYOR, MAYORAL APPOINTMENT, WITH APPROVAL OF THE COUNCIL, AND AS TO RULES FOR DEALING WITH THE SITUATION THAT WE WERE IN THAT FRANKLY WAS BEYOND MY BANDWIDTH given the other issues that are facing the city at the time. It's a it's a question i believe for a charter now i've lost the terms charter review committee or preferably a charter commission. They're they're excellent points but i they're beyond the cape of the beyond the purview of this particular change which is a technical change to the to the charter. [2:37:33] Carl L. Sheline: Yes, to recap, I urge us to vote this through and then to have our administrator schedule at a reasonable time here in the future a charter review workshop to discuss all of these options, educate us and the public. Further comments, questions from the council? Madam Clerk, please call the vote. Councillor, from word three? Yes. Word four? Yes. Yes. Board 5? Yes. Board 6? [2:38:03] Speaker K (unidentified): Yes. Board 7? Yes. Board 1? Yes. Board 2? Yes. Motion passed by the vote of 7-0. [2:38:12] Carl L. Sheline: Thank you very much, Madam Clerk. Item number 12. [2:38:15] Speaker K (unidentified): Item number 12, Presentation on a Proposed Community Ambassador Program. This is a presentation only. No action is required. [2:38:25] Carl L. Sheline: Administrator Kainrath, Special Assistant Grochmael. [2:39:16] Speaker Z (unidentified): Presentation should be coming up in just a moment. There we go. [2:39:20] Carl L. Sheline: can we get the presentation on the side screen please gentlemen [2:39:29] Bryan Kaenrath: please take it away all right thank you mr. mayor good evening council so we are here tonight to present a community ambassadors program. We're excited to be here to present this. It's been in the works for a little while scheduling and getting in front of you. In my first eight months here we've really tried to look at some ways to bring some new and proactive ideas to address some of the city's biggest challenges as well as our goals. And when we talk about community safety we're talking about economic development we're talking about improving the city's image and community engagement. We believe this proposal hits on a number of these different categories. So our goal also for this spring is to come back more through the spring with other new ideas new proactive ideas positive ideas to try to make some headway with some of our goals for the city. I think we certainly need it and we're excited to be doing this. We had you know just to recap a little bit joe spearheaded the lewiston live busking festival that's come about in Our last eight months here, the community listening session series, which we've also done, we're now bringing this forward, and we'll have some other ideas to bring forward for consideration through the spring. So next slide. Did you want us to introduce ourselves? Semester, we did that. Brian Camera, the city administrator, and Joe Grokmal, special assistant to administration. [2:40:47] Carl L. Sheline: Excellent. I mentioned your names as you were setting up. Thank you. All right, so community. [2:40:52] Bryan Kaenrath: Ambassadors, what is it? An overview. So community ambassadors are a non-police uniform presence in downtown and public spaces. They're focused on a number of things, including cleanliness, hospitality, engagement with the public, as well as data collection as a possibility. This is a program being used more and more by cities, you know, both small, medium, and large cities around the country. It's designed to complement existing city services, not to replace them. And the goal would be to hire local workers earning a decent wage, certainly above minimum wage, to staff this program. [2:41:31] Speaker Z (unidentified): Excellent. And so one of the questions is, why are cities exploring this model? Well, across the country, and even to expand on that, we also looked at some international examples. Thank you, appreciate you. Is that better? Excellent. So across the country, and even we looked at a few international cities, communities are seeing an increase in downtown foot traffic and events, as well as mixed-use activity, as communities come out of the pandemic times. There are also more visible quality of life concerns. Again, we've seen, you know, increased number of individuals who are in need of services, who are out and who are vulnerable in public. There's also a desire for municipalities to take on a proactive presence rather than being reactive. It's better that we deal with challenges or problems before they escalate. At the same time, police departments are increasingly asked to address non-policing issues to a greater and greater extent. Our department here is no exception. And cities are looking for non-enforcement tools that allow for them to, again, have more positive interactions with individuals in these spaces. Community ambassadors, from our research, we found that it will fill a gap between maintenance, sort of smaller scale maintenance in public spaces, social services, and of course traditional policing as well. And when we think [2:42:42] Bryan Kaenrath: About some of the challenges we're having with recruitment, for example, at our police department. We think this is a good idea to complement a police presence or that visible presence in a number of areas. When you think about some of our spaces around the city, just like Kennedy Park, for example, I think a visible presence that's not necessarily a police presence could be helpful in not only deterring some behaviors, but also just assisting people, whether they're on house or whether they're tourists looking for directions in a number of ways. So it's designed to, again, complement some those existing city services, especially areas where we already have recruitment challenges with some other positions that could perform largely some of the same functions. So again, what is a community ambassador? It is a uniform, clearly identifiable staff member in the public. They would be representative of the city of Lewiston. They would be clearly uniformed and marked as such. Again, there would be a locally hired, community based people in the workforce earning, you know, a livable wage, and they'd be trained in a number of areas that would be customer service and hospitality, conflict resolution and de-escalation. Again, when you think about some of our parks and areas, Kennedy Park, for example, I think some de-escalation resources out there could be helpful, engagement the vulnerable populations. We have a new shelter facility in town. I think engaging with some of these unhoused folks, and obviously we have you know, members of our police department that do this also, but again, there are, you know, people that can do this that don't have to be sworn on from our enforcement officers to be out there assisting. They'd also be versed in local ordinances, services and resources, and would most importantly serve as a consistent visible presence in public areas, in downtown, on Lisbon Street, in our parks, to assist the public, assist visitors and assist those vulnerable populations also. And so what [2:44:29] Speaker Z (unidentified): do ambassadors typically do? So again, traditionally in municipalities, when you're looking at, you know, jobs or different positions that exist, they're pretty cookie cutter, pretty off-the-shelf. The responsibilities don't vary much between locations. One of the things that we found very interesting about this approach is the fact that ambassadors, you can actually train them on different, you know, on different matters. They can be well versed in certain things, you can deploy them in certain manners, but Not in others, and so a couple of different options that we said we'll get into this more in a minute with the with the example of Grand Rapids, Michigan, but ambassadors can provide wayfinding assistance to residents and visitors. So people, you know, are looking for resources, they're trying to find their way to a location, they're trying to find their way to an event, ambassadors can be a friendly face for to be able to engage with those individuals. Of course there's addressing litter as well and doing light maintenance issues. Again, addressing graffiti, we'll get into that more in a minute, but graffiti, minor vandalism elements like that can be addressed. There's also just questions about infrastructure issues and being able to report that to the city or to the relevant authority so it can be fixed in an appropriate and timely manner. Another element as well that is relevant to discussions we've had over the past several months is the fact that ambassadors can be trained also to pick up syringes and that they can dispose of them safely and effectively. They can engage respectfully with unhoused individuals and serve as a way to connect them with whatever services are necessary. They can also observe and document and report issues to police as well. So just because they're not an enforcement arm in the traditional sense, it doesn't mean that they can't still be out there assisting with making sure that everything is staying on side. And then of course in specialty circumstances they can support events, they we'll talk about this more in a minute but they can also be deployed to a greater extent during peak periods or during different seasons depending on the municipality or region's needs. And so as part of this, I spoke with a number of municipalities, but one of the examples that I wanted to touch on was Grand Rapids, Michigan. So I spoke with a representative with their downtown association. So there the downtown association handles the contracting to make this happen. And they have approximately 17 staff at their peak period. It varies a little bit based on season. I think they fluctuate from 12 or 13 to 17. Peak time is in the summer. And so they have one operations manager who oversees sort of the day to day functions of the ambassadors, and then a deputy manager who assists as well. They have field staff who are assigned to different routes. So an individual will be tasked with conducting work in a certain area in the downtown. They're active daily from about 7 a.m. to 11 