MR. CLERK, YOU WANT TO GET BACK SO YOU CAN TRY THE ROLE? two minutes behind. Thank you, Mr. Clerk. Good evening, everyone. I call to order the regular meeting of the Committee on Administrative Finance and Law and Public Services. The time is 6.32. Mr. Clerk, will you please call the roll? Thank you. Chairman Alderman Centeno? Here. Alderwoman Maldonado? Here. Alderwoman Ortiz-Luna? Here. Alderman McNamara? Here. Alderman Santiago? Present. Alderman Barrero? Present. Alderman Dottie DeLernia. Here. Alderman Gibson. Here. Alderman Smedley. Alderman Malinowski is here as well. Alderman Vargas is here as well. Alderman Barbosa. Did I get everybody? You have a quorum, Mr. Chairman. Thank you, Mr. Clerk. We're right into the public participation today. Thank God. The first item on the agenda is item number three seven one three nine zero one to act upon a resolution regarding regarding the general fund budget for fiscal year two twenty twenty six twenty twenty seven Mr. Chair. Alderman Santiago. Make a motion to to make a motion to send item number three seven one three nine dash one to the council with a neutral recommendation. The motion is to make to. refer the resolution to the item to the Common Council with a neutral recommendation seconded by Alderman Barboza. Any questions at this time? Going along, all in favor? At this time we call up the departments to make presentations and answer questions. The first department is the mayor's office, Ms. Mary Prokorski. Any questions for Ms. Mary Prokorski? Good evening. Thank you Ms. Prokorski. Go ahead. Okay so the budget we have less than a 3 percent increase from last year's budget. We have four positions and then we have two vacant positions, one was recently filled and then we have another position that there are interviews being conducted for. Anything else? Any questions? All the women, Delernia. Hi. Hi. So what position was filled and what is vacant? The outreach coordinator. Okay. And then the executive aide to the mayor. is still vacant. All right. Can you tell me too, I have a question, I don't know if maybe, I don't understand myself, but what's the difference between advertising and marketing? Because you move them into one category. That's a good question. Yeah, I don't, I would imagine marketing is more promoting and advertising to me is different positions or. So do we need to see that difference because instead of having two separate line items you combined it, so how are we going to know the difference? I think that you can, you're talking about the 5540 and 5541, the marketing and the advertising? Yes. Yeah, so I think, I mean, even though if we combine them then you can use that line item for either one. for either marketing or advertising. Right, but that's my question. I understand that it was combined. It used to be two separate lines, it was combined. So my question is how do we know, are they going to identify whether it's a marketing or advertising? I don't think if it's a combined line item, I don't think they have to. I think either or could be applied to that line item. And maybe they combined, we combined them probably because they are so similar. Point of information if I may. Alderman McNamara. You notice in the descriptions of the budget actually marketing advertising are intertwined because the description combines them both. I think it's a distinction without a difference. And I would note that the $5,000 marketing budget has been zeroed out. Correct. Correct. And combined. Correct. Combined with one line, so I don't know how that came about, about two lines, Alderwoman, but I think the correction's been made, even though those two account numbers have been retained. Well, I have. Thank you. Any other questions for Ms. Popersky? No? Seeing none, the next. The next department is Corporation Counsel, Bill Rivera. Any questions for Attorney Rivera or Ms. Borkorski? I'm sorry? Just present your budget. Just present your budget, yeah. Well, actually, our budget, as you have in front of you, I assume, incorporates actually a reduction. of negative 1.24. If you look at the numbers, despite the fact that we're asking for two positions, which are incorporated in this budget, we're actually asking for less money than we did last year. Any questions? Okay, I think you mentioned here that again you're, you zeroed out legal judgments and damage claims and I believe I understand it to be incorporated into legal services, is that right? No, actually I believe that those items are going to be in contingency. I don't understand. So the legal judgments you're saying and the damages claims. Right 87.5 87.5 proposed 0 0. Right and my understanding is those amounts are going to be incorporated within the contingency part of the budget. So over here it says. Okay, legal services combined into one line item instead of separating between corporation counsel and damage claims. Right, so I believe originally there were two separate, there were damage claims and then there was a separate legal services. So there were two legal services, one under our budget and then one under a damages claims line item. So those have been combined. But as far as my understanding of the damages claims and the legal judgments, those are now included within contingency. Alderman McNamara. If I could interject another point of information on page 79 of the general fund budget, that indeed has occurred. That line item in contingency has gone up 16 percent to 1.786 million to cover those expenses, which are defined as set aside unbudgeted expenses for damage claims and pending contract negotiations, which with what was sort of fragmented into your previous budget. Mr. That is correct. Any further questions or I'd like to see the other one Scott. Thank you. Any further questions for no. Thank you. The next for presentation the next department is the Department of Town Clerk Miss Veronica DeLandrio please come on up. Good evening. Good evening. I'll just start with an overview and then I'll go over the, highlight some of the budget. So the Town Clerk's numerous responsibilities are governed by the State of Connecticut statutes and the New Britain Charter and ordinances. The Town Clerk also functions as the City Clerk, the Registrar of Vital Statistics, and the Clerk of the Common Council, as you all know. So these duties involve maintaining records of land ownership, vital statistics such as births, marriages, and deaths, election records, all city ordinances, charter, minutes and proceedings of common council, and commission meetings, trade names, maps, cemetery deeds, and military discharges. Our office issues a variety of licenses such as dog licenses starting in June, business licenses, et cetera. We also play a vital role in elections, We're the custodian of the city seal the notaries public and