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.
[0:34] Susan Hawes: good evening welcome to the city council workshop it's monday april 13th it is 5 15 and we are in the council chambers at city hall around the table we have councillor deans council carson councillor falloon council walker councillor beck councillor leonard city manager lear councillor fish and i'm councillor hawes so we have only four items on the workshop agenda which and go either way so we're going to start with the city manager update perfect so i
[1:07] Carollynn Lear: have four items I wanted to chat through in no particular order of importance. So last week during committee meetings, one thing that council discussed was an ordinance regarding placing things on sidewalks, and Councillor Mallar had actually brought up what I think was a good point, which is that there's an independent ordinance that makes it a violation to park a car in such a way that it blocks sidewalks, and Counselor Beck actually made the suggestion that we do some public outreach around because it happens not infrequently that folks park their cars in such a way that sidewalks are blocked, and I think that's a brilliant idea. So Chief Hathaway and I chatted today once I got Lord Beck's email, and he agreed that we should do some robust public outreach about parking that blocks sidewalks, to let folks know, remind them that it is an ordinance violation, remind them why it's important. I think particularly for folks who are, who have mobility challenges, having to navigate onto the Esplanade or into the street can be very challenging. It includes walking to school, and walking out into the street is not safe. So I do think it is an important ordinance to be enforcing. It's also potentially an expensive ordinance to violate. It's $25 to $500 per day for a violation. And so, what we will do is we'll do some public outreach, and then we will do some enforcement to reinforce the public outreach in the coming months. I think it's very timely for members of the public who are interested, if you see an issue that you want to report, if it seems like an issue that needs to be reported right away, the non-emergency line of the police it's definitely the way to report that. If it's something that you're seeing on a regular basis and maybe doesn't need an immediate response, it can also be submitted see click fix, and then
[3:29] Susan Hawes: we'll send someone out. Before you go to item two, we need to let it be known that Council Mallor is in attendance. He's on remote, so you will be hearing him, but he's not here in the chambers.
[3:43] Carollynn Lear: Sorry council, now forgotten. Okay, all right, item number two is another Councillor Beck email, which is the item of parades. Councillor Beck had asked to have a discussion about council participation in parades, which prompted me to chat with Tracy, our Parks and Rec director, to get an understanding of what prior practice has been. There are five parades that Council has historically been invited to either march in or participate in or sit in the viewing stand, Memorial Day, Pride, Fourth of July, Veterans Day, and then the Festival of Lights. And Council Rick, I don't know if you want to discuss that sort of course substantially, but what I will note is I had talked to you during committee meetings about this sort of tracking tool I'm putting together to make sure important things don't get missed, and I put the parades in the tracking tool to make sure that we get the invite out to all of you so you don't miss those.
[4:56] Michael Beck: What prompted me was last year's 4th of July parade, the Brewer City Council walks in it and apparently they do that regularly and get involved in different events. I just thought maybe it'd be nice to us to show the public us out there doing things, whether it's riding the trolley or we're walking the wave in, but just something to connect with the public and thought that'd be a fun opportunity.
[5:18] Susan Hawes: We've even gone so far as to get a trailer, decorate it, be honest, we've had music playing, we've been in the Festival of Lights, we've gone in the Memorial Day Parade, and people were singing and we've been in several, but it is, if you don't have to walk it, 's
[5:39] Speaker D (unidentified): more fun, but you're right.
[5:44] Susan Hawes: We have walked it before but they used to have a group of all the politicians that would just walk as one big group but it's nice to think and distinguish wonderful.
[5:59] Carollynn Lear: Number three on the list, the governor's supplemental budget, so the governor signed the supplemental budget bill into law a couple of days ago. There were a lot of things in there which I'm not going to go over in detail, but I did want to raise some property tax relief that was in there because I know that's been an item of interest to folks on Council, so the supplemental budget increases the property tax fairness credit from 750 dollars to a thousand dollars for a taxpayer under 65 and from 1 200 to 1 500 for taxpayers over 65. As a reminder, the property tax fairness credit works by the taxpayer paying the municipality their property taxes and then they get a credit on the income tax return for up to that max amount based on their income level as well. So the brilliance, could you repeat the over 65 tax credit? It went from 1200 to 1500. So the brilliance of it is that, you know, if we offer relief at this level, the burden gets shifted to other property taxpayers. With this program, the state budget bears the burden of the credit, which means it doesn't result in a redistribution of the property tax burden to other bank or taxpayers when a bank or taxpayer claims it. I know that we have as a to-do item to re-engage on the topic of local relief programs that we might want to enact, so I thought you would be particularly interested to know that the state
[7:51] Speaker D (unidentified): local program has been raised and
[7:56] Carollynn Lear: then the last item is LD 2232, which is a bill to provide one-time stabilization funding for the county jails in the amount of 4 million. So I emailed you all about that legislation on Friday, letting you know that I was going to reach out to our delegation and express council support for that legislation, which I did, and I wanted to let you know that over the weekend the appropriations committee voted to approve that legislation. My understanding is that the bill will now go back to the house for concurrence and then, if concurrence is achieved, go to the governor for signature. So not a done deal, but certainly a good sign that the appropriations committee supported, and that's what I have
[8:47] Susan Hawes: that for city manager please. Well, should we have a drum roll or are you just going to roll right? Okay.
