Finance Committee

REPORT OF THE FINANCE COMMITTEE APRIL 17, 2013 A meeting of the Finance Committee was held on Wednesday, April 17, 2013 at 6:40 p.m. in the Aldermanic Chamber. Mayor Donnalee Lozeau, Chair, presided. Members of the Committee present: Alderman-at-Large Lori Wilshire, Vice Chair Alderman-at-Large David W. Deane Alderman-at-Large Barbara Pressly Alderman Paul M. Chasse, Jr. Alderman June M. Caron Alderman Arthur T. Craffey, Jr., Arrived after Roll Call Also in Attendance: Justin Kates, Emergency Management Director John Griffin, CFO/Comptroller PUBLIC COMMENT PRESENTATION CodeRED Notification System Presentation Alderman Wilshire I did see a CodeRED in Boston today from the court house. They had a CodeRED and they were evacuating the court house, and I thought of the presentation tonight so it’s very timely. Thank you. Justin Kates, Emergency Management Director Good evening, everyone. I wanted to spend a little time this evening to discuss CodeRED. It’s a system that we’ve been looking into here within the City of Nashua for a little over a year now. Based on recent events, as well as the events that we’ve experienced over the past couple of years, we feel the time is right to move forward with this system. First to give you a little history on where we’ve come from with this system, the police department had started this process back in March of last year due to the fact that they were seeing a significant amount of incidents where they needed quick notification to the public. Anything from a missing child, an incident that required a border around a certain location that they didn’t want people to go into, all reasons that the police department would need to send out a quick message to a geographic area to allow for them to know the protective actions that they need to take. One of the things we recognized, though, was that the city had a significant stake in ensuring that all departments had a capability to do this based on all the storms that we had, the fire responses that are made and even the trivial trash delays and changes in transit routes. Everybody needs to be notified for different things around the city. So we put together a committee. The committee was a pretty diverse committee. It included fire, police, public health, public works, transit, citizen services, emergency management. It was really comprehensive for the entire city. We went through a variety of vendors initially, probably a good 20 – 25 or so where we checked out some of the features that they had, what we were looking for within the city to determine really the best fit. We ultimately looked at two vendors in August, one being CodeRED and the other being Blackboard Connect. Both of those systems provided a similar capability. In many cases they were along the same lines when it came to the actual technology that was powering those systems. However both systems had different histories, different origins where they came from. Blackboard Connect was focused in the educational community. It was primarily used in the higher Finance – 04/17/13 Page 2 education institutions as well as many school districts across the nation. CodeRED was formally an emergency notification system. That’s really where they’ve focused their efforts on over the past decade or so. One of the major things we tried to identify was: can we add additional services to the existing contract that Nashua School District has in order to provide those services to the rest of our citizens. Many of you have had kids in the Nashua School District or know what those messages that Superintendent Conrad sends out. That system works great, and it has worked very well for the school district. But what we recognized was we weren’t going to get a significant discount on both systems being combined. One of the other interesting aspects to it was because the student information that’s in the Blackboard system is federally secured and not authorized to be moved to any other locations, it actually wouldn’t allow for us to combine the two systems. So we would ultimately be purchasing two different blackboard connect products. The committee decided, that we would go with CodeRED back in January. It was an unanimous decision. Everybody really believed strongly in the capabilities and features that it provided. So CodeRED, it’s not just for emergencies anymore. It’s a very diverse product that allows for both emergency and non-emergency notifications. While the original search that we went upon in our committee was mainly focused around emergency communications, we realized that there was a benefit in having a non-emergency functionality to the system. It’s useful for the taxpayers because they want to see this system used more than just the emergencies. These alerts that we send out are going to be originated from a web browser or even from a smart phone. Many of our officials have that capability where they’d be able to send out an alert using CodeRED using their smart phones. In addition each of the departments here within the city can send out these alerts. It’s not going to be just one account. The police department can sent out alerts. The fire department can send out alerts. Everyone of them can send out alerts and they can designate various officials within their organizations that can send these things out. One of the other major benefits with CodeRED is it allows for us to send out internal notifications here within the city. One of the projects that we’ve recently been working on here within city hall is the development of a facility emergency plan so we know what we’re going to do with our employees during an emergency here at our building. This would allow for us to send out a notification to our employees, something that many corporations, as I mentioned higher education institutions, all have already. This will put us on the same wave length that you’ll see across this industry. One of the other real important features to this system is it allows for unlimited alerting. As we started looking into those non-emergency notifications, we wanted to ensure that we would be able to utilize it to its full potential to ensure that we would be able to send out message whenever we needed to, whether it be for an emergency or for a non-emergency. There’s a data base that ‘s involved with this system. It essentially requires a very detailed database with phone numbers and in some cases e-mail addresses if people so desire to be alerted that way. The first thing that happens when we look into this system is they will populate that data base with all the landline numbers here within the City of Nashua. They work that through FairPoint to get those notifications. Next, citizens and businesses will be able to use a self-service portal to go in and add additional information or if they don’t have a landline, they’ll be able to add their information in as a new user. This will allow for them to enter into cell phones that they can get text messages with, e-mails. They will also be able to determine what kinds of alerts that they want. I think one of the interesting things when we were having our committee meetings was we were talking about some of the ways that we can use this system. I said, I don’t want to know when the parks and recreation department cancelled the soccer teams. I don’t really care. But there are people that do. We want to make sure that we don’t overload people with messages that they don’t need to see. One of the important aspects of this is that you’ll be able to subscribe on your own. You’ll have to opt in to those non-emergency messages. One of the other things that will have to do with this system and CodeRED assists with this as part of the contract is essentially promoting it. They’ll put together press releases for us. They’ll reach out to the newspapers. They’ll set up accounts for us to go and promote this system so that people know about it and they register for it. The more people that are in the system, the more useful it is. This office as well as all the other departments will be part of that outreach project to ensure that as many people as possible are here within our data base. Finance – 04/17/13 Page 3 The infrastructure that powers CodeRED, one of CodeRED’s unique features is that it manages and owns all of its infrastructure. It doesn’t lease out any part of it to any contractors. It has everything from the telephone lines that will ultimately call you to the portal that we would use for self-services, as well as the alerting portal that we would use to send out the notifications. Everything is owned and operated by CodeRED. In addition, and this is something that’s important for emergency messaging, is it has to have redundant services. In the event that here, within Nashua, we’re affected by a disaster, and those servers, which they’re not – they’re not here in Nashua, but were affected by a disaster, we need to make sure that it’s going to work. CodeRED has put together a very robust network that has data centers in different parts of the United States. One of the important parts about that is if we’re affected by a disaster in some other location, they have one of those data centers. Nashua won’t be affected because there are other data center that are here within the United States. One of the big selling points of this system is it allows for you to send millions of voice messages. Those are actual voice messages that you’ll pick up the phone and hear per hour. Millions of them per hour. Text messages are even quicker, as are e-mails because it’s much less data. It allows for them to send them within a much shorter period of time. Angelo, our GIS expert here, was very happy to know that the GIS system that CodeRED has will allow for us to be fully interoperable with the current system that we have. To give you an example, having pre-designated flood plain areas that we would know where we could evacuate people from we already have that. All we have to do now is import it into the system and be ready to send those notices out. It’s a very robust system when it comes to infrastructure. Probably the most important part about CodeRED is how are you going to get those messages. How many of you guys have landline phones? Alright, I