[0:01] Good evening. I will call to order the Finance Committee meeting on August 31st, 2026 at 630 p.m. We have one item on the agenda this evening. Communication from the mayor. Proposed order for the acquisition of 40 log drive. With that, I'll begin with order number 26-108. Communication from the mayor. Proposed order for the acquisition of 40 log drive.

[0:29] that the mayor is authorized to enter into an agreement, to acquire any necessary interest in the real property note as 40 lock drive,

[0:39] Maubro Mass for municipal purposes, including a new fire station, by a friendly eminent domain taking for the sum of $4,000,000,000, $50,000,

[0:49] subject to the terms and conditions of the agreement and any applicable laws in the following conditions completion of any required

[0:59] by due diligence and favorable vote of the City Council authorizing the acquisition of the property as referenced in the agreement.

[1:07] And furtherance, therefore, the City Council by a two-thirds vote of all its members hereby authorize an appropriation of $5,092,666 to provide funding for

[1:21] the acquisition of real property for a new west side fire station, including any and all damages.

[1:27] services cost relating their third to and any design or construction costs associated with the new west side fire station and to meet the set appropriation by reappropriate repropriating $5 million $92,666.

[1:44] dollars, currently in land acquisition account number 193-0-0-0-0-6-581-2-0, to be available for all such purposes.

[1:57] With that, I will also read the letter submitted by the mayor.

[2:02] Dear Council President Ossing and Councillors, it is with immense pride that I submit this request to you in close for your approval.

[2:11] And acceptance is an order regarding an agreement to acquire the property of 40-log

[2:15] drive model.

[2:17] This order authorizes entering into an agreement relative to the friendly taking

[2:22] of the property based upon terms negotiated with the property owner.

[2:26] Once due diligence is complete and satisfactory for the agreement, I anticipate

[2:32] requesting a future vote to authorize actual taking of the property and adoption

[2:37] of an order of taking which would be recorded at the registry of deeds.

[2:43] Also, included for your approval as part of the order is a request to change the purposes

[2:49] of the funds in the land acquisition account number 193-0006-58120 to reflect the appropriation

[2:58] of funds to be all encompassing for a new fire station project including land acquisition

[3:03] and design and construction and not limited as it is currently set up.

[3:09] The approval and this acquisition and reallocated funds will streamline the process of building of a much needed west side fire station.

[3:18] There is much work that needs to be done, but this is a massive step forward towards meeting the needs and demands of our growing community to ensure public safety and response times for the west side of the city.

[3:32] This milestone could not have happened without the help and collaboration of my office with West Side Fire Station Committee,

[3:40] legal department, both police and fire department, DPW, MEDC, and the support of the City Council.

[3:47] I look forward to discussing any questions you may have about the acquisition of this important property,

[3:52] sincerely, J. Christian, Dumas, mayor.

[3:55] And at that point, Mr. Mayor, if you wish to bring any one of your team,

[4:00] Also, a reminder to the Finance Committee, this would be voting on two votes this evening on this agenda item.

[4:08] Good evening, Mr. Mayor, good evening, Mr. Solicitor,

[4:13] good evening.

[4:15] I don't know what you can kind of go through on the friendly land taking.

[4:23] And we are any part of the agreement that you wish to share.

[4:27] So we are hopefully entering into agreement to acquire 40 lock drive for the fire station

[4:36] and if council approves it, then we can start doing our due diligence with testing the

[4:41] land and moving forward to see what that will encompass to move forward to actually the

[4:46] design and then obviously the building of the property.

[4:49] So what is before you would just need the approval to enter in this agreement so we can take

[4:55] the next steps moving forward.

[4:56] Thank you, Mr. Chair, and yeah, we're all very happy to have this becoming down.

[5:01] Streamlining this, we've all had an opportunity looking at the committee years ago

[5:06] for the West Side Fire Station and appropriate these funds.

[5:10] At this point, I will open it up to the Finance Team.

[5:13] If we had any questions or any Councils have any questions, Council vital.

[5:17] Thank you, Mr. Chair.

[5:19] This is the first piece of property that since I've become City Councilor, I'm not familiar

[5:23] I made it with the term friendly eminent domain.

[5:26] Eminent domain, I always thought was the city wanted it and took it.

