City Council

3 &ir'; City of Fitchbur^,, ^pp !5 PH!2;52 Massachusetts 01^20 CITY COUNCIL Councillors at Large President Anthony M. Zarrella Ward Councillors Marcus L. DiNatale Ward 1 - Bernard J. Schultz III Amy Green Ward 2 - Paul R. Beauchemin Thomas C. Hughes Vice President Elizabeth R. Walsh Ward 3 - Andrew J. Couture Samantha M. Squailia Ward 4 - Andrew J. Van Hazinga Anthony M. Zarrella Ward 5 - Mlarisa R. Fleming Ward ^ - Flizahefh R. Walsh The City Council as a Whole Committee Meeting was held at 700 Main Street and over the Zoom meeting platform and live streamed at FATV Studios, Fitchburg, on April 13, 2021. The meeting was called to order by President Anthony Zarrella at 7:05 P.M. The Clerk called the roll and 10 Councilors were present, with 8 Councilors present in the Legislative Building and 2 Councilors logged in remotely (DiNatale, Schultz). Councilor Green was absent. Also present were members ofthe City Hall Team including Calvin Brooks, Susan Davis, Patrick Hare, City Solicitor Vincent Pusateri, and the Hon. Mayor, Stephen DiNatale. Fire ChiefAnthony Marrama was also present. The meeting opened with a salute to the Flag led by Councillor Van Hazinga. COUNCIL AS A WHOLE COMMITTEE MEETING Tuesday, April 13, 2021 Immediately following Legislative Affairs Meeting which is scheduled to begin at 6:00 PM As the meeting location will not be open to the public, they are invited to participate in the Zoom webinar by registering in advance for the Public Comment/Hearing portion ofthe Agenda by going to: https://us02web.zoom.us/vvebinar/register/WN_dhNlrYiARbe9BHYrud.I9iA Mr. Patrick Haverty, 110 Highview Street, spoke to Ordinances 068-21 and 069-21 during the Public Comments section and noted that he was the President of Fitchburg Firefighters of Local Union 3128, which the Fire Chiefwas not a part of, nor represented by the Union in collective bargaining. He wanted to state that he was their Chief, and during the last nine months he had done an excellentjob during tough times, and was sure that everyone would work together to make sure the Fire Chiefs salary was fairly set so they could all move forward as a Department. He then thanked the Council for their time. Before the meeting continued, President Zarrella noted that he preferred to take all matters on the Agenda together as they were essentially all regarding the same topic - the salary ofthe Fire Chief. He then welcomed those who would be presenting to the Council, and asked that they keep their initial remarks to no longer than five minutes. He noted that there would be no discussion of personal character or fitness except insofar as qualifications were concerned, and because this was a disputed issue, he reminded the Council of Rule 2.11 and stated that he would be treating the parties to this matter as equivalent to Councilors for the purposes of Rule 2.11. (http://www.ci.fitchburg.ma.us/DocumentCenter/View/7490/APPROVED-Council-Rules-1-4- 2021). He noted that there should not be any remarks by Council directed to the propriety or probity of the person speaking before them or their remarks. President Zarrella welcomed Mayor DiNatale to give a brief presentation. Mayor DiNatale stated the following: “Good evening, Councilors. I’ve been informed that the Council has already received the information they had been looking for, and that a number of our Department Heads had been contacted by Councilors for additional background information, and that the Councilors formed an opinion on how they would like to vote. To that end, my staff and I are available to answer any questions, and I yield my additional time to the City Solicitor, Vincent Pusateri. Thank you.” City Solicitor, Vincent Pusateri, addressed the Council with these remarks: “Thank you, Mayor DiNatale, Mr. President. I’ll just be brief, and I don’t know if you wanted to make this address, and I’ll remind you that you mentioned you might wish to speak to the general legal issue, but if I can just briefly discuss. The City Code provision that brings us here tonight just seems to be a bit of an odd endeavor for a Council, and it charges you with a difficult task, I think. Respectfully, the concept of the separation of powers is implicated by a Code provision that suggests that a legislative body, as this great body is, should opine, suggest, recommend, or even, may I dare say, set a compensation package which is typically a function reserved for the executive branch. There have been a couple cases, we spoke briefly, and you advised, and I can’t help but talk about some of the cases that I looked at were interesting. There was one out of Gardner, then Mayor Mark Hawke and Councilor Graves (two good people) had a dispute and they wound up in Court, and there was another one that came right out of Fitchburg, which was former Mayor Dooling and the then City Council, I think it was back in the 20’s. And they are interesting cases and having our experience together, envisioned what that might have been like for those folks to go through, and certainly the Mayor’s Office does not want to have a dispute with this Council, and we look forward to hearing what you have to say about this Petition. Thank you, Councilor Zarrella, you