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 our first of several budget meetings. It is April 13th. Around the table we have Council Dean, Councillor Carson, Council Walker, Council Leonard, Council Beck, Councillor Mallar, Council Fish, and I'm Suhas, Council Fox. Okay, so we're going to get right to it, and let Samantha and Julia take the reins.
[1:02] Carollynn Lear: Sure, for a brief amount of time, and then we'll have each of the department heads come up, which is how we're going to sort of tackle it this year. We'll be doing less of the talking. Unfortunately, our finance director, Stephanie Kimball, couldn't be here tonight, so I ask for your patience. We'll take lots of notes of questions if there are things that we need to follow up on with her. I think the department heads all know the incidents of their departments really well, but Stephanie is the brain behind the budget books. So there's probably instances where you'll have questions about the books and we'll need to defer to Stephanie at a later date, so I apologize for that. With that we can jump in at the top of the agenda unless anyone has any sort of immediate questions to start for me any immediate functions all Right, so I think first up is in the book is Lisa, if you would like to go first.
[2:23] Lisa Goodwin: It's a good one, City Clerk. I guess first I'll just give you some highlights from this past year. As I've told you before, the tax collector got her certification, which she worked diligently on that over the last couple of years to get her certification. The upgrade to our online payments that we've been working on, we are inches away from that going live. We're just waiting for work some information from the finance department to go to the bank, and then we have to do a test that money comes in, money goes out properly, and then we can have that link put onto our website, and then residents will be able to go in and make payments to taxes and utility at real time. So there will be no, right now they can do that, they can go on and pay, but they can't see how much is actually owed on the accounts, they can just make a payment. This way they'll be able to go in, if there's interest due on their accounts, they'll be able to figure that all out and make a payment, and it goes directly onto their account so that there's nobody here in this office and our office that has to manually the next day go in and put that payment into the account, which we have to do now, which will save us probably one to two hours a day from those online payments. So we just almost there. It's taken a lot longer than I thought it would. In the Clerk and Treasury office, we handle probably about 40 emails a day, 50 phone calls. And I will tell you, we struggle to answer the phone because we do not have the manpower. Everybody is waiting on customers and it is a problem in our office. us but we do feel that many we try to call them back as quickly as we can our foot traffic we average about 135 a day that swells up to 300 during tax time or during elections we get super busy we generate probably a thousand close to a thousand utility bills every week so those utility bills are going out of course the mail is going to come back with the payments so you know it's that is ongoing always we average 145 000 transactions every year and that equates to about 108 million dollars that we're receiving in rapid renewal that's the online motor vehicle we do 6 150 of those on a yearly basis so those we don't have to do anything except for file it in the book and upload information into our system so that's work that we don't have to do that people do that right online our mail we average that we're two weeks behind all the time during our busy season it can go to four weeks behind and if you're thinking about a busy season it could be two to four million dollars into sitting there not being processed we did work overtime on a saturday and they were able to process in about four million dollars worth of you know in a day there were six people working they worked for six hours and that's what they were able to do with no interruptions any questions on any of that have you ever you're going to have a chin trust you're losing i have not done that because enough to build another position i mean is it substantial i would have to check that out i have to go through finance because look i don't have i think that would be interesting yeah i can definitely get that from you from the finance department something else i did and just looking at the overall operation is to compare us to the other larger communities within the state to see you know what do we do what do they do they have any of these same issues that we do there were only four of the larger population of the top i'd say the top 10 there was only four communities that actually have the Clerk and Treasury offices merged. We are the only one that does utility bill, and out of the top 10, there's only two communities that the treasurer's office did the utility billing, and that was South Portland and Bangalore. And most of those offices have four people on the front line. We have six. So I'm just trying to see what the difference is. And the closest population would have been Auburn, and we have a population of 7,000 more than Auburn does, and they have four people on that counter. So it just gives you know they are in the same Auburn is in the same boat we are as far as not being able to get their work done the turnover of staff the burnout that they're feeling the anxiety that the workers feel the long wait lines full lobby there they have the same exact thing and they merged last year so i 'm kind of leaning now towards maybe bigger communities that's a difficult task to manage merging those two to do it so i just want to give you that information because i didn't you know do some research on it to see you know are we doing something that we should be doing differently or you know is somebody else really got this down but i 'm talking with the clerk in auburn she struggles with us the same things that we're struggling with so we're not it's not isolated
[8:06] Joseph Leonard: Yeah, I just had a question on that, and maybe the answer to this is just not even worth pursuing soon. But so I had my concerns early on about merging both these departments together. Is there an off ramp at all that we can absolutely use? Are we too far into this system to even separate those two departments?
[8:36] Lisa Goodwin: I would hate to see us separated back out again. I mean, just for the makeup of the office itself, now how we have it, you know, how it's all configured. I mean, yes, we could do that, and you know, maybe we could have one
[8:49] Joseph Leonard: side court, one side treasury. We could certainly try that too, but with that, like, do you think it would be more sustainable, more operationally valid to continue as is and try to work out the
[9:01] Lisa Goodwin: kings? I would like to try to work the king, so I really would. Okay with
[9:09] Carolyn Fish: i know the automations had some things were working out. But from what you've seen that you've been able to work out and the help and assistance that 's been able to provide as it improves and as it gets more efficient, do you see that helping the workflow? How do you see that helping to take
[9:31] Susan Deane: some of the workload off?
[9:33] Lisa Goodwin: It depends on whether the residents use it because there still is that fee that's associated with that, like your credit card is a three and a half percent that you're going to pay on that. So how many people pay their taxes that way, they can do an e check, which is $3.95 for that transaction. But if they're going to pay their taxes, are they going to come into the office probably, they're not, they're going to write send a check, they're not going to use that service. So right now, we've got over 4000 people doing things online, and I'm sure they'll continue, maybe more will pick it up too, where they can actually go in and see what they have and if they have a lien they can pay that lien online. It's not going to be that they have to come in, it's only if the property is assured that they would have to come in and see us.
[10:21] Michael Beck: This might be a question maybe for the finance director to answer later, but have we looked into
[10:27] Lisa Goodwin: lockbox processing with our local bank? Yes we have, and it's really not an option for us. We actually just did that a couple of months ago, we looked into it and had conversations because there's still that money is being, it's being put in there but somebody still has to do the work and we got to pay them, so it's it's really not cost effective for us to do it. So with that, but with my budget the only thing really that went up substantially was the postage, the postage fees went up and the reporting fees at the registry also went up, so you'll see on the treasury side that did raise up. Other than that, it's the personnel cost. We have one big election next year, we don't have two, but it's a big one, so it was the state is going up to our here right now for new voting tabulators, so we will be entering into a contract with them for our tabulators probably in this in the summer, and I did increase that just a little bit just to cover that. But other than that, I have requested the two positions, one is for on the park side really to do the functions there, we're not getting any of our filing done, I still have not got all of our files changed over from i moved back, you know, it's just we don't have the time to do it, and that person can answer emails, phone calls, do all of those things on that side. The other position really is on the tax collector's side, there is no one that is cross-trained to do the tax collection, so if something happens to her we have we have no one, i mean i have a little bit of knowledge as your tax collection, but nothing like her. And when we right before we merged, when the tax collector went to the finance director position, that person moved out of the treasury office, and those duties were absorbed by the people that were there, and they never replaced that position. And we tried putting the deputy tax collector position in with the utility billing clerk, but she is so busy she there's no way that she can learn any of the duties if that's what so this position would be someone that would be there for them. They would be all of the rental cars that we have. We do almost 2 000 of those a year, and that takes somebody off the counter to do those, because they command there might be 20 or there might be 150 cars, and they're waiting for them. They want us to get those done right away, so we have to take someone off the count, which just snowballs all the other work. I
[13:39] Joseph Leonard: just had a quick question. So I think it's important before talking about these positions to also talk about how your office was able to do all this work and still barely get by without these positions. Before, I won't name her name, but the person who volunteered countless amounts of hours to help your team out was took a huge burden off the workload and allowed you to do other pertinent things as well. So she's no longer here. That was a individual who was, I won't name her name, but she's an absolute incredible citizen. And also when it does come time to election year, whenever busy work does actually start to happen, that usually just falls to you basically do a lot of that necessary work, but then when election time comes, there are other things that take precedent that you have to focus on, and a lot of that work so such as mail is coming in that has to get put off to the side, because we just don't have the team that's there that process a lot of that work. So the reason why I think it's important to bring this up is because, I mean, I know last year had its struggles, but you guys were able to get through that. I am very hesitant of the future to not give you guys the support that you need, because you we need to make sure our mail is processed, we need to make sure that we have everyone not burning out in their department as well. And I that's always been a fear of mine, know there's been a fear of yours as well, and so I so I guess I'm just speaking to the council now, but These were, this department brought forward two positions before last year and they were voted down basically, and those were in my opinion the two most important things that we should have added to our budget last year. I think it would be a really bad oversight to not heed these warnings again, because there's also money that we're losing by not having these positions here as well. So I don't know if you wanna speak to any of that. I'd love to hear your perspective on both of those topics, but I know that 's been a huge concern for Brown-Prime Youth and your department.
[16:13] Lisa Goodwin: People, we did have a volunteer, she worked for us for probably seven eight years and she would come in and she did all of the election prep work that we had and she would, you know, she would get all of the envelopes ready, she would make sure that all of the applications were, you know, she would review all of the work that when we print out the labels to go to a voter she would check the application and make sure that everything matched up so that we were mixing things up sending somebody the wrong ballot. She was very diligent and I mean last, the last election she wasn't here and we got through it, I mean but I did hire on some extra help during that time because you know we just couldn't, we couldn't do it ourselves and when elections come yes the other work does go on the back burner, you know we just, we don't have the manpower to do it, the things that we can let slide we let slide and I know, I don't think that's different than other departments, it's just what we have to do for that but it's a struggle and it, I think in the future is going to, it's going to be harder especially when there's a lot of different election laws that could change and that will be very concerning I
[17:31] Wayne Mallar: mean one
[17:34] Carolyn Fish: question that I'm sure it's easy to explain. And I know sometimes the bill hasn't come in or hasn't been paid. So there's a bit of a shift last year, under revenue increase. Last year, it was a revenue decrease like 1850. This year, it's a revenue increase in the parentheses 19,500. What does that represent?
[17:59] Lisa Goodwin: Yeah, I can't give you that answer. I'm not sure, it could be on the tax collection side.
[18:05] Carolyn Fish: Okay, and then I would have to look that up, so it's probably something that just depending upon the timing it was recorded last year, this year, that's the difference, but it could be something that came in later and I can find out for you. And the only other comment I have to say is, you know, when you guys are overstaffed and you're working so hard, it does affect not just, you know, the bills to be paid or the taxes, but we had a real estate transaction on Tuesday and they couldn't get through and it affected two families because we had a VA rate that was locked in and we had to close. They called several times and luckily I was able to run down and the clerk was great, she dropped everything and she gave me that, but I mean we were like within an hour of being able to close and that family, he would have had to ship out the next day, they wouldn't have been able to move in their house, it would have been a real domino effect and a very unfortunate situation. So it affects not just, you know, the interest on the monies we could deposit, but it affects, you know, with closings and title attorneys that need to verify those bills with City Hall, it affects closings and, real people out there. So appreciate all you guys trying to do and they dropped everything to accommodate me, we were able to get it done.
