ORDER-2020-89 : City of Melrose Operating Budget for Fiscal Year 2021 in the amount of $88,397,961.08 (Eighty-Eight Million, Three Hundred Ninety-Seven Thousand, Nine Hundred Sixty-One Dollars and Eight Cents).

Transcript (~1 h 29 min @ 1:23:13)

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

▶ 1:23:08 Christopher Cinella: Nope. So number two, 2020-89, we'll get to the budget on the auditor and the stabilization fund. So no, we just voted that in.

▶ 1:23:22 Christopher Cinella: So next order, again, 2020-89, continuation of the budget. First up is the auditor, 135, and the 943 stabilization fund slash OPEC fund.

▶ 1:23:42 Speaker 3: Hi. Good evening. I did send down some material dated May 20th of 2020 as an overview. I'm not sure if there's any questions. I'm here to address them. I do want to speak to a couple of items, if I can, up front to help clarify a couple of items within my budget.

▶ 1:24:12 Speaker 3: And if I could respectfully look at professional services where you see the 61.6% increase,

▶ 1:24:22 Speaker 3: stands out noticeably and I can qualify that as the cost for fiscal year 21 of a full valuation for GASB 74 and GASB 75 which is required and the cost of that will actually go down in fiscal 22 seven thousand eight hundred dollars as it's not going to be required for full valuation this year 21 required by law by contract as well with our actuary stone consulting to perform this full valuation it's part of our annual audit it's not optional and it must be performed that's why you see that increase and you're going to see that forever more because we talked about opeb and other other post employment benefits which is really health insurance liability just like you have pensions and you have pension liability opeb is health insurance liability and that is now within our financial statements

▶ 1:25:27 Speaker 3: and um this is a requirement that the auditors will not will not produce a final audit until they have this opeb report from our actuary annually and that oprah report goes to the auditors and it also goes directly to the department of revenue with the audit each and every year and again it's it's the new uh i think that respectfully donald connor used to call it another mandate um however we're committed to it and the other increase above it which i believe is 500 for auditing services that pertains to the annual audit and specifically for work done for schedule a balance sheet and to our submission um so that's the 500

▶ 1:26:13 Speaker 3: increased there so the big items are those by contract for auditing and for opeb which is uh now become part of our framework and i'd be happy to speak to selling wages whatever the council wish if any questions i'm here if i can answer them i'll be happy to help answer them counselor

▶ 1:26:37 Cory Thomas: thomas thank you mr chairman uh mr de la rusa thank you for being here um you're very at uh your position you answered my question before i could even ask it i had a question about professionals services so thank you very much thank you sir the good news counts it's going

▶ 1:26:53 Speaker 3: down next year on that we'll look at it's going to get on four thousand dollars next year so one year we're going to do a full one and next year is partial

▶ 1:27:04 John N. Tramontozzi: uh thank you mr chairman uh thank you mr delarusso i do have questions uh consistent with my questioning and other departments as well in the salary and way line the original 2020 budget was in the amount of three hundred and forty three thousand one hundred fifty dollars and twenty cents to revise was in forty four three thirty point thirty what it's one thousand eighty but in ten cents can you

▶ 1:27:36 Speaker 3: explain that for us so again that was a we have one union member in my department we have four staff members including myself we have one that's union it was a settlement or a union contract we talked about earlier actually about settling contracts and it was a retroactive payment required and I believe was 18.8 weeks and then it was 33.2 weeks at one rate and 18.8 weeks at a second rate but it was a union position was collective bargaining it was required that we find it and we find it and that's why you'll see that look but that 1800 some odd

▶ 1:28:18 Speaker 7: dollars whatever the number you have 180 yeah thank you and so mr. Delarosa you

▶ 1:28:22 John N. Tramontozzi: have a staff or besides yourself one two three other employees yes sir and of the three employees only one of them is a union employee yes sir which one is that

▶ 1:28:38 Speaker 3: um it's jill irvin she does accounts payable is that it's listed as the financial manager

▶ 1:28:42 John N. Tramontozzi: is that the one or is it the assistant payable clerk accounts payable clerk the accounts payable clerk okay uh there is according to the the budget the accounts payable clerk uh has an increase in salary of three thousand three hundred and seventy dollars and thirty four cents from fiscal to fiscal 21 is that contractually are we obligated to pay that

▶ 1:29:13 Speaker 3: the in fiscal 20 um we're talking about the financial manager or the accounts payable i'm

▶ 1:29:18 John N. Tramontozzi: sorry the accounts payable clerk you said that she was the union uh employee is that correct

▶ 1:29:26 Speaker 3: Yes, she is. What happens is that she was at a level nine, step 11 in fiscal 20. And then what happened is in fiscal 21, she's got her COLA because she's union. She got a cost of living increase of 2.5%. And she got a step increase. So she went from a 911 to a 9-11, partial 9-12. That's why you'll see the salary in there at 50,577.86. She got a COLA plus a step because she's union. The other two, the other two staff are at their top step. They all, and they received a 2% COLA and a 2% COLA. They did not get a step increase because as non-union, you either get a step increase

▶ 1:30:21 John N. Tramontozzi: you get your two percent you do not get both okay so but uh so we're we're under our obligation to uh fund uh that uh union uh increase union increase is that correct yes collective bargain

▶ 1:30:34 John N. Tramontozzi: because it's collectively i get it i understand however there's nothing in the there's nothing in that we um that um requires us to fund the cost of living increase right for non-union employees

▶ 1:30:48 Speaker 7: it's it's been submitted by the mayor

▶ 1:30:57 John N. Tramontozzi: to be funded it's not for me to say i i appreciate that right no i take that mr mr delarus i appreciate that and it's it believe me it's not i'm trying to be consistent with the departments and it's not don't take it personal but i think that we're going to okay thank you i think we're going to have a a revenue shortfall and we're going to be either facing the position we're going to have to make some difficult decisions about layoffs as necessary i'm just trying to try to be consistent with with my thinking and that is i think i would like to the levels fund these salary levels to the 2020 budgeted um budgeted uh amounts um and again it's not your yes it's not a lot for each department but it adds up overall so uh with that in mind that I intend to make a motion to reduce line 011351-511000 in the amount of $9,687.43. I'll make that motion at this time, but I'll, you know, certainly defer it to our comments.

▶ 1:32:08 Speaker 4: Do you have a second?

▶ 1:32:10 Shawn M. MacMaster: Before I second, just a point of information through you, Chairman Sala. does that amount account for the actual contractual obligation? So that amount, that cut, does not include the salary from the employee who were obligated to pay a certain amount? Is that right?

▶ 1:32:35 John N. Tramontozzi: To the Chair, I calculated it and that is correct. I did not include accounts payable clerk the union uh that would have increased it by another three thousand three hundred seventy dollars so i didn't add that one and it's just three categories uh and that is the auditor assistant city auditor and the financial manager and i come up with that number i'll second the

▶ 1:32:58 Christopher Cinella: motion mr chairman a motion on the floor to cut nine thousand six eighty seven forty three second

▶ 1:33:12 Speaker 1: by Councilor McMaster. Vice Chair Migliorelli? No. Councilor Tramontozzi? Yes. Councilor McMaster? Yes. Councilor McNaught? No. Councilor Eccles? No. Councilor Garipay? No. Councilor Stewart? No.

▶ 1:33:36 Speaker 1: No. Councilor Thomas?

▶ 1:33:41 Speaker 1: No. Councilor Jamaleddine?