[5:31] What is a friendly eminent domain?

[5:33] It means that they agreed to it.

[5:34] We don't have to go to court, basically.

[5:36] So it's just an agreement between the sellers returning and us.

[5:40] So it's a friendly taking rather than us coming and saying we demand this piece of property.

[5:45] Thank you, Mr. Mayor.

[5:46] Thank you, Mr. Chair.

[5:47] Thank you, Councillor Vitam.

[5:49] Councillor Orl.

[5:50] Thank you, actually, I asked this question earlier to, it's confusing, excuse me.

[5:55] It's confusing to see two different numbers in here, and the mayor explained it, but

[6:00] maybe he could explain it for the general public just so they know what we're appropriating

[6:04] versus 4 million versus 5 million.

[6:07] I would ask that maybe the mayor explain what he pretty much explained to me, just so

[6:11] the general public knows as well.

[6:12] For the formalities, the purchase price of the property and then the $5 million is what we have allocated to actually

[6:19] for mitigation money that City Council have been able to

[6:23] accumulate over the years to designate to the West Side Fire Station.

[6:28] And if I may, will that account still remain in effect with the

[6:31] $1 million in there for future costs such as the building costs?

[6:35] That's what you were supposed to vote on. That's why we're changing the verbiage.

[6:39] So it will be allocated to a fire station.

[6:42] It's not connected to a specific address as you previously, it is now currently.

[6:48] Thank you for the clarification.

[6:50] Thank you, Mr. Chair.

[6:51] Councillor, do you say that?

[6:55] Thank you very much, Mr. Chair.

[6:56] Just a general question and procedure, are we going to go through the entire contract page by page

[7:01] or are we just doing general summaries?

[7:04] No.

[7:04] Okay.

[7:05] Thank you for that.

[7:06] I appreciate that.

[7:07] I just figured that some of the things that we've kind of seen on some of the other things

[7:11] before that we really didn't have to go through the total agreement.

[7:15] Yeah, no, that's fine.

[7:16] I do have a couple of questions, so I just wasn't concerned about the process of that.

[7:20] So I appreciate the clarification.

[7:22] Just a couple of things.

[7:24] One of the things I noticed is in a couple of sections of the contract, items are eliminated, right?

[7:33] Intentionally omitted, I think is the appropriate term.

[7:35] Why is that so?

[7:37] Sure. Through the chair. So sometimes when you're going back and forth, negotiating an agreement, which has many paragraphs and an order, you know, A, B, C, one, two, three, four, numbering system.

[7:47] Rather than, and let's say as particular sentence is just coming out, there's not going to be whatever section D anymore.

[7:55] A lot of times you'll see it'll just, rather than re-number everything and watching out for references within internally to the document, just put the phrase intentionally omitted.

[8:04] Okay, okay, so the biggest argument point and many of these was intentionally admitted, which is fun

[8:10] Is this something that is going to be cleared for the last version to get rid of those or is it is the final draft?

[8:19] Continued to have intentionally admitted

[8:20] Do you sure so the final draft will have it as you see it and that's it. That's common. Yeah, okay

[8:27] The other question I had specifically was with item 19

[8:34] and just to be clear, I'm in total support of this.

[8:37] So this is, this is, you know, just going now, trying to get clarification.

[8:43] But city agrees not to record this agreement or any memoriam, and there are at any registered

[8:49] deeds and owners option, any tent recordage of one of this agreement, Ellen Boyd, in owner's

[8:54] sole discretion.

[8:57] I thought when we purchased it, we have to record it, so what's going on here?

[9:00] Sure, so what that paragraph is saying is this actual agreement itself would not get recorded at the registry of deeds, and that's pretty common, right?

[9:10] But the actual, the order of taking that would transfer ownership that will get recorded at the registry.

[9:16] Okay, so it would be a separate document that actually does the recording in the deeds, not this contract.

[9:22] Correct.

[9:22] Okay, thank you for that, that actually makes it much clearer.

[9:28] And it's for the first time, I just want to make a comment, I've never seen a reference in party three,

[9:33] sorry, section three into section seven, jumping ahead like that.

[9:37] But in section seven, what would those, the owner representations that the owner is full powered

[9:47] of attorney, this is just regular boilerplate

[9:52] that came up as far as contracts and agreements.

