Portland Finance Committee reviews police, HHS, and dispatch budgets

[0:09] Benjamin Grant: You can go ahead. Great. Thanks, Tiffany. Good evening, everybody. This is Ben Grant, council member at large and member of the finance committee. It is Thursday, April 30th. I'm not the usual chair. Our erstwhile chair, Councilor Fournier, is unavailable at the moment, so I will emcee things for the time being. I know we are joined by Councilor Pelletier, who is also a member of the committee and various other luminaries from city government who can introduce themselves as it becomes their turn. I don't think we have any business to attend to, so I can just turn this right over to Brendan to start to introduce the various departments [0:54] Brendan O'Connell: that will give their reports. All right. Thank you. So I'm Brendan O'Connell. I am the city's finance director. And during tonight's meeting, we're going to go through several scheduled department budgets, including the city clerk. I'll do the actual city council budget because I don't think I've talked about that one yet. I will have the police chief here to discuss the police department budget. And I'll also be discussing the dispatch department budget. And then we have Maggie McLaughlin, the HHS director, to discuss the HHS budget, including the Barron Center, Public Health, Social Services, and the Office of Elder Affairs. So we have quite a busy agenda, and I'll just go ahead and get started. [1:43] Benjamin Grant: And just before you do, Brent, I should say, just for those, if there's anybody from the public, this is not a public hearing, so we won't be taking public comment, though at the end of each section. We will take questions if there are any from counselors who may be here. So with that caveat, I'll go right ahead. [2:02] Brendan O'Connell: All right. So I will start with the city clerk budget, and I am going to present it on behalf of Abby, who attends plenty of meetings herself, just so I try to volunteer to do some of the smaller department budgets. So the city clerk's department does a variety of functions for the city and actually collects revenue and expenses. They issue birth certificates, death certificates, dog licenses, burial permits, marriage and domestic partnership licenses, fishing and hunting licenses. They keep records for the council. They keep record of the city's authenticating documents. They do voter registration. They administer elections. They do nomination papers, absentee ballots, petition verification, board and committee tracking, acknowledgement of paternity, birth certificates, vacancies for applicants for notaries, and assisting all other levels of government in their searches for information. There's a couple of interesting things or items of note that are happening in the clerk's budget this year, and they are a small but mighty department. They're a team of eight full-time employees, and they this year have a few changes in their budget of note. Number one is payroll. Although it's only $85,000, I wanted to specifically call this out as it's a higher percent increase, and that's because we are voluntarily complying with the minimum wage change for our election workers, the city clerk. Many of you may remember that whenever we do memos about minimum wage, the impact on the city budget. There's a fairly high number of employees who are impacted, but typically about 500 of them are actually the election workers. We had been paying anywhere between $13, $14, and $15 for the various functions on election nights and leading up to the election. But the total dollars that we pay for those elections is not anywhere close to as significant as it would be for a full-time employee. So we are voluntarily complying with the minimum wage change that happened on 1-1-26, and we will, of course, comply again on 1-1-27, giving raises to all those staff. That's why that number is a little bit higher. With the contractual services line, we're now paying, we signed a five-year contract for software, which will help us track clean elections and make reporting of clean elections funds much more streamlined and easy, and useful for the public. And that was something that I know the previous clerk had talked about with the council as being a priority for both them and the public who's interested in elections. So that's kind of the driving cost between this $44,000 increase. Then we have a slight increase in the rentals line, and that is for the ranked choice software that we use, in particular for larger elections. So there's some software that we need for only larger elections. And of course, we've got a big one coming up in November. So that's that increase there. All in all, it's about $144,000 increase, or about 16.5% above guidance. But again, there were some items that we felt were important to include in the budget and not too material overall when compared to the overall city budget size. I'll pause there for questions. And Abby did, she is on standby in case there are any questions for her. [5:30] Benjamin Grant: I have a question. The software for the Clean Elections program, is that going to be available for this election cycle or for next year, or do you know? [5:39] Brendan O'Connell: Yep, yeah, it's getting implemented right now. So it should be in use effective,, basically starting it towards the end of this fiscal year and into the next fiscal year. [5:50] Benjamin Grant: So likely for the candidates running on the ballot this year. Oh, absolutely. City candidates running on the ballot this year. Okay, great. Let me see. I don't see other hands. Wes's thumbs up. I don't see any other counselors with us. So given that, back to you. [6:10] Brendan O'Connell: So I'll move on to another department of note for the council. Oops. It is the actual city council budget itself. And there are a couple things of note here. Number one is that it looks like there is a paid decrease in the payroll line, and that is actually not the case. Many of you recall a budget amendment at the tail end of the budget cycle last year from Councilor Phillips to give the council a raise. Because of that, the school board actually had to give their board members a raise and their budget process had already concluded. Included so we added a little bit of extra money in our budget to potentially reimburse the schools for the cost of this increase in their budget if they didn't have the money, so that's coming back out this year. We're hopefully back on track where we're aligned and they're going to be able to see what is in our budget and match it, so there should be no need for additional funds this year. The council budget does include a three percent COLA as it does for non-union staff, so that is all included in the payroll line there. The other big change you're going to see in this budget is a $150,000 decrease. This is also related to a last-minute council amendment last year from Councillor Bullett, which provided $150,000 in funding to youth and family outreach for their child care voucher program. I know she'd indicated she hoped to see this continued in this operating budget, but it wasn't something that we were able to fund in this year's operating budget as something that's ongoing. I'll also note that the total cost of a child care, a year's worth of child care vouchers is in the $80,000 to $90,000 range. So hopefully the amount of funds that we gave last year will fund more than a year and they won't need a full year of vouchers in this year's budget. That is all for the council budget. And I'll again, pause there to see if [8:06] Benjamin Grant: I see we're also joined by Mayor Dion. Hello, Mayor. If you didn't hear, I'm taking over MC for April, who's otherwise detained at the moment. So, just give me a second. I don't see any hands. Wes, you're good? Okay. [8:30] Brendan O'Connell: All right, keep on going to dispatch services. So this is one that I and the chief are both very familiar with. So I'll just continue presenting. So we actually share dispatch services and we provide them for multiple communities. We do dispatch services here in Portland out of Middle Street for South Portland and Cape Elizabeth. There's a board that we're on. It's the city managers from both towns or their designee, the police chiefs and the fire chiefs on the board, a six-member board. And we have meetings quarterly and they rotate location between the city and South Portland. We actually share expenses based on population. So we use 2020 census data and we share the expenses. It's about 29.3% South Portland, whatever the 61 point something city. And then Cape Elizabeth just pays an annual fee that's increased by an escalation percentage every year. So there