Ellsworth council adopts meeting rules, picks Bayside Road engineer

[0:00] Chair Lyons: This monthly meeting of the Ellsworth City Council to order. First on the agenda is the call of order. Second on the agenda is the Pledge of Allegiance. [0:13] Harris, Public Works Director: Pledge of Allegiance [0:14] Councilor Martin: To the flag of the United States of America and to the republic for which it stands, one [0:21] Chair Lyons: nation under God, indivisible, with liberty and justice for all. Agenda item number three, rules of order. The City Council operates under its own rules of procedure and also the Roberts Rules of Order. Agenda item number four, adoption the Ellsworth City Council minutes from the following meetings, August 17th, 2026, regular meeting, August 31st, 2026, special meeting, in September 8th, 2026, special meeting. Of a motion from the board the [1:02] Speaker D (unidentified): council move [1:05] Councilor Hilleman: to approve the minutes from those said meetings. Second. Any [1:11] Councilor Smith: further discussion? Simply that I wasn't here for August 31st, so would anything [1:19] Chair Lyons: anything further from the council? Seeing none, all those in favor. Agenda item number five, presentations of awards. We have one award to hand out tonight. The recipient is not here, but we'll recognize him anyways. The City of Ellsworth proudly presents this certificate of service to Zachary Chandler in recognition of five years of service in the police department. His devotion to duty and loyalty to the community have contributed to the improvement of the City of Ellsworth. Presented this 21st day of September, 2026. Agenda item number six, the City Manager's Report. [2:11] City Manager: Thank you, Chair Lyons. I'll try to be brief tonight. I know we have a very busy agenda. First, I'll just get a little bit of a preview for the workshop on October 5th, which will be our next workshop, where our planning staff, our economic development teams, and code enforcement are coming back to the table with the Planning Board to discuss a little bit more on the council's policy decision to enter a moratorium on RV campgrounds and get a little bit more dialed in on next steps, get some planning board feedback, and, you know, kind of get a little bit more direction. Our teams are kind of looking to kind of present two options. One on, you know, we can stick to just the RV campground piece. Excuse me, the audience can't hear just a little better. It seemed not to have the mics on. Check. Let me just so your workshop a planning board discussion, the RV campground moratorium. Staff is prepping some options there for council to consider and provide some feedback on, as well as obviously the planning board to provide a little feedback as well. The tiff task force, which we've had a Couple conversations on forming our economic development director. Twyla is going to be coming back for a discussion on that. A little bit of an update in the tax required prop property process, which we began in earnest early in the year. I know our city clerk slash tax collector Sue Lasard we'll have some updates on. And also an update in the progress on the city seal removal and repair and the grant application kind of update on that piece. There might be a few other things, but we'll notify council as it comes forward. Quick communications updates. I know communications director is gonna have a little bit more of a discussion on the public meeting process and a new sort of ask Ellsworth initiative, but she also wanted me to make sure to remind folks that are looking for updates on city events that we have a newsletter that folks can sign up for. Maybe does a great job of keeping that active and people informed. So Ellsworth main gov you just scroll to the bottom of the page you can click on the areas that you'd like information on. Also a little update the some folks from the Surrey economic development teams have reached out. You may have seen some news articles on this on if we'd be interested in expanding water sewer access in the Surrey area. We've had some very just brief initial conversation. Obviously, I don't have the authority to approve or to disapprove such a thing, but I have made it pretty clear that we have a lot in our work plans. We're sizing the Branch Lake system for kind of Ellsworth economic development expansion needs. Yes, there are some things in the comp plan in other areas on shared services and other nearby cities and towns, but really a sort of reminder to them too that if this is something that they're serious about they need to come to our City Council on the full authorization for it that it's even something we'd entertain. I think one of the areas that can be frustrating for staff and others on hey this is an idea let's get it fully authorized even at the conception level from our group before we move Forward on it and start to think about it from staff resources and other pieces, which kind of gets me to my more of a personal item is, you know, I'm looking forward to the next few months but also looking forward to getting a little more dialed in on city work plans, council work plans. I would say we have such an incredible staff, and tonight is a great example of an insane amount of work that they and people who are not even in this room apply to every single one of these agenda items, and some of them are from previous councils, some of them involved current councils, some of them are from, you know, five, six years ago, and nobody was in here for some of these decisions. Staff has done a really good job, we produce turnover dramatically amongst the teams, but they're a really new team, and you know, we're getting to kind of full tilt and task saturation with a lot of items, and I want to be a little more dialed in as we see the new council on exactly what our current work plans are as a staff getting vote and buy-in from the council on that being the approved work plan for every item, some hours that it takes, distributions for how long these process these projects are, and then ideally more of a new plan in place for how something from the council or the community gets on to the agenda to expend staff time, resources, legal funding. You know, we've done an incredible amount of things, Moore Center, we released negotiation, TIF redesign, ordinance reform phase one, assessing redesign, library renovation, school track, fire apparatus, 20 different roads repaved. Tonight we've got some big infrastructure discussions on the Bayside Road, sidewalks, additional roads. It's just an insane amount of work, and I can kind of feel the pressure from staff as they, we want to do excellent work, and we're getting to almost that task saturation point, so there's some other pieces to that, you know, thriving communities initiative on the high street piece, which was an inherited project, which, you know, we've kind of got to the stage where we could move forward, we could not move forward, we've also done a lot of projects over the last year, downtown restrooms, indoor bus storage. Garage a bunch of the things that we ended up not moving forward with, and that's the Bray Avenue discussion on these things. That's natural, I think, and things that were totally unanticipated, recounts, recalls, investigations, other pieces which staff have very limited control over, what will dominate thousands of hours of work of their lives. So there's some things that we can't control, but there are the things that we can. There is, when I first became city manager, I cleaned out all the detritus in my office of I think four previous city managers, and I found three separate plans from, you know, all spaced out like four or five years apart for a total redevelopment of the downtown waterfront area and river walks and oh my gosh, you just these binders and the proposals and the visions and the dreams. I was like, wow, that's 20 years there, 25 years ago for the first play on that. It's such a big thing to move forward, and now I have my own version of that. The village partnership initiative has some discussion, you know, on the bridge hill intersections and this thriving communities, but especially I highly encourage people to listen to Chris's Monday Finance Committee workshop on just some of the financial turnaround planning we're doing, and we really have to focus on that piece and how everything we do fits in there. And while they may not be some of the biggest budget line items for some of these other pieces, they also take a ton of staff time and resources, and I'm trying to figure out a way. Well, staff turnover has stabilized, you know, I'm about to be on my third city council chair in less than three years, so I think we need a different process or a better process for how work plans that have been aligned from previous councils get carried over into new councils and sort of voted again to kind of streamline staff's expectations for things, and that goes to council requests too. We have some items tonight that were prepped at multiple workshops by counselors. That's areas of the city seal that have been like that, and then we have others which are thrown on there with no direction whatsoever, and then I'm kind of when I last questions I get angry emails back and questioning my integrity. So a better process for council as well on how we decide and vote on expending staff and time resources I think it's gonna be really important to me and to the staff in the next cycle. So with that, let's get to this busy meeting you Charlie [10:47] Chair Lyons: Agenda item number seven, committee reports. Any reports from various committees, work, councilors, Councillor Smith? [10:55] Councilor Smith: Thank you, I'll offer an update from the cemetery commission. Excuse me, first related to Juniper Cemetery and then to the larger cemeteries across the town. They are, they have landed on pricing for the beginning to offer plots for sale and have also confirmed where there are plots lots that are available. In addition for Juniper, they worked with city staff. We have a contractor for lawn care who had not been performing. We dealt with it earlier this year. That did not fix the problem and so city staff has canceled that contract and our thanks to Parks and Rec and Facilities, they are picking up that work in addition to everything else they do for the rest of the season. It was really disappointing to have what looked like a top notch contractor come in and simply not do the work we will be putting out a new RFP in January to be able to hopefully have next year go more smoothly with that cemetery and then more broadly with the Broad Cemetery Commission role they are assessing the financial information with the finance department we were able to have them at the last meeting and looking at the various funds and we're preparing to have distributions to the cemeteries that are named for each of these funds. That hasn't been done for at least four years and being able to catch up on that. And finally, they are working on updating the cemetery ordinance. I know with the other commissions are also working on updating their ordinances that oversee the interactions between the city and cemeteries throughout the municipality and in all of this they're being appropriately cautious we want to make sure that we're doing things right working at a steady pace and the key is with all of these things because cemeteries are so important not to make any errors as we move forward so it's been a very methodical process and we're beginning to be comfortable with selling new plots and then continuing to look at the finances for several other cemeteries throughout the city so they've been doing good work over the last couple [13:17] Chair Lyons: of months and it continues great thank you nancy any other committee reports counselor [13:25] Speaker H (unidentified): right yeah [13:26] Councilor Hilleman: I just have an update on the tree planting event that will happen second year of our IRA grant volunteer planting event that'll happen at Harbor Park and the Union River Estates the last two weeks of October, so that's October 19th through October 30th, and it'll just be days rolling volunteers, so new faces every day out in the parks planting shrubs and trees in those places. So we'll have more on Facebook and an actual event that people can sign up for [13:59] Chair Lyons: soon. Great, thank you. Is that the right time of year to plant trees? It's a great [14:04] Councilor Hilleman: time of year to plant trees in the fall. Trees are cheaper at the nursery and they can get established a little bit in the fall and wake up in the ground in the spring. So yeah, great time. Great, good to know. Councilor Smith? [14:22] Speaker I (unidentified): So a local Girl Scout troop, I believe troop 1,282, have decided to repair and even add a few benches in Harbor Park, and just it is fun seeing then the next generation really begin to get involved in things like the harbor. [14:54] Public commenter: Great, thank you. That's wonderful. [14:57] Chair Lyons: Any further committee reports? Seeing none, we're on to agenda item number eight, citizens comment. This is the opportunity for citizens to provide comments on city business for matters that are not otherwise noticed for public hearing. We ask that if you would like to provide public comment on City's business, that you approach the DS, provide your name and town of residence for us, and that you keep your comments to three minutes or less. [15:39] John Linehan, public commenter: John Linehan, Ellsworth, Maine. After a few years of running for the City Council, coming close a couple times, lost by two votes last time around, I just want to thank the citizens of Ellsworth for the support that they've given me over the years. I've been fighting to reduce the taxes, to get a handle on the spending, what I consider is not a wise spending venue we've had in the city of Ellsworth. So I've worked that hard for the last three or four years, and I think a lot of the people in the community are aware of that. I feel we've had the majority of support on the last three elected cycles, but unfortunately we had too many people running. We kind of split the vote a little bit. So I took a look around this year and I said I said there's two very,, very good candidates running, and they're here tonight, Robert C. Grant, Sr. [16:24] Chair Lyons: John, I'm gonna ask you to stop, please. As we discussed last year, politicking is not a matter of city business and is not appropriate for public comment. [16:34] John Linehan, public commenter: I'm gonna say what I've got to say tonight. If you wanna have your attorney, and I'll have my attorney do it if you wanna do it, but you can't shut me up for my freedom of speech. I'm gonna do it politely, but that's my opinion, and I'm gonna say it. [16:45] Chair Lyons: I just wanna note, John, that I've asked you to please not politic. It's part of the City Council's policies. [16:50] John Linehan, public commenter: I'm not politicking. I'm telling you my opinion. If you consider it is, it isn't. That's not me. This is my speech. I have my three minutes. We went through this last year. And I'm not going to go through it again. We're one meeting away from suing you guys for freedom of speech because you allowed me to speak, and I expect to speak tonight. Respectfully, I expect to have my say tonight. [17:10] Chair Lyons: John, I'm just noting that this Council voted on policies... [17:12] John Linehan, public commenter: So it was a split vote in the last year round. and I just want to say we have the amount of people in the town that want to see the spending reduced and spending prioritized differently in the city of Ellsworth so where there's two other candidates running this year Robert C Grant senior Robbie Grant and Tiffany Gasper John that's a call it and I decided not to run because I don't want to split the vote because I believe the public wants to elect those two people and they will be elected come this coming year but I wanted to thank everybody for the support that I've had like that over there but if the city of Elsa wants to continue with agenda 2030 direction which they're heading in because of some of the councils that are on there why there's always a five to two vote five to two vote on every issue it's a microcosm of United Nations agenda 2030 sustainable building and a lot of it is portrayed by a gross map Maine by Nancy Smith that's her agenda from being here like that I believe Nancy is the most dangerous woman in the city of Elsa from the viewpoints like that needs to be soundly defeated so I'm here to support Tiffany Gaspar and Robbie Grant for that like that and thank you for [18:18] Chair Lyons: allowing me to speak I appreciate I did not want you to politic John and would ask that you not do that again it is I don't consider that politicking so we [18:26] John Linehan, public commenter: have to I don't want to take my time meeting for that's my definition of free speech I will just I'm one of them talking to that about that but politic is a different issue. So I appreciate you letting me have my free speech tonight. Thank you very much. Thank you. [18:46] Chair Lyons: Anyone else like to provide public comment? Seeing none, I will close the public hearing. Move on to agenda item number nine, councillor's comments. [19:07] Speaker I (unidentified): Councillor Smith. Just a small event I would like to highlight. The annual chess tournament at the library has been renamed the Dick Powell Memorial Chess Tournament. It is going to be on October 17th and it's there's a amazing power just sitting down that and playing a game with someone that forges great ties within the community that crosses so many boundaries and I just is this is just one event I like highlight that helps promote those connections that are critical to community. [19:54] Chair Lyons: Thank you, Councillor Smith. Any other councillors? [19:59] Councilor Hallam: Councillor Hallam. I'd like to talk about transparency. I've heard a lot of conversations about how transparent the process is in Ellsworth and how transparent city government is. And I don't see that. I don't see the transparency that is preached or talked about. It seems that when I ask for things I don't get transparency and I was elected to be here and I would have thought that I could at least get some transparency, as well as Mr. and Mrs. Ellsworth. And I wish that we would stop talking about transparency and start acting transparent. I think there's a big difference. This right here is what I call transparency. You can see through it. This is the transparency I see at City Hall. Every time I ask for anything there's no transparency. There's a black wall. Thank you. Any [21:55] Chair Lyons: further any other counselor comments counselor [22:00] Councilor Hilleman: Wait, yeah, as many of us know it has been getting more expensive to buy groceries and grocery store and also with a lot more dangerous with a lot of recalls and stuff on our fruits and vegetables. So I think it's really amazing that here in Ellsworth we have so many incredible volunteers and nonprofits that are working to help make our community a more sustainable and more sustainable and more resilient by starting a everybody harvest community garden. Our partners Green Ellsworth actually have a Organic garden that the residents of Ellsworth can go and visit behind the Trade Winds on the Bangor Road there. I don't know if it actually has an actual address there, but if you're going towards Bangor, the Trade Winds is on the right. You would take the next right after that, and there's a little dirt road that goes back there, and volunteers have been working all summer to plant out hundreds of vegetables with manure, prime soil. It's actually Whitney Field for people that have been here a while. It's a great soil, cross-country used to run that, used to be the finishing line for cross-country and elsewhere there. So a portion of that land has been repurposed for a community garden, and right now, in September, every Monday, Wednesday, and Friday, oh, I'm sorry, so there's volunteer work sessions that people can actually join and volunteer in if they wanna get their hands a little bit dirty, but there's also the option for free public harvesting. So in September, every Wednesday and Friday from four to six p.m., people from our community can go there and pick vegetables for free and take them home and feed their families for free. Also in October and November on Saturdays, it'll move, sorry, in October, November, it'll move from Wednesdays and Fridays and move to Saturdays, and it'll be from 10 to 12 p.m., and then there's also the ability for residents to make appointments to get food there as well. So they're really trying to make sure that everybody eats here in Ellsworth and everybody eats healthy food. So I commend our nonprofits here in Ellsworth and our volunteers that for years have been doing incredible work, and I really encourage everyone to go by there and visit, and I would be, actually I should also note that they're not doing that alone. They're actually doing it with Frenchman Bay Conservancy, Healthy Acadia, and the city of Ellsworth school district has been out there. So I encourage [24:50] Councilor Smith: everyone to go and check it out. Thank you. I'll just, I think add a little bit to that. I was able to go out and visit when Mary Blackstone was there. It's on Hannaway, thank you, that's the name. Go across the railroad tracks and you can park where there's parking for the multi-use trail as well, but Mary pointed out this is prime farmland. This is land that we want available for farming and food production and not for development. So, just adding a little bit to what you had said about this. Opportunity, absolutely. [25:27] Councilor Martineau: Councilor Martineau? I'd just like to say that I have found it very rewarding that over these months of my first year of my first term, I have had friends and acquaintances who have asked me how you follow along with local politics or state politics even. And I have been very gratified to be able to sit down with them and show them the benefits of a digitized world as far as government is concerned because it really does make things transparent when you learn to find the information that's out there. There's a lot of resources. It's not something that comes easy. You can't just put it into a Google search but so much information is out there and having them learn how to use it and learn how to follow along has been very gratifying to me any [26:26] Chair Lyons: further counselor comment so I'd just like to note or to counsel Halloran accusing the city of a lack of transparency in my experience over the last three years there couldn't be anything farther from the truth this city staff and this council takes its responsibility to the laws of the United States, the state, and our local ordinances very seriously. They conduct themselves with the highest standards of ethics, and Councillor Halloran is treated like just every other councillor here. And I have, as chair this past year, I've been