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 (~49 min @ 39:15)

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

▶ 39:15 Jen Grigoraitis: so collectively i'm glad this is being recorded um so and then i have one more request which is that given that we have mayor broder with us and i believe he wishes to speak to budget item 121 under order 2020-89 I would take a motion to take or the budget item 121 of

▶ 39:42 Christopher Cinella: order 2020-89 out of order I got motion by President Grigoraitis to take item 121 2020-89 seconded by Councillor McNaught. Madam Clerk, please call the roll.

▶ 39:55 Speaker 2: Councillor Migliorelli? Yes. Councillor Tramontozzi? Yes. Councillor McMaster? Yes. Councillor McNaught? Yes. Councillor Eccles? Yes. Councillor Garipay? Yes. Councillor Stewart? Yes. Councillor Thomas? Yes. Councillor Jamaleddine? Yes. President Grigoraitis? Yes. Chairman Cinella? Yes. Reverend Yes.

▶ 40:19 Christopher Cinella: Mayor Broda, the screen is yours.

▶ 40:23 Paul Brodeur: Thank you very much, Mr. Chairman. So it's my understanding that the council had some questions or concerns about the $18,500 budget item that falls under Office of the Mayor. I am certainly happy to answer.

▶ 40:52 John N. Tramontozzi: questions that you may have yes thank you thank you mr. mayor for for coming in regarding that I think the concern is that amount for community outreach and what events in particular with is this 18 500 dollars to cover and in light of a lot of the cancellation of some of these events due to COVID-19 pandemic is this all is this money expected to be fully allocated and appropriated for the fiscal 2021 year Thank You council

▶ 41:35 Paul Brodeur: obviously the you know the decision about whether or not it gets appropriated is up to you all I think my chief of staff from what I understand I wasn't able to watch the meeting but explained in some detail what the thinking is around this and I can certainly try to get and like you a little bit more on the on the growth involving the student participatory budgeting process which accounts for the all of the increase of a line item that has been in the budget for as long as I can remember and I regrettably go back quite a ways the events are things like kids club the kindergarten buttons for for that that the senior spring fling healthy Melrose which is going virtual this year folks didn't know that summer stroll which looks like we will not be able to do Four Corners music festival and sometimes some one-offs we did a senior discount event once upon a time in Memorial Hall that supported that money and in fact and supported that event and um going back probably 10 years now when i was in the legislature we organized a veterans job fair and kind of um training session if you will to support veterans coming back into the workforce both identifying jobs for them and acquiring interview skills resume building things like that and also letting them know about benefits that they might have access to that they might have been unaware of obviously we're in a bit of of some turmoil the history of the fund is that it has never been parceled out in more precise detail than the way it is you see before you and we obviously don't know what the future is going to hold in terms of events i expect we will have opportunities to do some things a little bit later in the fiscal year support some of the traditional events like home for the holidays or um victorian fair not this september but things like that um and to give you an example i guess of why flexibility is important or why you don't exactly know what's coming up um i'm delighted to say as i just was able to confirm this earlier today that as part of our memorial day ceremonies this year we are going to light memorial hall with gold lighting in recognition of our gold star families that was not budgeted in any particular line item we will be taking the funds that's roughly an 800 expense that there's no way we could have anticipated that is coming out of that budget in order to be a little bit more creative given the circumstances, about the way we're going to honor our veterans this year. Again, I'm not sure I can provide any more information, but certainly happy to answer