is some revenue that comes back to us. All in all, we're at about a 7% increase in dispatch services budget this year. And there are a few drivers of why it's slightly above the 5% guidance. Number one is the contractual services increase. This is an area where we've really had effective methods of increasing or actually reducing the amount of vacancies in dispatch. We've gone from a high of above 20 down to, I think, the low teens now in terms of vacancies. And there's been a number of changes that we've implemented, both contractually and scheduling-wise, that have been a big help to reduce not only the length of the shifts for the staff out there, but the number of vacancies that we have. You'll also see a significant increase in contractual services here. Right now, we're using a software called ProPhoenix that is not really meeting our needs in terms of computer-aided dispatch. Dispatch. We did an RFP for this about five to six years ago, and unfortunately, it just hasn't worked out in the way that we had hoped. So we are bringing on a consultant to help us with the next RFP for this RMS CAD software. And I'm joined by Chief Mark Du Bois. And I don't know, Chief, if you have anything you want to say about the importance of that software. [10:52] Unidentified speaker (Department Director): Yes, just a vacancy, it's with it, we're currently at 12, which is really good. There's a few people in back rooms too, so that's working well. The records management system is really difficult, it's just doesn't work. So with the consultant, we're going to try and find the right system for us, and hopefully over the course of the next year or two, purchase a new system. The contract we have with them expired conveniently this fall, so we don't have to renew that. So it's good timing for that process to kind of kick off. [11:34] Brendan O'Connell: Thank you, Chief. And then the only other item that I wanted to note in the dispatch budget is there's a slight increase in utility costs, and that is fiber service to some of our locations. We want to make sure we have of redundancy at each location, since if one goes down, we don't lose the entire system or at least that entire location. And the last thing I'll note is that when you look at the FTE chart that was included in the city manager's budget materials, this is one where you saw a plus one FTE. And we aren't actually adding a number to the headcount in this department. It's a change where as South Portland dispatchers, longtime South Portland employees who are doing dispatch, have retired. They're simply coming off the books over in South Portland and coming on to our books as full-time employees on our side. But the total number of employees involved in the operation is not changing. And that was important to know because, as you know, this budget has a significant number of FTEs being reduced, including nine vacancies being eliminated in the police department. And so that if there are no questions about dispatch, I guess I'll pause there and ask if there's any questions about dispatch. Mayor, you got anything? [12:53] Benjamin Grant: So you are on mute. Well, I'll fill the bus up for a second and ask some questions. So I know the overall manager's budget has called for the reduction of a lot of empty or vacant positions. So do any of those, are any of those in dispatch? And if not, how many vacant, is it 12 the number of vacant in positions that remain in the budget. Did I hear that correctly? I see Daniel nodding. [13:23] Brendan O'Connell: Okay. So did we eliminate any from dispatch? We did not. Okay. And dispatch is an area where we have already, in many previous budget years, looked at absolute bare minimum staffing levels during every shift. We're still filling all the shifts. In some prior budget years, we had people working 18 hours consecutively, which obviously we've moved away from that because we've been able to fill some positions, but we still intend on, you know, bringing this number of vacancies back down to zero, and we think it's realistic. Okay, that's my question. You think it's realistic? I [13:54] Benjamin Grant: mean if say hypothetically you wanted to find some other vacant positions to reduce it went from 12 down to six i mean what's the what's the practical impact obviously it's not an error [14:04] Brendan O'Connell: we really want a short change for obvious reasons, but in this division and even when we get into the police discussion, the elimination of vacancies isn't really saving us anything because we're not. We're still filling those shifts. In dispatch, what we had to do in the past was bring on outside contractors, which the union hated. And also, we either we use these really long shifts with people working overtime. So it's not a great option in terms of elimination of vacancies. And it's an area where we've really seen the needle move. We were up in the 20s before this last recent contract passed, and we're getting regular applicants. [14:39] Benjamin Grant: So yeah. Okay, that answers my question. I appreciate it. So given that, West Market, go ahead. I see the mayor now has his hand up officially. Go for it. I apologize, somehow my [14:54] Speaker D (unidentified): computer is not cooperating with me. I'm sure it's operator error at this end, so, but I have no objection to what the chief has presented in terms of the dispatch center. It makes sense. That's a high-stress situation for them, and I hope we can resolve it in due time. All right. [15:18] Brendan O'Connell: Go on. Okay. So I'm going to just continue with the police department budget, and I'm going to share just a one-page summary as this department has multiple divisions. Divisions. So in this department, we have a number of changes and we also do have the big reduction of nine vacancies. And so I wanted to just turn it over to the chief off the bat to talk a little bit about those eliminations. Okay. [15:56] Unidentified speaker (Department Director): So we're currently down to 24 vacancies. When we did this, we had a couple more, so the reduction in the vacancies is kind of an estimate, obviously, where we're going to end up throughout the fiscal year. So we hire people based on when the academies start, and there's two of them. One is in the middle of August, and one starts in January every year. The state runs them, so our processes work with that end goal of hiring people. Now, we hire them as fast as we can so that we kind of get them started early, but with the start date anticipated of an academy mid-August. So we have 24 vacancies right now. We have really good interest. We're seeing a lot more showing up for taking tests and passing and interviewing, and we're doing these kind of as we get a few people, we interview them. We used to just set dates before, so we're trying to streamline the process. So with the anticipation of hiring 10 at the August academy and then 10 more in January, which historically this last academy we had seven, I think, right now looking at the list that we have, we're very close to locking down seven right now, and we've got more testing, and we have multiple people in background. So I think 10 is a very realistic number, hopefully a little more than that. And then once that academy starts, we move on to working on January. So we kind of estimate 10 and 10, so that left us roughly eight positions when we started talking about this, which is where we came up with the eighth number. And then also we have a front desk person that retired that works the evening shift. So we left that vacant. She had been gone. She left for a medical reason and then retired. So that's been vacant for, I think, October is when it actually started. So that's the ninth position that we left vacant. [18:12] Brendan O'Connell: Thanks, Chief. And that number of vacancies was up in the 30s just last year, right? Yes. Yep. [18:18] Unidentified speaker (Department Director): I mean, we'll talk about it later with one of the increases, but with Epic, but the recruiting, honestly, two things have really changed, I think, in the last year. The recruiting efforts online with Epic, which has, I think, been very successful, and also the contract, the most recent contract really has specifically made kind of an impact that we noticed. We'll probably talk about that later. [18:47] Brendan O'Connell: Yep. And so we get, when we look at the police department budget as a whole, there is an 18% increase in expenditures, and a significant portion of that is related to the most recent contract, which was approved by council. Council. For the PBA unit, there was a 5% increase, a 5% increase, and a 5% increase across the three-year deal. And this is really the second year in