The Somerville Finance Committee on Feb. 25 recommended approval to pay prior invoices totaling $1,312.50 from the Department of Racial and Social Justice (RSJ) translation services account for communication access real-time translation (CART) services.

Councilor Burnley raised questions about why the invoice was unpaid and whether vendors had been informed when the city consolidated services under a single department. A staff liaison said the city has been moving toward streamlining internal processes so departments request language access services centrally through RSJ or the immigrant-affairs office, but acknowledged there is not a single formalized protocol that guarantees vendors are always notified when internal ownership changes. “There is no set protocol... but we do our best to communicate changes,” the staff liaison said.

Committee members described multiple legacy arrangements in which different departments previously held separate translation contracts; members noted the city is working to consolidate those services under RSJ and the immigrant-affairs office. Councilors discussed the impact on small local vendors that can struggle with delayed payments; staff said the chief administrative officer’s office is working on invoicing and vendor-management improvements, and pledged to follow up with the committee with details about current procedures and outstanding contract ownerships.

The invoice-payment item and several grant items were laid on the table and then approved in a combined roll-call vote at the end of the meeting. The meeting record does not include the vendor name, the original invoice date, or the reason the invoice was sent to the wrong department; those specifics were not specified in the committee discussion but were described generally as vendor mix-ups and internal transitions of service responsibility.