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 (~59 min @ 5:20)

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

▶ 5:09 Christopher Cinella: Councilor Garipay? Yes. Councilor Stewart? Yes. Councilor Thomas? Yes. Councilor Dermaladin? Yes. President Grigoraitis? Yes. Chairman Cinella? Yes. Levin, yes. To our guest speakers tonight, just uh to let you know as you present um councils will raise their hand which is to indicate to me that they'll have a question i put them in queue i just want to make you aware of that when they raise their hand that is for you okay so to start off tonight um continuation of our budget hearings order number 2020-89 city of melrose operating budget for fiscal year 2021 in the amount of $8,397,961 for the first time tonight in line item 141, 930, department clerk.

▶ 6:04 Speaker 1: Clerk, if we have one. I'm bringing him in as a panelist.

▶ 6:19 Speaker 2: I'm in right now. So, hello, everyone.

▶ 6:23 Speaker 1: Hey, Chris. How are you?

▶ 6:24 Speaker 2: Would you like me to make a statement, or how would you like us to proceed?

▶ 6:30 Christopher Cinella: Do you have a statement prepared, please?

▶ 6:32 Speaker 2: Sure. I'd just like to take this moment to just thank my staff. They've been unbelievable through the last few months, and I really think that this is an opportunity to thank them. The other item that I'd like to mention is that my Assistant Assessor, Sarah McClellan, has achieved her designation to be a Mass Accredited Assessor. In my dealings, this is the first time in city history we've had two assessors in one office so that's that's a huge thing and i wanted to publicly congratulate her on that it was two years in the making and i think our office and our city is better for it so with that the budget right now is pretty much level funded across instead of going into different line items what i'd like to do is just take questions um on anything that that has changed but for the most part um i have a prepared answer for any of the line items or i can answer answer anything um that you might have uh at this

▶ 7:38 John N. Tramontozzi: time thank you thank you uh counselor trimatosi yeah thank you mr chairman and uh thank you mr wilcox for uh for coming in uh this evening uh to present your budget um to it um line uh 539 three zero zero revaluation um twenty thousand dollar increase in that item from uh from the 2020 uh budget um i think i understand and i get it this is a year for reevaluation of properties

▶ 8:06 Speaker 2: is that correct the evaluation uh revaluation is actually 2022 but um it's a two-year project we take half of the money this year and half of the money next year it actually takes a long time to do it but it is every five years the city needs a revaluation correct what's the extra money used

▶ 8:24 Speaker 2: for what we have to do is we need to provide extra reporting for the state the state actually comes in for a couple weeks to sit in our office it's not a typical year considered an extreme audit of all city properties we also have to bring in the software developers to go through the whole table system um it's additional resources that we don't have in the office in the traditional year nor would i i ask for those additional resources in a typical year but during a revalid is crucial

▶ 8:57 John N. Tramontozzi: in order that we get certified right great uh i noticed that uh your uh 2020 year-to-date spend is $40,352 and the budget amount was $83,500. So why this disparity?

▶ 9:13 Speaker 2: Sure. The assessing department ramps up in the spring starting actually in March all the way to June 30th. That has been severely impacted with COVID. As far as operations, they've come to a halt. We will not go in any resident's house. All of our operations have drastically changed. We are working with the state to find out new mandates, new guidelines for how we put full and fair cash value on every single property. And to answer that question, we spend most of that from March until June 30th. And I anticipate spending that to complete the

▶ 9:54 John N. Tramontozzi: services needed for evaluation this year thank you you you have there's a total of one two three four employees in your department including yourself we have

▶ 10:03 Speaker 2: three full-time employees and we have an employee that's five hours that we split with another department everything is funded out of the assessing department

▶ 10:14 John N. Tramontozzi: great thank you are any of the employees union employees I have three union

▶ 10:21 John N. Tramontozzi: employees correct they on union contracts yes they are which which ones that the assistant yes everyone except myself okay and you also get the Board

▶ 10:36 Speaker 2: of Assessors that get a stipend with it the Board of Assessors comprises of two residents and myself they are part-time they come in as needed and during the reval they'll be in more than a normal year correct okay all right don't take

▶ 10:53 John N. Tramontozzi: this personally I've been doing it and suggesting it for all the departments so I'd like to level fund this back to the 2020 but if I if I took the the funding for 2020 but salaries and in reduce the 2021 budget that would be eight thousand five hundred sixty five dollars and twenty seven cents of that amount can you tell me what is required by lot to fund that union contract increase in

▶ 11:30 Speaker 2: salaries as far as the contracts I would defer to the solicitor's office I do not know the details nor should I speak on contracts so I will write down a note and I will speak with Rob Van Campen to find out contractually what I have to pay I would assume but I don't want to assume that everything is contractual as far as raises but i can i can follow up on that for you uh uh counselor tramitosa okay thank you

