Speakers labeled via automated voice-based diarization + AI name-matching against the city's official roster. Automated transcription can still mis-hear a name during fast speech (e.g. a rapid roll-call vote) -- clear near-misses are auto-corrected, but this is not manually verified line-by-line. Treat names as a strong best guess, not an official record.
[0:03] Speaker A (unidentified): I actually don't think I'm going to hold hands.
[0:06] Carolyn Fish: You have a word stuck to add.
[0:09] Speaker A (unidentified): Okay. Because that was school words. School, yeah. But I'm going to just pick it up later. It's enough. Mm-hmm. It works. Right. I think it's last words.
[0:19] Susan Hawes: Oh, there's a follow-up. This is our federal leader. It's a nice young knight.
[0:23] Susan Faloon: He's the galleon for the night.
[0:25] Carolyn Fish: So we said, I think I'm going to get a hold of him.
[0:28] Susan Hawes: Yeah. It looks
[0:41] Speaker A (unidentified): like we are live. Yeah, it looks like it. Yeah.
[0:45] Susan Hawes: Thank you. Good evening. Welcome to the regularly scheduled workshop. This is our second workshop for the budget. It's April 29th, 5:15. We're in the council chambers. We do have a hard stop up this evening for 6:45 because we have the school committee that's going to be following, and they'll need a few minutes to get going for their seven o'clock. So around the table we have City Manager Carollynn Lear, Councillor Deane, Councillor Carson, Councillor Faloon, Councillor Leonard, Council Beck, Director of Economic Development Ann Craig, and Councillor Fish, and then Councilor Haas. We do have Council Walker will not be here this evening, nor will Councilor Mallar. So with that, okay, Director Creed, I think we're turning it your way. All right, I'll just go through very quickly the department highlights. The planning division burns the regulatory aspects, a lot of the regulatory aspects of the city planning, the national management commission. The big project that the planning vision is looking at right now is the complete rewrite of the land development code. Typically when we do a comprehensive plan, the first thing that you tackle for implementation is the zoning as the land use plan, so that is going to be, that's been the big push this year working with consultants, and then this coming fiscal year it'll be a lot of public workshops, a lot of time with you folks in the planning board going over drafts. So that's, that's going to be the big push. But also planning also manages the climate action plan implementation. There's a lot, a lot of projects, a lot of grant pursuit that's done out of that division as well. And then under business and economic development, I mean, the primary function is business recruitment, business retention and expansion, and then all of the projects underneath that, the work on the foreign trade zone, our partnerships with the airport, and also housing. Housing kind of gets spread between all the different divisions in my department, depending on, you know, the task, and also a lot of grant management as well, and working on a lot of statewide partnerships and beyond national partnerships for economic development. The big push this year will be the Bangor Central Kitchen, as well as the continued work on the business retention plan that we started this year. And then in code enforcement, I mean, the primary function is to conduct inspections respond to complaints about building and zoning land development code violations. One of the big pushes this year, and will continue into the next fiscal year, is responding to vacant buildings, you know, doing the inspections, the follow up, there's significant staff hours in multiple divisions, but a lot in code in working through those vacant properties. And also, the other big project for this coming fiscal year in code is to, you know, solidify the procedures and policy manuals so that, you know, everybody, you know, coming into the department knows exactly sort of how that office functions, you know, in terms of procedures. So the program requests that come out of the department first is looking at digitizing the planning files. I know this might be part of a larger citywide effort, but we wanted to request to put in some funds to start making the planning panels digital. When we did the move, when we worked with the architect on the renovations for this room, this floor that we're on, it was always anticipated that there would be some digitizing at some point of files. And so this anticipates maybe getting it started, hopefully getting it started this year. There's a lot of them in the basement and on the third floor, so we want to try to get those done as soon as possible. And also another request is creating a housing fund and as a capital project. This was something that last fiscal year the city council talked about did not fund it last year. I put it in again for this year because in just watching and working with you on housing projects over this last year, it seems like there was an interest in, you know, the city continuing to invest in housing development projects, so that was placed in there as a program.
[6:29] Speaker A (unidentified): Just make a comment too, just because it popped into my head. I think there's a lot of really exciting stuff in your new program request for housing, and I think it, for me, was a little difficult knowing that there's going to be a housing committee. I don't think we can do nothing while we wait for the housing committee, and so I think it's important to consider these things, but I think there's a conversation to be had which things do we move on sort of unilaterally versus what do we defer to a future housing committee to consider. I think
[7:06] Susan Hawes: that will be a part of this discussion, and the beauty of the capital plan is that you're investing into the, into the future, so you know, so it's something to think about. So it's not an operating thing, it's a capital expenditure. Another program request was the mall redevelopment plan. When we were preparing on this budget, you know, there wasn't a potential buyer fire. But I, we still left this in because there may be a situation where the city needs to do some work for to invest in, you know, in that project, or just not sure what level of involvement the city mayor may not have in the redevelopment of the mall. So we kept in this program request, you know, to for that participation, and then the other request is the quality housing provider program. This is different than the capital program. This is a couple years ago the city council set aside some ARPA funds that we use to provide things like support for sprinkler systems and heat pumps for market rate apartments. Those projects that couldn't use block grant funds, but were still part of our housing stock that we've been working with the landlords, and one of the messages the landlords said to us, look, we do try to keep our rents reasonable. We want to, we can't afford to invest in our properties, so you know, we don't, we can't get block grant money, what else could the city do? And so we had used ARPA funds for that. We used all the funds that you gave us to do some great projects, and it was very successful. We got good feedback from landlords on it, so there's a program request in here to continue to continue that program. Another program request is the creation of a position in the department urban development officer. There's a lot of other sort of aligned with, you know, planning community development, economic development. That's why I separated it out into its own officer position that does things like the work in downtown management, the work with the cultural commission, the work with the general arts community, you know, parking advisory, and even livable communities, as well as all of the work with tourism, that really could be its own position. Somebody with a background in downtown management or in marketing or in, you know, downtown planning, you know, could easily take on that position. These are the things, a lot of these projects are the projects that I've been actively doing in my role as director. And as much as I love doing them, I have a lot of background in all of these areas. It does prevent me, you know, I won't say it prevents me, but it does impinge on the hours that I should be doing larger projects, you know, working with the city manager on larger things like the mall, for example, or larger housing projects like the Grandview project. So I'm ready to delegate these, in other words, to somebody else to provide that time. I think we need to do more department head level projects. And I would just, oh, sorry.