filed in connection with these Ordinances. “The long and short of it is, and with great respect to the body, it’s just a difficult situation to be in to maybe pass on a decision and rule on it, without it having a binding precedent. With that being said, the whole team here, the City Auditor, Human Resources, Chief of Staff, worked together to provide this bullet-pointed and explanatory page on how the decision we reached was made. The suggestion has been made by some that there was some animosity between the Administration and the Chief, and quite frankly I don’t think that’s true. I think there’s been some willingness to work pretty well between the Mayor and the Chief from what I’ve seen as they’ve been plodding over the last several months, and the bottom line is from the Administration we look at the executive function of setting salaries, and we came to the conclusion for all the reasons that were stated in that letter, that this is the correct salary. None of those criteria are controlling, if you will, they were all kind of pointing us towards this specific number that we came to. I’m available to have any questions on any of those topics that we have addressed and if you want me to give you some background on any of that information. There was some information that just came up, which was incident numbers, there’s been some discussion even just recently about what those incident numbers are. The Fire Chief had pointed out that incident numbers, which seem to be higher than what’s been reported to Massachusetts, so we’re delving into the delta as to what those are. I think we have about 4,100 and I think the Chief was more around 9,000, and so we want to take a look at the difference of those. The Chief and I had a great opportunity to talk about that, and he’s going to provide some additional information. So, here with an open mind but the constraints we laid out in that letter really do clearly memorialize the decision making process.” President Zarrella thanked Solicitor Pusateri for the reminder that he wished to note for the Council that there was a unanimous understanding between himself and Solicitor Pusateri, the Chief and Councilor Walsh, who he consulted as a fellow lawyer on the subject, that the Ordinance in which they are enacting, commits the decision to the Council, but does, in fact, make the consent of the Mayor, indispensable in the process. He noted that the Council could not “name a number” and then pass it over a Mayoral veto. He mentioned it as it was something that came up in discussions, and he wanted to note that they were all in agreement on that subject and it was not a matter for contention. Fire Chief Anthony Marrama then addressed the Council, as follows: “Thank you, President Zarrella, thank you Councilors, for hearing me out tonight. Thank you Solicitor Pusateri, and Mayor DiNatale. I do want to point out that for the last ten months, during this pandemic, we have been able to work through that. There hasn’t been any hold up in between anything that needs to get done between the Fire Department and the City in this entire thing. If I need anything from the Mayor’s Office, it’s been met with an immediate answer, if he needs something from me, I make sure that gets done as well, so I just want to make sure that it is known that we do continue to have a working relationship and that it has not held down anything that needs to get done from Fire, EMS, or any of that prospective that the Fire Department does. “I’m here tonight to basically speak about, I’ve put a package together that some Councilors have seen, and I’d be more than happy to have that shared with the other Councilors to see kind of where I came from in my logic and in my thought process about where this number, if you will, should fall. I think really when looking at it, it came down to what is a way to compensate this position fairly, for the 24/7, 365 job that it is, to not only oversee Fire, but EMS, and hazardous materials, and emergency management, and everything else this job does on a day-to-day basis. You know, a lot of comparisons that are made sometimes on paper look good, but they’re not apples to apples comparisons. We run into issues about how other departments are structured, what their call volume is like, what departments they oversee, what other issues that may arise that may be particular to this City, as opposed to others. So I think one way to look at it, and I’ve offered several different areas where I think we can come to a compromise or we can come to an agreement, one of which potentially is Massachusetts General Law Chapter 48, Section 57G. First of all, it’s a State Law, it’s widely accepted throughout the Commonwealth, many cities and towns have adopted it, and those that haven’t have used it as a baseline for compensation. There are several area departments that do use this as a baseline of compensation. I feel it takes the politics and the bias out of this position. I’m a firm believer that public safety should be separate from politics. I do not think that public safety officials and public safety members should be involved in political discussions and political battles because regardless of whether