[19:23] Lisa Goodwin: Yeah, she told me that she saw you in the hallway, then he was standing there. So she was kind of frantic because it was like, have that one, that's a prime example of the Tuesday after a holiday and what happens in our office and we had one person out on vacation, so it's snowballed, everything snowballs from
[19:40] Susan Deane: that point. She was great, she got me what I needed, so then
[19:46] Carollynn Lear: I think you'll recall I sort of presented you a triangle that tried to sort of display providing basic services, delivering on council priorities and sort of investments of the future. These two positions are definitely just to get Lisa to a place where she feels like she can provide the baseline level of customer service, ensure cross-training, have continuity of operations when someone's out sick or for prolonged leave. These aren't positions that are sort of high in the sky wishes, they're are very much related to Lisa's base and function. Any
[20:29] Susan Hawes: other questions, comments? I
[20:34] Carollynn Lear: think Phil is next in the book, at least in order. Although Phil doesn't have any new positions
[20:47] Susan Deane: or programs or positions.
[20:51] Carolyn Fish: Pretty easy. Well, Phil's a man.
[20:55] Phil Drew: I'm still gonna ask. So, Phil Drew, City Assessor, goes on the parcel viewer. They can pretty much see everything that the City Assessing Office does, right? We have a key track of who owns what property in town, whether it's real property or business personal property. We make GIS modifications on parcel size with the help of the City Engineer's Office. Office. And yes, keep track of all the core functions and especially the ownership information rights, waste water, spill water, and fill water, they're all using that same unit. And we try to diligently keep track of who owns what. That and for these and accomplishments I think working with KRT on the revaluation as we go. The second thing would be entered into an outside legal services contract you've run potential. They have a team that will be available to assist us with tax appeals in 2026, 2027, and my on the regeneration. And I'd say the biggest one was really onboarding the two positions over the last year, so both the city appraiser that went very well. I couldn't be happier. I don't need new people, so we're we are the right size with the right staff. I think publishing everything we need to accomplish, but here's my ask. So I would still like three board members for the boards of assessment review. So I've got five regular members positions or a field, so I need one regular member and two associate members. So I would just ask if there are people that have applied, is it possible to move those candidates forward? Expedited, if I may ask. That way, I can start training and developing them to be good board members for all the tax appeals that generally come with every evaluation, so you know that's my that's my ask
[23:50] Michael Beck: to that end. Are we able to put something on our social media to talk about how exciting it is, this opportunity to be on that board? And would any of us at the table be willing to act in a video with me to reenact how exciting it is to be on that board remotely? Because I think we should
[24:07] Phil Drew: be going to work to get those four members. So David Warren about six weeks ago, he did send something out on social media inviting more people to apply, describing the role in a in a very thoughtful, uplifting way. And we are thinking about going through applications.
[24:31] Susan Hawes: We're getting the nod that you do probably have some people that are interested.
[24:37] Phil Drew: That's my real ask. And then I think on the budget side, the budget increase is generally employee staff development. So years ago I read a nice journal article of the International Association of Assessing Officers, and they were just, they gave the hard numbers. They just said, you know, if you have one to two percent of your budget for staff development, that's probably a reasonable range. One shouldn't be below one, much above two. So I think we're in that sweet spot. That would be really the largest change, other than some change associated with having two pieces of software that we help pay for with both patriotic. Everything's going about the questions
[25:43] Joseph Leonard: you might have just a general one about the assessing department as a whole. So post-revaluation, what do you see as the assessing department's primary objective, mission, or role, or how do you see it? Let's say evolving over the next five years.
[26:09] Phil Drew: I would say probably the first year at the revaluation, and I think there's a lot of people will accept the number and beginning, and then shortly thereafter, there'll be a lot of calls or interest in having us come out and take a look ourselves. Just because we know that, you know, the majority have not had an interior inspection. So I think the next year is a pretty heavy year of inspections, and I believe myself and three others, I think that's that's the core staff level well into the future. And when I started with the testing department, we had six and we're down to four. So it's it's the right size. Yep, okay. And I think we will have plenty of work because I think there are probably 600 building permits each year from code enforcement. So we would be following up on those. Yeah, and yeah, I think I think one of the right size. Okay, and that answers your question. Yes, no, it does. Thank you.
[27:36] Wayne Mallar: And so now I have a question. Yeah, well, a couple of quick questions since nothing actually do with which I'm concerned about. What are we going to be using for valuation
[27:46] Phil Drew: to determine the tax rate of this? So we have to do that by what date? So KRT is going to give me some numbers at the beginning of June, and I will present them to you folks on June 10th.
[28:07] Wayne Mallar: Is that the latest date we can get it? I mean, I just want to prepare for the worst. So those
[28:13] Phil Drew: Are the those would be the preliminary numbers and I would I would gauge you know that's what we use to establish the tax rate how comfortable they are with those numbers right because it's still it's still going to be sent out to the property owner and they're the property owners still going to have the opportunity to sit down with KRT to hash out whether they think
[28:39] Wayne Mallar: You know everything was considered stand there but I'm just concerned about as far as the state's concerned when do we have to have the final valuation to determine the tax rate okay yeah
[28:53] Phil Drew: So it's really the fourth week of July is the delivery that's by the time we have to
[29:02] Wayne Mallar: So it's difficult to establish a budget without knowing what the tax rate potential is so we have
[29:10] Phil Drew: Until by June 10th you give us at least an idea of what it is right so I've I've made adjustments to the current data on what I think would be the necessary adjustments so I'll have a total value for real property from my own work and my staff's work and then I'll get the number from KRT and I'll be able to see how close they are no major difference okay I just wasn't sure
[29:39] Wayne Mallar: How we if we locked in early if we could make a change or how or if we were tied to it or
[29:47] Phil Drew: Was it concerned yeah and I'll bring what I believe at that time I will give you my true opinion of the accuracy and how comfortable KRT is with those numbers
[30:06] Wayne Mallar: The success rate has been good what's that I said they've been successful in completing
[30:14] Phil Drew: Their projects for other places I hear different stories no I think they're a little bit behind that's what I thought but they said they will be more diligent So I've, I, worked with Alabama school department. So we have June 16 is the plan date that public information on the process will be will have the peaks auditorium set aside. So the more dates I set firm dates closes the window that they have to complete the work so hopefully that's a motivator and
[31:03] Wayne Mallar: There's a penalty clause if they don't perform that's correct
[31:21] Carollynn Lear: And just a note, I sort of messaged the department. Hence, if not, there's no really good delve into the things that we've already talked about that are driving the budget, wages, cost of living, health insurance, the paid family medical leave program. I've asked folks just to sort of hone in on the things that are unique for their department even though for most departments especially today the drivers are of their budget are those sort of small handful of Things and then I think our city solicitor is up next
[32:00] David Szewczyk: It's a chance to be solicitor. I wanted to talk about our department, some of the highlights or accomplishment. One of the things about our department is two full-time attorneys and one 25-hour-a-week legal assistant. And that's the way it has been since I started here and well before that. The department is stable. Our legal assistant has been here over three years. years. The Assistant City Solicitor will be here three years in November and very happy with the way the department is, the personnel is. Makes things easy for me, relatively easy. One of the things that we took on after already having a full-time set of duties was sort of leading the interdepartmental effort, the team working on the enforcement of the vacant buildings registration ordinance. And last time I gave you a city solicitor update, we talked about some of the successes that we've had this year, in increased numbers of registrations as a result of the team's efforts, increased numbers of properties that get off the vacant property haven't gotten off the vacant property list this year. And this year, it included enforcement of that in either potential or court actions and those actions have had successful results. The idea of my department hasn't really made any significant requests for changes since I've been here but I do have two requests on in the budget this year so one of the requests is a request for an additional attorney that attorney would be the idea being that attorney would be focused on that multi-departmental team and the enforcement effort the goal of the enforcement efforts is to reduce the number of vacant buildings in the city increase the city's available residential housing and improve the sustainability of the city's income tax base and so we have looked at some of the other comparable cities and looks like we fall below what the other cities use in terms of attorneys. Portland has six in-house attorneys and two in-house paralegals doing their work that are exclusively used for their municipal work. Augusta actually has six or seven attorneys that are outsourced as well. But Augusta has a little probably a little bit more legal work due to where they are waterville has three attorneys that they use auburn has three attorneys that they use lewiston has four plus attorneys so that 's one of the big differences in the proposed budget for legal is a request for an additional attorney that would be focused mainly on the on the enforcement operation the goal of the multi-level team the other big request that we made this year is for an additional part-time legal assistant. When there actually has been a rising demand for the legal department's efforts, ongoing increased number of full requests, increased number of requests in general, we've increased the litigation that goes on and but for and the legal assistant that we have is 25 hours a week, but she is overly qualified and terrific. I believe Carolyn referred to as a unicorn and that I don't know that we would find someone else like her if we went out to the marketplace and looked, but when she's not here, the attorneys have to, they were required to perform time-consuming administrative tasks during those times. And I don't think those tasks are not the highest and best use of the attorney's time and skills and competencies. And so we've made the request for a 20 hour a week part-time legal assistant. The other program request are made for the FOA software that would be needed to increase efficiency, see improve accuracy, reduce staff's time spent on responding to requests, elevate compliance, mitigate risk, improve public trust, ensure security and streamline records request management. That I know that was something that the council showed interest in the last time that we talked about that. So that is that is built in as one of the requests. And those are the really the only three areas where we have requests and places where the budget is different than it has been in the other years. Since I've been here,
[38:18] Carollynn Lear: I might jump in because I do feel bad because I think the new lawyer may have originated with me. And I think Dave would say that he would probably prioritize the new legal assistant and the software over the lawyer. So I do want to say that out loud for his benefit. I also want to make a pitch for the new lawyer as it relates to property taxes, because there's really two ways to reduce property tax rates. You can either reduce your budget or you can increase your property tax base by either creating new properties or increasing the value of properties. And I see the focus on vacant buildings and dilapidated properties and code enforcement issues to all relate very strongly to the property tax base and increasing the value of our property tax base. I don't think there's a way to give you a straight line calculation of if you hired a new lawyer you would see this much additional value over a course of time such that we could say it would pay for itself with confidence, but I do think that investments like this towards increasing the property tax base overall is good for the community.
[39:42] Phil Drew: Thank you for articulating that.
[39:49] David Szewczyk: So are there any questions?
[39:57] Michael Beck: On the part-time, would that offset any of the costs that go into outsourcing, like when Board of Ethics has questions and it has to be researched, having someone in-house part-time would that be work they would pick up or is that something we still have to outsource?
[40:15] David Szewczyk: That would be, I mean, there could be less outsourcing because they're doing the administrative tasks that Grace and I are doing when we don't have an assistant here. The ratio of legal assistant to attorneys is so the legal assistant is doing both legal assistant type work and also administrative secretarial tasks, and to have coverage during those hours when we don't have coverage would be essential and freeing us up to do other things that are things that are more lawyer like to be doing and that I think that would reduce outsourcing.