p.m. We'll touch on this more in a minute, but those hours are variable. And again, they can change it up based on the needs that they have given sort of what's going on in Grand Rapids and what time of the year it is. Of course they're involved in maintenance, general outreach, and hospitality as well, and it sounds like from my conversations they've been very well received by members of the community from different backgrounds and different strata. So this gets down also to a question of operations and costs. So what does it look like when they're actually in the field? So in this case, and there are different models for how this can be conducted, but in the case of Grand Rapids they work with a contracted service provider. This service provider handles the hiring, the training, the equipment, the uniforms, the entire process, and then they report to the downtown Association. So all staff receive formal onboarding and orientation when they get started. They also receive ongoing training and supervision, so it sounds like that's a continuous thing for them. They're always trying to improve their skill set and get better. Before each shift there's a regular, there's a briefing at a central location where the staff come in, and that manager who's overseeing them is able to say, you know, for example, we've received word that there is graffiti on, you know, XYZ street corner, we need you to deal with this today, and they can in turn then go out and address that. The annual contract value that I was quoted at was they spend approximately 1.3 million for the 17 staff operations, uniforms, training, the whole nine. And again, this contract covers wages and benefits, training and supervision, equipment and operations, and then of course the staffing is also scaled seasonally and based on data trends, and that is the perfect segue into when we say data collection, what does that actually mean? So in this case staff will log key metrics from their daily activities. So on the right it's a little hard to see, but you know what that says there is, it's looking at the amount of trash They've picked up on these routes the amount of graffiti they've gotten rid of, syringes they've picked up. They also do some like sort of gardening and general maintenance work, so number of weeds pulled, flowers planted, elements like that. They also document public interactions, not specifically what was in that interaction, but that way they can see if they're engaging with members of certain communities more or less and then can tailor direct services accordingly. They also will track issues and referrals. So if they recommend that an individual connects with a certain resource, they'll then follow up on that in the future to see if the individual followed up, what the result was, if it was a good interaction, a bad interaction, and allows for easier tracking. The other element as well as walking routes, and I thought this was quite interesting, so whenever the staff or the ambassadors come back in from one of their shifts, they will report where they actually went and they can follow that so they can see that, you know, there are certain areas, let's say, that are, you know, almost have too much coverage, areas that are being neglected, and then I mentioned the briefings at the start, then routes can be adjusted in the future to make sure that areas are the needs of all of them are being met around this as well. There's a centralized data system where all of this information is tallied and logged to, it is made available to the public, so it's something that people can see, and in the case of Grand Rapids, they issue a, an annual public report which you can actually look up, or any interested member of the public can, where you can see exactly what their metrics were for the previous year, and that snapshot I have on the right is from one of their reports back in 2021. So another example that's a little bit closer to home and is still in its infancy in terms of adopting a program like this is the city of Portland. They are currently hiring for Urban Rangers. Urban Rangers is a sort of a change or a term that you can substitute in for community ambassadors. In their case, they're actually hiring them as city employees, so they're not contracting with an outside firm, and in this case it's again a uniform, non-police role focused on public engagement and visibility. Conflict resolution and de-escalation in key interactions, protecting public resources, education and outreach, again, same general objectives that we discussed for the case of Grand Rapids. In this case, they're working in partnership with the police and parks and rec departments. So I reached out to Portland police about a month ago. They told me to reach back out to them later this month for more information about how that process is going. I'm sorry I don't have that information now, but I can circle up with it as soon as I have it. In this case again, it demonstrates that this sort of function can be housed within a municipal government if so desired. And so there are basically three different models that a community can explore in terms of implementation. The first is what we call the fully contracted model. So in this case, that's like what Grand Rapids does, where they hire an outside firm. There are encountered three or four firms that provide this service. The vendor handles again all the hiring, the training, the supervising, they manage staff. Typically there's a, obviously there's a liaison even in the case of Grand Rapids who connects with them, so there's, there's oversight, but largely it's left to the contractor. There's a hybrid model where the city will go about setting those policies and priorities. They can set certain objectives like, you know, we're really worried about graffiti at XYZ location and we need this dealt with. And then it's up to the vendor for how they handle the operations to actually deal with that. There's also the in-house model, again, where a city will hire and supervise staff directly. Again, all of the models that I've encountered and seen and just heard through the discussions that I've had, they emphasize local hiring, they emphasize above minimum wage and fair compensation, and the other thing that they all just rave about in these discussions is training and how they try to upskill their people and how retaining individuals is so key for them in this process because of the amount of resources that they are willing to sink into people to get them ready. And so when we look at the vendor landscape as I mentioned, there are several national firms that specialize in ambassador programs. We've covered these points already. But to get down to the meat and potatoes of it, across the different groups that I spoke with, the average cost range was $70,000 to $100,000 per staff member annually. It's important to note that 's not just salary, that's salary, benefits, uniform, equipment, training, supervision capacity. All of it is included in that. And that those costs are somewhat variable. They may be reduced if a city is able to provide an office space or a location for them to store their equipment and manage operations out of. [2:53:51] Bryan Kaenrath: So what might success look like? Obviously, we have a number of goals that we have as a city. But we're looking for cleaner and better maintained and inviting public spaces. We're looking for a more consistent and approachable presence in the city. A reduction in low-level quality of life calls that may go to the police. Otherwise could be handled by staff that are not sworn law enforcement. Improved understanding of downtown conditions through data. There's an ability to adjust staffing based on trends and needs, and obviously a transparent public facing reporting of results will be part of that also. So the purpose of tonight is to present this idea. As I said, we'd like to present a number of new positive initiatives for the city to consider. Obviously, we're in a period of scarce resources. We're coming into budget. Everything costs money. BUT I ALSO BELIEVE FIRMLY THAT THE CITY OF LOUISTON NEEDS TO LOOK OUTSIDE THE BOX AND LOOK AT NEW WAYS TO POTENTIALLY TACKLE SOME OF OUR CHALLENGES AND WORK ON OUR GOALS. AND THIS IS ONE. WE HAVE, FOR EXAMPLE, THE POLICE CANNOT DO EVERYTHING. WE HAVE, YOU KNOW, NATURE POLICE WORK HAS CHANGED. WE'RE DEALING WITH SIGNIFICANT RECRUITMENT ISSUES THERE. HOW ELSE CAN WE START TO CHIP IN, CHIP AT SOME OF THESE ISSUES, SOME OF THESE PROBLEMS THAT WE'RE FACING? I think we need to look outside the box. We're looking for new ideas constantly of things from around the country, from around the state that we can bring to Lewiston and at least have a conversation about, at least talk about. We understand the resources are what they are. But at some point, our resources also dictate what are our priorities, what are our goals as a city government, as leaders of this community. And this is one tool to look at. Now, you know, the Grand Rapids example is a much larger initiative. It's a larger city, but the Portland example is much closer to us. So Portland is hiring four of these people in the coming year. Perhaps we could look at hiring one or two at some point, something at our scale. But we really believe we have to start looking outside the box. We have to start looking at some new ideas, new initiatives, and demonstrate to this community that we're serious about tackling some of the problems we've been talking about tackling, the goals that we've been talking about, those three major buckets that I mentioned. And so this is one initiative. We'll be back with more through the spring, but we welcome any questions. Obviously we understand the question of resources, but it's important to have these conversations. I think it's important to demonstrate to the public that we are thinking, we're coming up with ideas, and we're looking at ways to address the real challenges that people [2:56:25] Carl L. Sheline: care about here in the city. So thank you for your attention. Thank you. I appreciate that, Deputy Administrator O'Malley. If I can put you on the spot for a second, we had a similar community ambassador type program