the three-year deal. For the Superior Officers Association, there was an 8% increase, a 5% increase, and a 5% increase. However, in the FY26 budget, we only estimated a 4% increase for both of those units. So the increase that's being shown here is the excess increase from last year that we didn't capture in the budget, plus the increase this year. Also driving this is the educational stipends that were increased fairly significantly by the council in the last contract, and also some mandatory spacing between the different classifications in the contract. Previously, there was overlap between the top step of, I believe, the sergeants and lieutenants, and that was fixed in the last contract with a mandatory, I think, 10% bump in between those. So overall, a significant portion of the increase year over year was related to the contract. And you can see from this slide that 88% of the police department budget is related to staff, and only 12% is related to other expenditures. I'll jump over to the, let's see, I'll find police. Okay. Going through their divisions, there is an increase in admin, in the police administration division in administrative services of $94,000. And this is the Epic recruitment contract. We had previously been paying this using asset forfeiture funds. And in this year's budget, it's coming into the general fund budget because it has been a success. And as Chief referenced, he was going to talk about that during the presentation. So I'll just flip back over to you, Chief. [21:06] Unidentified speaker (Department Director): Yeah, we had funded that through asset forfeiture. Last year was a mix between that and some salary savings. So we're taking on the full amount in the budget. We're just seeing a really significant increase in applicants, better applicants, and we're having more paths through the process where we were struggling like the last two years. So, from all those analytics that we capture, we meet with them, I think, every week. They talk to them, but monthly we get a whole breakdown of, you know, all the social media advertising they do. But from all accounts, internally, we feel it's been very successful. So, well worth the investment. [22:05] Brendan O'Connell: Not the right screen. All right. Continuing to the next division within police. least, this is the uniformed operations group. And this is where the majority of the department expenditures live. The majority of the on the street police officers, sergeants, lieutenants. You can see the payroll increase that I talked about from those factors, mostly from the wage increase and the contract approved by the council. But there also is a fairly significant increase in the contractual services line and the supplies line. The contractual services line is being driven by increases in the contract with Axon, and there's a number of subcontracts there. It's both for the body cameras, but also for a software called DraftOne, and that software has a variety of different things that it does for the department. And Chief, I know you're prepped to talk about that. [23:08] Unidentified speaker (Department Director): Yeah, that account, just so you're aware, we pay $105,000 for the animal rescue lead, which is our kennel services that's part of that about 340 for the draft one so the reason that's so high is that we're making a double payment this year the way it was structured we have to pay july one and then january one so we're paying 140 in july and then 202 in january so it's kind of just miscalculated the timing of the payments, I think, for us. The body cameras are in there, which is pretty significant. And then there's what's called Axon Investigate. So that's also. So to kind of give you some reference, the Axon Investigate is a video tool that we can capture multiple sources. So like, if we have, say, somebody running down the street, we can compile all the video of all the different networks. So somebody's ring camera, somebody's surveillance camera. However, we, you know, all the different sources in it, kind of merges it all together, but it keeps it in, it's an original format. So you can do the timing of it as a timeline and show somebody like running down the street, but it uses all the different sources and adds. So the detectives obviously use that quite a bit. Probably the best tool they have that is an addition, and it's included in this, is what's called My90 Assist. And it's a translation tool. And if you've seen it demonstrated, you could probably go online and look at it. They have over 100 languages. So built into the body camera there's a microphone, obviously, so they can capture all the, you know, all the discussion. You essentially push a button and the person with whatever language they speak talks to you and it translates it and verbalizes it for the officer, and then the officer speaks in English to whatever language they were speaking to and it translates it back to that person in real time. And then with the Draft One piece of that, it translates all that and it captures it in a narrative form so you have the whatever language plus english how it's translated so you have all that in a narrative form when you're done so really great technology for us and i would say almost daily we ask for a language line phone call and the delay in doing that is really tough especially if you know timing is of the essence in the situation the draft one narrative stuff we already have we've been paying for that 's a tool that helps offices with the structure of a report with the body camera translates stuff from the body camera into a report and then obviously they kind of work through that. I think that's all in that, in that, at contractual services. Well, there's actually all the stuff in there too with Axon, with like the fleet, the cars all have cameras too, so this is all the camera is captured in that 984. [26:30] Brendan O'Connell: There's other, another significant increase in the supplies line, and from what I understand that is for computers that go into the cruisers and also for some taser replacement? [26:50] Unidentified speaker (Department Director): Yep. So the tasers are purchased on a five-year term and they basically expire. And obviously with new generation technology, they stopped servicing the ones we have, which we purchased five years ago. The last payment was last fall, so we have till this fall till they kind of don't replace them if they break and whatnot. So the new, the new tasers that we need to purchase are 130,000 and we still can manipulate that a little bit if we don't buy as many and share them more, but, that, and then the computers, we, work with IT now and they identify how many new computers or what needs to be replaced every year. And, we have been previously budgeting for roughly 10 computers. And then we do a mismatch between like a federal grant that we get, we'll buy some and some surplus money at the end of the year. But IT recommended we replace 80 this year, and we have over 100 in the building. So that's 125 of that money is really just computer upgrades and replacement. And that's also computers in all the cars, too. They don't need to be all replaced, but that's factored into that, too. [28:19] Brendan O'Connell: And the next division is Bureau of Investigative Services. Chief, could you talk a little bit about this one? There's no significant increases here. [28:29] Unidentified speaker (Department Director): Yep, this is the CID. The big change is, I don't think it's on this one. Second. [28:45] Brendan O'Connell: Police operational support services, that's the next division. [28:49] Unidentified speaker (Department Director): Yeah, that's what I'm looking at. Really, the big change would be in maintenance and repair. It was up 68,000. And that is really what's happening in investigative work now. It's all technology-based. So almost every case we have is a component of investigative digital forensics that we need, whether it's the video footage or if it's cell phone technology or laptops or GPS in cars. I mean, all that stuff is, we try to accumulate as much of that information as we can. And it's all at this point, it seems to be expected presenting a case, especially if there's a serious crime or a violent crime. So we have a lot of technology, computer programs and software programs that allow us to break and access all that information, say, on an Apple phone versus an Android or a laptop. And they all seem to have different needs. So we do have a lot of different programs that we need. Also in there is Behavioral Health Unit has a program called Casebook, which they manage all their, really somewhat HIPAA information. So it's very separate from the police side. So