[9:20] Carollynn Lear: So I'm pretty excited to talk about the proposed budget. As I was putting it together, it occurred to me that, you know, we have a lot of conversations about what our priorities are, but I think the budget is where the rubber really meets the road and where we truly decide what our priorities are. So I'm very excited to
[10:00] Speaker D (unidentified): talk about it. So
[10:04] Carollynn Lear: my approach, so I think we talked sort of preemptively about this, but I will repeat heat it, that I don't see my proposed budget as sort of a target driven exercise. I hope what you hope to get from me is information and advice on what the city needs to sort of achieve our mission, and that's how I approached it, and I've approached it really focusing in on three areas. One, what do we need to do to provide sort of our baseline municipal services? Two, what do we need to invest to achieve the priorities that council selected for the upcoming year? And then three, strategically, how do we need to invest in our city to see sort of long term success, growth, moving the ball forward? So I don't have any goal or expectation that what you see before you is what you will approve. My goal is that you'll ask questions that will debate and that we can sort of together collaboratively arrive at sort of a work product at the end that balances needs with the taxpayer impact. My approach to the new program requests from the departments has really been to include everything that's either justified by a well-evidenced business need or that shows a long-term return on investment. From my perspective, the department heads know their department, they know what they need to do that work, and I have sort of exerted a high level of trust in that expertise in this process. [Speaker D (unidentified): So I'm looking] forward to working on it with you. So what is driving the operating budget? So at a high level for new counselors, the budget is sort of presented in my mind, in three big buckets. There's the operating budget, salaries, goods, services that the city needs to provide and purchase to do our work. There's sort of the capital investment bucket, and then there's the new program request bucket. So in the operating budget bucket, the drivers are the same things that are probably the drivers every year. The vast majority of our costs are related to the wages of our employees. We've incorporated a 3% cost of living adjustment for non-bargained positions. That's not to say that bargained positions don't also see a cost of living adjustment. It's just those are negotiated as part of their contract. So they're sort of baked into the wages. For any non-bargained position, we've assumed a 3% cost of living adjustment. My perspective on that is that it is more cost effective to retain employees than hire them and train them. And in the world that we live in with rising inflation, not the marketplace, our employees will go to an employer that does. So it's both the right thing to do, but economically, it's also a smart thing to do. do. In this budget, we're estimating a 12% increase to health insurance costs. That is an estimate. We won't know the true number until the fall, but we're assuming a 12% increase. And that's sort of based on history as well as what our insurer is telling us to incorporate.
[14:12] Joseph Leonard: I have a question on that. You might not know the answer. Why was it that school board was able to know what their insurance rates sooner than we would? It must be
[14:26] Carollynn Lear: because they re-up on a different year than we do. We'll learn in October what the increase will be for January one. No, I heard, I spoke to the superintendent when she had learned theirs and I immediately called our HR and said hey, are we gonna know? And they disappointingly said no. So a new thing this year is that the state has enacted a mandated benefit for employees for a paid family medical leave program and the cost to implement that this year is 313 000. So that is baked into the operating budget and then of course general inflation has increased the cost of almost everything the city purchases. And I think the biggest category is probably parts, equipment, oil, tires, those sorts of things for the equipment and machinery. And I believe we incorporated a 2.8% increase for those sorts of things. A lot of the other stuff is more of an art than a science. But for those line items, we're pretty consistent in assuming a standard increase based on the research we did on the marketplace. And so I think this is a good opportunity to capitalize on supporting employees. As I said, I think if we don't meet the marketplace as it relates to wages, particularly in light of inflation, employees that maybe even want to stay and would prefer to stay will find themselves needing to go someplace where they'll make enough money to buy food and pay rent. So the capital budget drivers. I think a really big place where you'll see some targeted investment when you look at the capital budget is in IT. Long term, the city needs to transition to modern digital technology-based services but in order to do that we need to invest in IT infrastructure and security. And so you will see some IT investment in the capital budget. You will also see some new positions recommended as well to support IT. That was certainly a place when I joined the city where I was a little surprised that the small number of IT employees that we have, they do a lot with very little. You'll see in the capital budget that the Community connector in the airport continued to maintain a large number of capital investments, which fortunately for the most part are not funded with taxpayer dollars. That is also true of wastewater and engineering. They leverage a large number of federal and state DOT programs, environmental protection programs, as well as being supported by rate payers to do a large amount of their capital. I think the important thing to think about also when it relates to wastewater capital investments is investment in wastewater infrastructure leads to construction, which leads to expanding the property tax base, which is a good thing for all of our taxpayers, because when you can spread the burden among more properties, that benefits everyone. Similar to under the operating budget, a lot of the other capital investments that we're going to ask to make this year for things like vehicle replacement, sidewalk paving, and other infrastructure, the cost is just rising with inflation, and we've incorporated created that and for another year we'll continue to leverage the downtown tip to invest in capital infrastructure in the downtown area with street repaving street lights all of those fun capital items so the unassigned fund balance this year is projecting to be quite healthy per ordinance we can have a max unassigned fund balance of 22 million with a low of 11 and the proposed budget that we have targets us just behind the i think we land at returning 18 million in unassigned fund balance but i'll say ahead of time i think that 's a right place for us to have additional discussions about what the right level of unassigned fund balance is to retain going forward i think a time-tested guiding principle is only using One-time money to pay for one-time costs, so I would hesitate to make a recommendation that we use unassigned fund balance to offset operating costs, but we are seeing perhaps some single year spikes from the county for example that we might want to have a conversation about with that unassigned fund balance, but we do use unassigned fund balance and reserve funds to pay for 100 of this year's capital expenses, which is pretty consistent with prior years. There's nothing sort of new or unusual about That just
[20:28] Michael Beck: Had a question about the fund balance because I mean am I read this right that it increased year over year from