▶ 1:33:47 Speaker 1: Councilor, I'm sorry, President Grigoraitis? No. Chairman Cinella? And no to yes, motion fails.

▶ 1:33:58 Speaker 9: Mr. McNaught?

▶ 1:34:02 Speaker 11: Thank you, Mr. Chairman.

▶ 1:34:05 Speaker 4: Thank you, Mr. Delarue, thank you for being here.

▶ 1:34:06 Speaker 3: Thank you, sir.

▶ 1:34:08 Jeff McNaught: Thank you, sir. I just have some questions and before I ask them, I just wanna say that I, can everyone hear me okay? Yeah. I just want to say that I don't begrudge anyone getting a pay raise, but I am looking for information that I've been asking for and can't seem to get information on. But to start this out and to try and lay it out in terms so that the public understands, you helped the mayor prepare the budget. Is that correct?

▶ 1:34:40 Speaker 3: Absolutely correct.

▶ 1:34:42 Jeff McNaught: because you oversee all appropriations for all departments all expenditures throughout the year and you manage the money so to speak for all the way throughout the year and balance the book so

▶ 1:34:56 Speaker 3: to speak correct correct i'm the chief finance officer as well as the city auditor i play both roles and i'm responsible to set the tax rate of the city every year right never failed in 27 years

▶ 1:35:07 Jeff McNaught: Right. And believe me, I respect your expertise and your experience. Again, I'm new at this. A lot of us are. And I'm just trying to get information both for us and for all of us, really, for transparency's sake and to help the rest of these meetings hopefully a lot quicker. So I would assume your office manages the MUNIS system for budgeting?

▶ 1:35:34 Speaker 6: We use MUNIS, and as you know, and we use that for our general ledger system,

▶ 1:35:42 Speaker 3: and those payable, the whole nine yards payroll, we do use it. We're a user. Technically, it's

▶ 1:35:55 Speaker 3: we're end user. Obviously, IT is responsible to support it technically. And we have Donna cardillo she's um a financial analyst she's really the expert on munis so we're fortunate

▶ 1:36:05 Jeff McNaught: to have her in house so you feed the content into whoever is okay and with this would the same go for the um operating budget software that we use not just the salaries yeah all this we use for

▶ 1:36:22 Speaker 3: mean it's our host application absolutely okay okay I guess my

▶ 1:36:25 Jeff McNaught: question is I notice in the operating budget side we can see multiple years lining up what was what was expended in multiple years but we can't see that for salaries when I requested information just from the last fiscal year to the next fiscal year I was told that it would take weeks to compile the information knowing that it's all the same system and that I requested this information ten days ago I guess my question is are we ten days underway in trying to gain

▶ 1:37:10 Speaker 3: that information I am I can't speak specifically to it the position that

▶ 1:37:17 Speaker 3: it's sad but I will say this and this is no discredit to the system when if you look at the salary information and you're trying to do apples to apples for

▶ 1:37:32 Speaker 3: example then there are things that can happen and as we saw this evening for example if you looked at someone's salary for fiscal 20 and 21 in my office but there was a retroactive payment of over a thousand dollars that wouldn't show up that retroactive payment per se if you just see a total number you wouldn't know unless you inquired would you research wow that person get a thousand dollar retro I wouldn't know that so I think the concern that there you they're trying to work through a look at is for every single person it may be retro applied no retro there may be steps that they got media or maybe some that increased or changed and maybe differentials came into place for public safety guys detail work whatever the case may be overtime so I think it's a component of if we if you have the staff and you can analyze that the number I that the city gives you is valid in other words it's apples to apples and I think everyone's fine I think everyone wants to be sure that whatever you you do get as a council is real that it's been audited and looked at so that it's those questions that come up and someone say geez you forgot to tell them that i was you know upgraded that's you know a mid-year that's why my salary changed all those kind of incidents that i

▶ 1:38:53 Jeff McNaught: think are causing stress so we're not looking for um okay we are looking for steps we're not looking for retros and changes throughout the year we know what the number was last year we know what the end number was last year if we go and we pull up last year's budget we know what the projected number is this year what my question is is so that we don't have to pull both those things up every meeting isn't it very simple to

▶ 1:39:25 Speaker 3: just put those in the same spreadsheet maybe we can use crystal reports which is like a special feature and I can check with Donna Cardillo on that to creates a report that may do that and in an easier way again I understand we're

▶ 1:39:37 Jeff McNaught: underway this year I think we're all figuring a way through this but this is certainly something that I think would be all of us you have going forward

▶ 1:39:46 Speaker 3: happy I'd be happy to take that initiative sir and work with that I

▶ 1:39:51 Jeff McNaught: appreciate that and and mr. de la Rosa it's obviously you need to be familiar with the CBA's so that you know everyone in the city who is contractually

▶ 1:40:05 Speaker 3: obligated to get a raise is that fair to say all right that's correct okay i'm negotiating team

▶ 1:40:09 Jeff McNaught: and you need to be familiar with everybody who's on the city at city salary administration plan i believe that's the name of it and i'm assuming that that is what you're referring to when you say steps or are those two different things no they're not two different things the city has a

▶ 1:40:27 Speaker 3: salary administration plan i think they actually called it the only study years ago when it first came to be it was known as the only study and we haven't really had one since then that so that sort of has let's just say it's um grown on its own way and whether or not it's the most efficient

▶ 1:40:43 Speaker 3: system i'm gonna i'm gonna say it's not but i think the system that we have and that at some point i think we were looking to make some changes there to bring it up to date um prudence job descriptions and the whole nine yards but that hasn't happened yet i think the confusion for

▶ 1:41:01 Jeff McNaught: myself anyway i'm only going to speak for myself is i don't know who's on that um i don't know who may be getting increases this year that we're not contractually obligated to give them to and keep keep in mind as i said i'm not looking to stop increases for anyone uh i i'm looking for this information for transparency purposes only um i know i've received a lot of questions about it myself but we have no information on who's getting increases that doesn't necessarily need them in a year where we're saying we really have to we have to tighten up so is there a list of people getting increases in pay that we're not contractually obligated to give to them can we have it does that

▶ 1:41:56 Jeff McNaught: exist? I will find out for you, sir. And I would imagine that wouldn't take very long to pull

▶ 1:42:05 Speaker 6: together? I would hope not. Again, I don't want to promise many people on that list, right? But I

▶ 1:42:12 Speaker 3: also don't know other people's schedules, and I'm trying to do the best I can to get you what you want as timely as I can I can promise you that and again it this is something

▶ 1:42:24 Jeff McNaught: I'll look at first thing in the morning sir I appreciate that very much and please understand I'm asking these questions because I haven't gotten responses to completely understood completely understood and and I asked

▶ 1:42:35 Jeff McNaught: this question I know we referred to one one union employee in your office that where obviously by cba where they're getting a raise that's obvious is everyone else in your office contractually obligated to get an increase no one else is in the union so nobody's obligated

▶ 1:42:54 Jeff McNaught: no we're not obligated to give anyone else in your office an increase i'm not sure what obligated

▶ 1:43:05 Speaker 6: means candidly because contractually yeah i don't have a contract and i don't believe any other non-unions have an actual contract um at least yeah if you make it in that way then then i don't

▶ 1:43:17 Jeff McNaught: have a contract correct right but nobody's on this step the step plan which i'm not an expert on uh don't know that much about her if at all anything um nobody in your office is on a step type plan to get an increase for 20 fy 2021 i am i'm on a step and the other two staff members are at their