see a couple. How about cell phones? Now probably less of you have smart phones, Right? A couple have smart phones. I don’t even want to ask about social media. I know some of you guys have it and some of you don’t, but this system allows for you to communicate on all of those mediums. You send out one message and it goes across to all of them. I think one of the important parts of this, and in my profession we have to realize that we have a very diverse population, in many cases, we’re not going to see everybody having a smart phone, so we need to be able to take care of those that have landline phones and make sure that they get the same messages. This system allows for us to do that. Our committee came up with a couple of different uses for CodeRED. Essentially in our brainstorming sessions, we looked back at the past and said where could we have used this system to have a better outcome or a more efficient or effective outcome to an incident and where can we use it in the future for something that we’ve never ever potentially thought about. I’d say that one of the interesting aspect to CodeRED would be that because it is such a versatile system it will allow for us to use it for everything from those very unimportant, non-emergency alerts to the thing that might save somebody’s life. In many cases, we’ve got quite a lot of work ahead of us to put together some pre-designated templates for some of these types of events so we’ll be able to send them out during a disaster or just to let somebody know that a meeting time has changed. Mayor Lozeau I’m just going to interject, remember when President Obama came and visited at Elm Street. We had all those residents find out the hard way about parking and being able to get in and out of their streets. Even though the campaign staff said they went door to door and they left information, not everybody got it. That was a great example to be able to send something out to them and have them fully informed. That was one of the ones that I thought of because you don’t think about something like that unless you had it happened. Director Kates The next steps would certainly be reconvene our emergency notification system committee again and to put together those policies on how we’re going to send alerts out, who are the officials that are going to send those alerts out and essentially what’s the process going to be for sending them out. We’ll go out and Finance – 04/17/13 Page 4 create the accounts for those officials that need them, train them on how to use the system. We’ll also enter in all the information for our city employees to use this as the internal notification system within the city for emergencies as well as non-emergencies. Then we’ll work with CodeRED to start promoting the system and getting that information out to our citizens so that by July 1, when we can go live, we’ll have a significant database of our residents. It’s definitely a process that we’ve been through here over the past year, but we’re finally coming into the home stretch, and I think we’ll have a really great system for our citizens, something that will be very useful during those really critical instances as well as every day. I certainly would be welcome to entertain questions. Alderman Pressly Director Kates, this is really a wonderful system and I certainly support this, but it’s very high tech. The group of people that I always like to speak to would be the seniors. For those of us that went on the Meals on Wheels delivery day the other day, we really were awakened to the fact that we have many elderly people that are confined to their homes. Although I suppose the telephone would do it, I don’t know in a true emergency, evacuation or where you need to get the people to another location, I don’t know what to suggest or how you’re going to do this, I think of the senior center, but most of the people who use the senior center are your more active seniors. I guess you could go to the different housing complexes, make sure that they have somebody on site there, but there are a fair number of people of my age group that just are not adept with the technology and their homebound. I don’t have a suggestion, I’m sort of hoping you do. Mayor Lozeau Well he does. Director Kates Absolutely, a couple things. This isn’t the end-all solution. In an evacuation, say we need to evacuate a certain location, and there would be older Americans within that location, we’re going to have to send the fire department, perhaps some of the volunteers that we’re recruiting right now, to assist with an evacuation and notify people that don’t have a landline phone or couldn’t get to it to hear the message. That’s going to be one of those pieces of the puzzle. This is going to help to notify a good majority of people here in Nashua, but there are always people that we won’t be able to reach and we’ll have to literally reach out to them in person. Part of this, though, is to build those relationships in advance. We’ve worked with the senior center and the executive director there. Jeannie really has been a great person to really figure out how we can reach out to the senior community and find way to let them know that we’re available during a disaster and to ensure that they know the services that they can receive. In addition, the public housing, we’ve worked with Nashua Housing Authority to ensure that they know how to get information to us in the event of a disaster. We saw that during the Snowtober event where the Nashua Housing Authority didn’t very quickly let us know that their facilities were without power. Now they know that that’s one of the first calls that they can make to our emergency operations center to let us know that they have vulnerable populations there that need heat or in the case of a severe storm during the summer that need that air conditioning. But really the key is reaching out to those organizations in advance and building those partnerships. Mayor Lozeau Also, Alderman Pressly, you might take some comfort in knowing that fire, emergency management, public health, they already have an inventory of a lot of people that have special concerns. They can tell you who’s been registered with them that needs oxygen or they’re on a system where they have to be plugged in at home kind of thing. Where are those locations, and that has been mapped so growing on that, building that inventory as the director said is going to be pretty critical. Finance – 04/17/13 Page 5 Alderman Pressly According to AARP there are more people, those of you are really very adaptive at the wonderful new technology, it’s hard to believe that there are many, many people over 65. Some numbers say 65 percent do not use the internet. It’s easy to forget that when you get caught up in your day-t-to-day technology. I do think they, as far as an evacuation, are certainly the most vulnerable. Director Kates Absolutely. Alderman Pressly The ones that are going to need help just to get out of their homes. Director Kates You had mentioned that quote during the CTAB meeting, and it clicked in my head. I said you know that is a very valid point because not only for engaging with the CodeRED system, but we put a lot of information out on emergency preparedness on the internet to let people know of things that they need to do. One of the big things that we’ve done with the partnerships that we have with the senior center as well as the public housing is we have pamphlets now. One of them actually is being prepared for older Americans. It’s one of those things that now in a paper format they can get it, it’s actually in large print, and we can get it out to anybody that needs it. Alderman Pressly Just a follow up. I think the number of people staying at home is going to increase. I think in the health care industry they are trying to help seniors be able to stay in their home for a longer period of time and avoid going into an assisted living of any sort. I think that population group maybe increasing in the near future. Director Kates Absolutely. Alderman Wilshire I know having worked for the Housing Authority, myself for many years, they do have a good network. They do have a good feel for who their tenants are and what their capacity is. They have neighbors who watch out for neighbors. I commend you for going in there and working with them. They’re a good group to work with. Also, I like the idea of not being like a big capital cost. It’s a $36,000/year contract and it makes sense. I think it makes a lot of sense, and a lot of credit to you for pulling this together. I know you had a lot of help. Director Kates A lot of help. Alderman Wilshire Thanks for doing this. Finance – 04/17/13 Page 6 Mayor Lozeau It’s a good team. Alderman Craffey I have questions about contract and I’ll wait until we bring that up for discussion. I just want to comment on Alderman Pressly’s point about the health care industry. I do work in that industry and have for a long, long time. There’s a big push right now with the Obama Care that hospitals are punished, fiscally punished if they have a lot of repeat business. Hospitals now taking a line of making sure that when the patients leave that they leave and don’t come back. They are taking the extra time to make sure the patients when they leave, they’re healthy. Instead of sending them home, they might send them to a rehab center to get better because they can lose up to three percent of their Medicaid reimbursement for the whole hospital. If they become habitual offenders they can use their entire Medicaid cost. Hospitals are under the incentive to make sure the patients are better so they don’t get repeat business. Alderman Pressly That’s interesting. That brings up maybe the hospitals might be another contact point to know when people are being sent home. Sometimes what happens attendants coming in during the day or check up on the people on a regular basis so the hospitals might be another source. I did notice on the list of people that you had are agency. I didn’t see a senior voice there. Maybe the next time you get a team together, you could get a senior person and someone who’s sort of in the trenches. I know the senior center does a great job, but they have the dancers the singers , all the very