[20:33] Carollynn Lear: 2024 to 25 by about 13 million bucks. Yeah, I think there was a nine million dollar adjustment at the end of last year, and then the remainder would be what we're projecting for this year. A natural question might be, what's that from? It's over 75 salaries, so salaries from vacant positions that went unspent. That could be another place where, if you would like to have a conversation, frankly, if there's something different that we should do with budgeting salaries given the high amount of laps, I think if you look at the budgets historically, that unsigned fund balance is how we've budgeted capital expenditures, right? And so if you were to do a shift, you'd wanna be really thoughtful about that so you don't sort of unknowingly underfund next year's capital. But I do think that there could be space to have a conversation about if there's a different way we should be budgeting salaries to avoid such a large lapse, particularly in light of the economy as exists. I don't think it's out of this world to assume that we will see vacancies again this year. All right, so moving on to new programs, this is sort of, I had to find a way to organize my thoughts around the new programs and this is where I landed. I really think that most of our investment should be in the critical municipal services that citizens expect us to provide. guide, and then county-directed priorities and creative investments, long-term investments. So I have sort of bucketed the proposed new programs in that fashion just for conversation purposes. So for this going down the list, I think I previewed for you last week, I would recommend strongly adding a staff accountant to the finance department. I think the workload is such that we really need another staff accountant just to provide the baseline adequate financial oversight for the city, you know, in order to craft the budget, respond to the audit, it keep up with sort of the day-to-day financial reporting for the city. We have one staff accountant now and they're struggling to keep up there's also continuity of operations challenges with having one of anything, and so I think that there is additional reasons why having a second staff accountant would be smart. This also would have the capacity to remedy some of the observations of the financial auditors as it relates to separation of duties, because you would have two folks in that role, and so you could naturally separate their duties in such a way to add an additional layer. You'll see in the budget funding for a second downtown patrol officer. I think the reports on our current downtown patrol officer are glowing, but that officer is only covering a small portion of the hours of the day. And so an added patrol officer could cover later into the evenings and onto the weekends. I frankly think that there's an opportunity to discuss more than one additional downtown town patrol officer, and we will probably bring that forward to you as part of pd's [Speaker D (unidentified): presentation] cheap low will be presenting you with some really data-driven reasons why central fire specifically needs more firefighters. They have pretty high call volumes in comparison to industry standard, and he'll talk at length about why we need more, what justifies needing more, and some options for how many more you could fund. In the budget right now, it's currently funding for additional firefighters for the Central Fire Station, but you will see that there are sort of some options priced out in the budget if you wanted to do more on top of that. The blow will provide some justification for a dedicated fire training officer. Right now training is handled as sort of a corollary duty for some of the assistant chiefs and paid primarily through overtime, and so it would likely be cost effective to be paying someone straight time dedicated to do that work rather than someone making time and a half as a corollary duty. We've sort of talked at length about the full-time bus driver issue, making bus drivers full-time. We see that as a fundamental step to ensure reliability of the bus system from a, you know, retention standpoint. This is important to the drivers, but it does have a cost, and so we've presented it as a new program. You'll see two clerks in treasury and records. I think this is one of those return on Investment opportunities that we should consider. As I'm sure you've heard from constituents, there are certain times of the year, particularly when property tax payments are being processed, it's pretty, unfortunately, manual process. Checks are sitting for upwards of four weeks, millions of dollars of checks that could be earning interest if they were quickly deposited into the bank. And so I think there's a real opportunity to both have a return on investment and substantially increase the customer service that folks have experienced here at City Hall when they come to their business. The IT positions I think we've already covered, and then the final position here is an emergency manager position. As when you open this budget book, that position is not funded. I'm still sort of doing the research to determine whether I think this is a need, but I'd like to talk about it in the budget process just to sort of start the conversation. I think that is probably the one place when I joined where I felt the highest sense of exposure personally, only not having a strong handle on the emergency response aspects of a city our size. We have the Cross Insurance Center, we have the waterfront concerts venue, we have a cruise ship that comes several times a year with hundreds if not thousands of people on board. You know, we have a river that freezes up and can flood. There's a lot that can go wrong in the city, and I think we could benefit probably from someone who takes a holistic city-wide approach to managing those risks really thoughtfully. One of the places I want to look into deeper is the opportunities for grant funding to support this, because there are a ton of emergency preparedness
[28:49] Speaker D (unidentified): grants out there, so
[28:58] Carollynn Lear: moving on to some of the investments that we've suggested to better address addressed as council directed priorities. So the Homeless Response Coordinator and the Housing Support Navigator are on here. These two positions live in public health. They were ARPA funded and they are funded through the end of calendar year 2026. So if we would like to keep them into next year, we have to roll their salaries into the budget starting halfway through the fiscal year. I think you will, I hope that you will find as we talk through those positions, when we talk about Jen Gunderman's budget, that they certainly show a return on investment as it relates to the instance of the housing support navigator, keeping folks from becoming homeless and losing their housing and from the homeless response coordinator position, sort of doing his best to corral all the players in this space to be working towards the same goal. We have also made the suggestion that our current seasonal park ranger transition to year round. They currently are only half the year. And so not a full salary to do that. that. The seasonal park ranger, perhaps surprisingly, perhaps not, does play a large role in managing homeless response as well, particularly as it relates to our public spaces, our parks and forests. And then you will see an investment in an affordable housing fund and a quality Housing Provider Program. The Affordable Housing Fund is to help finance affordable housing projects. The Quality Housing Provider Fund will address sprinkler installation in rental housing. We've heard anecdotally from developers that the requirement that certain size developments have sprinklers can be a barrier and so we'll discuss those in more detail when we talk to Anne and then finally the first of the sort of creative solutions and investments bucket is what I have titled the vacant property program so the circle the city has certainly had a lot of success addressing vacant properties through the registry and then enforcement, which involves code and legal primarily. And, but we think we could do more and we could do more quickly with additional resources. And so you will see sort of a package deal of an attorney, legal assistant and code enforcement officer to support primarily continuing to do work with vacant and dilapidated properties. The reason why I've included this is for the reason we talked about earlier about expanding the tax base to the extent that we can take properties that are vacant, rundown, and low value and encourage them to transition to higher value redeveloped productive properties. Those properties can become valuable property tax producers for our city and defray the property tax impact for all of our taxpayers. So I think it's a smart potential return on investment for our taxpayers if we can put some targeted effort towards vacant and rundown properties. Oh, that's talking my nose. The second item on the list is an urban development officer. This would support the and in the economic development department. You know, I think the workload demands in economic development are pretty substantial, and I've observed that there is often not a lot of space to deal with projects and priorities in the way that they deserve to be managed because that team is out straight just managing sort of the day-to-day things that come across their desk. And so, and we'll talk about the position in more detail, but this would take a lot of the day-to-day things like managing certain committees off of Anne's plate so that she can focus in a much more targeted way on sort of big picture priorities. You know, a big development that's possibly coming to Bangor