Episode Transcript
[00:00:00] Speaker A: Quincy City Council president, Councilor at large, Ann Mahoney is joining us to bring us up to date on the March 2 City Council meeting. Hi, Ann, how are you?
[00:00:08] Speaker B: I'm very good, Joe. How are you doing?
[00:00:10] Speaker A: Doing well. We had to postpone it a week because we had a blizzard since last time we talked.
[00:00:15] Speaker B: I know, it's amazing, isn't it? It's like we have no snow for so many years and then we're inundated with snow. But you know it's going to be good for the grass. So if it, if it melts slowly. Yes, we were, yeah, that was a question last night is how fast is it going to melt? Hopefully not too fast.
Exactly.
[00:00:32] Speaker A: Yeah, steady.
[00:00:33] Speaker B: Yeah, exactly.
[00:00:35] Speaker A: Was it an identical agenda to what it was supposed to be last week?
[00:00:38] Speaker B: It was. I mean, I think a couple of people were hoping to add a few more things, but I'm glad we didn't because we went to 11 o' clock last night. So I think it was just the right amount.
[00:00:46] Speaker A: Okay, so we can start I guess with a couple of committee meetings.
[00:00:50] Speaker B: Yep. So we had the Rules Committee meeting was the first one. And that was just introducing the open forum to put it into rules. And that was pretty quick. We went through the whole thing. There was no real objections other than we tightened up a few things such as, you know, if it goes longer than 20 minutes because we have like last night it went 30 minutes, we can take a vote to suspend the rules and go a little bit longer. And the same thing is true. If we start the meeting and there's nobody there, we're not going to wait 20 minutes. It will be no have a five minute window because the meeting will start at whatever time the meeting starts. 7:30, usually around 7:45 ish is when we're starting open forum. So gives people enough time to get there and then if there's nobody in the audience and nobody wants to do it, then we'll just move on to the regular business.
[00:01:31] Speaker A: Okay, so that was given a supportive vote, I'm assuming.
[00:01:36] Speaker B: Yep. It was a recommendation from the Rules Committee to give a positive recommendation to the full committee. So it got approved by the full committee later on in the evening, the regular council meeting.
[00:01:47] Speaker A: Okay, very good.
[00:01:48] Speaker B: Yeah. So that's the first one and then the second one was the ordinance committee meeting. And that was the ordinance amending the municipal code for chapter 66 for the auditor, strengthening the powers of the auditor. That also got a favorable recommendation. But Councillor Ash had brought up something about potentially having the wrong, I think it's supposed to be 11, not. Not. Not three. So we are going to go back and take a look at that closer. So we'll. We'll bring that out for positive recommendation on the 16th. The 16th.
[00:02:15] Speaker A: Okay. And do these orders need mayoral approval, Ann?
[00:02:19] Speaker B: No, both of these are. The rules committee is strictly for the.
For.
For the council to make those decisions, and the reinstatement of the. The. The ordinance committee is the same thing. Oh, and I mean, just, you know, I did speak with the mayor about this. This is. I said, this is really not about taking anything away from his administration and chief financial officers. Really, it is not. And he understood that. And we had kind of a. He said, I think it's working perfectly. I'm like, it is, but it's not working perfectly on the council side. And he understood. So we. We're both on the same page about this. This is just about balancing things and, and being able to take a look at those things without, you know, if we have, like, the chief financial officer come up and do the presentation, it's really. It's really. We really want to be able to look at things from the auditing side of things.
[00:03:04] Speaker A: Okay, and have you discussed this with the auditor as well?
[00:03:06] Speaker B: I, of course, did that. I would never actually bring something forward that's going to change. It just. I think some of the things that happens for that position can be frustrating, and this just opens the door a little bit easier for her to be able to do her job. So.
[00:03:19] Speaker A: Okay, so what's the next step for this?
[00:03:21] Speaker B: The next step will be the 16th that we'll tighten. We'll bring it up. We'll bring it back on the next council meeting to formally accept it and in the full council, and then it will be there. And then we'll be able to start working with Susan if there's certain projects we want to start taking a look at.
[00:03:36] Speaker A: I see. Okay, very good. And this was. You introduced this, Is that right?
