Bangor council weighs emergency aid for Together Place, backs grant letters

[0:38] Susan Deane: We are live. All right, so I'll kick this off. We do not have our council chair today, so that would take a motion someone to serve as chair of the workshop. I'll make a motion to have [0:53] Joseph Leonard: Counselor Dean be our chair for the workshop. Okay. [1:02] Susan Deane: Discussion. Do we have to take the vote on [1:06] David Szewczyk: that? David can just be, by you can take a vote, but if there's no objection, then there doesn't [1:12] Susan Deane: have to be any objection. Okay, I'm so wonderful. Since I am unprepared, if I could just see the small detail. Well, good evening everyone. It is Monday, July 27th. It is now 5 15 p.m. We are at the regularly scheduled city council workshop. Around the table we have City Manager Carollynn Lear. I am Councillor Deane. We have Councillor Carson, Councillor Walker, Council Plume, Council Beth, Council Fish, Council Mallard, and Councillor Leonard. We have a few things on the agenda. First up is the city manager's office. All right, I am on a big page today, so the first item I have here is that I wanted to provide you a tweet on the community paramedicine program. You'll recall that the city had received funding to stand up community paramedicine programs, and the EMS license was just approved by the state. So very exciting that is moving. This one is Counselor Fish. Actually, I believe in a prior council meeting you had asked for updated statistics on BCAT's interaction with new people in Bangor. So you'll recall that in the months of March and April, we saw a pretty steep increase in the number of new people that BCAT was interacting with, up above 40 in each of those months. We now have data for May and June. May did see a little bit of a decline. There were 32 new interactions in May, but then in June it was back up above 40. It was actually 46. So I think probably on average the number has been pretty consistent through the spring and into the summer, well around 40 new books. I [3:24] Michael Beck: wanted to provide some information. Do we have any idea of any kind of like a trade-off, like kind of the functional zero words, how many people are entering homelessness that are exiting? Do we have any kind of idea of, so we saw 32 new or 40 new, do we have any idea of how many people exited the city or became housed or any other way to see if that's offsetting [3:47] Susan Deane: Or we just accumulate? Yeah, so I think we probably do have can piece together data about people who are exiting homelessness. I do want to be clear though, the new folks that BCAT are interacting with, certainly many of them are homeless, but that isn't the entire population of people that they're interacting with. And so concentric circles, there's some overlap with folks in the homeless community, but not absolute. It could also just be people who are in crisis or who are spending time in public spaces, but do have. [4:23] Michael Beck: So for the ones that are interacting with BCAT, but aren't homeless or they're just here in the city temporarily they may have come to live with [4:32] Susan Deane: family but these you know interacting with bcap for any number of reasons okay i think although i think it's fair to say that bcap primarily is engaging with folks who are unhoused that is not their only function it's any you know people in mental health crisis or who do you happen to know if bcat has numbers as to if any of these are previously housed people from bangor if they're all new to the area so i don't believe that they're systemically capturing housing information or where they're coming from or at this point we don't [Speaker E (unidentified): of that yeah] Any other questions? PD is working on a new, the police department is working on a new reporting tool. They're experiencing a particularly high call volume, and as you know, that is especially challenging for them because of the staffing challenges that they're having right now. On any given day, they're down between 18 and 20, which is just shy of 25% of their staff, so that's not, it's not an insubstantial vacancy rate right now, and there's a number of things that are contributing to that, some of some folks are just on leave deployed, and then there are some actual vacancies, but we've been spending a lot of time talking about ways to help mitigate the impact of all those vacancies, and one thing Chief Hathaway and his staff are going to shortly be deploying is trying to make their online reporting tool for non-emergency and non-time-sensitive public meetings more user-friendly and more widely available, so for example, if you're a business and you need a police report, you can look at that an Active PD response, you just need to report it for insurance purposes and you need a police report. You could report that or you can make that request through a portal, and the hope is that we'll better allow police to sort of workload advantage and stay attention to the higher priority emergency issues that are coming in, and then get to sort of the less than sensitive issues when they have time. That's pretty consistent with how other large cities manage those. I shouldn't say other cities and large towns manage those sorts of non-emergent police requests, so we're kind of coming into alignment with that practice, and hopefully it will be helpful to folks who do have an immediate need to speak to or get assistance from the police. How's [7:49] Joseph Leonard: the letter? So because this is an immediate need for the police department, just because of the amount of strain that their staff members have, we're going to need to educate the public in a very fastidious but also robust way so that they're aware that this is a preferred method. Is there a strategy that we currently have right now to deploy this messaging to the public en masse in a [8:15] Susan Deane: timely manner? Yeah, so we have a number of tools that we use, including public alerts and social media, and I would say PD is probably on the high end of all of our departments and successfully engaging with the public on social media, and so I think they'll use that tool. I think also there are a lot of frequent users like the grocery stores and other retail chains who, once you let them know that this is an available method, they're gonna buy in very quickly because that's far more convenient than sitting on the telephone and waiting for a dispatcher to [8:55] Speaker E (unidentified): get you cows [8:58] Carolyn Fish: or fish. I would think too that when you call in there would probably be a recording that would instruct them, like we do for many phone calls we make, a lot of times they'll say if you go to the website this will be faster, so I would think if it's on their recording it can instruct people right at that first point of contact and [9:24] Susan Deane: then in other public outreach news, Director Tilon actually initiated and effectuated a postcard mailing to all Van Gour residents with a QR code encouraging them to sign up for City of Van Gour alerts. I think Director Chmielin will report that he wished more people, I think he's tracking, I think he said it's about 400. [Speaker G (unidentified): Oh, 400 people.] So wishes it was more successful, but it's sort of all in an effort to get folks paying attention to those alerts. So when snow season comes and there's parking bans, we don't want the same thing to happen every year, which is about 90 or so getting towed and being unhappy and incurring that cost. So hopefully more people will sign up. [10:25] Michael Beck: How many mailers went out? 18,000 in one. [10:35] Daniel Carson: I would say that if you're anything like me, you received that mailer. I appreciated receiving that, and you saw it as you were coming in the door and you were busy, and