privy to a variety of requests from Councillor or halloran and they've all been responded to appropriately and there is no lack of transparency with the city if anything because of these just bold-faced false allegations the city has stepped up even extra transparent and doing everything it can to run government efficiently effectively and transparently so and I don't need props or gimmicks to convey that I just want to say thank you very much to the city staff for all the hard work you do that you do care about transparency that you do care about making sure the people's business is in the light and done properly and I just want to commend you all it's been a pleasure working with you and despite what others some very few a small group of folks or maybe one individual might say it's not true and keep up the good work thank you that I'll move on to counselor agenda item number 10 public hearing and action on the applications for renewal for the following licenses Hannaford supermarket pharmacy number eight one two three two five high street for renewal of a city class C license and renewal of a state agency liquor store license Alicia card PR DBA Jimbo's junkin 62 Kylie's way for renewal of a city junkyard automobile graveyard license Derek Goldstein DBA provender or provender 112 Main Street for renewal of a city class C license victual er and liquor and renewal of a state restaurant class one two three and four malt spiritus and vineous liquor license, and Shaw's Supermarket number 57, 157, 175 High Street, for renewal of a city Class C license and renewal of a state agency liquor store license. So these are noticed for a public hearing, so I will open the public hearing. If anyone would like to provide public comment on any of the license renewals that were just listed, seeing none, I will close the public hearing. Council, how would you like to proceed? Move to approve. I second. Any further discussion? Seeing none, all those in favor, unanimous. Agenda item number 11, council order number 092600, discussion of potential action on the public comment question process, sponsored by Councilor Lyons, which is me. I'm happy to step in, Charlie, on this one. [30:13] City Manager: That would be great. I know we've done, as I mentioned before, we've done two workshops on this already, provided some pretty extensive comment amongst council, and especially the last one, we had some robust conversations on some edits that were asked of Chair Lyons. We do have a bit of a small staff presentation with comms director Amy and sort of citizen engagement initiative that we've been working on as a staff as [30:40] Chair Lyons: well to kind of follow discussion. Sure, so for folks at home or in the room that haven't been following along, the back in, I believe it was May, maybe, I presented proposed revisions to the city's council's rules of order. The revisions I presented were based entirely on materials provided by the Maine Municipal Association, and everyone in here may be silenced phones, if you haven't checked, we'll do a double check. The so yes, so the last year there have been some contentious meetings, some difficult meetings, and that's all okay to a point, you know, city's business, people have strong passions and opinions, and it's good to facilitate a robust discussion and ensure that everyone is able to provide comment to the council through the various avenues we have available. It's also important to make sure that staff and council can engage in robust discussions, but also, but we need to balance that with making sure that we run an orderly meeting, that the meeting is done in a manner where folks are respectful to one another, and ultimately that they're done in a way where we are actually addressing the City Council's business, and efficiently. As you know, we have many long, robust agendas, and in order to work efficiently, having these rules of order are necessary and important. important. As I said, the proposed changes are all taken directly from the Maine Municipal Associations. They have a packet regarding city and town council rules and procedure and other information that all councilors have access to. I provided a copy of that at the first workshop. And as all of us as councilors, we're members of the Maine Municipal association so we can all access these materials through their website so these proposed orders just provide more clarification about the process of counselor conduct, how we move through the meeting, public comment, how public comment is conducted, including what is considered city business and what is considered to be ruled out of order, there's a number of situations including support for the opposition to any candidate for political office, personal disputes between the speaker and other private residents not germane to city business, matters for which complaint or grievance procedures are in place, comments about individual city employees, comments unrelated to city business or Ellsworth government, and specific situations that are in litigation, including those in which the city is a party. party. Beyond that, it also just lays out more procedures regarding not just public comment, but also just setting up how and when we have our regular meetings, special meetings, the process there, and our workshops, and also addressing executive sessions. So this is really just providing more detail to our rules of procedure that were already in place and again they're all based off of the Maine Municipal Association's proposed materials for these types of rules of procedure, rules of order, and I think regardless of who sits in this chair or these chairs moving forward, it's this best practice to have rules such as this in place so both the council, city staff, and the public understand how meetings are conducted so everyone can have the same Expectations and we can deduct orderly efficient meetings. I don't know, folks have any questions. I did make two changes based on our last workshop regarding the extent of public comment. I based it off, I looked around and saw a few other municipalities that include language up to public comments for 30 minutes, and at that point, based on the three minutes per person, at that point, suspending public comment till the end of the meeting. But that's at the discretion of the council chair, which again, in two meetings will be someone else. But again, this is all based on a number of communities, procedures, and materials that were presented from the Maine Municipal Association. A [35:47] Councilor Smith: question for you to that point. Have we gone over that 30 minutes before? I don't recall. [35:52] Chair Lyons: I don't think we've ever gotten maybe closer around it a few times. That's why I thought 30 minutes was a good amount of time, and again, if we hit 30 minutes, please, you can, you know, the chair could say I'm gonna suspend public comment till the end of the meeting and then provide for additional public comment, and then I also put it in language there, but if the council wants to extend that period further they can buy a vote, so the chair doesn't have unilateral authority over that. It can be a council decision, but the idea is again where we [36:24] Councilor Smith: have the entire agenda and people are here for specific items to allow some [36:28] Chair Lyons: continuity. Yeah, and I think but on that note, I don't know, is Amy gonna provide, yeah, she's here, she can give kind of your hiding. I think also I'd like to, on that note, Amy, maybe if you're able to provide a little overview of this, our public comment questions process that we're proposing, in addition to updating our rules of order, please and thank you. [37:08] Communications/Ask Ellsworth staff presenter: Good evening everybody, thank you so much for having me. So I know that we have discussed this a couple of times, so I'm just going to take a few minutes to sort of build it out a little bit. So we do want to continue talking about our project, which we've called Ask Ellsworth. At its core, Ask Ellsworth starts with a pretty simple idea: residents shouldn't have to understand the city's org chart to know who to ask when they have a question. So we want to give them one clear place to start and then have A consistent process to make sure that questions get where they need to go and then nothing falls through the cracks. So I just have five quick points here. First of all, and this is all in your packet, in a sense we are creating a front door to the city. So residents already do reach out to us in a number of different ways. Sometimes they call us, they come into City Hall, they use our website contact form, they speak during public comment, they email us. There's a number of different ways they can reach us. So this Ask Ellsworth product project isn't intended to replace any of these things. What we're doing is creating a recognizable front door for someone who has a question and doesn't know where to start. So we have established an email address. It's askelsworth at elsworthmaine.gov. So the second point is, now that we've created this front door of sorts, we want to make the process behind the door as clear as possible. So in your handout, you'll find the work, So I think this is what you were referencing too, Patrick? Yes, thank you. The flow chart of sorts, and it's pretty, we've tried to keep it fairly straightforward. Question comes in, we want to acknowledge it, we want to route it to the right person, we want to do the research, and respond to the resident, and learn where there might be opportunities. So, okay, so a question comes in, we acknowledge that we've received it, right? It's all about wanting to be heard. We determine who has the expertise to answer the question and then that person or department researches the answer. We respond to the resident and we track it through to resolution and then we close the loop. So some questions will be easy and answered quickly, others may involve several departments or even outside agencies. So not every question will be answered immediately. So really it's patience, right, grace and patience needed on both sides. So the third point about Ask Ellsworth and this is a really important one. I know we talked a bit about this at our last workshop. So it's it's about helping people find the information that already exists, right? This is an important piece. Sometimes the best response isn't creating a new answer but rather helping someone find the information that already exists. So we have a lot of tools and resources that are out there. We have city schedule for meetings on our website and event calendar, we have website email notifications that Charlie mentioned in his presentation earlier we have Ellsworth alerts that's our vendor called Doppler and also we have a very robust process for requesting public records and other resources that are available to our residents. So part of these ask Ellsworth project will be helping our residents become more familiar with these tools. So over time they may be able to find their answer quicker come to us although we welcome questions of course. So this fourth point this absolutely requires collaboration communications. will We'll coordinate the process. I'll track the questions, close the loop with the residents, identify trends and topics. That's what I'm really excited about, looking for areas that could involve broader communication opportunities. Our department heads and our staff truly are the subject matter experts. So we're tapping into those that know the information. So I will obviously need help researching questions and making sure that the information that we provide is accurate and if there are any barriers or if we need information with cross departments will look to more of our leadership team to help with that. So this is really how it works right one coordinated process with the expertise of the entire organization behind it. So finally we don't want to just answer a good question once. So if one resident asks a question like why are there trees being removed or what's happening with a road project? There's a very good chance that other residents are wondering it as well. So we will look at the questions that we're receiving, the questions that are being asked of us, and really look at if there's a bigger communication opportunity available to us. Maybe it becomes an FAQ on our website. Maybe it becomes an update to an already existing web page. Maybe it's a media story or a social media story. It could become a PSA. It could be information that we need to update the council with or any other pieces of public information. So ultimately success looks like this. The resident knows where to look for the answers, and then it's like an instant answer, right? There's that instant gratification of getting your answer. and then they know how and where to ask their question. Staff knows how to respond. Questions are tracked until they're resolved and nothing falls through the cracks. Great. Should I, anything Patrick? Did I cover it? [43:22] Chair Lyons: I think so, but if any counselors have any questions for Amy regarding the Ask Ellsworth initiative. I [43:32] Communications/Ask Ellsworth staff presenter: do want to add just one more thing Patrick. The, so Doppler, I know all, everyone has signed up for it for anybody that is interested in that the link is on the communications page of our website and we will be doing a wider communication plan around Doppler we're in I want to say we're in the testing phase still but we're feeling pretty confident about it so that'll be a great tool for us going [43:58] Chair Lyons: forward and that's receiving alerts on your phone and information email as well [44:03] Communications/Ask Ellsworth staff presenter: well as a text message and really we look forward to receiving the addresses so that we can properly use the tool to geo target areas that you know if there's a water outage or a boil water area we can target it right at that area so it's pretty cool you know [44:30] City Manager: it's just a huge thank you to Amy and also to Ebony this is a pretty robust effort we've had multiple meetings over the past months on this and it's going to continue to iterate you know I oftentimes find myself feeling like I'm you know a dispatcher or kind of air traffic control for a council request and inquiry management system because I get so much and I really earlier this year to try to dial that in with the team so we can track log categorize but then there's a whole separate stream of citizen requests that come to my and other staff every single day they're extremely important I'd say 90% come from the same ten or so folks but also those ten or so folks have some great things to say one tonight was really helpful on something that was emergency not emergency but urgent and pressing and we want to get to that soon others if it's your fourth fifth request in the week you know we have a ton of stuff to do if it's not extremely urgent we've got to get back to it but we got to log it we've got to know where it's out we get to assign the right person. I think it's just one of those processes. I used to work in constituent services for congressional office on occasion. I was a scheduler out there and we had a whole person just dedicated to those inquiries. So we've been doing okay about it as a team, but Ebony and I and Tima really talked about her kind of keeping and maintaining the council requests and that piece of it and citizen requests that may not be answered during the citizen comment portion that she can log, get an email address for a citizen as well so we can get that piece answered for things that we may not be able to have at the meeting and then Amy really focusing a lot of the citizen requests I'm sure they're gonna come in from a lot of different areas but let's let's start aggregating them you know sorting and having a weekly cadence meeting on what's really pressing what's an emergency back burner a bit and a defined process you know nothing slips through the cracks as Amy mentioned Great. [46:28] Chair Lyons: Thank you, Charlie. Anything further from council? [46:32] Councilor Smith: A process question. I love the outline of this. I love the clarity and the accountability in it. When we get inquiries, or I know through your e-mail or other staff, they get these inquiries. Are they forwarded so that they get into that workflow stream? Should we respond to the person we've received it and then forward to that email address so that they are aware that it's now in rather than us trying to follow it up on our own correct we always add [47:03] City Manager: it to the crims when even if the counselors we've asked you know counselors to add that to when they make a request to me under staff just because we have three or four people actually have access to that email account so it's logged you know I do 25 30 meetings a week so getting to kind of real-time email exchanges is difficult but that ensures a little bit of predictability there I think this will dial in a little bit more on that process some of the follow-up you know like I said the traffic control aspect it comes me we send it out we read me we are doing that on the council requests and what citizen and some of those have become agenda items we're meeting items RV campground peace was one of those some of them become workshops some of them become listening sessions some of them help really inform future conversations on like hey we need to get out a survey on this or we needed to do more so we really want to be a little more dialed in, and I've done this before, and I kind of relate it to feeling like a cup where all of a sudden, you know, there's just too much water come in and it's, but we're also more of an iPhone. We can redesign our operating system to handle these requests in a more, you know, defined way that I think will be helpful and get to better customer service interactions, I think. [48:16] Councilor Smith: So then to be clear, if we get one of these inquiries on a specific item, we can just forward it to the ask elsewhere let the and then copy the person so they know correct in the flow [48:26] City Manager: we'll get you a little more dialed in on once that piece i'd say keep going to the crims right now the crims is sort of is currently that's been a system we've been using for five or six months now it has and especially as councils get requests and it also really encouraged too for councils to use that especially when there's an active bidder or somebody making an inquiry you know that is something where there are things if it's city business because of your voting role that keeping independent viewpoint is going to be really important not to answer that citizens request or on your own piece and staff should be the one that is actually making those discussions and conversations points to be able to preserve your independence on voting on those issues so yeah crims for now but I think once we've got ask Ellsworth and a lot more of a here's the process here's the user journey of how to do it you should be able to say hey thank you so much ask ellsworth use this email address and it'll be asked and answered or in all due time according to city staff work plans availability [49:29] Councilor Martineau: etc okay thank you yeah counselor martin assuming that this is a success and these questions start coming in has anybody given any thought to how much staff time this will take I mean is it you're talking about researching things and having complex questions go from department to department they're stretched pretty thin [49:55] City Manager: right now yeah I think that's one of the problem the processes of doing this is to have this is an emergency and this is how we'll get to it this is what because right now we're doing that already and we're already at max capacity and sometimes we'll have a citizen email three times in a week with you know 600 hundred to a thousand words with seven questions buried in each one and that's a citizen request we want to get to that request I can't say hey you're not allowed to have seven we don't Have those pieces, but if it's not an emergency, or if it comes down to it too, and it's becoming repetitive, taking us away from business, we may have to put folks into the FOA aspect there is, you know, so that we can say when we can respond, and also if there's any staff time and we have to charge for it, because I would say that there are some areas where there's such a huge volume with certain citizen requests, that it's getting to the point where we need to say, we need you to go to the FOA, this question has been asked and answered, and so much city time and resources are being spent on it. And we'll have the data to kind of back that up too. Like I said, I'd say about 10 to 15 people are about 90% of our inquiries, especially in the multiples per week. But we'll have the data to back that up if we have this system for a year. I've done that in state government too when requests were flying fast and furious and I basically said we've got to hire three more staff. Just like the police and fire come here's our dispatch numbers. Here's the call volume. We don't do as good of a job of that internally of tracking those things. [51:23] Councilor Martineau: I just think it's really important that we track that to make sure that somebody's not going underwater researching questions or not being able to do their other duties because of it. I know that we want to be forthcoming and we want to provide this information. I mean, we can't do what I do, which is, say, read the syllabus. [51:44] Councilor Martin: It just doesn't work. [51:47] Councilor Martineau: But by the same token, to pile on more duties on staff. Because if you've got somebody, if you're going to work this so that you have designated people in each department to address this, that you have to keep on top so they're not getting snow under. I'd say it already feels like that for me. I know and saying something isn't urgent and can take some time that's all great but meantime theoretically more stuff is coming in on top of it and that's when we start to look you know like we're not doing what we're supposed to be doing. Yeah, okay. [52:35] Councilor Hallam: Unanswered questions create more dialogue. I have seen many people ask questions at the podium, and I have never seen a discussion about that. Excuse me, I've seen questions, when's the answer time? I've seen this come forward in a two phase wrong. One is rules going forward of City Council meetings. That has always been handled at the organizational meeting when a new council is seated. I have never seen pages of new rules from an outgoing chairman. Secondly, I don't know what's wrong with the process of the council establishing the organization, how it will be conducted. Excuse me. Secondly, the communications, when you don't address them quickly, pile up and ask more questions and aggravates the process. And I've seen many questions right here. Not everybody is Mr. Electronics, including me, and it seems to me that this plan of communications is geared around electronic