[9:56] For section seven.

[9:57] Yes.

[9:58] Some of those are pretty common that you would see.

[10:00] Other of those have been negotiated

[10:02] as part of this transaction.

[10:04] There are things, representations are things

[10:06] that the owner is putting on the record essentially

[10:09] going into the transaction.

[10:10] Okay, okay, okay.

[10:12] That's great.

[10:14] Thank you for the clarification.

[10:14] I do appreciate that.

[10:18] I just had questions about, now you said you're going to do diligence to test the land, test the soil.

[10:26] If something is found that cannot easily be remediated, would that cancel the sale?

[10:33] Yes, so the city would have the option to review the situation at that point in the 60-day period, so it depends obviously on the details of what that would be.

[10:44] Thank you, thank you, Council.

[10:48] Any further questions for the finance committee, Mr. President?

[10:53] So, I just want to expand on what Council Orham mentioned in the vote that the council is taking.

[10:59] So, the changing of the order for the $5 million, if you recall, in 2022, we authorized the prior

[11:05] administration, a land acquisition of $5 million to purchase 100 lock drive.

[11:12] And we've been carrying that in our capital account forever since 2022, all right.

[11:19] So the discussions with the mayor and the solicitor and the finance team in order to make it appropriate to now,

[11:28] we don't want 100, we're now going to pursue 40 lock drive and that lot works, the price is less.

[11:36] So the reason that portion of the orders before you is to say that $5 million

[11:42] that was dedicated to 100 lock drive is not going to be dedicated to buying westside

[11:49] fire station somewhere, which is good.

[11:53] In this particular case, if this all works out, that's an additional $1 million

[11:57] that would come under, all right, but it will allow the mayor and his team to do design

[12:06] nine work, other things without having to come back to the council.

[12:09] Separate from that mitigation money that we've been tucking away,

[12:15] the West Side Fire Station mitigation account has almost $4 million in it.

[12:21] And that's from Green District, phases one and two, that's about $2.8 million.

[12:28] Feson Hill retirement community, $1 million was not drive $50,000 pending.

[12:34] And in other words, projects that we've approved, but they haven't broke ground yet.

[12:38] Because remember, just because we approve a project doesn't mean it's going to get built.

[12:41] We've got the other two buildings at Lizard Drive, once for $63,000 and once for $74,000.

[12:50] We have the $74,000 one, but it's in that quasi state before free cash is certified.

[12:55] So we'll see that once free cash gets certified.

[12:58] Green district, phase is three and four, that's an additional $600,000 each.

[13:02] So that's $1.3 million more that's coming into that West Side Stabilization account.

[13:08] So go $4 million plus $1.3, or up to $5.3 million, okay?

[13:14] The AIMS Forestry Project had $90,000 coming in, but it's in court right now.

[13:22] So we may not see that, depending on how the court case goes.

[13:26] Other projects that are before us, the campus rezoning, the Forestry Residential Ovalay,

[13:32] Those are all opportunities to put more money to the west side fire station

[13:37] So again, we're talking the fire station bond will be about 35 million dollars. It's gonna it won't be 35 million dollars

[13:44] I'll tell you that right now. It'll be something around there

[13:47] All right, that impact is gonna be a hundred forty five dollars per year to the additional

[13:52] To the average taxpayer

[13:54] All right, but right now before us what we want to be able to do is like we can none of that matters if we don't buy a parcel land and build a

[14:01] So I encourage the finance committee to approve the Mayas Order, which does two things, allows the Mayas to proceed to finalize the purchase and sale agreement, do all they do diligence, and change the order that fixes it from 100 lock drive to basically buy staff associated with a Westside Fire Station.

[14:22] You have two chunks of money, five million, which is really a land acquisition and the next

[14:26] or a million for what the May is going to do, and then the stabilization account that has

[14:30] currently four million with 1.3 pending coming, assuming May build, and then who knows what else

[14:36] if the other projects come forward and what the appetite of the council is for mitigation,

[14:40] even more money. That would be used to offset the bond for the fire station, which is good.

[14:46] I mean, we've been doing our homework slowly trying to chip away because at $145 per year,

[14:51] There's not assuming any of that money gets applied to reduce the bond.