active ones. They may not have the capability of covering the ones that are more confined to their homes. Thank you. Director Kates That’s a very good point of having somebody with a senior voice there to kind of provide that input. That’s a really valid thing. Our public health department has done a really good job over the past couple of years. They have a specific person, public health emergency preparedness, that works with what we’re calling the functional and access needs community. People that either don't have transportation, older Americans, people that speak a different language. It’s a much broader term than special needs. They were really kind of serving as our voice for the senior community because of those relationships that they have and really talking about some of the concerns that we might have with those kinds of populations and making sure that this system would be useful for the ones that can use and then how are we going to provide services for the ones that can’t. Alderman Pressly Sounds good. Alderman Deane Is there any additional hardware required? Director Kates No. Alderman Deane Not at all. Finance – 04/17/13 Page 7 Director Kates Nope. Alderman Deane And the reoccurring licensing fee is the $30,000? Director Kates $36,000, yup. Alderman Deane Let me give you a hypothetical situation. I’m an elected official who has the authority to use this. Can I go into the database and cherry pick certain contacts? Director Kates You could. Alderman Deane So I can. Mayor Lozeau When you say you’re an elected official going in the database. Alderman Deane Right. Mayor Lozeau Elected officials aren’t going to have access to the database. Alderman Deane Who’s going to have access to the database? Director Kates The database is managed by the city. Hypothetically if we wanted to set up certain groups of people, cherry pick different people, we could set that up to do that. Alderman Deane So no elected officials are going to be using this. Director Kates No. Finance – 04/17/13 Page 8 Mayor Lozeau That’s correct. Alderman Deane Nobody. Mayor Lozeau That’s correct, including me. Alderman Deane My concern is with the Right-to-Know law. Mayor Lozeau I understand. Alderman Deane If you have the ability to go in and cherry pick and send communications out to certain individual then it’s got to be made public when requested. Mayor Lozeau The goal, Alderman Deane, would for it to be a tool for our staff and the folks that we’ve been talking about. Elected officials, like those of us in this room, could sign up for different things that we might want to be notified about. Alderman Deane We can be notified all night long with whatever we might have an interest in, but we won’t have access to send out notifications ourselves via text messages or e-mails. Mayor Lozeau That’s correct. Alderman Deane FairPoint. If you have a Comcast landline that was poured over from FairPoint, since FairPoint didn’t put people’s phone numbers in that has Comcast, how is this going to work? Director Kates That’s a good question. I’d have to check with them to see if that’s one of the vendors that they would get information from. Basically CodeRED pays for the access to FairPoint’s database, similar to when we were talking about the phone books the other day. I’d have to see if CodeRED would pay for Comcast’s database in order to import it into the system. Finance – 04/17/13 Page 9 Alderman Deane The other thing, I don’t know about you, but I’m sick of paying Comcast’s rates. I can’t wait until the contract comes before us again. It should be almost expired. People pop back and forth. They offer these things. They go from Comcast to FairPoint and then they get these satellite dishes and all this other stuff or Fios if it’s available. How fresh is the database going to be? When is it going to be purged? Other than people that move or whatever, and I know you have to sign up. I would imagine you have to physically go in and sign up and say I want to know all the park and rec cancellations, I want to know when school is cancel. Well, school already does that if you have kids, but you can sign up for all the different things that might come up. So how often is the system going to be purged to add or take out folks that are part of it? Director Kates CodeRED will go in once a year and do an all call essentially. They call it the valid-data system. I don’t know if it’s trademarked or whatever, but this system allows for them to call everybody in the system that’s in the data base to check and make sure that it’s a live line and ensures that the system is fresh. Alderman Deane Regardless of who the provider is? Director Kates Regardless of who the provider is because it’s the entire database. Whoever used the cell service portal to subscribe or whoever they purchased a list of numbers from. I can definitely can say that FairPoint is part of that. I would have to double-check on the Comcast. Alderman Deane If they port their number over from FairPoint to Comcast, the number is still there. It’s just being managed by a different company. Director Kates Yes, it technically should still be in the system because all that’s changed is the provider. The phone number still goes to that person, the same person that would have been there when it was a FairPoint number. Mayor Lozeau When we were having the presentation from them and we asked the question about how long it would take them to get up to speed, they were talking about how many numbers they already had here. It sounded like they have a resource to get what we needed regardless of who the carrier was with the exception of some of the cell phone information. Director Kates Yes, essentially they purchase it from those vendors. Immediately, day one, they’ll have whoever’s databases they’ve purchased. We were talking specifically about FairPoint. But since Comcast is technically a landline base system, they should be able to purchase that entire list of subscribers that have addresses here within the city. I’d have to ask if that’s part of their requirements or not. What I can say though in addition to that yearly test to ensure that the lines are actually valid, they massage the data year round as those providers add and remove numbers. That is one of the features that CodeRED provides versus Blackboard Connect. Finance – 04/17/13 Page 10 Alderman Deane That’s done on a ;yearly basis? Director Kates No, that’s regularly. If they get information about a change in service, they will remove it. But that providers has to provide that information. They only go out and do the manual check once a year. Alderman Deane If you change providers that’s a change in service. Director Kates Yes, but the number is still the same. As long as that number hasn’t changed and the person’s name hasn’t changed that will be fine. However say that year comes around, they switched to Comcast and now it’s time to re-evaluate the system. They’ll do an all –call. That number will still work. It’s still in the database and they are still in the system. Alderman Deane What’s a change of service? What does that mean? Director Kates The person has discontinued service. You have a landline customer that discontinued service because they don’t need a landline anymore. The next time that FairPoint notifies them about that, they will take that number out of the system. Alderman Deane But it will continue to dial that number? Director Kates Yes. Alderman Deane I forget what the timeline is on the providers not giving gout that other number. If you dump your landline, port it over to a cell number or whatever, they usually sit on that number I think it’s for six months before they put that number back out to be reused. My final question is, and I don’t know if you can answer this, but how is the property and casualty fund being used for a funding source for this? Mayor Lozeau He can answer it, but I’ll start with that answer, Alderman Deane. It’s actually interesting news. You know how frequently, well maybe some more frequently than others, you’ll get an invitation to join a class action suit. You fill out the paperwork and maybe you’re lucky and you get $2.00 the next time you use Expedia. There was a class action suit with some company that we’ve work or that Risk has worked with. The Risk Manager filled out the paperwork, sent it in and was very pleasantly surprised to end up receiving $50,000 towards loss prevention that she put into her account. When we were looking at this contract, it was my Finance – 04/17/13 Page 11 intention to just budget it for the new budget cycle that’s coming in. When we looked at how much legwork we’d like to get done before the budget started, the Risk Manager and the CFO said to me, this money came in. Are there things that we think we could use it for? I asked the risk manager to meet with Director Kates and the CFO to talk about whether or not this would be something that she would consider valuable that could be used for those dollars that were unexpected. She was quite pleased with the internal alert system and thought that would be great. It’s our intention this year to use those funds for the first year and then to budget it for the two years coming. When we get to that memo, I was going to point out to you that last sentence in Mr. Gabriel’s memo is not correct. It’s not our intention to use the Emergency Preparedness Fund. It’s my intention to budget this going forward for the period of time of the contract. That’s how that happened, Alderman Deane. Alderman Deane Is that the normal process when we have unanticipated revenue to just slide it into an account and then appropriate it? It’s not appropriated. Mayor Lozeau Alderman Deane, that is not usually the practice. But as you know in the Risk Department there is some flexibility allowed within the ordinance for the Risk Manager to be able to go after funds and reimbursements and then to spend that money in a manner that makes sense. Anything over $10,000, of course, will have to come here. We met with legal to make sure that first of all the nexus was appropriate and second of all that the funds could be expended from there. The Risk Manager has the authority to do that and this committee would then authorize it based on that