Bangor council advances three priorities, closes ethics referral with no action

[0:06] Susan Hawes: Good evening, welcome to the city council workshop. It's Monday, January 12th, it is 5 15. Around the table we have Councilor Meller, Councilor Deane, Councilor Beck, Councilor Walker, Councilor Blue, City Manager Carollynn Lear, Council Leonard, Councillor Carson, Councilor Fish, and I'm going to say so we will get right to it. We don't have a huge agenda, but it's always nice to move right along, and our first is talking about the finalization of the council priorities and see manager later. Sure, so there's a memo from me in [0:46] Carollynn Lear: your packet as well as a draft council order. As you recall in early December we met to discuss brainstorm and straw poll, I don't know, probably 50 or so potential Council priorities, and in that memo I've listed what were the top three straw poll finalists for the council's priorities for the coming year. Those were establishing a comprehensive plan, homelessness, continue to address housing needs, and work towards a fairer share of regional costs and participation and various regional challenges responding to. I took the liberty of drafting some rough potential strategies for your input and addition to. And so what I'm looking for tonight is just confirmation that you'd like to proceed with formalizing these three priorities as council's priorities for the coming year. If so, the associated order will be on the agenda at the next council meeting, and then get your input and feedback on the draft strategies that are in that memo. Okay, comments council member [2:18] Joseph Leonard: Just a quick question, are we going to have some more strategy meetings for some of the other agenda items that did not have unanimous approval for? [2:34] Susan Hawes: I would like to okay, because there were still some items on there that were that did not make the cut per se the top three. But one of them was infrastructure. And we've talked about the importance of that. But we also need some strategies for that. So I think we do need to find time somewhere to go [2:54] Joseph Leonard: over some of those extra months if I actually because this was on my mind I if I just wanted to offer a potential solution to that instead of trying to figure out one single night where we can have another one of these strategy meetings what we could do is because we already have regularly scheduled committee meetings we could actually prioritize some of the time from those committee meetings to go over some of those agenda items specifically related to those committees so with maybe some Overlap, just because, like, take buses for example. I know that's Gov Ops department, but it does heavily affect Bed. So, like, I, but generally speaking, that's probably the best way that I would like to go about it, just because it'd be structured, and we can also just have it be a, if we want to, a continuous conversation to have even after the initial strategizing. [3:52] Susan Hawes: Conversations have concluded. It makes sense because infrastructure, for example, if we take those items to the infrastructure committee, we have the engineer there, we have the experts that we would maybe get some information from. So what are your thoughts? That something you think would [4:12] Carollynn Lear: work? Give it a try. So what I can do is I can start taking them in vote priority order. Does that make sense? Because I have them, I this is the top three, but I do have them sort of prioritized, so I can start scheduling time fitting it in amongst the normal committee's work based on what had the [4:32] Joseph Leonard: highest priority. Oh, if I may, you may. I'm completely okay with that. If another counselor wanted to speed up the conversation on another matter for whatever reason, do we want to entertain those, or do we want to just stick with the voting mechanism that we've already attributed? [4:53] Susan Hawes: I'm fine with either one, but this council appears to be fine with topics that maybe didn't rise to the top but will pending something that happens or whatever. So [5:07] Joseph Leonard: I think it's a possibility we could move it if we needed to. Okay, so I 'm okay with that mechanism, but just to fall to the what was tally for the votes, I think that's completely acceptable. [5:21] Susan Hawes: Okay, all right, any other comments on the process? [5:29] Susan Deane: I believe one of the points was tax relief standards, which we've already addressed and should be coming up next finance meeting, so that may have jumped ahead, so full disclosure there. [5:42] Carollynn Lear: That has been discussed. It was certainly in the top here. It may not be the next priority, but it [5:49] Susan Deane: was very high on the list. As long as everyone's okay with that, we had planned to discuss it. I [5:55] Susan Hawes: don't see anybody looking like they really want to say something against it. So can you just repeat, [6:02] Susan Deane: repeat what you said with what the topic was? I don't have brought up a discussion about tax relief for seniors, property tax seniors, and what we possibly could do as a city, state, federal, all that good stuff, and so we move that to the next finance meeting. [6:20] Joseph Leonard: And [6:24] Susan Hawes: if you want some of the priorities for the city manager that [6:34] Carollynn Lear: was the moment, so that order then will be on the agenda for the next council meeting. [6:44] Susan Hawes: Our next agenda item is a discussion of board ethics, written