▶ 44:38 John N. Tramontozzi: any questions that you might have. Well, I do appreciate that. I think the Council appreciates that explanation. One of the concerns that I know I have is going through this budget process and the uncertainty as to what revenue sources we're going to have to uh to balance our budget i i just a few comments if i could uh mr chairman uh on the budget itself while we have the mayor here and other department heads um i just wanted to um just just to just make a couple comments about the state and the budget uh state senate that President Karen Spilka gave details about the severity of the state's coronavirus-related budget crisis this past Tuesday night. Many of you may have seen it, an article in The Patch. She also explained the type of aid cities and towns can expect from the state when fiscal year 2021 begins. Spilka told a meeting of the Framingham City Council School Committee Tuesday night state budget deficit would be between five billion and eight billion dollars. That estimate is in line with the six billion revenue gap forecast by the Massachusetts Taxpayers Association. The 44.6 billion budget released by Governor Charlie Baker in January can't at this point be forgotten about, she said. Do not use the governor's January number when he came out with the budget. It's simply not relevant anymore. She went on to say that um she could not give a clear estimate of when a state budget might be complete and the cities and towns across the state are clamoring for details about what type of state aid will come in fiscal 2021 um and of course we're having difficulty without that information and budgeting um she said like you in cities and towns across the state we are not certain what we can do in fiscal 2021 uh spilka said uh framing him counselor counselor um how is this relevant to what we

▶ 46:46 John N. Tramontozzi: we brought them if I could have you know if I can have more minutes I'm getting there because this would this is I think relevant for the the budget process as we're going along framing here for example has begun laying off off city workers and Natick officials are talking about closing a school and slashing other parts of the school budget regarding the city of Melrose budget I want to commend the mayor for putting forth a budget which is I'm sure very difficult during this period of time to put forth and try to balance in a fiscally reasonable manner. You mentioned that the revenue prediction is that we're going to be getting the full 2.5% Prop 2.5 plus any new spending to fund this budget. But you also said that pursuant to your memo that if this crisis continues for an extended period of time and impacts the ability of certain departments to operate at 100% capacity or impacts the ability of the city to fund the critical services these departments provide, then I will be forced to consider the need to implement layoffs or an employee furlough program. If we arrive at that point, we simply have no other choice. My fear is that my prediction is we may end up getting to that point. What I'm going to be asking all the department heads as we move forward in this budget is to help us is there anything in their budgets that they couldn't cut two percent three percent anything and so that that comes to your budget mr. mayor and that's why the we're looking at the line items in the community outreach is one of those areas that we thought there might be a possibility for cutting one of the other areas as well as that sick leave incentive and that was something that was brought up at the last meeting and if we can have an explanation of that that would be appreciated let me interrupt so I was I

▶ 48:40 Paul Brodeur: was invited here to talk about a thirteen thousand dollar five hundred line item that grew to eighteen thousand five hundred dollars not to address the overall budget that having been said I'm happy to indulge this somewhat as you know I think I've been I have been on a constant basis relaying to you the projections and accounts from the folks like the Mass Taxpayers Foundation that producing some of the revenue projections and working towards that consensus revenue figure I will obviously continue to do that it's as important to me as it is to you we have tried to make this budget as lean as possible so i don't think you'll see large areas for abilities to cut that would obviously be up to you in this area um speaking directly to the you know to the eighteen thousand five hundred dollar line item that does include a contemplated uh outreach to students that is what we would like to do with the money we would like to do that program and support the other things we have described and and now it is now it is up to you folks to decide whether or not you want you want to have want us to have the ability to spend that money if if revenues get really bad I think it probably goes without saying that dramatic cuts will happen we do not feel like we're in that position right now we are again have created some hedges in case there is some reduction of state aid but let's face it if if state aid goes down 50% this budget doesn't fly I'm sure you all know that I don't need to tell you that I think they said that both in the memo and in the budget address and that to the extent the extent those comments I understand that the sick leave incentive piece has been covered a little bit and that Marianne long sent a memo that is very much in line with the memo the council received last year about the sick leave incentive piece if I suppose we can go into more detail on that if you'd like again I'm not sure what else left there is to say about that and certainly as long we'll be happy to go into as much detail as you want about that when her when she is

▶ 51:26 Speaker 4: before you to discuss the HR budget I'm usually really good about that my