communications. There are many people in this city that are paying good taxes that would simply like to ask a question and get an answer, whether it be telephone or in person here. And I'm seeing this too electronic. Sure, electronics are great, maybe it's the best thing going, but let's not leave some of the taxpayers out that aren't electronic,, that are more questions, phone calls, visits, what have you. And I think you see repetitive nature when things don't get addressed. And it's impossible to address everything that comes through the door. But acknowledging things that come through the door goes a long way. Just [55:23] Chair Lyons: that point, I believe the ask Ellsworth initiative does include public comment at council meetings. It would include anyone with a phone call or a question to staff, and then that information would still be entered into this. I agree the faster we can respond to questions the better, but we have to balance that with making sure that we can get done what we need to get done for the city's business. And I think again we've been working at this since May talking to Amy and Charlie. It's been very important for me to make clear that the city values and wants to respond to question citizens comments and questions as quickly and as thoroughly and accurately as possible. So I would, I think this is a great start, you know, we've got to implement it and I'm sure will identify maybe areas that need to be improved or added to, but I think we're already on a good way there. And as far as, yep, the normal process is to adopt rules of order at our November organizational meeting, but there's nothing that requires us only to do it then. And these are, this is something I've been working on for a while. I won't be a part of that meeting, so that's part of why I wanted to propose it. And based on the last year of what we've gone through as a council, I think it's really important that the council adopt these. If in November the council wants to change them, they can. There's nothing set in stone here. This isn't an ordinance, it's just procedures, and they can be changed tomorrow following a duly notice meeting, but let the new council do it. Well, I hear your position, Councillor Howland, and unless there's other comments, I would entertain a motion to adopt these rules procedure. Move that we top these roads of procedure as outlined in the end. Second. Further discussion? Seeing none, all those in favor? Opposed? Motion carries five to two. Council order agenda item number 12, council order number zero nine two six zero one, public hearing and action on the request of the public works director toward the contract for the Bayside Road Minnesota partnership initiative design and engineering contract. Sarah Devlin, [58:06] City Manager: deputy manager, has been taking the lead on this item. I think counselors pretty aware we've had probably two to three workshops, and I think one City Council meeting discussion of the capital improvement plan, and this is a major piece of it, but I will not preview much more. Over to Sarah for a little bit more background on this initiative and the results of the RFP. Good evening, [58:30] Sarah Devlin, Deputy City Manager: Sarah Devlin, deputy city manager. So what we have before us tonight is not a decision whether to enter into a municipal partnership initiative with Maine DOT on the Bayside Road, because as at the April council meeting there was a unanimous 7-0 vote to enter into the municipal partnership initiative authorizing the city to fund their portion of $750,000 for that project from Washington Street to Beachland. So tonight we're really focusing the decision on selecting the professional engineering team that will take the project through the detailed design scope of that work. I'm going to quickly walk through some of the high levels of this project, provide an overview of the procurement process staff followed, and then discuss the firm staff is recommending the city to move forward with so the bayside road has been a priority for the city for several months we've been working with the main d.o.t on how to best rebuild that road and what funding options were available to the city the bayside road as you know is a parallel route between ellsworth and mdi carrying significant year-round, seasonal, and commercial traffic. The condition of the roadway, the drainage, the shoulders, and potentially the underlying iron infrastructure means this is not simply a paving project. This section of Bayside Road needs more of a comprehensive reconstruction. This project is being advanced through the Maine DOT's Municipal Partnership Initiative, or MPI program. This program provides a 50-50 cost share between the city and the state for eligible project cost. That gives us an opportunity to leverage local investment with significant state funding rather than Ellsworth having to bear that cost all on its own. This phase of the project is eligible for funding through the Beckwith Hill TIF district up to a million dollars. The initial MPI for the engineering and phase one of construction is funded for 1.5 million, again 750,000 states, 750,000 municipal. We have also been clear from the beginning that this is the engineering, the beginning of the engineering, and that the construct constructions cost may require additional funding depending on what we find out through the design. I just wanted to give a little bit of a background on what developing the road or constructing the road to a built status is for Maine DOT. So the Bayside Road is currently an unbuilt priority three state road, which means there are very limited and infrequent opportunities for Maine DOT to fully fund significant treatment options on that road. I want to clarify what bringing Bayside Road up to a built status means. It does not automatically change the roads priority three classification. The road would remain a priority three, but bringing it to a built standard puts it in better position for more regular Maine DOT pavement treatments and greater likelihood for reprioritization in the future. The goal is to protect the investment we are making in the road and establish a more predictable maintenance cycle while continuing to monitor traffic volumes and work with Maine DOT regarding the corridor's classification as conditions and traffic patterns change in the future. One thing I want to emphasize that tonight does not authorize construction of the entire corridor. This is just the engineering design phase of what we expect will be a multi-year, multi-phase. We need to understand the roadway structure, drainage, utilities, right-of-way needs, access, traffic operations, accessibility, and possible construction phasing. From the beginning, we've anticipated that this will likely require several phases and potentially additional MPI applications to fully construct the corridor from Washington Street to Beachland Road. There may also be significant water and sewer improvements that make sense to coordinate with the road construction, and those would be funded through appropriate enterprise accounts. Engineering work includes existing condition investigations, survey, right-of-way work, concept development, permitting, utility coordination, final design, preparation of bid documents, and ultimately bidding assistance. That work will give a cat the council a much better information about the actual construction cost and the appropriate phasing, infrastructure conflicts, right-of-way needs, and what can realistically be accomplished with the funding available. So now the procurement process that we completed. The City conducted a competitive qualifications-based RFP process and we received four proposals. The firms were evaluated based on their understanding of the project, technical approach, relevant roadway and utility experience, staffing, schedule, capacity, quality control, local knowledge and references. Following that review, the two highest ranked firms, Sebago and Sewell, were invited to an interview. Following the interviews, Sewell submitted a cost of $219,100 and Sebago submitted a cost of $267,540, a difference of approximately $48,000. This was qualification-based professional service selection, not simply a low bid contract. We considered costs along with qualification, project approach, schedule, and areas of project risk. After considering all of these factors, the committee is recommending Sebago. They demonstrated a strong understanding of the Bayside Road corridor and the project scope. Sebago does have a larger price tag. However, they are allowing more time for higher risk areas or areas of uncertainty, such as environmental permitting, right of way, and public outreach. Public engagement is going to be an important part of this project. As concepts are developed, there will be opportunities for residents, property owners, and users of the corridor to understand what is being considered and provide feedback. We do not want to design this in a vacuum. We want the input that while we are still at the point in the design process where it can be meaningfully incorporated into the project. Again, this is not a decision whether Bayside should move forward. Council established that direction with its unanimous 7-0 vote in April. Tonight's decision is about selecting the professional engineering team. The recommended contract with Sebago Technics is in an amount not to exceed two hundred sixty seven thousand dollars five hundred and forty, funded through the FY 27 general obligation bond to be paid through with Beckwith Hill to funding. We all know the Bayside Road needs a lot of work and attention. We don't know yet how much, and that's exactly what we'll find out, and we'll also find out what infrastructure should be addressed at the same time, what right away may be necessary, and how construction should be phased, and what that will ultimately cost. I will take any questions. Just also know the [1:05:46] City Manager: the previous special council meeting authorized, I believe, up to 750,000, and that so this is obviously much less than that. It will be a match between the two, and just a big thanks to the committee, the evaluation committee. They did an excellent job here, and you know, I don't like this. I just say in terms of this is a state road, I know this municipal partnership initiative is designed for this purpose. To me, I know, again, highly recommend listening to Chris, our finance director's presentation on Monday on just some of the urban compact aspects and responsibilities. I come in every day in the Casteen Road and the Bucksport Road, which I believe are built, and I see they're redoing it again. Like three years ago, they just redid it. To me, why this state road doesn't fall into their categories of something they need, but that is what it is, and cities and towns all across Maine are dealing with this initiative. It's and the citizens don't know those pieces, and you know I really feel like especially for this we need to move forward in the engineering, but that doesn't mean I can't, we can't keep lobbying for additional funds for this project. This initial stage is about the 1.5 million level. The previous TIF allocations which haven't been spent on Bayside yet allow for up to 2 million on this project out of the Beckwith Hill TIF, 1 million, 1 million on the Beckwith with Hill TIF on this project, so that's kind of where we're at now. The Beachland Road, we had a lot of debt service fall off, that was another, that was [1:07:21] Sarah Devlin, Deputy City Manager: another MPI project along with Christian Ridge was another MPI project that we've [1:07:25] City Manager: done recently, so we're sort of tagging that to TIF funding, which previous discussions, you know you're looking at 60 cents on the dollar there to utilize that tax increment funding. I find its funding, which is in, it's a separate area, so that we can move forward on this piece. [1:07:44] Speaker H (unidentified): Great. Thank you, Charlie. [1:07:46] Chair Lyons: City Council, is there any questions for staff on this? Councillor Smith? [1:07:51] Councilor Smith: Sarah, three questions. I'll just give them to you, and you respond as you can. So to be sure I understand it, would this 267-540 be a 50-50 split between Maine DOT and the state? Secondly, I'd love to hear a little bit more. I was, you know, looking at what that 48 000 differential buys us, and you mentioned community engagement as part of that. If there's anything more you can share about what they're planning to be sure that we're hearing from residents and business owners in the, in the city, and also I think in the area, since more than just Ellsworth residents drive it, anything you could offer that would be helpful. And then you stated it, I think, in the, in the beginning of your presentation, but just again to address something that I remember hearing from an earlier session on this is why are we doing the state's job, why are we stepping in and maintaining something that is a state road, and you gave some of that in the overview at the beginning. They just, they don't have the capacity, they prioritize, and we don't make it to the top, but if you can address those [1:08:59] Sarah Devlin, Deputy City Manager: Three short things that would be helpful for me. So yes, this is a 50-50 match with Maine DOT and the city for this design phase. All along our intent was for this initial phase with the 1.5 million dollars to do the engineering and whatever that would get us for construction. So I think the team was really happy that the engineering came in at what it did, so that will have about 1.2 for the first phase of construction once the engineering is done over the next 12 to 18 months depending on permitting, right-of-way, and public outreach. Those are the, those are the uncertainties in this because those are the ones that can really increase schedule or impact schedule. So second question about what this proposal provided for public outreach information or approach that others didn't. I would say that this proposal was really intentional about having an initial public meeting where they would attend and receive feedback on existing conditions to incorporate into this design and then come back in a 60 to 90 percent design phase to give some results of that input and feedback. So they were really explicit about that, about when they would be looking for opportunities for feedback from the public. The other ones were a little bit more generic about that, and I think the team felt like those are the, again, most uncertain times, so having it built into the schedule and scope, knowing that they're building some of that in there, was helpful. And the final question about the condition of Bayside Road now and how it kind of falls in with Maine D.O.T priorities. And I don't, I've never worked for Maine D.O.T, I've worked as a partner with Main DOT, but from my understanding and with our conversations with them, that an unbuilt priority three road is looking at like a, and these are rough kind of general like timelines, we're looking at probably a 10 to 15 year window of getting some treatments if you build the road up. And we did make the case with Maine DOT that when this road was prioritized and when it was classified, it was a very different road then. It's seeing increased traffic volume year round. We all see it and feel it, so we really tried to make that case, but really the sticking point was the built status. So it doesn't have the under drainage, the width, all of the things that Maine DOT requires to classify a road as built. So in correspondence with Maine DOT, it was very clear that bringing a priority three up to a built status, you're gonna get into light capital paving cycles, which is a seven to 10 year cycle. And that they, you're gonna be able to probably have a better opportunity for reclassification, especially if you have a built status. So, you know, you're looking at a possible 10 to 15 year, maybe like light capital paving, or you could get in this cadence. You're kind of guaranteed to be in that cadence. Any [1:12:17] Chair Lyons: other questions from Council for Councilor Halloran? [1:12:21] Councilor Hallam: So if I could get a little clarification on the information. There's four firms here in the packet. And the evaluation that staff did, was it after you had four pricing, or did you do the evaluation and ask only two for pricing? MS. Sure. [1:12:48] Sarah Devlin, Deputy City Manager: So based on the RFP process that staff entered in, we evaluated all four firms, and we only engaged with asking for cost proposals from the two highest ranked firms. The other two were clearly not ranked as high. So the two highest ranked firms we requested pricing from because this was not solely a cost basis qualification. It was based on project understanding and the evaluation criteria that we set forth which they all saw [1:13:20] Councilor Hallam: So you interviewed for no, we interviewed two Okay, so you had four Go back to how did these four firms know about this? [Sarah Devlin: Know about what?] being interviewed [1:13:36] Sarah Devlin, Deputy City Manager: The two firms were invited to be interviewed the two highest ranking firms [1:13:41] Councilor Hallam: No, I'm talking about how did you get there? So you've got four names here and I guess I don't understand, did this go out to these firms? Was there... [1:13:59] Sarah Devlin, Deputy City Manager: It was an open procurement process through OpenGov, just like all of our procurement [1:14:03] Councilor Hallam: processes are. So they would have to know to look on OpenGov? [1:14:07] Sarah Devlin, Deputy City Manager: It was also posted on our website. [1:14:09] Councilor Hallam: Okay, so they would have to know to look on open gov in order to be considered or through our city website Okay, all right So at that point you measured all of them and asked for two prices [1:14:28] Sarah Devlin, Deputy City Manager: At that point, when the submission deadline came, the Proposals were opened by staff. We reviewed them all. We scored them all based on the criteria. We had an independent engineering consultant help with us as well. He was part of the scoring team. Then we evaluated those scores. Two rose clearly to the top, so we invited those two firms. The others we considered disqualified because their scoring was so low that they weren't deemed competitive at that point. So then we requested interviews with two. There was some discrepancies on the two proposals based on schedule, which kind of talks to one of Nancy's questions. One schedule really didn't identify a public process as intense as the other one did. We went through the interviews with them, and then after the interviews we requested costs from both. So you only had pricing [1:15:27] Councilor Hallam: from two of the four firms. Correct. Any [1:15:36] Chair Lyons: further questions from council before we open this to public hearing? Councillor Shea. So the [1:15:46] Speaker H (unidentified): cost come out after the interview process? Yes. And yet everybody that was scored would rather have Sebago, which is 40 000 more roughly than what Sewell is. Interesting how [1:16:35] Sarah Devlin, Deputy City Manager: come the prices weren't there in the whole packet? Because it was a qualification based selection, an RF, our RFP was qualification based, not low bid. Okay, further [1:16:56] Chair Lyons: questions before we go to public [1:16:57] Councilor Hallam: hearing? Council Harold, I think the process is flawed, and I don't know why we wouldn't have accepted pricing from the firms with every proposal and then do the ratings. I don't understand why we wouldn't. If there's four people of interest, what harm would it have done to the City of Ellsworth by getting a price from all four before the ratings? And does the state agree with this, MS. [1:17:24] Sarah Devlin, Deputy City Manager: Well, this is very similar to a state process. I've done several of these RFP processes based on state requirements, and it is never cost-based. It's always qualification-based, and then you negotiate the cost after the fact. So, yes, I think the state would agree with us. This was a qualification-based bid or proposal. That's why we asked and scored, and the two lowest scores were disqualified I don't believe that there is anything flawed in that may be your opinion and sure that 's noted and I think we can take that into consideration moving forward but definitely do not think it's flawed in any way and I think it follows a very well-known news process through with other organizations yeah [1:18:17] City Manager: I just note that one of the excellent things about bringing Sarah into this city has been her incredible amount of main turnpike and DOT. She used to run a transportation initiative of Bangor area comprehensive transit system and has been an enormous value-add in addition to Mike our public works director, Brian are how we superintendent, Amanda our public works administrator, obviously our engineer that we consulted on this process as well, and our legal attorney to get at you know on our digital modernization of these pieces to get to this best in class piece. I think this was also under budget from what we thought it was going to be internally. I thought it would consume a lot more of this piece. I think we're gonna have some other ones that came in a little under today too and some you know that's that's the way it is. We budget one way and sometimes it lands in a good place in some point at times it's not where we want it, but this one I feel very confident in Sarah and the team's decision. This is the right firm to move forward on this pretty substantial process which is going to be a factor well above this amount to get a rebuilt road and started to be paved on a regular basis by the state, and I thank Sarah for her professional expertise all the way through. It's an incredible value to the city. She's also a resident here that is her absolute heart and soul is put into these projects and these initiatives, and I get an under undertone of credibility or that something funny is going on here and also advise counselors not to be discussing with firms outside of this process as well. The city staff takes this process incredibly seriously and objectively, and of course the tough questions are always important to move forward with, but I just want to [1:20:09] Chair Lyons: thank Sarah and the team for their work on this. Public comment please approach the deus state your name and residence and ask that you keep your comments to three minutes or less. Thank you Robert [1:20:29] Public commenter: Grant senior citizen of Ellsworth. I respect all the hard work they put into this project. I believe the project should be done. Just sitting back there, though, I have a concern and a question, which I'm sure everybody that's listening probably has a similar. You narrow it down to two companies which both had the same package presented to them. Them how can one out qualify the other when they both was asked to do the same thing? Can anybody answer that? [1:21:06] Chair Lyons: Well, we'll at