I stuck it right up on my fridge and thought I need to do that, and it's still there. So if you're at home listening right now and you're just like me, get the card off your fridge and scan that QR code. I think the same. [11:00] Susan Deane: messaging also went out in cat spills and then come you know mid-november before the first lakes fly we'll also do a social media campaign to encourage people to so if everyone has already thrown that mailing out how do they go about doing that on the website is there the QR code as well or is it a different way it is it a QR code on our website where could be yeah [11:27] Speaker E (unidentified): You gotta come to the table. [11:34] Speaker G (unidentified): On the front page of the website for people to just introduce yourself and the people there they deal on Director of Public Works. There is information on the front page of our website where they can sign up for that, and there'll be further pushes. The simplest method is text the word Bangor to a number that's on the card, and you'll start getting texts for alerts and notifications. [11:58] Susan Deane: It's a great idea. We should all do it, right? I was just going to say, you know, [12:02] Michael Beck: So based on what you sent out, that's about a two and a half percent response rate. That's [12:06] Speaker G (unidentified): pretty good for direct marketing, for direct mail order. So, hey. It is a postcard, and it probably, we got quite a few of them probably got chucked as junk mail, so we tried to draw their attention to it, but it is, it is what it is. And like you said, some people are still holding them. I keep the site open every day, I watch the numbers from ticking up still, so hopefully we'll get a little more drop and we'll do some more pushes to get people to sign up, right. [12:34] Susan Deane: Thank you all right. Next on my list is the library is submitting an application for a $10,000 grant from Pizza Hut. They do small literacy grants to communities where a Pizza Hut is located. The grant that the library is seeking is to purchase books for their New Year's Eve celebration for families. It's called A New Book for the New Year. So families can go and celebrate New Year's at the library and kids can pick out a new book to take home with them. And so this money would support that program. They have asked for a letter of support for their grant application. So I'm looking for your okay in the city, sending a letter of support for that application. That's an agreement. Yes. No concerns with that. Have a blessing. That would be a wonderful. And then the last item on my list is that, we are seeking your consent to send a letter to Senator Collins encouraging fiscal year 27 ongoing funding for the FTA the Federal Transit Administration the Appropriations Committee is currently considering a budget for FTA that drops funding for state and local whole transit systems by up to 50 percent which would certainly impact the community connector which is very heavily reliant on federal funding particularly for capital investment in the system and so I would be looking for your support in sending a letter to Senator Collins conveniently on the appropriations committee encouraging ongoing funding for FTA stay in local any concerns with this letter everyone's in agreement you have a blessing with that letter as well great that's all I have all right so the next would be the solicitor's update and we have city solicitor Dave's subject approaching the table [15:14] David Szewczyk: Hi, Dave. I'm a check space solicitor. I had meant to get this spreadsheet done in time to get into your agenda, but I didn't, and so I'm just going to hand out these. This them around please this is the spreadsheet that it's like the ones that you've seen at the other solicitors updates recently and I just wanted to point out a couple of items on this that the numbers will fluctuate depending on where all the problems are in the cycle Michael. But you know, as you know, there's a multi departmental team that's working on enforcement of the big vacant registration bill vacant building registration ordinance with the ultimate goal of increasing the number of registrations and ultimately decreasing the number of vacant buildings within the city, particularly residential buildings. Things and the two things I just wanted to point out on this spreadsheet is that there have been 10 matters in the green section where it says resolved by ACA, that's administrative consent agreement, there are 10 of those, and last time I updated you there are four, so in that time since then we resolved six matters by administrative consent agreement. Those are all matters that either were going into court but ended up not having to go into court because we resolved them by agreement, which means all those properties are registered now except one is not yet registered but it really is and we're expecting the payment within next couple of days so that 's good news and that those properties were able to we were able to get them registered and to pay what is owed by way of an agreement. And so that's one of the things that I've been spending time on since the last time I updated you. Another thing I wanted to point out was that there have been 77 properties newly identified by the code enforcement department since we started this multi team, multi departmental team. There, and I would tell you that I think that the reason why there's an increased number of properties being identified is probably at least in part due to the public awareness of what's happening here, there are more people reporting to code enforcement and then properties being identified. I think it also has to do with staffing improvements in terms of the numbers in the code enforcement office. So the more property to get identified and working on the list and then what properties that we have to work on with the team to get registered. We are currently preparing the job description for the new attorney, which Google will be hired to litigate more quickly the non-registered properties, and that attorney can, we will be training that attorney, and you know I've done many of these types of court actions over the course of my career, so the training will be an easy thing to do, so hopefully we'll get that set up and the important will accelerate. Are there any [19:17] Speaker E (unidentified): questions about that part of what we've been doing? Also, thank you, can you just briefly [19:26] Susan Faloon: describe just the whole process, like once it's been identified that somebody has a vacant property, like the whole process of you know if they're not registered and how that goes and what they pay and all of that, just you know, like see I have a, I have a house and I didn't register it and you know and then the city came to me and said hey you gotta you know take care [19:52] David Szewczyk: Of this, like, how does that whole process work? Well, there are different ways that the process can get started. One way is if somebody reports that there's a vacant building that we don't have and code enforcement goes out to confirm whether that place is indeed vacant, and if so, then the owner is contacted by code enforcement and advise that they need to register. If they confirm that it's not registered, contacts that landowner and says, you know, this place has to be registered search under our ordinance and assist them in any way in getting the application. And if there is either no cooperation or no response, then the code enforcement director would send in that instance. At some point he'll notice a violation. There are other ways to get it started and the letter writing, there's a whole letter writing campaign that starts with even properties that have been registered. Once they the registration only lasts, the permit only lasts for six