they have their own software program they use to manage all their cases. That's really what it is. It's just, it's incredible how much software we need to kind of get through a lot of these serious cases. [30:21] Speaker E (unidentified): And [30:28] Brendan O'Connell: The last division is Portland Jetport Security. And this division is fully reimbursed by the jet port. No real changes here with the exception of the contractual wage increases. And that is the last police department division. So I'll pause there for Q&A. Go [30:57] Benjamin Grant: To my colleagues first. Wes. [31:00] Speaker F (unidentified): Can you explain the cruiser camera component? What are the benefits of having that through Axon versus in-house? [31:15] Unidentified speaker (Department Director): It's called Fleet 3. So the biggest piece of Axon, it's all coordinated. So you get all these different views and you can pull up on the screen and you can see like however many windows are open. So you might be able to, you could see three views or perspectives of say three offices on scene plus the camera from the car. They have them pointed on the prisoner also if somebody's under arrest in the back seat. We have them in the wagon to monitor prisoners if you know they're getting transported. So it's really the coordination of, it's all synced together is really the big piece and these are automated license play readers. No, we don't have license plate readers. They're just video cameras that are... Fleet 3? We don't have license plate readers. The Fleet 3, it could have the option, but it's not activated. We don't use license plate readers at all. [32:12] Speaker F (unidentified): Okay. The website is saying otherwise, but I'll take your word for it. Okay. [32:22] Benjamin Grant: Mr. Mayor, you got anything? [32:26] Speaker D (unidentified): No, I know. I'm satisfied. satisfied. The only curious thing that came up for me is the language interpretation on the body cams. Is there ever an audit to ensure the quality of the translation? I hate to say that I'm sounding like a defense attorney, just because the computer tells me it said X. Do we ever do an [32:48] Unidentified speaker (Department Director): an audit on that or does that excellent we have we don't have it yet so i don't know but i mean it's a good question i can certainly ask them i think the satisfaction that you would have is that you would be able to hear it you watch the video and then read the translation so i'm not sure i mean somebody would have to speak that language obviously to translate it to understand it but i don't know if they do that if they ought to i only bring it up because [33:19] Speaker D (unidentified): a certified interpreter's court and i know when i post questions to the interpreter to the to the witness i would say did x happen and they chat to the person and there's a long response and then the interpreter turns to me and says, no. You know, I get a little nervous about that. I'm sure it's very helpful to the officer on the street. You know, it's kind of like probably translator on an iPhone. But I'm just curious. And maybe the prosecutors don't have any questions about it. Can you speak a little bit about the integration of Axon data in terms of discovery for the DA? [34:05] Unidentified speaker (Department Director): So they, yeah, they went to a, an Axon product called Evidence.com. So I want to say everybody in the county now, or vast majority of them, use it. So we put cases together with all the video evidence, the police report, all, you know, everything that they would reply for discovery, and then they have access to it now, versus us loading up like a flash drive, or their previous, I forget what they had, their servers were actually, like, at capacity. So it's actually working out really well. I think they're going to it live this week. So they, because of their relationship with us and all the other departments, get it, I think it's free for them to access it. So it works easier for us because we can compile all that stuff in one case, and then they have access to everything. That way [35:03] Speaker D (unidentified): I apologize, I had to take a phone call, because I wanted to hear the answer to Councilor Pelletier's question about ALRs, license readers, are there any departments in the county making use of that technology that you're aware of [35:21] Unidentified speaker (Department Director): I have no idea. Now, I mean, I'm sure that there's probably a capability for that, but this, we just don't use it. We don't have it. We don't have access to it. It's not turned on if it's an option. All right, that's all. Thanks, Chi. [35:51] Benjamin Grant: Wes, do you have your hand back up? [35:53] Speaker F (unidentified): Yeah, just to follow back up on that. That seems to be like a primary marketing. The ALPR seems like the primary marketing point of the Fleet 3. So is there just trying to be economic here, we're not using the primary like marketing point, could we just use a cheaper camera like I'm, I feel like the price point is set because it can automatically do this thing that I don't think it's, I don't think we should be doing, but at that price point, you know, maybe we can just get a dumber camera, and maybe there's a little bit more of a headache and collating the data, but it might save us some money, that might be something to look into, just because of how prominently ALPR is featured in when you google Fleet 3 [36:50] Unidentified speaker (Department Director): ALPR capability, right, the budgeted amount is 13,000 a year for that component. My understanding, it's really all just the cameras and all the cruisers in the wagon. So I'm not sure what they're marketing for that. It's one of like five different options we have with them. And the challenge would be, and we've worked this out with IT, and I'm talking to Phil about it, is if we go to different systems, the interoperability would be really tough. You know, Axon is not going to let another software company work with them in that regard. It's not going to integrate well, and then that's going to be a challenge for us, you know, putting cases together. And so I think it's from us, from our perspective with this, it's just easy to keep it all one package, the body cameras and the car cameras. Yeah, I guess I'll say that sounds [37:56] Speaker F (unidentified): like a really good argument for trying to stop from sinking into that morass that Axon is presenting us, where it's just easier to pay them more to get the same service that another company could offer just because we integrate into their ecosystem. But that's probably for a different time. [38:17] Benjamin Grant: All right, I will look to the others. I know we're now joined by counselors Phillips and Michniewicz. I don't see any hands up from them. I have two questions that came up during Brendan's presentation. One, I think you said that the EPIC contract was funded through asset forfeiture, and now it's coming on to like a regular budget. So what's happening with that asset forfeiture money that was being used there? Is it being reallocated to something? Thing I [38:52] Unidentified speaker (Department Director): can answer that, Brendan. You're on view. I don't know if you want to answer that. You want me to? Sorry, go ahead. We asked to pull up your money that the vast majority of it went to CIP [39:10] Benjamin Grant: for vehicles. Okay, got it. And then I think there's one for the chief. You talked a lot about the better prospects for incoming officers. What's the, what's the outgoing look like over the last year in terms of retirement, some people leaving? I'm just trying to get my head around the [39:29] Unidentified speaker (Department Director): churn. We have four leaving this summer. A couple are in the retiree hire program, so they're just, and they're actually all supervisors, so four sergeants, and then one possibly around Thanksgiving time. But, and just because of the volume of people we have, we all, somebody moves, they had 20 years in and moved out of state, they retired and went out of state. But I think the retention is actually pretty good. We're really not losing anybody. Okay, good. Okay, [40:08] Benjamin Grant: unless any of that generated other questions from my colleagues, which I don't see more hands, we can move on. All [40:20] Brendan O'Connell: Right, I think the next department on the agenda for tonight is Health and Human Services. And there are a number of key divisions within HHS, obviously HHS Administration, Public Health, Social Services, the Barron Center, Office of Elder Affairs. So I'll bring Maggie on and let her dictate the order of those divisions. I know she has a variety