that requires a high level of focused attention and responsiveness for example, I think the mall redevelopment, the potential mall redevelopment, is a prime example. I could see a world where Ann should be spending a third or more of her time just making sure that is successful. And she does not have a third of her time right now to dedicate to something like that. And then we did put some money in here to spearhead a city level redevelopment plan for the mall. Sort of a package that we could take to potential developers that included due diligence and maybe some visioning after some community input sessions. You know, we'll put a question mark on this one because we put that in there at about the same moment that we learned that there was a potential buyer for the mall, so that might be an unnecessary investment depending on how that sale ultimately goes, but it's in there for now. So next I want to talk a bit about technology implementation. This is something that you may have heard about before because the city has been reserving money each year for a potential big technology project focused on our internal finance and human resources systems. The city operates without a modern or efficient back-end technology system for finance or human resources. The example I would give is when it came time for me to renew my health insurance, I received a 15-page packet to come to read and you know choose my options, and that happened for every employee. In a perfect world, that would be all electronic where an employee could select their benefits each year, and there are hundreds of examples just like that where there are manual processes that should be electronic. The impact is that on the back end, the city, some of our functions are inefficient and error prone and manual, but that also means that on the front end, our customers aren't able to complete many transactions online, and that does not meet their customer service expectations. Most folks expect to do most business online, and that is not a reality right now. But to, in my opinion, to do, to do technology implementation correctly, it requires a pretty substantial investment of resources, not just the money, but the actual humans to do the work to make sure that it's done correctly. And so Courtney and I have been talking quite extensively about, you know, if we're going to do this, and we think it really is time to do it, how do we do it in such a way that what is a substantial financial and time investment at least results in what we hope it will at the end? And so step one is that we're going to procure professional services to assist us in performing a city-wide needs assessment, draft the RFP, and potentially evaluate the RFP responses. And this is not a unique model. I came from the tax world, as you know, and when I was at a state Department of Revenue, we did a 30 million dollar technology project, and the use of an expert to draft the RFP and do a needs assessment was the benefits were substantial, because there are folks who do that work as their living, technology project implementation. We do not do that work as our living. We're municipal employees, and so I think it's really important to leverage expertise. Then we will, of course, issue the RFP, evaluate responses, and finalize the contract, but project implementation will most certainly be a multi-year process. I think by doing the city-wide needs assessment, it is likely that this will not just be an HR and finance technology project. It is likely that we will identify other city areas that require some sort of system, and it is likely that there will be a vendor that will be able to provide that system, and so it will probably be phases over the course of months and years. But in the end, the impact is there will be a citywide technology system that will manage finance, HR, and other manual processes in a streamlined way. I think this is an important step to allow us to do more with the employees that we already have. And it's an important step for our customers to be able to have some form of online self-service,
[39:51] Speaker D (unidentified): which they don't have currently.
[39:58] Carollynn Lear: So as I mentioned, the keys to success will be performing that needs analysis and procuring experts. Also a key to success is having a single leadership level staff person responsible for project implementation. Spoiler alert, that's gonna be Courtney, right? It was very purposeful that we freed up Courtney's time by separating out her HR job function so that she could have the bandwidth to really manage a large scale project like this. And then some other sort of lessons learned that I bring to the table is that change management is really important with technology implementation because folks like doing things the way that they've done them. And many people actually see it as a unique skill and value that they are the only person who knows how to do something because the process hasn't changed for so long. So you really have to be thoughtful and careful with making sure that folks know that they're not losing their value as employees and as experts just because the way they do things is changing or is getting easier. And then lastly, I feel pretty strongly about the use of what's called an independent verification and validation vendor, which is a third party who comes in and ensures that the selected vendor is actually delivering on what they committed to deliver. And also, frankly, make sure the city is doing what they should be doing in order to see the maximum value on the technology implementation. As I mentioned, the city has been allocating money into reserves for this project for several years and you will see in this budget that we continue to do so and it's possible that in the next budget you may see a larger request for an investment for this project once we see the rfp responses and really have a handle on how much it's going to cost but we don't think we'll be there we'll not we'll not be at that point in this budget it will be for the next budget that we would be coming to You and asking for an additional investment. From my perspective, this project is the most transformational thing that we could do internally to the city, from both a cost savings perspective, employee satisfaction perspective, and customer service perspective. And it gets, it's not exciting necessarily. It's not what every kid grows up and says they want to implement, a back-end technology product, but I think it could be very transformational for our [Speaker D (unidentified): customers, then] the fun stuff. So historical budget data, this was actually counselor Dean's asked of me. You'll see five years of proposed budget, what was ultimately adopted, and then the percentage growth, as well as the mill rate. My observation about the proposed versus adopted budget is the year-over-year increases are pretty consistent from year to year. You see a proposed budget that's about four to five million higher, what ultimately gets agreed is about three to four million higher than the prior year, save for fiscal year 24. The percentage growth is pretty consistent, and then you have the mill rate, which is I think somewhat difficult to compare, just because it's impacted by property values as well. So you don't know that it's necessarily the clearest indicator of budget growth, although it certainly is important as it relates to our payers. So that concludes my presentation. Of course we'll go into more detail with each and every department in our meetings, and I should know as it relates to the new programs and positions, each department will go over their new programs and positions, but it likely makes sense to wait to the end to discuss those as a group, and sort of say yay or nay once you've had the opportunity to hear from each of the departments and determine what you're interested in.
[44:47] Speaker D (unidentified): Any questions? This is actually
[44:50] Michael Beck: a question for the city council, more of a housekeeping issue. You know, under code ethics 33 11b, we have to disclose both our own and other counselors potential conflicts, and I like to raise a conflict, potentially ask the council about it. Recently one of us made comments regarding the school budget and saying that they don't deserve an increase, well don't deserve an increase because of the fact that they're teaching English to multilingual students, which is actually mandated by state law to do. That and then because they don't, they don't deserve an increase, and I would hold that is a interest not held generally by the public, because we're tasked with having to be open-minded in the process. I motion that Councillor Mallory has a conflict of interest with a particular line item, both the school budget and the gross appropriation for it also.