findings and conclusions in reference to the CEO of 25270, and City Solicitor David Szewczyk is on his way to the table. [7:04] David Szewczyk: Good evening, City Solicitor David Szewczyk. Chad, I'm here to talk to you about the, referral that was done, by council order 25 dash two 70, passed by the council on September 8th, referring to the board of ethics, for an advisory opinion, the issue of whether, communications among, counselors following a may, council budget workshop constituted violations of the city's code of ethics. A copy of that order was in your packet. The board of ethics held meetings and updated its procedural rules to follow and investigated and held a public hearing and deliberated and voted on this particular item, made written findings of fact and conclusions which the board approved on december 17th, and that written findings affecting conclusions were also in your packet. The board of ethics found that it lacked jurisdiction to provide an advisory opinion regarding whether there was a violation of the open deliberations provisions of section 9-22 of the city's code as that section does not fall within the city's code of ethics and the authorizing provision in the Code of Ethics authorized them to give advisory opinions on whether there were violations of the Code of Ethics. So they found on that one that they didn't have any jurisdiction. On the other one that was in the council order, the board found that city councilors did not violate Section 33-7 of the city's Code of Ethics regarding disclosure of confidential information. Currently there aren't any rules in place for the procedure for the council to follow once they get the return of this advisory opinion that was requested. The legal department's staff is in process of putting together some rules that can be used in the future, but for now there's nothing in place. And their staff recommends one of either three different avenues that you can take. The first one would be you could thank the Board of Ethics and you know just accept the advisory opinion as it was given and basically not take any further action. A second option would be to advise staff to put proposed council orders on your next meeting agenda that would follow the findings that the board made with respect to the fact that there are no violations. And the purpose of you doing that would be if you want to make a formal vote on the issues involved. A third avenue that you could take would be if the council wanted to perform its own investigation, investigate either further on its own about the underlying facts of the matter before any kind of council orders are prepared regarding the issues. So that was what I was presenting this to you to get direction on which way you want to go. I suppose there could be other avenues, but those are the three avenues that staff saw that could be followed. [10:38] Joseph Leonard: If you want to go, you may. [10:40] Susan Hawes: I was just going to ask a question. If they decided they wanted to do the council orders, you're talking separate council order for each person that was investigated, correct? [10:52] David Szewczyk: That's the way that the Board of Ethics did it. They separated it out for each individual, which kind of made it easier for us to do, if that's the way, if that's the avenue you want to pursue, if you want to have council orders prepared, we would prepare them along the lines that they, the way they did it, and then, the council could discuss and deliberate both, if that's, that would be option two, yeah, also so [11:26] Joseph Leonard: But first of all, I just want to say, like, I completely respect the board's jurisdictional limitations. I mean, that kind of would put a bit of a, an unfortunate cloud over all this. But I do want to just thank them very much for the work and effort that they did. So the way I sort of look at this at this point is this has really been being on its head quite a lot. And I think that what this has revealed, it's highlighted that there are gaps in our governance. And I mean, if this council wanted to pursue its own investigations, like, I completely find that I would support that, if there are other, or this council wanted to go forward with, I'm completely fine, I'll go along with it. Personally speaking, rather than dwelling on the past actions that have occurred on this council on both ends of this issue, I believe we should focus on strengthening our systems to ensure future transparency and broader communication representation. And so I will be making sure, I'll make sure to afford you and Manager Lear this memo that I'm preparing right now. But I think the next step forward for us is not another investigation. I think it's time for us to realize that our government, it's the duties and responsibilities of it are ever more increasing. And that means our government also has to expand and increase and recognize the gaps that we have. And so there are two conversations that are both part of the same conversation though, which are a submittal for a formal council order memo to outline the two reforms that I want this council to talk about. One is the creation of council districts for neighborhood based representation. And the other one is the establishment of a city elected executive officer, whether it's a strong mayor or if it's a more administrative leaning or having one counselor be the executive officer. I'm fine with exploring strategies, but those two conversations do need to happen. And the reason why I think they need to happen at this