months, then they become out of registration and then they get letters sent to them and there's a process for increasing the letters resulting in an nlv and once if there's no response to the nov or the code enforcement director can't get anywhere, then it comes to legal. Although legal is still involved in the whole process, but then we have a last chance letter that we send to the landowner and if there's no response to the last chance letter, the last chance letters are is what we call them, that they're they're responded to pretty well and that's in many instances how we end up resolving it by administrative consent agreement. But if those go unresponded to, then we prepare a land use citation complaint for action in the court. Sometimes we have to do, my office has to do research to find out how to serve the owner because sometimes these owners are out of state, so we have to reach out and get the details on the sheriff's department in whatever particular county that landowner lives in and once they're served with the land use citation complaint, although we would have a court date built into that document, there have been occasions where we serve them with the sheriff, serve them and then they wake up and they contact us and we, if they do it quickly, we can resolve it by administrative consent agreement before it goes into court. If they if it has to get filed in court and the filing fee is made, then it has to be resolved by a consent judgment if they want to try to do so and we've resolved some of them by consent as Well, Dr. Fish, I'm not thinking. [22:57] Carolyn Fish: Can you remind me, but what is considered a vacant property? Because sometimes when elderly people pass away and the property becomes part of the estate and it takes six months to a year to probate before that property can go to market, so the years maybe they live away or maybe they're coming intermittently as they're going through the things. Also sometimes people go, you know, Florida in the wintertime, the property is vacant during the winter, with the lights and the upkeep are going on, so what would classify property? And I know there's a definition, but for the public maybe you could identify what would classify a vacant property. [23:37] David Szewczyk: A property is not vacant under the ordinance if it's lived in, and snow birds are elsewhere in the winter time. Under the ordinance the property is considered vacant if it is unlived in and not intended to be lived in for 60 days, and that of course is difficult for families whose the owner may pass away, it may be the last person in the house, and probate process takes a while, but you know we work with those instances and that's why being able to resolve by administrative consent agreement allows some flexibility in terms of what the situation is and you know and that sort [24:26] Speaker E (unidentified): of thing could. [24:31] Susan Deane: You just let us know what the benefit to the property owner is by registering. Is it just because they're not going to be fined, or is there some benefit to them besides that? [24:42] David Szewczyk: There's a, well, if it goes to court the court and the city prevails, the court will not only order the person to register and pay the registration fee, but the court will also assess civil penalties against that owner as well as under most circumstances they will award, they will assess against the landowner the city's attorney's fees, costs, and any expert witness fees that were incurred in the matter. That's by state statute, so they, it's to their [25:22] Susan Deane: benefit to register the property. So pretty much when the property becomes vacant some sort of letter is sent so they know what to do. Those that are out of state maybe they're not, [25:35] David Szewczyk: if the city knows about this, the city knows about it, and once the city knows about it then and that's when the code enforcement office and the legal department and some other department sometimes are involved, work to try to get the place registered and hopefully not end up in court, it has to. [26:08] Susan Faloon: Dr. Flynn. So would the court also require them to pay like to pay back periods of time that they [26:19] David Szewczyk: Hadn't been registered, there are different situations depending on whether it's been registered or not, and the court would, that this city would request whatever is owed to the court and put on the proof, the evidence as to why it's owed, and so the court would, and assuming the city prevails, would award the amount of the fees that are demanded, so [26:54] Susan Deane: For instance, the case where Council Fish brought up the properties in probate, family lives away, if they're not aware of it, you may be more lenient with someone like that because once they find out and they do the right thing rather than deliberately ignoring the, yeah, there are registration, there are some limits [27:14] David Szewczyk: In how lenient it could be based on the civil penalties that are required, we have a lot of provisions in our ordinances that require daily civil penalties, so this is done for [27:30] Susan Deane: Safety reasons, right, I mean, we don't want to have a vacant building, we don't want people living in a vacant bill, that we don't want it falling down and injuring people, so we're kind of looking out for the safety of our citizens, and that's right, there are all kinds of things that happen [27:44] David Szewczyk: When there are vacant buildings in the neighborhood that cost the city money, that are detrimental to the neighbors, and also are unsafe, and part of the registration process is not only they have to register and pay a fee, but they have to arrange for the code enforcement office to come out and do an inspection, and our ordinance has a number of items on it that need to be satisfied, and those are basically all safety type items. How many properties do we have right now on the, there are properties on The vacant property, but right now there are 64, there are 34 properties registered and current, and 30 not registered. Now that number changes because a property might be registered and then the six months expires and then they're not registered and then we do some sort of enforcement. How long do you give to re-register? Well, again, it goes to the, it goes to an NOV and then it goes to a last chance letter and then it, and it goes to court, so the process is not always exactly uniform, it may depend on Our availability, the legal department's and code enforcement office's ability to have, you know, to get the letters out at the right time, so there are also 69 properties that are no longer vacant that were vacant at the time we started this, the beginning of, beginning 2024. 