A regular meeting of the Board of Aldermen was held Tuesday, February 26, 2019, at 7:30 p.m. in the
Aldermanic Chamber.
President Lori Wilshire presided; City Clerk Patricia D. Piecuch recorded.
Prayer was offered by City Clerk Patricia D. Piecuch; Alderman-at-Large Brandon Michael Laws led in
the Pledge to the Flag.
The roll call was taken with 12 members of the Board of Aldermen present; Alderman Gidge and Alderwoman
Mary Ann Melizzi-Golja were recorded absent.
Mayor James W. Donchess and Corporation Counsel Steven A. Bolton were also in attendance.
REMARKS BY THE MAYOR
Mayor Donchess
First | wanted to mention R-19-113, which is the resolution which we are sponsoring to put before you the
recommendations of the Energy and Environment Committee. You may remember that after the United
States withdrew from the Paris Agreement that | became a Climate Mayor and we formed the Energy and
Environment Committee to begin to look at ways to meet certain goals regarding saving energy, saving funds,
saving monies and reducing the emissions of greenhouse gases. As you will see from the resolution, the
recommendation of the committee is that we seek to reduce greenhouse gas emissions by 25 percent by
2025, vehicle emissions by 25 percent by the same year and to ultimately derive 100 percent of our energy
from renewable, clean energy sources by 2050. We've already made quite a bit of progress in terms of
reduction of energy use, which | discussed at some length in the state of the city last week. As | said then, |
will be recommending in the budget coming up that we have an Energy Manager because as you get into this
in some depth, these projects are very involved, very detailed and require someone with a lot of expertise to
make sure that we get as much as we can out of any energy saving projects. I’m sure that will be referred to
committee, and | hope you will act favorably on it.
Number two, at the next meeting on March 12, | will be proposing to you the city budget. As | again
mentioned last week, the biggest challenge facing us this year is that the health care costs for city employees
are up about 11 percent, which we will get into more details later, but translates to about $3 million. This
creates a budget challenge if we are going to keep the tax rate to a reasonable level. This will require that we
be very cautious regarding increases in the remainder of the budget. As you will see, and as the budget
committee will see once this gets proposed, we will need to exert quite a bit of discipline to make sure that
any tax increase does not exceed the percent cap that | proposed in the State-of-the-City.
Number three, Friday we expect that the audit being conducted by CFO Griffin and Chief of Staff Kim Kleiner
will be issued and will be sent to you, to the Board of Assessors, to the public. Of course, they have been
asked to look into the organization, the processes, the procedures, the management, the organization of the
Assessing Department. | think you will find ultimately their work to be very thorough, and they will have a
number of recommendations for the city to follow including issues relating to technology. That will be
interesting, and | think ultimately we should follow up on their recommendations and implement the
suggestions and recommendations that they make in the audit.
Finally, there was some good news on in the State legislature on the rail front. The full Senate passes what’s
called SB241, which is the bill that would insert federal funds back into the ten-year transportation plan which
Commissioner Sheehan, and she met with us, has accurately called the final project development phase of
the Capital Corridor Project. That was good news. It is now through the Senate, it goes to the House. I’m
sure our very able representatives under the leadership of Chair Jan Schmidt will work hard to try to
accomplish the same goal in the House. Once that occurs, we will then be on the way to completing this
planning phase and looking seriously at how to implement rail in the future. | thought that was good news
and thought | would mention it. | testified in favor of SB241. | think Alderman O’Brien did as well in the
