Special Board of Aldermen 02-09-2021 Page 5
We also updated the Conference Room 208, this includes painting, a total revamp of the room as well as
installation of audio and video capabilities so that we may now broadcast from that room. That’s something
that we were looking to do without bringing in the television cameras, having another room within City Hall
for our various boards that meet.
We constructed the temporary space in the City Hall Auditorium which is where our Motor Vehicles
Department is now housed. And then we started the City Hall Renovations, which includes Motor Vehicles,
Assessing, Tax and City Clerk. As you know, that project is to comply with CDC Social Distancing
Guidelines and that is still underway. As | just said, Assessing is the first, they have moved back into their
space and are now unpacking and getting ready for a limited opening.
We also painted the lower level of City Hall and updated the employee lunch room. Here you can see the
temporary space in the City Auditorium for Motor Vehicles, if you haven’t had the pleasure of going up to
register your car. We also have the new Motor Vehicle area on the first floor that is still currently under
development. But as you can see here, these partitions that you see along the way, each one of those
windows will be a separated space so that when residents go up to the window to be serviced, they will be
socially distanced and have privacy, one thing that we didn’t have with the previous counter system. This
lower picture is the entrance to the Rotunda, | have to say yes one doorway was probably one of the most
complex issues with this renovation. We actually had to have a marble expert come in from Boston. We
wanted to make sure that we preserved the historic nature of City Hall. So they had to cut the existing
marble, they widened the door which used to be a single door. And then they used that marble to
reconstruct the framing around the door. There is one center piece there that is still being constructed and
we hope to have in place within the next couple of weeks. It certainly was a process to see.
Down below, this is the garden level as we like to call it at City Hall. The first picture of the prior lower level
is where we used to see when we came down to the bottom of the stairs. To the right is the new customer
service area which is being finished up; just has some counters to be installed. This is what we call using
an innovative approach to deal with considerable space constraints that were in Assessing. So Assessing,
when at full staff has 9 employees and the GIS Department. Looking at social distancing that number of
employees and housing a customer service area within the existing space, did not work. So we needed to
find a way where we could take advantage of this so-called “dead space” at the bottom of the stairs which
was once used as an entrance to a vault that is no longer being accessed from this area. We believe that
this is going to provide both our residents and our employees ample room to comfortably do their business.
The bottom picture is a picture of the new Conference Room. This provides Assessing with a room to meet
with residents. As you know, we reported over a year ago that for privacy they would take residents out in
the hallway and they accessed a table within the hallway. Well we can do better. Here they will get to
meet with residents in a comfortable and a secure location with privacy to discuss any business that our
residents may have.
Healthcare and Labor is always an issue within the City and we have been working strongly in this area. So
we had the creation of the CBA Strategy Team that includes all of School Employee Groups as well as
School, Police and Fire. This is to develop an informed and uniform approach to Collective Bargaining and
we have had four meetings of the group and | think the shared approach is definitely sharing some new
ideas that many of us may not have thought of as well as understanding the differences and the difficulties
that the different Labor Groups may face. We worked on the Healthcare redesign which will reduce the
increase of healthcare costs in the City. It was introduced to the Unaffiliated Employees and adopted so far
by 4 Bargaining Units.
The Administrative Services Division led the group for the UAW Professional & Clerical Collective
Bargaining Contract together with many of our City Directors and our Legal Department and that was
adopted by the Board not too long ago. We have increased our participation in the High Deductible Health
Plan so you can see 423 in 2018 up to 750 this past Open Enrollment in 2020. We supported our City
Clerk with the processing of Absentee Ballots by hiring 25 temporary City Clerk employees and 225
Election Workers.