[40:58] Michael Beck: Yeah. When we outsource, we're paying a premium, whereas we'd rather do it in the house. And then the other question I have, I know we can't calculate, although it would be nice to get an idea of what the lawyer would do. Because I mean, everyone knows what the possible increase to the overall tax bill is going to be. And at the end of the day, we have to sell this to the public and if there's something we can tell them, you know, I mean, I agree on this, hey, you know, the more properties we activate, more people pay taxes, but we don't know how much or even a ballpark, and you know, are we losing money in the long run? I'm asking someone to pay 800 bucks a month or a year in additional taxes, that's gonna be a tough sell, so I guess that would be one day kind of hear more about it, even any kind of projection we can come up with the baseline, you know, here's the work we've done so far, because of those spreadsheets, we get a great, let's say, look at all the properties we took off. And, you know, even we could just say, hey, by adding this additional lawyer, you know, it's possible, we could, you know, bring up X number of properties off that list additional, you know, and depending on what properties they pick, this is the kind of tax means it could be, you know, no one's gonna hold anyone's feet to the fire, it has to be to the penny. But when we're all done, we're putting the bow on this thing we have to sell it to the public. I just want to be able to tell a good story we can
[42:22] Carollynn Lear: put our heads together and try to come up with something knowing that it won't be you know exact
[42:28] Phil Drew: right in
[42:32] Susan Hawes: this year alone we've added tests to the legal department quite frequently anytime we've wanted an ordinance reviewed or somebody wants a new ordinance or whatever the council decided they wanted it reviewed first by legal before it came to us to talk about and potentially vote on it. So that alone are things that would you keep those in your control or would you divvy that up with a new attorney? What would your choice? You still
[43:06] David Szewczyk: go to meetings. The new attorney would have a focus on the team of the vacant property enforcement, but that doesn't mean the new attorney wouldn't do some of the other things as well. And so it would ease up a bit on yeah, I think that would be it would be a well I'm getting
[43:26] Susan Hawes: a sense that we have filled your plate quite well this year. So yes, I was wondering if you need another plate. Are you going to divvy that up or just as can't just catch him after the enforcement
[43:40] David Szewczyk: We would divvy that up. I mean, I think that the we'd be in a particularly good position for me to be able to supervise the litigation on any enforcement efforts on the vacant property registration effort. And the going to court because I those are those are areas land use enforcement and litigation is something that I've been doing for a very long time. So I think being able to distribute that work would be we're pretty well set up with the people we have now to be able to administer the
[44:23] Susan Hawes: additional work that keeps coming in. I know the legal updates have been more frequent, which is helpful for us as a council to what is out there that's in litigation, what are you working on, where are we at. So to continue that would be helpful as well. All right, any other questions
[44:53] Carollynn Lear: All right, so next up we're gonna move on to the executive. Courtney O'Donnell, Assistant City Manager. All right, so the executive, this budget incorporates not only the city manager's budget but also a number of internal services divisions as well. And so it is approximately 16 positions. And as you all know, city manager's office is kept quite busy, whether that is facilitating council priorities and ordinances and other things that come down through your actions, but also communications to the public. Of course, Carolyn as a city manager oversees all the other departments, and so that's the executive department in a nutshell. So a little bit about the divisions under executive include central services, which is our in-house print shop, as well as IT, which is new this year. It formerly was in finance and is now under executive, as well as risk and safety. So that covers things like workers' comp, safety and training, as well as insurance, and then human resources as well, which also encompasses labor, as well as employee relations, from everything from benefits to orientation and training, as well as investigations and things like that. Should introduce our friends from the executive. Oh, sure. Yeah. So in the audience is Rich Cromwell, our HR director, newly appointed. So that's very exciting. As well as Walter Ryan, our print shop foreman, as well. And Jeff Courtney, our director of IT. And they are prepared to come to the table and answer specific questions if needed. But so we thank them for taking the time to come here tonight. And so some goals and priorities for the executive office, I think high on our priority list is communications, especially as it relates to public facing. And I think Manager Lear also would like to formalize an actual communications plan as well. And we actually restructured a little bit within the city manager's office, so we have separated Dave Warren, our formerly administrative and communications manager, to just focus on communications, and we recently hired an office manager to take on all of The administrative duties of the office, so hopefully separating that out actually better facilitates moving in that direction to formalize more strategic communications plan moving forward. We're also evaluating organizational structure. I think that's actually reflected a little bit in the budget as well, especially with the new program requests and things like that. But I think the biggest piece of this, and I think this was touched on in a previous meeting, has to do with technology. So as you all know, in previous budget cycles we had requested funding for an HRIS system, also called the human resources information system. As you know, we have over 600 employees, 13 collective bargaining units, but we do not have an actual system where people can go in, employees, and actually look at their benefits and their paycheck and, you know, see what trainings they need to do and things like that. Is also pretty heavily paper-based. The other side of that is our financial system, of course, that is toward end of life as well and really needs to be replaced, and that kind of led to the conversation around a more robust sort of technology system that could do more of an ERP level. So enterprise resource system where it might do the financial, but also HRIS, potentially asset management and other features depending on our needs. And so I think that's a high priority for the executive office over the next year. Other than that, HR continues to chip away with updating personnel rules and regs and things like that. They'll obviously play them and it will play a really big part in that technology system in implementing that. And risk and safety, actually we just last August we hired a new risk and safety manager, and he now, he's been with us about eight or nine months and he's really gotten his feet under him and is doing really well in that role, so that's fantastic. Other than that, I'm happy to answer questions, but I can move on to the new program requests if that makes sense. Yeah, awesome, please, HRs. Yeah, would that help with payroll as well? Yes, it would, and time keeping and all sorts of globally things and data. I mean, I think there are lots of times where we wish we had no quality data to delve into various personnel internal type questions and right, a system like that would help as well. Thank you. Yeah, all right, so the first three new program request forms in your book are related essential services. Two of them are pieces of equipment. The first is a flatbed die eye cutter, the cost is 35,000. And the other is a wide format eco printer with a cost of 15,000. And the third is actually it's called a print MIS system. And that's a replacement of existing software. So these three items are, you know, the right now, Central Services has to outsource a number of print jobs. And so bringing our are purchasing excuse me these pieces of equipment would allow them to bring that back in-house which would see future savings. It would take a few years to see those savings but the life of the equipment exceeds that and overall the cost is fairly minimal. You know I oh I should mention actually it's not just the city that utilizes central services it's also school department so Walter is very busy during election season for early so in particular but also back to school season for a school department as well and he has some pretty cool things that he's able to do. In fact a lot of the signage here on the first floor it was made by Walter the all the signage directing folks that stick to the wall that was all made in so it's very convenient. He has a fast turnaround time he also can help with design and things like that as well particularly for areas that might not have somebody assigned in their area that can do that stuff so you can print your budget books yes efficiently yes and so that's the first three the other two are for it i'm sorry there's one more after that but i'll let carolyn mention that one. The next two are for it specifically so actually let me just ask is there anything around central services you
[52:47] Michael Beck: have questions about or anything. Yeah so on the first one for the die cutter yep this says six thousand and ten thousand each year is that just the invoice cost. I wonder if you're also you're also saving on someone having to go pick it up if there's a misprint the quality control i'm going to go back and do it so i'm wondering if you're are you is that all you're saying are
[53:08] Carollynn Lear: you with even more sorry walter will come up to the table i'm sure he'd be happy to answer that question for you thank you okay good evening everyone walter bryant central services
[53:22] Michael Beck: so if you would repeat that since i had photo share so i was looking you know the savings of six thousand ten thousand each year i'm just wondering if that's just the invoice like what we pay out or does it also factor in someone from staff has to go back up if they misprint it we have to go back like a staff time also calculated in that six to ten thousand percent
[53:42] David Szewczyk: Some of it is because some of you already know I'm the only one in that in that position, there is nobody helping me, so yes, this will definitely help me in that as well. This is also looking at the fact like special stocks that I have to order, like folder stocks that we use for the first day packets for the school department, any of the boxes we use for your business cards, your letterheads, those will be able to be made in-house too. So we're actually eliminating some of the stocks and getting that getting the core substrate basically to come inside and that machine will be able to handle all of that. It will also be able to help mailings like we've done in the past for like the airport. The airport had a special cargo thing about three years ago I believe it was, and that die cut actually costs extra money on its own, and we only used it once, and I think that was like two or three hundred dollars, and then we still had to some have somebody outside do that. This machine would also eliminate the cost of any die cuts that we would have to buy because it's all software driven, so this will yeah.
[54:54] Michael Beck: So this won't pay for itself, and then on the software is the 8000 is set up, that's just the one-time cost, and then to set it up, yes, okay, you know, and then it looks like the staff time will be saved, so that will pay for itself. And then for the last one I think it's kind of the same kind of question, the five to seven thousand saving each year, you know, invoice cost versus, it's clear that like to me the quality control having that in the house is a big piece, you know, that you know the time to save staff, you know, you yes, and but also improves the turnaround time and again
[55:28] David Szewczyk: end face for itself, so correct, and there'll be a, it also not just on that turnaround, like in some of the things that she was talking about, the signs that are inside, some of the other signs that we've done were actually for elections, so any of the election signs that you see outside that have the nice red and white blue and has the paneling in the background, that was all printed by me and working in conjunction with our sign shop. The problem is that substrate that we used, if we were to leave it out 24 7 because of the type of printer we have right now that would appear that would direct sun it would have disappeared in about four months but because it's only being used for elections we're getting six eight ten years out of it so with this eco with the eco printer we're actually going to have a UV resistant ink which will make everything last longer and then in cases like those signs when we add a UV resistant laminate on top of it will double if not triple the lifetime of our signs
[56:37] Daniel Carson: very helpful when they're outside I'm curious on the life of a piece of equipment what that looks like? And the typical maintenance costs over the level?
[56:52] David Szewczyk: A lifespan right now as it has been shown to me is about 15 to 20 years. I've had machines last actually longer than that currently in the shop like our mail insert, which actually outlive the manufacturer of the machine. The maintenance on that side, most of it can be handled in house by me. It would come down to like the wear and tear items like the perf and the scoring blades that would be needed. And that's kind of minimal, you're only looking at depending on the workflow
[57:34] Joseph Leonard: anywhere between 200 $500 every couple of years. thank you thank
[57:45] Susan Hawes: you
[57:49] Carollynn Lear: all you're welcome well i appreciate it i should have mentioned walt's a long time employee how long have you worked in the print shop well you have to come back
[57:58] David Szewczyk: this way though i've been with the city for 20 just about 23 years now and i've been in the printing industry since 1992.
[58:09] Carollynn Lear: yeah well it was one of the most passionate city employees I think I, know, really does a great job. Thank you. All right. Okay. So, moving on the other two new program requests are for two position two additional positions in it. So, right now, we have the IT director, Jeff Courtney and then he has five it staff that's support the entire city there 's a dedicated tech for airport as well as a tech that's based in city hall that kind of pinch hits for the rest of the departments and public safety shares one as well and then there's a database administrator and network administrator i was so close and so these two new positions in fact i'm just gonna have jeff portney the i.t director come up preemptively the Therefore, cyber security analyst and a cloud security analyst, as you might imagine, like the cyber security in particular is becoming a really big issue, particularly with our airport. There's a lot of directives coming down through that eat up a lot of staff resources and time to make sure that we're in compliance and that we are safe, if you will, and secure on the cyber side. Cloud security, I think it's kind of similar, right?
