Episode Transcript
[00:00:00] Speaker A: Checking in once again with Quincy City Council President Ann Mahoney to get an update on the most recent City Council meeting. Hi, Anne. How are you today?
[00:00:07] Speaker B: I'm doing great, Joe. How are you doing?
[00:00:09] Speaker A: Enjoying this gorgeous weather we're having here?
[00:00:11] Speaker B: I know, it's beautiful.
[00:00:12] Speaker A: Yeah, it really is. We should do this outside, I think.
[00:00:15] Speaker B: Yeah, I think we should. I just came home from a wedding in New Hampshire, and it was so hot Friday night, but Saturday was beautiful. And I know you had a beautiful day here in Quincy tube for Flag Day, but it was a pretty special weekend. The Mahoney family. So not any of my kids, but one of my nephews got married. It was really exciting.
[00:00:30] Speaker A: Oh, very nice. Well, congratulations. Excellent. Nice thing to do with. Spend time with family, for sure.
[00:00:35] Speaker B: Absolutely. It was a great weekend. Yeah.
[00:00:38] Speaker A: Now, on to the issue at hand. The appropriation for the potential purchase of Eastern Nazarene College was on the agenda last night.
[00:00:46] Speaker B: It was. It was on the agenda last night. And we did meet last week as well, on Thursday just to have a second meeting. I think it was like a second or third meeting, I can't remember, but it was on. It was on the agenda last night. And Mr. Walker got to speak in regards to it. And we all kind of. Everybody had a chance to speak and give their opinions of it.
My concern is not whether the property has value, but most people would agree that this is a unique property and it has a significant amount of potential. But the real concern is the financial impact and the financial financials that were presented to the administration, to the city council. We asked for a draft. I mean, we asked for the debt specialist to come and speak to us in regards to how much debt. We found out back in late March, early April that we have.
We thought we had 1.6, but we had 1.8. And now after this past week, and when I was looking at a Hilltop Securities June 30, 2025 report, we actually have $2 billion in debt committed to the city of Quincy. That means there's 200 that still has. It's been.
They haven't spent it yet, but there's 200 million still waiting to be spent.
And it wasn't. This is where I. This is where I think people are saying, oh, you just keep saying that number, but that number is huge. And we don't. When we ask for the debt to be presented to us, we're not looking to say that Quincy has flexibility. We're looking to say, you know, what do we have going on? What do we have to prepare for and can we afford any more. And we've had two credit downgrades. We've had Bloomberg, a national, national news cycle pick up that we are the highest debt, the South Shore, really the highest state, state of Massachusetts. And there's very critical watch I watches for us to be able to rebuild our reserves and to rebuild certain things. And it's been going on like that for years. So our my concern mostly is that debt. And although something is a once in a, once in a lifetime opportunity, you have to be able to afford those opportunities in life. And I can't just straddle the future Quincy residents with this type of, of debt. We need to get our arms around it. So, you know, it did not pass last night. I don't believe that means, to me, it doesn't mean the conversation is completely over. It just means that this conversation is over. There's opportunities to go back to ENC and talk to them if the administration so desires to want to. I will say that there's some frustration on some of the city councillors that they feel as though there is that we talk about collaboration all the time and there is not really a lot of collaboration. There's, you know, we're being told from a podium or by the Chris Walker what's coming down the pike, but there's not a lot of conversations. The mayor's not calling anybody or talking to anybody and that's different. He used to talk to everybody on a regular basis. Not necessarily me, but he did talk. I knew he talked to many of the other counselors. So it's definitely not collaborative right now. And I would like it to be collaborative. I mean, we did mention that. I did mention that if we were to sell the Monroe building, I probably could get behind it even better. But what I mean by that is the assets they were bringing to us, the Messina property, they took off the table as it should not have been on the table in the first place because it was not going to raise any money. And they put another, another one on the table which was, which was Sevilla Ave, which is assessed for $411,000. That's actually less than they were going to be able to bring in before. And this is all with the assumptions that everything's going to be 100%.
So those are where our concerns lie. Those are where my concerns lied. And I just feel as though we also asked for a capital improvement plan. They gave it to us last Friday.
So we're asking for things, we're not getting it, but we're being asked to trust and to go ahead and make this decision. And if we had gone ahead, this is just my personal opinion, if we had gone ahead $22.5 million, whether it's 5 million that they have to bond or whether it's the whole thing is just the beginning of the next one that's going to come in at $100 million or something else that we're going to have to keep investing in to be able to get these properties ready for sale or anything else we have to do. That's where my concern lies, that it's not the first part of the purchase. It's the extraordinary costs that come after you own it.