[00:03:40] Speaker B: I did. So this changed back in 2008. I wasn't on the councilman. I was on the school committee, but I did pay attention to it back then. And it was. It didn't pass unanimously. It was a 54 vote. So four of the councilors voted against it. And it was one of those things that. And we've lost a lot of those. Those former. Not the councilors, but we lost a lot of the former mayors. That would also talk to me about that, saying that that really weakens the council. And it's, It's. It's a Real check and balance for the city. And then there were several of them, Laria McCauley, several of them talked to me about it, talked to the councils about it. But, you know, it's been working since 2008 and now it's 2026, and we're just looking to get a little bit more balance back. And I think that's why we saw, quite honestly, the change of guard and the council, because people are looking for more understanding of what's happening.
[00:04:23] Speaker A: Okay, was it unanimous last night?
[00:04:25] Speaker B: It was unanimous last night, but that was in. That was in to take it out of committee. So I don't want to say it has to be. They don't have to vote the same way when it comes to full council. We'll have a week. So we'll update the. Well, make sure the numbers work so that we're not making Susan in charge of the harbor master as well. So that's. That was what was happening there. So it was definitely a good catch by Councilor Ash.
[00:04:44] Speaker A: Okay, well, it's helpful to have an attorney on the council.
[00:04:46] Speaker B: I'm sure it always is. It's always helpful to have second sets of eyes looking at anything. And quite honestly, this was introduced like that first meeting. So this is, this is. It feels like a thousand years ago, really, when you think about it. It was just. It's. It's March already. So.
[00:05:01] Speaker A: All right, then you went to full council.
[00:05:03] Speaker B: So we went to full council. And in the full council, we had a presentation from Al Grazioso and team about the snow operations.
It was per Councillor Jacobs resolve. And, you know, I've. And I've always been a person who, when comes to snow, saying, you know, our jobs are to help navigate constituents to be able to get their services that they need. If you know something that needs to be taken care of. I'm constantly in touch with Al and his team, making sure they know because they probably know it before. I'm telling them they don't need to be told how to do their jobs. But it's a, it's a. I just want to let people know, like, this is not an easy task. When you have a little bit of snow, you get criticized with a little bit of snow, a lot of snow. It's a really. It's monumental what has to happen. Especially that second storm. It was very heavy, very dense in the whiteouts. It was just very. It was dangerous for people to be out on the road. And they were out in the road taking care of it. And, and, and I'm the first one to say nobody ever gets an A for snow removal. I mean, if you do, you get in trouble for the amount of money you spend. And if you. And if you don't spend the money, you get in trouble for the services you provide. So. But if we all work together, which they do. And that was what really what they were showing last night was the DBW work with the police, with the schools, which is really a function of a full team. And then also the counselors were working with them as well. And there was some disappointment. Some of the counselors are new and they're. They by the rule, like sidewalk to sidewalk, you know, that we're supposed to be clearing. And I don't think they ever get to sidewalk to sidewalk, street to get street corner, street corner. But I think overall, you know, we're hoping that. I can honestly think I can speak for Al Grazios, that we're hoping there'll be no more snow. I hope I don't jinx them.
And they had their full staff there and they did a great job. And they didn't just have snow. They were dealing with water main breaks, too. So it's a lot in the wintertime, just in general.
[00:06:45] Speaker A: Yeah, I know there were several power outages that hampered efforts as well. So some warming centers had to be staffed. So there was a lot going on.
[00:06:52] Speaker B: Yeah. Yeah. And then. And then there's also, like some initiatives that are happening with the coa, trying to make sure that they're teaming with the high schools to see if we can get volunteers out to shovel people out. There's, there's. And you know, you have these volunteers sign up with the anticipation that there's never going to be snow. And then we had two giant snowstorms, so thankfully they had that done too. But, you know, we can always do better. And we are, we are, we are really pushing for a walking city in the city of Quincy. If we're going to be walking city and we're developing a lot of these new homes for people to live in, we have to think about how people are walking maybe from Quarry street to Star Market, just in general. And walking routes have to be taken into consideration. It shouldn't just be, you know, we think these are the right ones that should really be mapped out in the future. I think that's going to be something that you'll see happen. Okay.
[00:07:35] Speaker A: Yeah, I know it was a pretty extensive presentation last night.
[00:07:37] Speaker B: It was, it was no surprise. But they did, they did a lot. I just want to thank everybody for coming out because they actually said if we do not cancel the meeting last time that they would come in and do the presentation. I thought, oh, my gosh, it's a blizzard. I'm not expecting them to stop and come in. But that's, that's how dedicated they are. And I think it's important for people to know they go. I will say, in general, people who do this kind of work, they go into overdrive. They. They are up for 36 hours. They. They are. They are hard, hard at work. So I don't think I could do it, But. And it's critical services. So then the next thing we had was the, the appropriation for $2.6 million for the fire department and the fire department gear. And now we had a lot of, like, there's a lot of emails we're getting people asking us to vote it through, rush it through, get it done, and we can't. So the thing is, it has to go into committee. Nobody has stalled anything. There's a lot of other people out there telling us that we stalled things. That's not true.