[45:50] Joseph Leonard: I'll second the motion. I do have a question though. I believe our charter dictates that regardless of conflicts of interest, it doesn't matter like what line item that we're saying that we have a conflict of interest on, but even if Councillor Meller were to be removed from this particular portion of the discussion, he would still be able to vote on the overall budget. I mean, that's at least my reading of it.
[46:20] Tracy Willett: Yeah, I believe it's true, yeah, just this one way, okay.
[46:33] Speaker D (unidentified): For.
[46:36] Susan Deane: Some of the more senior members, has this ever occurred in past council discussion? Do you recall anyone for reasons other than you
[46:46] Susan Hawes: know a personal interest in an item? Not right off the top of my head, no. I don't think we had specific conflicts of interest during the budgeting process. This is a little bit different. You're almost looking at two separate things here. Yes.
[47:13] Carolyn Fish: I'm just, I mean, I guess I'd like to see the difference between having a conflict. You know, he made a comment that I think the majority of people would disagree, but at the same time, it was a personal comment of his opinion that he thought he was saying in private. And we have made, there's been comments from some of us sitting saying goodnight, you know, about feelings specifically about ICE, not liking ICE. So would that then apply also that you have a conflict of interest voting on those? Where do you differentiate between your personal comments and opinions versus when they become associated to voting on lineups city
[48:05] Susan Hawes: solicitors on his way to on my phone
[48:08] David Szewczyk: David subject city solicitor. First I do believe that council Leonard is correct in that, a counselor would be able to take a vote on the overall budget, not withstanding, a line item, if there had, if there would be a conflict that would rule a counselor out from one line item. However, with this particular issue it looks like it, there's, there doesn't appear to be a financial or special interest involved that would then conflict a counselor out of voting on that line item. I think what you're talking about more perhaps is an issue of whether there's
[48:59] Michael Beck: A prejudicial bias, no, I would determine that would be a special interest. I mean, it's an interest in that budget for the purpose of defeating it, for that reason, that it's not held by the public generally. I mean, I guess I'll give an example, like a special conflict I would disclose for myself is any items coming up with dignity. My wife is no longer involved with it, hasn't been involved for some time, however, she founded it. I mean, I would have a hard time arguing that I don't have an interest in that 's not held by the public generally i'm not i have no financial stake in it i'm just a strict reading of what the court of ethics says
[49:37] David Szewczyk: I think that the issue is more appropriately addressed with regard to whether there's a prejudicial bias involved. I don't know that just a comment made prior to the issue being addressed rest is a special interest. A special interest, I believe, is something else, so that can, you know, we can look at that more carefully after tonight. But I don't, and it doesn't, it's certainly not a financial interest, I don't believe, a special interest, that category, which is the one that's a little more hard to define. I don't think that situation would fit in that category, but I can look into it and also look into the prejudicial bias standards.
[50:40] Michael Beck: Well, I want to make sure that it was raised. Would it be helpful to this body to table it for now and then revisit it prior to us meeting with the school committee on May 7th?
[50:52] Speaker D (unidentified): Yes. I was just going to agree with the
[51:02] Michael Beck: motion table until further notice as long
[51:09] Susan Hawes: as it's done before we meet with the school. Sure, but we can find a meeting for that and we have another meeting to discuss some of this as well. I assume this will come up again.
[51:28] Speaker D (unidentified): Okay, any
[51:31] Carollynn Lear: other questions for me? You're looking to both as we march through the meetings, if you are going over the budget and you know you have questions ahead of time that might require data or information, if you want to send them to me, we can certainly be prepared ahead of time during those meetings to answer those questions. If you don't do that, it just may mean that we'll have to get answers later, which is the end of the world, but we can be more efficient if we have them ahead of time. All right, with that
[52:14] Susan Hawes: if you're done, okay, well, next up we have the city solicitor update. Who's coming around to joining the table? Good.
Referrals
[52:28] David Szewczyk: Evening big subject, see solicitor again. I just wanted to give you an update on a few of the places where the legal department's been spending time recently. The first item that I wanted to just talk about where was the vacant building registration ordinance enforcement update, which is, as you know, there's a multi-departmental enforcement team in place with regard to effectuating enforcement of the vacant building registration ordinance, and there is good news on that item. There's a spreadsheet that I included with your memo on that, and on the spreadsheet you can see that nine properties have been removed from the vacant building list since the beginning of the year, which we thought was pretty positive. They were removed for different reasons, but that's, that's been the progress in a short period of time since the last time I updated you. And even though the code has identified, and I'm sorry, even though code enforcement has identified and added 65 new properties to the vacant building list since the beginning of 2024, 24 when we got this kind of underway. We have now for the first time a reduction in the number of vacant properties on the list because 67 properties overall have been removed from the vacant building list during that same time. So now there are 56 properties that are on our vacant building list, and there had been 58 on the list before. So we've come, we've crossed that threshold currently. Now it says on the, on my spreadsheet that there are 38 properties registered and current. That's actually, to update that, 's now 40. There were two properties that were registered, so now it's 40 properties registered and current, and the properties that are not registered are currently 18. That number is going to fluctuate because the registration is only good for six months, and that is kind of a cycle that we try to bring down. But the fact that there are only 18 now, there will be others that are looking to go onto that list if those registered properties don't, or if other properties become vacant that are identified by code enforcement. Another piece of good news, I think, of the 11 properties that were court-bound via a rule 80k matters by land use enforcement matters, nine of those 11 matters have resolved either by court judgment or administrative consent agreement. And when they're resolved by administrative consent agreement, they result in typically a registered property and the payment of the restoration fee with an agreement that in many cases will say that, you know, you have to pay a certain amount and they're not getting out of paying the registration fees, but if they get a building permit by a certain date, then there are accommodations that are made. But we don't allow the ordinance to be not enforced by way of an administrative consent agreement. It's, it is enforced, and we think those are good numbers. And there will be other, there will be other properties added to that court list. So right now, nine out of the eleven have resolved, but