Providence Committee on Finance-Tuesday, November 26, 2024-5:30 PM
Call to Order and Roll Call
Chair Helen Anthony called the Committee on Finance meeting to order and established a quorum with roll call. Welcoming remarks and staff introductions were made.
Item 1 - Continuance of Resolution
The committee considered a request to continue Agenda Item 1 due to the sponsor's absence. A motion to continue the item was made and approved.
Item 2 - Resolution Granting Tax Abatement
Chair Anthony addressed a resolution regarding a tax abatement on 16th Street sponsored by Councilor Harris, who was absent. The committee voted to continue the item to the next scheduled meeting.
Items 3-5 - Presentation on ARPA and COVID-19 Equity Funds Reinvestment
City administration staff presented on reallocating remaining ARPA and COVID-19 equity funds toward revenue recovery to help cover budget shortfalls for Providence Public Schools. Committee members asked questions regarding specific line items, contracting timelines, and reporting requirements.
Item 3 - Approval as Amended
The committee opened discussion and moved to recommend approval of Item 3 as amended regarding ARPA fund reallocation. Following member remarks on the budget situation, the motion passed unanimously.
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Good evening. My name is Helen Anthony. I'm chair of the committee on finance, and I'm calling to order our regular meeting on Tuesday, 11/26/2024 at 05:33PM. Madam clerk is complete. All the vote.
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Chairman Anthony? Present. Vice Chairman Taylor? Who's active? Senator Inglewood?
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Present. Councilwoman Graves?
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Present.
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Councilor Sanchez?
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Pardon.
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Four present. One absent. You have a form. Wonderful. Thank you so much.
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I'd like to welcome the solicitor from city solicitor's office. Thank you very much for joining us. Of course, you are through the year of Saint Donna and our wonderful folks. Thank you so much for staffing us tonight. We've had several requests from counselors to continue.
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First of from counselor to continue item agenda night number one. If you could please read that. Item number. Resolutions above the decimal reader, trained for common beliefs. Okay.
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Unfortunately, he is not able to attend this evening and ask that we continue this. So I'd love a motion. Motion to continue in
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a second. I have a
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motion to continue by councilor Anderbaugh, seconded by councilor Graves. All in favor? Aye. Aye. All in favor?
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Madam clerk, would you please read item number two? Item two. Resolution granting and tax obtain from Joseph Kathy of her 16th Street. And, again, we had a request. This was a resolution put forth by counselor Harris, Mary Mae Harris, and she also was unable to attend.
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I am going to continue this until our next meeting, which is on December third fifteenth. Next week. Yes. Okay. May I have a motion?
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I'm sorry.
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May I motion? I'll second. I'll second.
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If I pass the. All in favor? Aye. All opposed. Okay.
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With that, we are going to move to we're gonna ask for a motion to waive the readings of items number three through five. Second. Okay. Motion made by counselor Andrew Ball, seconded by counselor Sanchez. All in favor?
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Aye. All opposed? And I will call on a group, whoever's here to testify. Could say three of you here, but it's probably a little scared you in. Mister Benjamin, do you bear on the plaintiff's plea for that testimony about him did was true about truth.
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Thank you.
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State your names and your titles for the record. Thank you so much. Now I'd like to have a motion to discuss items three through five together, and then we'll we'll vote separately. Thank you. You.
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So moved.
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Alright. Motion made by councilor Anderson, seconded by councilor Sanchez. All in favor? Aye. Aye.
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All opposed. Well, thank you so much for coming. I'm gonna turn the floor over. First. We do a substitute, which is the three.
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So I'm assuming these are all in order, Madam clerk, the first one for item number three, the second one for item number four, and the third one for item four. And so may I mark them exhibit one, two, and three? Substitutions. Substitution. Substitution.
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Pardon.
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Thank you, madam chair. It would be possible. We have a PowerPoint presentation here. We print it out. Would it be possible to pass this out and then we'll mark it as an executive if possible?