[59:48] Joseph Leonard: It is in a lot of ways. A lot of our environment is switching to the cloud. We're using Microsoft Office 365, Adobe, a lot of our backups, a lot of things are put out into the cloud and it eats up a lot of staff time managing that, keeping it safe. And that eliminates the need for us to kind of work in other areas and help other departments so
[1:00:11] Carollynn Lear: we're I think this would not only help offset like the current need but it will also help us be more proactive moving forward in regard to where we're at and
[1:00:22] Phil Drew: where we need to go so that's all right I don't have any questions I just want to say that
[1:00:30] Joseph Leonard: that proactive piece is actually very important because so much is going to change very soon across any type of conversation regarding information technology securities so securing our data is one of the most important things I think we can do in the sense of city right now especially when we don't know what's going to come down the pipeline with future evolutions of technologies obviously we're not right now but no I don't need any more any convincing on these two positions they're absolutely necessary I would encourage you
[1:01:09] Carollynn Lear: to ask a couple of department heads if they think they need additional I.T support as well because it's a famine situation right now as far as you know if there are adequate I.T right services yeah not because Jeff is doing a bad job the need is so high yeah we have five
[1:01:32] Joseph Leonard: five staff members that support you know 620 computer users that have the ability to log into a city system and we support almost 500 PCs mobile PCs tablets phones devices that staff needs
[1:01:48] Carollynn Lear: to do to do their job right not to mention the various projects and things that you know each department and their specific needs rely on IT support for as well and again especially with rolling out like new city-wide technology it is going to be heavily involved in that project as
[1:02:07] Susan Hawes: well councilman you have a question and then council dean the only question I had was I
[1:02:14] Wayne Mallar: noticed we're giving I mean we're giving the airport is using a lot of services is that in
[1:02:21] Susan Hawes: Do we get support from them through building or what? Yes, so actually the dedicated tech
[1:02:28] Carollynn Lear: tech is actually paid for by the airport for them, that is true, yes, and then there's overhead
[1:02:33] Susan Hawes: as well that's built to the airport, so yes, that's a good question. The cost really isn't 129 to the city because part of it's coming out of the app, is that correct? That's a, that's a can of worms, so
[1:02:49] Carollynn Lear: So the way that we apply, so we do charge the airport and the other enterprise funds a fee for sort of administrative services, HR, IT, finance, or bar time via a formula, all the ICAP formula. And I could not tell you what the acronym off the top of my head stands for. We really need to update the ICAP formula. formula it has not been updated for quite some time and so yes in theory the airport pays their portion but until we update that formula to incorporate new positions there they would not
[1:03:35] Wayne Mallar: well now is not this the time if this is going to be specific to the airport to just assign the
[1:03:42] Carollynn Lear: these positions will not be specific to the airport right there is a dedicated tech to the airport but these positions are separate from that
[1:03:53] Wayne Mallar: but a portion of that well that's fine I guess you know I've confused the issue now oh it is
[1:04:01] Carollynn Lear: a high priority for me to update the formula I will say that I think we need to have that updated to reflect yeah city cost it will not be a small or easy task however it will be very complex right and you are right council maller and that certainly like i mean we say it right in this new program request for the cloud security analysts that you know that they would be assisting like airport even wastewater which of course both of those are enterprise accounts so to manager lear's point yeah we definitely need to relook at that make sure i might be able to
[1:04:33] Joseph Leonard: help a little bit with some of that clarification a lot of the time the airport tech will reach out to like our network administrator saying i need to have this gate to have computer access so he wouldn't be able to do that the tech would call a network operations person and he would take care of that change i envision the same thing happening with like the cyber if he has a need for cyber access he would reach out to staff here to help and assist him in doing that
[1:04:56] Wayne Mallar: task i'm not concerned about that i'm only concerned about the fact that they make more money than we do and they can afford to pay more yeah i know where
[1:05:06] Susan Deane: You're going with that? Yeah, yes. My question, I think we discussed this at a prior meeting, but is there any way to combine the two positions into one, at least for a year or two, to keep the budget
[1:05:21] Carollynn Lear: down? Or they can be a separate position. It's a great question. I didn't really think about it in
[1:05:27] Joseph Leonard: that. Certainly we could. We do a lot of cross training with our staff so that, you know, the network person can do database and vice versa. I think in the short term we probably could. Your future, maybe a year or two, we would have to go separate those just because things are going to be changing so quickly and rapidly. Yeah.
[1:05:55] Susan Hawes: So
[1:05:58] Michael Beck: we talked about, you know, servicing department heads in that regard. Talk to us a little bit about the cycle security piece of it. Have we seen an increase in attacks, and also what kind of risks are we facing if we're not adequately staffed and being proactive about our security? Yeah, we see almost a hundred
[1:06:21] Joseph Leonard: thousand cyber incidents, you know, attacks on our network a day. It's, it's staggering. Back in 2021, TSA immediately got us prompting to look at cyber security. They came up with basically an incident response plan that we had to have by 2024. So the airport worked with the consultant, we worked with the consultant to come up with this incident response plan, and that's a template that we've been using that we're going to roll out to the rest of the city as we start to look at areas of infrastructure like wastewater treatment, public safety, community transit, all those things are going to be looked at. But in 2024 we completed that plan, we submitted the TSA, we had a passing grade. But since then we've done a tabletop exercise, we've done a penetration test where we hire a firm to kind of attack our network and look where our vulnerabilities are, both internally and externally, and then we're looking at, again, we have another audit coming through for the TSA in June of this year, and I envision that the results from that will kind of lead us into where we're going to go for the other areas in the city. We've also been working with MMA and a company called Google Mandiant who's been helping us to look at smaller communities basically. Communities less than 30,000 or under 50,000, and they've been working with us, and we've got a meeting next week with them to come up with an incident response plan for a municipality, not necessarily an airport or something like that. So we've been working with the MMA with that, Matt, and a company called Google Mandiant who does it all across the country, and their hope is by the end of the summer that we're going to have this incident response plan that we can roll out not only to the state and MMA that they can use for other municipalities, but they can use it in the country, throughout the country, with Google as a partner with it.
[1:08:13] Michael Beck: Okay. I attended an MMA conference and they put us through some emergency scenarios, and the one I got hated was you got, you know, these three, you know, scenarios happen with the flood, the weather, and then by the way, you got hacked and there's a ransomware and you're completely locked out of your system. And I said, that's preposterous. And they're like, no, I actually have been here,, here, and here. And now it's like, that's what makes me lose sleep at night of, I guess I'd rather pay 129,000 to get somebody rather than multi millions to be able to get back into our systems. So.
[1:08:46] Joseph Leonard: Yeah, we have a piece of software right now that we have one of our, analysts look at every morning to kind of look at where we've had attacks, where we're getting you know hits from throughout the world, and how we can shut those off, and it's notifications and emails. It's at least once a week that we have to do some sort of plan to ship things around and shut things off, it's it's staggering the number of things that are out there.
[1:09:11] Carollynn Lear: Yeah, the other piece too around tech is, you know, technology is evolving at such a rapid pace now more than ever, and just trying to keep up with that and also deal with the day-to-day needs of the airport. Like somebody's computer's not working, right, like that prevents them from working so IT needs to respond quickly. Meanwhile they're doing all this other work on the back end to and so definitely to Jeff's earlier point should we combine them yes and certainly we will that's what we're directed to do but it would be a short-term sort of progress and we would be back again asking for that additional full-time position just so again we can get back to be more proactive instead of reactive in various ways if
[1:10:06] Susan Hawes: You don't combine them though, or even if you do combine them, your workload is going to increase regardless because you're the only one that's going to have knowledge on everything else, so other things are going to go unnoticed or untouched for several days, maybe, if we have just a combined position. And to me, from what I know about cloud security and cyber security, I think that's really a lot to put into one position and expect to have good coverage for that. That so I would, I would be in favor of the two positions separately, but yes, counselor, just to
[1:10:54] Joseph Leonard: piggyback off of that as well, I'm sorry to give you bad names, but it's very likely if you were to put both of those positions forward, they would almost certainly be wearing two hats very soon in the future anyway, so I think this action is going to help us a long run
[1:11:08] Carollynn Lear: More guys and, oh sorry, happy to answer any other questions. Do you have another question?
[1:11:17] Wayne Mallar: Yeah, I have another question. Just for cost saving as far as the city's concerned, seems to me the logic would be to make decisions fully to the airport noted
[1:11:30] Carollynn Lear: Also I would be remiss not to mention that Jeff is also a long time city employee and he does a great job. In fact, he kind of undersold MMA piece a little bit. In fact, he was reached out to as kind of an expert in that area because he and his team had kind of been more forward through that airport process in his more cutting edge, if you will, in comparison to a lot of other municipalities in Maine. So we have a good team trying to fly under the radar. If you don't notice us, we're doing our job. Yeah. Actually I would argue that's, that's internal services
[1:12:08] Susan Hawes: in general, but yeah, any other questions before we move on? Awesome, thank you. Thank you.
[1:12:20] Carollynn Lear: and then the last one i'm going to turn over to manage earlier so the final position that you have in your packet under the executive department is an emergency manager role and you also have a somewhat lengthy memo in your budget packet i will take no credit for that memo even though my name is at the top of it was primarily the work product of chief lowe i would say when i joined the city one of the first conversations i had with jeff was all right work walk me through our emergency management plan. When are we going to schedule tabletop exercises? You know, where's our alternative location if city hall goes down? Where do we move our operations? What are our top 10 critical, you know, must perform functions for the city? And I think because up to this point, emergency management has been a corollary duty to our fire chief, he has struggled to manage the focus required to have an effective fire department and a happy staff there, fulfilled, trained, managed staff, while concurrently managing the emergency response functions and responsibilities for what is a pretty complex city. Although 30,000, 32,000 isn't enormous as cities go. We have two major event venues. We have the most important medical facility for the, you know, northern half of the state. We have a railroad. We have an airport. And so from an emergency management perspective, we are a pretty complex city. And Counselor Beck, you said it keeps you up at night. This is what keeps me up at night, is the possibility of some sort of major event happening within the city and not having the clearest, most effective response. You know, we certainly had some emergencies recently, primarily at the airport. But that was a pretty self contained incident. Incident, something much broader within the city, either geographically or with the number of individuals impacted, you know, I don't get the warm and fuzzy feelings about our level of preparedness for something like that. We would, we would get through it. We would do what we had to do, but I would feel better if we had someone within the city who their responsibility was to make sure that we were prepared for emergency situations. I think another challenge with emergency management is that, you know, I've started to delve into some of the mandatory emergency management trainings that I have to take as city manager, and it's very clear that one of the primary tenants of emergency management is having a very clear leader in that scenario. And because emergency management lives with the fire chief, who is a peer to many of the other responding agencies, police, airport, public health, I think there are also some structural challenges with the fact that we have emergency management led by the fire chief. Were we to hire an emergency manager,, that position would report directly to me as opposed to being a peer of the other department heads. I guess with that, I would be happy to answer questions. However, I would like to engage in this conversation again when we talk about the fire chief's budget and have him here, because a lot of the technical analysis that you had in that memo is really something that he's expert in, and I'm sort of relying on his expertise and bringing this recommendation to you. But if it were to be improved, it would live in the city managers budget.
