ORDER-2021-122 : City of Melrose Operating Budget for Fiscal Year 2022 in the amount of $91,000,522.33 (Ninety-One Million, Five Hundred Twenty-Two Dollars and Thirty-Three Cents).

Transcript (~12 min @ 11:16)

Speakers identified by voice; unnamed voices are numbered within this recording. Auto-caption text — verify against the video.

▶ 11:03 Jeff McNaught: Thank you, Mr. Mayor and Director Clay. I just want to say thank you for your many years of service to the city and Wakefield and everything that you've done. It's quite a good run of service, so thank you very much. On that note, I know that we're moving on to our budget orders. If you'd like to hang tight, we can move forward with your group first. I know that's not where we were scheduled, but I figured that might be convenient for you this evening. Sure. Okay. First, we have Order 2021-122, City of Melrose. Oh, I'm sorry. I know what Councilor Dramaluddin is going to say. We didn't place this yet on file. Thank you, Councilor Dramaluddin. Councilor Garipay, would you like to make your motion now?

▶ 12:05 Mark Garipay: Yeah. I'd like to make the motion to place this resolution on file.

▶ 12:12 Jeff McNaught: 2nd, thank and thank you again. Council. So we have a motion from, uh, counseling to place, uh, resolution 21, 2,021 dash 3 on file seconded by accounts of.

▶ 12:27 Speaker 1: Madam clerk, can you please call the role chair? Yes. Vice chair, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes. Yes. Councilor Garipay?

▶ 12:40 Speaker 3: Yes.

▶ 12:41 Speaker 1: Councilor Grigoraitis? Yes. Councilor Migliorelli? Yes. Councilor Thomas?

▶ 12:52 Speaker 1: Yes. Councilor Jamaleddine? Yes. President Sonnella? Yes. Yes.

▶ 13:00 Jeff McNaught: That motion passes. Next up, we have Order 2021-122, the City of Melrose operating budget for fiscal year 2022 in the amount of $91,522.33. Again, first, we will take the Health Department this evening with Director Clay, which is Department 511 along with the Health Revolving Account 2021. Director Clay, if you'd like to give us a review, we're ready to hear you.

▶ 13:49 Jeff McNaught: I think you might be on mute, Director Clay.

▶ 13:54 Speaker 4: Sorry about that. I think by now, I've learned. Obviously, a summary of the last year is COVID. pretty much exclusively COVID until about the last month or so. So our COVID activities kind of did the range based on where we were in the pandemic. So at the beginning, when masks were scarce, we procured masks and worked with the other departments on distributing masks. As caseloads got larger, we worked with the hospital to make sure that they had a overflow facility, started doing contact tracing. That was an all-hands-on deck. At the peak, we had 35 people doing contact tracing. We still couldn't keep up, And many of you, I'm sure, are familiar with the state's community tracing collaborative. So some of those cases were done by the state. We did as many as we possibly could. We had an extra pot of money because we are a health district with Wakefield. So as a health district, we were eligible for an extra amount of money that we did use. um on contact tracing ppe supplies um you know a variety of things like that and then of course with all the governor's orders over 60 i believe at this point of the governor's orders there were a lot a lot of education and questions that we answered from the public and the businesses And of course, some enforcement, unfortunately. And then vaccine became available. We were not slated to be doing vaccine clinics. We were told we wouldn't be. And then all of a sudden we were. So we kind of switched gears quickly and held, as many of you were at, the clinics at Memorial Hall, as well as we did the clinics with Wakefield at the Converse building that were very successful. Most recently, we did a COVID clinic for 12-year-olds and older for Melrose, any Melrose students, whether they're in our public schools or private schools, which we did last week, and we'll do a second dose in three weeks. So, fortunately, our caseload is decreasing rapidly. Our need for a lot of extra help with contact tracing is going down commensurably with the elimination of essentially all the rules this Saturday. that's actually created a lot of questions from people, although it's very straightforward that pretty much there are no rules. People are uncomfortable. Some of our people are uncomfortable with that transition to all of a sudden, so we're doing a lot of education and discussion with people about that. And we've gotten a lot of views out of behavioral health services. We have a new grant that we have from Melrose-Wakefield Hospital. It's a small grant for three years that one of our staff is working on four hours a week, carriage hours. And the goal of this grant is to decrease stigma associated with mental health and increase access to behavioral health services for some of our marginalized communities. The first year is a lot of assessment work. So we, that literally just started a month ago. So that is a new grant. We will be saying goodbye to our substance abuse prevention grant, which was the regional grant for basically, for mostly alcohol use. That grant ended and has been absorbed by a different grant that will be led by Medford. So the work will continue. The lead will be Medford rather than Melrose, and our current staff person hopefully will be transitioning to Medford so there's no loss of employment for her. Our tobacco control program continues and we are slated to get an increase in that grant amount for next year. We've been underfunded the last few years and have scrambled to get additional funding at the end of every fiscal year to get through the year with the budget, state budget, hopefully going through with additional monies for the tobacco control program. and we're hopefully going to be fully funded. We're the lead for that for five communities. Let's see, we also have the school nurse grant, which is a 10 year, $5,000 a year grant, except this year where they gave us an additional 15,000, which has gone to help pay for contact tracing that the school nurses have been doing throughout the year, as well as PPE for the school nurses and a new hearing screening machine. Starting next fiscal year, it'll go back to the $5,000 a year. I believe that is a summary of our grants.