point just because of all the transparency issues that we've had in the past what well before I even I got on council they did they're just there are just governmental ancient oddities that come with our charter that we do need to update and so I think this actually can help with our overall council guidelines as well because the rationale of wanting to do this is we can connect our ideas to already adopted priorities increasing their legitimacy and likelihood to be taken seriously actually helps more when you have neighborhood representation in districts and themselves, because that builds a broader coalition to engage with the public as well. And so I understand charter changes and discussions about them can be a bit scary to have, but if we don't have an actual real conversation about how this government acts and how this government functions and what its functionalities are, then we're going to continue to have the same issues that we've had since I think the event that really showcased in my mind the issues that our governmental body had was the pandemic. I mean, I get that there were a lot of things that happened in that point, but that's when that's a time when we needed strong executive leadership and we didn't have it at that point in time and a lot of things due to no one's fault were just left behind because there was no active oriented person that was an elected official that was constantly thinking as an elected representative all seven days of the week. We only meet once a week here. I don't think we can make actual effective decisions regardless of how much homework we do on the weekend, regardless of like how much Prep time we do, it's completely different than having actual daily representation in the executive office. And so I think that discussion is going to trigger, and this is why they're joined together, it's going to trigger what is going to be a charter review commission, because there's no way we're going to be able to even have this discussion without even talking about the possibility of putting forward a review commission on this matter. So but I think I know this is a lot of work and I know this is a lot of change in a fast, in a fast oriented pace, but I think we need to have this change and I think we absolutely need to have this conversation, because even if any of all the ideas that I presented are disagreeable in some way, that's okay. But citizens do need to be aware of what type of government Bangor has when they elected us to this body, because there are a lot of questions. And I think going through this conversation is just going to reveal what those answers are. So I guess in long story short, what I'd rather, I'm completely fine going forward not doing any council requested action. I actually would be completely fine with maybe doing a check-in on the ethics committee, just because you know what went well, what didn't go well with them, because this is the first time they did this in a very long time, and I would actually be very open to trying to make sure that they are set up and ready to go as anytime they need to in the future, because I know there were some hiccups that came from this but i again i absolutely appreciate the work that they did it was it was a lot to sit through but i guess that would be my recommendation is let's move forward on solutions let's have these conversations on governmental reform and that 's how i [18:25] Michael Beck: see it. That's okay. Yeah, I would agree. This is from a previous council, so I'd be in favor of just let the site involved before they found nothing. There's no sense going through trying to do additional orders or anything just to no avail. It's, it's a decided matter and there is nothing found, so I'd just assume it falls to the floor, we move on. That's person. I'd like to move that we [18:51] Carolyn Fish: accept the advisory opinion of the ethics board pending no violations and take no further action. [18:58] Susan Hawes: It's been moved and seconded that we accept the findings of the ethics committee and that we take no further action on those issues. Is there any discussion? Any [Michael Beck: any doubts?] Everybody okay we talked same number it will pass thank you so that's second the third item is also the city solicitor he's going to give us the update that we have asked for and we'll let him catch up on his writing of the last you know that sort [19:53] David Szewczyk: Of reminded me that I'm going to take this a little bit out of order based on what I just heard one of the updates one of the things that the legal department has spent time on recently since our last update was when these referrals were made to the board of ethics we looked at the procedural rules that the board of ethics were supposed to follow and they were written in the 1990s at a time when the code of ethics looked completely different so that they just didn't make sense anymore so staff Rewrote the procedural rules for them to follow and at their first meeting we talked about that and they went over those rules the first meeting they directed us to draft the some procedures a set of procedural rules which we did and modeled them for them to follow in particular when referrals are made to them by the council like these referrals were because the their procedures just didn't follow so now they do and so they adopted those procedural rules and I'm happy to report that I think They have a good foundation to proceed now with not just those, not just those types of revised, I'm sorry, referrals to them, but just