[1:16:57] Joseph Leonard: I was just gonna say really quickly that I that they for mentioning that with the second conversation with Chief Lowe, because I would very much like to hear his perspective on this as well, because we can obviously make the case that after two pretty major plane crashes and of course the complexity of our city as well like the need obviously is there to Echo what counselor Beck said earlier, but we do have to sell this stuff as well, and so not everyone usually sees safety and security as a thing like where's my return on investment for being safer having an emergency response, so I guess that's the only thing that I would say with the upcoming conversation is definitely be prepared to showcase like what happens when we don't have an emergency coordinator or manager I'm sorry, and what happens in a scenario a very likely you could face as a city especially due to all the varying things that we're dealing with right now in these tumultuous times, so that's all I would really say is I 'm looking forward to that next conversation because I would have more questions
[1:18:13] Susan Deane: I would want to ask as well, that's okay yes I think this is an extremely important position, but I'm also looking at Bangor as a service center, and I think the other communities are going to look to Bangor, and if we have this position I believe would be utilized by more than just bangor, do we have any way to perhaps bring down the cost with any federal funding state funding community involvement at least maybe the you know ponoska, yeah i just think that this is much more far-reaching than just bangor and once again we're going to be picking up the
[1:18:51] Carollynn Lear: cost for everything agreed and i sort of debated bringing this one forward to you this budget year but I thought it was good to talk about regardless of whether it gets funded or not I think it's really a really important conversation one of the reasons that I didn't bring it forward is because I do feel like or I know that there's a ton of grant funding available in this space for emergency response operations both from the feds and from the state level we haven't gotten to the point yet of having a good understanding of if we were to stand up this position is there any way we could cover salaries and benefits in total or in part with grant funding so more work to do there and i actually think chief lowe is sort of doing more research on that as we speak that's
[1:19:52] Daniel Carson: So Carson, I want to express this is when people talk about the I'm with you, this is what keeps me up at night, as a city. Thinking about I mean, there's hundreds of things that could happen that involve multiple residents that require an emergency response plan and I think I mean it's not just a position like this that can that can dive into that but I really need that expert to help us to determine if our policy environment supports an appropriate emergency response plan I mean there's tons of conversations I can think of and I think probably lots of examples across the country in my lifetime of failed responses from governments at all level in emergencies. Hurricane Katrina comes to mind. We dream about that a lot. But even to the point, we don't even have, I think, data available on what would happen in scenarios if we lost taxable property. If we have a giant flood and we permanently lose property, what does that do to our base? what does that do to our finances and that's often a huge piece that cities miss when they're preparing for emergencies or trying to recover from them so i mean i can see a million benefits to something like this but i also to councillor dean's point agree that this would be something that would be utilized by multiple communities councilor
[1:21:29] Susan Hawes: miller and the council back the
[1:21:31] Wayne Mallar: The question I have is, what services of this type does the county provide?
[1:21:39] Carollynn Lear: Yeah, I mean, I think if an emergency situations, we would call upon the county. I think we should talk about this more with Jeff Lowe, so you can hear it from the horse's mouth. But I think Jeff would say that they are probably most equipped to respond to the smaller communities and probably haven't established a level of preparedness to respond to a bank or city major issue and that we would probably instead be relying upon the state emergency management agency.
[1:22:17] Wayne Mallar: Could we work with the state or does it have to go through the county?
[1:22:22] Carolyn Fish: That's a good question, yeah.
[1:22:24] Wayne Mallar: And the other thing is I believe the county is the one that does all the contracts for mutual aid for the fire department. I don't believe there's a mutual aid contract EMS county-wide. Interesting, also a good Jeff question, I.
[1:22:44] Michael Beck: Like the conversation, find a way to share the cost regionally. Yeah, I think that makes sense, but also I think about too is that this is a position I don't think we've had in Bangor, and I wonder about, you know, this is we run into a lot of institutional memory issues. Yeah, and this is something we'd have to continue to pay for each year with one person. Eventually they either get poached by another community, the door goes, and I'm wondering, and this may be a chief question, but an alternative at least. In the meantime is about getting a consultant that specializes in this and help us create in a case of emergency break the glass kind of thing that God forbid we have a situation that we can at least, you know, crack open and say, okay, here's the steps to get you started, you know, in some scenarios. I don't know what that would cost, but at least it'd be, it would be a living document, but at least be something that we would hold on to that whether we have this position or not, you know, at least you. Know we have a starting place on these.
[1:23:39] Carollynn Lear: Things we do have an emergency plan, it's, it's probably this thick. I think the challenge is once created, it does need to be a living document, and so you do have to be continually updating it. And you do have to have someone who's responsible for organizing exercises and offering trainings when new staff come on. I think that's the missing piece there, that there's no one who has the bandwidth to carry what we have in such a way that it's an actually useful, informative tool.
[1:24:14] Susan Hawes: It appears that Chief Lowe is really fortunate that we have him at this time when you're needing to look at this plan because he's done a lot of that in his other positions and he teaches and he's well-versed in emergency management, so we should be able to get a good call.
[1:24:38] Carollynn Lear: So more to come on that when he joins us, he'll be very excited to talk about it.
[1:24:42] Susan Hawes: Oh yeah. Any other questions? Thank
[1:24:47] Carolyn Fish: you. All right. I guess we wanted to talk council budget quickly. Is that? Yes.
[1:24:53] Carollynn Lear: Oh, right. Because that's in governance, isn't it? Yes. Yeah. The council budget is, it's pretty minimal as you know and it largely covers yeah and so it encompasses things like for two counselors to go to NLC it also allows for various trainings for you guys to take advantage of both in-state and online as well based on interests one thing we did want to chat about was food i think yeah go ahead so we purchase a very small amount of food for council meeting nights and currently the vast majority of that food becomes several employees lunches the following day and so we were interested in gauging your interest in discontinuing the process of purchasing pizza or sandwiches, instead going to sort of snacks, prepackaged snacks, crackers, chips, nuts, those sorts of things. It will not say, it will not reduce the tax rate of eating full amount, unfortunately, but it will be saved money.
[1:26:23] Susan Hawes: For a very long time, it's been talked about for that same thing, year after year after year we have the food on council night we run out of time you've got maybe five minutes down food doesn't get touched and it's not just this council it's many behind us and there's people up there going -huh they saw it as well so if it's just being purchased to no offense but buy lunch for the staff the next day i'm not sure that's what is being it's not being used
[1:26:57] Carollynn Lear: usefully so and i would just add to that we would always like actually make sure i've noticed like committee nights are going longer too so we have a little snack area out back too in case somebody's feeling like really peckish and needs food but the question is to counselor house point is whether or not you need like a full meal on council nights might be after the
[1:27:22] Susan Deane: snacks yeah because there are times you don't think we need it yeah worked all day and you're rushing here and you've had nothing to eat you go late it can be a lot now on council orientations
[1:27:34] Susan Hawes: That's different, yes. That has always been used, eaten, and appreciated because it's a longer session. But right, just for a council meeting, an awful lot goes to waste. So actually
[1:27:52] Carollynn Lear: That would allow us to, I think, pretty much keep the City Council budget flat, which is good. [Susan Hawes: I actually,] despite the fact that Stephanie is not here, just to keep things moving, I'm going to go through the finance budget. Budget. So the accomplishments for finance primarily are filling the all of the vacant positions that have existed within finance. Right at this moment is fully staffed. I was actually looking at the roster of staff though, and there is only one person in the finance department that was here about a year ago. So that's a lot of staff turnover. That's a loss of a lot of institutional knowledge. That's a lot of training happening. And as a result, I will be blunt and transparent. We are not seeing the progress that we hoped we would in all of the catch-up work that has needed to happen due to those many years of understaffing. The goals all remain the same, catching up on the audit and becoming more timely, improving the procurement process to be more modern and efficient, providing you all better are more frequent and finally financial information so that you can monitor city operations, but progress has been slow for those reasons. For the finance budget, the finances budget is driven by the things that we've already talked about. It's wages, it's health insurance, finances. Because of all that turnover and because when you hire people you typically hire them at a lower salary level than the 10 year person's left, actually hasn't seen the increase in wages that you might expect, but they are still seeing a decrease due to all of those factors. But we are asking for a new position in finance. And I would put this much like the positions that Lisa talked about. out this is something that we need just to provide the baseline of what you expect of us in the finance department. So in the finance department there is a director and deputy director, there's someone who's responsible for payroll, there's someone who's responsible for the procurement process, there's a clerk, and then there is one staff that is the one person who has been here for longer than a year, and you would not have this budget book if she was not here, because she was the only person who had The institutional knowledge and experience to get us through the budget process. I would probably faint if I knew how many hours of overtime she worked to make this budget book happen. And we need one more of her. We need one more of her so she doesn't have to work overtime, you know, 12 months out of the year to perform the basic financial functions of the city. But also from a continuity of operations standpoint, we need overlap because that position is truly critical to the budget process and the financial audit process. So that's my pitch for that position. Okay, questions. I would be supportive
[1:31:59] Joseph Leonard: of that position. I do have a general follow-up question for finance. I swear I will not bring up artificial intelligence throughout the entire budget process. I know that finance in particular, is something that is very much creeping into finance as a whole, being utilized as unfortunately replacing employees as well in other departments. And I want to be very clear, that's not what I'm recommending at all, can't replace a junior employee. Mike, I do have thoughts on how much of the finance department right now is of the understanding that artificial intelligence really is creeping into finances as a whole and how much of that is, how much of an individual person's in finances time is being used to better get to know or even be trained on these potential tricks and trades of what financing can be with the assistance of a AI helper.
[1:33:10] Carollynn Lear: I'm going to be a little bit glib. That our folks aren't thinking about AI because they're essentially using an abacus to do their work. So I think a fundamental component of the conversation for a new finance and HRIS system is, are there functions and tools within that system that will help staff leverage AI in a responsible way to do their work more efficiently. We don't even have the tools to do that now because we're operating a system that's end of life that was built decades ago. So no, they're not thinking about it or using it. I think the, undoubtedly the products that are on the market today day, are coming standard with responsible AI capabilities. And so a new product will inevitably force staff to start thinking about learning and using those tools.
[1:34:22] Joseph Leonard: Okay. Thank you for that update.
[1:34:25] Michael Beck: So if I'm understanding correctly, one of the big reasons for having this additional, the finance department has just been gutted, and institutional memory just doesn't exist. And no matter how many people you try to put together at it, if we don't have the full source of knowledge, it's just not going to get done any faster. My question is this, is one, with us getting new software, does this also result in system changes where we can retain institutional memory, whether it's, you know, we don't, it doesn't walk out the door every time. I absolutely, I mean,
[1:34:59] Carollynn Lear: I think if you were to sit down next to Stephanie or another member of finance, the number of workarounds that they have to perform and have to know to perform to operate effectively in our current system is astounding, and it's inefficient. It takes them more time because they have to do these workarounds, but it's also not recreatable. And so when a finance director leaves with all the knowledge of how to operate within the system effectively, it's a struggle for someone like Stephanie to sit down at the computer and say, okay, I need this information. I should be able to click here and get it. But you have to know, well, actually you have to go here, add this line to this line and do some math to get the real answer. It's challenging.
[1:35:51] Michael Beck: And my other question that would be, being that our channels are what they are right now, do you see this as a temporary addition, you know, we're eventually, we would be able to downsize that position in the future once we're in a place where you, we've got the software happy worth where it's at, you know, turnover doesn't hurt us as bad, you know, would we ever be able to contract? It's hard to know because we
[1:36:19] Carollynn Lear: we are so far, in my opinion, we are so far at this moment from providing the baseline of what we should be in a timely fashion that it feels wild to even consider that we'd be in a place where we would be shedding a position in finance. We would be years away from that, for sure.