11 properties in 2026 that were vacant and are no longer vacant, and like I said, there have been since the last time I updated you, there have been 16 new properties identified by code enforcement, but despite that, there's, it's only been an increase of eight properties on the state of property list because of the enforcement efforts. [30:19] Wayne Mallar: how many properties that are on the list have not paid their taxes i [30:26] David Szewczyk: don't have that number but we do, that's when I mentioned before that we work with other departments, we work with Treasury about that, because if a property hasn't paid their taxes, and it's in the, for example, the 18-month redemption period, if it's ending, if it's nearing the end of the 18-month redemption period, then we have a sort of a different situation. Because if the redemption period ends and this is a situation where the city might end up taking the property, then, you know, then that would be the action that would kind of go forward and the enforcement action would not. Not so, you know, it varies from property to property, but we do take that into account when we're putting things on our priority list for the vacant property enforcement. So if you had a vacant [31:29] Wayne Mallar: property that hadn't paid taxes, obviously they're not going to pay the vacant fee. [31:36] David Szewczyk: Well, there have been properties that owed a lot of taxes and weren't registered, and we've gotten them to register, pay the fees, and pay the taxes. There have been, but the two collections are separate. But in the workout agreements that the Treasury, the Treasury operates, they include in those that they're going to resolve the vacant building registration issue as well. [32:13] Susan Faloon: Can you remind me how much the registration fee is, and also if you become aware that somebody has had the property for a number of years and they haven't registered it, do they have to pay for all that period of time or just when they registered? When we increased the vacant [32:31] David Szewczyk: building registration fees a few years ago, they went to 500 for the first registration, and that's what they are today. There were a number of good reasons why, in the ordinance, it doesn't require a first-time registrant to go back and pay what may have been owed prior to that. Number one is that fees have to be tied to costs, and we know vacant buildings have costs that the city incurs when a property is vacant. Number two is we wanted to encourage people to register the vacant properties. The vacant property registration fees double every six months as long as a property remains vacant, up to an upper limit of $4,000 every six months. And that's where it's capped. It doesn't go higher than that. So by having the first registration be 500, if it had originally been before we raised the order, I think it was, I don't know, 260 something, or I can't remember the number, but it was decided that the first registration should be 500. A third reason would be evidentiary. If the city had to come up with evidence every time, it would be a lot more difficult, and you would have people that may just not register, and then so then once they, once the properties are registered, then we have inspections, we can we're able to make sure that the property is safe, the items are taken care of, and that was the, some of the reasons for the idea of the first registration being 500. Do you [34:43] Daniel Carson: have other updates for us? I do. I just, the assistant state solicitor [34:47] David Szewczyk: has been spending a lot of time on sale of tax acquired properties, stuff like reviewing purchase and sale agreements, reviewing and drafting contracts for the removal of personal property in accordance with the abandoned personal property statute, reviewing and correcting various closing documents, and ensuring proper notices are sent under the revised sale foreclosed property statute. So I just wanted to let you know some of, I'm not going to be telling you about everything that we spend time on. A lot of those things you hear from me either in open or executive session, but she has been spending a good deal of time on that because the statute requires that a certain process be followed, and we're making sure that process is followed, it's conducted the correct way, and kind of connected with that is the legal department's working on updating the matured tax and utility lien policy as directed by the Finance Committee. So just wanted to let you know about that. We also were preparing a Freedom of Access Act PowerPoint presentation to department heads and their departments' FOA designee for training to enhance the coordination of timely responding to Freedom of Access Act requests, and we're also getting quotes for the Freedom of Access Act, FOA software that is going to enhance again and improve the city's ability to make timely responses, and we've been working on things like the Grandview Avenue development, currently waiting on the developer to send a draft construction agreement and other matters like that. And I wanted to just kind of let you ask me any questions that you'd like to, rather than me trying to outline all the areas where we do work for the city. That's a matter, how do we stand [37:18] Wayne Mallar: on the ball, which is the period has expired for them to pay the fines. Yes, we are currently in [37:27] David Szewczyk: settlement negotiations with them. All the prospective sale of the property factors in, and I can't, I don't want to go into details about the negotiations in public, but the ball is in their court right now. But as far as the court is concerned, [37:52] Wayne Mallar: they owe the fine, they do. So it's our determination whether we accept it or do something [38:02] David Szewczyk: something else with it, or what you're saying, we have to determine what we're going to do, and the sale of the property factors in there. So I can talk more about that, but settlement negotiations are confidential for a lot of reasons. Yes, [38:28] Speaker E (unidentified): Council Carson, I'm sorry. [38:30] Daniel Carson: I have to go back because my brain took a little bit to sort of think about this, the vacant property question. I would be very interested in maybe a year or two years of data that could show me the number of vacant properties that also owed taxes. And I'll share with the council that the reason I'm asking that is because I think, you know, in some past meetings, we've dealt with some workout agreements. And when I reviewed that policy, I noticed that there was staff guidance that instructed that there be a focus first on vacant properties that owed taxes. But some of the workout agreements I've seen that are multi-years of taxes, I personally feel that it's the wrong approach, that if all is to keep people in housing and there are people who are actively in housing and owe taxes, that actually would be a better place for us to focus our attention on that specific question. But I don't have any data to support my opinion on that, you know. And so I'd like to know actually before just suggesting that if we change course and have a different focus in that guidance, that actually the data really does suggest that would be an appropriate change. So if that would be possible, and then the second thing I'm thinking about, and I appreciate the vacant property ordinance and the reasoning and all that it does there, but I am thinking about, have we encountered situations, I think About families where the primary opportunity for them to build family wealth is their home, right? And so somebody passes away and the intention is to leave that home to their family. Have we encountered scenarios where that's happened and the home isn't ready to be lived in yet because the person who they're intending to share it with maybe is still in college, or they're holding that for a family member who needs that? And so I would be interested in understanding if we've run into that because I think in that situation, I, it would, I think, be challenging, right? If we're trying to leave a house to a family member, to have, you know, you're registering in it and every six months there's a rate, does the fee increases, that the time frame every six months, yes, you know, and then suddenly there's a cap of 4,000 and all you're trying to do as a family is have the house that you worked so hard to have that you could leave to another family member. So I am concerned about that piece being impacted by our ordinance, but I don't have any data to know if we're encountering that or how [41:13] David Szewczyk: often, if we are, it happens. And the thing about the probate processes is that it can, it takes a while, but it takes longer if nobody's pushing it forward. And so that the vacant billing registration ordinance is an encouragement to go ahead and do what you need to do in the probate court in order to take care of matters. And