▶ 51:31 Jeff McNaught: apologies Thank You mr. chairman Thank You mr. mayor for being here although I do share the same concerns with council tram and tozi and how careful we have to with this budget I am mindful of the fact of how much we're increasing it overall and how much is in this line item fortunately or unfortunately a lot of my daily job for the last 10 years or longer have been focused around event planning and community outreach and I can tell you that 18 5 won't cover a a small event sometimes. So I think where we may be a little hazy in this instances, we've had a lot of ideas thrown out as to what that 18-5 can go towards, you know, and we heard that it could go to police details if we try to do different things downtown, you know, surrounding boosting the reopening of businesses, which I think would be a great idea. Working with the high school students, I think would be a great idea. All of the programs that we've heard about, I think it's a matter of us just being comfortable knowing that we're going to use 18-5 responsibly towards some or all of those things. I don't think it's the largest line item that we should be wasting much time on. It's a very, in the grand scheme of things, a very small amount of money. That's all I have to say. Thank you. Councilor, I very much appreciate the comments and you are right to do that. Again, this is a line item that has been around for a long time. This is obviously my first budget as mayor. I don't recall this level of questioning. There's no problem with that. You're right to question every nickel, but at some point, your decision is whether or not you're going to, quite frankly, trust the administration to responsibly spend this amount of money and that is something that

▶ 53:46 Jen Grigoraitis: that is up to you thank you chairman uh mr mayor just circling back on the fact that this is for community outreach and i think we all know that that outreach during covid looks very different and i think we as a council have struggled with it as we've tried to figure out how to continue to reach the public while in a remote format and i anticipate that that's going to result in a lot of increased printing costs as we try to reach people in their homes through mail or leafleting like we did with the mask so is that could you speak if there are any

▶ 54:20 Paul Brodeur: plans around that with this money certainly not specific because it depends on the nature of the event but you know as an example and i don't want to tie this to the funding source but when we did the uh when the community really did the mask distribution you know we recognized we wanted to hit every household that was an important thing and we tried as best we could to present it in as many languages as possible which is not something that melrose historically has done that is not to poo-poo anything that's gone before but that is an important thing to be able to do and to council mcnaught's point almost regardless of what the nature of a future event might be it is going to be more complicated because we do have to think about potentially enforcement we have to think about social distancing you know we we really can't for the foreseeable future close main street and do a victorian fair type activity can we play around with main street in ways that might be able to help business as we roll through the phases potentially i'm not saying that is exactly what we'll do but that is the kind of flexibility that we need into into again to council mcnaught's point i don't think this money is going to go particularly far um it's going to be more expensive to do some of the things that we've done in the past um i suppose on balancing that up there are some things we obviously won't be able to do at all we would like to seek replacement events for things like certainly the intergenerational dance is obviously not something that could possibly happen in the way it has happened in the past would we like to put some creative energy into that recognizing that you know 500 or a thousand dollars that could be tapped to do something creative that we don't know how to build yet it'd be good to have that resource obviously you know if we don't we can't and i'm not sure what else to say about that thank you counselor stewart

▶ 56:30 Robb Stewart: thank you mr chair uh mr mayor i i just want to reiterate points that i made with Mr. Prendergast when he was here during our last discussion on this particular topic. I was thrilled to hear about the $5,000 additional added for the participatory events for the kids. Anybody that has a child that's been going through what they've been going through has been significantly impacted and if there's anything like that that can be sponsored by the city to be able to encourage them to figure out how we can make their lives more enriched uh make their lives to be able to to deal with uh this situation i think it's a great thing i think it's well worth uh the investment i plan on supporting it uh and i i just want to comment and reiterate that i think that's um uh you know the benefits way out really the risk of the 37% increase on this fairly small amount. Thank you, Mr. Chair. Yeah, I want to thank you, Councilor. Is that is an idea that is not unique to Melrose. We haven't done it yet. There are, believe it or not, there are some communities, I always use Cambridge as an example. Cambridge is a lot different than Melrose, I understand that. But they do a participatory budgeting process with over a million dollars in play. I'm certainly not suggesting that, but the idea where the state has made a commitment to civic education and a requirement around civic education. And I think we can all agree that that is a critical area that everyone needs to focus on, making sure that people are fully engaged, they are civically and civilly engaged is really important. and and to allow kids i'm a big believer in allowing our students to take ownership and to have responsibility uh and that that is the mechanism this is just kind of a baby step mechanism uh for making that happen i understand times are tight uh but i do think obviously i wouldn't i wouldn't have suggested the idea that it can be a real a real step forward for our for for our students and being able to really engage in a real practical and important real life level in how government works, how taxpayer money is spent.