the end of public comments we will if we're able to answer questions we will as their normal practice. Thank you. Any further public comment on this matter? [1:21:24] John Linehan, public commenter: John Linehan Ellsworth. I disagree totally with the way this big process was done. In my opinion the City of Ellsworth should have had an engineer put a spec sheet out there and if went to four people those four people bid on that whoever's the lowest bidder gets the bid. You're shopping apples and apples when you're talking taxpayers dollars. That's the fairest way to run a bid process. I understand you can pick and choose you like one a little better than the other. That doesn't matter. The engineer set up the guidelines originally. I hope our engineers set it up anyway. Whatever that low bid is dollar wise that should be awarded. That way thank you very much. My [1:22:10] Michael Hill, resident/public commenter: name is Michael Hill. I'm a resident of Ellsworth. First thing I want to say is a very good presentation. I understood why we're bidding or discussing things and that's part of my frustration. I haven't understood that before. So thank you. The question I do have is if I heard this correctly we're choosing Sabego because of public involvement and timeline which [1:22:34] Chair Lyons: were two of the things that you mentioned sir. When you provide public comment can you address [1:22:39] Michael Hill, resident/public commenter: them to the council when what did what did seawall provide the or sabago provide timeline like when will they be completed what did they offer for a public input that seawall didn't the other company if I named them right the one that you chose what did they offer that was different than Seawall, but my only question. Any [1:23:12] Chair Lyons: further public comment on this matter? Seeing none, I'll close the public hearing. Sarah, are you able to answer any of the questions or? [1:23:23] Sarah Devlin, Deputy City Manager: I'll do the best I can. What not? Sure, so yes, all the firms were asked to provide a proposal based on the same criteria. I will note we do not have an engineer on staff that would be additional funding we would have to hire an engineer to develop an engineer cost proposal to do engineering work if that's the process that we want to pivot and move forward with that's going to cost the city a lot more time and money to do that but or we could consider hiring an engineer and having them be part of the administrative staff that's another option so we used my expertise Mike's expertise Brian's expertise to and we did Have an independent engineer help score the RFPs. He was willing to do that, but that probably is going to be at a cost to the city. So we used our expertise to develop the RFP process. Again, this is not a bid, it's a qualifications based process based on experience, relevant work doing other MPI's throughout the state, relevant work with working with utilities and the public on right-of-way issues and things of that nature. This is not a straightforward construction project where we can have bid specs. In Council Halloran, you can roll your eyes at me all you want, but this is the process we followed. It's a standard process with transportation agencies throughout the country. Could you ask her to lower her tone of voice when you do that for me? I'll do that for you. Yeah. [1:25:08] City Manager: And considering the level of bullying and intimidation from yourself to the deputy city manager over time has been, we've already been addressed with a sanction and documented and continued in many ways, and I don't have to agree. [1:25:26] Chair Lyons: One thousand percent Steve wanting to stop bullying city staff, and I agree with you, and. [1:25:32] Sarah Devlin, Deputy City Manager: I, that's why I stated you don't have to agree, and I'll note your disagreement, and maybe we could amend the process moving forward, but that doesn't mean that there was corruption or misconduct with this process. That is what I'm saying. Why. [1:25:47] Councilor Hallam: Would you bring those words up, you. [1:25:49] City Manager: Know Sarah, I don't, I don't think you have to respond to this anymore. Excuse me, I've heard. [1:25:53] Speaker H (unidentified): Enough, okay, let's get back to the business at the end, okay? I worked in the construction industry quite a long time, heavy construction, road work for Maine D.O.T., but still, I can, I make a motion so we can move forward. You certainly can. I'd like to make a motion to award the professional engineering services in contract for the Bayside Road reconstruction project from Washington Street to the beach land road to seawall construction, seawall. It's Sewell. It's Sewell. Sewell Engineering. Second. For it not to exceed the price of 219. What else is there? [1:26:59] Councilor Hallam: I'll second that. That's the lowest bid of two instead of four. [1:27:05] Chair Lyons: Further discussion from council? [1:27:10] Councilor Smith: Understanding is we use RFPs and RFQs, requests for proposals, requests for qualifications. What I've seen here and elsewhere is a request for a proposal is for a finite project. We need you to do this thing. What is your price to do this thing? And then verify they're a qualified vendor. That an RFQ for qualifications is we have this big project. There are multiple layers to it, probably multi-year. This is really big. We're looking for a partner who we can work with. What are your qualifications? What are your experience, experiences relevant to that? So that we know who's going to be the best project for a large-scale project versus a finite. Can you pave this particular road? Is that the difference between when we use an RFP and an RFQ? Not always an RFP. [1:28:04] Sarah Devlin, Deputy City Manager: Can also not be inclusive of cost. It can just be based on experience and qualifications. But as you noted, a request for qualifications is normally for a multi-phase, much larger project where task orders are going to be managed. The project is probably going to be managed differently from the owners perspective. A request for a proposal is a more finite project, but again, doesn't. [1:28:32] Councilor Smith: Have to include cost. So what is that? What is the downside to going with the lowest cost bid, as has been the motion to be made right now? The qualifications may not be the same. [1:28:44] Sarah Devlin, Deputy City Manager: Qualifications that staff evaluated and scored, their experience could be different, their approach to the work could be different. So what will that look like to the people of. [1:28:56] Councilor Smith: Ellsworth, or to the final outcome of the project? It could look like a much more condensed, shorter. [1:29:01] Sarah Devlin, Deputy City Manager: Public outreach. It could look like change orders because there's not, they're not incorporating or taking into consideration how long the permitting process will take or the right-of-way. I would say that during our interview process, one, the low-cost proposer did think that it was in the existing right-of-way. This is not within the existing right-of-way necessarily. We've talked openly about having a multi-use path or sidewalk along this corridor, so that inherently adds more time with right-of-way. Considerations in environmental permitting. One of the proposers, again, the higher proposer, knew that we had a project with Maine DOT for the culvert work, that 's already gone through environmental permitting. They weren't aware of that. So there was just a better project understanding from one proposer to the next. I've worked with all four of these firms. I think they all bring different levels of expertise and qualifications for this particular project. The firm that staff is recommending was the better qualified firm for this project. I appreciate the. [1:30:08] City Manager: Clarification, thank you. And I'd note also, that's why we publish all this information, is to give you know upon our recommendation of the evaluation and scoring committee. It's obviously within the purview of the council to disagree with that. 's perfectly allowable. And just to the point on Sarah's, you know why we rely on experts like so, this is probably a 10 maybe 20x the cost of this engineering aspect is going to have to be done in built roads. I don't know Sarah, we haven't done initial estimates. We probably wouldn't want to telegraph them too far to potential bidders on the actual construction, which would be of a magnitude of a much higher level. And especially with our city staff and their expertise in this area, we've done this in the past with salt bids, we've done this in the past and other areas where they have expertise and experience and evaluations, and really feel like this for the Delta of cost is going to be a big value add for the this magnitude of a project to get this road. Built to where it needs to be so the state will maintain it, but an excellent cost and service for the city. There are also other processes we're going to talk about, the Maryland extension RFP, which is a table recommendation, but there's also RFBs, a request for bids on something that's a little more straightforward, that we're also going to discuss today, that came in fairly under what we budget or anticipated. But that's a little bit more of this road, this amount of paving is the firm qualified do. They meet our specs for moving forward, there's a. [1:31:42] Sarah Devlin, Deputy City Manager: Lot less uncertainty with those roads, it's pretty more it's pretty straightforward with those types of projects, so there's kind of all three. [1:31:51] City Manager: If it's an RFP and it's something like that and we don't need to have this qualitative in addition to the quantitative aspect, great, but it's really important, I think, to have this discussion. [1:32:02] Sarah Devlin, Deputy City Manager: And I would just reiterate that any councilor or any members of the public that would like to provide feedback on any of these processes, open to that and willing to listen and see where there's opportunity to amend or pivot on how we are doing these. [1:32:22] Councilor Martineau: I'd just like to address the strong insinuation that there's something shady or non-transparent or improper done because these firms had to look on a government website to find the job. Any civil engineering consulting firm capable of doing a job of this size and with the expertise of doing this size also knows where to find their work. We don't need to post this particular job on Hannaford's bulletin board because nobody in is going to read it and find it and be qualified to do it there. There are places that you seek help and seek expertise to do your work. Among the people and firms that are qualified to do them and not interviewing firms that clearly do not make the cuts, Debbie's Dance Studio applied to do this job, you wouldn't interview them. So I just think these insinuations that something is not good because we didn't because it was done the way it was supposed to do is most egregious, cheaper [1:33:34] Chair Lyons: is not always better. Ask a dentist or you know someone's gonna you know asking people's qualifications, scope of work, and oftentimes when you go with the cheapest option you end up paying more in the long run. We have a motion and a second on the table. I think I'd entertain a vote on the motion in second. [1:33:56] Speaker H (unidentified): The reason why I made the motion in regards to the solar company is one, they've been in business for a long time, they've done engineering for the city before, they've expanded, okay? Sebago is a very good engineering firm, too, okay? I'm just looking at the cost-wise. And then the other thing, looking at the scoring tabulations, I'm looking at they're pretty close. They're really, close. So I'm just going with the numbers as far as price-wise. And the fact that they are the low bidder, too, all right? [1:34:42] Sarah Devlin, Deputy City Manager: They're a good firm. [1:34:43] Speaker H (unidentified): They're all good firms. I'm not, you know, and I understand the process. I just, like I said, I wanted to know. It was a request for qualifications, and then we went and got the price. That's it, I'm okay with the explanation. [1:35:05] Sarah Devlin, Deputy City Manager: I'm good, you know, I mean, I would just note that Sebago also does a lot of work with the city. They're currently our contractor for all our traffic signals and they have engineered other things with the city, we [1:35:23] Chair Lyons: have a motion to second on the table. Seeing no further discussion on this, all those in favor of the proposal that worded to school posed entertain a motion from council toward to award this bid to Sebago. [1:35:44] Councilor Smith: So moved. Do you want the full? Please. Okay, moved to award the professional engineering services contract for the Bayside Road reconstruction project from Washington Street to Beachland Road to Sebago Technics Incorporated in the amount not to exceed $267,540 with funding from the fiscal year 27 general obligation bond and to authorize the city manager or to execute the final agreement and related documents subject to final review and approval by the city. [1:36:16] Chair Lyons: Second. Second. Further discussion? Councillor Smith. [1:36:23] Speaker I (unidentified): Just a quick comment. Bayside Road is a daily commute for a vast proportion of the population, and we need to do this right for the taxpayer. And in part because this is such a major commuting road, we need to have a good amount of public feedback so that we can, I believe the expression is like a dollar of prevention is worth a pound, is worth seven of cure. I may have the quote wrong, but the idea stands. [1:37:03] Chair Lyons: Exchange rates, it's always different. [1:37:06] Councilor Hilleman: Councilor White? I just want to thank staff. The work put into this and especially you Sarah for your expertise here given that we don't have an engineer to do this work and to help us in that aspect and I do believe I think the public comment or the public engagement part is going to be incredibly important for the widening of the road aspect we're going to be cutting into people's front yards cutting down their trees it'll be that can be incredibly difficult for people to kind of deal with and accept so I think more public engagement we can get with this the [1:37:47] Chair Lyons: better so thank you yes and I just like was thank the staff and how hard staff works on this we were blessed to have folks we do with the experience they have and I have full faith that this is the right choice so I'll be voting in favor seeing no other comments all those in favor of the motion opposed motion carries thank you council order agenda item number 13 council order number zero nine two six two zero nine two six zero two public hearing in action on the request of the public works director to award the contract for the Merrill Lane extension the Hancock County Judicial Center project that we have a memo from public works director but also Charlie [1:38:50] City Manager: Yeah, I think I'm going to take this one up many ways, the motion to table and to have a special meeting where we can really focus on this. I think you can see this on this last project on that RFP that was a lot of discussion we need a lot more discussion on. I think this piece that we have in a single meeting and I want to dedicate an entire workshop not just to discuss these RFPs but, you know, a recap for a lot of the counselors who weren't part of these original decisions on all the workshops. The process for how we got here, environmental reviews, DEP approvals, pre-acceptance of the public road, RFP for clerk of the works to manage this, which is around $300,000 we end up going with, purchase of right-of-ways, letters of credit, DOT discussions, updates on the developer agreement, state judiciary contributions in the project. There's an enormous amount of updates associated with this project that need to move forward including a full detailed cost to date as well as obviously the RFP recommendation but also not just costs for contracts, environmental reviews, surveys of the pieces but also we've, we've been keeping detailed analyses of the stubbing of the court of the, of the road before the high street was paved, all the work that our public works team did in the construction road from a variety of aspects that we. Really want to make sure that we have really robust project binder with all the work here that can kind of guide this discussion for all the investments and staff time and resources in addition to this kind of final piece of the process and there's a second piece of this as well, our public works director was out in training this week, and our other folks from the evaluation committee had come up to me when we were finalizing a lot of these memos for tonight, and we're not quite there yet on a. Final recommendation on the RFP for this portion of it. And I'd like to get to the right decision, not to a quick decision, especially in such a robust agenda where we're considering a lot of other infrastructure and other pieces. And the team, as I mentioned before, have been flat out on securing bonds, securing $750,000 grants from the states for some of our infrastructure projects. I really think this deserves its own meeting. We received, as noted in the memo, we did receive four proposals for this project. It has included pricing. And after, I know Sarah had some deep conversations with our attorney on, you know, on sticking with the integrity of the process, but also getting best price for the city. We really feel that we have three potential proposals that are very much very close to what our budget estimates via the bond package have put forward, but are not quite there yet. And as noted the run of the reasons for the hybrid or for the RFP process here is this has some aspects of a hybrid approach. There's a few areas where internal city services we feel and materials could be used to help mitigate costs. And while we could go with just the low proposal and just have a conversation with that firm do that, we really feel it's in the best interest of the city to discuss with the three proposers that are all within range and are excellent firms to really have a process where we can say here's the city resources and materials and expertise we feel like can be applied here really have it getting apples and apples and working hand in hand with our legal counsel on issuing guidance to those three firms and how that process is going to work next before we get to a final scoring and can come back to the City Council with a very strong recommendation. So we're closer on this one but I just want to notify the council my recommendation is to table and then we'll look forward to bring forward to us a special meeting we're really just discussing this in a whole range of the entirety of the project as well [1:43:12] Chair Lyons: Councillor Shea like [1:43:15] Speaker H (unidentified): I like I said on the last motion and stuff I work in the heavy construction business I am abstaining from this rule okay because I know of some of the contractors that are putting a lot of time and effort into it. Bidding is like playing a poker game. And they're all sitting around the table and getting ideas from each other and asking questions back and forth. And I don't know how many times I've seen my father sit down after supper and go down to the office next door and stay there until 1 o'clock in the morning to work out and get the bid and lose it, okay? Okay. I'll make recommendations if the council would like to know, but I'm not voting because I've been employed by pretty much all bidders. And I don't think it's ethically right for [1:44:31] Chair Lyons: me to vote. Thank you, Pat. I appreciate you noting that. And yeah, so if you'd like to abstain from deliberation, that'd be great. I think if you... I only think... I think [1:44:43] Speaker H (unidentified): That would be the best thing, okay, because I just, it's not right. Thanks, Pat. Yeah, so I think on this [1:44:51] Chair Lyons: matter tonight and moving forward, if it is tabled, we have our public hearing specifically on this. Just note that we believe you have a conflict and you should abstain, not just from voting but discussion in entirety. But thank you for bringing that to the forefront, Counselor White. I'd like to [1:45:08] Councilor Hilleman: make a motion. I'd like to move to table the award of Maryland Construction contract pending this solicitation and review of amended proposals from the three lowest proposers responding to the original RFP and schedule a special city council meeting for October 5th, 2026 for consideration of [1:45:25] City Manager: the revised proposals and potential contract award. Second, Charlie. We have an HR committee meeting on the fifth, the sixth at 6 p.m. would be a better, I think there was a mistake, revise that too. [1:45:38] Chair Lyons: Great, okay, so we have a motion in the second table. All those in favor, the motion of the table, all those in favor, opposed, abstain, oh yeah. [1:45:59] Speaker H (unidentified): I thought I already voted. Motion carries. I thought I already voted. [1:46:02] City Manager: You know, I noticed that Sarah, our legal counsel, will work to get notifications out to the bidder for the proposals on the process and dates and times, and we look forward to next steps. Great. And Ebony, obviously, will send out invites. [1:46:18] Chair Lyons: Council order – we're in agenda item number 14, council order number 09-2603, public hearing in action on the request of the public works director toward the bid for local roads and [1:46:32] Michael Hill, resident/public commenter: sidewalks. We have our public works director here. Good evening, ladies and gentlemen, Mike [1:46:38] Harris, Public Works Director: Harris, public works director. So as we did last year, this year we decided that we are going to try and do some more road paving and some sidewalks and we. So we, based on the amount of money we thought we were going to have available, we picked roads and sidewalks that we thought we could accomplish within that scope. We put them out to bid. We received three bids back. The companies that bid were B&B Paving, Roe v. Atlantic Coast LLC doing business as a Northeast Paving, and Gordon Contract Incorporated. And the low bid for the project, including the bid alternates, was Northeast Paving. So therefore, I'm simply requesting that the city council award the low bid of $480,177 for us to be able to continue our road paving efforts. We paved 20 roads last year, not as many this year, but we don't have as much money either. And this did come in significantly under what we thought it would come in. So I think it's up to the council, but there might be an opportunity to add some of the roads that were supposed to be in year two on, because this is the price I was shocked at how low the price was. [1:48:24] Chair Lyons: Any questions from counsel for public works director counselor Smith obvious [1:48:30] Councilor Smith: question