just for Kennedy Park, Peace in the Park. Do you mind sharing? Yes, that was all volunteer based. Basically the [2:56:47] Speaker X (unidentified): cost was yellow t-shirts but we did get folks to volunteer we did training I believe we use CCI community concepts and we had folks get trained in de-escalation this urban Rangers oh that's I think a little more advanced in terms of what training they would do and where they would be more on Lisbon Street as opposed to just Kennedy Park and when I had the piece in the park program that's when you were chief that was what I was pleased to you if that is correct that was based more on an incident that I had occurred where there WAS A DEATH RIGHT NEAR KENNEDY PARK, AND IT WAS MORE FOR JUST HAVING EXTRA EYES IN THE PARK AT THE TIME, JUST TO SHOW THE COMMUNITY THAT IT WASN'T JUST THE POLICE THAT WERE GOING TO SOLVE [2:57:27] Carl L. Sheline: THAT ISSUE, IT WAS GOING TO BE COMMUNITY-LED AS WELL. UH, AND THAT, UH, IT'S MY UNDERSTANDING THAT WAS, UH, WELL, I WAS A LITTLE BIT PART OF IT, BUT THAT WAS, UH, THAT WAS SUCCESSFUL. YES, IT WAS. YEAH. SO I LIKE THIS IDEA A LOT. UH, QUESTIONS, COMMENTS? COUNCILOR NAGING? YES. [2:57:46] Joshua L. Nagine: Thank you very much for bringing this to us. I certainly appreciate the fact that it's scalable and there are no steps and colas, so that's always pleasant. I would also suggest that we possibly have some resources that we're currently allocating in other places. I believe we're paying somewhere between $160,000 and $170,000 a year for security in our parking garages, for instance. And not necessarily adding to the budget, but figuring out ways we can cover the needs might be valuable. You know, I also think that, you know, having a conversation with the DLA and seeing if they could possibly apply for some grants, or we could possibly co-apply for grants in order to maybe fund this position for a year, see what happens. You know, it's, I think the challenge is we don't want to increase the budget, right, but we also see the value in this, in this type of program, so thank you for bringing that to us, and like I said, possibly DLA could give some feedback on it [2:58:55] Susan G. Longchamps: as well, so certainly thank you. That's one of our champs. Yes, it seems definitely like a well needed program. I like the fact that it's being used in other cities, in other states. I'd like to see a handful of people around doing this job. I'd love to see 17, to be honest, but I don't know that we could find the money for that. I don't know if we could do like a, is there any money where we could do it like a one-time? What is it, 1 million, and do we have money for something like this? Absolutely not. [2:59:33] Michael R. Roy: You make those decisions. Sorry, currently we finished the fiscal year off, we are at ten percent of fund balance, so that's going to make it difficult when we go into the budget for fiscal year 27, where we usually do one-time purchases with purchasing with our fund balance. We're not going to have that because we can't go any lower than eight percent without a super majority, and then that does not go well for when we go out to sell bonds. It's not looking fiscally responsible to our bond council, so I don't recommend going any [3:00:13] Susan G. Longchamps: lower than 10%. Okay, thank you again. I think we definitely do need to think out of the box. I don't think we can leave it all up to our police officers to do some of that work. I'm not sure exactly how we'll find the money, but I do think we should at least have a handful of people out here doing this, so thank you very much for bringing it to us. Thank you. [3:00:39] Carl L. Sheline: We're now going to a public comment for this, should there be any. Melissa. [3:00:49] Melissa Dunn: Dunn resident at Blake Street and I've been lucky to work on some contracted work with the city of Lewiston around the winter parking ban and also led notifications when there was public demolitions for the city of Lewiston and that seemed to work very well and I think what was good about it was that the city was working in collab and in partnership with existing organizations already to do that work to staff people to get notifications and things out and even though it's a different context I You know, we are so rich with resources and people that are trained and educated around community health work or peer support stuff to the level of what people in our community really need and their interactions with people. And so maybe try to consider that contracted work and the thing was 2018 was that effort was actually a counter to our peacekeeping efforts exactly a month to the day that Donald passed away Kimberly Dobby was killed by her stalker in the street and we held a couple or more than a couple of peacekeeping events to try to keep that momentum going and I think what was significant about when we came together initially there was people that was part of that process community members leading the Charge leading what we were going to talk about how we were going to hold vigil or space even marching from Knock Street to Sabata Street where Kimberly passed away to offer memoriam and all that stuff and so one of the posters that one of the members wrote was peacekeepers and peace was written as peace encompassing all cultures and ethnicities and that ultimately was hijacked to be used for other things which is okay but I think it's really important when we're talking about the history here Vulnerability and like anti-racism efforts people being credentialed to a degree to be able to have interactions with people in our community and for our community members to be safe thank you Christine [3:03:26] Holden Ward: Holden Ward one I Melissa took some of the things I was going to comment on I'm very excited to hear about this project and I support everything I've heard about it so far I would just parenthetically note that a long time ago even before being one of the peacekeepers in the park I was a state ambassador governor King had the idea that people needed people traveling outside the state you know you're sitting in a plane next to somebody and you say and they're going to a conference and you say Hey, have you ever had a conference in Maine, you know, just sort of talk about it, that was a very informal, low-key kind of thing, and what has been explained by the administrator and assistant has seems much more official. In places like Grand Rapids, I admit I don't yet know how large Grand Rapids is, but I do have questions. I gather from what was said towards the end that this was to be focused on the downtown Main Street to maybe slightly north of Blake Street area. And I just wondered if we are going to be considering Lewiston as more than just downtown, would there be some opportunity for traveling ambassadors, whether having cars or bicycles or, heaven forbid, e-scooters, to travel around more? Would it be considered an all-season job, or would there be hirings primarily for summer and somewhat more for winter? What languages, again referring to some of the cultural and ethnic issues that Melissa raised, would we expect people to be able to converse, or maybe have a badge on their uniform like you often see at airports saying the person speaks other languages than English? And finally, what would be the evaluation? Would it be based on consumer reports like I really enjoyed talking to so-and-so, or so-and-so looked official but couldn't tell me how to get there without going around all the one-way streets? But I support the idea and hope very much that we can move it forward. Thank you. [3:05:47] Carl L. Sheline: For the public comment back to back to the council and presenters, anything that you two would like to add? Nothing from my side other [3:06:01] Speaker Z (unidentified): than again to respond to some of the some of the public questions and comments, which by the way thank you for those. Yeah, again there, we can address any number of those points. Again, that's the beauty of the program is you can scale it, you can work with the company to figure out, I forgot to mention the language element, I shouldn't have in the presentation, but that is something that can be worked in with the ambassadors as well. Further [3:06:27] Carl L. Sheline: questions, comments from the council? [3:06:30] Bret Martel: Yes, Counselor Martel. Thank you, Mr. Mayor. I think this sounds like a great idea in theory. I have a few questions as far as practicality. It sounds like these individuals are going to have a pretty extensive skill set with the amount that they're going to be able to work on are of all the things, so we so conflict resolution and de-escalation also paired with giving directions, and so is there gonna be say different individuals trained on different parts, or is each one of these individuals is going To be kind of universally jack-of-all-trades trained on all of these things, so that they can be universally sent out to deal with the whole list of issues that we're looking to address, instead of like maybe two or three people that are like de-escalation, that have more of a developed skill set on the individual tasks that they might encounter. Absolutely, so it's by [3:07:25] Speaker Z (unidentified): Understanding that they all have a universal level of basic training, and then of course there's the ongoing training. So if someone has been, you know, a community ambassador for a longer period of time, they're obviously gonna have more training just because they've been around longer, but there is a baseline level that you could guarantee across staff, and then as long as the firm is cycling through trainings. The idea is over time, again, as you retain people and have them just get more experience on the job, ultimately you would achieve that as close to uniform coverage as you could hope for. [3:07:57] Bret Martel: Now in Grand Rapids, I think you mentioned 17? Yes, sir. People, was that the goal, is 17 the staff that they budgeted for, or is that all that they can get on? Do you expect any difficulties filling these roles? I know they're supposed to be above minimum wage and supposed to pay decently, and I would expect that