▶ 59:07 Christopher Cinella: Councilor McMaster.

▶ 59:09 Shawn M. MacMaster: Thank you, Mr. Chairman. Good evening, Mr. Mayor. Thank you for being here. Thank you also for your work on this budget. I did wanna address two issues that I spoke about at our last meeting, the sick time incentive and the outreach. I have less concern about the outreach, but I do still have some questions. I think as you know, Mr. Mayor, one of the areas that fell into my purview at the district attorney's office was outreach. And I completely agree with you and with what Councilor McNaught said is that the money being allocated on the surface, 37% may sound like a lot, but at the end of the day, you look at the actual amount being five thousand it's not the concern that I had wasn't and and I do understand how things worked historically having at least two prior budget cycles is that any type of an increase to me would call for more than a number and I do trust that the money if approved will be spent well and i think rob uh excuse me counselor uh stuart referenced this is the there just wasn't a description at the last meeting and i think he called for a categorical breakdown uh a good faith estimate of what this might look like but beyond that the the concern that i have is that and i said this at the last meeting that five thousand dollars i'm just not sure is going to be enough and frankly i'd rather allocate the money now than and as you know we can't increase than have the administration come back before us with a supplemental budget request at a time where we could potentially be in a very different financial state and then how then are we able to do the type of outreach that we may need to do as I understand it the $5,000 is for the participatory budgeting and I think that is a great process I'm a big supporter of civic ed but then I'm left to wonder about how we will be able to afford the costs of the COVID-related outreach that Mr. Prendergast described if that $5,000 is simply for participatory budgeting. So with respect to the outreach, Mr. Mayor, my question is, how is that going to be enough? And the second part of the question is, do you anticipate that you may be coming before us again for supplemental request relative to uh outreach and um so i guess i'll start with that that question thank you

▶ 1:01:47 Paul Brodeur: um sure again as you know this is a this is a budget item that has been in the budget for a long long time i'm somewhat delighted that it is getting uh such a remarkable amount of attention compared to years past because again i think it is important um for folks both here and at home to understand uh what is going on i don't anticipate coming back unless there is a dramatic need and quite frankly there are a lot of needs as you all know that this city has um that we're not going to address because of the because of this because of this crisis um you know if there is we will certainly endeavor to turn over turn over every rock in terms of looking at some of the cares act money fema and some of the coronavirus belief money to address any number of things um but you know this is this is a fairly narrow budget and every dollar that that we we spend on this is something that takes away from something else it is it is certainly a priority but I do not anticipate asking for more unless an extraordinary need arises I can't again I can't stress enough about how much we are in uncharted

▶ 1:03:15 Shawn M. MacMaster: territory with this thank you for that mr. mayor with respect to the participatory budgeting again which which I think is great is there a reason we would limit that just to high school students I certainly think we should involved in but what is the vision for that and um why might it not include taxpayers as part of

▶ 1:03:34 Paul Brodeur: that process well because it's for students i guess it didn't to be not to be flipped but to be simply it's designed to be a student engagement process that's also why it's not a huge amount of money and obviously um if the kids suggested something the student suggested something that's out of bounds that we wouldn't do it candidly it started the idea started as a ten thousand dollar um program with five thousand for high school and five thousand for middle school uh of course being mindful of the fact that we have students in the community that aren't part of the melrose public schools and started some inquiry with the folks um at the school about the middle school in the high school about how this might be able to work and it is not fully planned out and that there was a lot of concern about exactly how we're going to figure it out is this something that would have to be stipended you know we and we didn't get that far before before covid came and so it it is a work in progress what I do know is without the five thousand dollars we're not going to