you may not have an answer to why do you think they came in and less [1:48:34] Harris, Public Works Director: than half of what actually you have some of an answer for you on that great I don't know how many of you are familiar but at one point this year the DOT pulled a significant amount of road projects off the table and the low bid are significantly involved in DOT projects and so they their fall schedule cleared up very quickly they want to be able to keep their crews working and not have to lay them off and so that's why they gave us premium pricing great i'd also note just it's a [1:49:21] City Manager: big process change here i think one of the things our finance director has talked about when we're so reactive in the city that we're price takers and so often as mike attested when i first arrived as we sending roads out to bid i think water street was like that it was like that was in [1:49:36] Harris, Public Works Director: july or whatever everybody was already busy so they just got to us when they could get to us and we change that our attempt now is to get the local roads bid in the winter when the companies don't have work lined up and so we get better pricing and response from the contractors and we are also able to get the roads done earlier in the spring so before the firms get tied up with all the dot t work and then we're kind of left behind with that yeah i think that's one of those the great [1:50:06] City Manager: we're in the summer one more day anyways so i think that's another big piece of this plus the bond aspect as opposed to the band bond cycle reduces the administrative and some of the fee aspects and you know i know the year before i arrived that water street thing just we got to pave it go out there and pave it i took forever i was terrible and we're doing it mpi that would have been eligible for half state funding if the city was in a position to be more forward-looking and strategic so you know I don't think it was like 300,000 or so for that piece that you know it's why we have a great team around you that can do the good prep work think years in advance have a capital improvement plan that's ten-year outlook that's there I'm like and our entire staff all the departments into it can add up to more cost savings and predictability [1:50:55] Chair Lyons: Any further questions, Counselor Shay? So the roads that you're [1:51:00] Speaker H (unidentified): proposing to pave, all the cross culverts and done any driveway entrance culverts or any side streets [1:51:10] Harris, Public Works Director: or they will be once you, if you approve it, like if there's some that need to be done we would have done them already, but as part of the project, if you tell me we're going to approve McKenzie, then Brian would go out there and evaluate McKenzie and we would take whatever, because it would be [1:51:27] Speaker H (unidentified): It'd be nice to make sure that 's all done for us. [1:51:30] Harris, Public Works Director: Absolutely, 100% agree, 100% agree. So the sewer guys will go out, we'll look at the manhole rims and covers, if they need to be replaced, we'll take care of the manhole rims and covers. Water guys look at the water boxes, if they need to be changed out, like we did on High Street, we'll get them changed out, we'll move them up to grade, or lower them and then bring them up to grade as needed. So we'll work collaboratively with the paving company, wherever it is, to make sure that when they finish paving that road there's [1:51:59] Speaker H (unidentified): nothing else that needs to be done to that road, same sidewalk, sometimes hydrants, and yeah, okay, I just know I'm not questioned, I just want to make sure that [1:52:12] Harris, Public Works Director: people understand, yeah, absolutely, doesn't make sense to have to do work afterwards. I really [1:52:23] Councilor Hallam: like how this process went, unlike some of the other processes that we have seen, this was very clean and simple, and it's a great time to point out a good point that I don't think the city of Ellsworth has thought up. I hope that these roads were chosen from this scan company that you hired to prioritize roads, and I think that's very good that it's, you know, they've got the data. I assume you've gone through and taken the data and the allotted money and tried to prioritize through that. I really liked the fact that the bid openings were traditional. They were right here, and three contractors bid. All good contractors. All have extensive experience. But more importantly than that, when everybody left here that day, there's been no contract awarded, but everyone had a good fair idea what was gonna take place, therefore something the city hasn't thought of in my opinion, like the other bid processes that we have done, like the this courthouse situation, by having it open and people open the bids, recorded it simple that day, Northeast Paving left here thinking that they probably was gonna have this job, okay, so they're putting that in their Tentative plan and that day B&B be paving left here thinking, I'm not going to get this job, I need to go look for another job. Same with Gordon Contracting, I'm not going to get this job, I'm going to go look for another job. What that does is this, much different than we're doing on the courthouse road. Those contractors know that day they have an idea of what they need to do to employ their people the longest, okay, so it was pretty cut-and-dried. You're sure there's, you know, there's some chances that something's missed, but I think, I think the city's missed that because like in the courthouse situation to not have that open so contractors knew where they stood when they left here that day, that forced all the contractors to talk amongst them, which they do, they all talk amongst each other, they all knew that day one, they know more about it in anybody, but this is nice clean simple piece of business. We're taking the low bidder, it was open right here. I really like this process and it's one time that we get to support the low price and the other two knew where they stood when they walked out the door, barring any unforeseen, right, but they had an idea and I think that's important. I think we're missing that. If you want bidders to bid at the city of Ellsworth, they need to know where they stand immediately so they can make other plans if they're not in the run and we're not experiencing that elsewhere, but this is nice and clean and simple. Thank you. Absolutely, you're [1:56:15] Harris, Public Works Director: welcome. This [1:56:18] Chair Lyons: matter's notice is a public hearing, so I'm going to open it as a public hearing. If anyone would like to comment on this matter, they may approach the Diaz. Please give your name and town of residence for the record and keep your comments to three minutes or less. [1:56:37] John Linehan, public commenter: John Linehan, Elsworth, I just like to say I agree 100 with what Steve just said. That is a fair way to do it. We talk about being a friendly city and for the other mid-processors, I'll call them that even though they weren't tonight, the people involved with that have to have a bad taste for how the city of Bed Else would handle that. If I was one of those other companies that were involved with the Bayside Road, for example, I'd be less interested in doing in business the city of Ellsworth, I would Either give them a higher price or put them low on my list for doing it, so congratulations, Mike. That was very well run, and that's the way every one of these processes, my opinion, should be run like that, so thank you very much. Sorry, and I'm not taking away from work that Sarah or anybody else put in. There's a lot of work goes into those, I understand that. I just think that's the wrong process to be doing it, seriously. I know, I know, I don't mean that as a slant view or any way like that, so. Okay, thank you. Great. [1:57:41] Public commenter: I agree. I agree with Steve and Joan. I think that's the way it should be done, and I agree with you, and I think that's the way you think it should be done, right? Clear, cut and dry. That's the way we should do business. That's the way we have to do business at home. That's the way we should do business here. I [1:58:11] Speaker Q (unidentified): just want to point out. I just want to point out that every project is different, and some projects are a lot more straightforward, and getting your bids in place and your cost estimates and picking low bidder works well. It doesn't always work that way. Some things are much more difficult, they're much more technical, and you should never take a bid because it's the low bid. You take a bid because you look at the requirements, what they have for qualifications, what they have for experience, what their bids are, and if it comes down to, you know, lemons and oranges. Like, they're really close. I can see taking a low bid, but that is not consistent with every process. Every process is different, and you really have to take that into consideration when you're looking at these. I know that they sound very different processes, but there are lots of times reasons for that, And, I don't know, from my experience on council, that's, it's true, they're not always the same. Any [1:59:22] Chair Lyons: further public comment on this matter? Seeing none, I'll close. Should the councilor and manager? [1:59:30] City Manager: I just have a couple responses. It kind of goes without saying, I think this is interesting. Sarah was pivotal in designing all of these. While Mike's at the podium right now, could very easily be Sarah discussing this on the RF on the reason to go with an RFP versus an RFP versus an RFQ versus an RFI. Sarah has more experience in this than Mike and myself 20-fold, and you know I'm sure she would agree with that. With this project, the RFP process was a hundred percent our request for bids was a hundred percent the way to go. The second piece to on just you know of course, we don't want to leave any bad taste in folks' mouths. They're a team. We're going to be reaching out to proposals. But from a personal perspective, too, on, like, you know, I got three bids on a basement that was a dirt floor in my house when I bought it, and we knew that was a big problem. And the high bidder, I got three bids on it. The high bidder, who happens to be in Ellsworth, I talked to and said, hey, can we get that price down? I go, well, it's in other areas, so let's get it down. And I got to go with that because I negotiated down that was a better price for me. I'm sure the other two bidders on that project were not pumped that I awarded that to who I thought was the best contractor with the best service with the best product. I was extraordinarily impressed. I took a little bit more time not just to go with those pieces. That's why we've talked to legal counsel about designing an RFP process that really the end piece of it is to you know there's four people that are bid on this there's going to be folks that aren't and we're going to move as quickly as possible for the October 6. We'll have good guidance with Sarah and the teams and how the evaluation committee will score those other pieces, but price for the city of Ellsworth is a main component in addition to getting the bidder that we feel like can do work when it's a little bit more complicated or might involve a hybrid approach, but that's always the interest of the city is giving the right bidding process or proposal process to the right project, yeah. [2:01:32] Chair Lyons: I mean I 'm just some of these points are just absurd I don't know how people do business like I go out and I get bids for work for my company and I get to negotiate and I say hey a has a better price B what can you do for me and that's how business is done so to impugn or to imply that this isn't a proper procedure or it's unfair it's just it's foolish and absurd this is how business is done. This one for the roads is simple, pave the roads. If someone's gonna come mow my lawn, I say, okay, you did the lowest price, mow my lawn. If they do a crappy job, then I'm not gonna hire them again. But if someone's gonna come build an addition on my house, I'm not gonna say, oh, you have the lowest bid, come build the addition on my house. No, I'm gonna get multiple bids, I'm gonna see what they actually propose, I'm gonna ask for qualifications. This is standard business. All these comments attacking the city's bidding process. It's just bad politics trying to create a false narrative of a city. That's not transparent or is not functioning properly, and it's gross, and it's insulting to people, and it needs to stop. [2:02:42] Councilor Martin: Councilor Martin, just to build on that. [2:02:44] Councilor Martineau: What you can't ignore here is, Building on what Patrick said in the first instance, so everybody has a problem with this bidding process. You're buying someone's theoretical knowledge, understanding, education, reputation, their ability to think analytically and critically. In the second situation, and this is, I don't want to take away the pats on your back, but you're paying somebody to pave sidewalks and roads. And if their sidewalks and roads aren't done well,, that's the proof in the pudding there. The two situations are not comparable in that aspect. It's just a little more complicated than that. [2:03:32] City Manager: And I just would like just a small clarification. I know you meant that kind of in a personal level on what you would do. We do have, and we are working with legal counsel, by the way, this isn't to, you know, X firm is doing this. We've stayed very confidential with all of our processes. We haven't released, the city council has access to OpenGov that can see those pieces. We haven't told any of the proposal firms where they stand in terms of this is really for our process. We're going to discuss with legal in our evaluation committee and team of, you know, these are the apples to apples and the things that the city feels like it can bring to the table for materials and some cost estimates on some other areas. But that's, you know, we're gonna have a very open process on all those as well. Thanks for that clarification, trying to imply. [2:04:15] Chair Lyons: Apply anything other than, yeah, personal. Yeah. [2:04:19] Speaker H (unidentified): Councilor Shea. So you know how I don't work for paving contractors. I'd like to make a motion, forward the bid, local roads and sidewalk construction contract to Northeast Paving in the amount not to exceed 480, yeah, 480,177 from funding from the FY27 seven obligation bond authorized city manager to execute contract and related documents subject to the final approval by the city second third yeah a fourth it any [2:05:03] Chair Lyons: further discussion seeing none all those in favor motion carries thank you Mike [2:05:08] Councilor Smith: thank you guys quick note before we move on is there consensus to try to move down but lower the temperature in this room just click that I don't think so I [2:05:24] Councilor Martin: think it's still amazing I would be in favor of that as well [2:05:43] Chair Lyons: really funny let's see if that works for temperature and it doesn't crack some windows or on to agenda item number 15 council order number zero nine two six zero four excuse me sir six zero four request of the public works director to accept six million and drinking water state rebel revolving funds to be put towards the water treatment plant project Charlie we've got memos from the finance director but we also have a procedural question we need to address on this one correct we'd like to know Chris our finance director if you might [2:06:24] City Manager: be able to come up and discuss we've got a requesting an agenda change based on what a great citizen request I came through Ray oftentimes looks through our public hearing aspects and other pieces and notice inconsistencies this he flagged as these two motions were combined into one agenda item and they really need to be two they've been public hearings properly and this is actually oddly enough kind of cleaning up some paperwork from 2022 2020 or 24 for before my even tenure here it's to move forward with some bonding funds from the SWRF the medium is a bomb Pat Bank drinking water as RF program so there's a recommendation but it requires unanimous council consent if we'd like to add an agenda item to and I believe councillor Shay or cancer shake Council Lyons you're both Pats and our finance director can provide more comment here on the need there's a request first to add an agenda item to basically split these into two so we'll have two separate council agenda items with them if The council request is not meet unanimous support for that. Then we're asking to at least have a council order which doesn't require unanimous requests to split these into two separate orders and just vote on the first motion which is the more time-pressing one that allows us to activate this funding for the 24 million dollar treatment plan. We have word and current here to give a little more background on that as well. And again, this is this is funding that was already approved and voted on by the council but it wasn't done the right way in previous times. Chris, our finance director, working with Bond Council and working with the bond banks, noticed this, noticed there was a deadline to get these things submitted. I think that's another big process change. We're getting a lot more ahead of times, but we're still in many ways cleaning up the past as we find previous mistakes. And that's where we're at today. [2:08:45] Chair Lyons: Great, and I just want to note again, so the matter was properly noticed for a public hearing. Both orders are in our packet materials so the public's had opportunity to review it. The council's have the opportunity to view it all. We're asking the council to do is to if we're going to add an agenda item our rules require unanimous approval to do that. What that will allow us to do is address both of these here tonight as they're related and be more efficient for the town city. Again there's no issue with notice and awareness that everyone has noticed that we were going to take these all up. The only issue is it wasn't made to agenda items whether the same subject matter they're related. So I think it's in the cities and the council's best interest just to vote to amend to add a second agenda item basically bifurcating it. Well we'd have number zero two nine zero nine two six zero four a and B and those would be the two agenda items and then we'd be able to vote and approve them both tonight but it requires unanimous consent of the council. Councillor Halloran you mentioned that this was [2:10:02] Councilor Hallam: advertised as a public hearing correct I don't see that for a number six zero. We're talking about number 15. 15, yeah. [2:10:20] Chair Lyons: Okay. So it's not a public hearing, but it, sorry. It wasn't advertised as a public hearing. It was advertised, again, as on the agenda for this matter, for the drinking water fund. [2:10:32] City Manager: I guess the agenda edit two should be twofold. There's two mistakes here. One is it should be split into two, and then it has been public hearing. It has been in the paper. We did confirm with our bond counsel that the clerk's office put it in for public hearing in the newspaper. But it's not reflective here as well. [2:10:50] Chair Lyons: So I would say that so the agenda is the only thing that didn't have it as a public hearing. But everything else otherwise did correct. Okay, yeah, 604 agenda item 15. So we'd have a public hearing here tonight for both matters, and we'll be able to vote on them both tonight. We just need the council to approve adding the second half of it to the agenda here tonight so we can work through it. [2:11:21] City Manager: I don't know, Chris, do you have anything you want to add to that piece? Is that an accurate summation of the bond council, Jim Safian's request on how to... [2:11:35] Chris Nemeth, Chief Financial Officer: Hi, Chris Nemeth, Chief Financial Officer. I like the way Brent said, Is that all, Chris? You can take this. Yeah, no, I think that accurately characterizes it. I would just say that it's a little embarrassing for me, honestly, you know, and I was laughing a little bit to myself when Council Hellman showed the window pane because I think, you know, there are a lot of cooks in this kitchen trying to coordinate stuff. stuff. So we got public works team, we got the Woodard and Curran team, we got the CIP planning team, we got the bond council I'm coordinating with, DHHS, main bond bank, finance where we've had turnover and, you know, most of this predates me, prior councils that approved the project, and then we have administrative staff that kind of sets this up. And all those people I would tell you on the ground have been working to clean that window pane to try to get this thing going because now we're under time pressure to fund this thing. So we clean this window pane meticulously and then we hit our head on the sill basically. So I can't have this happen under my watch on a routine basis. But given that and given the fact that this is an infrastructure project that relates to water, we've talked about those things. That from a planning perspective, I think the team has done a pretty good job getting out ahead of it. Because of the scale of the project, it's created a couple of complexities. One is that from a funding perspective, the way the bond bank works and the DWS RF program works, because of the size of it, they're having to split it into a number of different loans as opposed to funding, again, if it was just one loan, I think some of these problems would have gone away, but we're having to essentially get a funded six million dollars at a time. And so that's that's that's that's one of the challenges. And then just the elapsed time from when it was originally drawn up and I think the original council approval on the project was, I think I had July 18th of 2022. And so that's sort of the good news and now the bad news is we're up against some time pressures. In one case to get the funding going, get it closed, and then in another case I'm under time pressure to actually get the application in. And then once we get that approved, we'll have a year to actually then close on that second loan. But with that said, I think the, you know, the project is good, that we certainly have the support of the state and the main bond bank and the water department. And I just, I want the housekeeping on my side to be better [2:14:35] City Manager: going forward. So thanks Chris. Yeah, I would love to bring up what it encourages briefly to talk a bit about, as Chris mentioned, this is 2022. In an ideal world, this was done the right way then, and like none of this, we've even back to you all if the paperwork have been submitted to the bond council following those pieces with the correct orders. We've added insult to injury a little bit by having to bring our own piece. I'm trying to clean up a piece from years ago. Granted, this is a huge, but in