▶ 1:43:36 Speaker 3: final step and in the in their level so they get the two percent cola there's no more steps for them at this time um that's why they get you get one or the other if you get a step increase you don't get the cost of living with that if you're at typically if you're at the end of your step you have nowhere to go there's no more growth then if there's a if there's a cost of living granted whether it's one percent or two you would only get the cost of living and that's it so two people in my office are only getting the two percent and two percent cost of living the two that are non-union you're not getting a step you're not getting i say this so the public knows

▶ 1:44:16 Jeff McNaught: and we again i'll speak for myself i can say i ask these questions and we're required to give these increases we're required to give the two percent or the cost of living that's

▶ 1:44:32 Speaker 3: accurate right yeah mine is that's my understanding is that that when the mayor when the mayor directed us to to give a two percent cost of living to the non-union we put that in the budget that's why it's before you could have said one percent you could have said zero he said two percent that's why it's

▶ 1:44:55 Jeff McNaught: there. That's it. It's out of his budget. Is everybody who's exempt in a step type

▶ 1:45:05 Speaker 3: pay scale? Yeah, they should have like a step, but they should have a level and a step. All those like myself should have a level and a step. The non-union.

▶ 1:45:16 Speaker 3: Okay, so. They're not in a union, so they have to be in that plan.

▶ 1:45:20 Jeff McNaught: right right so we're again i'll just i'm not clear on this we we are required to give all of the exempt employees in your office pay increases for fy 2021

▶ 1:45:35 Speaker 3: you only ones that my understanding is that have been bargained collectively which is one person the other three that including myself that got us i got a step i didn't get a cola but i got but the other two got colas that was from the mayor he directed the cola and that's

▶ 1:45:55 Speaker 3: the if there was no cola neither one would get an increase all i would get was a step and they

▶ 1:46:00 Jeff McNaught: would get no cost of living at all but okay so every year we're required to give you either a step increase or a cola increase is that what you're saying no you don't have to give a cola

▶ 1:46:12 Speaker 3: there was a year that there were years where we had a wage freeze there was a years five years where the mayor gave only one percent cost of living period you don't have to give a call it's the mayor it's a discretion of the mayor whether or not he'll give a cost of living and that's why i said in the past they we had the wages freeze at fiscal 11 and then five years after that it only a one percent caller and those that got the one percent um would only get it one percent or

▶ 1:46:45 Speaker 3: the step they wouldn't even get both even then it was you they had a step if you're up on a step grade you don't get the one percent caller but you don't get both you get one or the other right okay

▶ 1:46:52 Jeff McNaught: so that's i guess that's the heart of what i was getting at is we could be in a situation where we're in a wage freeze these are elective pay increases is that correct that's a discretion

▶ 1:47:05 Jeff McNaught: of the mayor correct right okay uh can you provide us a list of everybody that is getting uh a discretionary increase in pay or cost yes i can yes i can okay thank you um and also um

▶ 1:47:21 Jeff McNaught: mr doloroso one of the things i asked for and i'm not asking for a detailed listing but a tallied summation just of where the increases are throughout the whole budget a quick quick reference guide if you will i think would also help us move along a lot more quickly okay i mean i know we're only going into our third week here but i'd imagine if if we had some more of this information we could hum along and finish in advance of five weeks

▶ 1:47:54 Speaker 7: okay so you excuse me so you're asking for where the like a reference guide or where

▶ 1:48:00 Speaker 3: the biggest increases are within the budgets yeah what makes up the two million i mean in a year

▶ 1:48:04 Jeff McNaught: when we're only raising it two million um i mean let hey i'm all for celebrating increases and celebrating where we spent that two million i want to be very clear about that i'm not i'm not looking to cut anything i just think we need to be able to show where it's going okay like i i could not

▶ 1:48:31 Jeff McNaught: agree more i think i just have a couple more mrs dollar so bear with me no i'll take it down here

▶ 1:48:43 Jeff McNaught: oh my last question was i noticed that i look back at past year's budgets and i noticed that just last year in in may of 2019 um names associated with positions were deleted for the first time that that i that i came across can you tell me why that happened or my understanding

▶ 1:49:05 Speaker 3: was just because the position the name you didn't know what uh the position was that the person held so my office for example is by position because the person can change but the position doesn't accounts payable it's accounts payable finance managers finance manager unless then i'm missing

▶ 1:49:38 Jeff McNaught: misunderstanding the question sir no one moment the the prior year showed both mr delaro so it

▶ 1:49:44 Speaker 3: showed the name and the position um is that is that a preference of the council moving forward

▶ 1:49:51 Jeff McNaught: you want to see names with the title uh you know what um i'm not necessarily saying that it is

▶ 1:49:58 Speaker 3: it just it seems any any suggestions we'll take any suggestions so to make it better for next that's what it's all about how can we improve it you know in fact when I made

▶ 1:50:04 Jeff McNaught: my request I actually said names aren't necessary okay and then we could do to

▶ 1:50:13 Speaker 6: try to make it better I'm all in I don't know how the rest of the council feels

▶ 1:50:19 Jeff McNaught: about that I know I believe I saw another request that said the same thing that I did that names weren't necessary I'm not I'm not looking to shame anyone and put anyone in public light. I was just wondering why the change was made. If anything, I think the only positive would be we could see consistency in the role and why certain increases may occur. That's all.

▶ 1:50:42 Speaker 3: All right. I understood.

▶ 1:50:45 Jeff McNaught: Well, I have no further questions. Thanks so much for your time.

▶ 1:50:49 Speaker 3: Anytime.

▶ 1:50:52 Speaker 10: Through the chair, I just would like to continue

▶ 1:50:55 Maya Jamaleddine: on councilor and I would like to ask if we can keep the title added.

▶ 1:51:09 Speaker 3: I'm sorry, may I ask, do you want the title in the name or just the title?

▶ 1:51:13 Maya Jamaleddine: I prefer the title with the name.

▶ 1:51:17 Speaker 3: Thank you.

▶ 1:51:22 Christopher Cinella: Anybody else have a question? I didn't see any hands go up.

▶ 1:51:26 Speaker 4: Is the will on 135?

▶ 1:51:31 Speaker 5: motion to recommend move the bottom line this department second councilor Eccles

▶ 1:51:36 Christopher Cinella: in a motion to move the bottom line 135 auditor 942 stabilization fund slash opeb seconded by

▶ 1:51:47 Speaker 1: councillor thomas madam clerk please call the roll vice chair Migliorelli yes councilor Tramontozzi

▶ 1:51:57 Speaker 1: yes councilor mcmaster yes councillor mcnaught yes councillor eccles yes councillor Garipay yes counselor stewart yes counselor thomas yes councilor maladin yes president Grigoraitis yes chairman sanella 11 yes

▶ 1:52:17 Christopher Cinella: thank you uh mr dillard's uh with us mr chair i'd like to make a motion to take a five-minute recess

▶ 1:52:41 Speaker 1: that's a second not debatable yes thank you Thomas yes Jamala Dean yes yes

▶ 1:52:55 Speaker 1: chairman Sinella yes yes I'll pause for five minutes you guys ready to get back

▶ 1:53:17 Robb Stewart: in session point of order do we need to make a motion to start again or we do

▶ 1:53:24 Christopher Cinella: not we are now back in session next up is a part of 171 conservation

▶ 1:53:33 Speaker 1: Susan Murphy I'm bringing her in the chair can you see me can you hear me