in general, they have a set of procedural rules that is appropriate for them to follow for matters that come to them. And so I think they worked pretty well so far. And of course, they can always change those rules if they don't you know if in practice they find glitches or areas that they could be improved but that's one thing that's been taken up some of our time in between the last time that we updated you and this time so I just wanted to let you know about that one I also wanted to update you on the vacant building registration ordinance enforcement. So for the counselors who are new, there is a vacant building registration ordinance that requires vacant buildings in particular districts to be registered and to pay a registration fee. And the council a few years ago increased that the amount of that fee so that it doubles every six months up to a an upper limit and then it caps out at that upper limit and there's been a multi-department team kind of working to enforce that registration ordinance the whole idea behind the registration ordinance is to is vacant buildings, particularly residential buildings, aren't good for the city. There's agreement that, you know, those could be residential units that are housed, and housing has been a big priority and remains to be a big priority of the council. So we've had this kind of multi-departmental team working on that enforcement, and there was a protocol established whereby letters are sent out to remind people that they need to register their vacant building. If the vacant building isn't registered, there are letters to go out to tell them, you know, you haven't registered your vacant building and offering the application and such. And also if it goes further in the process and there's, hasn't been any communication, then there, it could end up being a notice of violation letter that goes out, and then another letter from the legal department at that point called, we kind of call a last chance letter, and the whole purpose of it is to get the properties registered. And the council pretty recently also updated the vacant building registration ordinance to allow for a couple of reasons why there could be a deferral of the fees that would be due and payable. One of the deferral reasons would be in the case of an active building permit, because we want to encourage active building permits and allow a deferral for up to six months is what the ordinance says now. If they have an active building permit, they get a deferral of the fees that are still due, but they're not required to be paid if the code enforcement division gives them this deferral, if they are working toward getting the building occupied in a satisfactory way. The code enforcement division, they can potentially get an extension of that deferral for another six months. And so all of this is going on now and has been, and the spreadsheet that I included in your packet is just has several columns involving the numbers of the properties that have been either registered or not registered. We've been finding buildings, we have a coordinated effort now. And so it's been pretty successful, relatively successful in improving the enforcement of that ordinance. You can see on the spreadsheet, the first column is properties no longer vacant. That means they were vacant when we started this and they're not vacant now. Since we started keeping track of this at the end of 2023, there are 58 what were vacant buildings that are no longer vacant. That means the your got have their certificate of occupancy issued or they are there is someone living there or it could be that they've been demoed. So 58, that's I think that's a good number. The properties that have been newly identified by the code enforcement department since we started keeping track, just by coincidence is also 58 new ones. But on the first column the property is no longer vacant. Since I last updated you in September. There are seven properties that are no longer vacant. Now, that were vacant in September when I last updated you. And there are three properties that have been newly identified by code enforcement since the last time i updated you so that the number of properties on the vacant property list is now 61. The last time i updated dated you had been 65. So there are properties that have registered you know things have happened we've we've identified more and so 61 currently. Of those 61. I'm sorry, properties that are registered and current is now 33. That's up from 30. The last time I updated you. So there have been a number of people that have registered that there are also people that you know, their registration only last six months that expires, they end up not current, but the number is currently 33 properties that are not registered are 28. The last time I updated you that was 35. So that has dropped to 28. Up in the right corner of the spreadsheet is a kind of a breakout of the it says Rule 80. K matters. Rule 80. K matter is the court action that you would institute to enforce this ordinance and other land use violations. You enforce in court by way of this. It's a main rule of civil procedure, Rule 80K. And there are 10 properties that have either been in court action or on the verge of it. And of those, one case was resolved by default judgment. One was resolved by consent judgment. judgment. Three have been resolved by administrative consent agreement, whereby the property owners agreed to register the property and pay the fee under the terms of the consent agreement. And so, five out of the 10 