Chelsea will not be hiring a Chief Economic Development Officer this month. On Monday night the City Council voted 5 to 3 to send City Manager Fidel Maltez’s request to the Subcommittee on Conference, over the objections of the three councillors who wanted it approved on the spot. The debate took 27 minutes and ended with one councillor withdrawing a word and another saying he resented it.
The request, which we described before the meeting, would create a senior position reporting directly to the City Manager and an Office of Economic Development under it. The letter carries no salary figure. The job is not in the budget the council adopted in June, and the letter says funding it this year will take a supplemental appropriation from free cash once the state certifies the balance, which the administration expected in the spring to be about $5.3 million.
“At the very least $100,000”
Councillor Manuel Teshe moved to waive the rest of the reading and spoke first. “We’ve been talking about the difficulties of the financial situation this city has been going through,” he said. “I just want to make sure that we’re not just expanding the government. I’m not in favor of just keep on adding positions and very high paid positions.” He suggested waiting a year and putting the position through the regular budget process, “because we’re talking about a high level position that would at least be $100,000.”
Councillor-at-Large Leo Robinson said he had been working with Maltez on the idea. “We need a certified person to go out and sell the city to bring in commercial development,” he said. “As you see, Everett got a boom. Revere got a boom. We’re the closest community to downtown … and we’re not getting a boom.” He said a salesperson could tell companies “there were 22 movies that were made in Chelsea” and that the city has parcels of three and four acres sitting unused.
Councillor Todd Taylor said he “would not be in favor of waiting.” “The economic situation is more dire than a lot of people realize,” he said. “This should be the number one thing we count on because this is how Chelsea is going to come up a level … This is vital.”
Councillor Giovanni Recupero agreed: “Without this type of office to promote our city, we would have to increase our taxes and cut things.”
The subcommittee question
Councillor Deron Hines was the first to connect the request to what the council had done half an hour earlier, when it sent both of the administration’s solar agreements to the Subcommittee on Conference rather than vote on them. “I just got to be honest about my confliction here,” he said. “We just moved a proposal to save people electricity on their bill to a subcommittee, stalling that process. But right now we’re ready to make a decision on hiring somebody to be our chief economic development executive.” He said Maltez “has been doing that work and has been doing that work pretty effectively,” and added, “I’m seeing him everywhere. I’m seeing him shopping the city … I just don’t know if we need to hire another person to then take on this work.”
Councillor Lisa Santagate said she was “really all for this” and that “it sometimes takes money to make money,” but asked whether the new office would replace the economic development staff already in Housing and Community Development.
Maltez said it would not. “It is a full-time job,” he said, and the level of outreach the council now expects on every project, “from little projects all the way to big projects,” is more than he and his staff can do. “Three years ago, four years ago, the economy was such where people were jumping at the bit. Right now it is much harder. Right now there is a lot more wooing.” He also said something the written request does not: the position would be exempt, non-union and confidential, “like, say, our city solicitor,” because “the level of negotiation that is required sometimes can be contentious, particularly to some members in the community, can be contentious to members of this building, and we need a high degree of confidentiality when it comes to those conversations.”
Councillor Calvin Brown said the council was straying from its role. “We hired the city manager to be a city manager,” he said. Making him do the selling himself “burns out a city manager. That puts city managers in positions that we don’t want to read about.” Later, when the motion to refer was on the floor, he went further: “We should not be posturing to get in today’s operation of slowing down the hiring process of a potential employee by the city manager when we don’t have that right.”
The exchange
Taylor asked for a point of order to answer Hines. “I only wanted to respond to the comment that was made about delaying the subcommittee. There was no intention to delay anything for poor people. And I take umbrage at that comment, because it’s not true. This is proper oversight … and I resent the comment.”
Hines then made the motion to refer, and later withdrew the word. “I want to call back my statement of delay,” he said. But he held the point. “The things that we just sent to the subcommittee on conference didn’t involve us touching money at all. Didn’t involve us spending money at all. It just involved savings both for the city and for residents. And we moved it. This involves us spending money. We should use that same intention here.”
Taylor, who had argued hardest for approving the position that night, said he would vote for the subcommittee anyway. “I think it’s absolutely fair for a city councillor to ask for a subcommittee on this … I don’t like it when we vote on stuff without discussing things.” He said a delay of “a couple weeks isn’t going to make any difference in the economic situation.”
Recupero asked how long the subcommittee would take. “Can we schedule one right away … or is it going to take a month? Is it going to take three months?” Council President Roberto Jimenez-Rivera: “We’re going to find something so that we can schedule a meeting as soon as we can. That’s how this works.” Robinson: “If we need to go to conference, we should have a conference right away.”
Under the council’s rules a motion to refer cannot be blocked by a single objection, so the question went to a roll call. Voting to refer: Taylor, Recupero, Jimenez-Rivera, Hines and Teshe. Voting no: Santagate, Brown and Robinson. Councillors Norieliz DeJesus, Tanairi Garcia and Kelly Garcia were absent. Jimenez-Rivera said the council would try to set the subcommittee date after the meeting. As of Thursday no date had been posted.
What the subcommittee will be asked
Three questions were left on the table Monday. Teshe wants to know whether the administration can fund the job this year without touching free cash. Santagate wants to know how it fits with the existing economic development staff. And nobody has yet said what the position pays; the job description places it at grade MM10 on the city’s management scale, and Teshe’s $100,000 floor went unchallenged. The council will also want an answer to the question Hines raised and Taylor rejected, which is whether the same standard of review it applied to two contracts that save money should apply to one position that costs it.
The Subcommittee on Conference now holds four items from Monday: the two solar agreements, the revolving fund that goes with them, and this one. The full results of the meeting are here.