Good evening. My name is Helen Anthony. I'm the chair of the committee on finance. I'm calling to order a regular meeting. I'd to say 09:14 at 05:36PM.
Madam clerk, could you please call the roll?
Chairwoman Anthony? Present. Vice chairman, James Taylor?
Councilor Stu, everyone? I'm here. Once the woman at the. Okay.
With that, I'm gonna ask to motion
to waive the reading agenda items on on 03:00. Present. Motion made up now through the remainder of the month. 75 points of grades. All in favor.
That's a lot. It's on the. Okay. With that, I think we are gonna do a little out of order this evening. I'm so sorry.
So, madam chair, would you would you prefer to have everybody sworn in at the same time? Because I don't know who you might call upon. I mean, similar to last evening,
there was quite a few that were here,
and it's a lot of group, but I think
I think it would too. Thank you so much. Okay. If we could have everyone stand who's gonna test Larry.
Lawrence Mancini, chief financial officer, city of Providence.
Sarah, deputy finance director, and vice officer.
Thank you so much, everyone. Thank you, chief. We appreciate that.
Okay. I think then if if we are going to take office of sustainability first. There's to do with some match.
Then maybe, like, for the
time being, we will sign down, but let me.
I'm joined today by director, Priscilla Galatulos, and mister David Ruggiero, the city's energy, nation, and
resiliency administrator. Is that right? Right? You did. Okay.
Total proposed expenditures in the sustainability department in the fiscal year of 2026 are $826,012. This represents a $69,553 decrease from the fiscal twenty twenty five budget at $809,105,545 dollars or 7.76% reduction. This
a revenue generated, but the revenues are reported and repeat by the power portion of the budget. So when you get to the later slides, we will see the $1,500,000 of energy credits reflected later in this presentation. However, all salaries associated with this department are budgeted in the sustainability department. Fiscal year three twenty five salaries were $487,456. In fiscal twenty twenty six, the budget was adjusted for the following items.
Cost of living increases totaling $8,784. Debt increases were $6,408. There was a position defunded. That was a sustainability policy associate position, and the salary for that position was $72,453. Additionally, there's been a request to increase the salary for the deputy director from a a 16 step five to a 19 step three with an annual cost of $8,119.
For a team of those total salaries in fiscal twenty sixth of $438,314. When we look at the operational fixed and discretionary costs, we see that the first discretionary cost is fees marked classified. This is parking and professional development for the office. There is postage expense, which is a new line item in this budget, but it relates to a mailing that's required for the mayor ordinance. Dues and subscriptions have been budgeted at 2,000 $6,215, and this is professional memberships for the sustainability staff.
Printing also has a modest increase, and that is to print Vero related materials for that mainly. Private contractors is considered a fixed cost. That's budgeted $63,500. This is translation services, the cost for URA Energy as well as climate justice plan updates. And just under the supplies category, there are grant expenditures listed under discretionary at $117,554.
What's important to note is a lot of that grant expenditure line or external grant matches. So it is in the discretionary category, but should we lose that funding, the funding for the program would also disappear. It includes funding for youth commissioner stipends and stormwater program engagement as well. But, again, the vast majority of it is a brand match or grant matches. And the last discretionary line item are miscellaneous expenses, which encompass their office supplies as well as public meeting costs, which are space, food, and childcare.
Would you like me to start, Sachin, or continue?
Think we'll I think we'll continue because this is important. I think first, we'll see this next morning. For sure. Definitely.
It's a major component of their operations. Moving into the Q and A power and light portion of the budget, this is an appropriate thing you wanna consider relaming as we continue. And then you'll see that we've moved more than heat, power, and light into here. It's encompassing almost all of our utilities vendors, and so it may be more appropriate to call us something other than those. This is where the revenue was generated in the sustainability department.
In fiscal year twenty twenty six, we have budgeted $1,500,000 for the sale of energy credits. While this does appear as an increase over last year, in fiscal year twenty twenty five, the energy credits were budgeted as a reduction in expenditures. So it's a little bit of a difference in presentation, not that this is a new revenue. K? The total expenditures in this budget are all lumped together.
So the total of all of the utility cost is $7,557,537 at the time this post budget was was presented. However, the breakdown for these line items are on on slide eight. So you can see the 7.5 no. $7,600,000 is comprised of solar energy incentive for energy services, which have been offset by solar energy credit cost or program revenues. The natural gas supply has been budgeted $435,029, gas service, electric supply.
Again, it's just kind of the breakdown of what makes up the $7,500,000. However, I do encourage everybody to turn this slide tonight because as we know, we are living in a very tumultuous market, and our data material is phenomenal in monitoring these things. And so what he has discovered since we've proposed the budget is that the market has indicated we may need to increase this proposed budget before adopting a final budget for fiscal year 2026. And I'm sure David can dig into more of his rationale behind these increases, but he has done a very good job of, you know, recommending an adjustment now by category as well as a description of why that adjustment is reviewed at the. Okay.
It's a lot to talk about. Like, we think that we we have some of the other experts right here. And What is your title?
Administrative. Energy and resiliency administrator.
That just doesn't seem right. But, anyway, I'm just. We we came up with all
the titles of operations. Oh, okay. Well, that would
just add to you then. Still director sustainability. Director direct. So Yeah. Thank you very much.
I appreciate it. Yeah. Okay. So if there's another question, if you would like to talk about I I have one. Alright.
So if we could just talk about the about the funding sustainability policy associated. Where was that in the in your org chart?
So it'd be orthstar, that would have been directly under WCR sustainability kind of prompt. Okay. And can
I'm sorry. Can you tell me why this that's been refunded? Mhmm.
Yeah. So first, just starting off by acknowledging, as you all know, like, the challenging budget that we're facing, we're looking holistically at the decision that has to be made. That is what's called for the administration to propose those department cuts to have not only to sustainability, but also across other departments. So that is why you see that position really defunded. But I do wanna go ahead and say that taking the time in terms of the teams that we've had over the past year, we've accomplished a lot.
And so Peter was a parent policy associate, has been tremendous in her contributions to what we've accomplished over the year. So it's no indication on her performance. And she has been particularly instrumental in furthering the implementation of the climate justice plan with initiatives like the resilience hub and really working at increasing the community resilience through the lens of community meaningful collaboration, with partners on the ground, also doing policy work on the compound, the platform master plan, and really increasing our ability to expand our capacity through strategic partnerships outside of the office and outside of city hall in terms of how we fulfill cost saving strategies, right, to do the efficiency, to do the center stormwater. I mean, with that said, we are looking on building our successes. Looking part of
our interdepartmental approach and how we work with other departments that are here today with public property, the mayor scheme in particular policy, reporting policy resilience, and really looking at we know what our statutory requirements are. We know what our priorities are. So Yep. Planning for for for the work does