▶ 11:53 John N. Tramontozzi: uh one other thing was um and i'll let you go but the um the original the original budget 2020 for your department salaries was two hundred thousand six five six hundred fifty five dollars and sixty cents, but the 2020 budget amount was $239,099.21, a difference of $5,443.60. Can you explain why there was a revision to the 2020 budget? During the year, I believe that we had some

▶ 12:28 Speaker 2: either we had some changes as far as longevity again I can find out all that information I will write down that but there was a change in longevity as far as hours or employees I don't believe we added anything over the last year but I will get those exact answers for you I'm taking notes on all of that great

▶ 12:52 John N. Tramontozzi: because you're all salaried employees right you know that's correct the in the

▶ 12:56 Speaker 2: last six years we have not dipped into overtime we don't there's no other things it's a flat salary and as far as contractual amounts that's all in the HR department and the solicitor's office and I will definitely go up and grab those but we have not increased hours or employees in the last year thank you all

▶ 13:15 John N. Tramontozzi: right thank you I'll defer it to others at this time just as a point of

▶ 13:20 Christopher Cinella: parliamentary procedure I do need to entertain a motion to suspend the rules

▶ 13:29 Christopher Cinella: motion to suspend the rules made by council chairman Tosi seconded by vice chair Migliorelli

▶ 13:38 Speaker 1: you're on mute

▶ 13:40 Speaker 3: Vice Chair Migliorelli

▶ 13:42 Speaker 1: 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 Mcnaught

▶ 14:03 Christopher Cinella: yes president Grigoraitis yes chairman sanella yes 11 yes we're now under uh suspension so actually if you could just go right through that again uh mr wilcock it's the same questions to the council tramadose only kid and stewart council stewart you're up thank you mr chairman thank you mr

▶ 14:18 Robb Stewart: wilcox for being here uh just uh you answered a lot of questions that i had so i appreciate that uh and be prepared uh the one question that i did have regarding uh the covid situation is uh do you have a backlog that you think will spill over into the next fiscal year and if so um what anticipated

▶ 14:45 Speaker 2: impact does that have if any um so the only thing that i feel that's going to get backlogged is every nine years we have to value actually every 10 years now we have to um visit every single property in the city so that's something right now i think with the um going into people's houses it's not a good time can i spread that out through the next couple years absolutely i don't think that will be a problem so what we don't get to visit this year for cyclical inspections we'll push out two or three years and we'll be able to get it it's going to take some some hard work but i definitely have the staff and we can do that that's the only thing i think would that will be delayed as far as any regulations through covid we still have to give full and fair cash value for every property in melrose there's no exception on that so the only thing we can't really do right now and that's by my directive is to go into people's houses it's just not going to

▶ 15:38 Robb Stewart: happen okay um the reason why i bring it up is um for your previous answers uh you had mentioned uh the forty thousand dollar um shortfall that you expected to be spent through june 30th um and if if there's um you fully anticipate that will happen at this point given that we have less

▶ 16:03 Speaker 2: than five weeks really yeah so what we're looking at is uh technology technology is going to have to solve this whether it's aerial imagery artificial intelligence we are heavily invested in getting this problem solved. So instead of sending boots on the ground, we're going to switch to more technical resources and we're going to complete our job. There is no playbook for this. I am anticipating at finishing what I have to do with the resources I have. Do I hope to leave some money left? Yes, but it could be spent because we do have to get this done in a very

▶ 16:37 Robb Stewart: fast pace okay so any expense or capital expend uh that may be unanticipated based on uh the

▶ 16:45 Speaker 2: technology so do you have that in place yeah so uh right now a lot of that money is left over for actual people to do inspections we hire out a company every year they do about 800 to a thousand inspections we are going to take that in-house using technology using aerial photography and then also using a couple other software systems so there might be a forward cost to that but it's going to be negated by the savings of going door-to-door the old route so we're pivoting from in the field to in the office using desktop

▶ 17:15 Robb Stewart: review one final question on that is do could you foresee that becoming a permanent process change that we could potentially save money long-term on well

▶ 17:27 Speaker 2: well the good thing is is last year i believe i came to uh the board and i was excited about a new project with change detection so this has been in the queue for a long time and it's really paying off right now so um i i believe that yes we will go to that at some point um we are still bound by the department of revenue in the state of massachusetts with laws um are they early adopters of this new technology i don't think so but we're trying to blaze a trail doing it and it's well