with the skill set that they're gonna be expected to be trained on, but do we expect any issues trying to fill these positions here locally? Absolutely, so I'm always a little [3:08:25] Speaker Z (unidentified): Skeptical of firms. When I speak with them, the impression, what I was told was that they haven't had a hard time filling or replacing spots as they've opened up. Again, I always take that with a grain of salt until we speak with more firms and until, you know, push comes to shove, but it's my understanding that [3:08:41] Bret Martel: They've been effective in that. Thank you, that's all I've got for right now, and I think we'd be [3:08:45] Bryan Kaenrath: Looking more at, you know, the Portland's complement of four, you know, certainly towards the beginning. Grand Rapids, I believe, is about 100,000 people, so a little more than double our size, so certainly that's a much larger example, but you know, not that they wouldn't be needed, but I think we're looking more towards the Portland model as far as, you know, a compliment, at least for the [3:09:05] Carl L. Sheline: their future thank you know and for these positions we're going to need incredible buy-in from them and close coordination and so on and so forth with the you know obviously the police department and other city staff i don't think that we'll be saving a lot by contracting out and i and i think we're gonna be losing a lot if we're not making them city employees and you know i have not talked with the mayor of portland about this but i bet those you know kind of managerial hiring considerations are exactly why they went with in-house city staff versus contracting. Further questions or comments? Thank you both very much. [3:09:53] Speaker Z (unidentified): Thank you, we appreciate it. Thank you everyone. Happy birthday, by the way. Thank you, thank you. [3:09:56] Carl L. Sheline: We are now up to the second public comment period for people who did not comment during the first comment period. My [3:10:10] Melissa Dunn: name is Melissa Dunn, resident at Blake Street and community organizer. I'm a survivor by survivor of sexual violence by the hands and doing of over 40 white men and incidences far exceed that and likely the number of men far exceed that too. They range from anybody that served in the army to too mediocre, and these are the type of people that would do jump scares, stalk their prey, threats to harm people or animals in detail, just like Robert Card. I want to urge the city officials and elected officials that I believe I'll I'll never see justice and it's part of the reason why I do restorative and transformative justice. It's almost like mediation or conflict resolution or meeting in circle to repair harm or have a conversation when there's a differences or when a survivor might not be able to get justice. And it's very apparent from white nationalist propaganda media that they're inciting and exploiting survivors impacted and a community impacted by Robert Cards mass violence, and I say this as somebody who was threatened to be killed with an ar-15 and I have a seven-year total protection from abuse order against the man and a total prohibition of weapons and he still has his ar-15. I believe as a community we have the power to support survivors in the way that they're not going to experience Through white nationalist propaganda, and part of that is mitigating violence that could happen, and we know from this white nationalist group they have had proximity and association to actual white nationalists who have made credible threats about coming into our community, what they're going to do, and who they're going to target. They also misuse database to manufacture civil conspiracy and propaganda narratives to racially target community members, and so I believe if there is not some kind of meeting in circle or working towards repair, and it's it's deep work, it's really deep work, but it's a commitment, and I believe that we can work through this, and we can find justice for people impacted by Robert Cart's mass violence still while holding space for people that weren't directly impacted by his mass violence but gun violence survivors, domestic survivors of people who served in the army and may have not fared too well. Thank you. [3:13:09] Carl L. Sheline: Further public comment back to the council. Counselors, we're coming up on, we're past nine o'clock. Do we want to take a quick break? I fear we have a lot of meeting left, or thank you if the council could refrain from speaking, that'd be great, the audience. Sorry, counselors, do we want to take a quick recess? Let's proceed, we're up to reports and updates, and we are, yeah, well we're gonna handle a few things, but yes, Counselor Herman, did you have [3:13:53] Scott A. Harriman: something first? Just are we going to handle the agenda items on there first or the that was [3:14:00] Carl L. Sheline: my intention, and then we're going to come back to regular reports and updates from all of us, the new business, yeah, okay, that's okay with the council. So yes, we have establishing a public safety committee as a standing committee. Do we have, yes, did you did you have something [3:14:19] Speaker W (unidentified): Chief Carley? Yes, I it's on my understanding that the council would like a standing committee on public safety, so our agency was asked to draft proposal for the city ordinance which you all should have. I'm happy to take any feedback in regards to that or answer any questions. I guess if you want to [3:14:40] Carl L. Sheline: give us a since you're here, thank you so much, could you just give us a brief [3:14:43] Speaker W (unidentified): Overview. Yep, so it's, I can go over the purpose and authority. Is the committee shall serve in an advisory capacity to the City Council and the mayor, city manager, on matters relating to public safety, with particular emphasis on the prevention and reduction of gun violence. The committee shall have no independent regulatory or enforcement authority, but may study issues, solicit public input, and make written recommendations. As far as the duties and responsibilities, the committee shall review and analyze trends, data, and root causes related to gun violence and other public safety issues within the city. Evaluate existing city policies, programs, and resources related to violence prevention, law enforcement, emergency response, and community safety. Recommend evidence-based strategies, ordinances, programs, and funding priorities aimed at reducing gun violence and improving public safety. Facilitate and coordination and information sharing among law enforcement, schools, health care providers, community organizations, faith-based institutions, and social service agencies. Promote community engagement and public education related to violence prevention, conflict resolution, and safe firearms practices as permitted by law. Identify opportunities to seek state, federal, and private grant funding to support public safety initiatives. Prepare an annual report to the City Council summarizing findings, activities, and recommendations. As far as the membership, the committee will consist of 12 members. There'll be two members of the City Council appointed by the council president, the chief of police and the chiefs designee, one representative from the city's fire EMS department, one representative from the local school district or youth serving educational institution, one representative from a local health care provider with experience in trauma or emergency care, one representative from a community-based organization engaged in violence prevention or victim services, one representative from a faith-based or neighborhood organization, two residents of the city with demonstrated interest or expertise in public safety, criminal justice, or community advocacy, and one representative from the city's code enforcement. As far as the terms of office, all appointed members shall serve three-year terms. Members may be reappointed for successive terms, vacancies shall be filled in the same manner as the original appointment for the remainder of the unexpired term, and all members shall receive an initial public safety orientation from the chief of police and or his or her designee. There will be an annual chair and vice chair selected, and that chair shall preside over meetings and serve as a primary liaison to the City Council. The meetings will be at least monthly or more frequently as necessary for certain circumstances. They all shall comply with applicable open meetings and public records laws, and a majority of the appointed members shall constitute a quorum, and the city manager said that designate appropriate city staff to provide administrative and technical support to the committee. That's basic overall of it, thank you [3:18:00] Scott A. Harriman: very much. Chief Counselor Herman, yes, thank you for putting this forward. So public safety, which is addressed in this one, and then economic development in the next one, have been the cities are the City Council's top priorities for a little while now. So I think it's important that they have standing committees, and I think this the structure sounds good. My only feedback would be on the membership. I would prefer that the councillors be appointed by the council and not by the council president alone I think it should be a decision of the whole council, but that's that's the only feedback I've got on this. [3:18:40] Joshua L. Nagine: Counselor and aging, thank you again chief for putting this forward. I see this as a tool for the administration and the police department to drive an action plan in order to address issues. I know that gun violence is specifically named out, but there are other issues that we have as well with public safety that I'm hoping that we can see out of, you know, that you have the seven examples here of, excuse me, duties and responsibilities, but one of them that's not like listed specifically is identifying The action plans as well as the rubrics in order to decide or the metrics in order to decide that what we've done is actually produced fruit, you know, I think that some things are pretty easy, like as far