[11:14] Speaker A (unidentified): No, please can. I was just gonna say, you know, I think one of the things that I've observed coming in new is that our development community
[11:23] Susan Hawes: expects a speed of responsiveness
[11:26] Speaker A (unidentified): that is sometimes in conflict with how governments work in general, right? Governments work slow, they're thoughtful, they're sort of very careful before they make decisions, but that doesn't work when you're trying to get investors who want to work quickly and you might lose the opportunity. And so I think this is one of those scenarios where it ends managing three, four, five different committees and, you know, work streams that she has to focus on a weekly basis, it becomes so hard to pull out of that and quickly pay, you know, half your attention to this really incredible opportunity that a developer is bringing towards you. I think that's sort of the opportunity lost if we don't
[12:12] Joseph Leonard: And to that point, I actually am supportive of this, and one of the notes I had in this was, and I know you and I talked about this, just generally speaking, but when in the city of Boston, when the pandemic, the restrictions were over, Boston's nightlife did not recover at all. And they actually hired a nightlife manager in order to kick back that nightlife economy. The economy with Bangor's downtown nightlife still has not recovered. There are still places that struggle at night. And one of the things that I see with this position is if we could also extend some responsibilities to downtown economic development for also evening economies, I think that would be immensely appreciated by a lot of the downtown businesses.
[13:15] Susan Hawes: Absolutely. Now Austin has a night, they call them the nighttime czar. Yeah. So yeah, it's definitely a thing. Thank you. A couple of questions.
[13:29] Susan Faloon: Do you see this, I'm assuming you do, but do you see this as having like a net positive impact on city revenues?
[13:36] Susan Hawes: Needs? Well, the work that they're doing, I mean, definitely frees up other aspects of economic development and my plate to be able to respond to, you know, as the city manager said, you know, somebody that is trying to make some investments in the community and needs attention right away, so that we can, you know, quickly respond to them, instead of, you know, prepping a cultural commission packet, you know, that type of thing. So I think indirectly, it's not a direct one to one, that you'll see the return on investment, but it's more of an opportunity cost that comes with that, 's good.
[14:22] Susan Faloon: Would the person in this position pursue grants and things like that?
[14:28] Susan Hawes: They pursue grants, yes. Working with the Coastal Commission to try to, they've been and looking at different grants for more public art investments in the community. So this person will do that as well as the historic preservation, cultural grants. Yeah. And the downtown grants as well. There is that one there.
[14:52] Michael Beck: I'll take that. Backing up to an earlier request. So for the FOA, the scanning, is it possible to get kind of an idea of how much staff time was saving do something be singing on the face of the trip and find it I mean on the surface I can understand how much this would save time but we kind of get an idea of just how much staff time to already be invested in this I mean it's a kind of top of the head number not a big deep spend time researching a thing because it makes it an easier sell when I can see a return on investment for the two Million dollar housing fund there was a meeting, I think it was a committee meeting months ago, and it was Robin Staneke who was here, was talking about how we used to have a lot more program income from CDBG funds. And I think it was last year, council had received a letter, or given a copy of the letter from HUD, talking about the opportunity to leverage our funding in the form of loans. Correct. And I'm wondering if maybe we can learn a little bit more about this program and see if there's like how the two could tie together. You know, because two billion seems like a lot, I'm wondering if there's a way to you know maybe not have to put the full two million in work with CDBG funds to see and yes to bring back it's called a
[16:11] Susan Hawes: Section 108 loan program that Robin has been looking into to kind of get that back into play for the city we haven't done a lot of loans you know for the last few years but it's something that and this could be participant in that especially if it's market rate housing that you really want to see happen you know because we're finding market rate developers have just as much hard time making those numbers work
[16:43] Michael Beck: As affordable sure projects yeah so I'm excited to learn more about this the other thing that he had was about the yeah the quality housing provider program and it talks about the tie-in with the rental registration yeah and you know we learned you know the pilot sounded like it was successful and this is going to be a key component of that where it's going to be very difficult to manage that without this person it sounds like to me correct okay yeah you know something about it
[17:18] Susan Hawes: Then another request was a housing rehab coordinator position this is a position that would be funded 50 with block grant funds and then 50 out of the code office and you know what we're finding with the vacant property project with short-term rental inspections that need to be done as well as the affordable housing inspections and the rehab inspections there's sort of a person and that could be running all of those inspections as well as running the housing rehab program I mean that's a very Successful program a lot of people have taken advantage of it which you know improves your housing stock by having you know available funds for people to renovate their homes that wouldn't be able to afford otherwise and the burden is lessened because we can fund half of it with block debt funds. And then the last request form is the code enforcement inspector position. This was a position that was in the office for a long time. We did two fiscal years ago when the person in this position left, we did not fill that position, and then we didn't fund it last year. So this is a request to put that position back. Again, as we're getting more and more active in responding to complaints and trying to work with these larger projects that are coming in, that's the good news, is they're getting a lot more projects being built. We really feel the need to bring this person back into the co-inspection. And in terms of capital, there's a couple of requests on this one on vehicle replacement and then the licensing software, and I know this is going to be part of a larger look at all software for the city. So this would be part of capital and part of that after, and that's it for CED questions.
[20:02] Susan Faloon: On the housing fund, does that two million dollars, does that come from the general fund?