many ways, and maybe you can talk to a little bit more, you know, this is a previously approved project. We have to do this water treatment plan. I believe $2 million of the 6 million is loan forgiveness. We don't want to lose that aspect of it. One of them is right away. The other one kind of matches the same, but I'll give it to you, Brent, to talk more about those two pieces. [2:15:18] Brent Bridges, Woodard & Curran: Thank you, Charlie. Brent Bridges, Woodard & Curran. So I've been in front of you at least three times in the last two years to talk about this very project. And so even though we talked about all of the financial pieces and how they came together, they didn't actually get voted on by you. And so even though you saw all the numbers and you saw where it's coming from and you saw the applications that happened, you never actually did this formal vote. So why are we so late? We got $6 million in 24. You got $6 million in 25. You actually got some more money this last year that we won't talk about tonight. tonight. It takes a long time to put a project together. The reason you're under the time crunch is because you were taking that time to accumulate funds to the project, you didn't start spending the money two years ago or one year ago. You're actually starting to spend the money now. And so what you've got is a time crunch because it took you three years to get the money you needed to be able to do the project. And so that really old money now, the Drink and Water program is very interested in getting that money moved along there's a lot of pressure on money that has been unspent to be able to be taken back to use for other clients and other places and other and so we don't want that to happen and so as Chris said it's taken a long time to get there but we've explained exactly how that went out it took three years to be able to build all of the projects together you got a really nice package from the standpoint overall in the overall water plant project you've got 45% grant 55% loan in all of the sources that are coming to bear on the water plant. The reason you need to do it is because you're a consent order. You don't really have a choice. You need to be able to build a new water plant because the State is telling you it's time, and we all know it's time. And so right now is we're actively working on the design. Our hope is, in listening to some of the comments tonight, is we'll have something we put on the street for bidding in March in anticipation of a project that's going to last a couple of years. We'll try to get it bid in March, not next summer, so we can get good bidders to be able to give us some prices on this to move this thing along. And so, as Chris said, what we're now is trying to clean things up. It's some old money that we're trying to make sure that's done the right way so we can start spending it. You probably won't start spending that money probably until next spring anyway, but right now the pressure is on Chris and team to be able to get that application in about October 1st so that the state doesn't give someone else your money. That's as crisp as I can be. Questions or thoughts? [2:18:00] Chair Lyons: Okay so unless the councillors have any further questions I think before we get further into the merits. We're going to make this make it make council order A and B. Yes if we need unanimous consent to vote to do [2:18:17] Councilor Hallam: that counselor Halloran is there another way to do this I hate this thrashing through this process you know errors happen it's no big deal I noticed that you mentioned October 1st is the big crunch is there a way to call a special meeting to get this thing organized the way it should be or because it's a public hearing you don't have enough time we're where are you at we have an October 5th meeting but I just heard that's too late today is there a way to sort this out so that's not so much confusion and still have a special meeting you wouldn't have time for a public hearing yes well I [2:19:05] Chair Lyons: think I'd be on that note Steve it again as I understand it that this meeting has been noticed as a public hearing or this agenda item both agenda items notice as a public hearing so the only misstep here was the as I understand it was how the agenda was written so otherwise we've done everything properly and I think rather than for that one minor clerical error come back and have to have a special meeting and expend the city resources and time I think it's a simple motion here to amend, and then we can get into the public hearing in both and have robust discussions and get the work done without having to come back here. So that's what I would encourage the council to do. I think, as we've heard, there's very good reason to do this. So, I'd like to propose a motion to amend agenda item number 15 to bifurcate the single into two orders, number 092604A, and that's for the 2014-17 DHHS SWDRF matter,, and number 092604B, which is for the 2025-06 matter, each authorizing a separate 6 million drinking water state revolving fund, I think that's what it stands for, a DWSRF [2:20:53] Michael Hill, resident/public commenter: loan, and [2:20:57] City Manager: that was a motion. I would add in to note as a public hearing. [2:21:02] Chair Lyons: In to note as a public hearing. [2:21:03] Speaker H (unidentified): In to note as a public hearing. Second. [2:21:06] Chair Lyons: Second. Any further discussion or questions from council? All those in favor? Opposed? Reasons? Why, Steve? Because I opposed. Okay. So I think the only what we can do to move forward here is have a public hearing on one of the orders, on both of the orders, but then only vote on the one because we only have one agenda item. And then we'll have to vote on another in October. But I believe only one of these requires the October 1st deadline? [2:21:54] City Manager: MR. Yeah, and I'd just like to complicate it further. I know we have a separate bond counsel than our legal counsel, so I don't want to put Attorney Tim Pease on the spot here. I think there's essentially I think we Mr. Safia and our bond council recommended an alternative for justice scenario so that we could not lose two million dollars in shortly they're expiring you know principal forgiveness which would be a big disaster for the city if we do that. We still vote that an order doesn't require a unanimous consent and that you can vote to split these orders and this public hearing satisfaction will be for the first one, which is the one that's time pressing, the one that has the October 1st deadline, and then we can come back in October either at a special meeting for the courthouse or at the other one and consider the more long-term item then and still meet our requirements and not lose two million dollars because we can't vote unanimously to split an agenda item. The so that is a possibility but it's a little bit complicated by the public hearing in the agenda item and if that requires unanimous vote as well Tim [2:23:23] Speaker D (unidentified): Pease City Attorney the I guess the question I have is whether there's a public hearing requirement for the second vote that you don't think can occur tonight. If there is, if the public hearing was noticed for tonight, all you need to do is make sure that you know tonight that the public hearing will be postponed until you meet again and have that vote. That way, you don't need to re-notice the meeting as a public hearing. [2:23:51] Chair Lyons: And just vote to postpone it? Yes. Or table it, or? [2:23:55] Speaker D (unidentified): Table it to a date certain. Okay. Councilman Hilleman? [2:23:59] Councilor Hallam: But I'm missing something here. Why would we not just clear this up? It's as clear [2:24:11] Chair Lyons: as mud and call a special meeting. I don't know why would we not just split the agenda item into two agenda items, Steve, and do it all here tonight. Night, all right, let's just proceed with Chris. I don't know, do you have any other [2:24:31] City Manager: Are you okay with that action plan? And then, you know, there is a bit of risk here. I'll be talking to bond council further. Might be special, it might be emergency, you know, we're reaching a 10-day threshold October 1st. So we'll proceed forward to pace and, you know, I apologize for the administrative error on this piece. You know, didn't seem considering this project and all this funding was approved a long time ago and this is very much a paperwork piece before most of us were on council or on staff. Yeah, but I'll leave it to you, Chair Lyons, on so how [2:25:07] Chair Lyons: we're gonna proceed then is that I'm gonna move for a vote to bifurcate the single order into two orders, number 092604A for the 2024-27 matter and number 092604B for the 25-06 matter. Do I have a second? Second. Second. So again, this is a vote to bifurcate the order into two orders which we don't need unanimous consent to do so the agenda I know we needed unanimous consent but the orders we needed we don't need unanimous consent so all those in favor to bifurcate the orders opposed so bifurcated so now we're going to hold a public hearing just on the matter that requires us to be and I hate to interrupt before we get there I saw [2:26:12] City Manager: saw that would occur and Brent had something, is there anything you wanted to add there to Brent before we go into public hearing? Can I? [2:26:18] Chair Lyons: Is that okay, Jim? Oh, please. Yeah. No, you're the, we're here to listen to you. [2:26:26] Brent Bridges, Woodard & Curran: I actually may be the confusion. And so when I presented this before, the three different times, the $6 million, the two $6 million was always, that was always firm. And so if I made a mistake in not being very clear to the council that those two $6 million dollar grants the 2024 and 2025 even though you didn't vote on them that were presented I thought was very clear the only thing that's unclear is the award you just got for the balance of the project that has not been taken up which is different than the six million dollars and so that's the only recent money because at that point in time we were still deciding what the overall project cost was what we thought we could get for funding we had to separate the project out, I think I explained, in that you received a $3 million earmark and a $1 million, excuse me, $2 million earmark and a $1 million northern border grant. And so because you've got that $3 million separate from what you're voting on tonight, you had to take out some additional money to match that grant. And so at that point in time, the two six million dollars were never in question. The only thing that was in question is how much additional money were you going to ask of the DWSRF system in order to come up with your match so you could match that three million dollars of grant that you got. You need to come up with a million and a half dollars to do that and so and the balance of the project. So those are the only things that were unclear and if it's anything and Councilor O'Connor if Anything that I've done in the last couple of years, I've tried to be really clear about the $2-6 million that those were the things that were the foundation to this project. And so I will come back with the balance of the project at some point in time with a lot more clarity as far as what the overall project cost will be and how we're balancing those things because I don't think those have been clear. But I've tried to be really clear on the $2-6 million that I would love to have you go forward with. that vote because that is not unclear that has been the premise of what we've done for the last couple of years that I've tried the last three times to talk through that. So if it's if it's unclarity Council Helen it's because of me don't don't pull this process up or don't let Ellsworth miss out on this money because of something I did that wasn't clear so thank you Council [2:28:59] Chair Lyons: Howland you could reconsider your vote to split the agenda item look [2:29:04] Councilor Hallam: I'm all for having a special meeting to resolve this so this clarity to everybody this is very important okay [2:29:15] City Manager: I just know yes the plan has presented to move forward in these votes public hearing bifurcating them that's the best we'll do tonight and then I'm going to reconsider convene at 6 a.m. tomorrow morning with city teams and councils and make sure that whether it's emergency specials other pieces so that we don't lose this two million dollars [2:29:34] Chair Lyons: and loan forgiveness so my understanding is now that we bifurcated we're going to hold a public hearing solely on what we deemed zero nine two six zero four B for the 2025 06 matter as that hat is the one that has the we know for sure and that's the October 1 2026 deadline so on that so that in your packet councillors you should see that as because there's two memos it's the one that's 2025 dash 06 before we go to a public hearing specifically on this matter does counselor council will have any Questions for staff or our experts that are here tonight? Seeing them enough, open this matter for public hearing. Anyone from the public like private public comment on this matter? Please approach the DS, provide your name for the in town of residence for the record, and please keep your comments to three minutes or less. Seeing none, I will close the public hearing. Council, how would you like to proceed on the dash be agenda? [2:30:54] Councilor Smith: Item clarification, this begins on page 56 of the packet, correct? This is the one. [2:31:00] City Manager: And we have an updated motion based on what Jim Saffian has provided for both the first and second item. [2:31:14] Councilor Martineau: Can I just make a motion? [2:31:16] Chair Lyons: Can I see it real quick? Oh, sure. [2:31:20] Councilor Smith: It kind of takes the fun out of it. Okay. [2:31:28] Speaker H (unidentified): Well, at least we could say it touched everyone's hands. [2:31:57] Chair Lyons: Okay. So, yeah, Tavi, do you want to move the first motion? I think it's just further detailed than the original motion that I provided. [2:32:11] Councilor Hilleman: Okay, so I make a motion pursuant to section 2.0 5b of the city charter move to revise no Here if the motion is bifurcated, okay, so got you I moved to adopt council order number zero nine two six zero four a authorizing a $6 million loan from the Maine Municipal Bond Bank Drinking Water SRF Program, DHHS-DWSRF number 2024-17 and issuance of the city's bonds. [2:32:52] Chair Lyons: No, this is not the right motion. [2:32:57] Councilor Hilleman: Okay. So I'm going to redo this again. So I move to adopt Council Order Number 09-2604B, authorizing a $6 million loan from the Maine Municipal Bond Bank Drinking Water SRF Program, DHHS-DWSRF, Number 2025-06, and issuance of the City Bonds and Bands, therefore, to finance a portion of the costs of the new water treatment project plant. [2:33:31] Chair Lyons: Seconded. Yes. Okay. Further discussion? Seeing none, all those in favor? Opposed? Motion carries. We have a motion to table agenda item number 092604A to be brought up at a later date. So moved. Second. Second. All those in favor? Opposed? [2:34:03] City Manager: Carries. MR. Yeah, I'll talk. I'll probably talk to Ray hopefully early as well. I'm sure he's reviewed this already. Again, big thanks to Ray. I apologize to the council for the administrative mistake both before my time and during my time. I'll endeavor to make it better next time, and I'll also get guidance on if we're going to need an emergency or special meeting or if the order, especially on the first one, is sufficient to move forward. Great. Thank you, Charlie. All right. [2:34:31] Chair Lyons: All right, moving on to agenda item number 16, council order number 092605, discussion to convert the city of Elser from a weak mayor form of government to a strong mayor form of government, the first election of mayor in November 2028, sponsored by Councilor O'Halloran. [2:34:54] City Manager: Yeah, I provided some general background. I had Tina Van Ettenstein, when this came in, who handles our elections, do a general review of based on Councillor Helen's request for this item to be on the agenda, just really general on process, on what if such a thing were to be considered. There's sort of two ways to go about it. There's the council could order a Charter Commission. It is such a major change obviously to the city's processes, it would require a Charter Commission. The City Council can order said Charter Commission to move forward if the City Council this or futures decide that they do not want to, but there is enough citizen support that follows similar to the referendum or the recall process, citizen petitions and the whole process laid out for that on what can trigger a Charter Commission. At that point in time you could do it in the same breath where the citizens at large vote to move to a Charter Commission and vote for people running for election for it to be on the Charter Commission, and I believe there's a council aspect that's considered as well as part of that, and then a whole series of events and if that says if it's no further action, if it's yes the Charter Commission is formed, but it's not necessarily they have to move forward to a strong mayor system, it could be under consideration as part of other charter reviews, and then it could would come back once that Charter Commission, if it was to say yes we would like to go to a strong mayor and here are the specifics of what that strong mayor system would look like, that could proceed and then that would have to be voted on by the city at large. As noted in my note my motion, you know when things are added of this nature, I especially haven't gone through workshops or other discussions, but really for anything moving forward, I really wanna get more dialed in. And if you'd like me and the staff to spend more time than we already have on this, if it's a realistic policy priority for this council, or if we need to spend additional legal resources, I haven't run this by legal, I'm not gonna spend city funds on this idea, but if the council would like me to, and the majority thinks that we need to move forward to spend more legal funds staff time then happy to consider that as well and I'll get you a much more robust policy discussion and timeline I think in general Tina said counselor Howman's request can this be done by 2028 yes but we're gonna need to start moving the chairs around in staff prioritizations to do so amongst the already very heavy workload. So with that, I'll leave it to the council to discuss. [2:37:46] Chair Lyons: Do any other municipalities in Maine use a strong mayor system? [2:37:51] City Manager: There's a few that have, I wouldn't say a traditionally strong mayor to the point of, you know, a big city mayor. Even Portland, I wouldn't say has a strong mayor system. I believe, you know, they have a little bit more, no offense, that more than ceremonial power or meeting arrangement so some of them do you know hire and fire the city manager but they don't have like the full administrative control over all department heads all staff you know salaried position enough for that person to be full-time in the way you'd see a big city mayor in Boston with a separate strong mayor there and a city councillor system and you know it kind of adds there's no that in my cursory again i didn't go extremely deep on this one but portland i think but those aren't like strong is it like how strong do you want to go yeah and so that's that's one of the pieces waterville has a strong city to me there's an aspect well typically you got to be a little bit bigger to you know to really have that sort of state government level political turnover get rid of all the department heads put in new political appointees based on a new system at the same time you know the city manager I have a report from the Municipal Burial Association Research Association from Bowdoin College, which so long as it exists, and the city manager council form of government was, and we essentially live in this world and we just saw some of the problems with it on the public hearing and the this and the that. And if you don't get, like, they really, the system hasn't been modernized. I'm not necessarily opposed to some of these pieces. We are already seeing a politicization, we saw it tonight, of the council, you know, and what's in the charter is supposed to be a nonpartisan aspect, but we're seeing slates for things. Meetings, city councillors are inviting me to Republican meetings or discussions of 2035 UN plans, other pieces. There's already a politicization in some ways that's happening around here. So I'm curious as to how this would work out and what Councillor Halloran's plan is for this strong mayor system. In [2:40:20] Chair Lyons: my understanding is if you have a strong mayor that's a full-time job correct it depends on how [2:40:29] City Manager: strong you are in my druthers for it to work effectively as like a political instrument of this person's for four years they develop a political faction of oppositions to another political faction that they would you know if I had my druthers I would say absolutely that should be a paid position so that it's not a volunteer type role you'd want to have that I mean I think Buddy sees how long the hours that I have if you'd only be getting a certain type of person that can actually afford to put in this many hours to be a strong mayor and the administrative so you'd be self-limiting unless you went to a truly strong mayor system I can actually see some benefits of that on having the politics especially with you know councillors coming in and out of the system you know I'm sure others would be have to more of a formalized work plan between councils and continue a non-partisan seven people have to agree on the work plan we get a little bit more alignment on that but there's all kinds of ways you can change the system like a constitutional convention and really analyze you know there's from the larger macro level when you have you know your house of representatives representing each part of the people your senate having a little bit more of the saucer that cools the tea your executive you wouldn't want any of those to have too much power and it's a good combination that they go against each other creating such a thing on a more local level could be a of interest you could also Consider an out at large system of city councilors instead. If you're looking for a little more geographic representation, there's some cities and towns that do that as well. But again, you know, this is Council Harron's sponsored agenda. I'm just reading the tea leaves on how this might proceed forward, and it would really be a charter commission that would analyze all of those things. [2:42:31] Chair Lyons: And if there's a strong mayor, so let's say it's a full-time mayor, they have, they're salaried, and then they'll also have a like a chief administration officer. Yeah, it's [2:42:47] City Manager: in typical organizations you're gonna have somebody still administering