administer oaths so it is our goal to provide accurate and timely information and assist the public in obtaining access to town information and services. Each town each year excuse me. We serve over 16000 customers and process over 45000 transactions that are walk in mail express mail or electronic. We're excited to be able to launch an online dog license starting this year, dog license applications starting in June. Just a few statistics and then I'll go over the budget overview. For 2025, the town clerk's office statistics, we recorded, we had nearly 20,000 land recordings, close to 1,500 birth certificates were issued, over 1,000 death certificates, almost 500 marriage licenses, over 2,000 burials and cremations, nearly 1,400 dog licenses, and 400 absentee ballots. So with the budget overview, I'll start by saying that the town clerk's department brings in millions of dollars in revenue to the city. We're proposing an increase of over 6% in revenue and just less than $3,000 in expenses. A full-time salary increase by $11,000, and that's due to contractual obligations. And due to the market increase, the price of real estate has gone up, and so have the convenience taxes. There's also an increase in postage and election expenses due to the increasing costs and election expenses that we have to cover. In terms of staffing, we currently have a total of six full-time positions, including myself, no part-time positions, and we are down to a full-time staff. We are in the process of working with HR and interviewing for an administrative town clerk, and we will also look to post a position for the admin assistant one position so that all eight positions will be filled by this summer. At this time I'll entertain any questions. Thank you. Any questions for Ms. D'Alandro? I'm sorry, other woman D'Alernia. Thank you. So here, I'm looking at eight positions. Correct, so I stated earlier that we currently have six full-time positions, so there are two vacant positions. Okay, two vacant. And are they full-time positions or part-time? They're full-time. All right, but I noticed in your summary of expenditures, it says part-time salaries are going from $14,000 to $7,000, 50% reduction. Yep, because we have no part-time positions, but we do want to keep that in the budget in the event that we do bring on someone part-time. Is there a need for that? Yes, there is. So how come that wasn't added to the budget then? What do you mean it wasn't added to the budget? I mean, how come you don't note it here that you intend on hiring a part-time position? Right now the position, this is full-time, so we're proposing eight full-time positions, but we want to have money in the budget for a part-time position, not that we'll be actively hiring for a part-time position. And if you didn't hire for that position, how would that affect the operation? Won't know until we, you know, I will say do this, with this being an election year, we will definitely need all hands on deck. Okay. Dues and fees, they went from zero to 500. I know that's not a lot of money, but who's, accessing those fees or memberships for the $500, and how many employees? Can you repeat? I'm sorry, can you repeat the question? The dues and fees, you're showing $500. I'm just curious who is accessing that money to get, it must be memberships for something. Correct. So we're all, everyone on the staff is a member of the Connecticut Town Council Association. Actually, we'll be closed Tuesday, May 12th, because we're required to attend a class at CCSU. So there are courses that we're required to take. And everybody on staff takes it? Yes. Okay. Okay. All right, that's all I have. Okay. Thank you. Thank you. You're welcome. Any further questions for Mr. Langevin? Thank you, Mr. Langevin. Seeing none, the next department is the Department of Public Works, Mr. Mark Moriarty. How's everyone? Good, thank you. Okay. I have a couple things I handed out to you guys. We handed out to you. We have a budget highlight sheet. First thing I'm going to do is just go over kind of the assets. Some of you are newer to the city council. And I do this probably once a year as much of a reminder to myself as to other people of what Public Works is in charge of. This is just the assets that we do, this doesn't even include a lot of the services or work we perform, but are separate in the assets. So, public works is a large department. We're in charge of the $60 million water treatment plant, constructed in 2004, that constantly needs a lot of work. 170 miles of streets around the city, 1,200 acres of parkland, including nine nature parks and 24 satellite memorial parks. The equipment is probably off a couple because it does flux based on what goes into a surplus, but about 350 vehicles, 143 pieces of large equipment, 320 pieces of small equipment, different parts of the year we're constantly maintaining them, seven reservoirs with a combined capacity of 2.6 billion gallons. Our caretakers, crew, maintains 6300 of acres of watershed property a lot of that is beyond the city limits we have 3100 acres in Burlington and it does require a fair amount of work to just manage that watershed property we have 64 traffic signals most of those are beyond their their actual lifespan. A lot of them are in very poor condition and the price of traffic signals over the course of my career has gone from about $200,000 to $650,000 now. So it's become a very expensive asset. We have over 20,000 street signs and posts, 271 miles of water main, maintain over 17,500 water customers and have meters associated with that. Six hundred fifty two fire hydrants seven high hazard dams and eight bridges like thousands and thousands of trees between parkland street trees trees on our watershed property. We go over fifteen thousand annuals we just started planting those actually for this year. We have thirty nine acres of irrigated athletic fields. We have three large volume water storage tanks with six pump stations. 