[1:36:45] Michael Beck: Well, the reason why I bring it up is again, challenges with selling this to the public. Like I'm talking to folks who remind me, hey, you know, we're the same population in 1960, and they were able to do it with slide rules and IBM calculator. So what's, why are we having to hire all these people to do essentially the same thing? And I'm not in that department, and I don't get to see all of the hard work, and it is hard work. You know, just look in this budget book, and it's like, you know it's hard work. So it's like the more information too, as we go along, that we can really paint the picture that taxpayer of like this, you know, which is a great picture to show them of we really got hurt by terminal it really hurt us and it will function at that level it's do this or you know we're just going to continue to get farther and farther and farther behind the ball
[1:37:31] Carollynn Lear: Here yeah and I think the item I would add is I think we are on a trajectory where the public expects more information and transparency and I don't know that was necessarily true 30 years ago. And then concurrently, the complexity of the transactions and the number of transactions that they're monitoring through the finance department is pretty high, I think, compared to prior years. Not last year, but 30 years ago. And then the accounting standards and the audit standards that they're subject to on the back end have also only grown in complexity and sophistication
[1:38:21] Michael Beck: Let me just follow up because also I would imagine that a lot of the additional dudes again using that comparison before there's a lot of new state mandated things that we have to do and to that end you know now that we have a legislative committee I think maybe as we go along is that if we can identify those kind of things of hey these are things the state heaps on us you know to be able to push for some kind of legislation is there a way to get additional
[1:38:49] Carollynn Lear: Reimbursements and things yeah I think communicating the impact of unfunded mandates could be a fundamental yearly task of the legislative committee for sure
[1:39:05] Wayne Mallar: I do have a question no I'm not sure if I answered the question but you know I'm in agreement that it'd be nice to think we could get rid of that for a few years but if we don't accomplish that I mean we can't but I think with new software or a new program you're going to find a lot of new efficiencies I sure hope so any
[1:39:30] Susan Hawes: Other questions all right
[1:39:34] Carollynn Lear: Next on the list is other Agencies and for the most part I actually think we are going to defer much of this conversation to other departments because they're the experts in the topics the items on the other tab that I would highlight are the first line debt service you will see that we are projecting an increase to debt service very shortly after we get through this budget process you are going to see a package of bonds through to approve these will all be bonds that you've previously authorized in the budget that We're now going to go out and actually go to bond for, and so this number is increasing in anticipation of actually going out to bond for those amounts. So that's why that is increasing. We will talk about most of these other lines. Citywide dues, these are our dues to MMA, and then we also are members in the service center coalition, main service center coalition, and there is a hired lobbyist who lobbies for that group on our behalf as well as the other service center communities in Maine. And then we are also a member of the Maine Mayors Coalition, which is an even smaller group of the larger cities that have mayors. Although Belfast doesn't participate, it just occurred to me, and they have a mayor. We will talk about the Cultural Commission, Tourism and Marketing, the Snowmobile Club, all in other departments. Departments, but I would like to highlight the bottom line for you. That's where you'll see the increase in the amount of county taxes that we will collect. When that tax increase was first sort of discussed, I think we were estimating about a million impact to Bangor. It was slightly less. I believe it was 900. Yeah, 911,000 is how much we will raise additionally from bank or taxpayers. I'm going to note here, but we should probably defer the substantive conversation to the end of the budget process when we have sort of firmer numbers. I think there is a place to talk about the use of unassigned fund balance to offset some of that impact. I'm really hesitant because I think things like unassigned fund balance, the general idea is you use one-time money to pay for one-time expenses, and I don't know that we truly believe that this is a one-time expense coming from county taxes, but we're projecting right now, and there's a chart in the front of your book talking about that being in a pretty healthy position as it relates to the unassigned fund balance, and so I just think we should in the back of our minds think about how we want to use that in a way to reduce the tax burden that's
[1:43:00] Michael Beck: Okay, not to get into the weeds about the county tax thing, but at some point I want to put this in everyone's ear. I'd, I'd like to start talking to our fellow communities and talk about how do we bring them back in line. You know, this idea that, you know, your budget can get that out of whack because of, you know, surpluses running out and, you know, between the budget committee that they had asking them to make more cuts and they just kind of blew that off, you know, we're all hurting here and there's just no accountability for it and I feel like we have no, we have no voice in it. I know we're not the only committee upset about this and, you know, I'm sure we can, you know, invite the commissioners to come meet with us. They won't show up, but I just, there needs to be some kind of public reckoning for this because, you know, was it 16 point or in front of the one of the, I mean, it was a huge increase, you know, with all the problems they're having and then their own budgeting issues and it just gets kicked to us, you know, we're drowning here and, you know, we can take out a lot of issues for the county and then to have to pay that increased tax on top of it, you know, so I would like to see us get more vocal about it and carry that to the county.
[1:44:19] Daniel Carson: Just right now that I think the order for the legislative committee includes language that's broad enough that it would have the authority to do that liaising that was of the committee's interest.
[1:44:35] David Szewczyk: So
[1:44:39] Carolyn Fish: if there aren't any other questions
[1:44:40] Carollynn Lear: I think we're to our final section, which is the Bangalore Public Library.
[1:44:48] Carolyn Fish: So I will invite Ben Treat to the table.
[1:44:54] Unidentified speaker (library director): I saved the most exciting part last, I get it.
[1:44:59] Carollynn Lear: It is on the other tab, and then in your packet for today, the library did provide a couple I
[1:45:23] Unidentified speaker (library director): want to start with good news. I always like to talk about what's exciting at the library, so I just got news today that I can't say who it's going to be, but we have somebody really big coming to the Bangor Book Festival in December. So I don't want to steal the thunder of the non-profit that co-manages that, but it's somebody who has, you know, local elections but also national recognition, tv programs that have been developed from their work. It's gonna be a big draw and the reason I mentioned that start is first I heard it today. And second, when you look at I think it's page four of the document, you see the rising number of people, I have a double check the page number, but you see a rising number of what's much later, it's page five, yeah, the rising number of people actually attending the library. And those numbers don't go up just because of day to day, you started going up, the big push there is that we have lots of events that are bringing lots and lots of people into the library on a regular basis. So if you look at the numbers and say, well, what's driving that, what's happening there, it's not just that we're seeing small increases each year and the number of people who come day by day, but we're also seeing huge increases in the people who come for major events. And that's a big part of what we're trying to do now is I think the way to say it is look big, right, we want to actually look like we're as big as we are and have a big presence for people so they feel excited about all the things that we have to offer we want people really enthusiastic about coming out for arts culture science programming, all of the different kinds of programs we have. So that's that's a big emphasis we have right now is trying to get people out for major events, but also then bring them back through another thing that we do that's big is we have a lot of people who get library cards who are or regional, not just in Bangor. And the goal there is to get them to come back into downtown Bangor for events, right? So they might get a card because they commute and they want to have downloadable audio books. And if you don't already have a card and aren't using downloadable audio books, you ought to be doing it, 's great. Unless you don't like downloadable audio books and then just forget that I said that, but you know, but seriously, like that person who gets the card so that they can do downloadable audio books also gets our newsletter and they find out, oh so-and-so is coming at this event in December and then they're in downtown Bangor on a on a weekend in December and maybe that's where they're doing some of their Christmas shopping and so that's part of the goal that we have is to keep looping people back In get them for the audiobooks and bring them back in December, get them for the December event, and then get them to get a library card so that they keep getting the new letters. So our numbers show that we're getting that energy, we're getting that attendance. It's at all levels of the organization too, in terms of age level. Our team programming has doubled come over the past couple years compared to previous times and pre-covered times even. So we're seeing people of all ages and with all kinds of purposes coming into the library. So there's lots of good news. The part of how we have the goal of looking big is grant funding, right? It doesn't make sense for us to come and plan out a year's worth of programs and then ask you to pay the bill for that. 's not what we do. We're we're looking for the basic nuts and bolts funding to keep the library operating along with other resources like the state area reference and resource center money that the draw from our endowment annual giving that's that's more than a hundred thousand dollars that we receive from gifts of like 25 to $2,000, like it's all over the board. Aside from all of that and those revenue sources, we also go out and seek grant funding. And the reason that we're doing that, and you wouldn't see that on an operating budget report, it's because we don't put it in the operating budget. We seek the grant funding so we can do the program. And then it's money that was given for a specific purpose. So it shows up differently, not as typical operating budget. budget. We received we've received so far this year more than as the last page of the report that I've given you more than $20,000 in grants, 13,000 of which came from the Friends of the Bangor Public Library. So if you're enthusiastic about supporting the library and more ways than just, you know, this budget meeting, then the Friends of the Library is a great organization to be involved with. And, but that's, that's not quite half the funding we received 5,000 from main savings for steam programming 3000 savings bank for state based for teens. We have lots of different grant funding that we have for both day to day expansion of what we can offer in the library but also big programming and programming that brings lots of people in. in. So that's all the good news. And, it's not all the good news. That's a bunch of good news anyway. But you know, what's driving the budget, right? So one thing is that when we have a budget surplus, as we did for several years, because of federal grant programs, or federal funding programs, like the PPP loans that we were able to receive, Steve, but you all weren't in the municipal government, we got that and then we were able to spread that out over multiple years and not ask for money as a result of that. So it showed up as surpluses in multiple years. So there's that, there have been bequests, there have been various ways that we've received surplus cash. And what we've done is you can see on our budget and our audited report that we run an intentional deficit in those years. We intend to have the next year actually rain a deficit because we have cash from a previous year that we're spending down. So our goal is not to sit on cash. We're not a, we should not have, you can, you should have an unassigned funds budget or I forget the terminology but that's not really the goal of a non-profit does it on cash we want to not come back to you the next year asking for a full budget when we actually have cash that we have available to spend that's not the case this year we've we've reached the end of that chain of things the of having the surplus funds so that's why you're seeing a steeper that's one of the reasons you're seeing a steeper increase as has been discussed we of course have cost of living increases and everything else that's another significant portion of the increase and then the third part is the social worker position now you know that was funded what we did was we applied when the county put out a grant process and said Mount Scott County we would like to do this project and they worked with the city and said is there a way that we could fund part of it and the city could fund part of it and the council chose yes the city funded about two-thirds of our request and the county funded about a third and we are now at the end of that process our funds have to have been spent by American Rescue Plan Act funds have to have been spent by December we will have hit that target that's not a problem but we now need to really take account of whether this is a position that has run its course, or whether it's a position that we still need. I believe it's a position we still need. Now you can see in the report that we provided. And you know, we can foreground some of the not so good news I foregrounded some of the not so good news. You can see the first chart on page two, behavior in the library. Now red card, you may say what 's a red card, you know, but it's like an informal criminal trespass order, instead of calling the police and using the police's time for a situation where a person needs to leave the library, but there's no, like, investigative process that needs to happen. We don't need a police presence. We don't need the authority of somebody with a badge. We just need the person to leave the library. We tell them, you need to leave the library and you can't return for a year. And if they continue returning to the library, then we call the police, right, because that's person who's floating our reasonable request to leave the premises but so we've combined those figures because in both cases it's basically an instance of somebody doing something that means that they can't come back to the library for a year and you can see that number has really shot up over time when I started at the library in 2018 I think we had two people on And now we're, we're usually around 75% increase over the last year you also can see a chart on the bottom of that page showing the kinds of misconduct that we see in the library the blue bars are over the past 12 months the red bars over the past three months so you can see it's it's basically it without regard to season it's mostly substance related and some threats, verbal abuse and disruptive behavior, a smattering of other things. So we have the problems still. We also have people who come to the library on a regular basis who are unhoused, who are in the bureaucracy of homelessness, right? And we also have new people coming to the library all the time. Some of them end up on this chart as one of the people we end up kicking out and some of them are looking for help. Some of them are escaping sex trafficking and the library was the first place they ended up. How we respond in that moment has an impact as a community. It has an impact on whether that person is moving towards a university education and housing, as is the case with one person who came to the library in that situation, or whether that person says like, nobody believes me, nobody is giving me help. And so that moment when library staff have to figure out how to respond. I want that to be a social worker responding to that and not somebody whose job is to check out books. If we had another location in the city where people were going, that was a public space, they were going all the time, and we had stood that up a year ago, we might be having a different conversation now. I think it would take a year for something like that to have the kind of impact where we wouldn't need Olivia Scott, our social worker, in place. As it stands now, my ability to run the library will be near zero without that position in place. There's nobody else in the library that can do that work besides me, and I'm married to a social worker, but it doesn't have the same impact, you know? I listen to her all the time, I do, and you should, but like, gosh, I still don't know how to do all the things that a social worker knows to do, and so I view that position as vital in order to be able to operate the library and do all the things that we do actually do all the time that I spend and my co-workers spend planning all the good stuff that I described early on, the stuff that I'm going to have to say, yeah, we can't do that right now because I have to figure out ways to manage all of the behavior, all the new faces that are coming into the library. And now we don't even try to divert people into new paths towards diverting back to Phoenix, back to Machias, or diverting to housing, diverting to case management, diverting people out of the library atrium and into the relationship they need to be directed into. So that's the reason for that budget request. It's really challenging. The other thing that Olivia does, I mean, one of the many things that Olivia does, is help staff. This is a very difficult thing for us to have as part of our job, right? And so she helps staff with knowing how to manage those early interactions, knowing how to manage their own emotional response after they Narcan somebody, after they see somebody blue on the floor, after they interact with someone and know that, okay, I got them to Olivia, I know that this is pretty good, that we have, we're able to give somebody some, a direction, but boy, that was traumatic, right? And so the, and then also help staff and commiserate with staff about some of the, challenges of compassion fatigue. I think after you've Narcan'd a lot of people, and sometimes you maybe have Narcan'd the same person, even though we've CT'd the person, they slipped in when the greeter was off dealing with something else, and they're on the floor of our bathroom again, it's really easy to slip into compassion fatigue. And that's a situation where it really helps to have somebody whose training is in this area, as opposed to me where my training's in like novels and stuff. Stuff. So the work of the social worker is really important. And I don't know what we would do without her. So that's why I've put her in the budget. That said, if let's say five years from now, one year from now, magic wand territory, everybody's housed. Everybody is, you know, there's a place for people to go 24-7 that's not the library atrium, and everybody is moving in the direction they need to. I wouldn't have come to you six years ago asking for a social worker. I like social workers, one in particular, you know, but I wouldn't have come to you asking for a social worker if I was asking for a physician. It would be a librarian, right, like that's what we do, but if but if we don't have that, those circumstances, we're going to continue to be the what people refer to as the last public space. We're going to end up being a public space where people are coming when they are first arriving in our city and looking for support, and I can respond badly to that, but I can't change that pressure. I can't change the fact that pressure is going to exist on our institution. So my goal is to keep looking big with all the good stuff that we can do, but also manage that pressure by pushing back with the social worker position. So that's my appeal. I hope I didn't go on too long. I probably talked about some of not some of the other products, but that's that's that's my appeal.