▶ 1:53:47 Christopher Cinella: hi Susan hi thank you for having me patience and screen is all yours if you

▶ 1:53:52 Speaker 1: have some prepared remarks all right I always learn a lot when I come to these I just want a brief introduction to the Conservation Commission we are a a seven-person appointed commission with two basic responsibilities. We are the administer and enforcer of the State Wetlands Protection Act and Rivers Protection Act as well as the city's wetlands ordinance in which we are a permitting body for development and construction activities that occur in proximity to wetland and water resources. The second responsibility is care and custody of the city's conservation land which is our passive open space our budget has two major components the salary item we have a part-time about 10 hours a week conservation agent who primarily works on permitting activities but also is a point person for issues that come up with conservation land and he runs our trail steward program also and then our other main item is our conservation maintenance budget which is primarily expended on doing treatments for nuisance vegetation in three of the city's ponds El Pons Wayne's pond and towners pond all of those ponds are typical urban ponds and highly developed areas that get a lot of loading and he'll have excess vegetation and potentially algae growth and so we have a contract with an herbicide applicator who will go in and do treatments in those ponds to keep them aesthetically pleasing as well as healthy some of the algae blooms can be toxic it's important to keep all of that under control so those are the main items of our budget We have a couple of smaller pieces, but I'm happy to answer any questions that you may have.

▶ 1:55:54 Speaker 4: Showing hands, go up. How's the gap?

▶ 1:56:06 Speaker 4: You're on mute.

▶ 1:56:11 Mark Garipay: Sorry, that five minutes messed me up. Sorry, I had two questions and they were answered, but I do, brought me to another question running El Pond and the treatment of El Pond. I'm assuming that goes on to the conservation maintenance line item? Yes, it does. And how often do we treat that? Is that either annually or annual? There's sort of

▶ 1:56:34 Speaker 1: a schedule on which these things happen. Usually the major treatments happen between May and early July, depending on what you're treating for. But you do some treatments early in the season to try and get ahead of some of the growth. There are also some treatments that will occur later in the year. El Pond in particular has a relatively recent problem with invasive water chestnut and that treatment occurs later in the year. So it depends on sort of the best application for the particular type of growth you're doing. We're treating for algae in El Pond. We do treatments for submersed vegetation um and we're treating for the water chestnut um and we also do a part of the treatment is we um put alum in the pond to try and bind some of the phosphorus that's contributing to the plant growth so that usually happens early in the season so now is there is a big time for um for doing the treatments we've had had some occur already and some are scheduled

▶ 1:57:40 Mark Garipay: thank you thank you for that that was uh brought up by some of my constituents that live in the that's your handle point thank you also thomas thank you mr chairman ms murphy thank you so

▶ 1:57:51 Cory Thomas: much for being here um looking at your you know this is a pretty uh balanced budget throughout here um your advertising and printing costs are very low uh is that enough money for you to get your message out into the people of melrose mind um we maybe there's more outreach we could be

▶ 1:58:12 Speaker 1: doing i'll tell you what we use those for the advertising budget is actually primarily for when we need to advertise in connection with a project so with anything that comes under the wetlands protection act of union order of conditions um if there's a statutory requirement that it be advertised so we have to do that periodically and so we have that line item in there just for those kind of statutory required advertisements the printing budget we primarily used for our trail maps so and that has been enough distributing them in past years obviously you know healthy Melrose the Victorian Fair we provide them on request that's been enough that we have enough of those make it through the year that's pretty what we've been using the

▶ 1:59:11 Cory Thomas: printing for does the DCR get involved with any advertising for your own you know for Melrose and Conservation Commission get anything from DCR we

▶ 1:59:23 Speaker 1: don't really have any relationship with DCR yeah there isn't any connection

▶ 1:59:32 Cory Thomas: there okay all right thank you very much any other questions McMaster thank you

▶ 1:59:40 Shawn M. MacMaster: mr. chairman good evening mr. Murphy thank you for being here I just had a very quick question about the invasive species over there I appreciate all the work that the conservation Commission has done to address algae and water treatment wondering if there any plans relative to the invasive species for the upcoming fiscal year

▶ 2:00:05 Speaker 1: okay so um a lot of the vegetation growth is non-invasive it's native species it's just an overwhelming amount because of the nutrient loads in the pond but l pond's invasive water chestnut is an invasive species that's really important to try and get under control because it will grow rapidly um there are two ways to approach invasive water chestnut there is an algaecide i mean a herbicide treatment for that and you also and there's also the possibility to do um hand pulling of the water chestnut hand pulling is very expensive so um we have we had had our our contractor do but we can't really afford to have them spend enough time to make a dent in it so we've started working on a volunteer approach to it we had um two of our members uh last year went out and and did hand pulling and the plan and hopefully this will be able to happen with you know hope covid you know conditions um to do that again this year um and get more people and try and make it an annual volunteer effort to do the water chestnut pulling it's something that uh mystic river watershed the mystic river has a big uh water chest invasive water chestnut problem they have a big volunteer program so it means going out there in a boat and and pulling it out by hand um so we're hoping to do more of that but we are also doing the herbicide treatment as

▶ 2:01:36 Shawn M. MacMaster: well and the reason i asked miss murphy is because a resident had brought it to my attention uh beyond the the water chestnut um is there the bobbery and i believe the burning bush are those two species that are there and if they are are they scheduled to be addressed

▶ 2:01:53 Speaker 1: So, I'm talking about the actual plants in the water, burning bushes would be something on the shore. Yeah. Correct. Yes. So, we do not have, right now, a program for shoreline invasive species, but certainly there are issues with some invasive species in some of the conservation lands as well as on the edge of Elk Pond. And certainly be happy to follow up with the resident that the property actually belongs to the parks department so i think they should be involved as well and probably have better resources to um to provide the labor to do that uh but i think we'd be happy to work with with all of them to to address that excellent thank you any other hands and hands go up

▶ 2:02:42 Christopher Cinella: what is the will of the committee everyone jump at once motion to move the bottom line

▶ 2:02:54 Christopher Cinella: Move the bottom line made by Councilor Tramontozzi, seconded by President Grigoraitis.

▶ 2:03:00 Speaker 1: Madam Clerk, if you could call the roll. Vice Chair Migliorelli? Yes. Councilor Tramontozzi? Yes. Councilor McMaster? Yes. Councilor McNaught? Yes. Councilor Eccles? Yes. Councilor Garipay? Yes. Councilor Stewart? Yes. Councilor Thomas? Yes. Councilor Jamaleddine? Yes. Councilor Garipay? Yes. yes president Grigoraitis yes chairman sanella yes 11 yes

▶ 2:03:34 Christopher Cinella: thank you miss murray thank you very much have a good night next up uh 155 info tech

▶ 2:03:41 Speaker 4: and bringing in neil ellis department equipment and 931 capital outlay

▶ 2:03:56 Speaker 1: neil can you hear us yes can you hear me yes just can't see you oh

▶ 2:04:05 Speaker 12: yep okay welcome back thank you yeah uh under better circumstances thankfully i uh we have uh uh rectified the issue with the webex i actually purchased got the uh quote and purchased uh a year's worth of Webex for the city going forward, which will have more storage online. So hopefully we'll run into that again.

▶ 2:04:37 Christopher Cinella: Do you have any prepared remarks in regards to-

▶ 2:04:39 Speaker 12: Yes, I didn't know if I should get going on that or Mr. Tremontazzi, do you have a question before I get started?

▶ 2:04:45 Christopher Cinella: I'm going to keep a queue so you'll see people raising hands so you can just go in and out.