▶ 1:04:50 Shawn M. MacMaster: do anything mr. chairman I had I had one additional question I'm sorry I was on mute and we have a lot of people waiting to come before us this evening and I'm happy to come back mr. chairman if you want to if you prefer to go through the other councils but I did have one chairman and excuse me I did have one more question and didn't use all of my time wrap it up please I also geology I had councilman McMaster thank you the last question mr. mayor so I guess I should say the outreach based on well you know what you've represented I'm inclined to support that tonight my larger concern is about the the sick time incentive and if you could extend our thanks to this long for the memo that she provided us dated May 19th I still had a question about it though Because as I understand it, or at least as it's written in the memo, she describes this being something that has been offered since the 1980s and says employees are reimbursed for unused sick time, providing they're actively employed on December 31st in accordance with a calculation schedule. And it looks like it's not just for not calling in sick, but if you, for instance, use less than 24.9% of available sick days, you receive $50 a day for remaining unused days. So, essentially, the incentive, just so I understand it, Mr. Mayor, is that…

▶ 1:06:15 Paul Brodeur: Let me stop you there, Councilor, because that is something that Mary Ann Long can speak to. Here's what I do know about the program and to the extent that it is helpful. Again, it is the same program that has been around for several years. Again, I think the memo mirrors what you considered last year in terms of the budget. And, you know, the program works the way it works. And the way it appears in the budget is you basically have, as I understand it, you have to assume that everyone will take full advantage of it. Otherwise, it is unfunded. not everyone will so presumably there will be some that is essentially funded to the max I would leave it to the both Marion long and to the CFO to speak to that but that is that is essentially the way that you know the extent of my

▶ 1:07:11 Shawn M. MacMaster: knowledge about the actually mr. mayor we're voting on it tonight though so that's why I posed the follow-up question to the to the memo is that it's Just one of the questions is if you don't call in sick and you're reimbursed at the daily rate, you're getting a payout for not calling out sick. Are you still rolling over those days? So there's still some uncertainty. I do appreciate her effort to get this to us, but there's still some uncertainty about what specifically it is.

▶ 1:07:47 Paul Brodeur: um yeah i would say so the all i guess all they can the most help i can be tonight is to say it is the exact same program the council approved in prior years thank you

▶ 1:08:02 Maya Jamaleddine: thank you mr chairman and thank you mr mayor for uh coming before us today um i um actually I appreciate all the efforts in trying to be creative and supporting and recovering our community after this pandemic. We all know that, you know, we're very optimistic about, you know, having flattened the curve. However, we are cautious about the second wave. Do you anticipate that um if if we have this second wave um would you still be using this um fund or uh would you you know would it be going to the free cash um thank you for the question it kind

▶ 1:08:52 Paul Brodeur: of depends on the nature of the of the second wave again if we have a second wave that causes um a public policy response like the one we have right now then quite frankly all bets are off because that means uh you know the revenue projections we we're seeing right now that are pretty dire are no good and are probably going to get worse and we'll have to make significant budgetary adjustments that that are hard to anticipate at this time that's why i don't want want to get on my high horse about the need for social distancing but the extent that folks are watching the message that we are you know we are not out of the woods that there are some changes coming on Monday but the best practices are still the practices that we've been following around physical distancing and wearing of masks and the sanitary advice folks have been giving and the tagline has changed from safe at home to safer at home, and folks really need to be mindful of that.

▶ 1:10:01 Maya Jamaleddine: Yeah, that would lead me to a second question, if you don't mind, Chairman. Would this community outreach and community events would be targeted or the purpose is to support our small businesses or is it to help our community and residents?

▶ 1:10:21 Paul Brodeur: All of the above. it's flexible though i will say this to be clear about um you know business support as you know from our earlier discussions the city cannot make you know cannot provide direct financial support to businesses but what we can do are support things like you know i'll use as an example you know a reconfiguration of main street or you know the city dollars support the victorian fair which in turn support our small businesses but that we still do not have the ability to do something like you know a small business grant or loan program just to be clear about that okay thank you

▶ 1:11:07 Jack Eccles: thank you mr chairman um having heard from two of the three members of this department and um having the modest increase be explained at this time i would move uh to recommend the bottom line

▶ 1:11:27 Christopher Cinella: I think Councilor Thomas had a question. I know that thank you but we do so we have a motion to move the bottom line seconded by Councilor Thomas. Councilor Thomas did you want to say something?