Referrals
[2:01:03] Carolyn Fish: Been especially recently, but I think the last three to five years there's been a lot of people that have all text or you know met me on the street and have told me that they've stopped going to library. So I know that you do have, I think you the marketing you've done, I think you have different groups from different schools and other groups that have coming in, and I'm making up for that, but it's I think it would be a miss to not acknowledge the fact that there's been a lot of local families just. The other day I stopped to let a young man walk by with his two children and the maze that he had to go through. He literally get up to the door and I just kind of watched and he literally turned around and left. I have several elderly ladies that have told me that used to be their past time to go to the with their book club and they do not feel comfortable to go anymore. And I have met with Olivia and talked with her a couple of times and she told me that and I haven't talked with her for a while. But I was amazed that she said she has between 24 and 38 service providers depending upon her assessment of the person in need of who to call and how to help. And I think that's great in one way. In another way, you're a library. You're not the expert homeless provider and substance use addiction person. And I commend you that you have somebody to deal with it. But on the other hand, it seems like it's attracting more and more and more of these individuals that it's hard to keep for you to keep up with so I'm I guess that I feel you know the library is really for everybody and it almost seems like it's sort of been hijacked to a lot of people and a lot of people who go in there but I think that it's something that of a concern it's something that's loudly talked about in the community and have fund another position on you know for the taxpayers when I see that it may contribute to the issue being as bad if not worse because we're going to continue to provide a service at the library and we've got a new committee we're putting together and I'm wondering if somehow we as a city can't help you the library as you said try to move this into the hands of better experts and give the library you know a lot more of the community a more comfortable experience at the library so I see the need for it but I think I'd like to see you know we've been talking about with grants and monies going out some more some more data you know this is good for when I look at 100 220 referrals that's you know for the activity I see down there that's less than one day so it's just you know for a whole position I guess I would like to have seen better results I'm happy to respond but I don't know if that's
[2:04:18] Unidentified speaker (library director): Normal, right? So I'm sorry, I was, it sounds like I was unclear. Olivia is the pressure out of the library. She's helping refer people out of the building. Like, she, her goal is to get people into the service provider situations that we are not the experts in. That's not the goal. If she was trying to be the substance abuse counselor and case manager and housing coordinator for every homeless person in Bangor, that would be absurd, right? And so, we will drown under homeless people who will still come into the library without her position. Her position is about the pressure out. We can do things to kick people out of the library for behavior. We do it all the time. It's demoralizing and crushing. I don't, I barely have a week that goes by that I don't kick somebody in abject terror of starvation out of the library for something they've done that's unacceptable, right? It's, it's unbelievably demoralizing. I can keep doing that and just eventually have all of my staff keep doing that and quit and then we don't have any staff or like the finance department, but I was listening, but that's not a good point. And so the social worker position does all the things you said that you want to happen. She's not an attraction to the library. Homeless people aren't coming to Bangor because they heard there's a social worker in the library. Homeless people are unhoused in Bangor and she's pushing them back to the different service providers who are able to help them. Do they come back the next day? Possibly, right? If they're not engaging in misconduct, but they may come back the next day. But the folks who are actually engaging with services are the ones who settle in and become part of the library. The folks who are in on, you know, city property around the library are part of that maze that you described. I walked through it to get here from the library today. That's another discussion, right? But we will continue to do everything we can to connect unhoused people with the service providers who actually provide services so that we're not the ones doing that. Is our goal having Olivia there is not an attraction to the library it's not like we didn't have unhoused people overwhelming library services before Olivia arrived and it's not like she's increased the number of fun houses in Bangor or the number of fun house people in the library if anything it's it 's part of a key part of decreasing the number of unhoused people and the number of unhoused people who are engaging in unacceptable behaviors in the library so i'm sorry it sounds like i was unclear made it sound like i was saying like she's bringing people into the library for services. The people are coming already. This is a way of managing that, constant pressure that we're that we're feeling, councilman. I mean, for me, this increase it
[2:07:29] Michael Beck: just it's an investment we have to make, and you know, not every interaction Olivia has ended the referral. You know, I go there for coffee and I see my own eyes what happens, and a lot of times it's just a conversation. You know, when you mention that, you know, library is the last public I mean, that's exactly what it is, you know, one of the things that this council decided not to do, we had an option to save outdoor space, you know, trying to create other places for people to be. And I've heard it since I've been elected about, you know, when this is the heart center when it exists, you know, and just anecdotally, just looking at this winter when the warming centers were operating, yeah, you didn't see the maze, you didn't have that problem, you only had a few people, a few people in the interim, but it wasn't there, you know, and it's still again you know we have work as a council and what this homelessness community is going to do for us to figure out where that next space is going to be. But in the in the meantime, we absolutely cannot pull the plug on that position because it really is like the last wall. Because for every one person that I talk to says I don't go there anymore, five six seven more people talk about how much they love the library. My friend my show we love the library, and is it uncomfortable to see sometimes? Sure, but you know what, I'll hold their hands and we're to go to the library because it belongs to all of us, and you know, so absolutely I'm grateful for everything that Olivia does. I'm grateful for the library that you've gotten thrust in the front lines of this and just the hero's work that just doesn't get sung enough, that everybody in the library and, you know, when I first moved to Bangor, learning the fact that before any of this was even the big crisis, it was that librarians were taking trainings, I'll learn how to help people who are unhoused and everything. I am grateful for the library, and to me this is a small ask and I have no problem agreeing to it and I appreciate you putting it forward.
[2:09:24] Joseph Leonard: Just really quickly, I thanks so much for coming in Ben, I very much appreciate your perspective and I do have to concur with the council of Becca as well. I do have a question though regarding when we first did this position it was a joint operation between the county and the council. I know this is a very awkward question, I don't even know if it's possible, like is it at all possible for us to have communications with the county to see if they'd be willing to actually combine forces again on this because it was originally a dual approach. And I think it is important to maintain that partnership with the council.
[2:10:08] Susan Hawes: That's a good question. We can answer everywhere. Council Walker.
[2:10:14] Angela Walker: Thank you, Ben, for coming in. I really appreciate it. And the work that you put into this, I actually had the library on my radar as you have seen me recently. But in the last month, I've been trying to get over to the library and I brought my grandson and we had lunch this week and we sat there for a long time and looked and I kind of just kept an eye out to see what was going on. I did see one unhoused person sitting on one of the benches but I saw a lot of people coming in and out of the library which made me feel really good because I love the library and in the 15 years I've been here, I've had the opportunity to bring my nephew there. We go in there, enjoy the third floor very much. I did take my nine-year-old grandson that was with me to the third floor. It was just a really good experience. And as far as the position, I am in favor of the position. I think, like you said, you weren't trying to say that her position being that we're great announcing that 's what you want i can't remember the term at least but that she's not there to bring people there for that specific thing but i have worked with olivia and i know a lot of the on house or and not on house that's run into olivia have said nothing but really great things about her and we she does refer out in my other capacity in the community i have worked been able to work and i just really appreciate the work that you do and I am out, I'm very in favor of this position and
[2:11:56] Susan Deane: thank you. Absolutely, yes. Well, thank you Ben for everything you do. And now I'm hoping that some point the library will become a library, not a service center. I think our goal will be to move the unhoused elsewhere, and with the advisory committee that we're forming, hopefully that will happen. I mean, you said maybe it'll be a year, maybe six months, maybe it'll be 18 months, we don't really know. But in the interim, where this position obviously is taking a lot of the burden off you and helping the unhoused, say in six months we have a solution, they're no longer in collaboration, we have created a position that is really not necessary. Does that position move on somewhere else? Do you need someone like that in the library long term? This is not permanent position. What would help? And if it is, I think we have a serious problem. So where do we see this
[2:12:48] Unidentified speaker (library director): going? That's a great question. I, you know, I don't want, I don't want to need a social worker in the library for the rest of my time there, which hopefully is a good long period of time, another 15 years or so, right? I don't want another 15 years with a social worker in the library, because that means that the library is still the hub, the only public space where people are landing when they enter the community. That means that there's a huge population of unhoused people in the community. That's what that means if we retain that position. Position. If six months from now, if let's say six months into the fiscal year, all homelessness has evaporated in Bangor, I would be shocked. I don't see that happening. So I think we are looking at a one year situation at least, but probably more like five, 10 years. It like it could be longer, that we don't have solutions about where unhoused people are gonna go in Bangalore. I'd love to see that resolved in a year, that'd be great, but I don't know how we do that. That's in fact not something that I'm an expert in. And so if we're in a situation where we don't need a social worker, we're not gonna continue asking for funding for a social worker. And we won't come back and be like, hey, we eliminated the social worker position, but now we have a new librarian on staff. And we, you know, it's not something where we just eliminate one position and use the funds in some other way. We would, I mean, I think we've been very trustworthy about actually like running a budget deficit when we had extra cash on hand, like I think we're pretty transparent about what we're, what we're doing with public funds. And there's reason for that. It's a lot easier to remember the truth, you know. So the truth is, we're okay. If we did not need a social worker position, then we would eliminate the position. We'd find a way to, you know, to eliminate that position. I don't know when that's gonna happen, though, realistically. I don't see that six months down the road. I think if we tomorrow opened a palace, which I don't think is a great idea, but like if we tomorrow opened a palace and said this palace is only for people with no home, I don't think that would change the situation in the library enough, because that palace would start kicking people out as they did things that they shouldn't, and they'd end up in the library, and then we'd be kicking them out. And so like I don't see that need going away immediately. So I don't want to give you false hope that I'm like, yeah, this is a one year thing. You know, Olivia, work on your resume, because, you know, it's a one-year thing. And Olivia, if you're watching, we're going to. But I don't want to give you false hope. I guess your thing. I'm confident that the library won't continue to have that pressure on it. A year, a year from now, or after one fiscal year. But when the library doesn't have that pressure, the library is never going to not have house people. I guarantee you the first, like, library that opens in Rome, like, put a guy in who's like, you know, Cicero and the second guy, it's like libraries have homeless people in them and always have, you know, and, that's, that's, that's not, that doesn't go to any, city, any service center in America, you'll see this event, it's not a Bangor thing. So, it's not like we're gonna suddenly not have unhoused people in the library at some point. Then I'll know that we don't need it, but it's when the pressure is not so dramatic as it is right now. I realize that sounds like, eh, you know, like I'm not making a real commitment. It's because I don't know if the future holds, you know. But I can promise that when we don't need a social worker position, I'm not gonna, like, oh, let's keep the social worker on, you know, or let's convert this into a librarian position.