recommendation. In this instance, that’s how it would be done. If the CodeRED was not here before us, that we thought that would be a good funding source for, that money would probably just stay in that trust fund. Alderman Deane The Risk Manager has the ability to settle up to $15,000. That’s what happened at Darrell’s Music Hall. Mayor Lozeau I’m just going to grab my ordinance book. Alderman Deane Go right ahead. Mayor Lozeau We met with legal to talk about it. Alderman Deane That’s fine, but I don’t see anything in this memo that states anything about any of that going on. This windfall of money. Mayor Lozeau That’s why it’s here, Alderman Deane. Finance – 04/17/13 Page 12 Alderman Deane What you mean: that’s why it’s here? What you just explained to me and what I read in this memo are not one in the same. Mayor Lozeau Because the memo speaks to the emergency trust fund for year two and three, which is not correct, but the rest of it is correct. Alderman Chasse Point of order. Shouldn’t this be taken up when we bring the thing up from the table? Mayor Lozeau I would agree, Alderman Chasse. I was going to ask the committee, seeing the director is here, to take up the contract next if we’re set with the questions on the presentation. But, I had legal today follow up with me to make sure that I knew which ordinance that they read from for the Risk Department. I should have written it down, but anyway, why don’t we follow Alderman Chasse’s suggestion. Alderman Deane Whatever he wants to do is fine by me. I want everybody to be happy. If that’s what he wants to do, I can wait. I don’t want to waste Mr. Kates’ time. His parents are here. Mayor Lozeau Well if there are questions about the contract, I’m sure he’d like to participate. Alderman Pressly To pick up on something that Alderman Deane said, what is going to prevent people, and maybe it doesn’t matter, to use this for frivolous purposes so to speak. Say you have two people that access it that communicate frequently anyway. Maybe through another system. Would it matter if they started to use this system instead and just communicated between them or does that make a difference? What do you do to avoid it becoming sort of a substitute for other types what I use the word “frivolous” to them it’s probably not. Things that really do not apply. Director Kates The system is actually one way so the city officials will only be able to send a message out to the citizens. Alderman Pressly Not to another city official? Director Kates Not to another city official unless they are sending out an internal notification, but it’s still one way. Alderman Pressly Couldn’t the person who receives it then send it back where they would be talking back and forth. Finance – 04/17/13 Page 13 Director Kates They could but that would be very extensive for them to send that message back and forth. Alderman Pressly It would be cumbersome? Director Kates It would be very cumbersome. Alderman Pressly So they would stick with their regular Director Kates Ya, they would text them or e-mail them or something like that because this will require that person to send an alert out. They would actually have to have a private group of just one person in order to send it directly and then vice versus. It’s really meant for a mass distribution internally or externally to our citizens. Alderman Caron I thought this was for emergencies only, so I’m getting a little confused, but how many people, employees, are going to have direct access to give this information out? I’m not looking at the secretary doing this. I’m looking at more a superintendent or a division director or you as the emergency management director be in charge with this. Can you give us a little bit of history on that as to who’s going to do that? Director Kates What we’ve looked at for those emergency notices to be able to send out an alert that people couldn’t opt out of, would be your division directors, department heads, based on the department that is sending the message out. For example, if it was an emergency message from the Office of Emergency Management, I would be able to send that out, just me. The fire department and the police department would be a little different because they typically use their dispatch centers as that kind of 24/7 notification location. Their dispatchers would have an account to go in and send out an alert on behalf of the fire department or the police department. Same thing with any of the other departments if they had some reason to do an emergency notification. For example, public health could have a public health emergency and that would require their division director or the public health emergency preparedness coordinator to be able to send out that message, but only them. For non-emergencies, though, it would really be based on the kind of message that’s being sent out. If the public works division is interested in ultimately using this as a way to notify families of canceled or postponed parks and recreation events, then we would have to determine the official that could send that kind of a message out or would be the first one to know that it would be canceled in order to send it out. Alderman Caron So someone is going to oversee this. No one is going to be just be sending out. I’m not talking about police and fire because that’s a constant unless they are talking about there’s a major fire somewhere and trying to keep you off. We’re looking at this as contained. Finance – 04/17/13 Page 14 Director Kates Very contained. Alderman Caron This isn’t just anybody being able to go in and out of there. Okay. I was thinking everybody and their grandmother and that’s not what the intent is. This is an emergency type thing. Considering I think emergencies cancelling basketball games. It’s very difficult in the wintertime. Mayor Lozeau Alderman Caron, let’s just say as we’re developing the procedures and policies, we all understand that for emergencies it is going to be a very small group of people that have the ability to send something out that could panic citizens or cause any real problems. There’s an internal component where staff messages could be sent out potentially. So say for instance last week we had a significant sewer collapse sink hole on East Hollis Street. We plated it; it’s about 20 feet deep. Internally, there could be a group that gets a message to say get on over there. We need X, Y and Z and this is how it’s going to work. Then there’s another component of things that we want to roll out to citizens where we’re going to determine what those things might be. Are we going to do anything around park-rec and if we are, what are those things? Whatever that list becomes citizens would opt into it. They would say I would like to be on this list that says you’ll tell me when the soccer games are canceled. My kids do this, I want to know when that happens. One of the big problems that we have during a snow emergency depending on when it lands it letting people know don’t put your trash out in the morning because we can’t pick it up and plow. That would be an emergency different than a missing child. But people could opt in and say, let me make this up, please remind me when soft yard waste picks up. If we want to do something like that. When my neighborhood does it. Depending on what those parameters might be for some of those things we’ll use, again, people opt in. You don’t want people to get alert fatigue and they stop paying attention. It’s also important to know that when you get a CodeRED alert that’s an emergency, it’s going to be a different number. It’s going to be a different name on your phone when you see it so you’re going to know. When you get one to say the soccer game is canceled it’s going to “City of Nashua Park-Rec” or “City of Nashua Solid Waste” so you’ll know that’s what it is. It takes down some of the angst and that’s part of what we talked about with developing policies around it. Alderman Caron And I think that’s great. Just listening to Alderman Pressly, the thing is that it’s still going to be combined. It’s not every employee having access to make that. Certain people are going to have that ability whether it’s a canceled soccer, to tell you the trash is not being picked up because of snow plow. That’s the important part of it. Because you’re the director of emergency management, you would be totally in charge of the emergency type thing. That’s what I was trying to get a clearer picture of so people would understand. I think this is a great idea. I wish we had it a long time ago, but I think every time you do something and improve on it, it makes it a lot easier for everyone. Director Kates If I can add on to that. One of the examples we had where even with a confined system like this it would still be very important for us to determine who would be sending out that kind of emergency message, now we go out to, say it was a major fire in the city, you would kind of think off the top of your head that it would be the fire department that might send out an alert if there was the need for adjacent residents to know about it or if it may have had hazardous materials. You would think the fire department would be that first department that would send that notification out. However the police department is also out there. They might say, I’ll send out the message in regards to it. Or, I might get called out to it and then I say, well, I’ll Finance – 04/17/13 Page 15 send it out.. Even with this technology, it’s still important to have the policies in place to know at this kind of an incident, this is who the responsible party is for making sure that notification gets out. Alderman Caron And we’ll have that? Mayor Lozeau We will. Alderman Caron Thank you. Mayor Lozeau And there’s some time between now and July to be able to finish that up so we can launch and market it a little bit and find out what people are interested in. Alderman Caron Sounds good. Thank you. Mayor Lozeau Thank you. Director Kates, if you’d like to stay there while we take up the contract in case there’s something you’d like to weigh in on. If the committee doesn’t object, we’ll take up Item 3 now while he’s here. That way we can let him go on his merry way. COMMUNICATIONS From: Robert Gabriel, Purchasing