have resolved in that manner. There's a sixth one that's It's being resolved by an administrative consent agreement right now. We're drafting the administrative consent agreement. There's one of them is the complaint is drafted, but we haven't yet brought it into court. And then three of those properties, there are communications going on with the property owners to get the violation resolved. So I think that it's been productive. And if you have any questions about that I'd be glad to answer any council [28:58] Susan Deane: Fish I know [29:01] Carolyn Fish: Bacon properties are not good for the city especially we have a housing shortage but I've heard and I know of a couple of situations one unfortunately about such hardship on a family that during Covert they bought the property they registered it they fell financially in trouble couldn't comply with our ordinances and unfortunately added to the person's mental health and it didn't end well and so I just I just want to know if there's any avenues every situation is different I understand if There's banks and they have a big block of properties or it's a corporation and they could care less but for our local families or a small investor or somebody that ends up picking up a property with good intentions and something like Covert or something else happens interest rates go up to 14 or something happens that creates an unusual hardship do we have a protocol to look at those unusual situations and negotiate with them to try to not make a bad situation worse and then I get it I know What the objective is to get these properties occupied but at the same time I think some of them are vacant I know of one that they can't find the heirs it's a long legal battle and then I don't think it's on your registry but they don't even know I don't think that they would even tell you who should register it as a vacant [30:35] David Szewczyk: Property we do have a protocol in that regard and I would say this any property owner who is in communication with us. We have the ability to be flexible with regard to resolving the fact that their vacant property isn't registered. We just resolved one by administrative consent agreement. The owner had two properties and they've now been registered, and there's a plan going forward that allows the property owner to get the properties into a situation where there will be a certificate of occupancy issued. And we don't, we have that in common with the property owner. When we talk to them, everybody wants the place to be occupied, and we understand that there are different situations depending on everybody's own lives. And so we, it is, we do have a flex, be able to have flexibility in terms of enforcing the agreement, and that flexibility can be incorporated into an administrative consent agreement. So the ones that end up on the verge of court or in court are almost always ones that just will not respond to anything, you know, that are just ignore us. Thank you. So and then some of them then do respond when they get served with the land use citation complaint. Then they sometimes respond and we work it out. So for [32:20] Michael Beck: that, so something like the message is that, you know, even if you don't think you can pay the registration fee, it behooves people to contact the city and just start the process, and one way or another it'll get worked out. But better to be on the right side of the ordinance and wait until a letter comes and it gets into the whole court, you know, proceedings. Yes, we've had [32:42] David Szewczyk: a couple of people who were very stressed when they first talked to us because they were worried about the whole thing. But after they worked with us, I believe that their stress level went way down because they understood that we want really what they want. And so it's not a matter of, you know, forcing these things on them. It's just that, you know, the ordinance is there for a reason. And we can work on things that we have commonality allow to both allow them to reduce their stress level and also get done the enforcement of the ordinance. Thank you. So the next thing I just wanted to update another thing that's taken some part of our time since the last time we talked is we have some matters that are either in court or about to be in court regarding property maintenance or illegal junkyard enforcement. enforcement. Those are very similar in that it's a rule ADK matter once it goes into court. We've already had one of the matters that we spent a good deal of time on resolve again by administrative consent agreement. In these agreements, they admit to the violations and they, this particular one that resolved, there's a schedule worked out for them to make deadlines of the violations that are going on in the property. And so if they can stick with those deadlines and get the property cleaned up, then, you know, the court action will be, well, this one particular one's already resolved without actually going into court because when you have them served with the land use citation complaint, you haven't actually filed it in court yet this particular action you have to serve first and sometimes when you serve it they contact you and then you start and you reach an agreement and you don't ever have to file it in court they don't have to reimburse us for the filing fees and such anyway there are you know various stages of some of these other matters I don't want to go into in the individual matters but you know one a complaint's being drafted evidence gathering is going on another but