▶ 18:02 Mark Garipay: received so far great great uh thank you mr wilcox thank you mr chair thank you mr chairman thank you mr wilcox for being here uh a couple of questions most of my questions were uh answered but going back to the revaluation when we when we look at your budget your your budgets every category um is level funded and you're increasing um your re-evaluation budget by just about 20 000 and your professional services is going down so it's safe to say that you're moving you're moving the money within your within your current budget are you are you going to have enough money to are you going to come back to us next year for more money or do you think there's enough money in this budget to uh to do what you need to next year i mean because you're just moving the money around um one line item to another so so again um i i

▶ 18:51 Speaker 2: don't know what the circumstances will be next year as far as how we operate assessing uh departments um but i i plan if i have to prioritize certain things in one year then i just push things to another year or just change that down the list i think i can still meet all my legal obligations by doing processes like this the reval is the most important thing coming up all of our resources have to be pushed to that so what does that mean for us in the office that means we have to do a little more inspections we have to take on inspections instead of hiring out and i've had a meeting with my staff and we're more than willing to to suck it up and get it done so uh yes i don't think that i will be coming for any additional money as long as everything's kind of consistent next year thank you appreciate it thomas thank

▶ 19:47 Cory Thomas: you mr chairman uh mr wilcox thank you for being here um all my questions have been answered so far so i'm going to pull for my uh my questioning thank you president Grigoraitis thank you and thank

▶ 19:58 Jen Grigoraitis: you mr wilcox for being here i just had um one brief comment which was i just wanted to thank your team and you especially for all of the work you put in behind the scenes on both the scaffolding of the melrose helps website and of the covid information hub on the city webpage those are incredible resources and i know i've heard from many residents about how helpful that has been particularly as you reference as people begin this next phase of trying to figure out risk and things like letting people into their homes i think being able to have the information and the data in a way that you presented it is truly incredible and i don't think people necessarily know that that came out of your office so i just want to say thank you for providing that in addition to pivoting and how you provide your offices services during this crisis so i don't

▶ 20:47 Speaker 2: have any questions thank you thank you and i just want to follow up on that i was part of a team and kudos goes to everyone that was part of that team we had volunteers city employees and everyone really came together and it was kind of amazing it's definitely not in the assessing job description but I always feel I'm part of a team and and that was needed at that time so this site was designed by Jane Pitts who's in the planning office and also in my office and she did an excellent job I did help with that but she deserves all the credit and I'm glad that everyone likes

▶ 21:19 Christopher Cinella: it thank you I missed anybody you can hold up your hand I'm not sure I missed anyone what is the will of the committee

▶ 21:33 Christopher Cinella: motion to move the bottom line by councillor mcnaught seconded by councillor eccles madam clerk if you could call the roll

▶ 21:40 Speaker 1: jim mclearelli yes councillor Tramontozzi yes councillor mcmaster yes councillor mcnaught yes councillor eccles yes councillor stewart yes councillor thomas

▶ 22:01 Speaker 1: yes councilor maladin yes president Grigoraitis yes chairman

▶ 22:08 Christopher Cinella: sanella yes 11 yes next item is uh 241 inspection services and revolving account account number 2658 let me bring in paul johnson

▶ 22:27 Speaker 1: please hold making him panelists now can you hear us you're muted

▶ 22:32 Speaker 4: Hear you yes, you guys hear him

▶ 22:38 Speaker 1: Can you hear me? Yes, can you put on your video or no? I'm gonna give it a shot

▶ 22:40 Speaker 4: I had some problems with my tablet. So I switched to my phone. So let's see what happens. Am I here you're here

▶ 23:17 Christopher Cinella: the screen comments it's a Q&A exit with the exception of I too want to thank my

▶ 23:27 Speaker 4: staff if they they've done an incredible job it's been very stressful and they've stuck with it and I think we're we've come out the other side after two months of uh batting back and forth with the ideas and and touching base with contractors and the public of what's working and what's not working so they are it's definitely um strenuous and it's it's uh not an eight to four job anymore uh as i'm getting emails from my step six o'clock at night but i wanted to just thank them again for that

▶ 24:15 John N. Tramontozzi: thank you thank you mr. chairman welcome mr. Johnson how are you I'm doing well yes I know you've been very busy and I appreciate all the hard work your department is doing especially with all the construction happening around the city prior to the state of emergency you're around you're pretty much kind of a quick question about the professional services line five to nine zero zero zero is this purpose of that line item okay so the professional service line

▶ 24:53 Speaker 4: item is for my part-time as needed building inspector and for covering inspectors who will bring in if someone's on vacation the electrical we bring out inspector so we have coverage all year round so the building inspector is a part-time as needed and uh i hope that answers your question yeah it does so uh so

▶ 25:27 John N. Tramontozzi: your staff includes uh yourself your full-time assistant uh director uh who's full-time as well