333 miles of sanitary sewer and storm pipes, almost 8,500 manholes and catch basin, 200 miles of sidewalks. Beyond that, we do about a $2 million paving program, and any given day we pick up public works through CWPM picks up 3,000 trash containers and 1,500 recycled containers, and we have 40 bulky waste collection pickups every single day that we schedule. It's a big operation and right now we have 31 million dollars of projects in construction and we have several other ones going out to bid. We manage those projects. In terms of this year's budget so it's a big dynamic operation. A lot of a lot of things are complementary a lot of things are different. I think a very good dedicated staff doing this work. So I hand we handed out a budget highlight sheet just to go over. I did hand out org. org chart I don't know if you guys you guys want me to go over the org chart or do you want to just have that for your own use? Okay okay for fiscal year 27 the budget proposed to you on the general fund side the budget the fiscal year 27 budget is we do not include streetlights and the handout I gave you with that and the actual budget bit. book it's $16,434,062. So we support services really handle street lighting a little more they actually pay those bills so the budget we really manage is the budget reflective on this sheet that's almost $15.6 million. That is a 2.9% increase $452,979. On the revenue side, we have an increase of $203,741. It's a small increase, and that's mostly due to Town Aid Road. That sheet also lists the major increases included in the budget. Now, if you look at these increases, they're much more than the total increase we have. So there are a number of decreases. The decreases are spread out among a lot a lot of different line items and some of them are smaller but they all equate to that total increase of about $452,000. Salaries obviously contractual typically in a large department like ours about 127 positions that every budget year ends up being about the largest increase. Rubbish removal. Rubbish is one of the most expensive things we do and we have a CPI increase in the contract and also has a fuel differential that came out to almost $130,000. Motor fuel that obviously is going up. We budgeted an extra $20,000. Hopefully that's enough. We submit this budget in January. It did have some modifications along the way but Still you know it's a little different than probably what we may have submitted today. And sidewalk repairs that was something submitted through the mayor's budget that more funding was allocated to sidewalks. So I mean I think that's a very positive thing for every everyone. Sidewalks I think are in my entire here time here we don't really invest enough money in sidewalks. We could probably invest about five times that in sidewalks of 200 miles sidewalks. We do a lot of sidewalk work every year between what we do with our sidewalk program and CDBG and also capital projects but anybody that walks around knows there's a lot of poor condition sidewalks out there. The backside of this sheet includes the three utilities budgets that Public Works maintain manages. So we have the water fund the sewer fund and the clean water fund. The water budget most notably has almost a 5 percent decrease. That's obviously very favorable. We are able to just tighten up some line items. We're still providing adequate funding for everything but really just tighten up line items. Restruct did some restructuring with that budget actually too. Probably did more. of investment in water main replacement. That's a goal of the water budget this year but that came with came in with a decrease. The sewer budget the biggest thing about our sewer budget and our Simonian from Mattabasa was here council I think it was the last council meeting and you know they do their best job to try and keep their rates flat. or not flat but modest and our sewer budget the biggest component of our sewer budget is that our the money we give to Madabasa. Madabasa only needs the answer to us. They don't need to answer to utility users. So our the past the cost they pass on to us we pass on to our customers. We tried to go in with a small increase and no rate increase if we possibly can. But they came in with a 6 percent increase. So it's a it's a struggle we have every single year because they pass on a bigger increase than we could ever justify passing on to the ratepayers. So we went in with a 3 percent increase. And the Clean Water Fund that's our smallest our smallest utility that handles stormwater and flooding. That's been a critical utility that we put in place to deal with projects like the overlook flooding that heavily funded them in Klintock drainage improvements. It's going to be helpful with the Allen Street drainage improvements and in terms of catch basin cleaning. Last year if we if we clean like 500 600 catch basin year that's a very good year for us. Last year we we did about three times that because of the Clean Water Fund. So that's it's been very important. That one for fiscal year 27 has been flat funded. Now combined the good news on all three of the utilities is that we're not looking at any rate increases this year and that's because through a use of let's say I mean the sewer is probably the real big increase but that one through a combination of water usage and also fund balance work and also a rate increase and on the clean on the water budget the White Bridge well field and the significant amount of costs that we're going to be implementing even though we do have a decrease we're looking at a nearly $40 million project potentially so it you know we're trying to build up some fund balance to offset some of our debt on that project. So that's pretty much a summary of where we're at budget wise if you have questions for sure. Any questions for Mr. McGard? Other woman DeLernia. Utility permits you have a reduction near 50 percent. That's a big big reduction why is that. I mean we looked at we looked pretty much at recent revenue that was being produced and an average of historical revenue. It does increase utility permits so this is you know the bigger thing that happened there is that we gave the utility trench repairs back to CNG probably 12 years ago. We didn't feel like they were doing a good job repairing their utility trenches. We took them over in-house we put an $800 per trench fee on them. We agreed this year pretty much under a trial basis to allow them to take on their utility trench repairs themselves. So for this year we're not going to be receiving that revenue but also we're not going to be bearing an expense for their repairs. So this is the first year you're not receiving it. optimistic that they're gonna do a good job. They understand that we like and yeah and if they don't then we'll probably take it back over but it was years ago now but a lot of times people think it's a pothole it's really a poorly repaired utility trench and a lot of times that they were not doing a good job doing the repair and We require a temporary repair and a permanent repair. We have to maintain the temporary repair until the permanent repair is done. So yeah, we're giving them the opportunity to take that work back on. Okay, the fuel expense. I have the feeling you're going to end up coming back asking for more money and I see that the Mayor even reduced it more than what you were asking for. with the cost with the cost of gas. I mean are you optimistic you're going to be able to stay with that amount. I'm not. I think we're going to find out. You know there's some there's some things in the budget that there's a fair amount of fluctuation. We're going to