of other staff that she'll introduce as well. [40:52] Unidentified speaker (Department Director): Thanks, Brendan. Really appreciate it. I just want to say thanks for the opportunity to share our budget. Happy to answer any questions as they come up. Have an incredible team here. Our four division directors, Bridget, Aaron, Mary Beth, and Linda are here, as well as Mark, who is our lead on finance, helping us put all this together. Other. So we're looking forward to the conversation. Brendan, do you want to start or should I give a quick overview of the kind of achievements in 2025? Yeah, I think that would be great. Okay, great. So some of you may have been in the HHSPS committee where we talked about some of the data points coming out of our 2025 annual report, but it's always helpful when seeing the numbers kind of match it with impact. So I'll take a moment just to kind of give an overview of what we've been achieving. So across the board, we operate across the four divisions, and I'll just briefly talk about each of them. There are so many impact points, this conversation could go on for hours. So know that these are just little highlights and happy to talk more any day. Barron Center is our skilled nursing facility. And over this past 2025 year, we supported 23 individuals with short-term rehabilitative care. Sometimes people forget that the facility can also support that kind of transition. We also supported 170 individuals with long-term care. And it's helpful when you think about Barron Center to think about it within the scale of the state. So over the last 10 years, there's been a 22% reduction in the amount of skilled nursing facilities we have in the state. The ones that we do have available are often smaller and they often don't take main care. We are one of the only facilities operating at scale that really prioritizes helping individuals who are in that lower income category. So 81% of our residents are main care eligible. We also have a higher percentage than the average for individuals who have higher needs. So often that's psychiatric diagnoses, dementia, Alzheimer's, things like that. And so the team is really providing a critical service, even if you didn't consider the demographic factors in the state. But then when you think about the demographic factors, the need is only increasing while the service is decreasing. And so for any Portland resident who is in need of the service, Barron Center is truly a lifeline. Our OEA team is small but mighty, and they operate an incredible range of programs. So they have a day program which provides respite to caregivers and provides interactive care to individuals who need support during the day. That helped 69 individuals this past year. They also do at-home outreach. When we talk about safety nets that are needed and designed to fill gaps, that's really one of them. So our senior outreach nursing program did 398 home visits. So those are for individuals who are just a little bit too wealthy to qualify for MaineCare, but are not wealthy enough to pay for that service on their own. And so we're really catching them where they would otherwise fall through the cracks, keeping them on track with med management, blood pressure, things like that, so that they don't fall and need emergency services and more advanced care. Our snow shoveling program connected 132 shovelers with 121 households. Households and while I think you know one of the major outcomes of that is people have paths that they could safely walk on, I think one of the other things to highlight in that is the true impact that it has on community. The, you've probably seen and heard about some of the, we call it, epidemics of isolation that are facing our country in terms of how our community fabric comes together, and it's programs like that really connect people that help combat that. And so yes, we were shoveling snow, know, And that was an amazing service on its own, it also helped create community, which makes us stronger across the city. We also work at kind of a much broader level doing coalition work with Age-Friendly Portland, helping people register for P-STEP and the Age-Friendly Summit. Moving into social services, our social service team is very mighty and operates at a scale that I would say really is critical for the state, but certainly is focused on helping our residents. Our general assistance program supported more than approximately 4,000 households this past year. And GA really is, we call it the last of the safety net. So it's a safety net when none of the other ones work. And that is helping people with really basics and essentials. Maybe it's a security deposit so that they can finally get into housing. Maybe it is medication that they can't buy otherwise. So that program has really provided an essential need, particularly in the amount of shocks that the community has faced at kind of an economic level this past year. In terms of some of the kind of unique things that scaled back up, it's career programming. So we connected 466 GA clients with potential employers to help them as they continue on their journey to economic self-sufficiency. Agency. You're all familiar with the HSC. It's a 258 bed shelter and really provides shelter at scale. And I want to commend the team for doing so in such a strong way that it makes a space that is dignified for such a large population 24-7. The HSC is also the home. When you look at the HSC budget, it's not just the building. It's the home where a lot of our wraparound services are housed. So the HSC is budgetarily where you see the work that we do on prevention and diversion. And that's where we can make a small intervention to keep somebody from going into the emergency shelter system. The team receives calls all day and is helping to prevent evictions and things like that. Our HOPE team is the team that works connecting people who are living with unsheltered homelessness and connecting those individuals straight to housing. So we were able to connect 46 people into housing through our HOPE team this past year. And that's a collaboration with local partners as well, Preble Street, Milestone, Common Space. We also scaled up this year to offer the winter warming shelter. So that supported 382 individuals who otherwise may not have had shelter during some of the most acute nights throughout the winter. And we have a daily outreach team that is working to connect individuals with services. Our family shelter serves up to 43 families at any given time. And this past year, we housed 79 of those families. So always a bright spot when we're able to get a family into housing and connect them through on their journey. We work very closely with the team over at the schools, the McKinney-Vento team as well, to coordinate on housing and needs for families that are experiencing homelessness. We also have the 166 shelter, that's 169 bed shelter, that supports single asylum seekers. You're familiar that we have closed that shelter, but it provided an incredible resource to the community while it was there, with high volume of placements and supportive services wrapped around. You may remember we had some innovative programming that linked shelter participants with Hearts of Pine, as well as mental health programming and some life skills with many of our partners. Shifting over a little bit to talk about public health, our public health team really works across a variety of levels, whether it's thinking about community public health writ large, or individual health. So just a couple highlights. We operate the free clinic and the STD clinic. We reached more than 860 patients this past year with HIV, hepatitis C, other STD clinic services. That is an incredible resource for our community, particularly in light of the fact that there are some cases here in Cumberland County. We also have provided more than 3,000 vaccines. So we provide vaccines to uninsured adults and any children. There is an increase in infectious diseases that are preventable by vaccines and it's programs like this that help keep Portland at a higher level so that we are not facing the challenges such as a measles outbreak. Our prevention team met more than 3,000 individuals and trained them on healthy cooking. Our city readiness initiative trained more than 172 professionals on hazards and hazard preparation. Our community alignment group gathered more than 80 organizations to work on health equity across the city and ways that we can promote that together. Our harm reduction team played an essential role in overdose prevention across the city. We distributed more than 31,000 doses of naloxone and were able through our exchange to link to have more than 4,500 referrals to