that's just another thing that's been that we've been spending time on is these property maintenance and illegal junkyard auto graveyard situations in residential properties I already talked about the board of ethics procedural rules freedom of access I just wanted to give you a quick update on we have been coordinating with other departments. There are more and more freedom of access act requests that come in and sometimes more complex ones it's it's growing and we are coordinating with the other departments and we are establishing the idea that each department has one go to person for us to coordinate And these requests don't all flow through the legal department, but if there are issues that need to be addressed, questions, then they end up with the legal department. Some come directly to the legal department, but other departments deal with these regularly and the routine ones they can handle on their own. But if there's any kind of difficulty, the legal department supports the process of responding of these efficiently and appropriately. And so that's taken up some of our time lately. But we, you know, and again, we, I will probably, we'll be looking into some software possibilities that might assist in that regard this year. Another thing that we've been doing lately, we've been doing some annual training for boards and commissions and committees. I did a training for the board of ethics. The assistant solicitor recently, just recently trained, did a training for the planning board. I trained the historic preservation commission recently, and there's some others coming up. And that's, this time of year is when we spend time doing those sorts of things. So that's just a little snippet of what's been keeping us busy lately. And if you have any questions about anything, let me know. Council back. So the question about the for the [37:38] Michael Beck: freedom of access act, I know that there was a bill that they tried to pass last year having to do with speeding up how quickly you have to get things out. And thankfully that was killed because just in like police body cam footage alone, there's no way that municipalities would be able to meet this and set up timeline. As we think about next year, I think culture already passed for the current session, but if we think about the next year, this is not something to answer now, but just something to put the back your mind is it might, would it behoove us as a city to kind of talk to our representatives, other streamlines or things that we could change in the law that would help the city not, you know, obviously we want to be transparent, we want to get information to people, but to make sure we're not doing it in a way that completely impedes all of the other work that has to be done. Right. [38:31] David Szewczyk: The statute actually has a pretty good balance in it right now about, it says that you don't have to impede a department's everyday activities. The obligation to respond is within a reasonable period of time. And that can vary depending on the magnitude and complexity of the requests. And you, part of the process is doing a good faith estimate of the time that's going to be needed and the costs that are expected to be incurred. And they have a very detailed formula for how you have to do that. And part of our training, and that kind of ties in nicely in having somebody in each department to be our go-to person. We will be providing trading for all of them with regard to those good faith estimates. Those are kind of important to do those certain way because the statute requires it. But it does provide a balance where the response, the requests get responded to in a reasonable amount of time, but at the same time you're not, you don't shut down all the operations in the various departments of the city or any other public entity that's received follow requests. That bill you mentioned it did have, it was, it had something unreasonable period of time and I don't think it didn't come close to passing. Right, yeah. [40:05] Susan Hawes: Comments, Council Dean. [40:06] Susan Deane: Back to the, clearing of the property, junkyard, is there any city resource that people can use when they find themselves in a situation where they don't have a truck, they don't maybe have the funds to hire a private person to come in and clean up, or is it 100 on the individual? Well, is their private property and if there's [40:31] David Szewczyk: a situation where they are in violation of the junkyard statute, by the way the junkyard statute is a state statute, so it's state law, and you know there's one that we recently resolved by administrative consent agreement and we were able to give them flexibility in terms of the time and we try to assist them to however we can in order to help them to find people to, but sometimes they don't, they don't have the money to hire outside people to help, but it is private property and so it is their responsibility to do the cleaning up. If you store or allow others to store junk materials outside on a private property, then that's, that's a violation of the state junkyard statute. Would there be a list for them at least [41:28] Susan Deane: as to what kind of materials could be disposed of at our city dump? Oh, at the city dump things aren't going to be, I mean out there, but some of these things that are building up and they are possibly could be disposed of, I don't [41:49] David Szewczyk: know that we have any city accommodation for that. Yeah, but there are, there are [41:59] Susan Deane: Some in the