▶ 25:40 Speaker 4: correct that is correct and then it includes it includes a part-time wire inspector at 24 hours a week and a part-time plumbing and gas inspector at 24 hours a week and also my wire inspector is cross-trained and acts also as the sealer and weights and

▶ 26:04 John N. Tramontozzi: measures for the city are they paid by by salary or they are on contract paid

▶ 26:10 Speaker 4: by the hour or by the job we are salary are any of the employees in the

▶ 26:12 John N. Tramontozzi: department union or the non-union positions we're all non-union okay great all right i i think i'm okay um and uh i'm all set with my questioning and defer to others thank you mr johnson thank you

▶ 26:32 Christopher Cinella: did i miss anybody if you could raise your hand if you have a question how's the gather pay mute

▶ 26:45 Mark Garipay: Sorry about that. Thank you, Mr. Johnson. Thank you, Mr. Johnson, for being here. Just want to follow up on one item. You had sent us an email about moving some of the application process online. And I know there's been a project out there that we've been working on, on trying to get the applications online to make that whole process more efficient. And I was wondering if you could just explain a little bit about where that is and when we may think that what our goal is to get that up and running on the website.

▶ 27:27 Speaker 4: We are presently probably around 80% there in the development of it. There were some challenges there with how we wanted to move forward. This administration has expressed its willingness

▶ 27:55 Speaker 4: and its direction to anticipate and would hope it would be up by the end of the calendar year.

▶ 28:02 Mark Garipay: That's great. And, you know, we've had a number of conversations regarding that, and I'm sure you hear it from some of the contractors as do some of the councilors that it's one item that I think everyone would find very useful.

▶ 28:17 Speaker 4: Oh, absolutely.

▶ 28:20 Mark Garipay: I appreciate your help in getting that up and running. Thank you.

▶ 28:25 Speaker 1: Let's do it.

▶ 28:28 Robb Stewart: Thank you, Mr. Chair. Thank you, Mr. Johnson, for being here tonight. uh i appreciate it and i appreciate your um well thought out note that you put together uh that helps um answer a lot of questions beforehand um one one piece that did uh uh stand out to me as an interest is where you discuss um and i think uh council garrifay was alluding to this is as you progressively go from issuing permits um that you're developing uh much more of a technology enabled uh system and solution uh could you speak to how that looks longer term because when i see that uh and and i see the efficiencies that bring uh that can be brought to the department that can be faster uh it can be uh less labor intensive i see cost savings uh so could you talk a little

▶ 29:24 Speaker 4: bit about how that looks in the future um well presently what we've done uh to from as a result of covert covid we've um instituted a pdf version of the application where someone would apply online via e we process that application get it into our current permit tracking system recently in that number i was able to get up and running a online portal for payments for inspectional services free fees uh that was uh roughly about two and a half weeks ago we got that finally up and running so it's been a long journey to go through but you are that the pro the process we have in place now because of covert

▶ 30:26 Speaker 4: COVID is not the end permit tracking system that developed with an actual online you'll register as a contractor all your information will be stored or a homeowner all your information will be stored you'll be able to go on and file your permits online initially what's that look like once it's up and running we're going to keep it in-house for a month or so to work the bugs out

▶ 30:53 Speaker 4: them a little easy applications work through and over time will be advancing to building permit applications what I and what I envision that to look like would be at first what we're going to call a short form basically for windows siding roofs smaller jobs that may not include an extended review permit you know permit review so yes it would on the

▶ 31:31 Robb Stewart: back end of data and I think it makes the the process a lot easier for homeowners that are looking to do improvements as well as the contracts that you mentioned as well so I applaud that I appreciate you putting that in there and I look forward to seeing how it develops I hope that we can see some improvements coming forward in the next couple of years and virtually change how we do that whole inspection process. That'd be great. Thank you, Mr. Johnson. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.

▶ 32:03 Speaker 1: Councilor Eccles.

▶ 32:06 Jack Eccles: Thank you, Mr. Chairman, and thank you, Mr. Johnson, for being here. I see in your in your questionnaire you said you've transitioned to now being open on Fridays. I just kind of a question as far as there seems to be no increase in staff time is there going to be do you think you have the resources to accommodate another day of being open for service especially me let me just

▶ 32:31 Speaker 4: yeah let me let me explain that roughly about a year ago our permits increased to such that the permit review time increased to almost three weeks to a

▶ 32:54 Speaker 4: month we just on the example is seven week period see that in seven weeks we had 11 walk in the office help so every time someone walks in that takes us away from entering a permit reviewing a permit processing the permit so it's

▶ 33:18 Speaker 4: give me I lost my train of thought do you repeat the question I apologize no

▶ 33:25 Jack Eccles: So what we decided to do was the mayor at the time and it was shortly after the