[00:04:46] Speaker A: So does the city council have any control now over the property?
[00:04:51] Speaker B: Nope, we don't have any. The city council has no control of the property. Neither does the administration.
You know, there's things that you can do. We can, you know, definitely the mayor talked about doing an overlay in that area back when I was in the council. Never got voted through. So there is no overlay in that area right now. I think he spoke as though there is. There was never voted on for 55 and older. Can't really vote on a 55 and older when you don't.
When it's not for sale. But second thing is, you know, we can put, we can put restrictions on it. We can put a PUD around to change the word, the way the variances work for a PUD and make it something so it has to come back before the council to hold people accountable. You know, there are many things we can do, but we didn't set the date. Like, you know, the administration says enc set the date. We didn't set the date. It was, it was set. And there was no consideration for what our needs were on the council to be able to get to. Yes, we told. We. I think we were pretty articulate about we needed to see. And you know, and again, we. This is what I mean about a conversation. No conversations were had. We just get an email right before a meeting telling us Messina's off and Seville is on. And many people didn't even catch that until the meeting. They were like, we didn't even know. They thought it was additional two. And it's not. It was not additional two. So I think that's where things are really kind of.
We're kind of off balance because it's. There's 80 properties the city has purchased over the course of last 10 years and Seville is. Was one of the ones that they came back with. And it's just there's other things that we could do. And if this is something that we really want to do, we need to find a way to be able to not just buy enc, but also settle the nerves of a lot of people who, you know, want us to start tackling that debt. And I would say that. I know a lot of people were saying they weren't getting any negatives about enc, just positives.
That's true. I got a lot of. I got a lot of pro encs, but I got a lot of, you know, debt issues that people were bringing to us. And even last night when we had the open forum, it was not 100% ENC. There were people that lived in the neighborhood that were thanking us for, you know, staying strong. And there were people that came up and just spoke in general about the debt. And again, I don't want to. I'm not trying to disparage anybody's opinions of those, but there's a lot of opinions out there, and we are listening. I know that there's this urge to say that we're, you know, we're just not listening to everybody. We only listen to the people who tell us we're whatever they're telling us. I listen to everybody. So I'm happy to say that I have no problem. I listen to people. I don't, you know, I have no problem with people disagreeing with me. I'm not. I'm able to listen. And to be able to put into, you know, to be able to programmatically figure out which is the best. Pragmatically look at things and be able to try to put our best foot forward. This is strictly. When you're looking at it, as far as I'm concerned, it's a finance package that just isn't gonna. It just. It just didn't pass. And, you know, there are other ways to do it. Sure. Come back with a better plan. They'll have more time to do that.
They actually had two years, to tell you the truth. It was two years ago that the mayor announced he wanted an overlay and enc. So we really had plenty of time to have this prepared. So to say they. They didn't have a lot of time to do it is also not. It's. It's. This is what I mean, this is where it's. It's just not. We need to work together on that, and we're not. So.
[00:07:59] Speaker A: Okay. So the vote was 6 to 3 in finance, and then again in the full council meetings Yep.
[00:08:04] Speaker B: In the full council meeting, we did take up that vote again, just to make it a clean. You know, we clean voted on it and took it out of committee so that the next one, if there was something to come back, it'll be a new proposal, hopefully.
[00:08:16] Speaker A: Okay. Because it would have needed two thirds. Is that right? To pass?
[00:08:18] Speaker B: Yeah. Needed two thirds. Yeah. So really, they only needed. If four people voted against it, it wouldn't have passed either. So it's. It's. You know, it. And again, you know, where everybody's looking at these in their own lenses. All of the councilors are looking in their own lenses. I think people very much articulated where they felt, where they stood and why they were voting that way.
[00:08:38] Speaker A: Okay, very good. And then on to the full council meeting.
[00:08:41] Speaker B: Yep. On the full council meeting.
[00:08:42] Speaker A: Yep.
[00:08:43] Speaker B: We. We had.