area just think of the expense. Sometimes it may be an excuse, but sometimes there's a huge expense that keeps piling up for these people that just can't seem to stop adding [42:12] David Szewczyk: to their property. Sometimes there is, there is, and I don't, it may be a source of income for them, but it's not, it's not an allowed source of income to run a junkyard without getting a permit. If you get a permit, fine, you know, but it's the one, the places that don't get a permit, then that's, that's the problem. Other [42:42] Susan Hawes: problems, Councilman? Yeah, I have two questions. [42:46] Wayne Mallar: One is, what's our outside attorney expense to date, and what do you anticipate using to the end of the year, and was it in the budget, or how much was in the budget? I can't answer the [43:01] David Szewczyk: first question of what the expense is to date. The three referrals were referred to outside council, and I can get that information for you as far as what the costs are today. The legal department can be guiding the outside, I'm sorry, can be guiding the ethics board, and did guide them in the first meeting, but the specific referrals on the council orders were referred out, and I can talk to you about that anytime you'd like. So why that was done, that was budgeted, where that would come out of the legal department's budget. Your [43:50] Wayne Mallar: second question, and you may not be able to answer this one either, where do we stand on the mall properly [43:57] David Szewczyk: as far as the court case is concerned? There hasn't been a decision, and there isn't an update. The last hearing was in September, I believe it was September 22nd, and you know, we're still waiting for a decision. [44:23] Wayne Mallar: Do we have any input with the Chief Justice? I assume all the judges are under the Chief Justice. Can we rattle a cage and say, why aren't we getting results? [44:36] David Szewczyk: It was a district court matter, but there was a Superior Court Justice sitting on that matter that was assigned to it. When you say the Chief Justice, I don't, are you referring to the Chief Justice of the Supreme Court? [44:50] Wayne Mallar: Yes, they're in charge of all the court system. Well, I believe they're in charge of all the judges. [44:55] David Szewczyk: When we have a pending, a matter that's pending in court and waiting for a decision, I have a kind of a way to approach that I don't really think would be a good idea to talk about in a public meeting that is pending litigation, and I think it would be more, it would be in the city's best interest talk about pending litigation in executive session [45:27] Wayne Mallar: or i could talk to you individually about it i guess the question i had is there any way to what i was looking for is there a way to spur them on to make a decision i we're going to be sitting here next year at the same time waiting for a decision i don't usually do this but i wrote [45:45] David Szewczyk: a letter to the court asking to get a decision, sent it in recently. I also phone called the clerk's office. I don't usually do that either. I usually leave them alone. Right. Well, I understand [45:58] Wayne Mallar: understand that, but it's been a while. It's been a while. [46:11] Susan Hawes: Anybody else have anything? Do you have anything else? That's it. Thanks. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Next we have LD435 and that to improve the historic property rehabilitation tax credit, it, and I believe Director Krieg is on her way. Good evening, Angry, Director of Community and Economic Development. I got a request last week from Maine Preservation asking to continue our support of this particular LD. I forget my numbers, 465 or, yeah, sorry, there's so many we're tracking right now in our office and it's a time sensitive because it's going to appropriations this week. Basically what it's changing is right now for small rehabilitation projects you get 25 of qualified expenditures for your tax credit and this increases it to 30. Professionals working with commissions have been hoping for is that the tax credit would also go to homeowners. And they would get 25% of qualified expenditures, plus 5% for accessory dwelling units, and an additional 5% talking about vacant properties, if it was previously vacant. So that is great. And the maximum expense is 250,000. So, you know, I think this would be excellent to have this. We have this issue a lot with people who buy into historic districts and buy historic properties as homeowners and not as commercial property owners. Commercial property owners are able to get facade grants from community development block grant program that aren't available to residential homeowners. Owner. So this, you know, provides some relief for people. Last year, when it was in committee, you had authorized us to testify, which we did send a testimony. It's happening now as it's going to appropriations. And so that's why I'm asking, because there's new counselors since last year. And I just want to be sure that you're still in support of this. [49:06] Michael Beck: Just to clarify, this is a credit towards their income tax, correct? Yeah. Okay. [49:18] Susan Hawes: To continue. Okay. All right. Thank you so much for your time. All right. [49:27] Carollynn Lear: Do we have any other business? [49:32] Susan Hawes: No, I don't think so. Okay, that finishes the agenda for the workshop, so we will adjourn at 605 and then we will have the council meeting at 7 as usual, so you have a little bit of the time to visit.