services. That could be anything from basic needs to interest in recovery and treatment services. And those are just some of the highlights so we can get into the numbers now. [50:47] Brendan O'Connell: Maggie, is there a particular division which you would like me to start with? Or do you want to start with admin? [50:53] Unidentified speaker (Department Director): Let's start with admin and then we'll go to public health, social services, Barron Center, and last but not least, OEM. [51:01] Brendan O'Connell: All right. I think with admin, I'll just go right to the one pager that we have. So I will share that. So there's a fairly significant reduction in expenditures here. And Maggie, do you want to talk through the highlights? If you don't, I have them as well. [51:23] Unidentified speaker (Department Director): Yeah, no, I can talk through it. So the biggest change that you're seeing here on expenditures is really associated with removal of the deputy director position. While it may be necessary to bring the deputy director back in future years, at the moment where we are at, we have an incredibly strong team across our four division leads. And we've also got a very strong bench beneath them. And so when we were looking at places where we could create efficiency, this was one of the ones where we felt that for a year we could delay or leave that hiring out. out. The other major change, there's a data coordinator that was removed. That was under our infrastructure grant. It was paid for with matching grant revenue, and we just restructured some of the roles within that grant, but it's still focused on and delivering on data quality work in the background. I'm [52:22] Brendan O'Connell: going to pop over to public health, and I don't know if you prefer me to use the individual division sheets here or you want to just go through the one pager we can [52:30] Unidentified speaker (Department Director): go through the one pager and if people have questions we can go to individual sheets so [52:38] Brendan O'Connell: again here we're showing an expenditure decrease and that is largely related to expiration of various grants i believe is that correct maggie yeah so we lost eight [52:50] Unidentified speaker (Department Director): full-time staff based off of grant losses. And so much of our public health unit is actually run through grants. So we work in the background all the time to secure funding to scale up and maintain the work that we do. You all are aware of the significant disruption kind of in the grant community writ large as the federal government has changed priorities. Some of that has echoed through to us. Some of that was happening even without some of the federal changes as the state consolidated some services that they previously had delegated out to us and other providers. I think the other thing I would just highlight, we had some increases here in terms of estimates of how much we would be spending on opioid settlement funds. We put in the budget $520, which is $120 more than we had in there last year. We have separate funds, so if we do go above that number, it would be matched with revenue from that opioid settlement funds. But it's what we thought was the accurate figure for what we would be spending this year. [54:05] Brendan O'Connell: We'll pop over to social services. [54:08] Unidentified speaker (Department Director): All right, so there's pretty significant shifts, really, at the social services level. And most of this had to do with state level policy. So, when we went into this process last year we were in a very different place at the state level budget and so we were facing multiple challenges which would have provide somewhat existential impacts to us as you guys saw at the GA level so that was things like the legislation which would have tapped how many months individuals would have been able to receive support. Legislation that rules that would have affected the bed night rate and various things like that which ultimately was more than 3 million and impact. And so we had without knowing where those were going to land we had budgeted at a more conservative level last year on those scenarios did not come to bear so what you see this year is really about a significant increase in the anticipated GA revenue Because those conservative circumstances did not happen. The other major shifts that you're seeing on the social services side, we had a significant decrease in payroll. Most of that was associated with the closure of 166. So we eliminated 42 roles when that facility closed. closed. Obviously, that had an impact both on payroll and benefits. We also looked at what our family shelter structure was and tried to find efficiencies within that structure by eliminating some vacancies as well as for roles. And that was really because we are seeing a decrease in demand for services at the family shelter. And so we were right-sizing the team while keeping in mind that, you know, these are really our best guess estimates of what the needs will be over the future years. There's some changes associated with the family shelter based off of anticipated rents. We are expecting to go from four buildings down to two. And we also expect to have significant maintenance costs associated with those facilities. And so And so we have scaled up the amount of funding that we applied to the maintenance costs. And those are the major highlights on social services. [Brendan O'Connell: The Barron Center.] So at the Barron Center, the biggest changes that you see are really associated with a change in our census structure. So our census in the FY27 budget, sometimes a census is a very clinical word and it can be disconnected. So let me take a moment to pause and say the number of people that we hope to support is 136 individuals. Well, more than that, but getting to 136 beds that are available for those individuals throughout FY27. And so whenever we adjust the census, there's concomitant adjustments in all the other costs. So you can think about each bed is going to have an associated reimbursement, right? Each individual that we serve is going to have associated costs with supplies, and so all the costs are then adjusted. Last year, we were more optimistic about how quickly we could increase that limit, and so you'll see that the overall expenditure request has gone down because we're not being as ambitious based off of what we saw this past year and where we're going to go. It is a 209 bed facility. And so we are hoping to scale up and continue to work towards that 209 beds. The industry as a whole has been beset by challenges associated with staffing. There were challenges structurally going on in the healthcare industry, particularly as it relates to nursing staff before COVID hit. But once COVID hit, it really disrupted practices. You may have heard about agency staffing playing a much bigger role, a lot harder to recruit and staff. We are making our way back from that and we actually outperform our peers, both in terms of turnover and staffing ratios, but it's still going to be a long journey just because of the conditions in the market as it relates to direct care staff. We also increased our certified public expenditures match based off of what we're seeing this past year and our estimates coming up. And those are the main things that we're seeing. We brought down our anticipated main care reimbursements. That's just based off of that census as well as kind of actuals and where we expect things to be. The state also reduced the cap by ten dollars per day and so recognizing that upper limit has also shifted down. OEA is our small but mighty team and you will see here there are not any major significant changes so OEA is planning to continue to deliver on its existing services and at a net budget requests of 251,000, we really provide an incredible scope for residents. And the changes you see are really just changes in the cost of staffing associated with regular kind of agreements that we have already signed on to. [59:52] Brendan O'Connell: We'll pause there. Probably should have paused after every individual division, but any questions for Maggie on HHS, the various divisions that we just went through? [1:00:06] Speaker F (unidentified): Wes, go ahead. Thank you, Director McLaughlin. You may know that this question is coming. But where is, you know, where's the winter warming shelter money? I want to make sure that we are set up so that we have a smoother year this year. [1:00:28] Unidentified speaker (Department Director): Yes, the winter warming shelter was not included in this budget. We did not contemplate it in there. In part, it's an active discussion at the HHSPS committee. [1:00:37] Speaker