▶ 2:04:50 Speaker 12: Okay, great. All right, I'm going to switch over to my presentation. um actually uh ms foote can i get the ability to share a screen

▶ 2:05:08 Christopher Cinella: oh that's interesting question let's find out any other hands that needed to go up please do it now

▶ 2:05:20 Speaker 1: okay hold on one second neil villages shared documents looks like you're able to try that now

▶ 2:05:24 Christopher Cinella: I have Councilor Tramontozzi, Councilor Eccles, and Councilor Stewart just to

▶ 2:05:29 Speaker 12: make sure uh I only see share file I don't see share let me try file let's see what I can do nope that is not it um well you know what Mr. Director if you could explain how to

▶ 2:05:48 Speaker 1: share screen for a panelist I'd be happy to do that

▶ 2:05:58 Speaker 12: Let me see. I think you have to give me the host rights in order for me to share a screen.

▶ 2:06:04 Speaker 1: Fabulous. Doing that now. You're driving, Neil.

▶ 2:06:14 Speaker 13: Okay. Let's see. Is it working? Still can't share.

▶ 2:06:31 Speaker 1: the presentation that I sent to the council and added tag them to yeah I so

▶ 2:06:41 Speaker 12: I'm on as a I'm on as the presenter has anyone other budget presentations done a present done a like a PowerPoint or anything like that not sharing screen

▶ 2:06:59 Speaker 12: you're the first last is there any other rights you can give to me under the I'll

▶ 2:07:10 Speaker 1: just go like this you're the host you have the most rights possible okay hold

▶ 2:07:15 Speaker 12: on I think I might be able to get it now there we go

▶ 2:07:20 John N. Tramontozzi: Neil do you have a button on the block the shit share tent content right there

▶ 2:07:32 Speaker 12: we go okay yay so so I hope you notice the background this is a City Hall the way it looked in 1900 before the fire that burned it down and it was reconstructed well didn't burn it down but burned off the roof there was a third floor in there so so let me just walk through I'm kind of gonna loosely follow my uh budget questionnaire i don't want to get too caught up on too many things or we'll be here all night um but uh uh just to start um so staffing my city staff is uh myself uh tom

▶ 2:08:07 Speaker 12: smulligan uh assistant i.t director jared cameralango systems administrator donna cardello works independently she's still under the i.t on the school and i have uh frank sorrenti um dave remington jimmy ho they all do desktop support and i have a shared systems analyst and data coordinator if that's one position that analyst and data coordinator that's the position title so that's not two different two different staff um so our responsibility is not going to

▶ 2:08:42 Speaker 12: go through the whole list but we're basically responsible for everything in the world and we also have I do a lot of project management building so we constantly are adding and improving our systems and basically for the last you know 20 years there's always a technical solution for every problem so everyone else's problems become our problems so unfortunately we're we've become uh overwhelmed i mean we did about 1100 tickets in our system some of those are project related uh this year and like we have an open queue right now about 130 tickets and that's pretty common

▶ 2:09:35 Speaker 12: so so these are projects we completed last well this during this fiscal year um we are in the middle of the city phone system upgrade which uh included running cables in eight different buildings uh to connect the new phones um we designed and built it in-house which saved us a lot of money um and we were kind of got shut down on that with the with the with the shutdown but we're we're still going ahead with what we can uh we renewed the uh copiers this year um some things we've converted we've been working with uh covet 19 trying to keep people moving which meant uh rolling out a lot of laptops uh webex a lot of other just things here and there with people who've never used uh laptops before or done meeting principles it's been extremely busy We also rolled out Evergreen, which is our – it's an emergency system, but you can also use it for other purposes. The mayor's been using it quite often to get information out to city residents. So I won't really get into that, but we've done a lot of training for it, and we're going to expand our use of it. We've got the Chromebook cart rollouts. We did a bunch of those this year. We also instituted a one-to-one in our schools where kids would have one Chromebook to one student, is what that means. So students brought in their own Chromebooks to school, and we're trying to alleviate the costs of purchasing Chromebooks in-house,

▶ 2:11:27 Speaker 12: um and trying to get it so that kids are using it as a as a personal learning device that they have with them all the time and have during the summer um uh we also replaced the telephone system at the lincoln elementary we did that in-house as well it was a voice over ip project as well uh we to access for ells we have a lot of state required testing um besides but we also have you know which is an english language learner so we have to install a server and we have to do it all on chromebooks um and uh it can be uh pretty rigorous it takes up a lot of time um so we also installed a new exchange server this year is our email server again we did that in-house very talented team of people who can do a lot of this work and save us a ton on a lot faster we have that included the Tyler content manager which means we're that's our document management in relation to our munis So we're going to be trying to get rid of paper and digitize all of those documents and have them in a system for easy retrieval. And right now we're trucking paper around all over the place. So as soon as we get back, that that whole project is going to kick up again. That would have been something we were doing already right now had the pandemic not started. We also installed an employee self-service. It's actually unit self-service. The employee piece of that is to allow, right now we print out our advices or checks, which is, you know, something that, you know, private government hasn't, I mean, private sector hasn't done for a long time. They do it in email or they have a website for the employee to visit to see their accruals, to see their to get their check advices, all of that. We are we spun up a server to do that. We're going to need to implement that over the next year. We also spun up an infrastructure server, which ties all those those different munis products together. We did a bunch of server upgrades this year. I don't want to bore you with all the details. We also did a new cloud server. We consolidated the backup servers and trying to improve that system due to ransomware. We're in the middle of rolling out an antivirus software to protect us from ransomware, which is, again, something that's, since the beginning of 2018, we've really gone after municipal, local government. So we're trying to do what we can with the that we have protect ourselves uh we also installed a new hvac server which runs all the city and school buildings um uh mr thomas you'd be happy to know that we we installed new ups's uh all over the place we just i just installed uh two more yesterday in relation to the new phone system uh clever is our single sign-on for the school to really ramp that up this year uh i mean i don't I don't want to really get bored if I start talking about it. But basically, it ties our student information system and Google logins so that the kids can have one password to get into the several software applications that we have in the schools. It makes security a lot more stringent, where the kids will remember the password because they only have one. and it's complex enough that they can use it for all the different software and no one can get into those. Well, kids can get into them. People we don't want can't get into them. The Massachusetts Student Privacy Alliance is something that we're working on. That's our initiative to get a data privacy agreement with all of our vendors for student software. that's I could go on for that forever new where there's a new antivirus and cybersecurity and security upgraded at the middle school this summer we are planning to replace all of the I think we talked about this once before replace all of the bobs in the whole system so that it matches the rest of the city so it's a little bit safer in that way so that that's be going on also I'm also going to be working on a project for the Lincoln upgrading cameras there this summer we have a ton of stuff going on this summer so any changes from my budget for this next coming year unit support is is up to well 103 is just the standard. That's what we got to pay for what we have. We're adding modules to go to 123, which is a 35.9% increase in the MUNIS line overall. And I anticipate a 47.2% reduction in my phone line uh which to the tune of 62 630 dollars and 56 cents um this is an initiative that i started when i uh began working for the city and saw that the telephone line was far higher than i uh thought that it should be um the new phone system that we're installing right now we designed it in such a way that we uh could get a phone agreement with a carrier

