The Chelsea City Council meets again Monday, September 21 at 7 p.m., one week after a meeting that sent its three largest items to committee. None of them is back yet. The agenda posted Thursday has no unfinished business, one second reading and a set of smaller money orders, plus a first look at what happened to the World Cup budget.
The World Cup money
In January the council put $125,000 of free cash into a “FIFA World Cup Community Events” account, part of a 16-item supplemental appropriation adopted 10 to 0 on January 28. The city used it for the Fiesta Futbol watch parties in Chelsea Square, viewing rights and police details. On Monday City Manager Fidel Maltez asks the council to repurpose what is left: $40,438.51, to be renamed “Chelsea Square Community Events” and spent on future events there. That leaves $84,561.49 as the cost of the summer’s watch parties, unless the packet, which had not been posted as of Thursday night, shows otherwise.
The rest of the City Manager’s list
212 Chestnut Street. An update on an affordable homeownership project at that address. The communication is informational; no order is attached.
Rats. Maltez asks for a subcommittee meeting on the city’s Rat Abatement Program. Which subcommittee, and when, will be up to the council.
Ice cream. Eastern Minerals, Inc. donated $939.20 worth of ice cream to the Police Department for Chelsea Day. The council has to vote to accept it, as it does every gift.
Prior-year bills, again. The $26,546.88 in unpaid bills from past fiscal years that the council referred to Ways and Means last Monday is back as a new order, 26F50. The September 14 version said the bills dated from FY21, FY23, FY25 and FY26; the clerk said FY21 was a typo. The new order says FY25 and FY26. The bills themselves are described here.
The parking lot. An order moving $270,599.66 out of two FY2027 capital projects, $96,058.82 from Annual Roadway and Sidewalk Improvements and $174,540.84 from Roadway Safety and Traffic Control Enhancements, into the FY2025 City Hall and Senior Center Parking Lot Paving project. The order says the money is “no longer needed” in the roadway accounts “after alternate funding was received.” It does not say what the parking lot now costs in total.
Second reading: the appointments
The one item carried over from last week is the slate of appointments the council moved to second reading on Councillor Deron Hines’ motion. If approved Monday: Monica Elias-Orellana returns to the Board of Library Trustees; Giancarlo Saldana and Charlotte Dumont join the Historical Commission; Sara Nasah joins the Planning Board; Joseph LaFond joins the Conservation Commission; Yuliana Padilla, Brianna Flores Pineda, Sadiel Hernandez, Lily Castro Reyes and Jeymi Menendez join the Youth Commission, where Yurie Lee, Nina Young Lee, Catherine Hernandez, Hazel Hatleberg, Kendra Morales and Madyson Chea are reappointed; and Raymond Morales returns to the Chelsea Housing Authority Board of Commissioners for five more years. Council President Roberto Jimenez-Rivera asked councillors last week to reach out to the appointees before the vote.
Committee report
Councillor Norieliz DeJesus reports on the Housing and Community Development subcommittee’s September 14 meeting, held at 6 p.m. before the regular session. The topic was Jimenez-Rivera’s order 2605 on expanding abutter notification requirements for new developments. City Solicitor Cheryl Watson Fisher and permitting director William Cecio were invited.
New business
Councillor-at-Large Kelly Garcia files two. The first asks for a Conference subcommittee meeting with GreenRoots, Mass Audubon and The Neighborhood Developers “to discuss their development plans for the Forbes site,” the former lithograph plant that sold to Mass Audubon for $8.36 million. The second is a resolution urging the state Department of Conservation and Recreation “to strengthen the Mary O’Malley State Park Pier Restoration Project.”
Councillor Giovanni Recupero asks the City Manager to look into “providing assistance to residents in understanding the terms and conditions of their residential leases.”
Also on the agenda
A certificate for Chelsea Police Officer Joseph Barker-Santiago. Approval of the minutes of the September 14 meeting, which would put the votes we reported from the video into the written record one week after they happened, faster than usual; the June 22 minutes took twelve weeks. And no public hearing.
What is not on it
The Subcommittee on Conference has not met, so the two solar agreements, the revolving fund and the Chief Economic Development Officer are not back. Ways and Means has not reported on the $116,942.80 in rideshare surcharge money or the Teamsters 911 supervisors’ contract. The Rules subcommittee has not taken up Recupero’s Rule 31 order. None of those meetings had been posted as of Thursday night.
The meeting is in the council chambers, third floor of City Hall, 500 Broadway. The Planning Board holds its public hearing on the master plan the next night, Tuesday, September 22 at 5 p.m., in the same room, and the city’s public meeting on the downtown Broadway reconstruction is Wednesday, September 23 at 6 p.m. at the Senior Center.