And, you know, the fact of the matter is, is that this came to the city as a press conference back last August underneath a different, different city council.
So they had six months to bring it before anybody, and it's just coming before us here on March 2nd. And it's gone into committee. It's going to come out of committee.
The science committee on March 16 will be when we start discussing it. And even when I was speaking with Chris Walker about this, he said, we're not anticipating this as a one and done. You're going to go in and just vote on it. We know that this is going to be. It might take a couple of meetings. And so the administration understands that. We just want people to know that this is. We're not. We're not holding it up. We're not causing any. This particular City council is certainly not doing that. But we will do our jobs and we will get it done and we will have these discussions and we'll move forward with it. So.
[00:09:13] Speaker A: Yeah. And speaking with the mayor just this morning, he acknowledged the same thing. He fully anticipated that this was the process.
[00:09:20] Speaker B: We can't do it any other way. I know Councilor Ashe said, like, if we could, you know, we would. And I did remind him. I said, well, this is the law. So it just, it works both ways. You can pick up on, you know, I really appreciate him picking up on the ordinance we were talking about, and I also appreciate him taking the moment to Say, you know, this isn't something that we don't want to do. It's something that we have to go through the right process for.
[00:09:43] Speaker A: Sure. Sure. Will there be a presentation and you know, from the administration or the firefighters union about the new gear that might be purchased?
[00:09:50] Speaker B: I think there's a lot of requests. What I didn't want last night to happen was turn into just a itinerary of what we want. So what I asked councilors to do is I think Councillor McGee had a couple of things like she was saying that, you know, if we can't have things in public, maybe we can have an executive session.
And, you know, it's a fair question to say. And I think Mr. Walker was telling me that they're going to. They're going to try to determine that whether or not they could share something in public. And if they can't, they will have it in. So we're all working very well together, I think. But what I did encourage people to do is reach out to Mr. Walker with all of their questions so we can kind of put them all together and we know what we're looking for because we're going to have duplicate questions. So rather than go through nine counselors and ask what we want, some people may not want anything, some people might want the world, but, you know, this will be up to how the administration wants to present it back to us. And if there's more questions that fall from that, that's what happens.
That's what this is about. This is about making sure that we're, we're reviewing all aspects of things and the administration is making sure that they're checking the boxes for. For themselves too.
[00:10:48] Speaker A: Sure. Okay. So March 16th, Finance Committee meeting.
[00:10:51] Speaker B: Yep. And we were hoping to have that little earlier, but because Debbie's going, she's going away for vacation. So we couldn't have it because we could have had an off cycle meeting, but that's just not going to work out. So the 16th will be the earliest.
[00:11:03] Speaker A: Okay, very good.
[00:11:04] Speaker B: Yeah.
And then we had the appropriation for community preservation for $325,000 for the National Security Society of Colonial Dames. That got tabled. Councillor Jacobs had a couple of questions in regards to that. We're hoping that will be back on the 16th and if not, Councillor Riley may take it to the CPA just to get a little bit more clarification on that. And then the two confirmations for Quincy Housing Authority and Quincy for the tenant and at the at large. I did talk to Mr. Walker yesterday and he said that they weren't. They weren't ready to bring them forward. And that also got tabled because there was a lot of information that counselors were asking for a little bit more information on.
To be completely fair, this is a whole new group of people, and this might have been the way they were doing it when they had all the same people for quite some time. But they need a little bit more information to be able to make this. And they're just trying to understand what their roles are, how long they've been on that type of stuff. So that will be either brought back on the 16th or at some point in the future.
And then we had the resolve for the American Rescue plan.
The result for the American Rescue plan, spending and transparency that was introduced by Councilor Riley. And she's really just looking. There was a resolve that was put through, I think, by Councilor Indronico. I can't remember the year it was put through. And she. There was no real. I think what they did is they sent an Excel spreadsheet for everybody. There was no real presentation to the public, and it was written in the Patriot Ledger. But what she's looking for is a little bit more transparency in that communication. And then also at this point, the opera monies are really all closed out. Really an audit of what it was, you know, what we thought it was spent for, what it was spent on. And just a presentation in that to be able to kind of close that. That loophole for that. And then she also had a second one which was, and I apologize to my whole packet here, which was the result for the retirement pension theft update. Again, that's the $3.5 million that was fished from the retirement. And, you know, we just. I think they're just looking for that update because back when this was brought forward, we were constantly being told, well, this is an active investigation and we can't have this. We could have had executive session, but we didn't. And now at this point, I think, I think they can come back and actually present when that's going to happen. I'm not sure, but I think that went into finance and oversight as well. And then finally we had a $2,000 gift for manic communication to dear, which was unanimous with a note to be sent.