▶ 33:32 Speaker 4: override so I didn't bring it up but I've had the idea for a while is to close the office where they're working on Fridays we're there so it was to close the office to the public so that would give us that time to process the applications do the permit reviews and would just give us that four hours of

▶ 34:08 Speaker 4: solid time of not answering phone calls help so we've the mayor has instructed us to reopen that to the public on Fridays thank you thank you mr. anybody

▶ 34:28 Maya Jamaleddine: else to positive analogy thank you uh chairman um good evening mr johnson uh thank you for being with us today um i'm sure like any other department your department was affected by this pandemic and um some of the inspections were put or the projects were put on hold um would you anticipate once uh hopefully this is over um you're into the increase of uh the volume of the work uh

▶ 35:06 Speaker 4: you will have any overtime uh we do office you'll see in in this in the uh budget there is an overtime line item and what that is actually for is for emergency calls so on a night some after work or a weekend especially after a windstorm or some type of event it's called out beyond normal business hours to attend to an electrical service ripped

▶ 35:38 Speaker 4: off the house get there on that night that's that is what that overtime line

▶ 35:47 Maya Jamaleddine: item is for and do you so do you think that once once this is over and you're going back to the normal whatever is the new norm for your department gonna be do you feel that whatever you used to do or you used to function before this pandemic will be enough to pick up the work and you know try to finish all what

▶ 36:21 Speaker 4: was on hold yes so what when the pandemic started we limited we suspended all inspections with with the exception of emergency inspections or extenuating circumstances if someone was in the middle of doing their kitchen or a bathroom over we considered that extenuating if someone had a roof leak or some other issues that that affected the habitability of the home that was considered an extenuating circumstances so we kept those inspections going and we issued permits from the beginning for those certain situations you know a few weeks in it we extended it further and opened it up for more permits it was gonna be it was a case-by-case basis with with the building department in permits going up and down it's typically in the 13 years I've been here it's done nothing but gone up the workload so I think we'll be in good shape as we as we

▶ 37:34 Maya Jamaleddine: move forward and to handle what comes at us thank you so much so Thomas thank you

▶ 37:40 Cory Thomas: mr. chairman mr. Johnson thank you for being here real quickly as a 19 you spent roughly about thirty six hundred dollars in emergency overtime this year was twenty one hundred is that about average you know in your tenure over the past 10 plus years under I don't have that information in front of me I

▶ 38:00 Speaker 4: certainly can get it for you I will I will tell you that you will see me again shortly to this budget for this FYI I'd have to get that for your counselor okay

▶ 38:19 Cory Thomas: and the 2100 obviously that's $1,500 less than 2019 was that due to a mild

▶ 38:29 Speaker 4: winter I know when you well when you look at the 219 that was the total so we if I recall we probably stayed around started around that $2,100 mark and because we had spent it all and we needed more there were more events it

▶ 38:51 Speaker 4: was up to 3500 we spent if you can see where 2200 into it so if I'm not sure if

▶ 39:02 Speaker 5: that answered your question I see it I appreciate it thank you so much thank

▶ 39:10 Speaker 1: you miss anybody raise your hand for the first time not take a motion move

▶ 39:22 Christopher Cinella: bottom line forward the motion made to move the bottom line like made by councillor mcnaught but we do have council transitory for the second time uh just a point of order while we have mr johnson

▶ 39:35 John N. Tramontozzi: here if we can just have him talk about the uh fund uh two six five eight the revolving account um mr john may i uh mr chairman um mr johnson on uh fund number two six five eight we have a revolving account established with a $15,000 annual cap. Can you tell us what amounts are in there? What is the purpose of that revolving account? The purpose of the revolving account

▶ 40:00 Speaker 4: is for state mandated, they're called certificate of inspection. So in my state building code, there are a host of properties that are required to be inspected. Some are yearly, some are every two years some are every five years uh the multi-family three family and above above are usually every five years places of assembly like churches restaurants daycare facilities are required to be inspected for safety every year so that that program is a um that that's that's what

▶ 40:48 John N. Tramontozzi: we use that for well where the funds come from is that the fees paid by uh the those are the

▶ 40:55 John N. Tramontozzi: fees over the years yes yeah and then what do you do with the money once the uh they go into

▶ 41:02 Speaker 4: the revolving account the well we'll use it for things uh education seminars uh and if need be in certain times we would bring in we we may have another inspector well a part-time at needed inspector when he does those type of inspections he needs to be paid per diem it comes from that

▶ 41:26 Speaker 4: reason it comes from that revolving account correct who has control over that is that

▶ 41:29 John N. Tramontozzi: your responsibility discretion yes sir and what's the balance in the account now I don't have that