we're going to find that one out. I mean we do sometimes over the course of the fiscal year. I mean we manage line items without a doubt. But also sometimes we end up with underages on. So I mean I also try and manage the overall budget and sometimes like it's a slow it's a slow winter. There's other things that happen that overall that I've never delivered a budget that did not come in under budget. And so I'm optimistic that we'll be able to handle it. DIRECTOR HAMPSON- Okay one more. Contractually, meal allowance is $5,000 reduced to $500. If that's per contract, how does that work? We changed the contract language. At one point in time, when we first introduced meal allowances and snow operations, everybody that came in stayed in. And then we had historically done shift operations for our snow operations. So people come in for like a one to two shift operation. Typically 12 hours could go up to 18 hours. There was never an intent to give a meal allowance for somebody only coming in one shift, but they kind of got grandfathered into the language for a while. In the last contract negotiations, we were able to eliminate meal allowances unless somebody was working multiple shifts. So we're paying very few meal allowances now. Okay. But don't. don't the guys tend to work multiple shifts regardless? This this year we really didn't have a lot of people doing double shifts. We've been fortunate we've been we're down I think six positions right now for the entry level drivers. But we're actively in the process of filling the utility workers. But there there just wasn't a lot of people doing double. So I mean in for for there were periods in time when we have 75% of the crew doing double shifts. That's all I have, thank you. Alderman Barbosa. Did any of these line items have revenue from last year? I don't fully understand the question. Is there any savings from last year? I mean in the current fiscal year let's say I mean we're quite over on snow obviously this year don't have that and we are tighter this year on our budget than we've historically been I still think we're going to come in under and but that's going to go to just general like overall fund balance and you know that's could end up any anywhere you know however the mayor's office and council decide to allocate that. Alderman McNamara. I think, Mark, you may have answered the question, but on the staffing positions, at some point last year or so, mechanics or maintainers, you were down more than six, but you're pretty much at full capacity? Not really. I mean, fleet, we've done a good job. We just added three new fleet mechanics last week. We also promoted a person. that was a maintainer into fleet mechanics. So right now, and we had one guy that was going to be retired, was supposed to retire that decided not to. So right now fleet's only down one. We have another person that is pursuing becoming a treatment plant operator. We're down a water treatment plant operator. He's interested that we'll, a good chance we'll end up down two right now, but we're in much better shape than we were. It was ridiculous for like a while. Um, but we're, yeah, we're down to some other positions, but that's, utility workers is the other one right now that we're kind of struggling, but... Thank you. Anybody? Alderman Santiago. From this proposal, it says that you're adding a deputy director and reducing an assistant, administrator, administrative assistant. So is there a reason for that? I mean I think there was a that was a decision by the administration that you know that it could strengthen the department. East Harford has two deputy directors. Most most communities our size have deputy directors in public works. So I think it was just a decision that it would strengthen the public works department and have some redundancy. Anybody else? All the women, Scott. I was just wondering how, I have a couple things. How much does it cost, I don't know if you have the answer for this, but how much do we spend for bulk pickups? Per bulk pickup? Like the appointments that get made. I mean we pay a, I don't have the number off the top of my head, but if we don't pay for per pickup, we pay a – it's a monthly fee. Okay. And, I mean, this has just been something we've been actually focused on quite a bit. And, you know, it's almost 40 pickups a day. So it's a massive operation, actually, bulky waste pickup. Okay. But they have, like, a set monthly? It's – when they did their original bid – It was a monthly cost for like curbside trash collection, curbside recycling collection, bulky waste collection, the downtown barrels. So there was a cost associated with each one and then throughout the years there's like CPI increases on those but they were all bid as monthly costs. Okay. So are they able to do more than more pickups? That's pretty much, I mean 40 a day is pretty much the max. Okay. All right. And how much more are we getting for sidewalk. I don't know if I think you might have mentioned it but for sidewalks now. I think it was $200,000. I think it was $200,000. It went from 250 to 250. Okay so how many streets do you think you guys can do? I mean that's one of the changes in the budget number I think is really good I'm excited about. Because that will improve like how we'll be able to do more streets with that. We'll be able to yep we'll be able to get a fair amount more done. That's good. And something else I want to ask about the water. So you said they're increasing at six? I mean, they were going to increase at six. Increase. For the water? Oh, we're not increasing any of the utility rates. It's up to three. It's three, you said. We're not raising it? No. Okay. I was just checking. All right. Well, thank you. Thank you for all the work you do. Oh, no problem. Thank you. Thank you, Veronica, also for all the work you do. And I'm glad that we're going to get to do some more sidewalks. Thank you. I just have one clarification on the sidewalk program is it 50-50? For the cost share program for a single family property it's a 50-50 cost it's up to a maximum but pretty much almost all the work goes into the fits within the program limits. And then for two-family and up? It goes down like 10% per... Okay. 10%? I think it's like 60% when you get to two-family. Okay. I'm asking because one of my constituent neighbors picked up my mail the other day, and he told me, he goes, yeah, they said 33% for me, but... And I couldn't I told him I said I think it's 50 50 but then I realized. No yeah it goes down. He's got a three family house. OK. Thank you I'll let him know. All right. Thank you so much. Anybody else. Thank you Mr. Maroney. So you know the next department is Department of the Register of Voters Mr. Peter Gostin. Good evening all the men and all the women. Good evening. I'm here also representing my