[00:13:23] Speaker A: Very good.
It was a busy meeting, for sure.
[00:13:27] Speaker B: It was, you know, it was. But, you know, it's productive and it's going to be those types of things. We don't have to do everything on council meeting nights, but it's easier to start them that night and then potentially go off cycle if we need to. So we've got a lot to do. I know for the 16th, we have an ordinance meeting and a finance meeting. I think when we have a public. Public utilities. So public utilities will be from 6 to 6:30, 6:30 to 7 will be the starting conversations of salaries and then the 6:30 to 7, 7 to 7:30 will be the finance that. Beginning conversations for the. The fire gear.
[00:14:05] Speaker A: Okay. All right. So. Oh, so the salary raise issue is coming up then?
[00:14:08] Speaker B: Yep. I don't. She hasn't picked the ordinance, which, which one she's bringing out, whether it's going to be the mayor's salary or if it's going to be the. I think it's going to be the counselor salary first and then followed by the mayor. And I think the real first thing she's going to do is have. I believe. Because she kind of mentioned to me at the end of the night she'd like to have solicitor Timmons come before us and just talk about, you know, they said it was deferred, that the raises were deferred from taking them in the last two years ago from the mayor and also. But I think there's some miscommunication with that. There wasn't necessarily deferred. I think the state ethics came in and said we couldn't do this and they had to wait until the next election. So, you know, there's a lot of like, why can't you defer it? Why can't you do this? There are some tricks, tricky things about how that's written. You know, it came into play in the last. They approved it in the last council and we can't really just come in and just wipe it out. So we have to talk about the process and really about what the next steps are and whether or not we, you know, can we defer it? If we can't defer it, can we give it back? Can we? And really, it's not as simple as people think. You know, if it was, it would be done. So everybody's dealing with it differently. I think some people have set up an escrow account and putting their full checks in there, have yet to set up the escrow account just to let people know. But I have not deposited any of the checks from the city of Quincy. I will be hopefully setting that up this week. I just haven't had time to go to the bank. You have to do that in person. And, you know, people. And what we're hoping too is it could be Six months. It may not be a full year. What we collected. This might be six months when we have this all figured out. So be patient. We are working on it and I think everybody has the best interest of the taxpayers, city, Quincy, and making sure that we're, you know, when we are, when people are getting raises, it's done in a way that's, that's acceptable to everybody.
[00:15:51] Speaker A: Okay, excellent. Appreciate the update and. Anything else like to share?
[00:15:55] Speaker B: Not that I can think of. I know it's been, you know, we did have some dedications last night. There were a lot of, unfortunately, losses in the city.
I focused on the Louisa Lare and I know we had just. There was a lot going on last night. So there's. So for all the families that were mentioned last night, we just. We have you in our heart, in our prayers and thoughts and, you know, and, and hopefully, you know, this daylight savings will be happening this weekend and little longer days, a little bit more melting. And we know it will be in spring and then we'll be complaining about the heat. We'll be having emergency sensors for cooling.
[00:16:28] Speaker A: Just for the record, I will not be complaining about the heat.
[00:16:32] Speaker B: I always say that, Joe, but, you know, I'm a. I'm a fall spring girl. Like, I, I don't like when it's too cold and I don't like it when it's too hot, so.
[00:16:39] Speaker A: Okay. It's our favorite pastime in New England. Right? Complaining about the weather.
[00:16:43] Speaker B: It is. I know. Well, if we had perfect. San Diego has perfect weather, but it would get boring every day. I would think so I'd like to
[00:16:49] Speaker A: try it for a while, just to see.
[00:16:51] Speaker B: Exactly. Exactly.
[00:16:52] Speaker A: But we will catch up on the 17th, St. Patrick's Day, if that's okay.
[00:16:56] Speaker B: That would be perfect. That would be great, in fact. Well, you have a great day, Joe. I really appreciate your time.
[00:17:00] Speaker A: You too. Thank you.
[00:17:01] Speaker B: Thanks.