Let's start with some positives. We had two recognitions last night. The first one highlighted was recognizing chef Lawrence Luby, the owner of Bravato and Quincy, and he's the runner up of Bravo's Top Chef. And he's. Which is one of the most prestigious culinary competitions in the country, which I have to say I am a fan of, and I did watch it. And he also beat previous. They beat Bobby Flay and Chopped, which, again, if you're a. If you're a Cooking channel fan and, you know, all of these shows. My husband's not. He's the gardener, and I like to watch the cooking show. So I. I was very intrigued. I was sad that he didn't win. He was. It was great to watch him. If you haven't been to his restaurant, you have to go. It is delicious.
And it was just exciting to have, you know, that attention brought to, you know, really what I would say is he's a very. He's very. He's very. He's a gentleman. He's gentle. He's just. And he's incredibly talented. And his imagination, when you watch them on these shows, it's just. I just am blown away by just. It's a. It's another form of art as far as I'm concerned. You know, I prefer to. I don't cook like that, but I definitely enjoy watching people create things like that. So it was exciting. And then we also had the Girl Scouts in front of us and an opportunity to honor several of the Girl Scouts and their leaders and shout out to Gail Spring, because she was forgotten about for a second last night. She was like, I was only. Only Gail for the longest time. But, you know, it was great to See all the leaders, they're doing a great job with these young ladies.
Four young ladies that were, I think they had bronze, bronze, bronze in the girl Scouts. And they came up and they were speaking. I said, who are the little girls? And they're like, there are siblings, but this is about us. And I thought they were so cute. They were just, they were just very excited to be there. And it's always nice to have both the boy Scouts and the girl Scouts or any of the scouts, any of the kids that do something. It just kind of lifts you up because they do work really hard for those things. And they are, as far as I'm concerned, those future leaders of our, you know, of our, whatever they want to do because they work pretty hard on things they do in scouts. So I just wanted to mention that too. And then we moved on to open forum and in open forum they, we did share that we'll have two more special counsel meetings. There'll be no open forums in that because they're special meetings. And then we'll be back to open forum in the fall.
I did basically ask that everybody be signed onto the papers last night just because we, there was a lot of people in the room and we, it takes a while to get through. We're not complaining at all because this is, this is something that I did put on there. But. And these were big topics, you know, the topics that we were having. I'm certainly not going to say to somebody in a big talk topic thing you can't speak, but they'll have no open forum in the summer, so we'll come back in September.
So. And there was, it wasn't just strictly emc. We definitely had some of the early intervention parents were back. I think they were very feeling very disparaged by the sanctioned Facebook page that, that's what I've come to call it, the sanctioned Facebook page that, you know, seems to be very adult one sided. If you're, if you're not, you know, you don't agree with them, they kick you off. I can't see any things you're saying, but they were saying some pretty rough things about. These parents were basically being puppets for people. And they were both. There were two parents that got up and basically said that they don't need to. They, they can speak for themselves and they're not puppets. And they just were explaining the, the, the, the destitute they feel for their kids because of the, the, they're being moved out of the building that's very much created for the environment of what these children need and being put into an office park, it's not really going to work. And they're entitled to come up and speak about that. And, you know, it's, It's. They, they are begging for a meeting with Mayor Koch, and I'm hoping Mayor Coke does give them a meeting, but, you know, that's a. That's in his court. So from there, we moved on to the open meeting law complaints. We had four open meeting law complaints.
This became one of the most detailed discussions of the evening. So we did have the council reviewed the facts, we discussed the applicable standards underneath the law. We heard a variety of viewpoints.
We had Mr. Timmons come up and revealed another part. So just to back up for a second, it was.
I forget the date. It was. But it was back in May. It was an ordinance meeting. They were talking. It was about the raises. And there was this discussion going back and forth. And I think Councillor McGee mentioned the fact that she, she talks to a lawyer. And Jim Timmons called out, you know, from the podium that she was breaking open meeting law, which is very. It was just a strange. It just felt strange. Everything felt strange about that night. And from there, like the next day or two, we were getting open meeting law violations that basically say, we want the name of your lawyer, your secret, Secret Squirrel club or whatever. I'm not sure really what. I'm just. I'm just. It was just a lot of things that came in and, you know, we. Maggie had reached out to the attorney General herself because of course it was. It was about her. So she was feeling a little, did I do something wrong? Kind of thing, and she didn't. And open meeting is really about a quorum. It's about talking in a quorum. It's about discussing business that's on the agenda that hasn't been discussed in public. If something has been discussed in public, we can talk about any of those things to anybody. If it hasn't been discussed in public or it's highly sensitive, we cannot. That's the rules of being a counselor. And what we can't do is we can't meet as a quorum and discuss what our votes are going to be. We. And a quorum would be for a city council the size of nine is five. So anytime there's five counselors together, they really shouldn't be talking. And if you have public meetings, I've said this in the past, I know Kazley Yang used to always say, I can't. They asked us questions in a Public meeting. But I can't speak because, you know, we will be breaking open Media Lab. That wasn't posted. That's not true. We can't speak to each other. We can have our own opinions for things and, and so long as we're not basing things like, like standing up and saying, I'm totally against this. You can say what you feel about something, but you know, you have to be balanced of what you're talking about. So what has happened last night is counselor, City Solicitor Timmons got up and started speaking about an email. Now, the email was never brought up in the last meeting. It was just that she was talking to the lawyer. It was all about getting the lawyer's name and talking to lawyer. And you broke up a meeting law.