▶ 1:11:41 Cory Thomas: Thank you Mr. Chairman. Mr. Mayor thanks for staying around and answering all these questions. I'm excited for the community outreach program. I'm excited to you know see us get back to you know whatever the new normal is going to look like um i'm excited to see you know a tip a traditional melrose and helping our community and our small businesses uh i'm also excited about uh what the high school students gonna come up with in the participatory uh budgeting you know we've got a lot of creative kids in our schools um you know you and i both know a couple of kids in schools very well um you know and i'm excited to see what they do come up with um whether this is the time the place to talk about this now uh but i'm gonna go back to what councilman mcmaster talked about with the sick leave incentive um i was able to get some information as well 227 employees took advantage of this in 2019 um 2009 employees took advantage of it in 2020. um a number of employees have been working from home the last two and a half months um is there concern either in human resources or in the mayor's office that a number of people uh that work for the city right now are accruing more sick time than usual and potentially more people going to going to be using this uh incentive you know over the 209 and

▶ 1:12:59 Paul Brodeur: 227. yeah yeah am i am i worried that they're essentially that there's going to be some fraud

▶ 1:13:06 Cory Thomas: or gaming the system no no not at all not fraud or gaming the system but just more people are accruing sick time people aren't using sick time right now well that here's the way it's supposed

▶ 1:13:13 Paul Brodeur: to work um is if you whether you are working from home or coming into city hall or going to the city yard or the police station wherever wherever your office happens to be or you are working at home you are at work and if you do not feel well or you're taking a vacation day or whatever the case may be you're taking a vacation day um and the fact of the location of your work um isn't particularly relevant using an example that's not directly like my my wife has decided to take tomorrow off and so i don't even know exactly what that means and knowing her the way i do it means she's going to work for like six hours instead of eight or ten or whatever that whatever the case may be um but it is you know we are the i think that the employees have been terrific they have been stepping up so i i do not have a huge concern that there's going to be um an unusual exposure because of the way we've shifted around the workplace i hope that i hope

▶ 1:14:26 Cory Thomas: that's helpful i hope that answers the question it's very helpful you know and i'll follow up again with human resources when uh when they come up thank you sir okay so we've now spent 45

▶ 1:14:32 Christopher Cinella: minutes on this issue we have several people waiting uh to speak before us tonight for the first time i think we have counselor mcnaught that like to say something briefly thank you

▶ 1:14:45 Jeff McNaught: mr chairman i'll be very brief i just thought that it would make sense and i know we already have a motion before us but it would make sense to add the memorandum from director long to the to the record um and i suppose i should wait until after this we'll dispose of that uh the motion we

▶ 1:15:02 Christopher Cinella: we have on the floor. We'll get to that. Anybody else for the first time? Councilman McMaster for the second time. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. At this time,