we are sensitive to that type of situation. It's, it's, you know, it's not always easy when you have the probate process that takes a while, but there's also situations where a family member passes away and the property is vacant and it's not a situation where it was intended to be left to someone, but maybe the rest of the family lives out of state and it's just, there's just nobody doing anything about it. And so that is also a scenario that we've encountered. And I want to ask you follow up if that's right, the data you're talking about that you'd like for vacant properties that are also owe taxes, did you also want data on, I mean, so what kind of data would you want? Just it may be in the last year, the [42:34] Daniel Carson: number of vacant properties that maybe have been registered or identified where treasury has also identified that they owe taxes. I'm just looking for the penetration on that question. Okay, before I would come in here with a suggestion to revise a policy. Sure, yeah, I think the piggyback on that [42:54] Carolyn Fish: It would be interesting also to see what monies we've made from the registration fee, the late, you know, then six months if they didn't do something, comply, or make the property so it was livable, or someone was living and it was no longer on the vacant property list. How many, how many have maxed out it? What is it, four thousand dollars? And I do know of a couple of situations since it's happened that I've gotten an email or a call from someone who bought a property and started to renovate it and through the delays with contractors were unable because the contractor delayed and then they were hit with the fees and then they sort of get off more than they could chew because especially post-COVID that first two or three years they got in financial trouble and unfortunately with one situation I know to unfortunately some mental health issues and suicide and the call to me was that the vacant in property fees contributed to the whole financial distress situation so I'd be interested that's probably rare but i 'd like to be mindful about the registration fee and see i see why we're doing it 's to encourage those that can to register and do what they should do but at the same time i'd like to look at the loopholes and the weaknesses in it and the cons of it to see if we do need to amend it for some for those that are trying to do the development and there's unusual beyond their control circumstances so that we can meet them at the table and negotiate maybe you're doing that but I just wonder how many people that are distressed and threw them into a horse position because of registration fee opposed it working [44:48] David Szewczyk: in our favor so I'm glad you brought that up because I didn't even mention we have amended the ordinance not too long ago the council did and there's a building permit exception now that allows for the vacant building registration fees to be deferred if a person who owns a vacant property has an active building permit the deferral lasts six months it's it the vacant building registration fees continue to accrue but they don't but the payment of them is deferred for six months if at the end of that six month period the property owner requests an extension of that deferral, the property owner can get one extension of that deferral for another six months if the code enforcement office is satisfied that they are making progress in making it toward the goal of it not being vacant anymore. Once they get the certificate of occupancy, either within that six-month period or if get the extension within a year, then they can request that the fees be waived that have accrued. So ultimately, if they get the development done, then they can enjoy that exception to the vacant building registration fee requirement. Thank you. One quick question, we do need to move. [46:22] Michael Beck: A little further just about that too, about it. I know you use one extension, you know, talking to at least one owner on 4th Street where they've been working on it over a year, just with supply chain issues and you name it, where they're actively working on it. When I went and saw her on the property and she had guys on the roof and all that. Is there an opportunity to extend that further? Because my thinking is the idea is we want to get these properties active, and if someone is making the effort to get it active, I don't want to bankrupt them in the process, kind of the scenario that is being described here. As long as they're actively they're working on it, can we extend offer more extensions than that? I mean, as long as code. [46:58] David Szewczyk: Satisfied that they're working on it. Yeah, I'm glad you asked that because there's there's also the administrative consent agreements which allows for some somewhat amount of flexibility, so that if a property owner is developing is working on the property, maybe they maybe their year is up and they don't want to, you know, if there's a situation where they owe a good deal amount because that year has gone by and the vacant registration fee have continued to accrue, so they might owe a good. Balance of fees, if they enter into the administrative consent agreement, the purpose of that is to enforce the ordinance, but also allow for a certain amount of flexibility rather than going into court and getting a judgment against the landowner. And if we were to see that a property has been that has had all these improvements as a result of the building permits that have been issued but they're not quite finished, we can't allow for that, so that they may have to pay over a period of time and. Before that period of time, if they get the certificate of occupancy, then that could the remainder of the fees could be waived. [48:23] Michael Beck: Just quick follow-up, so what I'm hearing is no one should assume like they're going to have a special situation. Come and talk to the city and see what's possible. That's always best. Okay, the. [48:33] David Szewczyk: The most problem ones are when we're the city's completely ignored. Then we don't have a choice but to just keep going forward, end up in court. Do [48:45] Susan Deane: you have any other updates for us? That's it, other than any other questions. We do have three executive sessions. And sorry, just before we jump to executive session, I heard some rumbles that there might be a desire to add some to the agenda. And so I think this would be the [49:02] Joseph Leonard: right moment to do that. Yes, if I could, please. So you should all have two documents in your emails. I'm sure all of you are aware of the current situation regarding the financial situation regarding Together Place. So yes, if we're talking about Together, oh, then thank you for bringing it up. It's already established [49:33] David Szewczyk: was all you've been saying. Great, thank you. One important to discuss an item that's not [49:41] Joseph Leonard: on the agenda there would need to be a motion to suspend the rules yes so i 've created two documents one which is it would be a council order to suspend the rules and the other document is the initial draft version of what council would want to go into regarding a contract with Together Place to appropriate some of our opioid settlement funds alongside them as well. So that document in particular, I would very much appreciate any edits to that. that one edit, I would actually like to make Oh, [50:27] Susan Deane: I think first, you should make the motion to suspend the rules. [50:31] Joseph Leonard: Oh, we do we want to vote on that right now? [50:34] Susan Deane: Start before we go into the order. [50:39] Joseph Leonard: Okay, I just I just assume that this is a workshop. So but yeah, [50:44] Susan Deane: I think then the workshop agenda stage and then we'll amend that. [50:48] Joseph Leonard: That's