[20:13] Susan Hawes: It would be a capital fund, but yeah, it would be a taxpayer, and maybe.
[20:22] Susan Faloon: This hasn't been worked out. I know you talked about in the form of grants or loans. I guess my concern with that would be like, if projects don't materialize, then what happens? Are there usually provisions built in?
[20:35] Susan Hawes: You would have a development agreement, yeah, that would be put in there. And do you have any
[20:43] Susan Faloon: idea or any statistics on like how many housing units something like this could create, could help
[20:52] Susan Hawes: create? Oh, I don't, it's more, you know, I put two million, I chose two million as sort of a starting conversation about how much you as the council want to invest, you know, over the next fiscal year in housing projects. So it's not necessarily the number of units, it's more the projects that come in, you know, you could use it for, you know, helping with land acquisition, or helping with permitting costs, or, you know, some aspect of a project that, you know, if they gave a pro forma that you would look at to see, you know, where, you know, sort of where their financing is having difficulties, and you would invest that amount of money that you felt was reasonable into the project. So it's it's not necessarily the number of units, it's more how much do you want to invest in what will be private projects. Thank
[22:01] Speaker G (unidentified): you. Sure.
[22:05] Carolyn Fish: Right, even though it wasn't used in budget last year for the position of code inspector, because I think we had a short term and didn't work out, and then we just left it. Isn't it for housing? Yeah, we have, you mean a housing person? No, I thought that you're asking for here code enforcement inspection. Yes, that's yes. So, even though we didn't fill it last year, did we leave it in the budget? It wasn't, it was unfunded in last year's
[22:40] Susan Hawes: budget, right? And then the year before there was a person in that, and then when he left the city, we didn't refill that position.
[22:49] Carolyn Fish: Wasn't it still sort of-
[22:51] Susan Hawes: It was zero funded last year.
[22:55] Carolyn Fish: And then I think lastly for the 2 million, I think it's hard to tell because we don't know in the future what types of projects or opportunities there might be, and it could be an array of all kinds of different things. Right. From a tiny home to rental complex, to mixed use. So it is hard, I think. I think we can set maybe an amount of money we feel comfortable with, but to say how it's going to pan out, I think it's hard to know until we know what opportunities, unless there's something on the table now that you already would have a suggestion or see something in the pipeline that...
[23:31] Susan Hawes: Yeah, there isn't any specific project in the pipeline, but what I would recommend if you were to fund this is that we would have a conversation at the ed about what those, what the criteria, what the parameters are, you know, that type of thing, so that we will be able to communicate that to the developers. Thank you. That's the question I just wanted to express
[23:53] Daniel Carson: as much support as is humanly possible for this code enforcement and security position. Familiar with many challenging maintenance situations across the city with properties, and I've heard far before I was even here in this room, I heard a lot about them. But I think dollar for dollar, when I think about values and I think about the improvements that could bring, that position would pay for itself in about four and a half seconds.
[24:25] Speaker A (unidentified): I was, I was shocked when I joined the number that was probably one of the highest number of sort of community member inquiries that hit my inbox, or initially were issues with neighbors with unkept properties. Voting, and you can understand why it's such a big deal
[24:42] Daniel Carson: for a neighbor. Yes, oh yeah, absolutely. And yeah, and for, I think it paying for itself in about four and a half seconds might even be a conservative estimate.
[24:54] Speaker A (unidentified): Actually, I think Council Fish was before me, but that's okay, you could go ahead first.
[24:59] Susan Faloon: Why was the housing rehab coordinator position eliminated, or was it just not killed?
[25:09] Susan Hawes: The housing rehab coordinator, that was a position from I think three fiscal years ago, that kind of got blended in with community development, and there's two people in the community development division that are funded through block grant programs, the community development officer and also community development analyst, and so the analyst position kind of took on the housing rehab coordinator role as part of their work, but then the inspections actions we're still having to get coordinated with code, and so as we were looking at, you know, the projects for the analyst position, it really kind of came clear as we need to bring back the housing we have coordinator and have it partially funded between those two divisions, Community Development and I
[26:09] Carolyn Fish: think this position, I agree that the enforcement position is very important because I think there's a feeling, you know, unfairness with when you get a permit or you work with a new development, the code enforcement officer is just by nature in the process involved and everything is up to code during that process, and then you know these homeowners are that are, you know, doing renovations on, the developers are looking around and saying, well, that's how to code and that's how to code, why are they picking on me, and I think it's just the nature of the process that the code is involved from the beginning, where when these other violations happen, they happen randomly, they pile up and just don't get attention, so right, you end
[26:53] Susan Hawes: up being reactive and not proactive, and so that's where that feeling of randomness happens from people, because we're responding to a complaint, they feel like they're being penalized
[27:05] Carolyn Fish: for being legal, or the person that's illegal is being rewarded or not, you know, it's not paying their share, so then I'm all for this position, I'm seeing there was a question
[27:24] Susan Hawes: Yes, it's all usually in this, yeah, I'm gonna have the data come up and review the economic development fund, this is a, fund that kind of enterprise fund that we get the funds from the leases that we have and sales of properties, so
[27:59] Speaker I (unidentified): We recently spoke about the EV front and all of its properties in our portfolio, and it's important that fund replenishes so that we can contribute to additional assets. One of the biggest, okay, so we talked about the portfolio of the ED fund. We talked about last year, we sold 110 Hildred. It's important that as we receive the revenues of those properties, that we contribute to its continuing maintenance, but also new assets. Assets. So very familiar and discussions that we had previously was the sale of ones and Hildreth and those proceeds contributing to the bank or central kitchen. So we make sure that we have a buffer to manage and operate that property. But all in all, it's important that we have those funds to maintain those structures. And then just recently we talked about releasing an RFP for property management, because as we talked about, there's a lot of detail to manage those properties individually, and we want to make sure that we are positioned to best position those as infrastructure that's going to produce, right? Right. So for instance, 39 and 49 Florida, I just received a call that they want less space, and that they want us to renew their lease, but revise it so that they can have less space so that we can have additional space for other businesses or other entities that may want to use it. And so it's just important that we stay on top of that similar to development opportunities, right, we need to be able to respond to these things quickly and it's important that we do it officially and it's important that we do it with an entity that has that kind of experience that has the time to negotiate leases it has the time to look at our properties and understand what's needed what needs to be redeveloped what needs to be improved and so on so we I think probably in the next month I will come to you with what that RFP looks like in terms of the property management model but we do believe it will position us better and make sure that portfolio continuously produces any questions on just the general operations of the fund how we're moving forward with it the other the other very important plan that we have this year is still and that'll be soon I just I met with Epstein signed properties use our commercial real estate representation and I met with them actually today to Really take a hard look at our main business enterprise, Clark. The last time that was price was before my time, probably about five years ago. We need to take, we need to re-look at it. What do we want to use it for and really understand that we have a valuable asset and how we go about promoting it. So we'll talk about that probably in the next month in an executive session. They will be, they will be prepared to propose property parcel prices and determine and we can all, you know, discuss how we want to utilize those properties, but they cannot sit dormant anymore. Council
[31:45] Carolyn Fish: Fish, I think that's great. I think that's a great choice. They have a legacy here and they really dominate the commercial industry and I think they're going to give you great advice. So I think I'm looking forward to seeing them. That's, that's great. Yeah.