F (unidentified): And so I understand it was about $770,000 [1:00:41] Unidentified speaker (Department Director): for the short season on the peninsula, right? Yeah. So we ran through several cost scenarios and I would flag that all the cost scenarios contemplate some assumptions that it would be a building that has open sight lines, that it would be 5,000 square feet, et cetera, et cetera. And so assumptions, right? But yeah, under those assumptions, a narrow season operating nightly from beginning of December through March 15th, I believe, was estimated at approximately $770,000. [1:01:17] Speaker F (unidentified): So it does. What would be the best way to get that in? I mean, if it takes an amendment, that'd be great. But it does seem like we're driving at the same wall that we drive at every year to not include that. So I guess what was the decision? [1:01:35] Speaker E (unidentified): I think the thinking was, Councilor, that we provide the HSC as our shelter year-round, and so the warming shelter is always for targeted snowstorm events, and that's how we've used it in the past. And so that was never something we operated 24-7, so we always used those funds that we get through the state process if we were successful. And actually, it was operated by a private, another entity, not us. This was the first year it was operated by us. So it's not something the city has used or been doing as part of its services like I said we operate the HSC so we do that as our option for individuals and then others would step in and address that warming shelter need for targeted snow events the additional cost the only thing I would say another assumption that I know Maggie alluded to is just we don't even have a space for it so that would be a significant cost. And we did struggle as you probably remember when we were looking for a space to try to find a space that would accommodate this use. [1:02:42] Speaker F (unidentified): Right, yeah, I would say, I think the results of the current system have been less than exemplary, but that's probably something we'll discuss further amendments at some point, thanks. [1:02:55] Benjamin Grant: I will next go to Councilor Phillips. [1:03:02] Speaker H (unidentified): Thanks a lot, Chair. Yeah, I'm not part of the committee, so I defer to you or anybody else who's on the committee if they have any questions before I go. [1:03:11] Benjamin Grant: I'm already done with all the deferring that needs to be deferred. Wes and I are the only committee members here, so the floor is yours, be assured. [1:03:22] Speaker H (unidentified): Councilor Pelletier asked the same question that I had about the warming shelter. So, Maggie, you said that the warming shelter runs from December to March. It's not part of this budget. But are we, I mean, I know we'll probably have more of a conversation about it, but I know the frustration was it wasn't open enough, especially in snowstorms. So I apologize I haven't been able to attend any HHS meetings. Are we planning on looking at that when there is a snowstorm? And as far as being open from the end of December to March, is it still the same criteria as last year, the [1:04:02] Unidentified speaker (Department Director): conversation's been active in HHSPS about if we were to look at different scenarios, what would be the financial impact. And so there were multiple scenarios presented, one being the current situation and this one with this figure, and again, caveats around that figure, a lot of assumptions, but it is proposed that it would operate nightly, so it would not be operating on a threshold model, which would ultimately, the difference is you would be hiring seasonal staff for the season as opposed to relying on an overtime model. Perfect, thank you. [1:04:41] Speaker H (unidentified): My other questions, one question is for the Office of Elder Affairs. I know they have the day shelter. I was under the understanding that the day shelter, you had to have a diagnosis in order to use the day shelter? I see Linda's on, so maybe she can answer that question. [1:05:03] Linda (Office of Elder Affairs): Yeah, hi. Well, it's not a day shelter. It's an adult day program. Sorry. Is that what you're talking about? Yeah. So, yeah, the folks who attend the program do have diagnoses of some, most of them have a cognitive impairment that qualifies them to come to the program. A lot of our activities and the care is geared towards people with dementia and also some other health problems. But yeah, to qualify for funding, folks can use Main Care, their VA benefits, different. They do require that they have a diagnosis and need the supervision and the daytime care. [1:05:48] Speaker H (unidentified): And has there ever been any discussion about increasing the number of folks that can attend the adult daycare? Well, we try. I don't know if the space will allow it, or I know we obviously don't have staff, but if we had an additional staff and obviously the space, has there already been any discussions about that? [1:06:10] Linda (Office of Elder Affairs): Yeah, we did add a part-time staff two years ago, and that allowed us to increase the census. We have a ratio of one staff per six clients that's required by our licensing, so that helped us increase the numbers. And we're always in flux a little bit because people, you know, sort of age out of the program or they go into a nursing home and then we refill, try to refill all the spots and keep the census up as high as we can because we obviously want to keep all those spots full. At this point, we don't have a waiting list, but we sort of teeter right around what we can manage and it seems to be a good balance. [1:06:56] Speaker H (unidentified): Perfect. Thank you, Linda. I appreciate that. I'm always going to put in a plug for the Office of Elder Affairs. I do it every year. Linda does an amazing job. Thank you to her all-but-mighty team. My last question, Maggie, is you said that you lost eight full-time staff. I think that was in public health. Was that just because, was it one program that closed, or was it just one person here from this grant, one person there from that grant. And do you need any of the eight folks that were laid off? [1:07:33] Unidentified speaker (Department Director): We can always use more folks. Public health, the work is never done in public health from that sense. We have pivoted as best as we can with the changes. The vast majority of what we deliver in public health is through grants. And so the losses were across several different grants, maternal child health, prevention, some lead work, but we're able to continue versions of the work that we were doing in many cases. We've just kind of pivoted and [1:08:05] Speaker H (unidentified): adjusted as needed. Perfect. Thanks a lot. I appreciate it. Thanks, Chair, for allowing me to ask some questions. Appreciate it. Mr. Mayor. [1:08:15] Speaker D (unidentified): Thanks. I was just smiling because I could have deliver Counselor Phillips plea for elder services. She is persistent and consistent [1:08:24] Speaker H (unidentified): on that issue. Why I will continue to be that way as well. No, I know you are. I know you are. That's [1:08:30] Speaker D (unidentified): why I'm smiling. You know, nonetheless, I have a couple of questions. Maggie, what's the percentage of employees at HHS that are grant funded? I'll [1:08:45] Unidentified speaker (Department Director): have to get back to you with the exact figure. [1:08:46] Speaker D (unidentified): Year across all departments. Yeah, I'm just trying to assess what our vulnerability is with changing state or federal policy, you know, because that might inform whether or not we have the capacity to continue providing a particular service if those funds are withdrawn. I think you saw that [1:09:05] Unidentified speaker (Department Director): scenario last year kind of as we saw kind of the impacts of GA and what that would look like. That wasn't per se, but it's the type of scale that would be deeply effective. [1:09:16] Speaker D (unidentified): No, I hear you, but I just want to work with the percentage in my mind. I had a general understanding that it has an adverse consequence, but I'd like to have something more specific to answer the questions that are put to me outside in the community. What percentage of the services we provide actually or overlap the available state services? Are we duplicating something that could be provided by the state here in this city? [1:09:46] Unidentified speaker (Department Director): I wouldn't say that there's any duplication happening. And part of that is around mandates and presence. In many cases, the work that's happening at the state level is centralized