▶ 2:17:35 Speaker 12: that would basically it digitizes all the lines no more lines would be coming into the city so we can um go direct to digital um which drastically reduces the amount of money that we have to pay we we did go out to um several vendors uh all the state contract vendors uh trying to figure out who could who could supply us with with that um for our design um and uh we significantly reduced it unfortunately due to the shutdown we might not be able to implement that um we're not able to implement it as quickly as possible or as anticipated when i had done this budget so hopefully we can we we stay in budget this year i i i we should but um um it might be it might be tight but but significant savings there um events in the next year just a few

▶ 2:18:34 Speaker 12: things covet 19 planning we're doing that now we're i'm anticipating this happening again in the fall so we're preparing for that as we have been actually since this started we have new mutus modules that we're going to be working on and implementing hopefully we will get city hall generator this year which is just just long overdue long overdue in an absolute necessity for emergency management

▶ 2:19:13 Speaker 12: I won't go on about that again, but we also have a Chromebook one-to-one we're going to roll out again this spring. So that will include grades six and seven, because six will have matriculated to seven, and nine and ten, ten again moves up to ten, nine moves up to ten, so we'll have nine and ten. So we'll have four years in that one-to-one program. also I anticipate replacing all the the phone system at the Roosevelt which is again to another voice over IP phone system that concludes my presentation I tried to get through fast enough so that we wouldn't be wouldn't be bored and I can I can go eat the enchiladas my wife made for dinner

▶ 2:19:58 Christopher Cinella: first in queue we have counselor tram the toes yeah if you want to switch off

▶ 2:20:08 Christopher Cinella: the yeah let me see council mcnaughty and cookies these are totally legit are

▶ 2:20:20 Speaker 4: we back online looks like it's Karen counselor thank you mr. chairman and

▶ 2:20:22 John N. Tramontozzi: thank you mr. Ellis for coming in and presenting your presentation your department does yeoman's work and keeping these cities IT the technology up to speed and all I do have do we have a quite again being consistent with my desire to having all the departments give a little because we're all in this together as you know in this these fiscal difficult times I want to review the salary lines I have to commend councillor McNaught you asked the appropriate questions and you're absolutely we did not and do not have from the administration a spreadsheet of the salaries and it's not part of the public agenda however I have information because I dug it out and from prior years budgets which I and I would manage to review so I could tell you that you have one two three four employees including yourself correct yes you did

▶ 2:21:45 John N. Tramontozzi: mention in your presentation that you had some school staff but that paid out the school budget is that correct so of the four one two three four employees in your department or are there are they non-union or union employees uh none of them are union okay great thank you

▶ 2:22:04 John N. Tramontozzi: so i could tell you that again i'm gonna i'm gonna be making a motion and again don't take it personal because i'm doing it for i'm trying to be consistent here um i see that uh and i'm trying to level fund salary lines to the 2020 budget all right I don't anticipated passing so you can breathe easy but the difference in the director of IT from and I have the figures if anybody's wants but it's two thousand one hundred and ten dollars and seven cents increase in salary from the 2020 to 2021 budget. The IT analyst, $2,294.27. Assistant IT director, $3,069.73. System analyst, $2,026.32. And then there was a $600 difference increase to the sick leave line. And that's a total of $10,100.39. So with that in mind, I'm gonna make a motion to reduce line 011-551-511000 salary and wages by $10,100 and 39 cents.

▶ 2:23:29 Speaker 4: Second.

▶ 2:23:31 Speaker 12: If I may, just for a second. So this year I was anticipating an additional uh employee so and you know that wasn't set in stone obviously and then we had this downturn um because we are so overwhelmed so you've already uh i've already given up basically i mean for all intents and purposes a position um uh i don't know if that i know i i appreciate

▶ 2:24:07 John N. Tramontozzi: that and and thank you I'm still gonna make that motion for what it's worth and again it's it's it's I'm trying to be consistent because I anticipate a revenue shortfall and I think we owe the taxpayers and the citizens of this great city to try to do something that would be fiscally responsible so we have a

▶ 2:24:36 Christopher Cinella: a motion to cut out about $10,100, 39 cents in by Councilor Tramontozzi, seconded by Councilor McMaster on discussion. And we do have a Councilor Eccles actually next.

▶ 2:24:55 Jack Eccles: I'd prefer to speak now on discussion, but after the motion, if that's all right.

▶ 2:25:03 Speaker 4: Councilor Stewart.

▶ 2:25:07 Robb Stewart: Thank you, Mr. Chair. And I'd like to speak through the chair, recognizing Mr. Ellis' pose. As someone who has been working in the IT industry for over 30 years, I think it's real important to recognize the retention strategy as IT people in general can move around quite a bit more. I don't think there's any exception to Mr. Ellis's department. My concern, if we level fund this, is we have attrition and when there's attrition in IT departments, it can be a much larger cost than the salary increase from the standpoint of having someone that's knowledgeable with the systems, with the people, with the infrastructure. So for these reasons, Mr. Chair, I will not be supporting this motion. Thank you.

▶ 2:26:09 Speaker 4: Councilor McNaught.

▶ 2:26:13 Jeff McNaught: Thank you, Mr. Chairman. Thank you, Mr. Ellis. just had one question on page six sorry i'm looking at two screens so it's i'm not looking away from you um but on page six of your questionnaire that you filled out um it asked the and every department gets asked the same question one moment uh it's it's the question of do all your department salaries come from the same budget or are they split amongst multiple budgets and your answer was my department salaries are split between my school budget and my city budget and i found that i found that interesting because and i'm not seeing that i would have been a little puzzled as to why you would make less than your assistant director um so can you shed some light on um what other uh income there is for everyone in the department where it is and what the total amount

▶ 2:27:06 Speaker 12: sure so uh we so i mean in a general sense or because i have numbers digging way way down um because i mean in a general sense uh 40 of my salaries come from the i'm the only person in the department in my city department that is actually split the salary split between the cdn schools so my budget is paid for out of um the schools

▶ 2:27:35 Jeff McNaught: uh that's good that's good enough for me thank you

▶ 2:27:43 Maya Jamaleddine: Thank you, Chairman. Thank you, Mr. Ellis, for being with us tonight and for answering all our questions. Just a couple of questions. Can you explain to us and provide more information about what is the munis support consist of?

▶ 2:28:00 Speaker 12: Sure. So there's a, the department would like, the auditor's finance department would like to expand general billing. I mean, I'm not too, we've just been, we've talked about this just recently. It makes, it does, it automates a lot of the processes. I think we've learned a lot during this COVID-19 pandemic about some of the things that we could automate generally with billing. We've had people coming in, you know, for a week and then another person comes in for the office for a week uh my understanding is the general billing will automate a lot of that billing where people can pay directly through online uh through the unit through munis um also there's a fixed asset management module that we'd like to look at uh we've just brought on a new facilities manager um i'm sure that's tying in uh with some of that and and one of the big things that we'd like to do is uh expand our uh transparency of the budget process um so in keeping with that munis oh sorry tyler uh technologies who the makers of munis actually offer a product uh which they they purchase which is a nice product uh called socrata that uh dynamically updates those numbers that you see and we would set it up so that the stuff the stuff the numbers would come straight out of mute us on a daily basis some of those numbers would change and those would be reflected online for people to see who really wanted to get into the nuts and bolts of what the spending is so yes so you mentioned transparency

▶ 2:29:55 Maya Jamaleddine: which is a key for us. And this is something that I think, and if I may speak for majority of my fellow councillors, this is something that's very important for us to increase the transparency in our city government. How is it going to show in this new system?