[32:02] Speaker I (unidentified): We had a really great conversation and again, right, it's about the expertise. We want the experts to lead us. We talked about always having that consideration of economic development, right. We, one thing that came up in our conversation today is, you know, it's, we have to balance out market price with a great opportunity for development at the city of Bangor. So for instance, if we had a developer who was looking to Lewiston and look to Bangor, we really have to lean in and say, okay, what's the economic multiplier and what's the long-term return on investment versus just the selling of the property. But I'm looking forward to working on that. My
[32:48] Speaker A (unidentified): questions, thank
[32:54] Susan Hawes: you. Thank
[32:57] Carolyn Fish: Thank you, David. This
[33:03] Speaker A (unidentified): is the parking fund.
[33:06] Susan Hawes: Well, the parking fund.
[33:08] Carolyn Fish: The parking fund.
[33:11] Speaker I (unidentified): The park is usually at this table. What I will say is that we made great. We're in this place where we kind of introduced the new tools to be able to manage our parking and this year it's really about maintaining, like making sure Pickering Square Garage is very expensive to maintain, so we want to make sure that we keep it up to par. However, this year is really about managing and understanding what parking looks like from a data analysis standpoint point. How do we, how do we increase turnover in parking, really being able to be productive in our conversations on the parking committee. So we've had, I believe, great traction with our parking committee and Talking really honestly and having them represent what the community concerns are and getting to a place where we can study that and make improvements. So I think generally from a from a technology standpoint we are where we need to be. We have the parking platforms in place, we have the barnacle and show you stats, thank you, that's that'll enforce then help us enforce. But now we need to study the outcomes of those of those pieces of technology and again prioritize it, right. I think the parking community is in a really good place and prioritizing the communication around it and hearing what the community needs, the community wants to say to was about parking. I
[34:51] Joseph Leonard: very much agree with Bagida and I think once the committee has their own citizen representation for chair I think it's actually just going to improve more. So you know I don't want to say I did a bad job or anything but it's it that committee has been plagued by a lot of inaction over the years. I was on that committee before I was on council for two years and we met once and that's no longer the case. But the reason why I say it's going to be much more productive is because for those at home originally we had a parking meeting this Thursday but because of our rules because a counselor is the chair for that committee if they can't meet then that committee cannot form. So just that one move is going to just make that committee much more efficient because they're no longer going to be shackled by that need to have a counselor. There will still be a counselor liaison but I agree it's the best
[36:02] Speaker I (unidentified): it's been in years, the best I've ever seen it. Yeah and I want to give kudos to Anya as well because Anya because it's great to have two divisions representing parking at the table. Anya do you want to add anything to what we're working on? Okay but yeah we're really passionate about the direction parking is going and how we're both
[36:26] Michael Beck: working. Absolutely just a question about the barn clue is that is our contract with them is it scalable like if you get the data back and you're looking at wow this is really successful you know the firm enforcement rule you know can you just pick up the phone and say hey we need three more
[36:39] Speaker I (unidentified): Work or how does absolutely, I mean we definitely can and I'm sure they're ready for us to purchase three more, but I don't think that there's a need. I think just the introduction of the barnacle, the fact that it carries some, you know, it just carries some shame, it's bright yellow, and people don't, people don't want any parts of it, so I think it's working on its own. And it was interesting to me because I asked Park that, I'm like, we only need one for the entire city, and he one has been enough so far. But yes, it is scalable if we need it. Yeah, well, kudos everybody for the
[37:14] Michael Beck: rollout of it, because all the press that came with it. Yeah, I'm sure it got a lot of people in to pay some tickets, so that was great. Thank you. Absolutely, how many times have you had to use it?
[37:27] Speaker I (unidentified): I think less than 10. Wow, yeah, and it was great because we gave that time for people, that grace period for people to go ahead and pay their parking, and I believe it was at a discounted rate, so again, like showing the community that we care, we understand, but also we have to do our part and make sure that we enforce as well. Other
[37:53] Speaker A (unidentified): questions? Okay.
[37:57] Susan Hawes: Thank you. I know we're doing the fifth on the, on a different night. Yeah, that was the stuff, I guess. Well, the last on our list for tonight is a control commission, so the, this is requested to be level funding at twenty two thousand five hundred to fund the grant program as well as our TOBR marketing materials. When we talk about the TIF, we can go into other arts and culture investments that we're requesting out of the TIF for next year.