▶ 19:56 Speaker 4: And I did send to the city auditor, my traditional spreadsheet of all the positions and what sources of payment they have, because we do have a lot of different payment sources, whether it's the city budget, the Wakefield budget, or different grants.

▶ 20:22 Speaker 4: That's my summary. I'm not muted.

▶ 20:36 Jeff McNaught: I am muted. Oh, shoot. Any questions for Director Clay? Thank you, Councilor Grigoraitis, by the way. That was-

▶ 20:46 Speaker 5: Could have been me.

▶ 20:47 Speaker 2: Council Grigoraitis.

▶ 20:50 Jen Grigoraitis: Thank you, Chairman McNaught. Thank you, Ms. Clay, for being here. I just wanted to echo the sentiments of the resolution. I know in March, I think it was St. Patrick's Day weekend of 2020, which feels like a lifetime ago. I sat in the chamber with you and Mayor Broder and other city department heads, and we had no idea what was happening and you were such a beacon of professionalism and calm. And I think that many of us had looked to you in the past 15 months. So thank you for that. And I also just wanted to thank the Board of Health. I know that this is not what they signed up for either. And just two comments on the budget. I'm thrilled about the mental health grant. I know we're all seeing a massive increase in mental health needs at all ages, partly due to the pandemic and some of the increase in child abuse and domestic violence we're seeing as a result of that. And also, I believe if I'm reading the budget correctly, we're seeing some increases for nurses, which I'm really happy to see given the heavy load that they all carried this past year. I think some folks don't realize that school nurses are a part of the health department and I know they did an incredible amount of work this year and I wanna just acknowledge that and thank them for that as well. So thank you to your team for getting us through this.

▶ 22:05 Speaker 2: Thank you, Councilor Geraitis. Anyone else have questions for Ms. Clay? Seeing none, what is the will of the committee?

▶ 22:16 Speaker 3: Motion to move the bottom line.

▶ 22:20 Jeff McNaught: We have a motion to move the bottom line for Department 511, the Health Department made by Council McMaster, seconded by President Cinella. Madam Clerk, will you please call the roll?

▶ 22:35 Speaker 1: Chair McNaught? Yes. Vice Chair Eccles? Yes. Councilor Tramontozzi? Yes. Councilor McMaster?

▶ 22:44 Speaker 3: Yes.

▶ 22:45 Speaker 1: Councilor Garipay?

▶ 22:47 Speaker 3: Yes.

▶ 22:48 Speaker 1: Councilor Grigoraitis? Yes. Councilor Migliorelli? Yes. Councilor Thomas? Yes. Councilor Jamaleddine? Yes. President Sinella? Yes. Then yes.

▶ 23:05 Speaker 2: The motion passes.

▶ 23:09 Jeff McNaught: Thank you, Ms. Clay, for being here. Madam Clerk, if I have my procedure correct here, I know that we need to hold

▶ 23:25 Jeff McNaught: the revolving account order in committee as it will come up again. We also need to vote to pass that line item. I'll entertain a motion on line item that-