▶ 2:30:33 Speaker 12: well uh we got i had a well you know i have well uh it's hard to explain uh this system has a combination of um graphs and charts uh but the the the nuts and bolts of this system are are more um what you'd want to see um kind of in the lines the budget lines you can set it up so that you can just click through and see all of the expenditures uh with the lines each budget line is for and and how much was spent um you know i would i could give you maybe some more information once we get into the product we purchase the product once we get into it more or i could get you more information from uh tyler on how it displays the information but basically you would you would you would get to it from our website um and there would be a section

▶ 2:31:30 Maya Jamaleddine: where you could click through the budget so um mero's residents will be able to go on the website and be able to pull all these records and the numbers correct perfect my second question you mentioned that you anticipate increase of 35% and if this happened would you come before us and request that or is it something that is already going on the

▶ 2:31:55 Speaker 12: third that that part is is part of my operating budget for FY 21 so essentially that would be this right now I think you wouldn't come and you're not

▶ 2:32:07 Maya Jamaleddine: anticipating coming back and requesting another increase or another no thank you

▶ 2:32:22 Leila Migliorelli: I'm done thank you mr. chairman thank you mr. Ellis for being here tonight um I had a question for you but councillor Jamala Dean already asked regarding the transparency on the website I think that'll be a great asset and offering for our residents I'm in terms of the motion that's on the table right now to to cut. As I mentioned last night and previous nights, I will not be supporting this. I am in favor of looking at a more holistic strategy and hoping that the mayor's office will provide that soon. And I will not be supporting minor cuts to budgets. Thank you.

▶ 2:33:00 Jack Eccles: Thank you, Mr. Chairman. Thank you, Mr. Ellis, for being here. Just one, the first, I'll start off with a quick question um who's responsible for generally like the day-to-day maintenance of the content on the website is that under the i.t department to the department is it

▶ 2:33:15 Speaker 12: kind of decentralized through the department heads it's a combination of uh decentralization uh and amy camosa is our webmaster the city clerk so she's responsible for the general upkeep of that of that as well as you know departments have access to their section of the of their for their pages which for the most part stay fairly static but yeah awesome thanks and then

▶ 2:33:41 Jack Eccles: and looking at you know the phone project which which was appropriated last spring is there anything you see kind of long term that would be it's you know kind of a one-time expense that would trigger an annual cost savings a recurring cost savings like the phone um upgrade are there are there some things that are kind of on the back burner or could be added to the capital

▶ 2:34:06 Speaker 12: improvement plan um well i will say that um there are not not a drastic thing like that i will say that um indirect costs um things like uh like we negotiated a new print contract at the schools this year and we're being charged a lot more for upkeep of our printer fleet which in is we have our average printer uh is the printer age is um i believe it's 14 years now so when you have printers that are 14 years um and they're slow and old and need a lot of care um then we pay more for those so um yeah it's there are some indirect costs that are like that

▶ 2:35:01 Jack Eccles: awesome thanks and then i i had asked when we were talking about security not too long ago um transitioning to more software as a service in in less you know locally stored things kind of i see about a new exchange server is there anything that you sort of see on the horizon of transitioning to more cloud-based stuff and in less less local storage i know the generator is important but but it would kind of as far as you know it would make it so that it wasn't completely centralized and when things down go down as well the issue the issue with the um

▶ 2:35:34 Speaker 12: to answer your question and sort of i don't want to be too long-winded but um it comes down to funds so uh uh 365 which is the microsoft um office product that's online um that includes collaboration uh is is a great product it is roughly half the cost of buying um say office new i mean that would include online exchange and all those things um the exchange portion is a whole other added cost if you look at that cost over say a 10-year period which is what i usually if i'm looking at things that you can look at a five to ten year period the cost of going to oh 365 for for a mail or exchange product um is going to be i think the price is out it was like like eight times the cost over 10 years um so really what that comes down to is is our ability to fund um things so yeah i would love i would love to put us in o365 um with office and exchange but um the cost is just too too high um we also take into consideration how much use it would have over you know gaining traction over a certain amount of time i think i think local office with exchange is is going to do what we need it to do in the probably in the next five years at which time we will probably then go to a cloud-based system

▶ 2:37:20 Mark Garipay: thank you thank you mr. chairman thank you mr. chairman thank you mr. Ellis for being here I just want to follow up on you had mentioned kovat planning and I know your department had to shift on the fly to get everyone set up to work remotely and in doing so you kind of mentioned and I hope I hope it doesn't happen but I think it's it's out there that we may have another surge in the fall and if that if that does happen are we are we set up to work remotely with enough with enough hardware enough um you know laptops um do we we see any investment coming forward in order to uh to help us um help the workers um make sure we get uh full uh full production at home i know i know it's a shift and it's different for everyone and not everyone has their home pc so i wasn't sure if we've looked into that at all to make sure that everyone is is set up and to Councilor Tramontozzi conversation earlier regarding the CARES Act, would that be a possibility if we were to go that route to upgrade some of our hardware, could we use that money from the CARES Act?

▶ 2:38:35 Speaker 12: Yeah, yeah, good question. So to answer the first part, right now, I mean, all of our staff is operational, at home. We worked like dogs to get laptops out. We had ordered some just before the shutdown in anticipation. We ordered more after that and rolled those out. We upgraded probably seven laptops that we had that we were going to take out of service and upgraded those and rolled those out and then we stole a laptop cart from the high school after it was announced that we no longer were going to have school to the end of the year we took a laptop cart that was actually in rough shape and we fixed all the laptops and then re-image those and then roll those out to any remaining employees and then there are the employees who are coming in and working in-house we're still in the process of rolling out um some of the new laptops to replace some of the older ones that we had given out um and we uh to answer your question i just ordered um this last week another 22 laptops in anticipation of um well to get those laptops back to the schools and to replace the laptops that are you know not that great um and uh we want to be able to pick up and go home on a moment's notice um and that's what i'm preparing for uh the rest of the systems the server wise uh we're pretty much already there uh but to answer your question on the cares act uh yes all of those uh laptops that we had ordered uh prior um we were about 22 before we were at another 22. uh those will uh some of those i think were charged to the fema uh money that was first uh first came in and then the remainder will go toward uh the cares act so yes so i would not be coming to you to ask for more funds for for that for that purpose now and and would that be the same if uh come september

▶ 2:40:50 Mark Garipay: we see uh the schools doing uh virtual virtual learning um would that be the same with um um um investment into in the school department in in virtual learning um would that be covered

▶ 2:41:12 Speaker 12: by the kids act too uh i wouldn't even cause we would occur i would expect yes uh absolutely we i'm not exactly sure we're planning out you know what what we're we're looking at um and uh so we're it's still up in the air but yeah we would we would try we would get that under cares

▶ 2:41:37 Cory Thomas: thank you very much thomas thank you mr chairman mr ellis thank you for being here thank you for providing that slideshow earlier um your line item for the munis software it's a significant bump um well thirty three thousand dollars uh will that be the line item moving forward you know the

▶ 2:41:57 Speaker 12: 123 000 plus it should be it should be an additional 20 000 and um that's a one-time well

▶ 2:42:07 Speaker 12: that's that might i'd have to look at what that that quote was for um but there be there would be an additional annual cost i don't know that it would be that much that much more that's probably a one-time cost the renewal would be less than that i'm sure

▶ 2:42:26 Cory Thomas: okay thank you and then on um software licenses it looks like there was about a you know 15 000 uh dollar bump uh this year as well uh was there some new software that you guys installed or