Manager Re: Contract Award for Emergency Notification System (Value: $108,000) MOTION BY ALDERMAN CHASSE TO ACCEPT, PLACE ON FILE AND, CONTINGENT UPON BOARD OF ALDERMEN APPROVAL, AWARD THE CONTRACT TO EMERGENCY COMMUNICATIONS NETWORK IN THE AMOUNT OF $108,000. SOURCE OF FUNDING IS DEPARTMENT 128, RISK MANAGEMENT; PROPERTY & CASUALTY FUND, 68 OTHER EXPENSES ON THE QUESTION Mayor Lozeau Alderman Deane, I’ll begin with giving you the ordinance. NRO 50-35(a)(ii) talks about the two self insurance funds that are created. It speaks to how they are used and how they are created. It makes the Risk Manager the appointed agent to expend. Her recommendation for these funds, and I am quite pleased that she went after them, was that they could be used for this purpose. She would recommend them being used for this purpose, and we brought it here to the committee. Alderman Deane That explanation is not good enough. Finance – 04/17/13 Page 16 Mayor Lozeau I’m sorry, Alderman Deane. It’s good enough Alderman Deane You just got done telling me how they were created. Mayor Lozeau How what was created? Alderman Deane What you just said. You’re reading the NRO that says how they are created. Mayor Lozeau It says: “Two self insurance funds are hereby created.” Alderman Deane Yup. Mayor Lozeau “ 1) Employee benefits fund for employee benefit programs, including long-term disability programs; and 2) Property and casualty fund for property, liability, bond, automobile, unemployment compensation, workers' compensation, and other commercial or self-insurance insurance programs that may be lawfully implemented in a manner consistent with state statutes and regulations. These shall be expendable trust funds pursuant to RSA 31:19-a, and the Risk Manager is appointed as agent to expend.” When the lawsuit was available and applied for and the funds were unexpected and received, they would ordinarily come in and go in that trust fund. IN this instance we’ve asked for them to come out of the trust fund to pay for the cost of this because under our interpretation, legal, financial services, and risk manager, this can be justified as a loss prevention item. That’s what we’re recommending. Should the committee choose not to use that source of funds, that’s at the committee’s discretion, but that’s the recommendation of the staff. Alderman Deane Is there any other revenue that was brought in that you know of that was expended that was under $10,000? Mayor Lozeau This is a very unusual item, Alderman Deane. No, I’m not aware of any. I don’t think we’ve ever tried to apply for a Alderman Deane Try to do this? Finance – 04/17/13 Page 17 Mayor Lozeau Right. As a matter of fact, the Risk Manager said she didn’t think it would ever happen. I was in on a weekend, I thought I would fill it out and if we got lucky, we got lucky. Alderman Deane Mayor, I’m not criticizing anybody, and I’m certainly not dissatisfied with the diligence that the Risk Manager, the Director of Risk Management did in filling out her paperwork. That has nothing to do with it. Mayor Lozeau I understand that. I’m just telling you that’s how it happened. Alderman Deane I just want you to understand that because what you said sounded like I was chastising her for what she’s done. I’m going to talk to the legal department tomorrow. I’m going to try to anyways. Alderman Craffey Are we paying the full $108,000 now or are we paying $36,000 for the next three years? According to this it states we’re paying $108,000 but if you read the contract, the contract says $36,000 over the next three years. Mayor Lozeau We’re paying $36,000 per year for the next three years based on the negotiation that actually I can give all the credit to Director Kates. We saved 40 percent by signing a three-year contract with them. Alderman Craffey Ten licensees, under 1. Are we expected to have any more than ten? Director Kates One of the things that’s currently going on with CodeRED is they are actually about to implement a new system called CodeRED Next. That was one of the reasons why we held off for so long. We wanted to see what this new system was going to be like, what kind of features it would have. With the new system it actually allows for unlimited users. Still we’re not going to have unlimited users. It’s going to be a confined list of people. What we have determined so far is that ten users is going to be the necessary amount of officials to send out an alert during this period of time until the next system comes out. Alderman Craffey There’s no way that you could get a list of the users? Do you have an idea of the ten users? Director Kates I don’t have it in printed form, but essentially that list of committee members. Each department would have an account. So emergency management, police, fire, public health, public works, transit, citizen services. I’m trying to think if there were any additional. I believe that’s it for right now, so that’s seven. After the new system goes into place, we’re going to have to re-evaluate if we want to add additional users as people or if we just want to have accounts with departments like we’ll be doing in the beginning. Finance – 04/17/13 Page 18 Alderman Craffey Our contract says ten and there’s a cost associated with additional users. I went to try to find the cost, and I couldn’t find the cost associated with it. It says refer to Exhibit A, but I don’t see a cost in Exhibit A. I was curious what the cost would be with additional users. Director Kates An additional aspect of that when we were going through this, and I’ll have to see if that’s mentioned in here, they mentioned that if we did have a need for additional users beyond the ten, ten is what they will typically set the system up with, they will do that for no charge. That’s just because of the fact that they are putting in a new system that’s going to have that functionality. Until it’s in place, they are willing to essentially do that for free. That’s probably why it’s not here in the cost. Alderman Craffey Costs of Service, is this an automatic renewal? Mayor Lozeau Yes. Alderman Craffey, that was the way to save the 40 percent, was to tell them that we would enter this contract for three years. Short of them doing something negligently, they will be our vendor. Alderman Craffey So it won’t come back. Mayor Lozeau It won’t come back before finance, but it will be certainly in the budget. But once you’ve approved the contract, we are obligated to pay for it. Alderman Craffey So it won’t come back up for a renewal in three years? Mayor Lozeau Yes. When we’re done with the contract that we have here, and certainly before that three years is up, the analysis of the same team that’s been working will come back and say we should stay with CodeRED. We should tweak this, we should add this or we should go out to bid and get a vendor. Whatever that might be. We’re hopeful at some point that there may be a way to get some value to the school and city being together. But as the director pointed out, at this stage there wasn’t one. Alderman Craffey 87,499. Is that the population of the city right now, roughly? Mayor Lozeau It is. Finance – 04/17/13 Page 19 Alderman Craffey It is? Wow. I remember when it was a lot smaller. When we first moved here, it was a lot smaller. We don’t think we’re going to exceed ht ten percent, right? Mayor Lozeau No. Alderman Craffey I hope not. Mayor Lozeau I don’t think we have room. Alderman Craffey I don’t know if we build that new development. Maybe. Referencing Exhibit A, the GIS Upload and Hosting. Will they allow us to do our own GIS upload? Director Kates Yes. Alderman Craffey Hosted ourselves? Director Kates We won’t host it. What we’ll end up doing is essentially they offer unlimited uploads of shape files. What a shape file is we have a polygon of a certain area that we want to have in our database. Angelo will be able to upload that and that’s unlimited. What this one layer is is if we have a custom layer of the city, which Angelo actually does have with kind of the outlines of our city buildings and things like that, we can upload that and use that map instead of the one that comes default with the system. Alderman Craffey Is that an additional cost? Director Kates Just the one is not an additional cost. If we wanted to have multiple layers, essentially, it would be but we only expect to need one because it’s the one that we use for all of our default GIS programs currently in the city. Alderman Craffey Could you explain this $100 per hour database maintenance? Finance – 04/17/13 Page 20 Mayor Lozeau For everybody following along, it’s the last page, and by the way in your package for CodeRED there is an email that Mr. Gabriel apologizes that got caught up in here. It has nothing to do with anything but if you’d like to read his e-mail. He felt a little badly about that, but it did give us all a chuckle. Director Kates In the event we wanted them to do the upload of data, we’re not going to do the upload. Say for example, we want to import the city employees into the system. If we don’t have the capabilities to do that or the expertise to move that file into the right format, they will do that for us and put it into the system, but they’ve put me through some through basic training on how that would work, and essentially all it is is a spreadsheet. I think we’ll be able to handle it. Alderman Craffey How about this 2 ½ cents per record in the final update. Is that 2 ½ cents per record to update? Director Kates Yes. Alderman Craffey Is that part of that valid system that you talked about? Director Kates Yes, as they mentioned here, one annual database accuracy update will be performed by the licensor upon request by the licensee at no charge. That’s that yearly test of the system which they will scrub and remove any non-working phone numbers, add any additional ones from the providers. If we want that beyond that year, so say in the middle of the year we want them to go through and do that same all-call, that would cost 2 ½ cents per change in the system. Alderman Pressly I just have one last question regarding the issue that Alderman Caron and I are talking about. An emergency, like a city evacuation, a missing child, that will go out to everyone unsolicited. Director