[14:55] So that's good news, but again, I encourage the Finance Committee.

[15:00] To look favorable on the mayor's order, which again, does those two things, allows the mayor to go ahead and finalize the purchase and sale, and change the order. The mayor will be coming back to us for authorizing of the taking, and in order that actually transfers money to buy the parcel, assuming the council and the due diligence goes in the favor that the city is hoping for. Thank you, Mr. Chair. Would we ask for if this goes through, would we ask for a suspension for

[15:29] the next meeting?

[15:31] I mean, I'll look to the mayor, but I think that would be appropriate because the timing is

[15:34] to get this move.

[15:35] Again, remember, the goal was to get this done before the end of the year, so we can start the

[15:40] design phase and get the fire station moving, because, again, you're talking building a project,

[15:45] and a building takes 18 to 24 months, so these tax impacts, as two years plus down the road,

[15:54] One of the ban Ryan comes up with, but it's still a ways away.

[16:00] But as the mayor said, this is a big step to get, I was going to say, massive.

[16:05] Step is at the end of the day.

[16:07] This is big, because until we find a spot to put it, we can't do anything.

[16:10] So that's why it's key.

[16:12] Thank you, thank you, thank you, Mr. President, for that information.

[16:14] Council vital, and then I'll go to councilor.

[16:17] Thank you, Mr. Chair.

[16:18] I'd like to make a motion to allow the mayor the sum of $4,000,000,000 to $1,000,000

[16:24] subject to all the terms and conditions that we talked about before in order to purchase the property at 40 log drive.

[16:30] Could I comment on that?

[16:32] Yes, absolutely, Mr. President.

[16:33] If you could, Council Vile, just make a motion to approve the order as written by the mayor.

[16:37] I think that would be simpler.

[16:38] Thank you, and that would be separate.

[16:39] My main talk, once time, told me that I was a little verbose, so I was trying to keep it small to begin with.

[16:44] But in order to, yes, let's make a motion to approve the motion as a written.

[16:50] Thank you, because most have been made in second to approve order number 26-109808,

[16:59] which authorizes the mayor to enter into an agreement to acquire any necessary

[17:04] interest in the real property known as 40-lock drive, Marble Mass, for municipal

[17:09] purposes, including a new fire station by a friendly and minute domain taking, for

[17:14] some of $4,000,000, $50,000, subject to the terms and condition of the agreement

[17:19] and any applicable laws and the following conditions.

[17:23] Also, motion to approve the appropriation of 5,092,666 dollars to provide funding for

[17:34] the acquisition of real property for the new West Side Fire Station, including any and all damages,

[17:40] services costs relating there too, and any design construction costs associated with the new West Side Fire Station.

[17:46] and to meet set appropriation by re-appropriating $5,092,666 dollars currently in land acquisition

[17:56] account, number 193-0006-58120 to be available for all such purposes.

[18:05] Motion has been made and seconded in any further discussion.

[18:09] Mr. Chair, earlier you had mentioned that we're going to have two votes.

[18:11] Is now we're going to combine the two?

[18:13] Yes, so my thinking was that you said approve the order, so that was the order, right, Mr. President?

[18:22] That's correct.

[18:23] That's correct, Councilor.

[18:24] Thank you.

[18:25] And thank you.

[18:26] I was going to actually jump ahead to Councilor Vito, but that's fine.

[18:29] I was in agreement with exactly what he was asking and motioning.

[18:32] So I'm all set.

[18:34] Thank you.

[18:34] The motion has been made in second, no further discussion, all in favor.

[18:38] One, two, three, four, it carries.

[18:41] I will entertain a motion, and that's okay to have a suspension.

[18:46] Thank you, carries with a suspension.

[18:48] With that said, motion, I'll entertain a motion to adjourn.

[18:52] You sure you want to adjourn?

[18:53] It's a summer night, we could stay a little longer.

[18:55] We can talk about things.

[18:57] Motion to adjourn.

[18:58] Motion is debate and seconded to adjourn, all in favor, one, two, three, four, five.

[19:03] We are adjourned at 6.49 p.m., thank you.

[19:08] you find it.

City Council Finance Committee Meeting

Transcript