▶ 2:42:39 Speaker 12: needed yeah so uh with that uh upgrade to those servers that we had uh purchased and moved um data over uh again we had to you know re-up our licensing and Most of the companies have gone from charging for the hardware to purchasing software companies. I mean, if I buy a $20,000 server, it's going to cost $100,000 because I have $80,000 of licensing fees. So those are pretty significant now, and we can't really dodge it, and those costs go

▶ 2:43:24 Cory Thomas: up every year we it's yeah so if if see what software licenses so say that you know department of public works needs a cad license or the assessors needs the gis license does that come

▶ 2:43:37 Speaker 12: out of your budget or their budget uh so so sometimes those costs depending on what it's for and how it's handled uh will come out of those budgets their budgets or sometimes we'll take it over as just a matter of um maintenance and making sure that it gets renewed a lot of times when stuff gets renewed out of departments you're trying to chase it down to get stuff renewed and it's a horror show and you just take it on in your department instead of that department we're going to try to do that with the copiers for next year too because they're disparate copiers and we want to roll it you know take control of those costs and make sure we're getting the best

▶ 2:44:16 Cory Thomas: cost thanks so much mr. Ellis thanks for being here thank you chairman Snell and

▶ 2:44:24 Jen Grigoraitis: thank you mr. Ellis I just had two quick follow-up questions to mr. Garibay councillor Garipay questions regarding kovat and I think it's clear that your department in particular has played a key role in making sure that we can continue to safely operate city services and I don't think that remote work or certainly remote participation in meetings is going to be ending anytime soon um so my first question you mentioned at the start about um extending the webex license is that something that will continue into fy21 or does that need to be factored into this budget

▶ 2:45:03 Speaker 12: uh so that's a really really good question and i i i wondered about that myself because the initial year which will you know we'll be able to get to next june um june of 21 with the purchase that we made this year um so going into fy 22 we will probably need to put that in the budget if we want to continue with it um generally speaking um you know they'll they'll let you hold over a software they know you're gonna pay for the software they'll let you continue to use it for another month or we can just pay a month and then get it onto the fy 22 budget but this the amount that i spent today was i think it was nine two eight eight and that is gonna be on the uh cares act from the cares act so um really shouldn't

▶ 2:46:02 Jen Grigoraitis: impact us in fy 21. okay and we're covered license wise we're covered as beyond june 30th of this year correct and then my follow-up question in in your um memo you provided a hyperlink to infinite visions employee self-service which i'm assuming is some sort of online time and attendance platform for city employees correct yeah that's by tyler yep okay and is that going to be um operational because i i was you happen to be a part of a conversation at the start of the covid pandemic when things were shutting down about the fact that most city employees are still doing paper timesheets which does seem like something we would want to transition out of

▶ 2:46:45 Speaker 12: in this era of social distancing so um yeah yeah the timesheet thing um makes me shake my head uh

▶ 2:46:57 Jen Grigoraitis: well well we i don't know the question for marianne long i just um i'm surprised the

▶ 2:47:03 Speaker 12: city's not already doing it yeah what we're we're there are two things to that there's um there's the employee self-service which will kind of take care of employees requesting their their accruals and data and constantly asking the hr department for that um the time in attendance type tracking um you're right it's done on a paper basis right now that will i think there is a time and attendance chunk that you can get from units i'm not sure that this will handle it we also need to factor in the um the punch card system that we use right now which sorely needs an upgrade uh which is mostly used at the um public works for all of the the guys to punch in um guys and gals um so yeah that might be a separate thing okay so it's just something that

▶ 2:48:01 Jen Grigoraitis: may come online for employees to be able to check their own balances yeah there's a whole bunch

▶ 2:48:04 Speaker 12: there's a whole bunch of things that we can roll out that's part of that but um it's going to take a lot of training for employees and going down the road so that's the first thing that we intend

▶ 2:48:18 Christopher Cinella: to implement thank you no one else in queue we do have a motion on the floor to reduce the budget by ten thousand one hundred dollars thirty nine cents uh madam clerk please call the roll

▶ 2:48:28 Speaker 1: counselor i should make legally counselor tram and tozy yes

▶ 2:48:39 Speaker 1: counselor mcmaster yes counselor mcnaught no counselor eccles no

▶ 2:48:45 Speaker 5: No.

▶ 2:48:46 Speaker 1: Councilor Garipay? No. Councilor Stewart? No. Councilor Thomas? No. Councilor Jamaleddine? No. President Grigoraitis?

▶ 2:48:59 Speaker 10: No.

▶ 2:49:00 Speaker 1: Chairman Cinella?

▶ 2:49:01 Speaker 3: No.

▶ 2:49:03 Speaker 1: Two yes, 10 no, motion fails.

▶ 2:49:10 Speaker 4: And what is the will on 155 IT?

▶ 2:49:12 Jeff McNaught: Make a motion to move the bottom line forward.

▶ 2:49:17 Christopher Cinella: second motion to move the bottom line forward made by councillor mcnaught second by councillor Garipay in discussion for discussion and then seeing none

▶ 2:49:28 Speaker 1: spice jim Migliorelli yes councillor traymond tozy yes councillor mcmaster yes councillor mcnaught yes counselor Eccles yeah that's the garipay yes sir Stewart yes

▶ 2:49:51 Speaker 1: sir Thomas yes I'm so Jamala Dean yes Grigoraitis yes Karen Sunilla yes yes

▶ 2:49:58 Christopher Cinella: well my move they'll enjoy your cold enchiladas and at this time I'll

▶ 2:50:04 John N. Tramontozzi: to obtain a motion to adjourn do we have 9 30 do we have 9 30 9 31 or do we act on those

▶ 2:50:15 John N. Tramontozzi: did we move uh 9 30 and 9 31 that's all part of the 155.

▶ 2:50:24 John N. Tramontozzi: well okay you want to do that's fine i don't have a problem with it

▶ 2:50:30 Speaker 1: similar to the previous nights they've done very brief explanations that's the

▶ 2:50:40 Jen Grigoraitis: world committee just a point of personal privilege not that we don't all enjoy spending time together but if you miss some of our faces you can see four of us on Saturday night participating in the bridge virtual trivia be it will be myself counselor Stewart counselor make me really and counselor McNaught so I'm happy that such a worthy organization is able to continue with their um event and that we're able to participate so i know there aren't a lot of live sports to watch these days so if you're desperate you can watch us try to win trivia thank you good luck counselor mcmaster good luck

▶ 2:51:16 Shawn M. MacMaster: thank you mr chairman i'd just like to make a motion to attach the powerpoint presentation and memo provided by mr ellis to the record leave it on okay i'm clear i'm sorry the presentation

▶ 2:51:34 Speaker 1: is attached the presentation is an iqm2 memo i'll check and make sure but you have the

▶ 2:51:45 Speaker 1: motion it's been seconded vice chair Migliorelli yes councilor Tramontozzi yes councilor mcmaster Yes. Councilor McNaught?

▶ 2:51:52 Speaker 12: Yes.

▶ 2:51:52 Speaker 1: Councilor Eccles? Yes. Councilor Garriger? Yes.

▶ 2:51:56 Speaker 4: Councilor Stewart?

▶ 2:51:57 Speaker 1: Yes. Councilor Thomas? Yes. Councilor Jamaleddine? Yes.

▶ 2:52:03 Speaker 10: Councilor, I'm sorry, President Grigoraitis?

▶ 2:52:03 Speaker 1: Yes. Chairman Cinella? Yes. 11 yes.