Kates Yup. Alderman Pressly And the ones that I have said frivolous, maybe unfairly, but those that are more Mayor Lozeau Those that aren’t an emergency. Alderman Pressly Are not an emergency, notification of a canceled meeting, that is one that people sign up for. Finance – 04/17/13 Page 21 Director Kates They have to opt in for it. Alderman Pressly So they choose that. What if there is a major evacuation going on? I presume you’re not going to let all these other things, the non-emergencies, take up the traffic or would that matter? Get out of town and by the way the game was canceled? Director Kates As part of the policy development on how this is going to work, we would need to ensure that there’s a priority put on those emergency messages. Within their system, they are able to, using their technology, tell which messages are emergency and non-emergency based on the flagging that’s done when the person goes in and types the message up. They have to choose if it’s an emergency or not. It has a different priority in the system. However, we still want to make user that our officials aren’t accidently or inadvertently sending out a non-emergency message at the same time because it’s not going to go out as quickly as they intend it because we might be using it for another thing. Alderman Deane I’m confused. This is coming out of Department 128? Mayor Lozeau Coming out of Department 128, Risk Management Refund, Property Casualty. Alderman Deane 128 is a transfer to P&C, right? That $3 million? Then you go over into the 6500 which is property and casualty that has all the line items in it, right? Mayor Lozeau I’m following. Yes, I think. Alderman Deane Which line item? Mayor Lozeau I believe it’s 68 out of expenses. Alderman Deane Which line item under 68 is it? Mayor Lozeau It’s just other expenses. Finance – 04/17/13 Page 22 Alderman Deane Other expenses? Mayor Lozeau Yes, the category is other expenses, Alderman Deane. Alderman Deane What’s the five-digit code? Mayor Lozeau This system is not designed to work that way. It doesn’t matter if there’s a five-digit code. What matters is that there’s a two-digit. Other expenses, that could say “loss prevention.” Alderman Deane Loss prevention would be 68360. Mayor Lozeau Then it’s 68360. You have advantage because you have that… Alderman Deane Is that what it’s under? Mayor Lozeau Yes. Alderman Deane Then this line item would increase from $20,000 to $70,000? How much money did she get? Mayor Lozeau She got $50,000. Alderman Deane Okay. Have you ever seen all the lawsuits that are against this company? This Lawson Company? You should look into seeing if we could hope onto one of those. The 68360, loss prevention, this line is going to be reflected from the original budget of $20,000. Now it’s going to show $70,000 because it’s going to increase. Mayor Lozeau Because it’s going to have a transfer in. Mr. Griffin, you want to come help us so we don’t struggle and end up in the wrong place. I don’ think it has to be transferred into a line. Finance – 04/17/13 Page 23 John Griffin Basically what’s going to happen is those monies that we were fortunate enough to receive would basically be a credit against expenses. There’s going to be no increase in the budget. When we apply the $36,000 first payment to that, there will be enough budgeted money on that line. Just to add some clarity, the descriptions underneath in that internal service fund are mainly just to make sure that we’re transparent and what types of charges are in that fund. As you may recall in the budget last year, that has policies, claims, loss prevention and other expenses. The budget is basically, as Alderman Deane mentioned at the front of this discussion, the $3.2 million appropriation that the Board of Aldermen makes into that fund to provide a revenue source. That’s basically how it works. Alderman Deane is referencing a listing of the line items that capture the expenses of the fund. Mayor Lozeau Which are our best estimate. John Griffin Best estimate, that’s correct. Mayor Lozeau When I first got here the budget did not break it down. It was a single line item with a single dollar amount. We went back a few years to look at what the history was and then we tried to create a way for you to see where those expenses would likely be spent. Alderman Deane We can take in revenue anytime we want and spend it on anything we need then? How do we track that? Where do we get the money to buy this? Do you know what I mean? It’s not tracked in any manner? Unanticipated revenue. John Griffin In this particular case through the provisions of Ordinance 50-35, further down in that section the monies that are received for claims, lawsuits, etc., can be appropriately, for lack of a better word, credited to the expense lines in this particular budget in this particular internal service fund without any need to further appropriate. Alderman Deane So it has nothing to do with an expendable trust. John Griffin No. This is an internal service fund. Mayor Lozeau It’s not an expendable trust. Finance – 04/17/13 Page 24 Alderman Deane I understand that. That’s what you had mentioned earlier when you started reading. She had the authority to spend down one of those as well, right? Mayor Lozeau Yes. Alderman Deane That’s what I thought I heard. Mayor Lozeau Actually, I don’t think I said it. John Griffin If I may clear it up a bit, 50-35 allows the Risk Manager with regard to the property and casualty internal service fund to spend out of that fund. The budgetary control that the Board of Aldermen has is the appropriation from the general fund into that fund. As you mentioned, Alderman Deane, that’s about $3.2 million for Fiscal 13. Alderman Deane Right. Thank you. John Griffin Just for further clarity, how that fund operates is the $3.2 million is the best estimate that you folks have for the expenses going in and out of that fund. To the extend the expenses are greater than $3.2 million whatever the beginning balance is of that fund will be lower than it otherwise would be. That’s why, as you may recall, we need to on an annual basis have an actuarial study done. Basically they call it the loss runs of this particular account to make sure that we have enough funds going forward. Certain claims, they last a long time. They don’t manifest themselves immediately, they could transcend fiscal years. That’s the purpose of this fund. Mayor Lozeau Alderman Deane, when I read the provision, I did say two self insurance funds, not expendable trust funds. That’s what we were speaking about. I’m sorry if I might of misspoke but I think I read it, although my glasses are not getting any better in this light. Alderman Deane I think, my opinion anyway, if we didn’t question the funding, we would have never known about the money that the Risk Manager got through the application. Mayor Lozeau Actually I would not agree, Alderman Deane. If I wouldn’t have suggested that this be the fund. You know about it because we suggested using the money. They didn’t hide it. It’s right here. I think it’s something to Finance – 04/17/13 Page 25 celebrate that we got these funds in and we don’t have to use the city budget for this first year. I think it’s an appropriate use. I thought it was worth bringing to the attention of the committee, and that’s what I did. Alderman Deane Thank you for discussing the funding source with me. Mayor Lozeau You’re welcome. MOTION CARRIED From: Mayor Donnalee Lozeau Re: Emergency Repairs to a Primary Compactor at 4 Hills Landfill MOTION BY ALDERMAN CHASSE TO ACCEPT AND PLACE ON FILE ON THE QUESTION Alderman Deane What was the funding source? Mayor Lozeau The funding source for the emergency repair? Funding for this repair is through Department 168, Solid Waste Fund, Solid Waste Account Classification: Property Services. Alderman Deane Property services? Mayor Lozeau Property services. MOTION CARRIED From: Mayor Donnalee Lozeau Re: Emergency Repairs to Cat 826G Compactor at 4 Hills Landfill MOTION BY ALDERMAN CHASSE TO ACCEPT AND PLACE ON FILE ON THE QUESTION Alderman Deane I have the same question. Mayor Lozeau It’s the same source. Finance – 04/17/13 Page 26 Alderman Deane How often is this piece of equipment used? Mayor Lozeau It is on a maintenance schedule. It’s turned on and tested at least weekly. Alderman Deane How often is it used on the landfill? Mayor Lozeau It’s only used as a backup. Alderman Deane So it sits there and doesn’t really have any harsh punishment. Mayor Lozeau It may have some. I shouldn’t speak like I know that they never use it, but I know that it’s being cared for and being maintained. MOTION CARRIED From: Robert Gabriel, Purchasing Manager Re: Contract Award for Regional Radio Communications System Consulting Services (Value: $145,000) MOTION BY ALDERMAN CHASSE TO ACCEPT, PLACE ON FILE AND AWARD THE CONTRACT TO INTERTECH ASSOCIATES IN AN AMOUNT NOT-TO-EXCEED $145,000. FUNDS ARE AVAILABLE IN DEPARTMENT 157, CITYWIDE COMMUNICATIONS; CITY WIDE COMMUNICATIONS GRANT FUND ON THE QUESTION Mayor Lozeau This is the one that Communication Manager, Mr. Mansfield, came in and spoke to us about legislation that passed back in 2011. Alderman Pressly I’m just interested if this system in any way relates to CodeRED? Mayor Lozeau It doesn’t relate. Alderman Pressly It doesn’t relate at all? Would it be beneficial if it did in any way? Finance – 04/17/13 Page 27 Mayor Lozeau No. This is their handheld radio and interoperability system. Alderman Pressly But still they are out there doing their thing. Mayor Lozeau They could call them on their radio to tell them to send out an alert, but it won’t work with that. Alderman Pressly Coming up the same night, I just had to ask. MOTION CARRIED From: Robert Gabriel, Purchasing Manager Re: Contract Award for Wall and Door Area Repairs for Nashua Fire Rescue (Value: $21,600) MOTION BY ALDERMAN CHASSE TO ACCEPT, PLACE ON FILE AND AWARD THE CONTRACT TO EVANS CONSTRUCTION IN THE AMOUNT OF $21,600. SOURCE OF FUNDING IS DEPARTMENT 152, FIRE RESCUE, CAPITAL IMPROVEMENTS FUND; 81 CAPITAL PROJECTS/ IMPROVEMENTS MOTION CARRIED From: Robert Gabriel, Purchasing Manager Re: Sidewalk Improvements Program Change Order #3 (Value: $2,500) MOTION BY ALDERMAN CHASSE TO ACCEPT, PLACE ON FILE