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Alright.
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Madam chair, counselors, thank you for your time. Just to begin, I'm hoping to weigh out the donors presentation and the information I hope we can today. I think, firstly, I think, give the committee the sense of our process and the steps we've taken past few recent months to provide infrastructure. And, secondly, the goal is to provide somewhat of an overview of where our the work stands today, the progress made, and updates from some key programs. So lastly, my goal is to give this committee a sense of our proposal for reinvesting in remaining funds, where those funds are coming from and why, and my colleague, Wall Street has been done with the reinvestments for for the city.
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So just starting on slide two here. As I mentioned, I want to give a quick sense of just the process and the work we're covering obviously been doing over the past few weeks and months. So leading up to this point, we've engaged in a pretty thorough exercise across city hall, and we've reviewed all ordinance lines related to our capital award. The goal was to determine the status of the funds and identify potential areas of reinvestment. And it's something we've been on isolation.
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There's a collaborative process. It's one that's been done in collaboration with a wide range of city departments, including the staff and the council office. We've been holding monthly and, in many cases, biweekly meetings with department leads and project leads overseeing various projects funded by our. And the goal of those meetings has been several. One is to continue their employment departments of our upcoming treasury deadlines compliance related issues.
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The others to talk to project updates and planning on contracting and spending funds. And so we've been meeting with and in contact with at least nine different departments about this process to make sure the city is ultimately meeting their interest as part of that. And coming out of that exercise, we've identified 11 ordinance lines which are going to the investment, either full or partial. And as part of that same process, we're happy to report that we've identified about 60 ordinance lines that are either fully spent or attractively spent. And so these are the lines where funds are fully expended where we have a very clear path to spending down those funds, or we have contracts in place, or we have box awards issued with contracts being drafted by a law department.
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And what this slide here tells me is that the city has been able to plan, design, and partner with organizations executing on a various extensive number of projects to ensure that the funds associated with those projects have an impact in the city's residents and, in many cases, the city's residents of high risk need. The city has invested its award in high impact areas represented in the low, including economic development, building resilient neighborhoods, city services and infrastructure, youth and education, and housing. And those are all outlined here in the world.
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May I just stop you for a second just so we're here? Of course. So the green the green is the ones that are fully spent. That is correct. Gotcha.
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Okay. And the ones that aren't headed by the interview, these are
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Well, not fully spent now. We have plans in place. They've either been contracted or were have a plan to get area of contract by the interview. Okay. Okay.
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Excellent.
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I I just wanted to stop to make sure that you all were not were following along. Absolutely. Yeah. And
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on the next slide, on slide four, in addition to the work being done to bring the general market public projects to fruition, we also want to provide the submitting with a sense of the already programmed work being done as part of
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the COVID nineteen equities program. And so
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since the passing of that order, city has allocated, planned, developed, and programmed in contract with a substantial portion of the funds from the COVID nineteen activities program in line with the goals of the Providence Municipal Reparations Commission. And so the city has been able to develop programming and contract outside partners to carry out the work that's prescribed in '17 of those lines. As of today, the city has contracted $6,123,540.08 worth of projects and has spent over 5,000,000. There's approximately 900,000 worth more in development and will be contracted shortly. But, like I said, just over $7,000,000 in the that will be contracted in development.
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And on the next slide, on slide five
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I'm sorry. Just wanna catch up with you. Please. So slide four Yep. Are is all the contracted work and through the vendor.
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That is correct.
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And all all encumbered and spent. That is correct. That's correct. Alright. Now we're on five.
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Thank you. Sorry. No. No. Totally aside.
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And just to note, there is an additional about 900,000 that is in the final stages of the year getting contracts drafted by the legal department. We have box awards issued. And so this total amount all said and done by December 31 should be just in
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point of $7,000,000. Okay. Thank you. Alright. I think it's just taking me one minute to Yeah.
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Totally. Absorb your report, and then I'll report back to you. Okay.
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Not beautiful.