as the shootings are concerned, if the shootings are down, we know that we're doing all right, like it's moving in the right direction, but as far as other issues that you may be addressing, like just figuring out how we decide that we're successful, right, and I like the fact that this is set up to drive again from administration and the police department's perspective, like I think that's that's helpful because you're the folks that you're the paid professionals that do the job, so one thing I would say is in the membership I'm not a hundred percent clear on who appoints, like for instance the representative for a faith-based or neighborhood organization or a representative from a community-based organization engaged with violence prevention or victim services, it's not clear who actually does the appointments, and so I think it should be the council that does the appointments, just to spell that out, and that's basically the feedback that I have, thank you [3:20:35] Carl L. Sheline: Further questions for [3:20:37] David B. Chittim: Chief Councillor Chittim. Thank You Chief Connolly. I think you did indicate in there that non-staff positions, by which I think you mean people who are not employees of the city, would be nominated by the mayor and appointed by the council or approved by the council, so I think so maybe the language of non-staff could be cleaned up to clarify that it's people who are no not there by virtue of their of their offices. I have a particular preference for odd-numbered committees that may not be applicable in this case, but I would prefer to see 11 or 13, not a hill I would die on, but generally it's helpful if they're mixed to help resolve what could be otherwise tie votes. Major question I have, we already have standing, I mean I'm sorry ad hoc committees for public safety, would you anticipate that this ordinance would address the transition from an ad hoc to a permanent committee or a standing committee that hasn't been addressed here, and i've i've been puzzling over how we do that, we don't really want to have two public safety committees operating at the same time, so there ought to be some mechanism by which [3:21:50] Carl L. Sheline: we transit transfer, well chief you first if you would like, and then i could address that [3:22:00] Speaker W (unidentified): I mean, I think it certainly could transition into a standing committee. I think that comes down to what the council would want and, you know, collectively what you would decide. I think it makes sense to have one versus two going at the same time if you're asking my personal opinion, but that's, I think that's for you all to decide, Mr. [3:22:25] David B. Chittim: Mayor, I'm unaware that the ad hoc committee has a compositional element to it the way that the standing committee would. So one solution might be to take the people who are serving on the ad hoc committee and move them into the standing committee, but they may not necessarily meet the criteria that have been specified in this ordinance. So I think that needs a little bit of work. I would also ask, I'm in favor of this, I would like to see this, it is done by ordinance. I think I would like to have the city attorney weigh in to make certain that the ordinance has been prepared in keeping with all the ordinance requirements that we have. [3:23:07] Carl L. Sheline: Yes, and I can speak to the committee. So I think transition like the committee work, I think one committee could end and then this new committee could begin because you're right, a lot of the committee members may or may not want to serve on a, you know, standing committee that has, you know, multiple year terms, etc. And then you're right, they also may not fit all the slots that are here. And so for both the ad hoc and, I was sorry, for both the economic Development and the safety committee, I was talking with the co-chairs and city staff. My plan is to run them through August and, you know, considering that this is an ordinance will take time, etc. I think by the time those end, these will be ready to take it going. So I don't think there's, I don't think there needs to be a tussle over when ends and so on and so forth. I think that's an amenable way. The only, or did you have more questions? [3:24:08] David B. Chittim: COUNSELOR CHIDDOM? NO, I HAVE COMMENTS. [3:24:12] Carl L. Sheline: I HAVE COMMENTS, TOO, SO AFTER YOU. [3:24:18] David B. Chittim: WHAT WAS MY COMMENT? [3:24:21] Carl L. Sheline: I'M SORRY. IT'S GONE. WE CAN COME BACK TO YOU. I GUESS MY ONLY COMMENT IS, YOU KNOW, I'M NOT SURE HOW WE ADDRESS THIS, AND OBVIOUSLY WE HAVE TIME TO THINK ABOUT IT, BUT, WELL, ONE QUICK QUESTION, CHIEF. SO IT SAYS THE CHIEF OF POLICE AND THE CHIEF'S DESIGNEE. SO IS THAT TWO PEOPLE FROM THE POLICE DEPARTMENT? [3:24:41] Speaker W (unidentified): Is that what I'm reading? Yes, I think it makes sense to have two from the police. [3:24:45] Carl L. Sheline: Department in this particular committee. Yeah, absolutely, understood. And there's, there's two right now on the current committee, so thank you. So right now, if I'm counting this right, we have one, two, three, four, five, six, so half of the committee. And you know, depending on you know where some of these other filled from, there's at least half of the committee that are either elected officials or city staff. And so that seems a little staff heavy to me. And do we really need two counselors when most of our other committees have one? It's just something to think about. I think it's you know, and where I'm going with this is I think it's you know, if we're gonna have like a you know citizen or a committee of community members and then we immediately fill it with a bunch of counselors and city staff, that's I think that you know defeats the purpose in some way. Just something to think about, counselor and agent. So to speak to that, I would be comfortable [3:25:49] Joshua L. Nagine: with one council member on the committee and an additional member of the public in order to get to that the unlucky 13, lucky 13, I don't know. But I think the biggest part of this that I just want to make clear from my perspective is that this committee work is going to be driven by the police department and administration. You know, this is a tool for them to communicate with the public in order to identify the specific goals that they're looking to accomplish. And a large COMMITTEE OF COMMUNITY MEMBERS DOESN'T NECESSARILY CORRELATE TO RESULTS, UNFORTUNATELY. I'M NOT SAYING THAT IT DOESN'T, BUT I'M SAYING THAT, LIKE, AT THE SAME TIME, THEY'RE NOT THE PAID PROFESSIONALS THAT DO THE WORK. [3:26:52] Carl L. Sheline: COUNCILOR CHIDDOM. THANK YOU. IT CAME BACK TO ME. [3:26:55] David B. Chittim: I VERY MUCH ENCOURAGE THIS. HOWEVER, WE HAVE A FULL PLATE IN THE NEAR FUTURE. WE DO HAVE AN AD HOC COMMITTEE ADDRESSING PUBLIC SAFETY. I'd like to get a sense of the council whether or not the council feels that this needs to be brought back to us before we finish all of the budgeting process or can we wait until June July to address adopting this ordinance back [3:27:23] Carl L. Sheline: to you councillor Neji I would pose that question to the chief of police and the [3:27:28] Joshua L. Nagine: Administrator, in May of last year we came up with during our visioning session to identify priorities within the city. It was public safety, it was economic development, and it was image and reputation of the city, right? It's now February. I'm not seeing that we have specific priorities named out or action plans, and we're, we have a team here that's, I think, wants to do the work, and so I would ask them as opposed to us. [3:28:01] Carl L. Sheline: Country Longchamps, sorry. YES, [3:28:06] Susan G. Longchamps: I WOULD AGREE WITH COUNSELOR NAJIN. I WOULD NOT LIKE TO DELAY ON THIS AND REFER TO THE ADMINISTRATOR AND THE CHIEF ON YOUR OPINION ON THE QUESTION THAT COUNSELOR CHIDDUM HAS RAISED. [3:28:20] Carl L. Sheline: ONE SECOND. DID YOU WANT TO WEIGH IN QUICKLY, COUNSELOR HERMAN? [3:28:26] Scott A. Harriman: I WAS JUST GOING TO SAY THAT I AGREED. I WAS SURPRISED BY THE SUGGESTION TO NOT START THIS until later than in the summer. I feel like this work needs to really get going, and it should have been done, should have started months ago, and I think as soon as it's reasonably possible for staff to do this, I would, I would support that, so. [3:28:51] Bryan Kaenrath: We're very ready to move on this. Whenever we have a draft document, we'd like to hear some potential edits or changes you'd like to see. We'll have the attorney review it. We can bring it back as soon as the next meeting. So we're ready to move as quickly as you want to, you want to move. [3:29:08] Carl L. Sheline: Councillor Longchamps. Yes. [3:29:10] Susan G. Longchamps: Again, I would just like to reiterate that I do think we should move quickly. This is something that we've been talking about for quite some time, and maybe we could get a thumbs up or something from the council on whether we should adopt this with or, Move forward with the minor changes that you guys will need to make, or hopefully we'll make, and then adopt it, but rather than delay, I think it would be a good idea to see how the council is feeling about. [3:29:38] Bret Martel: This now. Councillor Martel, did you have something? Yes, thank you, Mr. Mayor. I would like to echo Counselor Longchamp's statement. I do think this is urgent. This is important. I don't see any reason to delay despite the fact that the council has a lot on its plate right now. I don't deny that. Another point I wanted to make is that I know if we get to an odd number, if we do one more, I would like to see two representatives from faith-based organizations. We have a very strong Muslim community in Lewiston. We also have a very strong historical Catholic and Christian faith in Lewiston. There's there's many other, I'm not suggesting that's just the two, but by having just one, I think it might alienate all the others. And I also think that faith-based leadership is a direct tie to public safety. You get a lot of moral compass and parameters to actions and behaviors, I think, in faith-based organizations. So I think having two representatives