counterpart Lucian Pavlak. He's recovering from some surgery. So I'll be speaking about in the aggregate of both of our departments and in some obviously the registrar voters office is responsible for running elections. All the early voting that has to go on now at two different places both at our senior center and the CCSU campus and we do all of that coordinating with ourselves two of our full time staff and two part time staff. And if I could basically the budget that we submitted in the aggregate for both of us is about two and a half percent increase yet the The mayor's budget is cutting us somewhere close to like eight, nine percent. It's a pretty hefty cut and I'll speak to just a couple of items that I believe could be impacted although partially mitigated. One is our professional services where we hire poll workers and many other part time or people who work the polls and early voting. That is where all the money's come from and those are being cut. nearly $50,000. I expect that some of that, if not hopefully most, might be mitigated by what the General Assembly just did up in Hartford a couple days ago. It looks like they may be offering the state a little over $2 million to be divvied up to municipalities for early voting. So I'm hopeful that Well, last year, they only had a little over a million, and we got 21,000 of it. I'm hopeful if they even double that, that would be nice. That would cut into the deficit that I would anticipate for professional services. Our equipment line also, we've got, as you know, brand-new tabulators. There's a lot of maintenance now that we didn't have to pay. The Secretary of State used to pick up the tab for all of that with the 20-year program. contract that they had, but that's now gone away. And the new company has, I guess they didn't put it in the RFP, but every municipality is now responsible for maintaining these machines and the costs, which are fairly significant. We also are now responsible for the ballots themselves and programming, where we weren't before either. So that adds an additional layer of cost. And we were cut there a total of about 11,000. I hope that you can revisit that in your deliberations. Also, we're now required to have every single sign that we put out for public consumption or communication to be translated also into Spanish. And that's going to cost us a little bit more because we're going to need all new signs. and things like that. We're hoping to get that done as much as we can in this fiscal year. But I'm sure that some of it's going to lag and go into the next fiscal year. And as far as our salaries go I know that there has not been a compensation committee referral to this body. I don't know if that's going to be in the offering so I took the liberty of MAKING SOME COPIES AND PRESENTING A PACKAGE TO EACH OF YOU ON THIS COMMITTEE AND ALSO THE COUNCIL AT LARGE THAT YOU CAN LOOK THROUGH. I THINK YOU'LL FIND THAT OUR OFFICE HAS SOME INEQUITIES THAT WE'D LIKE TO ADDRESS, PERHAPS WITH COUNCIL LEADERSHIP AT SOME POINT, AND THAT PERTAINS TO BOTH THE REGISTRAR SALARIES AND ONE OF OUR FULL-TIME EMPLOYEES. I'LL ENTERTAIN ANY QUESTIONS AT THIS POINT. ANY QUESTIONS FOR MR. GOSS? Alderman Delernia. Yeah, you touched on it, the professional services. You know, I was curious because everybody says it's going to be a busy election year and I'm seeing increases in budgets because of that. But here it's a decrease in professional services even though you have an increase in overtime to accommodate those elections. So it seems kind of odd to me. What, the overtime? No, the decrease in the professional services. Yeah, well, it's not us requesting that. We certainly wanted more. And like I said, I think a good portion of that, I don't expect all of it could be mitigated by monies we do receive for early voting, because that's where the payments are going to go out to. But instead of the usual, as in the past, we would have just election days for a primary and election day itself. We now have 14 days during November elections we have seven more coming up in August so another 21 elected election days if you will which we have to hire a fair amount of staff to cover every single one of those days in two places now. So you know I'm fearful that we may not have enough based on the cut that's been offered but we're hoping you can at least restore to what we requested. And. Yes, you're correct. The Compensation Committee hasn't met to review the info you provided us, so hopefully we will be doing that soon. Yeah. Well, let's hope so. Thank you. You're welcome. Thank you, Alderman McDonald. Alderman McNamara. Just a quick question. Yeah. Mr. Goss, can you repeat what the state, with the early voting and expanded election days, How much was the take last year, this fiscal year? How much did you get from the state? Oh, last year we got $21,000. This year, and that was based on about a million dollars the state came up with at the last minute, just about this time last year. And with that, I believe there may be legislation that if it makes it to midnight, in before midnight, they may be adjusting that somewhat. I think they already have. Yeah, I've got that from our lobbyist up at the Capitol. Yeah, it was passed I think either Friday or Monday. And that would go largely to the professional services line? Yeah, it would go all pretty much to pay the people, plus some of our office staff and the overtime, things like that. But I don't think it will be enough. But, again, you know, if we could put some of the money back from what was cut, I believe we'll have enough. Thank you. I just have a question on staffing. What's the lowest number you've had and the highest number you've had? Staffing for elections? Okay. We generally will hire, depending on the year, but somewhere between 170 and 200 people for one day. Either it's primary day or election day. During early voting we pretty much need at least 10 people besides a couple people from our office to run each of those places. So figure another 20 people times 21 days, you're looking at 400 and something man hour, man people if you will, all right, times the number of hours that we have to pay them. So it's chewing up a lot of our budget. Thank you. Any further questions? I just have one, Mr. Gustaf. How much do you actually need to make everything function in your office now? In terms of the total budget? Yeah. Well, we requested $630,000 or something like that. We're being cut down to below that. So there's a lot more costs the last few years. specifically because of equipment and the election, I mean, the early voting days. They are really causing a big drain on the office where we didn't have those expenses three years ago. Yeah. Well, hopefully we'll get some money from the state. Yeah, hopefully. I mean, I'd love to see a $40,000 number. Maybe I'll be right. I don't know. The Secretary of State's got to come up with their own calculation, and I don't know what they do with it, with some kind of... logarithmic thing or algorithm thing that they came up with based on how many early votes you had, how many absentee ballots you processed. They factored in a lot of different things to come up with a, in a formula to come up with a number for each municipality. So hopefully, I would anticipate it to be more than 21,000. Hopefully we can get it doubled. But that's not our call. Right. Well thank you so much for Everything that you're doing. You're welcome. Thank you. Alderman Barboza. For the voting and the early elections if the employees paid one stipend or they paid per hour and what's the cost. They're paid per hour. I believe last year just to run the November elections we were upwards of like forty thousand dollars collectively to run just early voting not just Election Day which then There's a lot more people times a lot more hours. That itself would run us probably, collectively, somewhere around, to run a city election on one day is about $70,000. Along those lines, is that regardless of the number of monitors that you hire, is that regardless of the election, like municipal, state, or federal? Right, because we need pretty much the same number of people for the different positions that we need to hire. So whether you have 2,000 people showing up at a polling location or 3,000 or 1,000, we can adjust a little bit with maybe a couple people fewer in some of the slower locations. But it would help greatly at some point if we could have a conversation about the number of districts that we have to have open, which have 17 polling locations. And this might be a loaded question, but is there any plans, or have you heard of any plans, the upcoming elections, there's talk of National Guard coming in, maybe some other federal agents coming in? You're right, that is a little bit of a question. Has that been... No, I've not been privy to anything like that. So you haven't heard of anything? What's going to happen if it does happen? Well, we have police on call, and they usually are assigned three or four locations throughout the city, and they can park themselves close to those particular areas of town so that if they're needed, they're only a few moments away. But we've not had that kind of disruption. Individual person here or there, yes, but nothing coordinated like that. Okay. Anybody else? Alderman Delano? No? I was just going to comment. You know, I think that's a lot of national noise, but even if it were to happen, that would come out of your professional services budget, which has been decreased. You know that'd be tough. We hire the police out of there too. Yeah thanks. I just want to make sure that we're ready. We'll be ready. All the women lose I'm sorry lose Luna or the deets. Quick question. So I know we're trying to kind of get away from the schools but I know like for example like Pulaski we still use as a voting poll. So. the like the custodians or whoever has to stay there because the schools are open. Is that something that you guys have to pay or. Yes. Yeah we pay for the custodians. We pay double time between 5 and 7 in the morning when our people have to set everything up and then we pay on the back end from usually 3 to 9 in the in the evening or so while they keep it open. Remember both the times that we have The August primary and November election schools are closed. All right. So they do have to bring in somebody usually to cover those hours specifically and we have to pay for that. DIRECTOR MACK. : Thank you. DIRECTOR DEWOLF. Alderman DeLaney. DIRECTOR MACK. : So again that's professional services. DIRECTOR DEWOLF. Oh yeah. DIRECTOR MACK. : That was really cut. DIRECTOR DEWOLF. Yep. DIRECTOR MACK. : All right. Thank you. DIRECTOR DEWOLF. Anybody else. Anybody. Thank you Mr. Costner. DIRECTOR COSTNER. Thank you. DIRECTOR DEWOLF. Thank you. Mr. Gasson, come back. I'm sorry, who was that? It's not really like a question necessarily, but I just wanted to say I just hope that people understand how important it is for us to make sure that we are funding this because it's for us to have fair, safe elections. And I mean the debate about closing down election maybe it's something to have a conversation about but we want to make sure that people can easily access voting. So like that's what we're trying to do here. So I hope that everybody understands how important that is to have several locations and all these people who are being staffed and that people take the opportunity and vote because you know we're really trying to make sure that we're giving all of the things that people need. to make it easy for them to do it. So thank you again. Okay. Thank you. Thank you Mr. Grafson. Anybody else. No. Okay. Free to go. At this time there is no other. The next item on the agenda is. Mr. Chair. Go ahead. Alderman Santero. I make a motion to table this item due to the fact that we still have to continue tomorrow with the Board of Ed as part of AFL's So I'm moving to table this for tomorrow. The motion to table for until tomorrow. Oh we did. Mr. It's just a point of order to withdraw the table. We have the finance. That's right. And. Sorry you were not on the list. He wasn't on the list. Sorry. Or HR, is HR here? Yes. Oh, I'm so sorry. Come on up. Thank you, Mr. Anderson. We've got to be skipped on the list. Who's your time to go? I'll withdraw my table. What's your chance to go? Good evening. Human Resources. So if you don't know the Human Resource Department, we manage the full employee life cycle for all city employees, and that would include full-time, part-time, the 240 poll workers that Mr. Gossin was speaking about, seasonal employees, as well as we do all the recruitment testing. We assist Corporation Council with labor relations and contract negotiations. We handle all the benefit administrations, safety regulations, drug testing for all our CDL drivers, and police and fire departments for random drug screens. We also handle the sex or sexual harassment prevention training programs as well. So there is myself and a benefits administrator so there's two of us right now that do this work and then we are looking for a CHRO officer which we will be posting for hopefully very soon. So with our budget. We have increased our budget overall by about twelve hundred dollars for the year and that does include a full time administrative assistant to help us in the HR department. And what will happen is I have a part timer now that's budgeted and that position would go away. So it would turn into a full time position. Anything else? Any questions for Alderman McNamara? Just a point. Ms. Gard, you mentioned the CHRO and the other position. Did you