you’re liberal or conservative, our job is to the people, our job is to the citizens. It doesn’t matter who sits in the Mayor’s chair, it doesn’t matter who sits in the Council seats. We need to do our job regardless of that. I believe that it costs controls this Chief’s position. It keeps it in line with the members of the Department in terms of, you’re not going to get a position that is going to radically change, or they’re going to get raises above and beyond what the members get, because that creates animosity between the membership and the Department Head. If that starts to grow over time, and there’s a larger gap that becomes created, if the Department is being asked to take zeros, because times are tough, the department Head should take a zero. Why should the Department Head receive anything more than his men and women are being asked to do. Especially in the middle of a pandemic or a tough time. I don’t think that is proper leadership. That’s one man’s opinion on it, but I truly believe that. It keeps it in line with the other positions in the Fire Department – privates, lieutenants, captains, deputies – it keeps that structure intact. One person isn’t getting above and beyond what somebody else is getting. It grows at that same percentage. It ensures that you don’t create any animosity between the Chief and his members. It ensures that there’s more transparency within the position, there’s not these other stipends or these other things, it creates a transparency that gives you a number that is more reflective of what that actual number would be, and it’s easier, if there’s questions that come up about whether there’s a conflict of interest with the Statute, if you were to involve that, how can the Chief negotiate on behalf of the City, if he’s going to then accept a raise that’s similar to that. I have a couple of rebuttals to that and that this it’s not an issue that this position created for chiefs that I’ve spoken with – they’ve said it hasn’t been an issue. I’ve spoken with chiefs throughout the area, they said that it hasn’t been an issue when negotiating. Beyond that, how is one chief on a negotiating committee going to come in there and say that ‘I think that they should get x amount of a percentage’? There’s an auditor, there’s a Mayor, there’s an HR Director, there’s lots of other people involved that are going to say ‘hey, listen, we can’t do this’ and beyond that, even if it were to get past, it would have to get past the Council, and then beyond that, as a Chief, as a Department Head, if my members are given a raise of a certain percentage, the City’s budget is the City’s budget. You can’t magically create more money – I’m going to have to cut positions in order to make sure that those members get that raise. And as a Department Head, it’s really not in my best interest to do that. I need the bodies, I need the individuals. So I really tried to think of a way that we could move forward with adopting something that would be fair that would set the compensation that would remove the politics from it. That would make the Council happy, that would make it a fair compensation, and that would keep the members of the department happy. So, in closing, I just feel that this could be a route that you could potentially discuss as a way, there’s other alternatives that I’m open to, but I just really wanted to come here tonight and say that I appreciate the effort that you have all put into this and I know this is a lot to take in and a lot to discuss, so I very much appreciate that. Thank you.” After comments, the Council discussed whether there should be a rate based on experience, time in the position, the possibility of incorporating MGL Chapter 48, Section 57G, and different rates from other towns/cities. ORDINANCES 068-21. AN ORDINANCE: Amending the Fitchburg City Code, Chapter 44, re: Fire Chief. 069-21. AN ORDINANCE: Amending the Fitchburg City Code, Chapter 44, re: Fire Chief. Motion to give Leave to Withdraw to Ordinances 068-21 and 069-21amended to Hold in Committee was approved by vote of 8 in favor and 2 opposed (Beauchemin, DiNatale)  PETITION 073-21 Council President Anthony Zarrella: to set the salary ofthe Fire Chief, pursuant to City Code § 23-26 which instructs that, "The compensation ofthe ChiefEngineer shall be fixed by the Council, with the approval ofthe Mayor and in accordance with the provisions ofthe Civil Service Act." Motion to amend Petition 073-21 to show that it is the sense ofthe Council that it should include adoption ofMassachusetts General Law Chapter 48 Section 57G to be adopted through a regular Council Meeting was approved by vote of 8 in favor and 2 opposed (Beauchemin, DiNatale) Note: https://malegislature.gov/Laws/GeneralLaws/PartI/TitleVII/Chapter48/Section57G Motion to further amend Petition 073-21 to show that it is the sense ofthe Council that stipends and other incentives should be used in the calculations for the base salary ofthe position was approved by vote of 8 in favor and 2 opposed (Beauchemin, DiNatale) Motion to approve 073-21 as amended was approved by vote of8 in favor and 2 opposed (Beauchemin, DiNatale) The meeting adjoumed at 9:10 P.M. r\ *&' Mary de ^Jfderete, City Clerk