totally fine. Okay, so I would make a motion to suspend the rules to add to our agenda, the topic of adding Together Place as an agenda item for the workshop. [51:05] Susan Deane: We have a motion, do we have a second? Second. We have a motion and a second. Do we need a roll call vote? [51:12] David Szewczyk: There needs to be a two thirds vote in approval. Council Carson? Yes. Council Walker? [51:20] Susan Deane: Yes. Council Palou? Yes. No, Councilor Mallar, no. Councilor Leonard, yes. And I will be yes. Five [51:32] Joseph Leonard: yes, five, seven, that's two first [51:40] Susan Deane: that will do it. So we do have a motion to suspend that has been passed. Do we now discuss what that will entail? Okay, do we need to make a motion to add that to the agenda now? Or so you would then during the course of the council meeting we're good [51:59] Joseph Leonard: Right now, yeah, okay. I said sorry, I didn't mean to talk over you. I was just trying to remedy of time. So one of the things that I would change to the second document, if I can continue on from what I previously said, is there has been an update that I've received from staff members of Together Place. So they have received from a anonymous individual that if they were able to meet the $170,000 threshold that they would get, that they would be able to donate $50,000. They have also raised about $10,000 as well. I think it's is just shy of that. I was also just informed today that they have also been told that they would receive another $80,000 if they were able to guarantee that amount as well. So that would mean that they would only need to raise another $80,000. And per to what the document that you should all have in front of you, the recommendation that I was making is that we would we would instead of doing a lump sum do monthly installments. Originally I had in there $25,000, but since the amount that has been told to me as an individual and for from what I understand there will be some representatives of Together Place are willing to come speak tonight at public session if requested, but I would recommend to even change that to reduce it to $13,333. You could bump it up to like $500 if you want to split the difference on that. But effectively, that would be one major change that I would recommend. In addition, if this council is wanting to, if this council wanted to make a motion to assist Together Place in their financial crisis situation, if they want to do instead of monthly bi-monthly weekly installments whatever is to the council's desire, I would also be amendable to that. I'm going to stop talking right now just so that I can give it to the floor, because I know we are limited on time. [54:32] Susan Faloon: Thank you. So a couple of questions. First, I want to express a little bit of concern because I feel like we and I've expressed this to you. I feel like this is not the first time that Together Place has been in this situation, and then come to us as BLO. And I know that's part of why you wrote that up the way that you did with the installments. So I was glad to see that. And I would, I would suggest even more than a quarterly accounting, because, you know, like, they could, they could feasibly get like half the money before they had to do any accounting. So that would be one concern for me. And then I And I really like all of the built-in things because I think we need to see that they've got a plan in place to not end up here again and continue to come to the city. And I do recognize that they do some very good work and that would leave a vital void in our community. So I'm balancing that. The other thing that I wanted to mention is that, and maybe you can clarify this, because they put out on their Facebook page earlier today that they have raised $89,000 in the last week. Does that include that? Because I know you said 10,000 and they were putting out this 89,000. So does that include like this additional 80,000 that you mentioned? I guess I'm a little bit confused about like what they've actually raised or is some of that amount contingent on raising more money [56:18] Joseph Leonard: so they don't really have 89 000 may i respond yes so to be completely transparent i don't know the full details of that because there's a lot of varying numbers what i'm more than happy to do is to when we're offline to figure out what that exact number is so that by the time we get to council if we want to vote to amend the rules we can adjust to what that number is that they would need minimum in order to get to that 220 000 threshold because my understanding is right now it's eighty thousand dollars that they would need additionally but i could be wrong on that so i want to make sure that we are as accurate with that as possible [57:05] Daniel Carson: yes i do understand the urgency of finding funding for together place i support together place and the work that they do. However, I do have some concerns as far as our opioid settlement money for the city that other organizations were in line for that funding. And a matter of fact, I had learned earlier today that Together Place is scoring for that, others scored higher than Together Place. I also am concerned about, they did what you lose the lot their state funding last year and so we're a year later looking at funding again and so I'm wondering if we're going to be in the same situation if we were to go ahead and rush this through and get funding out through whatever channel that we get it from. Are we going to be faced with the same thing because there's a timeline that they would be able to apply for another state funding which would be a couple years out I believe I can't say that for certain but i believe that 's the thing so there would be another year of questioning where we're going to get money if together place were to bring it to the table again and then i'm also wondering if we did have a little bit more time to look at this having representation from the committee the opioid settlement committee to weigh in on it because we do have a committee for that and the RFP they did submit the RFP for the day space so I don't know if you've come to a conclusion with that either for the and I believe there were talks with Bangor Public Health with this topic so I do have some concern concerns about it and it being so rushed thank you culture fish I too have a lot of [59:12] Carolyn Fish: concerns in 2024 I know through opera there was 375 000 for them to find a unit I think to host 10 individuals. And through that process, they were unable to, though they're gonna do some research, there was inventory. So I don't know exactly what the collaboration, what the effort was around that, but there was more money then added to it because it was believed that perhaps that wasn't enough for the 10 units, so they cut it back. But again, they were unable to fulfill that mission. Last year, I know we gave them from GA funds, on $60,000, only defined less than two weeks, it was gone. And now here we are back again, and we're not the bank. Nonprofits do qualify to get letters, to get lines of credit and banks do work with nonprofits as long as they can show that they're fiscally responsible. And I think that Together Place offers a great service. I know the community needs it, they've had a lot of advocacy for it, but I think it's a huge concern that they need financial consultant, they need to get their act together financially because we can't be their bank and we can't, we have a responsibility to our taxpayers that we just can't keep doiling it out to people that are not fiscally responsible. And I know that they did lose a lot of funding last year. That I think 50% of the funding, think they were expecting, but they should have by now had other resources lined up. They should have gone to the bank, and they should have either found other