there are others that are coming in that will be added to that list. We think those are good numbers, especially given that we only have two attorneys and one part-time legal assistant in the legal department to work on these matters along with all the other legal issues that require our time and work. Does anybody have any questions about the, that update? Well, I'll move on then. I wanted to give you an update on the ethics, the board of ethics procedures and ordinance, the board movement. There hasn't been an update to you that I've given you on this, but the board did move expeditiously with regard to the three referrals that were made to it this fall that were virtually almost simultaneously made to the board. The legal department determined after those referrals that the board's procedural rules that existed were from over 30 years ago when the ethics code was very different than it is currently, so they were really completely inappropriate for what the ethics code says now, so what we did was they just didn't line up and couldn't be used. So at the initial meeting of the board following the three referrals, the legal department provided a lengthy training to the board. And, suggested that the board vote to request the legal department to draft a new set of procedural rules, because the procedural rules are done by the board itself. And they voted to go ahead and have the legal department do that. We drafted a new set of procedural rules and based it on the way the ordinance looks now so that it was appropriate the board did so vote and the and they voted reviewed and adopted those procedural rules at the next meeting. Under the requirements of section 3321 of the ethics code and per the new set of procedural rules the ethics board is required to notice and conduct at least three separate meetings for each referral made to it the board. So the board has an investigate investigatory function and a function whereby the board hears evidence deliberates and votes with respect to factual findings and conclusions and prepares written findings of facts and conclusions which constitute its advisory written advisory opinion that comes back to the council and the board efficiently combined into one meeting its first meeting with regard to all three of the referrals. At the first meeting the board is required to review the material supplied to it determine whether it wishes to request any voluntary statements from witnesses or parties or other people determines whether it wishes to request any additional documents to review addresses any pre-hearing issues and determines whether any executive sessions are going to be needed with respect to the particular referral. The board decided at that time to conduct the second meeting with respect to each of the three referrals separately in between the first and second meetings staff had to assist the board in requesting any voluntary statements and in gathering any documents the board requested for review. This would involve making an inquiry into witnesses to two witnesses and regarding voluntary statement and waiting for their responses. At each second meeting the board conducted a public hearing heard the evidence presented and reviewed the documents determined findings and voted on each of the items the City Council referred to them regarding whether there were particular violations of the ethics code. Sometimes just so you know there needs to be more than one second meeting on a referral because to do those things sometimes it takes longer than one meeting they may decide they need additional things at the second meeting and then that actually happened on one of the items. The only real delays that occurred were earlier this year due to turnover of board members the board membership dipped down to three at one point due to there having been one Vacant seat initially, one member moving away, two members' terms expiring at the end of the year without their requesting an additional term, and training and review that had to occur for newly appointed members to take their seats and be prepared to address the remaining issues that were involved with the referrals. In between the second and third meeting, the board's written findings of fact and conclusions making up its advisory opinion is drafted. At the third meeting, the written advisory opinion is reviewed, voted on, and approved by the board. Also with regard to the ethics board and the ethics code, recently a counselor has submitted a proposed addition to the code of ethics, which the legal department has been, has reviewed and had significant input into. This is to put deadlines into the board's required actions and to add provisions that will guide the city council once the ethics board has completed its work on a referral and the council is presented with the board's advisory opinions. The legal department has said, spent time reviewing and identifying issues of the proposed addition to the ethics code, and the proposed ordinance additions are in the process of staff evaluation. So that's the update on the at the board and ordinance on that. Thank
[1:02:10] Susan Faloon: you. I don't have any questions, but I'll just say I'm the one who proposed the changes, and I've gotten some feedback, and I'll rework it, and I'll send it out. But basically what I was trying to address with that is to sort of tighten up the period of time that it takes from a referral to getting a decision. And I know, like, I just briefly glanced at your feedback, and I've got to read through that more, but I was trying to tighten that up because it was like an eight month period of time, which seemed like a lengthy period of time. Maybe it's not, given what they have to do. But the other piece that I was trying to address in, my amendments was like, there's this, okay, we got a decision, and it comes back to the council, then what, then what? And we get asked this a lot, like, so what's the next step? And so it kind of outlines pretty clearly what the potential next steps would be, and that will all be in there. But I will send this around to everybody once we kind of work through on some of these at it. So before this comes up, I think it's sometime in later in May, because I won't be here for the next meeting, the next committee meeting, so it will be in May anyway. So we've got all right, and that would one of the reasons I want to
[1:03:30] David Szewczyk: Make sure I did a significant update tonight was because the board didn't take eight months to review and do their work on each of these three. It took eight months to complete all of it, but the first one was done earlier. The second one involved a delay because of the turnover of the board, and but you hadn't been updated on any of this. So in retrospect, I wish I had maybe included this on the last time.
[1:03:57] Michael Beck: I had a solicitor's update. That's okay. Just a question about the three we did send over. I only recall one coming back to us so far. They found they had findings of the other two. Do you know one will receive the other the other two complaints? The third one is in the process of the
[1:04:16] David Szewczyk: written decision being drafted. The second one did come back and
[1:04:25] Michael Beck: I only recall Councilor Leonard's
[1:04:27] Susan Hawes: matter. I remember that one. I think the second one did come back. Yeah, we're only waiting on the
[1:04:34] David Szewczyk: second one found that there was no violation and the council decided no actions needed.
[1:04:40] Susan Faloon: Was that second one former Council Tremble? If so, I think I think all that would come taking out of papers. Yeah, I do think that came back. Okay so
[1:04:54] David Szewczyk: we're waiting for the final finding report. Yeah, there's going to be a meeting this week, I believe. They're going to review and approve the written findings with regard to the third one.