the city from a more of a chief of staff type role, which I structure that more into like, you know, the governor's. Again, I haven't gone into deep analysis, but in the cities and I've worked with from a state level that have this [2:43:06] Chair Lyons: So this proposal would add another high-paid city employee on top of paying the mayor as well? [2:43:14] City Manager: I'd love to give you an answer there, but it would depend on, you know, if a charter commission wanted to have a volunteer strong mayor with dictatorial powers over all things Ellsworth, reelected every four years, two years, you know, it's going to be up to that charter commission to design how strong, how weak. Is it something similar to kind of some other cities and towns in Maine, or do we become a first? So again, I don't know what his reasons are. I think it's a [2:43:52] Chair Lyons: horrible idea. I think it would just bring more politics into our small town, and that may be Councillor Halloran's intent. That wouldn't surprise me, but I think it's a horrible idea for our small community. It would disenfranchise to a degree the other councillors. We are growing, but we're not Boston, we're not any of these communities that have a strong mayor. I don't think this is a good fit at all for the city of Ellsworth. Then I have no interest in directing the staff to pursue it any further. Another [2:44:33] Speaker I (unidentified): thing I'm wrestling with is the city is already doing an ordinance rewrite that is taking up a lot of time. I don't think even if I've agreed, which I don't, I don't think this is a wise use of our city resources or employees are already [Communications/Ask Ellsworth staff presenter: stretched thin.] I'm just, yeah. Any [2:45:03] Chair Lyons: further council comment? When do I get to [2:45:08] Councilor Hallam: talk about my agenda item? Whenever you'd like, Steve. Good,. I've heard all kinds of commentary of opinions of what this means and this could have been clearly stated right up on its customary that the sponsor speaks first but I guess not for me. So let me tell you the basis of this. I'm not hard and fast on it but it's not something that I want to do tomorrow. It's not something I want to crash right at. I'm not hard and fast on it. What I what I am interested in is this the system that we have now when you hire a city manager it goes through HR and it a few of the candidates come to the council and then there's a process and having the citizens elect quote the mayor or the chief administration of the city would allow public engagement to make that decision not just the council and that's why I wanted to have a discussion. It isn't anything more than an idea. If it's not a popular idea then that's fine but I thought it was worth throwing out that I've heard a lot of things about from people that city manager should be a resident city manager should do this city manager should do that and I just thought we at least should throw that idea out there and it can die right here. There's no support of a conversation that's perfectly fine. It just simply says discussion. I think letting the citizen vote for the mayor that would administer the city depending on the version that you took you've got the entire city making that decision on a four-year plan tied to the presidential elections, as opposed to a council picking a city manager and four people deciding for the city who manages the city, whereas a strong mayor form of government, you'd have a citizenry deciding who manages the city. That's the basis of that. It's nothing more than that. It can die right here and not be talked about. It's that was the basis of this is allowing the citizenry to make the decision about who runs the city [2:48:42] Councilor Hilleman: yeah thinking I'm doing some research on this I think elsewhere's the biggest issue that else would have here is that we lose I would assume that in a strong mayor situation it's the residents a resident of Ellsworth would have to be the one running so we don't have many people here in Ellsworth that would be qualified even age-wise to do it but you lose half the population there and I think we lose just the ability to get someone that is actually qualified to do such a such a difficult job Really, and I just, I get how a strong mayor works, and in the cities voted in those cities for strong mayors, but I don't think Ellsworth is the right, that's the right place for it. So counselor Smith, thank [2:49:48] Councilor Smith: Thank you. Looking at the comparison of the two systems, I would not support this method because the description of the strong mayor aligns more closely with that person being the governor and the rest of the councilors being the legislature. Or that you have someone with veto power and you have someone who sets the agenda for the area that's being governed, and that is much more effectively done through collaboration, even when there's conflict, of seven people rather than one who's the boss with that much power and the rest of the people on the council trying to advance good policy with very little ability to do so. I don't see a need for this, and to appoint me earlier, I think with staff capacity we need to be very careful with what We're charging staff to do given recent assignments we've given. There's another one on the agenda tonight that if it passes we'll require some work, and so as we prioritize all the things we could be having city staff doing, I just don't see value in this item [2:51:07] City Manager: Moving forward at this time, I would note and Twilight will probably give you some guffrey, but you know we've had some conversations on this. I have a personal like of this idea. I do not like having to have a rotating council and you're trying to, it's why one of the pieces why I want to move forward with more defined work plans, more alignment between exactly on switching councils, on previous councils decisions, that how do we migrate that and the current council's decisions get actual votes on Pieces, it's administratively quite burdensome in ways that you know if I was a political appointee of a mayor that doesn't get elected, then me and the mayor, you know, we go it our way. I've been that person before. I've been appointed by governors before. I've transitioned over administrations. I've left over administrations. You know, it's a little more clinical and political in that scenario, but also like that's my personal desire to have a strong mayor who could just say, this is my policy priority. You're dealing with one person instead of seven. And then it's that strong mayor's responsibility to have to do that sort of alignment to the seven people that are on council, but that's more of a personal preference than what's right for Ellsworth I [2:52:25] Chair Lyons: don't see how this would improve Ellsworth I think it would just make it more political and to bringing big city proposal to a small Hancock county town and i have no interest in advancing this unless anyone else is anything further on it i think we just move on to the next agenda item we have council order number zero nine two six zero six discussion and potential action on the creation of a city of ellsworth food sovereignty ordinance sponsored by councillor o'hara the [2:53:12] Councilor Hallam: Hudson family had reached out to city hall all a couple of times about this issue, and when I saw it I really wanted to learn about that, so here it sounded pretty exciting to me. And I don't, you know, I don't know all the ins and outs, obviously Don and Rob have done a lot of research on it, but it seemed to me that it would make sense to consider adopting this by the state guidelines, or at least have this discussion about food sovereignty. It's a pretty important issue. We heard earlier about a public garden, and I think that's wonderful. You have a public garden and you have people able to harvest or work on the garden and receive nutritious foods, and this is just another step towards that, to set aside all of the foolishness and allow people to be treated like a grain supper or a church supper. And that could be a poor analysis, we'll see what they have to say about that, but there are many grain suppers that everybody are donating pies and then they're selling the supper tickets and you're eating baked beans from Joe's house and lash from Mary's house or what have you, and this just I think makes sense in the in the place that we're in. So I'd really like to hear from the Hudson's, and if I could just note too, [2:55:05] City Manager: just a quick apology to the Hudson's. I think that a we sort of have a rule like once I send it to Ebony, whatever order she gets it, that's where she puts it, and I don't intervene to try to, I've been accused otherwise of to try to game what goes first, but I do apologize that you're so late in the system. And okay, I'm confused, what are you apologizing about for? Yeah, we thought about bright bringing it up into the top, but we just have a whenever I have been he receives it, that's how it's ordered. I don't try to game what goes first, what goes second, so I apologize. No problem. Mr. We'd love to have you here for the whole [2:55:43] Speaker Q (unidentified): Meeting. Ms. So I really wasn't sure what to put together in this. I've just written a little something that's going to be very similar to what I sent to Nancy earlier because I didn't have a lot of time. So I sort of worked off of that. Ms. It was what I needed. Ms. All right. Good. So we recently retired from federal service with the USDA. I worked for Rural Development and Rob for the Farm Service Agency. During our time with the USDA, food insecurity was an issue we worked to mitigate and is something that remains on our minds and a concern we share for our community. Last year we started vegetable gardens to grow food for our family, sister and my aunt, and we placed a small farm table, farm stand at the end of our driveway to offer free vegetables to anybody who wanted or needed them. And the experience has been wonderful. One of my favorite things. We have met many kind people we might never have encountered otherwise. Some stopped out of curiosity and others out of need, and all were excited and appreciative. It's been a small but in our opinion a meaningful effort, certainly meaningful to us. That experience led us to ask how we might do more. In talking with neighbors about what would be most helpful, one answer came up again and again. Food. Food. People are busy and many prepared meals are expensive or unhealthy. We began researching what it would take to offer healthy, organic, reasonably priced meals, free when needed, to those who could benefit. And what we learned was disappointing. To offer anything that's not shelf stable, we would need a state licensed commercial kitchen. The licensing itself was not the obstacle. I think that was one of the questions that you asked, Nancy, about the licensing. The cost of building or acquiring such a kitchen, that was the obstacle. We would need to either renovate our home to add a separate kitchen, because it can't be our home kitchen. It has to be completely separate for the commercial kitchen license or purchase a food trailer, and either which would cost tens of thousands of dollars, and that expense would make it impractical for us to provide the kind of high quality affordable food we had hoped to offer. Still we kept researching and speaking with friends and neighbors. We learned that there is another path. Ellsworth can adopt a food sovereignty ordinance as many nearby communities already have. Such an ordinance would allow residents to grow, prepare, share, and sell certain foods without taking on the major expense of a commercial kitchen while placing common sense decisions in the hands of local people. To us, this makes such sense. It would reduce the unnecessary barriers and allow community members to exchange goods and services more freely while leaving individuals free to decide for themselves whether to buy or consume what a neighbor is offering. I also want to clarify that this would not remove the state's restrictions on meat processing. So I couldn't raise my own chickens and not have a state-licensed processor process them for me. Any meat used in food offered for sale would still need to come from a state-licensed processor. However, under the current rules, I could not buy something as simple as a cinnamon roll with cream cheese frosting or a slice of quiche from a neighbor unless they had a state-licensed commercial kitchen. A food sovereignty ordinance would make that kind of neighbor-to-neighbor exchange possible in Ellsworth. We're asking to pursue an option already allowed by the state and adopted by many neighboring communities. It would help neighbors support one another, give consumers more responsibility for their own choices, and reduce barriers for residents who want to share their skills and talents with the community. We sincerely hope you see the same value in this ordinance as we do. We cannot solve food insecurity on our own, but we may be able to make a real difference for a few families. I believe others would be willing to do the same and that goodwill could grow. This ordinance would remove a significant barrier and allow people to show care for their neighbors and community while helping others feel seen, supported, appreciated, and valued. Some of you reached out to ask us why we are pursuing a food sovereignty ordinance, and this is the path that brought us here. Well, our motivation is rooted in helping neighbors. Others may use this opportunity to earn income from food they produce and sell from their homes or properties, and that has real value as well. For example, it could help a young family earn enough additional income to allow one parent to stay home and or provide a more manageable alternative to seeking a second job outside of the home. We thank you for your time and consideration and appreciate the opportunity to be a part of this discussion. [3:01:11] Councilor Hilleman: Maybe you can answer it, maybe someone else can. Where is the line drawn when you, let's say I'm going to use Momo's cheesecake for example, like I start selling some cheesecakes in a little refrigerator at my at my place when do I cross a line where I actually have to get a commercial seat commercial kitchen is there like a B amount of pro like product that you're [3:01:41] Speaker Q (unidentified): making and selling what I found so far that delineates and there may be other you know delineations but what I found so far is that it has to be from my home or a farmers market or another they said specific community events but I can't have a storefront I can't have a restaurant I can't have a storefront that's not it has to be on my property so it has to be people consumers coming to me. I'm not supposed to take it to like Hannaford or something like that. Yeah, I can't do that. Definitely what was very specific was that it was direct. It was from me to you. It wasn't me selling my stuff to, like you said, Hannaford, or even like a small little restaurant or whatever. You know, if I made cookies, I couldn't sell them to flex it to sell to customers it had to be from me to them specifically but I don't know about you still have to file for your state tax stuff you still have to file all those things it's not averting any of that it just means I don't have to spend $20,000 to have a little refrigerator with 10 takeout meals for you know homemade food for folks that may have there's so many uses We have so many folks that are taking food to their parents who aren't able to make food for themselves, and being able to grab something and do that. I don't know. There were a lot of wonderful, beautiful stories that I just saw, so many ways to help them. But I can't spend that kind of money to do it. [3:03:24] Speaker H (unidentified): Before you go now, go ahead. I just have a question. [3:03:27] Councilor Martineau: I have a little bit of experience. I've lived in a community with food sovereignty ordinances. Does this include poultry and meat, I understand, raw milk? [3:03:41] Speaker Q (unidentified): I don't know. You don't know? I don't know. I guess it would depend on what we put together. It's specific to each municipality. The state just says that the municipality can decide. I mean, I could, under the food ordinance, if it's worded this way, I could still have meals with meat in them. It just can't, I can't wring my chicken's neck and take it inside and cook it up and serve it. It would be, the meat has to be processed through a licensed, yeah, so that was confusing to me though, where it said that the exception was chicken and other things when I was reading it. That gave me pause because what am I going to put? I could put together vegetarian meals, but that's not what everybody wants. But I can still, you could still use meat, it just has to be properly processed through a state licensed facility. I don't know, I think that the part about milk depends on what people put in that what the individual municipalities dictate can is acceptable and not acceptable so [3:04:45] Councilor Smith: I'm gonna dive in here. I love this conversation. When I saw your email to the councillors, by the time I got to it, councillor O'Halloran had already said he wanted to sponsor it, like that. Okay, I don't need to sponsor to dive in. I want to start by saying I really, I support the motion that's being proposed, which isn't to pass us food sovereignty ordinance tonight, it's to answer all of these questions and see what's a fit. So let me, my thoughts are in five different categories here. First, what I bring to this, I was a farmer for 17 years. I included some of this in my email to you, asking more of what was behind your interest. We were livestock and poultry. We started as dairy, and then we added, we would do 2,000 chickens every year. We did 200 turkeys. We did a dozen pigs, and then we did beef and rose veal from the dairy calves that came up through. So I lived this. So I also was the head of a farmer's market for 10 years and brought in and managed all of the other farmers who were part of that, and we had our booth there as well. We also had Maine's only state-certified poultry processing plant on our farm. We had a repurposed reefer truck in the barnyard. I was part of the part of the line. I had my small hands, so I was the one gutting basically the poultry that was there. Anyways, I have the arthritis in my shoulders, arthritis in my fingers from farming. I have the cracked rib. There's a lot to farming. And with that poultry line, I was also on the finance end of it. We formed a little cooperative group of a dozen farmers and we processed for ourselves and other farmers around the area. We tried to make it work. There were state grants. It was very intense. So I've lived this for 15, for that 17 years of how do you get the product out there. And so this is why it's a particular interest. And I also want to highlight, these are small businesses. I was doing all of this while serving in the legislature, and I never missed an opportunity to point out I hated when people used the word quaint for a farm. And I would say broken ribs and arthritis and the scars from barbed wire that I have in a couple of places on my arms, those are not, there's nothing quaint about this. We are small businesses trying to make it work. So that's what I bring to this. The other thing that I want to learn much more about, because we never pursued this food sovereignty, is those levels of licensing. I know that if you want to sell fruits and vegetables, there's no licensing required. Eggs, too. The baked eggs, too. Okay. The baked goods, it is complicated because you really can make somebody ill with things that aren't cooked. Or you made the cat quiche and it sat out for six hours, and then you put it in the fridge. There are ways that you can really hurt people. So there is a level there. I've heard different things about the licensed kitchens. I have a friend who makes vegan burgers and he said you can have cats and dogs in your house, you just need to have them not in the kitchen while you're working. And you have to have impermeable services, which means painted, so that you can clean it. And then I hear others say it would be impossible, it's a real barrier. So we need to find out, I think, more about [3:08:31] Speaker Q (unidentified): The two levels you're talking about are for the baked goods that don't have to be refrigerated they're shelf-stable breads cookies things without dairy icing you know those kinds of things you need a cottage kitchen license and you can have animals we don't have animals but that is that's called a cottage kitchen license and that means you can do things that do not need refrigeration or require refrigeration again the breads the cookies the things so and I can use my kitchen right but if I want To move to a meal or anything with dairy or meat it has to be refrigerated that's the commercial kitchen license so these [3:09:09] Councilor Smith: Are things I think for all of us to earn those of us who are interested as we move forward to understand better and again we were we were clear meat and poultry are not included because the stakes are so high custom processing being the exception you could buy a half a pig or a quarter of a cow you buy it live and I transport it to the butcher for you yeah and then you get it back in packages that's that is allowed when you're buying bulk so there's there's a lot to this raw milk I have caution About when we were dairy for about 12 years, I drank raw milk. I would not recommend someone go to the grocery store and buy a quart of raw milk. Your body is not used to the wonderful probiotics that are in it, and you won't be leaving the house once you try raw milk. You have to build up towards it. So those are things that are all the considerations we need to look at. And so within all of this, I think there are three points that we want to, there are three different interests that we want to align. One is that informed consent, the point about you have to buy it from me, is believing that if I go to your farm, I see you, I see your farm, I know what I'm doing, and I have a sense of whether I'm comfortable buying from you. So there's informed consent, there's growing your business. This is a great opportunity for people who have been building into farming and they're ready to go the next level, but they don't have the money or they aren't ready for the of a risk that comes with building a commission. So they are a kitchen rather. So they can, this is a next, like an incremental step. It's really good for building a business. And then the final is like you said, food access. What we desperately want is for as many people as possible to have as much access to as much local food as possible. Those all three things can fit. And I think those are the parts that we're gonna balance as we move forward with this. The one other piece I want to, Steve had mentioned the church suppers and I asked about that because I've done some work when this came up. Who can