[39:23] Speaker A (unidentified): Council Dean? Was there something that the Cultural Commission had asked for two years running and we did not approve it, and I can't remember what that was with the refresh? Yes, do something one
[39:37] Speaker G (unidentified): project that we have requested funding for in the past couple years is a printed calendar events calendar we've worked with various organizations from a local resident request and we haven't been able to get funding for it so we have applied for some grants that's an ongoing project that we're working on to see if we can fund it elsewhere and i don't know if it also made it into the list for the tiff funding i'll be back on the tiff night and we can talk about kind of
[40:07] Speaker A (unidentified): the other stuff, or possibly be something that we used in the kiosk that we're introducing. Yeah, we
[40:13] Susan Hawes: can put that into that SIM card. Yeah, it really wouldn't cost anything. Yeah, it's easy enough to do.
[40:18] Daniel Carson: Yeah, thank you. Yeah, that's
[40:23] Michael Beck: So bad, so this 22,500 is, this so this doesn't include all the kind of grants and things, it doesn't count the grants, does not count the grants. Okay, because my question is, you know, worth every other department, you know, everything seems like some percentage increase. This one stayed flat, and I'm just wondering, you know, how it was able to stay flat. Well, the
[40:46] Susan Hawes: The increase that's being requested is coming out of, instead of coming out of the general fund, we're requesting that it come out of the TIF. Traditionally, TIFs couldn't be used for arts and culture investments. The state statute changed about a year and a half ago. So last year you changed your TIF to allow investment in art and culture as part of the TIF. So, instead of asking for an increase here, we ask to reduce that burden on the taxpayer we're asking for under the TIF.
[41:21] Speaker G (unidentified): And this does, I'm sorry, this does include $20,000 for the grants that the Cultural Commission gives this 22,500, but the increase rate is coming from the TIF, so we will ask for more
[41:35] Speaker A (unidentified): on a different night. If it makes sense to talk about those components of the TIF tonight, we can certainly, I mean, we certainly have time, and if it sort of goes together, I don't want to put
[41:49] Speaker G (unidentified): you on the spot. And then I don't have to come back? All right. Am I prepared? Sure.
[41:56] Susan Hawes: So one of the requests is...
[41:58] Speaker A (unidentified): Can you direct this to the right tab, though, just to be sure? Oh, yeah.
[42:01] Susan Hawes: I'm sorry. It's under the other...
[42:04] Speaker A (unidentified): Oh, under the other as well. Okay.
[42:06] Susan Hawes: If you go to the next page under capital improvement program, the biggest project in there is the cultural commission strategy plan because under the requirements in the code for the cultural commission, they're supposed to do asset management, cultural asset management plan and one aspect in the comprehensive plan that we did was we didn't go in very deep or very specific on our cultural assets in anticipation that at some point we would do a cultural asset strategy and the reason why you want to do this strategy is this commission is doing a lot of work looking for grants for public art and you know and the calendar and a lot of other programming that they want to do and it'd be it's always good as a planner I'm going to say this it's always good to have a plan to kind of you know establish a strategy about what types of public art do you want to pursue over the next decade or what locations what parts of downtown what parts of other you know parts of the city do you want to start Making investments into arts and culture, and so by having that planned process of, you know, getting, you know, input from the general public, but also from the arts and culture community, you know, to come up with some kind of a strategy, just like we did with economic development strategy, energy, we would do that the same year for that. So that's being offered in here, and also an increase in the grant program of twenty thousand dollars, and the reason for that would be ten thousand over because it's a it's a twice a year program, so it'll be ten more thousand in the fall and ten more thousand in the spring, and the reason for that is the good news is there's a lot of arts and culture that's happening in the city, and the challenge of that is this program is getting more popular with the community, and it would be great to be able to make more investment than just, you know, a thousand dollars here and there to a program that costs a lot more than that, to be able to really make those good investments.
[44:51] Speaker G (unidentified): If I may add to that, our budget for grants, the $20,000, has not increased since I've been on the commission. And I've heard that it has not increased since the beginning of the cultural commission, which I think was founded about 20 years ago. As you all know, things keep getting more expensive. Since I've been chair the first three years ago, The total requested amount in both cycles was $29,000, and we were able to fund 20, so that's $9,000 that local organizations didn't get that year. Last year, it was $32,000, so that's $12,500-ish that we couldn't fund. And this year, so far, the total request is right around $34,000. We have not given out the spring cycle. That's being decided on Friday. But it's looking like we can't fund about $14,000 of local grant organizations. And right, the number of applicants has steadily increased. And the types of projects that we get to fund, even partially, have changed in variety. And they support all kinds of both organizations and local residents, as well as tourism. And I can answer more questions if you have them. Questions? Council Dean? Yeah.
[46:13] Speaker A (unidentified): What percentage would you say of like permanent beautification of the city would be covered by these grants?
[46:20] Speaker G (unidentified): That's a good question. I don't have an exact percentage. My guess is about 30 percent. There are definitely some murals, but it's also a lot of local theater productions that are both professional theater as well as community theater and theatre performances that include local kids and open that up to people who might not otherwise be able to participate in that. The Symphony Orchestra, Bangor Ballet, Robinson Ballet, the Maine Academy of Music provides free classes locally so Bangor residents. We also support the Authors Festival which has become a permanent yearly program and then a group of or a selection of local artists. Really the permanent projects that we've supported in the past few years have been murals and there are a number of those.
[47:24] Susan Hawes: Other questions?
