City Council Meets on Budget

The City Council met with the mayor and other departments heads as part of the process of going over the city’s budget line by line.

The discussion begins above.

Note that everyone dialed in remotely due to an issue with the ceiling in council chambers.

Charter & Rules Committee

City Councilor filed a motion for the city’s law Department to craft legal language regarding the timeframe for proposals. Asa proposals from city councilors stand now, even when they no longer occupy a position on the council, their respective proposals must be attended to, even if to take up for a few minutes to dismiss it.

City Councilors Linda Vacon and Meg McGrath-Smith, chair of the Charter and Rules Committee

Vacon’s motion is that any proposal by a city councilor who is no longer on the councilor become null until another sitting member wants to take it up.

The motion will be taken up with the new legal language by the committee at its June 17 meeting.

Also, City Councilor Vacon and Kevin Jourdain introduced a motion banning the use of mobile phone and/or computers during an official meeting to express or gather viewpoints when the City Council or its committees are already in Open Meeting Law. The law considers it a violation when members of an official body communicate with people online who have not signed up to speak. The motion also advocates that no councilor be characterized in pejorative language by another language.

City attorney Michael Bissonnette said:

Members should not text with each other during the meeting. That’s number one. And it’s a clear violation, particularly if it pertains to a matter under deliberation and something on the agenda. I would argue that, if everyone has their cell phones on and  members are posting on Facebook, another member may be monitoring and that could be considered to be discussion dialog of some type  So I would caution against, doing that during a meeting.

The issue is complicated by the First Amendment that allows for people to express themselves — within certain parameters. The city attorney gave as an example of the council needing information from a city department and having an official from that office on the phone. The councilor would have to announce the official, maybe ask them to join the meeting remotely, but certainly repeat to the councilors exactly what the official said.

Public Safety

The state of apartment buildings and rental units being up to code was discussed by the committee at its May 14 meeting.

One motion would create a registry of  property owners and have them apply for certification from the city that their respective properties are up to safety and sanitation codes.

The motion filed  by former City Councilor José Maldonado Vélez would  force accountability by slum lords or absent property owners was met with positive response from committee members and the director of the city’s Board of Health, Timothy Rivers. Yet, there were reservations citing staffing.

City Councilors Israel Rivera, Jenny Rivera — chair of the Public Safety Committee– and Patti Devine

Also, City Councilor Patricia Devine said that the city’s Building Department is already in contact with building owners who must repair their buildings.

“Recently the building department has, put out letters to two, three, four family homes and blocks to follow the state law because they haven’t done that in about 30 years,” she said.

“As much as I like the idea,”  said Rivers, “I understand that there are some other avenues that maybe we can address some of those issues. …The mayor was looking into creating a community response department. If we had, those people in place that might be able to check out a unit beforehand.”

In the end, the motions did not win approval from the committee.

Another motion by Maldonado Vélez called for the creation of a registry of rental units.

“I think the idea of, rental registration is an excellent idea,” said Rivers. But as with the previous motion, the city needs a budget and personnel to manage that. “I think for the reasons of having a maintenance plan on file, we have a lot of overflowing dumpsters that would eventually, and not at first, but eventually create some of the, take some of the workload off of the complaints that we receive when a dumpster overflows and a landlord is not fulfilling their obligations, at least having a maintenance plan on file and holding them accountable to that maintenance plan.”