in that area would be beneficial. [3:30:51] Carl L. Sheline: Councilor Longchamps, yes. [3:30:53] Susan G. Longchamps: I would just like to agree with that. I think that's a very good point and I hope that we can add to [3:31:06] Carl L. Sheline: Administrator Kenrath, Chief Conley. Do you have what you need from us at this moment? So we've heard a number of [3:31:13] Bryan Kaenrath: potential amendments. Maybe if we can get some clarity on which amendments we would like include in the document, then we can have a final draft. We can have a legal review and we can bring this back in short order. So maybe just some consensus on some of the potential changes or amendments we've heard might be helpful at this stage, Chief. Yeah, that would be great if [3:31:33] Speaker W (unidentified): collectively you could decide what amendments you'd like to change in the document, get that to me via email and we'll get working on it right away. [3:31:46] Susan G. Longchamps: Councilor Longchamps, yes, should we do that by email only because it might be a lot of back and forth, could we do it now? I think I'd rather do it now. So if we could say do we all agree on one counselor or two, I think we're all, you know, we could probably make [3:32:04] Bryan Kaenrath: those decisions now, you know, we're just looking for consensus. So I think that brings up thumbs [3:32:09] Carl L. Sheline: down sort of procedure. Yeah, are we okay with one counselor, counselors? Yeah, looks like it's, yeah, we're good. What other two faith-based, two faith-based or could I have clarification [3:32:24] Scott A. Harriman: on that one? The line in the policy says one from a faith-based or neighborhood organization. Are we changing that to two from a faith-based or neighborhood organization? Yes, to okay, thumbs up or down. So are we, so are we [3:32:42] Carl L. Sheline: adding a line for toothpaste space too, so to faith-based and then one neighborhood organization or we're not doing neighborhood organizations anymore. [3:32:52] Bret Martel: Councilor Martel. I think it's important to differentiate those two. I don't think they align as far as definitions go. So I don't object to having both on there. I just think that we separate by how we appoint those between, I don't know, how we clarify faith-based or I don't think we should exclude any faith. But I think a community organization could be a wide spectrum of things that could involve a faith-based organization or may not at all. [3:33:22] Carl L. Sheline: Yes, what is, what do the rest do you think? Yes, all right, we're good there. What are the questions did you have, or did we talk about adding another [3:33:36] Joshua L. Nagine: community member, right? Yeah, so basically if we remove one counselor and we add one faith-based organization, when we have one neighborhood organization, we're still at 12. And so I think there was a discussion of whether or not we make it an odd number. I think that's the last part that we need to specify. Yeah. [3:33:58] Carl L. Sheline: I guess how set are we on having odd numbers instead of even numbers? I don't [3:34:03] Joshua L. Nagine: I like the idea of being able to break a tie. [3:34:07] Carl L. Sheline: Council Airman, did you have [3:34:09] Scott A. Harriman: something? Well, one thing to that point, I think with a committee of this size, it is probably not likely that there will be perfect attendance at every meeting. So I'm not, as I'm not as concerned about a tie happening. My second point, I'll, I'll save until we finish discussion on this one. Council Roy, yes, I would just say if we're [3:34:34] Carl L. Sheline: going to separate the faith base in the neighborhood, just make the two faith base and then one neighborhood organization. That's adding your extra. How are we feeling about that? [3:34:47] Joshua L. Nagine: Councilors, the math still doesn't work because we removed one councilor. So but [3:34:54] Speaker W (unidentified): I'm fine, that's 12. Yeah, we're still at 12 with that logic. I'm [3:35:01] Carl L. Sheline: FINE WITH 12 AND WE HAD TWO COUNCILORS WE CAN'T FIGURE OUT THE MATH IT'S GETTING VERY LATE wait until the budget starts I'll continue to run the meeting deputy administrator thank you councillor Harriman did you have something again I [3:35:37] Scott A. Harriman: had also raised the point that I think that the council member should be appointed by the entire council and not solely by the president. Are we [3:35:47] Bryan Kaenrath: mostly good with that? Look at that, so that's section four, letter B. We just be changing the language there about the appointment, right? Okay, well that one [3:35:57] Scott A. Harriman: would specifically be under 4a one. Are we okay with letter B? Yes, but the issue I raised is in 4a one. Yeah. [3:36:15] Carl L. Sheline: Instead of accounted by the appointed by the council president, just be by the council. Long champs, yes, if it's not too [3:36:25] Susan G. Longchamps: Much to ask, I do think it'd be good to add a business owner in there. What [3:36:35] Carl L. Sheline: do you guys think? Yeah, I mean there's many different slots that we could add for [3:36:40] Susan G. Longchamps: sure. I know, but I specifically would like that one. Yeah, yes. Well, how do the [3:36:45] Carl L. Sheline: rest of you feel about adding a business owner, adding a business owner now? Where is that, 14 people? Okay, you're welcome. Further comments, or do we need Claire? [3:37:04] Joshua L. Nagine: Yes, Councillor Nagine. I'm just thinking that the size of the committee is starting to get a little unwieldy, but I'm fine with, I'm fine with that. One of the things we could look at possibly is so a representative from the city's planning and code enforcement department, if that is, that a voting position, I'm sorry, is that a voting position? What I'm thinking is if we make one of the staff positions like ex officio, I mean we still absolutely need planning and code in there, but I'm just trying to figure out how to balance it so that we have an odd number, but again I'm not going to lose sleep over it either there. I think 14 would be okay too. [3:37:47] Carl L. Sheline: Yeah. Council Herman, did you have something else? [3:37:50] Scott A. Harriman: Yeah. I just wanted to add on the point of voting, these are really just advisory committees. So they're not like policy committees that set policy. So I think if something comes down to a split where it's seven to six or something, then maybe the council shouldn't take that up if it's that, if it's split to that extent. So I just think the whole, the point about voting is not as much of an issue, it's it's really meant to be an advisory committee to the council, and hopefully we'll get fairly broad consensus on things. Yes, Councillor Chittim. Thank you, Mr. Mayor. I would push [3:38:39] David B. Chittim: BACK A LITTLE BIT, COUNCILOR LOGSHAM'S SUGGESTION ON A BUSINESS OWNER. WE HAVE TWO RESIDENTS IN THE CITY WITH DEMONSTRATED INTEREST OR EXPERTISE IN PUBLIC SAFETY, CRIMINAL JUSTICE, OR COMMUNITY ADVOCACY. I THINK A BUSINESS OWNER WOULD FIT INTO THAT SLOT. IT KEEPS THE NUMBER DOWN TO WHAT I THINK IS A REASONABLE NUMBER. WE START GETTING UP 15, 16, 18 MEMBERS OF THE COMMITTEE AND COMMITTEE work begins to fall apart there. The other comment I have, chief Connelly, is the clarification of what a staff position and a non staff position is. We just had a little confusion up here, our city councilor staff, so if that could be clarified in the final draft I'd appreciate that. Are [3:39:28] Carl L. Sheline: we good, counselors? Thank you very much, chief. Thank you. Thank you. Yes, John boy, thank you for joining us. Please take us through the economic development one. Miss mayor, council. I'll go down through this but you know, it almost seems, you know listening folks that you know, perhaps we should consider a workshop. I feel like we could have some open discussion about you know the direction we want to go. There's three of these frameworks and from my standpoint from an ordinance standpoint as a planner I want to get a lot of ordinance writing, you know the framework should be Relatively the same and I just I lay that as a consideration as I move this forward. Our purpose again, we're charged with advising the mayor the City Council administration and our own department on economic and development economic development matters our duties review and guidance again it's an advisory board performs specific duties to the committee. I'm kind of skipping down here though I feel like we really should be focusing on what the it's a little bit different than what we have written here you know on section four a through d i think we should be really focusing on the work of economic and community development and in terms of reporting back to administration reporting back to council and the mayor we really should be focusing on housing starts permits code we should be also inviting planning and permitting code into this language we should have new business development new business investment we should be reporting on that training investment new jobs reporting capital investment citywide TIFs business opportunity grants what we just we just kicked off this year we've written a very strategic economic strategy for the next five years I think that our committee should be focused on that should be our point on that we should be emphasizing CDBG and home and lead so I named nine items our committee we're suggesting to be nine people each person becomes a subject matter export and we report on these items quarterly and then we commute you know throughout the year we put together a nice report so we can see what the findings are and see what our benchmarks are and see what the direction the city is going I'll leave that in a nutshell as I think that we need more work here on the draft that we submitted to you I know there's been substantial communication about the appointments and in those ours is we suggest nine folks on the committee we're having three city council members appoint them it could be anybody in the in the city there could be three that this the mayor points there's three that the city administrator points and exit officios we have