Episode Transcript
[00:00:00] Speaker A: Time to check in once again with Quincy Mayor Thomas Koch for our weekly City hall updates. Happy Tuesday. Mayor.
[00:00:06] Speaker B: Happy Tuesday.
[00:00:08] Speaker A: Yes, it's beautiful for sure.
It's gonna feel like summer here in just a short time.
[00:00:13] Speaker B: It will. Yeah, that's okay.
[00:00:16] Speaker A: It's okay with me too. Yes, absolutely.
That leads us to thoughts of cleaner, greener Quincy coming up on May 2 this year.
[00:00:26] Speaker B: It is coming up quickly and it's a great day for the city. As you know, Joe, we've been doing it a long, long time.
Back when I was chief of staff at Jim Sheets, she started it and it continues. I tell you, it's a whole lot easier these days because we got parks and playgrounds so much better maintained. And in the old days we'd pull out refrigerators, mattresses, even burnt out cars in some locations up at Faxham Park.
So anyway, I think people pay attention more today.
I know our crew with both TPW and Natural Resources do incredible work, but it's still a big day because the stuff that we can't get to, I know a lot of people live in their beaches, city beaches. They get together and help clean those. We bring the equipment down and clean it. Every school area, usually the kids and parents come out and give it a little spoofing up.
We got obviously park locations that we'll have crews at and trucks at. So I mean it's a lot of labor hours that day that the public donate. That makes a huge difference in the end what these places look like. So we're excited about it. It's an event, everything everybody looks forward to every year. And I appreciate all the volunteers that work so hard on it.
[00:01:41] Speaker A: Yeah, it's really become, yes, a cleanup but also a big social event for a lot of groups, organizations, neighborhoods look forward to it as a way kind of gather after this long cold winter that we had.
[00:01:54] Speaker B: Indeed, indeed.
Some have their own breakfast or lunch with it. Obviously we do the cookout afterward. Everyone's involved.
Certainly welcome to. But it is a great day. Hopefully we'll have decent weather.
[00:02:07] Speaker A: Yes. That's always, that's always the, the fly in the ointment that we wait to see for. Sure.
[00:02:12] Speaker B: It doesn't have to be perfect but you know.
[00:02:14] Speaker A: Yeah.
[00:02:16] Speaker B: If it's.
[00:02:17] Speaker A: Can't be a washout.
[00:02:18] Speaker B: Yeah, exactly. Exactly. Yep.
[00:02:20] Speaker A: Any progress on, I know you had mentioned a while back city possibly taking over Wollaston Beach. Is there anything new to report there?
[00:02:28] Speaker B: Really nothing new there. It's something I approached the legislative delegation about a couple years back. I spoke to Governor Brake about it a number of years back.
You know, one of the.
One of the delegation, Representative Chan didn't see the wisdom in it and felt those were state owned. They should say state.
So it kind of stopped it. I mean, we had to go if we were going to do it, we had to go to the state that we were unified on it. So clearly weren't unified there. And so, you know, I still think we do a hell of a better job. But it is what it is and I got enough on my plate, so.
Very good.
[00:03:09] Speaker A: Can we talk a little bit, Mayor, about proposed ordinance in front of the city council that was discussed last night, actually.
Regarding. Well, I'll just. I'll just read what the order states. Establishing fiscal safeguards, reserve protections and financial transparency.
And I know that you don't attend these meetings, but do have a representative there who spoke on your behalf. Have you had a chance to review this?
[00:03:36] Speaker B: I read it quickly before. I know obviously Mr. Walker represents me at those meetings, so I haven't talked to him since the meeting to see how things went. But you know, I just would like to say a couple of things, Joe. One is we're fully transparent. I mean, our budget is online. You can go and look at a budget any day of the week and see where we are expenditure wise, et cetera.
You know, we hold meetings. We have to get votes for certain things.
You know, that whole transparency thing I think is. Is way overstated. I mean, we answer to the state. We're an entity of the state. Every year, you know, we have an audit. Non. By an outside auditor. We have certifications in the fall before we can set the tax rate by the state that everything is in order.
We pass every federal audit, the CDBG expenditures, our opera Covid money. We pass applying colors.
I'm not. I'm not really clear what the intention is. If they would like to change the direction in some ways that they'd like to have more in reserve. I get all that. I get all that and that's all fair game. We can have those discussions at the end of the day. I wasn't elected to build our reserves and savings account. I was lucky to get things done. And I've often said, Joe, you want to know where the money spent, open your eyes. I mean, we're on our fifth new school, which is incredible.
It's amazing in the state that we're able to do that.
Every park and playground has been rehabbed, restored.