[47:26] Michael Beck: With the strategy plan I'm assuming it also is going to tie into the marketing work that's being done elsewhere. You know I guess with so many things in Bangor you know it's about telling our story and you art's a big piece of it and just to be honest I'm actually kind of shocked that we invest so little to be honest for as much as art gets talked about and how important it is to everybody you know to hear that it has increased and how long this kind of seems we've requested increases the
[47:58] Speaker G (unidentified): past several years and they've been denied so right we're trying to figure out how much we can ask for that might get through the system well because for example one of the things I'm looking
[48:10] Michael Beck: at on this sheet right here is that you know we did 12 500 for the fourth of july corporation last year this year we're doing none you know me personally you know i 'd like to see that get kicked into art instead you know i mean keep it flat to the other 38 000 you know rather than you know i'm all for you know cutting costs wherever but you know art is an investment for this community and at the end of the day what kind of community do we want to live in right I, to me, that's an opportunity. So I don't know how that works with our budget process, but that's something as a conversation I'd like to have is, can we invest a little more? What are we willing to do?
[48:52] Joseph Leonard: I can just piggyback on that. To that point, the pittance of stuff that we invest into in culture, what we gain out of that, economically speaking, actually is more than we actually invest. So there is actually wiggle room that we could put in here, just because I know $30,000 is a lot to an individual person, but to a city budget that's like around $140 million, that's close to pennies at that point. And again, culture is a massive economic driver. I keep using Quebec as an example, but Quebec has a vibrant arts community there, and it attracts a lot of people going to downtown Quebec. And there are only 20,000 larger of a population than we are. And we have close to competing cultural economies as well. So there's no reason for us to not invest more into that, especially considering very recently all price for everything have gone up, so we're not getting as much of a bang for our buck now with the cultural commission. So if this council does want to revisit that and how we might want to take that 12, and a half thousand from the Fourth of July corporation to add into the cultural commission at minimum. I don't, I don't see that as a bad use of our funds at all.
[50:24] Carolyn Fish: I'm for funding. I'm looking at proposing more funding for this. I think on this day, we need happy things, you know, art, who can't be happy to go into anything to do with art and cultural events that we have downtown and to promote our, are artists, and it's a community unifying, I think things that help unify our community. I'm for that. I'm not for taking it out of the fireworks budget, because I think there's so many families that are limited by travel or expenses, and that is the key event of the year. And that's a family event. And I just would hate to jeopardize taking monies away from that or lessening that experience in any way, because that is also a joyful family event that people from not just all Bangor but all around come, so and it also seems like a category that there should be a lot more grants, I would just think in the whole arena of art that there would be more grant opportunity, so you mean
[51:27] Speaker G (unidentified): As a cultural question to apply for other grants, federal funding in all the arts things has been cut significantly in the past year and a half. I mean, yes, private funds exist. Competition for those, as federal funding has decreased massively, has shot way up. So we have been applying for things. It's a little difficult. I think one of the other complicating factors is that while we are part of the city, the Cultural Commission's operating budget is $22,500, and that removes us from eligibility for many grants. I get it. So we're, we kind of, we apply as part of the city, but we are not our own organization, and we don't make enough to get more. That's a big barrier. But we have applied to a few in the past year. We have not yet gotten any, but we're gonna keep trying. Yeah, I'm trying again. Yeah, absolutely, there's
[52:32] Michael Beck: a clarification. So I wasn't saying to take the money out of fireworks. They didn't ask for any this year, so we're just saying that the money that they didn't ask for, and I'm assuming because the one we did last year was supposed to be for two years, or we're supposed to, we had a deal we're gonna have with Brewer for it, but I was just saying that, you know, keep the overall spending for the other category flat. I think that goes along with what we didn't ask for and then apply it to the Cultural Commission in a way they see fit. 'Cause again, you know, I just want to make my position clear is when I say I was surprised that it's a little invested. I am thankful that the commission made the money they do get look so big. And that's why when I got elected, first got to see it and start looking at it, there was, this is a surprise because the Cultural Commission is so good with what they do have. And I'm grateful for that. Any other questions?
[53:26] Joseph Leonard: Yeah. All right. We
[53:36] Speaker A (unidentified): have a few extra minutes, so I was going to draw your attention to—I'm sorry, Anne, are you— Yeah. Anything else for Anne? Sorry.
[53:46] Susan Hawes: One track in my— It's okay. No, it's all good.
[53:49] Speaker A (unidentified): So if you flip, if you go to your general fund summary tabs, the page just before that is titled Fund Balances, Reserves, and Trust Balances. And I think really the most overall, [Joseph Leonard: so certainly] the largest and most impactful of these lines is the top one, which is the unassigned fund balance. Balance. And if you look at this chart, you'll see that the estimated balance at the end of fiscal 25 was 25 million. And that is because that's largely, or that is definitely much larger than what you heard it was going to be in the last budget process, because we lapsed about 9 million, if my memory serves me, 75, 76 percent of which was salaries of employees due to vacancies. And so we're projecting a pretty healthy unassigned fund balance to exist going into this next this budget that we're in. If you look over to the column that says estimated balance as of March 2026, the budget that you have in your hands uses an amount of unassigned fund balance that leaves us with nearly $19 million in unassigned fund balance remaining. Our ordinance and policy asks us to target between 11 and 22 million. I think the middle is probably the right place to be between those two, not too high, not too low, which would be 16-ish million. million. So my budget projects us, in my opinion, to be going to be using too little unassigned fund balance. As you're having these conversations about investing in the cultural commission, I think we should keep that in mind that there are about 2 million in unassigned fund balance that I think we could prudently use
[56:39] Susan Hawes: to reduce the tax rate, absolutely.
[56:43] Speaker A (unidentified): But also if there are these investments that we're agonizing over, to know that there is something to cover portions of that, I think is helpful to the conversation. So I wanted to bring that to your attention given the conversation about the Cultural Commission investments.
[57:06] Susan Hawes: Any questions?