[1:05:11] Susan Hawes: Can I just add something to that? So when we get that, we can be pretty we can schedule pretty quickly a meeting for the council to discuss the legal findings and then the what's next. Yes, so we'll plan to do that fairly shortly after receiving that, just to make sure that it will
[1:05:35] David Szewczyk: come to you first. One of the things that was one of the items flagged in the draft of the additional ordinance is that the council is free to do its own investigation if it so chooses and then relying on the investigation of the ethics board. So that because it is just an advisory opinion, so that has to be one of the options when that ordinance draft is done on it. That's got to be one of the options, and so the time deadlines in that draft will need to be a greater deadline than the number of days that were dejected. But that's what we look at. Okay. Okay, should we move on or yes? Okay, there's no more questions. Sure, I just wanted to let you know that we've also spent a good deal of time on the forms of the local response to federal immigration enforcement. Legal was involved with the drafting of the order the council recently voted on and approved that required immediate compliance with the provisions of state law LD 1971, which itself becomes effective in July. Legal was also involved with significant input into the draft of the internal policy that would direct employees to get management personnel involved if ICE or Customs and Border Patrol arrive at a city building wishing to access the non-public areas for purposes of federal immigration enforcement arrest or for review of non-public records for enforcement matters. That draft is nearing completion of its rounds before city manager will take effect to put it into effect, but the legal's been working on that as well. Legal's also spent a good deal of time reviewing, identifying issues in, and researching issues involved in discussion of legal issues involved with the proposed ordinance regarding employee authority and immigration matters, both the initial version of the draft and after significant edits were made to it. I don't think that this is the time to discuss the issues that were identified i just wanted to let you know that we've been spending time on that and the items on the regular council agenda for second reading tonight night and we don't I mean that can be talked about at the regular meeting so I just want to let you know that we've been working on that as well and then I wanted to give you a little public update of the bang or mall litigation
[1:08:28] Susan Deane: Yes. Okay, when the policy is completed on the internal and how to handle any interactions with ICE, where will that be posted? Where is that? So
[1:08:44] Carollynn Lear: it's an employee policy, so we don't typically post those publicly. It's posted in our internal server for employees to access and read and understand. Will council have any
[1:08:55] Susan Deane: input on it or be able to view it? We can certainly send it to you to view.
[1:09:01] Carollynn Lear: Sure. Typically council doesn't weigh in on internal employee policy, so we don't, it's not a formal part of the process to have council review and provide comment, but
[1:09:11] Susan Deane: certainly just given you know all the everything that's going on with it, I think it'd be nice to
[1:09:15] David Szewczyk: know what additionally we have. Yeah, the city charter makes as part of the city manager's authority to the authority over the department in the city other than the school department, and so that's within the city manager's purview, but anyway, sorry.
[1:09:37] Susan Hawes: Anything else before he moves on to
[1:09:40] David Szewczyk: The Vanguard Mall. Okay, so legal has con had continued involvement with the two land use matters that remain pending in the Vanguard District Court. Although the court's decisions have been made, the order on sanctions remediation entered into at the end of January, beginning of February required the owners of the Bangor Mall to do a number of things. They required them to reimburse the city within 30 days $38,966.59 that were the costs incurred by the city in making the repairs to the mall owners sewer pipe after it burst or after it was damaged because of the sinkhole. That order has been complied with by the city recouped those costs from Namdar. It also required the defendants to post to submit a post-construction stormwater maintenance plan and a comprehensive plan to remain remediate all the remaining violations within 45 days. Namdar had a third party submit what it said was a post-construction stormwater maintenance plan, but that after review by our stormwater manager did not comply with our ordinance, and this our stormwater manager has informed them that it's not acceptable. Namdar has not submitted any comprehensive plan to remediate the remaining violations, so those two items deadline has recently passed. The order also required Namdar to pay $1,154,215 in civil penalties within 75 days, and that will be due shortly. That deadline is coming up very soon. The order also required the owners to abate all the remaining violations by June 15 of this year. The defendants Namdar have recently hired new lawyers who immediately moved filed a motion to extend the deadlines in the court's order. The city has filed an opposition to that motion
[1:12:02] Speaker D (unidentified): so that's my public update to you questions
[1:12:09] David Szewczyk: comments moving on all right the last one is just full request response work legal is always busy with timely responding to full requests not that every request comes through legal but a lot do and we are currently preparing to begin training with individuals in each department shortly for more efficient coordination among departments to ensure timely responses and we have included a request in the legal's budget for software, which the council showed interest in, and which will assist to provide uniformity and improved efficiency in this regard. I just wanted to give you that quick update on that front. That's all I have. Any other questions? No? Okay, thanks. Thank you.
[1:13:05] Susan Hawes: Okay, next up, we have a discussion of proposed parks and recreation facilities. So, here comes director.
[1:13:18] Tracy Willett: Thank you, Tracy Willett, Parks and Recreation Director. Just want to take a few minutes with you all this evening and ensure that we understood the conversation from the last workshop that we had regarding a potential referendum vote, and then kind of discuss with you a thought of how to address some things we heard, and again review the overall project from where we started to how we've arrived where we're at now. If I understand, we understand the conversation from last time. There seemed to be sentiment around the table that there is recognition that both facilities have reached their useful life, and there's recognition as a group that discussion needs to be had about how to replace those facilities. We also heard that certainly it's a big project and it's a lot of money, and we heard that loud and clear as well. And that if there are ways along the way to identify potential alternatives to funding the project. So before, I believe that's what we heard from the last workshop, and the nods around the table seem to concur that. So thank you for that. We're thinking that perhaps to at least have this current council understand and know how we've gotten to where we are. I've been at this for a while. I recall a combined council school committee meeting I believe we had in November of 23 at the high school where we first started to kind of lay out plan for the project, and did so at the time because the identified side of Griffin Road was a school space. From that, a final presentation to council in February of 24, and then the special committee was convened. Along the way, our suggestion to you to try and provide you as much information as we can in a workshop setting is to take the next two or three workshop times and split the project up a little bit and take it in pieces to discuss with you, and ultimately we'd like to get to a place where we can have a conversation about revisiting a referendum question potentially for November. So we'd like to, rather than, and you're gonna be the budget season, we recognize that, so rather than try and dedicate another workshop night, use your current workshop time, take some time at each of the next two or three council of workshops, take pieces of the project, identify what those pieces are, where we started with the initial study, how we arrived at what the special committee arrived at, what we're currently doing, and our need for those spaces, so we can lay Out for you how we arrived where we're at and have a conversation along the way with specific questions you have. No question? Yes, I was just gonna say.