▶ 41:38 Speaker 4: in front of me I apologize I can get that from okay great thank you just one

▶ 41:48 Jack Eccles: one quick point of clarification the inspector it gets paid per diem that you just mentioned is that someone who's currently a salaried employee who in addition to their salary gets a per diem inspection rate or is that an outside

▶ 42:06 Speaker 4: person not a salary person is a non-benefit eligible employee he's just straight per inspection fee per diem so we use him on the we'll use him on inspections which comes out of our 241 account and then when we use him on the certificate of inspections it comes out of the revolving account and those two

▶ 42:35 Speaker 6: never those two never mix thank you thank you mr. thank you for that

▶ 42:40 Speaker 1: clarification mr. Johnson sorry Patrick Del Russo is in the queue he has those figures if the chair if the council would like that sure yeah making him a

▶ 43:05 Speaker 5: panelist can you hear me good evening pleasure to be here um fund number 2658 inspectional services the balance is thirty three thousand five eighty three forty six revenues to date a two thousand thirty six dollars expenses year-to-date a three thousand oh eight nine point nine four and the annual cap

▶ 43:38 John N. Tramontozzi: is fifteen thousand dollars yeah thank you mr. de la Rosa for that information So I'm a little confused. If there's a cap of $15,000, how come there's 38, what did you say, $38,000 in the account?

▶ 43:48 Speaker 5: It's $33,583.46. And that's a good question on revolving funds. That comes up frequently. Revolving funds, there's a couple of ground rules on revolving funds, first and foremost. they they can take in revenue without a limit okay however they cannot spend without a limit so they can take in this for example this case his cap is 15 000 there's no reason he can't have thirty thousand dollars of revenue because it's driven by volume if he's extremely busy the volume's up and the revenue's up that's fine however no matter what the revenue number is you would have to go to the council to spend more than the fifteen thousand dollars on an annual basis and he can do that in media for example um that's fine um but it requires council vote to change that cap and um so he's you know perfectly um in line to accumulate that kind of money in the fund but that's a great question thank you we have a motion to move

▶ 45:02 Speaker 1: the bottom line made by councillor mcnaught did i hear a second second by councillor thomas uh now i'm glad if you call the roll vice chair Migliorelli yes councillor Tramontozzi yes council mcmaster yes councilor mcnaught councilor eccles yes councilor Garipay yes councillor Stewart? Yes. Councillor Thomas? Yes. Councillor Jamaleddine? Yes. President Grigoraitis? Yes. Chairman

▶ 45:37 Christopher Cinella: Cinella? Yes. 11 yes. And then now we need a motion to move the revolving sound. I think a point of

▶ 45:41 John N. Tramontozzi: procedure Mr. Chairman I think this stays in committee until we're ready to until we get from

▶ 45:54 Christopher Cinella: all the revolving accounts and then we voted out then um we voted on it last uh last week one of them uh the two last week we voted twice uh both online and then the revolving account

▶ 46:07 John N. Tramontozzi: and then uh both the entire slate of revolving accounts at the end of the uh

▶ 46:15 Christopher Cinella: end of our hearings uh in council i believe we i believe we do have to vote on this

▶ 46:20 John N. Tramontozzi: That's fine, but it stays stays here. It doesn't leave the appropriations yet.

▶ 46:32 Christopher Cinella: Okay, you got it. Did you want to entertain that motion?

▶ 46:43 Christopher Cinella: Well, mostly to approve the revolving fund 265, approve the revolving account made by counselor. Second. Seconded by Councilor Garipay. Madam Clerk, you can call the roll.

▶ 47:02 Speaker 1: Vice Chair Migliorelli? Yes. Councilor Tramontozzi? Yes. Councilor McMaster? Yes. Councilor McNulloch? Yes. Councilor Eccles? Yes. Councilor Garipay? Yes. Councilor Stewart? Yes. Councilor Thomas? Yes. Councilor Jamaleddine? Yes.

▶ 47:14 Speaker 7: president Grigoraitis chairman yes 11 yes next order uh

▶ 47:22 Christopher Cinella: let's do 221 fire bringing in thank you good night good night

▶ 47:40 Speaker 1: thank you paul chief are you in here everybody how are you

▶ 47:56 Speaker 6: hi screen is all yours oh my okay well good evening and I thank you for the opportunity to present the budget I respectfully request that you will prove this but and I'd be happy to entertain any questions that you may have but first it would be remiss if I didn't thank my department fighters who uh day in and day out the work and uh steadfast professionalism not only during this

▶ 48:28 Speaker 6: the time of covid but uh for the year-round uh service to the uh to the city of uh melrose and i i just wanted to thank them thank you thank you councilor mcmaster thank you mr chairman

