By The Times Staff

The Finance Committee met on Tuesday, September 22, via remote participation and took up a 10-item agenda, said City Councilor Ben Wheeler.

The committee approved an appropriation of $350,000 from the city’s immigrant legal services stabilization fund for legal services for immigrants and asylum seekers seeking permanent residency.

A grant was approved for approximately $216,000 for the salary and personnel costs of two health and human services staff members, a shared services coordinator and a clinical community health worker.

Three grant approvals, all related to 911 dispatch, accounted for approximately $480,000.

“These pay for salaries and certification training overtime,” he said. “They are a significant part of why the E911 division, the E stands for enhanced, tends to come in under the amount budgeted in each of the several most recent fiscal years.”

Also related to policing, the committee accepted a grant for approximately $10,000 for body armor vests from the US Bureau of Justice Assistance, which will have a state match.

Approximately, $255,000 that comes from Somerville’s cut of ride share payments was approved for the mobility division’s various projects, part of its ongoing work that has resulted in a four-year streak without a single traffic death, according to the committee report.

The Department of Public Works requested to pay a large set of prior-year invoices totaling approximately $81,000 out of its own accounts, he said.

“There were various reasons for these, from clerical errors to difficulty budgeting for a new electric provider,” said Wheeler. “But DPW staff seem to be making progress working out these kinks on the literally hundreds of utility accounts that they manage, and they intend to end this fiscal year with fewer surprises.”

Finally, the committee spent “quite a while” discussing and approving five Armory leases that are signed and ready to go as part of the long process of the city making Armory space available to Somerville’s many artists, performers, troops, and arts-related businesses, he explained.

Wheeler noted that these leases do not yet include the largest tenant of all, Arts at the Armory. He says that committee members “expressed hope” that Arts at the Armory will soon see a lease that “truly works for them, perhaps even one that encompasses the considerable other space at the Armory that is yet to be leased.”

Furthermore, the committee met newly hired Property & Tenant Relations Manager Josh McCorkle, and the committee encouraged McCorkle and the city’s community development team “to minimize the paperwork and obstacles keeping the Armory from being fully used by artists.”