resources. I think they lean back to the city. They keep coming to ask us, and I'm extremely concerned about their fiscal responsibility to their own budgets. And I cannot, and I also who, I don't think I've had fun. I have similar questions as counselor Walker about the opioid settlement money. Who else always scored better, other contenders for that monies, and how appropriate or inappropriate would be for us to just quickly go to council tonight and say yes? So I'm not prepared to move this quickly, and I have some great concerns about, yes, I'd like to see them be in business, but no, I don't think the city of [1:01:43] Susan Deane: bangor should continue to be their bankrupt. Excuse me, if I could just interject with a point, these questions really need to be answered by those that know the answers, those that are from together place who will be here later. Is that the intention? I'm just trying to figure out how to get the best information. I would just say I think that's probably one of my concerns is just the many ways that it sounds like information is coming to you and requests are coming to you. So director Gunderman has had at least one meeting and call with folks from the together place, and then I have a scheduled meeting with them tomorrow, and I think that there are a lot of really important questions to ask before we make any decisions on whether to, you know, provide get funding for this organization that we're not going to be able to answer by tonight. And so I think from my perspective, you know, some of the important questions to answer are, you know, why was closure identified only 10 days prior? And if the city provides emergency funding, how are we going to ensure that another emergency doesn't happen? If we provide funding, how many months of financial viability is that providing? And, you know, I would want to see reports showing financial viability to make sure that if we give this investment it's not lost and we wind up a couple months from now in the same place. I would like to see a budget for how the money would be used. We typically will hire that of any or any, you know, grant applicant for city fund. It sounds like there's a lot of questions to be answered about what other funding has been pursued and what amount that is in. And then I think, Chancellor Walker, you raised good points about the opioid funding process and whether we would want to re-look at all of the applicants before reallocating funding. And then I think just more philosophically, however much money this organization needs, we should also think about opportunity costs and what things we can't fund by funding this particular organization. I raise that only because you did have the city issue an RFP process for a day space. Director Gunderman is in the process of working with state entities to see what available state funding there might be to support that day space, but certainly money that we allocate here would not be available to support that. And so those aren't points that I make to say we shouldn't fund this organization. It's more just have we asked all the questions [1:05:02] Speaker E (unidentified): that we should ask before we fund the organization. Council Leonard. So I want to be very clear [1:05:10] Joseph Leonard: and I appreciate everyone's comments and points that they made. The reason why I wanted to bring this forward tonight was to give us that option if we all felt comfortable going forward with assisting them through this crisis. The other thing that I think this also should inform us is this is a wake-up call to me because if they were to shut down that's 20 to 50 people that utilize services that are very active right now that would then lose those services overnight. And then those burdens would go directly onto downtown Bangor. And I would argue the costs of those people that would then do their things that they would typically be doing in Together Place would now be in downtown Bangor or other areas of Bangor. And the cost of that would exceed the eighty thousand dollars that we would hypothetically give out to them. So the reason why I bring this up as well is I think we need to, regardless of the outcome of what we want to do tonight, we need to have a very serious conversation about what the vision for our public health department is for the next two to five years. I think it's arguable at this point that the services that street, I'm sorry, the services that Together Place provides right now are not services that the city can provide right now in this moment in time. We would not be able to sustain those services, and that to me is a dire situation. I would much rather we spend our time as a city developing our public health department so that it has the ability to absorb a lot of these services if another HEAL or another organization were to shut down or fail, and then those services have to go somewhere. Somewhere. I think this presents to us an opportunity to actively pursue a new and expansive vision for how we see our public health department and to look to other cities, like I mentioned to a few other counselors and citizens, cities like Boston, Mayor Michelle Wu has done a very extraordinary effort in the way that they utilize their public health department to mitigate the poverty spectrum issues that city faced. I get that Boston is a much larger city than we are, but we need to be thinking outside the box and recognize that Bangor is not a town, it just isn't. We are a city, we are a city that has services that over a hundred thousand people rely on every single day. And we need to start thinking like we are a city because that's how everyone else sees us at this point. So I put that out for food for thought, regardless of what we do tonight, we need to have on our agenda for government operations in the future. I wish Councilor Beck were here, obviously he can't be here. But we need to have for a future government operations committee meeting a very serious conversation of what the health department has to be in the next two to five years, how we want to expand that, and one of the things I would recommend is currently with Street Plus, I would recommend we take those services that we dish out to Street Plus and we just reinvest it back within the city and recreate an ambassador program that exists within the city department so that's one way to innovate without reinventing the wheel [1:09:05] Susan Deane: Anyway I'll leave it at that, we are getting short on time so we need to come [1:09:12] Daniel Carson: to a conclusion yes I will be quick to share the same concerns that have already been raised and I appreciate the emergency situation and you know we 've put together this homeless committee we've tasked them with creating a stabilization and we've tasked them then to create a long-term care plan. And any, I see this as a potentially disrupting factor to our ability to be able to do those things, because there's already constantly moving pieces in this crisis. And every other large piece that moves almost resets a conversation that committee almost hasn't even started yet. At the same time, I'm not, I really feel strongly that when we rush to a decision, we don't do our best work. And so I would be interested in understanding what pathways exist to continue having this conversation as absolutely quickly as possible. Is there a way to get us in here for another meeting that the public can be notified about so we can keep discussing and get answers to our [1:10:25] Carolyn Fish: questions if we don't, you know, move forward. I think also is important to know, you know, if we considered this or we found money from, or boy, excuse me, we found monies from wherever, grants or whatever, we public grants from. I'm still extremely concerned about with a patent of not being able to manage their budgets for even before