You know, you can look at all the great projects we've done with the Community preservation, the Cardington building, the old town hall, some work at the Church of the Presidents, the Adams Academy. We're building seawalls, rebuilding roads and I mean I could go on and on. We've with catching up on infrastructure. We're an old city. We used to talk about this stuff all the time. Joe, we're an old city and these things have to be addressed. So you're kicking the can down the road.
So at any rate, we'll continue to have these discussions, but I'm not sure any policy will really change my mind on how we should move forward. But at the end of the day, the people weigh in and we listen to that people. Some of these people are newbies of the city, probably here five or six years before COVID we used to do meetings all across the city on the budget, on where we were and answer questions on our pension system, how things work.
So I think the word transparency is a little overused these days. But the city council also has an appointee, a city auditor.
The city auditor holders to, you know, keep an eye on things and report to the council and things. So not really clear what the big hang up is other than they don't. Some of them maybe just don't like to spend money and I get it, that's fine. And when we go forward projects, they'll have an opportunity to weigh in and make a decision to vote up and down on some of those projects. That's how it works.
Again, I haven't caught up with Mr. Walker yet on how things went last night, but catch up today, I'm sure.
[00:06:52] Speaker A: Yeah, it was, it was not voted on. It was continued to a future finance meeting.
[00:06:57] Speaker B: Yep.
[00:06:58] Speaker A: I understand your budget presentation to the council is coming up on May 4th, is that right?
[00:07:03] Speaker B: That's correct. Yep. First Monday of May. That's what we just used for.
[00:07:06] Speaker A: And can you give us any insight into what that might look like?
[00:07:10] Speaker B: What I can say is when there's no new positions and no new programs and you know, the increases in the budget will largely reflect contracts by employees, health insurance and energy costs.
That would be pretty much the bulk of.
You know, I'm not sure these, the new councilors fully understand it's not a zero based budget. We don't start from scratch, as you know, Joe, you know there's a current city budget. We tweak that, make the change as necessary.
Like I just mentioned, the contract increases and some of those other costs. Rubbish is another example.
Those costs go up every year and not much we can do about that. But at any rate, look forward to bringing the budget in on that Monday, May 4, and then open up the discussion. And my guess is there'll be some lengthy city council finance meetings, which is fine.
We get a lot of new councils that probably don't even understand what some of the department's missions are. So I think it'll be a learning experience there, which is great.
They should ask all the questions they have and we'll take it from there.
[00:08:24] Speaker A: This weekend, mayor kicks off the concerts on the Hancock Adams Common. The soft rock concert. There's something planned right through September on the Hancock Adams Common this year.
[00:08:38] Speaker B: Yes, as you know, that's been well received over the years, Joe.
It really has. The public loves those, brings the community together, some great acts and you know, it helps the downtown. A lot of people go to dinner before or after, which is not a bad thing at all. So yeah, I look forward to it the season again this year.
Still working on the rest of the items. As you know, we've talked about Flag Day June 13, which will be Saturday night, which will Talk about the 250th and try to honor that, that history.
We are bringing back the Marina Bay Festival out of Marina Bay, which is the July 3rd, 4th and 5th, I believe.
And we got a smaller tall ship that's coming in July 17th, 18th that weekend that will be open to the public. So a lot of cool stuff coming up. Still working on some other things, but the typical, you know, the concerts on the Common. There may be a couple of things at Peerroy Square. Working with a team on, you know, whether we have some watch parties with the soccer going on.
You know, the typical truck festival in October will happen. That's always another well received event with the music festival and the food trucks. So, you know, the staff's working hard on all these items and I know the public loves it.
[00:10:00] Speaker A: Any concert at the stadium to talk about yet?
[00:10:04] Speaker B: No, we can't do what we did last year. But we are trying to put something together and more to follow.
[00:10:11] Speaker A: Okay, very good. Yeah, those were once in a lifetime, I'm sure.
[00:10:15] Speaker B: Absolutely. There's a lot of resources, committed. I mean it's the 400. That's the stuff you do. But going forward we'll.
We might do something much smaller version this year, but going forward we'd never be able to have something there with the ticket prices so low. We just, we can't. I mean, obviously Dancor subsidized those events pretty heavily, which helped us keep the ticket prices within reach for the average person. So we're proud about that. But if we're going to continue to do it, we wouldn't be able to do that going forward.
[00:10:45] Speaker A: Sure appreciate your time, Mayor. Enjoy this lovely weather we're having.
[00:10:50] Speaker B: That's my plan. You too, Joe.
[00:10:52] Speaker A: Will do. Thank you.
[00:10:54] Speaker B: Bye.
[00:10:54] Speaker A: Bye.