The East ECD director and potentially a DLA rep, or you may, you know, maybe someone from LA Chamber, I think that's up for discussion as well in terms of rules and procedures and vacancies, conflict of interest, how many people we need for, you know, for a quorum. Those should be consistent as we write these ordinances, and I'll leave it open to that and questions as we move forward. Take any question, concern, aging. So first and foremost, I appreciate the [3:43:32] Joshua L. Nagine: comments concerning making sure that the ordinances are consistent across the board. I think that's, that's super important because I do think it is pretty confusing when we're looking at all these different committees and boards, and especially when we're talking about something as important as economic development and again public safety to write, like those are two big parts. I welcome the concept of a workshop on this. I do think that it's important that we name clearly where we're at in the city as far as our goals for economic development and where we're at and what our targets are and that we're measuring that out. And so I think that this committee should be able to house that information. I also think that when we talk about community development, for myself personally, it's a slightly, I think planning and code comes closer to economic development than necessarily community development in the way that it's currently managed. You know, we have almost, I think, a staff member for each grant that were made that we're managing, and so that becomes, I think, onerous when we're talking like lead grant program, very important, right, absolutely very important, new housing also, I would say very important, you know, and so like it, the question is like how much do we bring into this that kind of dilutes the overall message, because to me economic development is increasing the tax base, that community development is how we all live, economic development is how we increase the tax base. That's just my quick take on it. I would be totally open to a workshop on this because I think we'd have to talk out a lot of pieces for sure. [3:45:26] David B. Chittim: Counselor Chittum. Yes, thank you, Councillor Naijin. I concur. I think that there's enough work to be done on this that a workshop is called for. I believe Acting Director Blase that you suggested that as well. Being mindful of the amount of work that we have in front of us, I'm going to have some comments later on during reports and updates about our schedule and the amount of work that we're we're looking forward to over the next few months. So I in favor of a workshop. [3:45:59] Susan G. Longchamps: Yes, I, too, would be in favor of a workshop. I just wanted to share that. [3:46:07] Carl L. Sheline: And I think a workshop is a good idea to figure out where this committee is headed and who can serve and, yeah, it appears that's consensus and I would move that we just continue this conversation at the workshop whenever it's convened. I'll just say that I look forward to the two-way conversation. Conversation we'll support you any way we can. Thank you very much Mr. Boy. We're now up to the public health officer. Jeremy open it up. Yeah sure take it away. [3:46:50] Bryan Kaenrath: In the binder is a draft job description. We discussed this position so our HR department wrote this job description. It incorporates elements of the public health committee submitted a draft as well as other similar like positions in Maine towns and cities that have positions in public health. So this is what our HR department came up with. The big question on this obviously is not necessarily the ins and outs of the job description but is funding for this position. I know we were looking at one point of doing something mid-year on this. At this point we're already you know towards the end of the fiscal year. It probably makes sense to consider it for next year's budget. So I think the larger question is do we want to fund this position in the budget for next year? Would you like me to just include this in the budget proposal for next year just for discussion? I was planning to do that. I guess I'd like to see maybe some consensus if you'd like to see that. And then I think obviously tweaking the job description is more of an HR sort of task. But if you do have any particular feedback about it, we're happy to hear that as well. [3:47:56] David B. Chittim: Councillor Chittim, thank you Mr. Mayor. Yes, Administrator, I think you should put this in the budget and allow us to have that full discussion when we come to the item in the budget. But I would definitely encourage you to include it in the budget you're presenting to the council two weeks from now, late March. Late March, that's seems like two weeks from now. Thank you Councillor. [3:48:19] Joshua L. Nagine: Thank you very much. I think we're getting closer as far as the, and I understand that these are just tweaks that the HR department can make, but again, the Public Health Committee wanted to share some comments and I'm gonna forward those through as well. But the comments was, after reviewing the proposed position description and related agenda materials, the Public Health Committee respectfully offers the following observations and recommendations for consideration by the city administrator and City Council. As currently written, the position appears to combine the responsibilities of a public health officer, emergency preparedness director, and grants and policy director under a single role. These expectations are significant, particularly given that the proposed, the proposal does not identify dedicated staff, a defined operating budget, or clearly articulated Authority. Without those elements, the scope of responsibility may exceed what is realistically achievable and could create confusion regarding accountability and effectiveness. To address this, the committee recommends clarifying the role will be implemented in phases. Initial responsibility should focus on coordination, assessment, data analysis, and pilot initiatives, with any expansion of authority, staffing, or operational responsibilities subject to city council approval and appropriate funding. The committee also notes language indicating that the position leads public health preparedness and response. This raises important questions regarding incident command and directive authority during emergencies. To avoid ambiguity or conflict with existing departmental structures, the committee recommends is revising this language to state that the position advises the city administrator on public health preparedness and response the approach preserves clear lines of authority while ensuring public health expertise informs executive decision making yeah so that 's [3:50:12] Bryan Kaenrath: That's their feedback. We're absolutely happy to talk further on some of those tweaks and incorporate some of those comments. And as far as budget, the salary range you see here is what our HR director did research and believes that is a fair range to consider when talking about the budget. I understand. [3:50:32] Carl L. Sheline: So right now we are asking the administrator to include it in the budget as a starting point and topic of conversation. Sure. OK. Yes, Councilor Martel, did you have something? Yes. Thank you. [3:50:49] Bret Martel: Sorry. This is just kind of my first reaction, but in budgeting for this is going to be the difficult part. I see value in this plan and in this position. I don't know that one position is going to be enough. I think this might warrant a small department. I don't, it's going to have to be separated from the public health committee and what this role is, but I'm just reading the duties and the responsibilities and the requirements and it seems like a lot for one individual, especially one individual making 65 grand a year. I'm just curious, could we mock up what this might look like, say we're gonna do the budget for next year, could we look at it for the following year and maybe what two positions would look like or what it a following step would include? I just, I'm nervous that one position is going to be able to fill the roles and the expectations that I'm reading here and that's just a quick reaction and I'd like to discuss it more, obviously, but that's just one thing [3:51:49] Bryan Kaenrath: that's jumping out at me at the moment. Yeah, just quick response, you know, I mean, obviously we'd like more positions, a lot of areas, but it comes down to resources in general. You like job descriptions to be more broad than narrow to, you know, encompass a whole number of things that, you know, that this person could work on. I think starting with one position would be a huge, you know, win or start for the city. We haven't had any full-time public health, you know, positions [3:52:50] Carl L. Sheline: mean in all actuality we may not even have money for this one position, let alone like two or three, so we're gonna see how things shake out, counselor [3:53:01] David B. Chittim: should have anything else about this. Yes, are there any external funding sources for a position like this? I [3:53:09] Speaker X (unidentified): will say that our workforce development employee is applying for a grant through the Sewell it wouldn't fund this entire position but I believe the amount is possibly $50,000 that we could get towards this position we may know before we start debating this over budget but we may not know at that point but we are looking for other funding mechanisms other than just in the budget thank you [3:53:34] Carl L. Sheline: Okay, I think we're mostly set on the public health officer. You'll set Miss Ray King Rath. Excellent. We are now up to regular reports and updates from counselors. Counselor Herman. Yes, thank you. The [3:53:50] Scott A. Harriman: school committee met last night. A few items on the agenda. We recognized the mock trial team, which won the state championship, so congratulations to them. We also voted to approve a field trip, which is for the mock trial team to attend the national championship in Des Moines, Iowa. We received an update from the superintendent on impacts from immigration