this and other situations. So I would like to know where their weakness is. I would like to have a financial consultant look at their pattern of fiscal issues up to this point. So it'll be nice if we give them money that they would say what they would do with it. And even if they come in and give reports, but that doesn't really give us insight as to what the habitual issue has been, in which will likely continue if it's not addressed. So that's a big concern, and as far as public health moving forward, I think that we should be partners, but definitely I caution the city from all the research that we, that I have found, in conversations that I've had with 30 or more communities our size, jumping in as a city to become the homeless experts has been very much cautioned. I think we need to identify our partners that we can trust, that are stable, that have the experience. We already have some, and I think we need to better identify them as we move forward, and definitely partner better, be partners, better partners and collaborators for [1:12:06] Susan Faloon: Sure, Councilman, I know you don't know the answer to that, like exactly how much they've raised. I guess I'm thinking if they truly have raised eighty nine thousand dollars in this, as urgent, like do we have more time because they've got that much money raised? You know, I'm sorry, I can find that out tomorrow because as I said, Jen Gutterman and I are meeting with the executive director and the vice president of the board. Yeah, so then we could have a little more time to get those questions answered. And then if not, in like with what they've actually raised, if some of that is contingent and they have you know just raised ten thousand dollars, that may not be enough for them to keep the doors open. Could we do like a short term, you know, like a 30 day, like what are their expenses for 30 days? Could we provide 30 days of stopgap funding while we work on getting answers and you know in a better plan, something like that, just so that we're not committing to this large amount and then oops that didn't work out the way we wanted and now 150 000 gone. Just a thought. So if I could just say one thing before [1:13:24] Susan Deane: you council honored, if we were agreeable to a very quick turnaround after your meeting tomorrow, would we be able to meet in time to do something to help them within this two week window that they've given us, if that is indeed still the time frame? I'm sorry, I think it's [1:13:42] Joseph Leonard: Friday, I'm sorry, I was going to say that we can hypothetically do an emergency session, but that requires the chair to call for that and the chair is currently unavailable right now, so I don't know [1:13:55] Susan Deane: what that process would be or by majority vote. Yes, that too, council, which we can array, we can get. I think what in my mind what makes sense is for Director Gunderman and I to talk with Joe tomorrow, Executive Director Kartel tomorrow, and sort of understand the funding landscape because it sounds like it has changed, that they have raised some money, and determined whether this is a special meeting issue or if this is a gov ops issue for Monday. I think it's feasible that if they've gotten funding we could then come to you with a more substantial plan and information back up off someone. In all fairness, I think where Council Leonard brought this up, we should probably ask if he's agreeable to that or if you still want [1:14:48] Joseph Leonard: To proceed with, hey, I was going to say, I'm, I would be agreeable, and depending on like what, whoever is going to come to the public session tonight, I would be agreeable to either a short-term 30-day plan change to what I proposed tonight, and so sorry. [1:15:08] Susan Deane: What was your other question, if you wanted to move forward tonight or wait for answers tomorrow? [1:15:13] Joseph Leonard: I mean, I would definitely would be more moved by what I hear tonight, because if, they are amendable to working with the city to figure out, as long as we're working in good faith and they know that we are going to assist them, then I would be amenable to that. But I would also, if it's more beneficial, I would also be welcome to motion for a 30 day emergency fund as well. [1:15:45] Susan Deane: So I need guidance on how to proceed. Are we, are we asking these people to come tonight to speak to us during council so that we get more information, even if it's not on the agenda, or do we need to put on the agenda in order for them to discuss it, so you don't need to vote to put anything on the agenda right now, that will need to take place during the meeting, someone would need to make a motion to suspend the rules to offer the council order, and then it would require another two-thirds vote, so you don't have to decide that by a vote now, I would imagine that folks are going to show up for public comment to talk about this topic regardless of [1:16:26] Joseph Leonard: what we do here and provide their input, and if I could, if, it's amendable to whoever we designate to be the chair pro tem tonight, if their board president or if their executive director were to come tonight, I would recommend that we, whoever the chair is, extend the amount of minutes that they have in order to answer any questions regarding their situation. If we are not going to go and vote to suspend the rules to add a new topic tonight, if we are going to do that and we do add it tonight, then we can create the space to actually bring on a subject matter expert without being finicky with those introductory public comments, you have information you need in order to change what you, I guess what I could do is I could still motion to suspend the rules to put this onto the docket tonight, that way we can create a session for the public to engage and then depending on the information that's provided by the people that provide their public comment and that we have questions for, I can also just vote to make a motion to suspend to a future council meeting or suspend indefinitely as well. [1:18:04] Susan Deane: I just want to raise that we generally don't engage in that during public comment, so I think this is highly irregular, certainly not the ideal forum for that. So we could also just allow those that are coming to speak, we could listen, you could have your meeting tomorrow and we could have a session perhaps, or depending on what we [1:18:32] Speaker E (unidentified): agreeable, I mean it would be up to the [1:18:35] Susan Deane: county. I think we're probably jumping a little quickly to think that we could actually come up with something that would pass this evening. One [1:18:47] Daniel Carson: of you, I would be interested in an emergency session if it ordered today and I would absolutely move my schedule to come back here. All right, I wish I can balance the need with there's, you know, urgency and also that we have [1:19:07] Susan Faloon: questions. I agree as long as it's not tomorrow night at the end. We all [1:19:14] Susan Deane: agree we do have three executive sessions, I would need a motion. Sure, so it's one of our studies section 40560 [1:19:25] Daniel Carson: fleet maintenance contract and pursuant to an mrsa section 4056 consultation with city solicitor regarding rights and duties council art appraisal reassessment contract and pursuant to one mrsa five six c acquisition of real practice your economic development regarding the attempt application and move that we enter exactly a session. Second option, we have a second, we will [1:19:53] Susan Deane: be going into executive session at six four more after a roll call vote. Whatever the person, yes. Councillor Walker. Yes. Councillor Clover. Yes. Councillor Fitch. Yes. Councillor Walker. I mean, Councillor Bowne. Yes. Councillor Leonard. Yes. Doing so well. And I will be a yes.