say there's going to be a search underway? I'm hoping very soon, yes. Okay. Anybody else? Alderman D'Alernia. Hi, Linda. All right, I missed the last part. We currently have a part-time position, don't we? Yes. Okay, and that position is going away? It will go away if I get the full-time admin assistant to help. And you're going to interview for that? Yeah, it will be a full civil service position. So the admin assistant three, That's the one that would go from part time to full time. Yes. So does it have to be a three. It does for the level of work they will be doing. They will have to have H.R. knowledge and benefit knowledge to help us. Because usually it comes in at a lower level I would think and you know. Right. If we weren't if you didn't fill that position and you kept it a part time. How would that affect you? It's very difficult to service over 660 full-time employees and then close to 350 part-time seasonal in-poll workers with two people. Okay. I also noticed. Let me see where it is. There was something about membership fees. Professional dues, membership, it was noted that that was coming out of pocket. Professional membership fees required by union contracts. Mayor proposed addition of professional dues and memberships for the HR director that were previously paid out of pocket. BUT I ALSO SEE A REDUCTION. I ALSO SEE A REDUCTION. AGAIN, IT'S NOT A, IT GOES FROM $1,150 TO $750, YET THE MAYOR IS PROPOSING TO PAY FOR THE DUALS. YOU'VE PAID FOR THAT OUT OF POCKET BEFORE WHEN YOU HAD TO DO MEMBERSHIP FEES? I'VE ALWAYS PAID FOR MY OWN, YEAH. OKAY, SO... AND IF YOU LOOK AT PRIOR YEARS, FOR THE LAST 10 YEARS, I BELIEVE FOR THE BUDGET, THAT MONEY WAS NOT SPENT. SO THE MAYOR IS GOING TO PAY FOR MY PROFESSIONAL FEES THIS YEAR. OKAY, SO THE $1,150 WASN'T SPENT? NO. FOR 2026? NO. OKAY. AND HE'S PROPOSING $750 TO COVER FOR YOU. MM-HMM. ALL RIGHT, THANK YOU. YES. Ms. Gard, can you share the total number of workforce that this office provides human resources for? The city workforce, is it about 600? It's about a little over 650. Thank you. Any other questions for Ms. Gard? Call the woman, Scott. Are you comfortable with this? Like the amount that you're being offered? With the budget? Run everything away? Yeah, I'm comfortable with it. Okay. And we also, you know, keep in mind we also generate some revenue through testing. I do feel comfortable with it. What do you do with that revenue when you get it? Well, it goes in the general fund. Okay. At the end of the fiscal year. Thank you. Thank you so much for what you do. Thank you. And the dues fees and memberships, are those, are some of them required or are all of them required? No, they're not required. All right, thank you. Anybody else? No. Thank you. Mr. Anderson. Oh, I'm so sorry. Hello everybody. I'm Amy Goldsberry. I work in the finance department and I'm here to present our. I apologize for Mr. Henderson spoke and I thought thank you. That's OK. No worries. So Tim is our assessor so he'll be talking about the assessor's office. So I just want to say that our finance and revenue department were made up of three divisions the finance department the tax department and Tim's Assessor Department. Our combined in the general fund on page 45 is our combined budget for all three of us. And our whole budget went up less than 3 percent which is below the inflation amount. So our budget went up just a very small amount basically for contractual obligations. So that's all I have. Yeah, quickly, the assessor's office, you know, the job of the assessor's office, we discover, value, and list all the properties within the City of New Britain. You know, quickly, there's 17,000 real estate accounts, 2,000 personal property accounts, 46,000 motor vehicles. In our department, we maintain the exemption programs, ownership, history, We work with the Board of Assessment Appeals, real estate appraisers, real estate people, all that stuff. The big thing with my budget this year, the line item in professional services, there's a line item in there for the reval, $250,000. That's the big line item this year. Hopefully, you know, We won't I won't really know and the bid opening is going to be on May 22nd. We're thinking I'm estimating that the cost is going to be 500000 for the reval this year. The thought is we're going to spread it out over two years so 250 for fiscal year 27 and for fiscal year 28. So that's why that big number is for next year for the next two years. So that's the big thing for next year. Yeah I'm wondering why Chris isn't up here. Isn't he Chris didn't you prepare the budget for the mayor. How come you're not up here asking questions answering questions. So we work as a group. Well I would like to ask him a couple of questions. You can ask me. He's not part of management so this would be management. Right here, so he can't technically. But is Chris under contract to prepare the budget? Again, this is management. They're the ones that would answer any questions. But Chris had a big part in the budget. I had a big part in the budget, too. I might be able to answer your question. So is Chris under contract? Not for the 27 budget. For 26? I never saw a contract. So I think we're talking about the 27 budget. I can answer some questions about our twenty seven budget as it relates to. All right. Revenue finance and. So when do we expect a finance director. It just went out today so hopefully I forgot how many days it's going to go out for. Today was the first day it was posted. I believe so. Interesting. But Linda left she would have had more information. Oh no Linda's here. Linda's here. Hi Linda. Can you answer that. Yes the finance director was reposted today. When was it first posted. It was posted a few times it was posted under the old administration and then it was posted twice with the new administration. And we just haven't had the right applicants come along. Not yet. Has there been any changes in new posting. Changes in the posting. Yeah this new posting that went out today No, there were no changes. So it's the same posting that went out previous to this one? Correct. Okay. Thank you. Alderman McNamara. Well, thank you. Yes, actually I participated in that search and it didn't pan out under the previous administration. And Ms. Goldberry, I believe, has stepped in to put things in order. I'll note that... Without even the absence of the previous finance director, the audit was done and completed on time at the end of December. And working without a finance director, the department has reached out for assistance. It's in its purview to do. I have some general questions. You don't, pertaining to, I see that, and if you don't have the answer we can get them in due time, but the cannabis tax revenue was adopted at $250,000 for this fiscal year. It's estimated at $25,000 projected