and we're giving it legs here in the city. [1:10:00] Speaker D (unidentified): So there's no field services provided in those discipline areas by the state. [1:10:06] Unidentified speaker (Department Director): Can you give me an example of what you're thinking of? [1:10:09] Speaker D (unidentified): Well, in terms of public health, I know there's a contingent of public health nurses that are deployed by the state. [1:10:16] Unidentified speaker (Department Director): So, for example, the public health nurses that the state employs do basically something called cradle knee referrals. So they're going into homes and doing prenatal or postnatal checkups, kind of checking blood pressure, things like that. That was the work we used to do. The state has centralized that service under their public health nurses. But we on our side have pivoted to provide more programmatic services on the maternal child health side that they cannot provide. And so that's where we are focused now and filling a different kind of gap. I would say our ability to pivot as well is central. So having clinical staff in-house allows us to scale up very quickly, whereas with the state, their ability to respond in a timely manner is often not as effective. [1:11:05] Speaker D (unidentified): That's such a nice way of saying you do it better than they do. [1:11:10] Unidentified speaker (Department Director): The state provides incredible services and let it be on the record that we deeply appreciate their partnership. [1:11:16] Speaker D (unidentified): Okay. Plus you're a politician. Thank you. I appreciate that. Nonetheless, I get a lot of questions about the size of our health and human services budget. So these answers are helpful to me in having a somewhat informed response to those who pose those questions to me. Last, in terms of the Barron Center, is there any conversation or, yeah, I guess conversation or exchange with Maine Health on how they might make use of your available beds? You know, so it benefits them because I know whether it's a step-down question or just a transfer of a patient back into the community. Community, are we in a place that we can provide that service and resource to Maine Health and get [1:12:07] Unidentified speaker (Department Director): compensated for? Yes, actually. And you've really landed on something that is basically a hidden problem that many people don't realize is the hospital systems are backlogged and they are struggling to get people out the door, which then you see when you go to the ER and there's a long wait. And it's really because there are no beds in the facility because they are reaching and they'll be the first to tell you upwards of 98, 95% at times. So we have maintained a phenomenal relationship with MaineHealth to make sure that for those who can come and are qualified that they are welcome. Mary Beth, do you want to share a few details about that? Sure. [1:12:54] Unidentified speaker (Barron Center Director): We are continuing to meet with MaineHealth case managers routinely and talk with them about what are the barriers to get people out of the hospital and into our beds quickly and smoothly. So that relationship continues to be very good. They had come to us a few years ago wanting to somehow utilize our empty beds, BC tube under the city's license with almost no, they really couldn't put together a proposal to give to us that we could really evaluate. So that kind of stalled. They have reached out to me just this week with a program that they'd like to discuss, so I'll be getting back to them. And if it's anything that we'll discuss it with Maggie and send it up the line if it's something that we think is really valuable. [1:13:46] Speaker D (unidentified): Okay, that's helpful. I've had discussions with Maine health officials, and they do have a congestion in terms of discharge planning. Planning. So I suggested that I think the council would be interested in reviewing any possibility for contractual relationship to help deal with the congestion and increase our revenue at the [1:14:06] Unidentified speaker (Barron Center Director): Barron Center. Great. We just brought on board a new admissions nurse who's been very successful in her short time with us so far in really generating more admissions and getting them admitted quicker. So I'm hopeful that we'll start to see that continue and have a positive [1:14:27] Speaker D (unidentified): effect for both parties. Thank you, Mary Beth. I appreciate it. Thank you, Maggie. And I look forward to the possibility that we'll soon have to discuss some sort of partnership with Maine Health in more detail. Thank you. You're welcome. [1:14:45] Benjamin Grant: Seeing no other hands, I have a couple of questions myself, similar to what I asked the chief. What is the, after the manager's recommendations, do there remain some vacant positions still left in the budget? And if so, how many? [1:15:01] Unidentified speaker (Department Director): There are still some vacant positions, primarily their shelter attendant positions. We've really been able to close the gap on vacancies on shelter attendants. They're still in the budget because if they are not there, then we end up using per diem or overtime staff, [1:15:16] Benjamin Grant: which is more expensive so that's how that's been envisioned here okay that makes sense and then I know it's a little bit of a hot button but I still want to hear the dollars and cents just and I'm not on the HHS committee obviously so maybe this is something they know but what does it cost us to run needle exchange at the levels that we run it out right now [1:15:38] Unidentified speaker (Department Director): I will turn it to Bridget to provide some information around that sub program. Good [1:15:47] Unidentified speaker (Health Exchange Director): evening. Hi, how are you? To run our exchange in its current capacity, we are primarily funded from the Maine CDC. They provide us with just over about $200,000 annually for supply purchases, as well as our staff and our personnel costs. We have a variety of grants that sort of support our overall harm reduction services program, but again, primarily grant funded to do the day-to-day operations. [1:16:19] Benjamin Grant: Okay, so it's a mix of Maine CDC and grant money, basically. [1:16:23] Unidentified speaker (Health Exchange Director): Yeah, there's some city money, of course, mixed in there, but we have local, state, and federal grants that support the programs. [1:16:32] Brendan O'Connell: Okay. Counselor, I can add a breakdown of that program specifically to our budget frequently asked questions and answers document. [1:16:40] Benjamin Grant: That's where I was going with this, so thank you for anticipating. I think that is, yes, that's all I have. So let me just check if anyone else has popped up. I do not see any other hands. So I think we are done there. Brendan, what else you got? [1:17:08] Brendan O'Connell: That was all of the departments we had on for tonight. I know it was a lower number of departments, but with HHS being a fairly large one, I wasn't sure exactly how long that department would take. And as Councillor Pelletier alluded, I think there are a number of councillors who are interested in a potential budget amendment regarding warming shelter, but that's actively being investigated. Mitigated and we'll talk more about that at next week's meeting, which will also include an agenda item around central office. We recently got estimates in terms of the cost of renovations of that space, both for a family shelter and also for a potential day space. The costs are very high and so we're going to address all of that in more detail next week with funding sources and more details around the costs and potential options for the council. And also at next week's meeting, there are some other department presentations and also a presentation from Portland Downtown on their work plan for the upcoming year, the executive budget, the memberships and contributions budget, which is a couple of other outside organizations, and the benefits budget as well. [1:18:23] Benjamin Grant: Great. So do we have any other business for tonight? [Brendan O'Connell: That is all.] Okay. Well, I'll pick up where April usually picks up here and just thank staff for all the hard work they put into this and the quality of your presentations. I really appreciate your detailed information and ability to answer questions. So thank all of you. And with that, Wes, would you move to adjourn? [1:18:50] Speaker F (unidentified): I would move to adjourn. [1:18:51] Benjamin Grant: I will second Wes how do you vote I will vote yes as well so we are adjourned at 620 thank you everybody see you soon