AND AUTHORIZE CHANGE ORDER #3 TO THE CONTRACT WITH PICHETTE BROTHERS CONSTRUCTION FOR A NET CHANGE IN THE AMOUNT OF $2,500. FUNDS ARE AVAILABLE IN DEPARTMENT 161, STREET DEPARTMENT, CAPITAL IMPROVEMENTS – STREETS FUNDS, MAIN STREET PROJECT ON THE QUESTION Alderman Pressly You usually don’t bring in to this committee something of this level, like $2,500. Is it because it’s a change order? Mayor Lozeau It is. That will bring it over the amount. Alderman Pressly This has to do with the Main Street which is connected to others coming up. Finance – 04/17/13 Page 28 Mayor Lozeau This is the mid-block crosswalk on the bridge. This is the curb work for that. We had hired this company some time ago and we’ve added work to it. Alderman Pressly So it’s just adding to what we’ve already authorized for that. Mayor Lozeau Correct. Alderman Pressly I see them working there. When do you think that’s going to be finished? Mayor Lozeau The mid-block crossing? We hope it will be finished in May. We’ll see; I don’t want to promise. Alderman Pressly Soon. Thank you. MOTION CARRIED From: Robert Gabriel, Purchasing Manager Re: Purchase of Concrete for Main Street Sidewalk Project (Value: $30,000) MOTION BY ALDERMAN CHASSE TO ACCEPT, PLACE ON FILE AND APPROVE THE PURCHASE IN THE AMOUNT OF $30,000 SPLIT BETWEEN REDIMIX AND GRANITE STATE CONCRETE. SOURCE OF FUNDING IS DEPARTMENT 161, STREET DEPARTMENT, SIDEWALK CONTRIBUTIONS – SE QUADRANT FUND, MAIN STREET SIDEWALK PROJECT Alderman Deane What PSI concrete are we using? They gave us prices for $4,000 and $3,000. Mayor Lozeau I can’t answer that question, Alderman Deane. I didn’t ask. Alderman Deane And the night delivery, was that Granite State that was pouring overnight, that rainy Sunday? Mayor Lozeau I can’t tell you which contractor for certain. We divide the work between the two. It was one of these two. They are the same two companies we’ve been working with and they’ve held their price. Finance – 04/17/13 Page 29 Alderman Deane So there’s no overnight price from RediMix? Mayor Lozeau Now that might answer the question. They don’t have an overnight price, perhaps it was the other company. Alderman Deane No, no. They won’t pour overnight? It seems kind of crazy to write down a street if you’re going to pour in the middle of the night. Mayor Lozeau I don’t know, Alderman Deane. I didn’t ask that question. We try not to pour in the middle of the night unless we have to. MOTION CARRIED From: Robert Gabriel, Purchasing Manager Re: Contract Award for the Purchase and Installation of Additional Main Street Crosswalks (Value: $26,000) MOTION BY ALDERMAN CHASSE TO ACCEPT, PLACE ON FILE AND AWARD THE CONTRACT TO SANTORELLI CONSTRUCTION IN THE AMOUNT OF $26,000. FUNDS ARE AVAILABLE IN DEPARTMENT 161, STREET DEPARTMENT; PRIOR YEAR ESCROWS FUND, MAIN STREET PROJECT ON THE QUESTION Alderman Pressly I thought we were going to wait and not install any other ones until we see if the one on the bridge works. Mayor Lozeau This is the one on the bridge. It probably shouldn’t have “s” in the memo. We are hiring a contractor to do the bridge for this mid-block crossing because of the herringbone pattern that we want to use in a high traffic area. The streets department is more comfortable having a company come and do that and not have our mason do it. That’s what this is. Alderman Pressly Just a further question, it probably should have been asked a long time ago. What did the fire department, has all this been cleared with them as far as getting through that spot in case of a fire? Mayor Lozeau They have had no objection to it. They’ve worked with us right along. This doesn’t take out any lanes. It doesn’t do any of that. As a matter of fact, one of the reasons for the zigzag in the crosswalk is to prevent them from happening, impacting those other lanes. Finance – 04/17/13 Page 30 Alderman Pressly What’s going to happen when we have our parades down the center of Main Street? Mayor Lozeau That’s an interesting question. I hadn’t thought about that. I’ll guess we’ll have to walk around the center unless we’re in the marching spirit and we want to march up on them and through it, although the mid-block crossing is going to have two gate panels in it with a “N” for Nashua on it. Alderman Pressly I always enjoy marching in the parade so I’ll have to decide if I go to the right or the left. Tough choice. We’ll have to watch which side everybody goes. Mayor Lozeau Maybe you can mix it up a little, keep them guessing. MOTION CARRIED From: Robert Gabriel, Purchasing Manager Re: Contract Award for Mine Falls Weed Harvesting Requested by Park Recreation (Value $29,500) MOTION BY ALDERMAN CHASSE TO ACCEPT, PLACE ON FILE AND AWARD THE CONTRACT TO AQUATIC CONTROL TECHNOLOGY IN AN AMOUNT NOT-TO-EXCEED $29,500. SOURCE OF FUNDING IS DEPARTMENT 177, PARKS & RECREATION, MINES FALLS PARK TRUST FUND, 54 PROPERTY SERVICES ON THE QUESTION Alderman Craffey Is this the annual weeding event in the river and the canal? Mayor Lozeau That’s correct. The harvesting event of the year. You don’t want to miss it. Alderman Pressly I assume this is the money from the cell tower that you spoke of before. Mayor Lozeau That’s correct. The Mine Falls Advisory Committee has okayed. Alderman Pressly This is the second year, and they predict it will take six years? Finance – 04/17/13 Page 31 Mayor Lozeau It can take up to six years. We have a six-year plan, a five to six-year plan. It’s my intention to budget these funds moving forward. Alderman Pressly Who sort of checks on this? Do we have people that know a lot about this type of weed? Mayor Lozeau We do. Alderman Pressly To monitor. The seeds are still on the ground, on the bottom of the river? Mayor Lozeau Apparently one of the problems with this particular evasive species is that pod gets under pretty deep and you don’t necessarily see it. I think the barbs on it help it to make its way down. It’s a little bit unpredictable but the report that’s attached to this speaks to how the tonnage is decreasing each year so that’s a good sign. Then the plan that was put together was put together in collaboration with the DES. I had to write down the job title for this particular individual who did the plan with us because I found the name very interesting. She is the Exotic Aquatic Plant Program Coordinator. I thought wouldn’t that be a fun job to have. What’s your job? I am the Exotic Aquatic Plant Program Coordinator. It fits on her business card, apparently, but no, we are seeing some success. Again this will be one of those things in the mix that we have to look at along with the other evasive species. This is only one of them. Alderman Deane Is it appropriate to use this expendable trust fund that was set up for the maintenance of Mine Falls Park to be doing work in the river? Mayor Lozeau Yes. Alderman Deane Says who? Mayor Lozeau On some level, Alderman Deane, I’m not sure you’re going to agree no matter who said, right? Alderman Deane No, that’s not my point, Mayor. It seems like we’re dipping into a lot of these. I thought this account was for the specific use of Mine Falls Park. The river seems to fall outside of the land. Finance – 04/17/13 Page 32 Mayor Lozeau It falls outside of the land, but it’s a part of the park, Alderman Deane. If you look at it, that’s one of the features. Alderman Deane Do we own the river? We own the park; we don’t own the river, right? Is that the way it is? Mayor Lozeau If we take that attitude, Alderman Deane, then I guess we shouldn’t be doing anything at all in the river. Alderman Deane Oh please. Mayor Lozeau No, but I mean, what do you mean, do we own the river? The park runs along the river. Alderman Deane I understand that, but the trust account was set up Mayor Lozeau There’s a significant amount of funds in that trust account that are being used from time to time in the park. We asked the question of the advisory committee and of others if this would be something that they would contribute. Alderman Deane Who are the others outside of the advisory committee? Mayor Lozeau The financial services division. Alderman Deane Did we ask the legal department? Mayor Lozeau I can’t recall if we asked the legal department. I believe that account has $170,000 in it. For them to contribute $29,500 for this Alderman Deane It has a lot more than that. Finance – 04/17/13 Page 33 Mayor Lozeau It might have a lot more than that. I’m just off the top of my head, Alderman Deane. I don’t have my book with me this evening. Alderman Deane Mine Falls Park Fund has $355,142. Mayor Lozeau Even better. Alderman Deane So let’s spend it, right? Mayor Lozeau Alderman Deane, it’s not about spending it. It’s about using it appropriately. Alderman Deane That’s my question. That’s my question. Mayor Lozeau People launch their boats from Mine Falls into the river. Alderman Deane My question is on the legality of using the funds for this purpose. That’s my question. It has nothing to do with people launching their boats. It’s just the legal end of whether it’s appropriate to be using these funds for that purpose. Mayor Lozeau The legal department reviews every memo that goes into the finance committee. Alderman Deane It doesn’t say them on here. Usually it says and the legal department. Mayor Lozeau They have reviewed this memo. Alderman Pressly I appreciate Alderman Deane’s concern. I have felt that this type of a weed, as I understand it, does affect the land. It clogs up the flow of the river. In my mind, I could connect it to Mine Falls Park and the quality of the park so I just liked to comment on that. Finance – 04/17/13 Page 34 Alderman Caron I can understand your concern, Alderman Deane, but I know when that was set up when they put the towers in and that money, anything that had to do with Mine Falls Park, whether it’s the shoreline or land, and I know we use a lot of money for paving and what have you, that is what it was for. Taking care of the weeds and stuff like that, I agree with Alderman Pressly. You want to make sure you take care of that so it doesn’t overgrow and come into the land. I understand your concern, but I know that was one of the things we talked about when that trust was put together. Monies would be used for Mine Falls Park and that advisory commission