▶ 48:44 Shawn M. MacMaster: good evening chief thank you for being here chief looking at your budget um I'm mindful that the middle of the pandemic so when I see some of the level areas I can't help but have have some questions just to preface it as I've been you know looking throughout this process where we can potentially cut have money and carry over to you on essential items that may come up down the road so we don't know uh right now um and looking at your budget i i certainly didn't see that um one of the questions i do have relates to salary and wages which is a very modest 0.6 increase how many civilian employees do you um employ is it just one civilian employees would

▶ 49:43 Shawn M. MacMaster: be one uh jessica baker the finance administrator and is the the increase in the salary and wage

▶ 49:53 Speaker 6: line items completely contractual yes okay so so the exception of uh just dollars correct so the

▶ 49:56 Shawn M. MacMaster: increase is for for those um who are sworn firefighters and paramedics and it this has come about as part of the collective bargaining process that is correct and chief uh one of the the line items I was happy to see go down is of course the and you won't be surprised by this is the motor vehicle repair and maintenance because you're aware the last two years I've you know asked some questions about that and scrutinized the the increase last year I believe it was a 34.6% increase the year before that it was a similar amount and in addition last year that's on top of the 34 and a half percent increase came before us and we approved the prior council about $100,000 on top of that. I know I was pleased along with all of the other councilors to support your request for two additional pieces of minor apparatus. So I understand why that point item would certainly not be what it was in the past, but I'm also in favor of the fact that we're not gonna get these vehicles for, I believe, anywhere between 1 and 2 years. Is the 0% change in vehicle maintenance sufficient in terms of the potential problems over the next year or two on two fire apparatus that continue to age?

▶ 51:25 Speaker 6: Well, I'm going to keep my fingers crossed that it is, because we've sunk a significant amount of money over the last couple of years into that is to keep it afloat. One of the biggest costs was Engine 2 and how to have its engine rebuilt, and that was a $40,000 repair. we're doing a better job at our preventive maintenance to do identify the problems again the the apparatus is eight and it works hard day in and day

▶ 52:04 Speaker 6: out I'm not anticipating and I say this lightly that any of significance you know other than you know maybe a starter or an operator things like that but that's that's every vehicle repair issues the wipers you know we've had those replaced so knock on wood I'm confident that the 75,000 will get us

▶ 52:33 Shawn M. MacMaster: through fiscal year 21 in chief similarly can you talk about the line item for tires in the line item for equipment those are both level funded

▶ 52:48 Shawn M. MacMaster: I'm sorry what was the first one counselor tires one tires is uh five three one two zero zero which is under supplies supplies and material tires so

▶ 53:11 Speaker 6: it's the fourth item yeah yeah yes i see it um

▶ 53:18 Speaker 6: um yeah we've replaced uh pretty much all of our fleets top and uh i suspect thread wise uh will be good good position but now because we're osha uh hit a curb and the uh sidewall of the tire gets mocked or torn we have to actually take that tire out of service right away even if it's not leaking it becomes an unsafe uh unsafe tire and that's that's under the osha requirements

▶ 53:54 Speaker 6: borrowing any sidewalk

▶ 53:58 Shawn M. MacMaster: okay chief and under that that same area of your budget is the line item for um for tools and hardware that's five three three five zero zero that's correct ended as well at

▶ 54:18 Speaker 6: twenty four hundred does that line item also include hoses no we use that one for station supplies like trash barrels or any incidentals that break in the station showerhead faucet to think things like that we used to use a lot of that down at Whittemore but they're out of business and stuff so it's just a general hard way around so chief my final question is under

▶ 54:41 Shawn M. MacMaster: uh fire other charges and there's two areas there education seminars as well as seminars and schooling i'm not sure for the first one relates to firefighter training

▶ 55:08 Shawn M. MacMaster: We're on page two of your budget, other charges, education seminars, which is 540600, and seminars

▶ 55:22 Shawn M. MacMaster: and schooling, 540700. Which one of those is it? The first one relates to the seminars

▶ 55:30 Shawn M. MacMaster: in schooling sending someone to the fire academy is that what's covered no they're uh some of them

▶ 55:35 Speaker 6: are used for a reimbursement if someone gets into schooling and be a uh whatever the fee is to get into a class um not too much of that there but uh um let's see i got my notes here um

▶ 55:56 Shawn M. MacMaster: My question is, the $500 on both of those line items sufficient considering where we are relative to the COVID-19 pandemic? Is $500 under the first one and $500 under the second, exactly the money that you need for training as it relates to response and preparedness

▶ 56:27 Speaker 6: light of what we're facing I would like to I'm gonna have to say yes only because I don't know what your training would be if any some some training get

▶ 56:42 Speaker 6: at the Academy at no cost so I got there's a when I go to a professional development in March credentials $250 so that would cover it you know does that