[2:17:08] Susan Deane: If I could just follow up just on that, go ahead. What is her incentive to stay, though,, knowing that this should be a temporary position? That's another part of it. That's a good question.
[2:17:19] Unidentified speaker (library director): I think her, I don't know, I can't say for sure, but I feel like her commitment to the work that she does in the library is really strong. I know her really well now, and I feel like that's her incentive is loving the work,, not so much like maintaining a, I don't know. I think the other thing is I mentioned I have a wife who's a social worker. Social workers do move quite a bit, move positions quite a bit. And so it's not unusual for social workers to be able to find other jobs. So I think if she was and introduce her relatively quickly so I think like not leaving now is not the same thing as if you were like a college professor or you know a doctor or an hospital or something like that where you're like well I hope to make a career at this one place and there's not another hospital for miles you know there's not another university for miles Allison, and I have tenure, you know, it's not the same kind of dynamic social workers change positions quite a bit. And I so [Phil Drew: I think I] can't speak for her, obviously, but I think she's really good at the work.
[2:18:43] Joseph Leonard: Also, I was gonna say, could I borrow that paper really quickly? I wanted to sort of like do a little visual point. So like, on the point of this being a temporary position, Unless something unless Council decides to make an active change to have that no longer be a position. This is very likely going to continue to be a position, because even if we did open up a another public space for people to go to this line right here. it without knowing that the exact formula if we were to have 27 right here that line going down that way is that 's not realistic that's that's not actually in reality to something that can actually happen it's more likely if we do open up a public space that line would plateau and then maybe start to go down but realistically you're still going to be looking at a position that's needed even if we do everything that does decrease that population you're still gonna see i mean certainly for The next like two or three years we're gonna need this position that minimum so I get where you're coming from counselor Dean that this is not a start to draw on that but there's just no realistic way that we can not have this position for the next two to three years. It's it's just we're gonna have to work with it in our budget because there's just there's too much of a need at this point. I know it's only for like maybe one referral a day or something like that but that's still huge for you guys
[2:20:34] Daniel Carson: I am in favor of maintaining this position for now. I think we're forming the advisory committee on homelessness. That committee is going to take leadership on that question with experts and I don't think we do ourselves any favor by making an already complicated right storm of moving pieces. It doesn't make it any better for us to move another piece. I think I really want to see that committee come together I really want to hear from the experts that we get on that committee I want us to have a plan and so I'm just personally disinterested in making any changes to the landscape until we actually have a plan But I also agree with councillor Dean but I think that the goal should be that this is not where the pressure is on this question and I also agree with counselor Leonard and really I think I would really like us to push on that question of county involvement in funding this pressure that happens here is in part as a result of a lack of coordination and leadership and funding from the county right and there are there are communities that because they do not have the infrastructure and they don't Have of the funding that utilize Bangor as a service center, which is natural, that's going to happen. That's what a service center does. But I don't think that absolves the county of its responsibility of participating in the effective leadership of this question. So I'm sorry, all those pieces, thank you.
[2:22:33] Wayne Mallar: That's amount. Yeah. Just one quick question, Ben. Our contribution is a percentage of the total, right? Percentage of the total revenue that the library has, is that no, the your deficit or whatever you want to call it, we pay up. What percentage of the budget do we now have that number? Is it increasing from or decreasing? Oh, it's an increase, definitely. Yeah.
[2:22:59] Angela Walker: Yeah.
[2:23:03] Phil Drew: Looking at the wrong sheet of paper. It's it's it's something that she's doing.
[2:23:23] Michael Beck: Yeah, one point two nine percent. Yes.
[2:23:32] Wayne Mallar: What percent of the budget at the library do we pay?
[2:23:38] Unidentified speaker (library director): I'm pretty sure that number is 70, which I mean it's it's and it has been that for
[2:23:47] Wayne Mallar: a while. I thought it was under, right, in the 60s, so it's increasing every year, so eventually we're going to take over the library. I
[2:24:00] Unidentified speaker (library director): just figured an accurate answer and then I felt definitely it's a lot harder. Yes, 70 percent, so this is yeah, it's increased a little bit each year. The library's other revenue streams are not ones that are likely to go up, right, so we're not likely to see that. We see a five percent increase in employment costs, we're not likely to see donors give five percent more, we're unlikely to see a five percent increase in what we can draw from our endowment. State government hasn't been increasing how much they give in the area reference and resource center funding by five percent each year, and that's unlikely to happen, so yeah, we come and say this is what it costs to renew the library for another year. Yeah, I know, renew right, the library for another year, and then we whenever we are looking for other ways to fund things that we need to do, it happens off budget with grants, so the grant funds a
[2:25:03] Wayne Mallar: specific project that we're doing, but at 70 of the costs of the library, what input do we have to the operation of the library? On your board of directors or board, I think they're one of the cooperators. What do you call, trustees, board of trustees? How many members do we
[2:25:24] Unidentified speaker (library director): provide to the board? Five of the nine members, one of whom is an employee that you hire, director of finance Stephanie, the other four you name as Hersey Pond trustees, and that's done with this body. One of them's in the audience today, and remember
[2:25:39] Wayne Mallar: I was just curious because it did, I didn't know if we had any vote or not. I can I can name who they are, it doesn't matter as long as I know they're you're saying that we have five of the yeah, one non-voting, no, all voting, just finance vote, they never used to. Stephanie is fully
[2:26:01] Unidentified speaker (library director): empowered to vote and so was Debbie and so was David like they're I was there a past practice that they didn't well used to be I wasn't aware of that and I certainly saw suppose
[2:26:20] Wayne Mallar: I'm just surprised that it's increasing so much. I'd like to think there was ways that we could keep it, reduce it or keep it at one rate.
[2:26:37] Angela Walker: My
[2:26:40] Daniel Carson: question is about grants that you just mentioned. I see, you know, for year 26, there's an increase there. And I see that in here you have a note that the grant totals don't include recurring grant funds submitted previously. And so I have a question, but I'd like to know a little bit more about that. And you also said that grants are used those to fund specific projects. I'm wondering if we're missing opportunities to fund other things besides just small specific projects that could impact the larger operation of the library. I'm wondering what opportunities are out there that we might be missing.
[2:27:24] Unidentified speaker (library director): Yeah. Okay. So the first question, so for instance, the Maine Community Foundation maintains the Leonard and Rennie Minsky fund, which is publicly available information that gives us $3,000 a year. So you can do the math as to what percent, what's in that fund, but it's a very generous gift. And of course, you know that Rennie Minsky just passed away, and then Len passed away earlier. But that fund isn't included in our list of grants, because that goes directly into the operating budget. It is specifically for children's programming, but we use it for children's programming. We don't have a separate class fund, it shows up as part of the revenue that we get, it shows up as donations that we receive. So part of the whatever that is in a given year, and I believe we have budgeted $110,000 for annual giving from the public. Three of that would be the Leonard Redding Company money that we received. But there's more that are like that, where somebody has given us a gift, but we don't hold the, it's not like the endowment where we actually hold the principal in our own pooled investments. So does that answer that question, like what we meant by that okay right yeah and so that's an example that's not the only fund that does that but that sort of makes an example for people no so we are we missing opportunities for grants i'm sure we apply for a lot of them we do have a development position and we also have department heads who do a lot of work now that development position doesn't just sit and apply for grants all day. Siobhan does a lot of program development work, programs that bring people into the library, and she also manages the annual appeal. That's a source of $110,000 in revenue. So certainly more than pays for her position. But the, But in terms of grant funding, yeah, usually what we do, so there's one that I didn't mention. We saw that the Semi-Consentennial Commission was providing grant funding, and we had this collection of materials that was actually the property of the Historical Society, but it's old assessor records and then Works Progress Administration photos from the 30s of a bunch of many of the homes or buildings in Bangor. And so we're able to do a scanning project using semi-quincentennial commission money from the state to actually scan all of those records and scan all of those images. That's the kind of thing where nobody really wants to go in and actually look through all of those to see a photo of their house. And people may not even know we have access to that collection or that we have the collection from historical society, but if we have it up on a website, then people can go in and see the historical value of their homes, see bits of Vancouver history as a result. So that's the kind of thing where we wouldn't come to the council and ask for money for that, right? That's the type of thing we need to find grant funding for. Whenever we see an opportunity like that, we go out to the folks in the departments, and Siobhan and I, or the department heads find it themselves and we talk about what are we what are we looking to do oh we want to improve the materials we have for theme parkers by the fact engineering arts and math for kids we need to have new tech or it looks like it's you know we're teaching them how to play with an abacus and so we so we go out and get new tech using that so that kind of thing i'm sure we've missed some opportunities but there's a lot of work that we do about funding and a lot of people who want to put money behind us because we have a lot of people
[2:31:41] Daniel Carson: i just
[2:31:46] Carolyn Fish: Want to wrap it up by saying that, you know, I do appreciate the library event and the addition that was done about how long it's been now, three years now, it's been, it's been 10 years. Yeah, good god, yes, I know, it's beautiful. I mean, in the upstairs, in this position, I appreciate what Olivia has done, it's been remarkable. But I think when I see the position on it's the end of ARPA, I just see, I was concerned that this would be the start of, as Councilor Deane said, a permanent position. And with us putting together the homeless committee that we're putting together, I was kind of hoping that there's a solution that would be helpful. So moving forward, I am for this position because now would be the worst time, just the situation of the library is just going to get worse. So my comments were really with the concern of this being a perpetual position, and really I don't want to see the library be a perpetual service center. I would rather have you be less of a service center so that the city and through our other or service providers can take that off your off your desk, and I hope that we see you often reaching out to us and working with our committee to help, you know, leave some of that burden away from the library for a better experience for all involved. So I just wanted to wrap it up to make sure that, you know, it's not, I'm anti-library, and you know, but it was just a concern that
[2:33:17] Carollynn Lear: it, I hate to see you in this position forever. Yes, yeah, I know you're not an anti-library, don't, well, so this went about a half hour longer than I was hoping, which I think is in the grand scheme of things not that bad, the way things have been going recently. So I'll end with this is our first budget meeting that you and I have had. We haven't, we don't have many first lefts, I don't think, after 10 months. But if you aren't happy with how that went, or if you would like to hear different things or have us bring different information, just let me know and we can pivot, you know, going forward, and this should be a collaborative and iterative process. So let me know what it is that you need and we'll do our best to bring it to you. And we're good, all right, thanks man. Well, thank you all.