forward for the next fiscal year. I'm not sure there's been a diminishment of use of cannabis particularly in the world we live in but is there an explainer for that or. So for the FY 26 budget we are really hoping and anticipating to get a lot more revenue. But through this through this fiscal year so far we've only collected twenty thousand dollars. So twenty five thousand is a more realistic number. which is why we put it in the budget, so we could have a good budget in going forward. Mr. Conservatively, yeah. And that money comes back to us through the state, is that correct? Ms. Yes, it comes from the state. Mr. From the state. Ms. It's a tax on all the cannabis sales. Mr. The other global question I had, and again, if there's an answer we can get either now or soon enough, is the previous council approved a medical insurance program with a new carrier ending Blue Cross and was it Cigna I believe. So now we have Cigna correct. With no diminishment in benefits but the there was a projection of savings both for I believe city and school on the city and school side in that. Are you beginning to see those numbers has that been realized yet or is it going to take another year. I think it's going to take another year. We just got some numbers from Cigna. They're in our budget in our special revenue account, but I think they said it was going to take another year to fully realize any savings. Okay. Very helpful. Thank you. You're welcome. Roy? I wasn't done when John jumped in. Sorry. I was recognized by the chair. I certainly would have yielded all the way. Thank you, John. Can you please, Alderman DeLarnia, can you please refer to the Alderman as Alderman, I'm sorry, first name. Absolutely right. Thank you. Alderman DeLarnia, go ahead. Thank you. Big increase in interest income, 200%. What's that attributed to? So over the past few years, we've been really aggressive with making sure that all of our funds are in a bank account or an account that yields higher interest rates. So we took a look at the last few years and anticipated that our interest expense will, excuse me, our interest income will go up for next fiscal year. Over time went from $30,000 to $6,750 and part-time salaries $20,000 to $5,000. What if we need that support during peak times. So when we're fully staffed in the finance office we we should be fine we shouldn't need extra extra overtime and my revenue department though we're very we're very short staffed down there so some of that overtime would probably go to the staff down there. Part time salaries we don't really have a need for a part timer down in the revenue department once we're fully staffed. I think that those jobs are going out to bid soon and we actually have interviews next week for one position down there and I'm not sure about the assessor's office. Do you have any part time in the assessor's office. No no we don't. And Tim doesn't have any part timers in the assessor's office. Okay and what's the annual stipend for the treasurer. The annual stipend is it $5,000. I don't remember off the top of my head. Alderman McNamara seems to think it's $5,000 and I apologize to you. I think it's that. I'M RELATIVELY NEW, TOO. IT'S $5,000. IT WAS ON A DIFFERENT PIECE OF PAPER. SO THAT'S THEIR STAPEN. THEY GET PAID FOUR TIMES A YEAR, QUARTERLY. LIKE THE COUNCIL MEMBERS? MM-HMM. OKAY. ON THE SAME PAY TIME. THANK YOU. YOU'RE WELCOME. DID YOU WANT TO COME UP, LINDA? I DID. Thank you. I just wanted to make a correction. There was a change to the finance director job position. Oh okay. It was the salary because we could not we weren't getting the candidates that we were looking for with the salary that we had. No other change in the in the scope or the duties no no everything's the same. It was just the salary. Okay. Okay. Thank you. Alderman McNamara. If nobody else wants, I'd just like to ask the assessor. Yep, absolutely. I've been directing people down to the senior center and advising people of the senior tax credit to the state. Yep, the homeowner's program. With the May 15th deadline. Yes. Can you, and if you don't have the answer now, we can get it later, can you say how many of our seniors are disabled take advantage of that? I believe overall, I believe there's about 600 or so. Yeah, there's about, it's a two-year program, so about 300 on that even year and 300 on the odd year, so about 600 altogether. And that's just that credit, exclusive of veterans or other programs we have? For the ad vets, two. The credits, yeah. Yeah, the additional veterans, I believe that's another 200 or so, 300 or so, so it's additional, too. Okay. So, yeah. Thank you. Anybody else? Aldo Roman Maldonado. I just want to say thank you to both of you guys. I feel that you guys making magic with the little stuff that you both have. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you so much. Thank you. You're welcome. Anybody else? Jim, thank you. Thank you very much. Thank you. Thank you. Anybody, any other departments that I missed? I apologize. No other departments? No, I think that was all. Thank you. City Council, but I'll leave that to President Santiago. Thank you. Thank you. Seeing none, that completes that section of the agenda. Mr. Chair? I need a motion. Actually, I need a motion to table. Alderman Santiago makes a motion to table. Second. Second by Alderman McNamara. All in favor? Aye. Motion carries. And we will resume tomorrow night this part of the. Actually each one will have to be. Each one. So we have to go through each one. So we do each one individually? Yes. Thank you. So motion, I need a motion for the Mr. Chair? Yes, Alderman. I'd like to make a motion to accept and refer to the council with a neutral recommendation item number 37140-1. Second. Motion to refer the 37140-1 to the common council with neutral recommendation. Anybody, any discussion on it? Seeing none, all in favor? Mr. Chair, hold on. Again, I have to table it. All three of you will have to go to the table. I make a motion to table item number 37140-1 until tomorrow. Motion to table 37141-1. All in favor? Aye. The next item on the agenda is item number 37141-1 regarding the budget. Appropriation for Capital Improvement Program. Can I have a motion? Alderman Santiago. I'd like to make a motion to refer item number 37141-1 to the council with a neutral recommendation. Second. Second by Alderman Barbosa. All in favor? Motion carries. I have to recover that. Discussion first and then we have to send it to table. Any discussion on the motion? I apologize. Yes Mr. Chair. Alderman Santiago. I'd like to make a motion to the table item number 37141-1 so tomorrow. Motion was to table second by Alderman Barbosa. All in favor. Aye. Motion to adjourn. Second by Alderman Luz Ortiz. All in favor. Aye. Motion carried. Thank you. The time is 7.49. get hit.