enforcement on schools. There's a lot of information there. I would encourage people to take a look at the school committee video if they want to learn more. And another item we discussed was adding Latin honors for the high school. So that's cum laude, magna cum laude, summa cum laude. A lot of other high schools do this, and the rationale was that we currently recognize a lot of things for seniors, juniors, but juniors don't receive a lot of recognition for different things, which they can put on their college transcript. So that seemed to have popular support among the committee, and it looks like that will probably be moving forward. That's all I have for updates right now. [3:55:10] Carl L. Sheline: Further updates on anything from councilors before we move to new business? Yes, councilors. [3:55:16] David B. Chittim: I think this actually may be new business. We're here, we're here in new business. Go ahead. We have, as I've said several times tonight, I don't know what's happening with my voice. It just went away. Maybe it's the lateness of the hour. As I've said several times tonight, we have a lot of business facing us in the near term. I would like to suggest to the council that we seriously consider increasing the frequency of our meetings. I am not a fan of arriving home at 1 o'clock in the morning. This is Already late for me. We can accomplish a lot more if we attack these issues fresh. So I am proposing that we begin to use the Tuesdays between our regular meetings for workshops, for special meetings if necessary, but that we begin planning on having four meetings a month rather than TO UNTIL AT LEAST WE WORK THROUGH THE BACKLOG OF SOME OF THE THINGS THAT ARE THE BOW WAVE IN FRONT OF US. So I'd like to suggest that to the Council. I'll defer to how the Council feels, but that would be my RECOMMENDATION. Yeah. [3:56:29] Carl L. Sheline: Okay, thank you. Further? Yes, Councilor Najing. I would just like to respond [3:56:36] Joshua L. Nagine: to that and say I think it's an excellent idea. I understand that we may want to do it in a way that's least damaging to staff because we're asking staff to stay, but yeah, we've got a lot to go through for sure, so I support that 100. [3:56:55] Carl L. Sheline: I would like to remind the Council that we're going to be moving to multiple meetings per week here momentarily, but there'll be budget meetings, so I'm not sure where we'd fit in these extra meetings, at least in the near term. [3:57:11] Scott A. Harriman: Concern, thank you. I've got a few things here. So as it was mentioned earlier, I would like to see a an agenda item for a Charter Commission to be put to voters, and hopefully we can get that workshop happening sooner rather than later so we can make a decision on that. I'd also like to bring up again mobile home lot rents. I know there have been a lot of a lot of meetings around the community, and I think if you take a look at the Auburn City Council, they put a moratorium in place on lot rent increases while they work through an ordinance I'd like to see something similar happening here in Lewiston in another thing that came up was the fees that towing companies charge for towing and impounding vehicles I think councillor Nagin brought this up with a constituent and I checked with the police chief and we only have some we have some rules in place for towing for parking bans but not for other reasons and I'd just like to see what we can put in place so constituents aren't being charged unnecessarily or charged exorbitant fees. And lastly, I have, if we could find out, and this could be just an email to the council or something, if our social services department, general assistance, has resources for people who, you know, have been impacted by immigration enforcement in town and who haven't been, you know, they maybe haven't been able to go to work and they're at risk of defaulting on their rent or potentially being evicted. What we have for resources as far as helping people out with those things. That's all I've got for now. [3:59:10] Carl L. Sheline: Councilor Longchamps. Yes. [3:59:12] Susan G. Longchamps: First I would just like to thank and welcome Councilor Noble to the team. Thank you very much. Second, I would just like to apologize. I wrote this quickly as public comment was going on and I'd like to apologize to the families that have been affected by the mass shooting. I was not a counselor during that time and I have not spoke publicly about this although I have had many conversations privately with people regarding this tragic incident that happened. I'm very concerned and it's very disturbing to me how the money was distributed. I've been told that there's nothing that I can do as a counselor and I'm sorry that I listened to that, but I vowed today to do everything I can to try to see how the victims that were truly affected are somehow, they somehow retrieved that money that was donated for them. I don't know how that will look, but I just want to make the public aware that I will do everything I can to see what I can do personally, whether it's go to the organizations and talk to them and ask them to personally give the money back because there are people that are affected still today because of that and it just really upsets me that there was so much money that was poured out and given for the victims and it just does not, well, we know that it was not distributed the way it was described to the people that were donating and that is really disturbing and I'm sorry that it has taken me this long to speak up about this. But again, I just wasn't sure of my position with this or what I could really do. But I'm going to try and do everything I can to make sure that the organizations hopefully make it right. Thank you. [4:01:32] Carl L. Sheline: You have your hand up? I did. [4:01:36] Joshua L. Nagine: So really quickly, I missed the reports and updates, so I'm just going to mention really quickly that the Citizens Advisory Council that oversees Community Development Block Grants, applications as well as HOME ARPA funds is currently down two members, and we need some help. We're currently evaluating the requests for distribution to community partners, so it's important that we get people in there as quickly as we can. The Public Health Committee has recently gone through the RFP process for the eighty thousand dollars of opioid recovery funds that they oversee, and the awards will be announced shortly. They're also working on Rally for Recovery already, so Rally for Recovery is in September, but we're working on it now. And then for new business, to reiterate the towing charges for abandonment fees, a tenant that lives in my ward was charged seven hundred and fifty dollars for having his car in impound for three days, and originally the fee was fifteen, $1,500. That's extraordinarily high. We need to look at some type of ordinance that we can put in place in order to stipulate when we're working with private businesses what the maximum they're going to charge is, because in my opinion that's extortion, and we're culpable, we're responsible, because $1,500 is more than his rent for a month. It's just not fair. I would also like to point out that last meeting I brought up the state law concerning ICE enforcement as well as the Rockland ordinance, and unfortunately that did not make the agenda packet this meeting. I'm going to be working with the council president to make sure that it is on the agenda packet for next meeting. I want to point out as well that recently, actually the Main Wire did a report on a ride along with the US Marshal Service that highlighted vacants, so it was a vacant building in our community. I know that we have a lot of them. I would like to have a clear understanding of like how we're tracking those vacants, so that we have an understanding of like all of these properties are Potentially problem areas for each for each neighborhood that they exist in, and so possibly we could ask our code enforcement department to let us know how they currently monitor them if they do, and then how we can follow up on that. And then last, this is just a small one, but well it's not really a small one, we have a flag that was put up at Kennedy Park, we also have a flag that flaps off the side of the building, neither of them are lit up, they stay up 24 hours a day, it's against flag code and so we need to have a conversation on whether or not we're going to figure out whether we work with individual organizations to take down the flags and put them back up every day like volunteers whatever we might do, because we certainly don't have the staff funding to do that, or are we going to light up the flags, because right now having a flag flopping in the dark is the US flag should never sit in the dark. So Those are all the things for new business for me. [4:05:18] Bryan Kaenrath: Thank you. We're gonna let them up. Thank you. I Appreciate it [4:05:25] Carl L. Sheline: All right anything else counselors before we head to Madam clerk, I believe we have some executive sessions. Yes, sir [4:05:33] Speaker K (unidentified): You have three executive sessions Executive Session Pursuant to Main Revised Statutes Annotated Title I, Section 4056C, to discuss an economic development issue which the premature disclosure of the information would prejudice the competitive bargaining position of the city. Let me read the motions for you. Two of them are on economic development. So to enter into an Executive Session Pursuant to Main Revised Statutes Annotated Title I, Section 4056C, to discuss economic development issues of which the premature disclosure of the information would prejudice the competitive bargaining position of the city and to enter into an executive session pursuant to main revised statutes annotated title 1 section 405 6d to discuss labor negotiations regarding the International Association of firefighters local 785 I have a motion [4:06:22] Carl L. Sheline: please move to all three executive session I'm saying by councillor Nei Jean madam clerk please call the vote yes. WORD 7. YES. WORD 1. YES. WORD 2. YES. MOTION PASSED. VOTE OF 7-0. LEWISON, HAVE A WONDERFUL EVENING. THANK YOU SO MUCH.