[57:08] Carolyn Fish: I know it's like you know a certain designated amount of monies this year were pretty healthy but I also know looking and listening to our employees and you know how we really can't compete with the open market and trying to hire our vacancies and keep our employees and looking at what that overall number is to be more fair and stop, which costs us more, stop continuous leaving and rehiring and training. And I know once we hire that's a longevity thing, but at the same time, if we could be thoughtful about what part of this we could take to kind of leverage it for the next few years to help that tax base but also to help our employees and help us as a city to keep our staff and influence in competition with competitive with our wages so I'm sure you've looked at that but I didn't know if that's a place we should look at that but when I look at some of the key issues we have yeah nice to keep in mind yeah and my budget does include not my budget the budget
[58:26] Speaker A (unidentified): Do you have in your hands that we're working from, does have a 3% cost of living adjustment, which I would say is there certainly for this year, but it's difficult to evaluate a cost of living adjustment without looking back to what you've done in the past as well. Because if you've under adjusted in prior years, the base that you're applying the 3% to is too low. So if it's of interest to you, I could do the exercise, which I did not do. I could do the exercise of looking back and seeing, were there years where maybe we did not adjust for market appropriately? Now that I'm saying it aloud, I might just do that anyway, but I can tell you, for example, that the federal government, which does the cost of living based on market data, it's usually not particularly debated, they just use whatever the data was, I believe last year was 4.7%. And I don't think the city did a 4.7% cost of living adjustment last year. So, arguably, there is space.
[59:50] Susan Faloon: I would definitely be in favor of using some of that $2 million, if not all of it, to offset taxes, because I really think an average of $816 as an increase for taxpayers is a lot to handle. And I've already heard from people who are super concerned about that. Yeah, I'm sure other people have too. So other
[1:00:28] Susan Hawes: comments questions where you're just taking your glasses
[1:00:30] Michael Beck: out so bad just one of the stories that you know we have to go tell the taxpayer is knowing that you know roughly nine million of this came from past salaries and then we're adding all these new positions and then we're saying you know we've got this money we're gonna spend on all of these you know capital projects but then we're gonna ask tech for more money for the positions and many of them are probably going to be thinking well I just gave you all that money for salary and why are we not using this for that salary then why are you asking me for more so you know those are the difficult conversations that will come out of it and I think there are some
[1:01:10] Speaker A (unidentified): things that we can talk about together decisions we could make I mean I think for example for these new positions we budget them at 100 which is fundamentally inaccurate right we will not hire if you approve them on July 1 have these positions filled instantaneously in all likelihood most of them won't be filled for three four five or even six months and so if we were interested in making an adjustment in this year to reflect you know maybe four months of those positions going unfilled I think That would be a prudent thing to do to avoid collecting tax dollars that we don't need to collect. I think what we have to say aloud though is that we will feel the fall impact in the later years, and so it will be an unrecognized increase in this year that you won't have the autonomy or choice over next year because those positions will be filled. There'll be human beings in them, and so the conversations will be much more difficult. So I want, I would like to have the conversation about the positions fully understanding the true cost, but maybe when we actually calculate the tax rate we assume eight months for
[1:02:34] Michael Beck: example of those positions. Yeah, there's a follow-up. You know, I appreciate hearing how which ones are the real investment, like the code enforcement, like that's gonna pay for itself, or listening to everything tonight about, you know, we're, we're giving birth to new taxpayers basically. Yeah, all of the opportunities and things like this can bring everybody's taxes down, you know. So I also like remind ourselves about the investments we're making for the community, and I'm excited to hear more about those. And on that note, we're well on the way. I
[1:03:03] Speaker A (unidentified): think you had three really good takeaways from the last meeting. Ventry and I are going to meet with the county administrator on Friday to discuss the possibility of cost sharing. I have worked up an analysis for you on the investment and the attorney to focus on vacant properties. I'm just getting others' thoughts on it. And we're calculating the lost interest on checks that have taken a long time to process during property tax season, primarily, so that you can understand potentially the return on investment of hiring new folks. So those will come to you in probably a memo format in not too many days. I'm scared about the number on the interest. Yeah, if I'm being honest,
[1:03:58] Carolyn Fish: did you have anything else? Yes, go ahead. And I think also keeping in mind with the employee, even though we budget and want to look at the real number and the fact we might not see the first year, at the same time there's always going to be employees leaving, they're going to retire. We never seem to have a full slate, so as we may hire new people and look at the budget as full as planning, the employee slates will probably never always be full, so there's
[1:04:27] Susan Hawes: a little bit of balancing that number out there. Yeah, there's one more thing to think about too,
[1:04:33] Michael Beck: is I know I think the overlay account was actually have increased on the ask this year.
[1:04:36] Speaker A (unidentified): Yes, I thank you for raising that actually, and I meant to bring that up when Phil was here actually, because that really relates to the reassessment. And I think he has some concern that although we typically are not spending even a fraction of that overlay account, that in a year where we have a revaluation is a real risk that we actually will spend a good amount. They'll actually, you know, one in a million, and I said I don't think we can do that. I can't ask for a million, but going up to five hundred thousand seemed prudent given that we had a revaluation and the
[1:05:16] Michael Beck: reason why I bring that up because I, my concern is for the people who rent, because all the tax building programs everything out there helps the property owners, but they don't help the renters. And then that's a cost that gets passed on to them, and it's usually not one-to-one, it's always a markup on everything, just business. Yeah, and people are going to be displaced, and you know I take that to heart. And so there's, you know, I don't know what the options are. I know that the state laws are very specific about what we can do, so I don't know what we can do in terms of having relief available or coordinating with the organization that do your deterrent or what's, what I'm looking for, avoid homelessness, I forgot the word, but you know I'm saying like, you know, the prevent, the prevention ahead of time where you know they're in a situation where you know they just found out the rents going to go up by 150 bucks or 75, whatever it is, you know, because of the tax increase, you know what can we do to keep them in their homes, because you know we don't want to create another problem, but I also don't want that to slow down the great progress we're making, the opportunities before us. You know, this is a plan, a dream, and it needs to be planted, and it's going to do a lot of good for a lot of people.