▶ 56:54 Speaker 1: also cover incident command training to the incident command training is is

▶ 56:58 Speaker 6: training through FEMA and reimburse it's reversible so at a hundred percent so we would train send our new officers to a training location for ICS 300 or ICS 400 if they're going on their own time we would pay them over time female reimburses if they're on duty they get the time off and we backfill with

▶ 57:33 Speaker 1: overtime in thank you chief thank you mr. chairman thank you chairman thank

▶ 57:44 Mark Garipay: you chief for being here one question regarding the salary and wage line and it's kind of uh level funded and you know it's all under uh under contracts um do you have any open positions right now or do you expect that this line item will go up i mean is this yeah i

▶ 58:05 Speaker 6: have uh two open options right now and i anticipate a third before the end of the year about fiscal

▶ 58:13 Mark Garipay: year and when would they be um what when do you think they'd come on would they be ready to they

▶ 58:23 Speaker 6: training at school right yeah so the the hiring list is pretty much exhausted and the was scheduled to have an exam on March 1st and they canceled it and there has been no for a rescheduled exam for entry-level firefighters okay and then

▶ 58:48 Mark Garipay: And what vehicles do we have in the departments that get maintained by the DPW? They handle a portion of our fire department maintenance, correct?

▶ 58:57 Speaker 6: They do. So, fire apparatus does not get serviced by the DPW, be the fire chief's car, the fire prevention vehicle.

▶ 59:18 Speaker 6: and I will say that last year one of the ambulances had an issue and that EPW was able to fix it and put some tires on for us in a fashion.

▶ 59:29 Speaker 6: We normally send it out to a mechanic that works there that will take our vehicles to Chelsea.

▶ 59:44 Mark Garipay: Okay. And one other question under cleaning and disinfectant supplies that's level funded, do you see, would that, in light of all the COVID-19, what we're dealing with now, would that line item go with any cleaning any of the equipment or is that enough money in there as we progress forward through this pandemic?

▶ 1:00:13 Speaker 6: yeah uh i think that's enough money in there that cleaning supplies is not is not um for the basically for the ambulance that's more of the um floor soaps uh hand soaps that the supplies that we use in the stations and the public bathroom up at uh the carmen's firehouse

▶ 1:00:38 Mark Garipay: okay all right thank you very much i appreciate it

▶ 1:00:46 Cory Thomas: thomas thank you mr chairman uh thank you chief clean for being here um i just wanted to thank the entire fire department uh for all they do each and every day but also you know especially during the public health emergency uh they don't know what's on the other end of each call right now and every time they come into a building um they're putting themselves at prime risk

▶ 1:01:04 Speaker 5: thank you for that thank you as far as the budget underneath um miscellaneous uh line five six zero

▶ 1:01:10 Speaker 1: zero zero

▶ 1:01:15 Cory Thomas: is that the fire academy you know how does that differentiate from the previous lines education seminars and seminars in schooling

▶ 1:01:27 Speaker 1: i'm sorry what line are you talking second page six zero two zero zero That's a budgeted item for $24,000 and $56,000.

▶ 1:01:37 Speaker 6: Yes. So that education reimbursement for EMT licensing and some, we're not able to provide the training in-house. Sometimes we have to send the training out. So that's all educational reimbursement from the state for the licensing, things like that comes out of that line.

▶ 1:02:02 Cory Thomas: In a year to date, there's about 16,000 already spent year to date. Is that down this year because of your trainings have been down the past 3 months?

▶ 1:02:15 Speaker 6: So, I don't know the exact answer to that. I push that and figure out why and get back to you.

▶ 1:02:27 Speaker 6: Just to be clear that the training only missed 1 in house training that we, we conduct. everything out we've been training every day you have a component we brought on board last year each member can log on and do any or paramedic training

▶ 1:02:47 Speaker 6: website all approved through the state for CEUs for educational purposes okay

▶ 1:02:55 Cory Thomas: great so so no trainings are missed over the past three months and they wouldn't be made up you know next fiscal year nothing's been missed no no the fire department's running

▶ 1:03:10 Speaker 1: smooth great thank you so much chief make a motion bottom line forward

▶ 1:03:18 Christopher Cinella: motion to move the bottom line

▶ 1:03:26 Speaker 1: any discussion madam clerk you can call the room vice chair mcgurley second councillor Tramontozzi yes the mcmaster yes councilman yes that's what eckles council Garipay yes stewart yes thomas yes

▶ 1:03:51 Speaker 7: Yeah. Grigoraitis? Yes.

▶ 1:03:58 Christopher Cinella: 2020-98 acceptance of the FY20 Firefighter Turnout Gear Grant, if you're not under $500.