I, who does this? Who can I talk to? Church suppers are, if they're allowed, if they're up to eight times a year. There's no licensing required and it's the same with pop-up restaurants because otherwise if you're doing it more often than that the sense is you're a restaurant. So you are allowed to have those kinds of public suppers where people bring their own and again this is for pay you know people are paying to do it so there is a way to try to moderate with those all apart I think this is fascinating and I think it's really good information to consider here I just I think farming was by far the most difficult and the most satisfying job that I've had in all of this time and it's exciting to be able to take it on we were doing it to make a living which adds a whole other level of excitement to it. But if there are ways with this food sovereignty that we can help people do that, incremental improvements to their businesses to meet those goals, I'm supportive of it. So that's what I bring to the conversation, and I like the motion ahead about we need to explore this and talk to other [3:12:21] Speaker Q (unidentified): people. I love the informed consent pieces you put in there because personally I think it's important that if we, you know, if I'm selling you something, that the assumption isn't there that there's a license, because that may be important to some people through the state. Like I think that it should be placard, I think that these businesses should say this is provided under the food sovereignty ordinance and you know this is what has happened and what has not happened so people don't have to assume or presume [3:12:48] Councilor Smith: anything. And this, sorry, the one that, the tension that I had was we were licensed for the chicken and we had chicken and we were friends with bakers who had a bakery and I thought this is great, they make amazing pies, they can make us chicken pies, and we found out no, that's not what their license covers. So that ended very quickly when we had that set up. But to be able to do something like chicken pie that people can just put me up at home, yeah, that's great potential [3:13:15] Councilor Martineau: which leads me to a question, Tim. I maybe this isn't your area however, but just, Do you know if these kind of food sovereignty ordinances protect or eradicate legal exposure to people selling food if they happen to turn out about to be stroganoff with staff in it or something to that effect? It's a business. [3:13:39] Speaker Q (unidentified): I think the responsibility would be on whoever was doing this to have their own insurance to cover whatever happens. That wouldn't be on the city. [3:13:48] Councilor Martineau: It wouldn't be on... No,. I know it wouldn't be on the city. [3:13:50] Speaker Q (unidentified): They could be sued if they did not have... Responsible people cover those bases by getting insurance for their business. [3:13:56] Councilor Martineau: Right, so what informed consent would mean in that aspect is you asking your potential beef stroganoff cook if they have insurance. [3:14:06] Speaker Q (unidentified): No,, my insurance. I would buy business insurance. That's what I mean. [3:14:12] Councilor Martineau: If I were going to buy beef stroganoff from you, 're making beef stroganoff. [3:14:18] Speaker Q (unidentified): Why would you care if I had insurance? [3:14:20] Councilor Martineau: in case you give me staff and I and I end up with a huge hospital bill well [3:14:26] Councilor Martin: that sounds to me like you just I don't know well so just I think this is these [3:14:37] Chair Lyons: Conversations and these questions are great, and if the council wants to vote to advance this, then I think we're gonna need, you know, go through the various process of vetting. My one question for you is, if the council does approve this, with your family and other folks be willing to help council advance an ordinance like this? Because, you know, again, that, you know, limited resources, the more we can, as the city can rely on we interested constituents could, my [3:15:12] Speaker Q (unidentified): husband went and found a number of ordinance, ordinances for our just very local area, but they're all over the state, and we'd be very happy to even draft something for you all to review and pick apart and add things and take things away or whatever, but as a sort of a base of what we ideally we think that would work for what we're looking for and what might work well for others, and then if things aren't, you aren't comfortable with them, but we'd be very happy to give you a draft to work from. [3:15:40] Rob Hudson, Ellsworth: We're happy to take the administrative burden. We both serve the administrative officers more. [3:15:45] Chair Lyons: Sir, if you're going to speak, could you, sorry, just say your name for the record, please? [3:15:51] Rob Hudson, Ellsworth: Rob Hudson Ellsworth. We would definitely be more than happy to take that administrative burden side of it. We both served administrative officers and in our time with the federal government, so instructions is notices directives, that's kind of our specialty. So again, to not put an additional burden on the city, and quite honestly, a lot of it's going to be cutting pasting and taking from what the work's already been done for the most part, but definitely putting something together, presenting it and work through it, and if it's not what we need to do, we need to fine-tune it, take something out, add stuff, we're happy to do that work. We absolutely [3:16:30] Chair Lyons: absolutely are. This means more chicken pies in my life. I like what I hear so [3:16:45] Speaker H (unidentified): far. Okay, I hope to be able to work with you on this in the workshop so that we can absolutely get this taken care of. You know, to Nancy's point about working on a farm, I think every young person needs to work on a farm. I used to go help out on a friend's dairy farm. And then on top of that, my daughter raised chickens. Yeah. So it's a lot of work, but yet the reward is great. [3:17:17] Rob Hudson, Ellsworth: I spent 38 years with the Navy, most of that in uniform. But then when I transitioned to the USDA, Farm Service Agency as the administrative officer, my job was to be out between the 13 offices in the state and allow that involved farm visits, actually going out to the farmers and talking them. Hardest working people in the world, it's 24 7 and it's there's no guarantee of any kind of reward at the end. You might get paid, you might not get paid, and they continue to do it and so we can eat, now so we can all eat. And so when we retired last year and that's what we decided to do and the response was incredible. I mean we're giving the vegetables away, we're not we're not charging anybody for them and it's it's a way to give back, it's a way to I mean if maybe folks aren't getting anything nutritional big time all week but maybe that one meal that they got from us what in its we just think it's the right thing to do, meals veggies right. But the farm stand gets cleaned out every day with the free vegetables so there's nothing better, it's very rewarding And I thought I was retired but I'm working harder now doing this. Thank you very much, the suntan proves that. Yeah oh and thank you [3:18:59] Councilor Martin: Thank you for your service. Yeah Nancy you have that. Yeah as we move forward others that have come [3:19:05] Councilor Smith: to mind that I think should be involved are Green Ellsworth yells with Farmers Market, I see Twilight in the back, there's a connection with the food systems folks, there are probably people there that would be interested. And to your point about giving it away, Loaves and Fishes as just a starting point for what barriers are they seeing and how could an ordinance hit those three points at the informed consent, grow your business and access to local foods. I know I can address Loaves and Fishes [3:19:34] Councilor Martineau: I know lots of people that get food there and aside from the errant carrot and onion you they don't get fresh produce, they don't get it. Charlie? [3:19:49] City Manager: Yep, just to, I guess, I'm in the business of reading tea leaves. I kind of, despite maybe some assumptions of dictatorial power in the city manager's office, I kind of figured that the strong mayor would go one way and this one, that there'd be a lot more council support with it, but also have the same concern. And I absolutely, I thank you so much, especially hearing USDA Rural, which I think does a lot more than just farm pieces. I mean, I just met with the new director for the state of Maine about, you know, they do, they can design firehouses in rural parts of the country and do all the design work and then help you get the grants and low interest [3:20:26] Rob Hudson, Ellsworth: loans, etc. Charlie, yeah, become good friends with him, okay, yeah, it's, there's, there are a lot of [3:20:33] City Manager: resources there, absolutely. And it's sort of like that's, it's one of the pieces too, so we gotta, I know, I think I've tried to have two minds of this. One sort of this is of a moratorium on data centers level where somebody from the College of the Atlantic has some expertise here. There's a bunch of other cities that are going through this as well. We can spin up something with some pretty minimal city council. There's no active piece moving forward. Somewhat of a light lift on staff with some external support. This seems to be in that layer, but I don't know. I really need to do the estimates, right? And to me, until we have a system that says like, here's how many hours we have of staff time, Twyla, Green Ellsworth, Loaves and Fishes, how many meetings are we gonna have on this? Staff's gonna have to prepare ordinances. It's gonna take funding. We're gonna have to leave a review on these pieces. We'll be able to use a lot of external resources to move it forward. But we're looking at hundreds of hours of staff time. Is that a priority for this year? What, until I have the matrix built on like, this is how many hours you have to deploy and if this is coming on there's gonna be less good work on current activities and we'll try to make it as light of a lift as possible but it never is like you know great I'll see you when the ordinance is ready to pass at the meeting it's gonna be a lot on me and Twyla and teams. I'd say fortunately or maybe unfortunately depending on how you know this is something I think Twyla has a economic, she loves this type of work, I hate to speak for her, but Green Ellsworth, I know a lot of the council on many of the food meetings we've already had with Erky and reimagining that, I know Twyla has some areas, I think on a grant with Healthy Acadia, yeah, maybe you can speak, Twilight [3:22:20] Fisher, Economic Development Director: Fisher Economic Development Director. Yeah, so we have a community action grant that you may all know about that does actually have some money in there, more through Healthy Acadia, but the city has some as well, to look at food policy for the City of Ellsworth. And that's something we have to check the box for anyway with that grant. We have nine months to do it. Is limited in terms of hours, I think it might be 50 hours total, but that's a fair amount of research and I think could, I don't know how that plays into how you want to move forward tonight, but we could certainly come back with that research completed because that checks boxes on both sides. And part of the food policy kind of groundwork is establishing stakeholder meetings and having a steering committee, so I think it actually fits really nicely into this [3:23:09] City Manager: initiative and maybe this could be the first one well I'll start to do an estimation of you know if the council orders me to move this forward then I'll do an estimation of what that is this will be the first of hopefully many and works both ways to if staff wants to do a new initiative like we need council approved unless it's an emergency that we have to move forward on just some of the red flags I would see with this you know code enforcement public health I did do a cursory review on some lawsuits that have popped up because of these ordinances. I think one involving a meat factor, it's really gets into the what tilts the balance to not food sovereignty, and I'm just trying to use food sovereignty to run a business and not, and where do you exactly draw that line, and then conflict with the city and being hey you're running a business, you need to be regulated, you need to be this, you need to be that, and they're like nope, this is food sovereignty, I have my right to do this, and then you know how can you shut. Thanks. So those types of, I'm sure a committee and these other groups can iron those things out. There's only like four or five examples, Orland, Blue Hill, I think one other one of their town had some issues that they were ongoing with legal slash code issues that had popped up, but nothing huge. So I could definitely see some time, but we'll do an estimation, we'll put it on our project management team list, but it'll be maybe the first hopefully of many if the council so orders. And chooses to keep this on our priority projects, but I think hopefully the first of many of them. These are the projects that we're doing for this year. This is how many staff hours we have to deploy to it. This is what our expectation of the staff hours for this piece. And then once we have a robust list of what that 2027 work plan is in council authorized with the next council, when these come forward we can say great, let's do in 2028, we are maxed out in 2027, or let's drop RV park regulation this year and switch to this, and really have a better idea of what we're going to commit to policy wise as a council and order staff to do, but then how it flows into a work plan as well. Great, thank you Charlie, good stuff. Counselor, I couldn't imagine [3:25:26] Councilor Hallam: anything more important than feeding the community. As far as a timeline goes, certainly this isn't a huge emergency, however it's September and correct me if I'm wrong, but if this was to go through the next four months, would that not allow people to hit the spring season for their planting and vegetables? A fair timeline is [3:26:09] Chair Lyons: that I think this is much more, it's not just growing produce, there's a whole host of consideration [3:26:16] Councilor Hallam: right, but it's not, you know, a full month window or so I would think would make [3:26:23] Chair Lyons: some sense maybe. I think my advice is someone make a motion and we see if the council supports it, and so to figure out how we get this through the process. When [3:26:37] Speaker H (unidentified): anyone like to advance a motion? All right, I move to authorize the staff in the procedure preliminary research legal review regarding the potential of development food sovereignty ordinance for the City of Ellsworth, including authorization to incur minimal expense associated with work and return them added to the City Council for further consideration before any ordinance is formally introduced or adopted. [3:27:11] Councilor Hallam: How's that sound? Could we, could we replace the word staff with city manager? I wouldn't support that, I'm sorry, the [3:27:23] Chair Lyons: which word direct the city [3:27:25] Councilor Hallam: manager to the [3:27:29] Speaker H (unidentified): staff? Oh yeah, we're not supposed to direct, yeah, that's, oh yeah, sure, yeah, that's [3:27:37] City Manager: more, I'll second that. It's more of it as individually privately outside of open meeting that you're not supposed to be directing staff or sending all caps emails with multiple explanation points or time to do things privately anyway. Sure, so [3:27:54] Councilor Smith: what is the current motion? Move to authorize the city manager to authorize staff and then the [3:28:01] Brent Bridges, Woodard & Curran: rest that's written. Yeah, that sounds good. I like the answers of men, that is [3:28:06] Speaker H (unidentified): Not I authorized the manager and staff to proceed with preliminary research and legal review regarding the potential for development of food sovereignty ordinance for the city of Ellsworth, including authorization to incur reasonable expense associated with the war, and return to the matter to the city council for further consideration before any ordinance is formally introduced or adopted. Second, any further discussion from council? [3:28:44] Councilor Smith: Yeah, I think just reflecting on some of the other things we said, I don't think it has to be part of the motion, but again, with the intent that we reach out to, we being the city, the organizations I had mentioned, and then others, that this can be a large collaborative effort, and there's no timeline to this, that it is about sinking it in with, in my mind, the RV park, we have a six-month moratorium, people on both sides of that issue are waiting for an outcome and that is a priority with limited staff. And that within that context, I would see this advancing balanced in with the other work. I've seen the grid of the work plan. I know there's a lot going on. [3:29:25] City Manager: Yeah, I think that's the way I would treat this one if it would be appointed to move forward. We'll put it in the project management team list. Sarah and I are already working on, this one will probably have a note that's already been as an individual project council authorized. But we're going to have all of the rest of the one that are in tier one, tier two, tier three priorities really bring them for discussion with the next city council. But with here's how many staff hours we expect to have in them, here's when we'd like to deliver these projects for 2027, and we can have more discussions at those new council meetings on, you know, do you want this in April? Do staff actually think with the rest of our project teams and with community resources that's a feasibility? Just when I could say so, but until we have the holistic view, I think that'll be the more appropriate venue to say like, let's give it a day in the hopper, in the hopper, our first one of many. [3:30:17] Chair Lyons: Why don't we just move to them what we've got a lot to do here I ask we move to the motion to vote all those in favor opposed motion carries thank you we will proceed to the next thank you very much for coming we will proceed to the next agenda item, number 18, which is an executive session for discussion of labor contract negotiation matters regarding a proposed side agreement to the Clerks' Collective Bargaining Agreement between the City of Ellsworth and the Laborers' International Union of North American Leuna pursuant to 1 MRS section 405.60. [3:31:01] Speaker H (unidentified): So moved. Second. Second. Second. [3:31:04] Chair Lyons: All those in favor? We are in executive session. Thanks, folks, for everyone coming tonight. Council Order Number 09-2607, action on the proposed side agreement to the Clerks' Collective Bargaining Agreement between the City of Ellsworth and the Laborers' International Union of North America, LUINA. Louina so we just discussed in executive session the proposal with the council and our legal counsel and HR and the city manager do I have a proposed motion regarding this agenda item councillor Smith thank you I move that [3:57:56] Councilor Smith: the City Council approved the side agreement between the city of Ellsworth and the Ellsworth City Hall clerks unit local 327 authorize the city manager to [3:58:06] Chair Lyons: execute the agreement on behalf of the city motion second is there any further discussion from council on this matter seeing the city manager I just [3:58:20] City Manager: I'm sure the reporters they might like what in the world is this about there might be obviously those are staying with us on the agenda 10 o'clock at night So Carrie, our HR director, she can probably, after this, talk to the reporters a little more about it, but it's the addition of a facilities assistant, two deputy treasurers to the clerk's union, as well as some slight modification to the deputy clerk's, some job description areas there, and then a, there's one other I want to miss saying, oh, a slight amendment to the job description for the assessing assistant I won't get that name wrong and a titling area so that's what this is about the executive session and the approval the next motion is to allocate and he's going to be returning to exclusively clerk's duties you know as so we're gonna be author hopefully authorizing some transfer of funds at the next one as well from the city manager's office to that area but I can talk more on that at the next item [3:59:27] Chair Lyons: Thank You Charlie motion to second and further discussion from council seeing none all those in favor unanimous agenda item number 20 council order number zero nine two six zero eight discussion and potential action on the request of the city manager to make a budget reallocation from the city manager's fy 27 payroll line to the city clerk's fy 27 payroll line make the motion well charlotte [4:00:01] City Manager: Any further elaboration? Just, yeah, it's, we're not planning on backfilling the executive assistant. Epony's been doing kind of half and half in an incredible way for some time now, but so just, you know, that's why the transfer is going to happen. And then also just a big thank you to Jay from Leuna and Carrier HR folks and the clerk's facilities assistants, all these folks. You know, Leuna has been an incredible union to work with. They're not just our clerk's union, but the wastewater union as well and our public works union as well. And they have been, you know, very helpful to our employees and I would expect no less from our new employees who are entering this union as well and thank you very much to Jay until you and I and to all the staff have been working on these side agreements so and there is a budget-neutral as well there's no FTE ads this is really you know reflection of the unionization for those positions do [4:01:09] Chair Lyons: I have a proposed motion? I move [4:01:16] Speaker I (unidentified): to authorize the transfer of $48,366.40 from the city manager's payroll budget to the city clerk payroll budget to reflect the city manager executive assistant fully transferring to the clerk department. [4:01:50] Chair Lyons: Second. Second. Any further discussion from council? Seeing none, all those in favor? [Speaker H (unidentified): Any animus?] Agenda item number 21, Executive Session for Consultation with the City Attorney Concerning the City's Legal Rights and Duties Pending or Contemplated Legal Matters Involving Main Organics Including Potential Continued Enforcement or legal action pursuant to 1 MRS 405 6E. So moved. Second. Second. All those in favor? Anonymous? Jason, we are in executive session. We're out of executive session now. There's no action coming out of the executive session with legal counsel, So we are going to proceed to agenda item number three, adjournment. Move to adjourn. Second. All those in favor? It's unanimous. All right, adjournment.