[1:06:42] Speaker A (unidentified): Any other questions for me or anything that you would like to see in upcoming budget sessions that you're not getting now?
[1:06:54] Susan Faloon: Just regarding positions, and I'm assuming there are going to be other places where you're looking to add positions. I'm thinking maybe like that kind of a priority. Yeah, you know, like okay, we get through the budget, it's like, all right, we can't do all of this, like what's the priority for, you know, like what's going to be the biggest paying for the buck, what's going to bring more money back in ultimately, and you know what positions are absolutely necessary as opposed to like, you know, kind of would Be nice to have, yeah. And I'm sure they're probably all necessary, but I'm just thinking when we get to the end and we, yeah, can't
[1:07:39] Speaker A (unidentified): absolutely do everything, yeah. And I think the other thing, sorry for people in the hallway, I want to draw your attention to is, let's see, I think this is the very first section, three four, so five pages in, if you look, it is titled Fiscal Year 27 New Program, and it's several pages long, but the, I don't know, the, depending on how you count, the third column, it listed new programs, and then there's a column that reads funded yes or no. And so every position in here that has a Y is something that is funded in my base budget, meaning the salary or the cost of that new program is included in what you receive. If it's an N, that means that it has not been funded, and it is also highlighted. And so I think you can gather, at least initially, what I think are the top priorities, but even to be really transparent, I funded almost everything that had a strong business specification, education. So absolutely, I think once we sit down with the fullest and start making decisions, I think it would entirely be appropriate for me to give you what I think the priorities are because
[1:09:44] Carolyn Fish: I certainly think that there are higher priorities, and I think also just, I think departments, when they're turning in their budgets, have sort of been trained to, you know, come into the skinny any right out of the gate, so typically I think what they're asking for is in line with what we've already sort of planned a budget, and it seems like when they absolutely have to ask for something, they hate it because they know we're going to beat them up or deny it. So I think that's helpful in the triangle you gave us some priorities with that, with what's funded and not
[1:10:24] Speaker A (unidentified): not funding, helpful. And to be really clear, my approach with the departments was asked for everything. If you think it, if you think it adds value to our citizens, we should serve it for conversation, knowing that everything is not going to be approved, but you deserve
[1:10:43] Carolyn Fish: options too, right? Did they ask you what did you say, because everyone's thinking it's usually
[1:10:52] Michael Beck: Just a question about the capital requests, because some of them, you know, we didn't didn't talk about the night of, like a lot of the it asks, yeah, you know, in some words, like I'll be kind of curious to see kind of what the status of these things are, what if there is things that can be deferred that aren't like a critical failure or, yeah, you know, end of life and those kind of things, where I'm all for, you know, prevent, you know, preventative upgrades, but yeah, you know, things like, you know, remodeling. The old council chambers, like, you know, is it just not functional, those kind of things, so my question would be, it would it be helpful to go through and flag all the things that I'm curious about and just, yeah, buckshot you the big list and say, hey, absolutely, yeah.
[1:11:33] Speaker A (unidentified): Absolutely, and I think we can balance whether it's a counselor bet question or if it's a full council question, right, because if you have a really long list and everyone else is a short, I'm happy to sit with just you and really dig in, but if everyone's interested, then we can.
[1:11:52] Daniel Carson: Schedule time to just go through it, sure, can you share your list, yeah, sure, yeah, and I see, I just want to make a comment, I see that emergency management director with a no, and it's highlighted.
[1:12:06] Speaker A (unidentified): Yeah, well, you know, I think there are various reasons, I think when we chatted about that one, I feel like we really need it, but I'm not frankly confident that we have to be changed for all of them, right, and so I think that's where I feel like I have more work to do is to figure out really the balance between the county and us, the available grant funding, the resources we can cover, the state, I think the need is clear, but the funding mechanism probably isn't, I was I.
[1:12:38] Daniel Carson: Was looking into, I think there are some emergency management like grant funds that do pay for portions of those types of positions, really.
[1:12:51] Joseph Leonard: Quickly on that, how many cities in Maine did you say have a emergency response manager, I don't think I said a number, but I looked through.
[1:12:59] Speaker A (unidentified): Sort of the top, I don't know, gosh, I looked at Portland, Waterville, Augusta, Lewiston, in Auburn at least, and they all had emergency managers, which, you know, that maybe that shouldn't lead the day, but I think it is an interesting data point, what's more compelling for me is sort of our the memo that you had from Chief Lowe and the analysis of the assets that we have that invite emergencies by their nature.
[1:13:34] Joseph Leonard: And I guess to follow up on that, of those municipalities, how many of them fully fund their emergency response managers?
[1:13:42] Speaker A (unidentified): I can go into that. Yeah. It's a good question.
[1:13:47] Daniel Carson: And will they fund ours? No. No. No. They fund ours.
[1:13:51] Susan Faloon: How much interaction does the city have with Penobscot County EMA? May like is there like a relationship there or not a ton to be honest and I think part of that is
[1:14:05] Speaker A (unidentified): a function of the fact that because this is a sort of corollary duty to a very busy fire chief he actually doesn't have a lot of bandwidth to do this work I bet the collaboration would be much more substantial if we had a standalone position who was truly focused on emergency
[1:14:23] Susan Faloon: emergency management right but is it mom Scott County EMA is like separate from the fire
[1:14:32] Speaker A (unidentified): department I mean they correct yeah but our fire chief is our emergency manager yeah oh I guess so
[1:14:38] Susan Faloon: he doesn't really have time to do a lot of collaboration yeah sorry yeah thanks
[1:14:45] Speaker A (unidentified): how do others see that 's all for me i won't go there friends all right we didn't
[1:14:57] Susan Hawes: keep the waiting for seats if there's nothing else I guess we're adjourned
[1:15:11] Speaker A (unidentified): let's say we have a hard stop at 6 45 again and night worked well didn't it sweet and we have oh I have