And the next, I think next day we got the open meeting law violations. Then there was, I guess a Freedom of Information act looking for any emails or texts or what from Maggie to City Solicitor Timmons. And those got out, which was Timmons asking for Maggie to, you know, to give up the name of her lawyer. And she asked, what law did I break? And it's basic. Basic. It seemed to me that those should have been confidential. The City solicitor works for the city, works for all of us. Had a conversation with the counselor about something and released these. And those are all over Facebook too. And again, they're looking from the surface of things. It was all about, she's not giving up this name. And she has to. She does not have to. It's not part of it. The. I never spoke to the attorney. Nobody as far as we. I asked that question last night. Nobody spoke to the attorney. We didn't have emails. There was no correspondence. There is nothing there. So Mr. Timmons brought up an email that Maggie had sent in with a redline version that was to be sent out to all of us through Jen and Mr. Ash. Councilor Ash actually brought it up and said. He looked it up on his phone and he said, it looks like she sent it to Jen. Jen sent it out to all of us. That's how we. That's how we do it. Like you're changing something. I'll send out a red line to let people know, like, this is what's being changed. He was suggesting that he didn't know who helped her write that. Again, it. It doesn't matter. So it. Nobody violated anything. And even, you know, it was Councilor Dibona who asked Mr. Timmons to come up and speak. And at the end, Councilor Demon was like, if nobody replies, then it's not an open main law violation. So interestingly enough it, this is where we're standing and you know, Mr. Solicitor Timmons was coming up going, well, I don't know if, I don't know if his, her attorneys, Morgan and Morgan, like I don't know what their specialty is. And it seemed a little odd. I did say, can we just, just. It's not that to me wasn't professional either. So it's just my opinion, like there's no need to exchange these types of things. It was what it is. But I will say it was a thorough discussion and, and council was right. This, this council is getting, you know, a lot of opening law complaints. And again I go back to that sanctioned Facebook page that is, it's a whistle saying anytime happens, this is what you need to do. Send them all out and send them a violation. They're all violating everything. They're, they're talking behind. None of this is happening. It's just a, it's a conspiracy in the making. And you know, that's what happen how conspiracy starts. But you know, we're doing the business that the people elected us to do. We aren't listening to everybody and we aren't talking to people. And if, if we're not allowed to talk to people, then everything has to be discussed in open public. And that's not how this works. I can talk to you, Joe.
Somebody might say she's breaking open meeting law. She's talking about something. No, we're not. So in, in the end there was a vote for me, the council president, to take the, take the words of the council, which was that there was no violation and send it back to the Attorney General and the four complainants. It will be all sent as one email to all four, plus the attorney. I'll get that taken care by end of day today.
[00:17:19] Speaker A: Okay. And it's up to the Attorney General to make the final ruling, is that right?
[00:17:22] Speaker B: Yep. So the Attorney General has the, has the opportunity to make the final rulings. Sorry about that.
So the Attorney General has the, has the opportunity to make the final ruling. And I think the, I think and I'm going to draw a blank this because I haven't gone this far, haven't happened. This hasn't happened after 30 days. I think they can appeal and it goes, goes down that row. But okay. But again several, you know, I will say it wasn't just Councillor McGee who called. It was. I also called the Attorney General's office because, because it just seems like when does it Become like there seems to be regular things coming in. I said, when does it become like, you know, that it seems more serial than it does.