would do the best they could to use that money very diligently and very thoughtfully. I don’t have a problem with this at all. Alderman Deane I believe I legislated the authority of this money over to the Mine Falls Park Advisory Committee because the then superintendent wouldn’t buy them a shovel. Those people were over there with nothing trying to maintain the facility. Alderman Caron I remember. MOTION CARRIED From: Robert Gabriel, Purchasing Manager Re: Contract Award for FY13 Street Paving Program (Value: $797,755) MOTION BY ALDERMAN CHASSE TO ACCEPT, PLACE ON FILE AND AWARD THE CONTRACT TO SUNSHINE PAVING IN THE AMOUNT OF $797,755. FUNDS ARE AVAILABLE IN DEPARTMENT 161, STREET DEPARTMENT, CAPITAL IMPROVEMENTS FUNDS FY 11 PAVING (17,006), FY13 PAVING ($666,320), DEPARTMENT 169, WASTEWATER DEPARTMENT, WASTEWATER FUND, SEWER STRUCTURES/SEWER MAINTENANCE (30,337), DEPARTMENT 161, STREET DEPARTMENT, STREET PAVING ETF FUND, 61 SUPPLIES AND MATERIALS ($15,892) AND DEPARTMENT 177, PARKS & RECREATION DEPARTMENT, MINE FALLS PARK ETF FUND, 61 SUPPLIES AND MATERIALS ($68,200) ON THE QUESTION Alderman Deane Can you explain the work that’s being done in Mine Falls Park with this money? I saw the bid paving comparison. They showed crushed stone and then the machine paves. What area of the park is being paved. Mayor Lozeau The superintendent has requested the trails that he needs to have paved this year be done as part of this contract. I didn’t ask him which trails, but that’s the plan. Alderman Deane So we don’t know. Finance – 04/17/13 Page 35 Mayor Lozeau I don’t know the specific trails, that’s correct, just trails in Mine Falls Park. As part of the bid for the city paving, it allowed him to get a better price. Alderman Pressly Looking over the multiple funding sources, it looks like you pulled together money that was available and put it in the street paving program. No? It seems like that towards the end of the fiscal year that might have been a smart thing to do. I was going to complement you. Mayor Lozeau Thank you. I appreciate that, and I could take any of those I could get, but actually the funds that are identified here are funds that are actually doing some of the paving work. For instance, wastewater Alderman Pressly It’s there’s locations. Mayor Lozeau No, it’s actual structural repairs for manholes and catch basins. It’s that kind of work that‘s being done. When you look at park-rec that’s for the trails at Mine Falls. They’ve all been identified. When there has been opportunities in the past that there’s surplus money that we could move into paving, it is something that I would potentially do because we don’t put enough money into paving and sidewalks. Alderman Pressly I thought I remembered that being done before. Mayor Lozeau I’ve done it before. Alderman Deane You have $65,000 in contingency in here. Mayor Lozeau I do have $65,000 in contingency here. Alderman Deane Did the people look at the streets and stuff before they put the bids in? Mayor Lozeau The streets have been looked at, the lines have been videotaped. All of those things have been done. The $65,000 is not used in contingency. You will see it on our next round when we come back for paving for Fiscal 14. This money will be used on paving. Finance – 04/17/13 Page 36 Alderman Deane Not necessarily. Mayor Lozeau I’ve made that commitment to you every year that I’ve put the contingency in there, Alderman Deane, and I have not yet deviated from that commitment. Alderman Caron I had the same question that Alderman Deane did about Mine Falls Park because you list all the streets and how far. It would have been nice to see Mine Falls Park trails, how much of that. I don’t care what trails they were, but if it had listed how many feet of trails were being done, that would have answered my question. I was a little confused why parks-rec was listed when it doesn’t show anything, but I appreciate the answer. Mayor Lozeau I’ll ask the superintendent to provide us with the list and I’ll send it out to the finance committee. Alderman Caron Thank you. Mayor Lozeau You’re welcome. MOTION CARRIED From: Robert Gabriel, Purchasing Manager Re: Contract Award for Demolition of 44 Broad Street (Value: $61,500) MOTION BY ALDERMAN CHASSE TO ACCEPT, PLACE ON FILE AND, CONTINGENT UPON FHWA APPROVAL, AWARD THE CONTRACT TO FRANCESCO DEMOLITION IN THE AMOUNT OF $61,500. SOURCE OF FUNDING IS DEPARTMENT 160, PUBLIC WORKS ADMINISTRATION/ ENGINEERING; CAPITAL PROJECTS FUND, BROAD STREET PARKWAY ON THE QUESTION Alderman Deane Where’s all the debris going when the structure is torn down? This is the former wizard cycle , tattoo place, plywood ranch. Where is all that going to go? Mayor Lozeau It is going to the landfill. I believe that we had a conversation about that at the Board of Public Works. I think it’s just is all going to the landfill. Finance – 04/17/13 Page 37 Alderman Deane Are they paying a tipping fee? Mayor Lozeau I believe they are, but I’m not comfortable. No, we’re not. Mr. Griffin just told me no. We’ve had a couple that we’ve been talking about. Alderman Deane And this is being paid for out of the bond or out of the federal money or? Mayor Lozeau We try to spend the federal money first, so this is federal money. We have city money on the table as well for this project. Anything that we can save, we benefit from. MOTION CARRIED Mayor Lozeau The next item on the agenda, I’m going to withdraw it from the agenda. It’s not ready yet. There’s some inaccuracies in the document that’s been provided. It went out ahead of its time so if there’s no objection, I’m just going to withdraw it from the agenda and you’ll see it probably in a couple of months. It’s relating to the engineering services at Solid Waste. You might remember that last year was the first year we brought it in. I think the superintendent was a little quick to get it out and it needs a little work. We’re not doing all of the things that are in the contract. It’s not ready yet. I’m just going to leave with that. Is there any objection with it being withdrawn? Thank you. RECORD OF EXPENDITURES MOTION BY ALDERMAN CHASSE THAT THE FINANCE COMMITTEE HAS COMPLIED WITH THE CITY CHARTER AND ORDINANCES PERTAINING TO THE RECORD OF EXPENDITURES FOR THE PERIOD MARCH 29, 2013 TO APRIL 11, 2013 MOTION CARRIED PUBLIC COMMENT POSSIBLE NON-PUBLIC SESSION ADJOURNMENT MOTION BY ALDERMAN CRAFFEY TO ADJOURN MOTION CARRIED The Finance Committee meeting was adjourned at 8:15 p.m. Alderman Paul M. Chasse, Jr. Committee Clerk Notifying Nashua History • Nashua Police Department started the investigation for a notification system in March of 2012 • It was determined that other Departments also had existing notification needs and that this effort should be unified across the City • Notification System Committee was formed to bring expertise from all Departments into the decision-making: • Fire • Police • Emergency Management • Public Health • Public Works • Information Technology • Transit • Citizen Services • GIS • School District History • Narrowed investigation down to two vendors in August of 2012 • CodeRED • Blackboard Connect • Both systems provided similar functionality and capabilities • CodeRED had a background in emergency notifications, where Blackboard Connect was based on the school environment • An effort was made to add citywide services to the School District’s existing system, but based Blackboard’s quote, there was no financial or user benefit for having a unified District/City system at this time • In January 2013, CodeRED was decided unanimously by the committee to provide service after calling references around the region and participating in many product demonstrations CodeRED • Provides both emergency and non-emergency notification capabilities • Alerts can be originated by officials from a web browser or from a smart phone • Alerts can be originated from many different departments depending on the type of notification • The City can utilize the system for internal notifications with City employees and partners through private groups • System can be used as much as we would like with no limit on number of alerts per year or users Database • Landline phone numbers will be populated into system from Day 1 • Citizens and businesses have the option to use a “self-service” portal to add their cell phone numbers and e-mail addresses into the database. • This portal can be used by the citizen at any time to add or remove their information • In addition, citizens can opt-in to different kinds of non- emergency notifications based on their interests • Significant outreach effort will be required to promote the service to cell phone users Infrastructure • Redundant infrastructure to ensure system reliability during a disaster • CodeRED owns & manages the entire system (does contract with 3rd party vendors to provide service) • Capable of sending millions of voice calls per hour, but will load test FairPoint’s system prior to implementation to determine rate • CodeRED’s GIS system is compatible with the City’s allowing for interoperability Many Paths Landline Voice Cellphone Voice Text Message E-mail Twitter Facebook Android & Apple CodeRED App  Uses: • Emergency notifications to businesses & non-City • Severe Weather and Winter schools Storms • Trash delays • Missing children & seniors • Roadwork affecting traffic • Hazardous materials • Transit schedule incidents requiring shelter- modifications in-place or evacuations • Notifications of meetings • Shelter & Warming/Cooling • General City updates Center locations • Internal alerting for City • Fugitive in the area, active facility action plans shooter, or other law enforcement functions • EOC & special operations teams activation • Road closures • Closed city blocks during VIP visits Implementation • Notification System Committee will be working over the next few months to finalize policies on alert origination points and alert templates • Accounts will be created for alerting officials in the City • City employees will provided information about how they can register for internal notifications • City will work with CodeRED to start advertising system to populate database with additional cell phone and email addresses • System will go live on July 1 2013