[1:16:27] Joseph Leonard: Say that I know that there were basically three primary pieces of discussion for the facility, one being the one that Diane from the Y brought up, which was what she said was basically a that they already had. But the other two were Sawyer Arena, rehabilitation or reconstruction of that, and also child care facilities. This is just my opinion, but those child care facilities have to happen no matter what. And it I would even if it's very strained of a of an economy I'm of the opinion that we just if worst case scenario happens council is going to have to eat that cost and provide those facilities for child care. Child care is getting more and more expensive as the days are going on. I don't see those costs going down anytime soon. That's something that is not like a recreational facility like Sawyer Arena is. As important as Sawyer Arena is, those child care costs have to be addressed. And it's of my opinion that if we were to separate Sawyer Arena and our strategy to address that issue and the child care facility issue, that would, I think, substantially mitigate any confusion that happens with future conversations. Because I think, I can only speak for myself, But I think that one has to be addressed no matter what our discussion is for Sawyer Arena because I'm right with you there, Tracy. I mean, that facility, it's served its purpose, and we have to respect not just Parks and Rec but also the families and that facility every single day. So that's just my thought on that. In regards to soy arena I have my own thoughts and opinions on that but that piece alone I just I don't think there's much discussion to be had on that 's just an investment that if we're not able to work with other citizens to do a private public partnership or something else along those lines we are going to have to bring that into the fold sooner rather than later. I'll end on that for right now because I do have some creative thoughts on Sawyer Arena.
[1:19:08] Carolyn Fish: As well, that's all fish. I was thinking similar. Since we've met, I'm, I would love to see the project as presented, but it's just not on the backs of the taxpayers and kind of a bond. But I've reached out to a couple of other communities that are in the process also of looking at new rec center. And I wondered if when I went to the National League of Cities a couple of years ago, I did go to the child care, a government child care session, and there would seem to be, I wish I'd taken more notes at the time, but it seemed to be a lot of grants or creative financing associated to child care from the municipalities. So I wondered again if rather than looking at it at one big picture, if we creatively maybe took pieces apart where we might be able to get grants and more federal funding associated primarily with childcare, that seems to be a good avenue. And also if we might think of a hybrid bond where if there was a section, say for instance, the ice, we might be able to get more fundraising, especially from other municipalities and families and donors, where we could take that segment of it, have more, fundraising, and yet still have a bond. But I understand that there's more opportunities with bonds that are called self-sustaining. Oh, it's the self-supporting and capital projects. So even if it was a small section of the entire project, we have, if there was a segment that would qualify under that, even if we went to referendum with two bonds, you would just have to think a little bit out of the box. If there was a particular segment of this recreation facility that helped get us some special funding under the capital part of it, we might be able to raise money or make money on the ice arena more creatively, and then we have a smaller, maybe ultimately at the end of the day a smaller number to come to bond with. But those were a couple of things that since we've last talked, I
[1:21:22] Tracy Willett: I found and wondered. So these are all topics that when we get to those particular pieces of the project might be, gives more time to discuss those options and the viability of those options and so forth. So that's our hope is that when you have these kind of, this is helpful, you have these kinds of pieces of particular information about particular piece of the project that was kind of logical, keeping it simple at each workshop. I did bring, had to share with you this is the presentation that was Done in 24 to Council. Certainly distribute that to you. It has some of the background on why we chose the site that we did, some of the stakeholder conversations that we had. There's also another presentation that we did at the combined meeting being back in November of 2023, that we can distribute to you as well as kind of background so that you have that. That would be helpful to you all to have. So if I hear correctly, your next workshop, we'll take a piece of the project, take some time to discuss it, take some of the, hopefully have some answers for you from tonight and use that timeline to keep it moving.
[1:22:41] Susan Hawes: Sure, I'll slip that.
[1:22:42] Michael Beck: I just wanted to brother I'm of the mindset of taking the ice piece and just breaking it out completely from the rest of it. One of the things I personally would like us to see us do, there's a lot of interest in the community to organize around it and do this and that's what they've done in other communities. I know that over in Brewer that it's not the municipality that does theirs, other communities, yeah, it's not the municipality that runs the facility or work built the facility, they certainly invested into it some but they didn't put the project on their back. And I know that there's some interest right now and I don't know if this is a matter where council can help out to try to bring some of those people to table to help find a champion in the community to take this on to do. But I know that between you know the Main Junior Black Bears and other organizations and other individuals, I think that we can cobble together a group and they would be able to identify a champion, they can lift this up and we'll help where we can. But I guess I'd rather this conversation be how do we all figure this out, they figure it out, they do as much funding as they can and they come to us as part of a funding stack and say hey can you help us get us over the last three million or four million rather than us having to figure that out on top of the bigger issue of the child care and everything else. So I just wanted to put that out there, that's where I'm at. I was just going to say it would be
[1:24:06] Susan Faloon: be helpful if we knew, I don't know if this would be on the agenda, like what specific piece of so that we can just you know where to focus our preparedness for the conversation, you know, like we're going to talk about the child care component this week, we're going to talk about the ice that
[1:24:21] Tracy Willett: Would just help me to prepare for that conversation. Certainly give you as much an ample notice as we
[1:24:27] Susan Faloon: can for each workshop. Don't you know, yeah, I mean, we don't, not all the details, but just like which component of it would be really helpful to me, so I
[1:24:39] Tracy Willett: will send this around now and certainly distribute. There is a brand we did front to back, so if there's a random page in there from something else, that's how it ends up being, but at least this is a presentation that we did in 24. It is different than the special committee's report, so we call that the special committee reviewed what you're getting naturally and sharing it with you so that it gives you a sense of progression as we've gone along. There's nothing different or new in there, I think. [Susan Faloon: I] have what we need from you folks tonight unless there's questions of me while I'm here, and we'll plan on the next workshop to have a discussion about a particular piece of it, and we'll let you know in plenty of time. Sounds like playing, thank you all very much. Thank you.
[1:26:00] Susan Hawes: All right, that brings us to the end of the agenda for the workshop. It is what time, 6 40. We will adjourn the workshop now. We'll start the council meeting at promptly at seven, so you have a few.