It's not. It's not that I don't want to respond to everybody, but it seems like there's a lot of this happening, and it's. It's. Hey, that's the way it works. You can ask for anything. But I will say some people are getting things much faster than others. I've known people waiting for information from city hall or years to get information out of it, but this information's flowing pretty fast, and that's why I think it's relatively interesting. I'm not saying, you know, anything's happening there, but it does seem to get out of City hall fast. So this is. This is not in the spirit of collaboration. That's what I would say.
[00:18:36] Speaker A: Okay, we'll leave it there.
[00:18:37] Speaker B: Yeah.
So then we moved on to the remainder of the meeting. Was basically was really moving. Transferring of funds. And there were some questions in regards to that. So we had.
We had several. I don't actually have my. My agenda right. We definitely had some transfer funds. And, you know, this is the first time any of the. The. The. The people that are in the council are having transfers. They're asking some questions. I will say Director Della Barber was up at the microphone. And it is a tool that is used in all towns and cities at the end of the year because we do have to zero out the budgets, meaning if there's any negative balances, we can't have those. Because if you do go to the dls, when you post up your final. Final numbers for fiscal year 26, they. And if there's any negatives, they're going to take that from your free cash right away. So the goal is to clean up everything and the transfers help clean things up. So there were a lot of transfers. And what I will say is I noticed a few things which seemed a little strange. Nothing major, like basically the firefighters have a lot of money every year that have to be transferred. I think the police do too, for overtime. And it seems to be a regular thing. So what we really should be doing is that something we should build into the budget so that we don't have to do the transfers at the end. Because if we. And if. And if you have too much in the end, then guess what, the transfer will be coming from the police to someplace else. So that's the goal of any budget, is to make sure that it's not. You have so much money you can Transfer all over the place at the end of the year or that you have to slow down because you know that this is going to be a big negative. And now you have to go to other departments and say, is there any way we could slow down your pace of spending? We're going to need X amount of money. That's a perfectly normal thing. And you know, I asked counsel, I asked Director Della Barber, do you look at your expenses every month? And he was like, yep. And I said, you know, that's, and that's how you keep track of it. That's how you, that's, that's the job of the chief financial officer to make sure that, you know, everything's balancing out at the end of the day.
I did ask for a line by line detail because they do show you who it's coming from, but I just, it's more interesting to find out what, what line it's coming from because that's where you can go back to as a budget and kind of say, you know, next year when they're doing the budget, you can look at it and say, do you, you know, is that an area that, this is an area that you had a lot of money in last year. We got to transfer it out and, and that's the type of work that we have to do. So. And, and those are the questions that were asked. But I think it was a good discussion. There were a couple of things for CPA that got transferred. There was one thing that got held up because it wasn't enough money in the account for, and we'll do that Wednesday night. But for the most part, I think it was, it was all, you know, buttoned up by the end of the night. We were done by like 10, 10:30, 10:40 last night. So. And I have to say I was glad that we didn't go past 11.
So. But it was, you know, we do have two more sitting. Like I will say this is our business isn't done because we have to have. Normally this last night would have been the night that we voted on the budget, but we'll have meeting Wednesday night and we'll vote on that budget Wednesday night and then we'll have a final meeting on Monday. So the budget finance Wednesday night will be the final, final few departments and the other, any departments I have to come back will be Wednesday night. We'll, then we'll get to the vote for the budget. And then on Monday night, I think there's two oversight meetings. One is in regards to the COA director, Mr. Clasby because that did. His rulings did come out. I think they're just. I think tomorrow he'll be sentenced. So that's something that was brought in by Councilor Riley. She was asking to have that before we break for the summer. And then also Councillor De Bonar had. I mean, customer. Councilor Jacobs had two orders that she came in last night. I think it was for appointments. Just understanding how appointments are working mostly for the. The senior housing.
And then we're going to have an oversight meeting as well. And that oversight meeting, I believe, is going to revolve around the raises. And then we're going to have a council meeting in case anything needs to be voted out of committee. And then that will be the last meeting for the first six months and fast. Six months, Joe. I mean, it's a blink of the eye. And six months has gone.
[00:22:25] Speaker A: Very much so, yes. Okay. So you and I will catch up two more times before the end of the council session.
[00:22:30] Speaker B: We will, we will. And hopefully the weather will stay just as beautiful as it has been.
[00:22:34] Speaker A: That would be nice. Yes. Thanks for the update, Anna. I appreciate it.
[00:22:38] Speaker B: Absolutely. Have a great day.
[00:22:39] Speaker A: You too. Bye. Bye.