▶ 1:15:13 Shawn M. MacMaster: I'd also just like to invoke Rule 37B respectfully and also just to manage our time. There's a matter under debate. It's no longer a back and forth with the administration, with all due respect to the mayor. We're debating right now, so it's not a Q&A period anymore. Since this is on discussion, I'm fine with the outreach, and I understand Council Eccles has made a motion which is duly seconded. My concern is the reimbursement for the sick time, and Ms. Long is not before us tonight. She provided a memo. I think we could have had further clarity if she was here tonight, and I just don't think there is enough information or enough candor on exactly what this is to support it. So we have two options. If somebody wants to withdraw the second in the motion, we can look to see if there's a motion to reduce the bottom line. Other than that, I do realize there's a motion that's before us that if not withdrawn, we do have to vote on. But I won't be supporting it because of the lack of information. Same point I made at the last appropriations meeting. I do appreciate the information that was in front of us. I appreciate that there's a history of how things have been handled. but I do rail has an appreciate statements that the mayor has made in the past about this being a new administration and the way that the city does things moving forward is not necessarily always going to be the way that things are done that things have been done in in the past I think right now the chairman the idea of incentivizing that employees work by paying them a stipend at the end of the year is not something that is going to be palatable I think to the the general public especially when we have so many members of the public who are not working who aren't accruing sick time or a paycheck at that so I am concerned about you know the idea that we're essentially incentivizing people during this very difficult time to work and not call in sick and I would just finally say Mr. Chairman that you know we're the fiduciary body of this city and I understand that our employees work very hard but as the mayor has said tonight and on occasions and as Senator Lewis said when he came before us a few weeks ago is that from a fiscal perspective essentially the sky is falling and we need to have a cushion and that cushions not going to be there unless we as a council is not only willing to scrutinize what's in front of us but also scrutinize practices that perhaps have occurred in the past. So based on that, based on the additional questions I have and just the general uneasiness of incentivizing people to work and the need to try to save some money in light of the state of the economy and the fiscal uncertainty and the possibility of state aid being cut um i can't support um uh the budget if we move forward on the bottom line tonight thank you mr chairman mr president you're

▶ 1:18:30 Paul Brodeur: still under suspension i'm out mr chairman yes um so it would be appropriate for me to speak

▶ 1:18:36 Shawn M. MacMaster: uh i appreciate the comments jack we we under 37 b the the mayor spoken already spoken more than twice on it and i think i i think it it's there's a matter on the table we're debating it right now

▶ 1:18:52 Paul Brodeur: it's not a back and forth i understand that but and i will say under suspension of the rules that i appreciate the comments i am shocked i must say that the word lack of candor was used to describe the administration's approach i think that is a disappointing tone to set as we go through a a very challenging budget you reference miss long she's not here tonight to answer the

▶ 1:19:09 Shawn M. MacMaster: question so there there are questions that you've considered you're you're not able to answer but we're being asked to vote on a item tonight respectfully uh for which we don't have all

▶ 1:19:27 John N. Tramontozzi: the answers i don't know how we proceed mr chairman um actually i was going to make a motion to you know i think it might be time that maybe we eliminate this the sick leave incentive for all departments um and uh so i was going to contemplate that and and frankly i was going to make a motion to uh reduce the bottom line by 1 250. and the reason i was going to do that is because i think we need to set the example for the other departments that come before us because i think this might be an area where we can we can eliminate for this fiscal year um and i think based on the memo from miss long um i think that can be done because this is just a a reimbursable uh a new sick time uh that is um is a is a perk to the uh uh the uh the employees so um that's what i was gonna do um and i and i think you know we we should be we should be given the opportunity to address any of the issues uh whether or not we want to uh reduce any of the uh the line items before we uh move on the bottom line so i think that the motion to uh recommend is a little bit

▶ 1:20:41 Christopher Cinella: premature at this point we have uh president Grigoraitis thank you um i'm comfortable moving

▶ 1:20:45 Jen Grigoraitis: forward with the motion to recommend but i also just to a few comments my understanding is that the sick leave incentive program is involved is a part of every union contract that the city has so i i mean i think we're pretty limited in our ability to eliminate that for many city employees without entering into contract renegotiations. So I think we're kind of making something a little bit grander than it can be. And as both a public employee and someone who supervises public employees and someone who cares very deeply about the hard work of public employees, especially during COVID, the term incentive, everyone is incentivized to work. That's what salary and all those things are about and i i think to somehow demonize that for the hard-working employees of the city of melrose who have responded to this and something that my understanding is that this council has passed for decades going back to the 1980s according to marion long's memo um if i don't quite understand what we're doing unless there's something that has significantly changed from years past to this year other than what we all know is an unprecedented fiscal situation that none of us have a crystal ball about right now thank you yes thank you thank

▶ 1:22:02 Mark Garipay: you mr chairman thank you miss uh maya broda for being a uh i appreciate your explanation on the community outreach that was one of the questions i had um i'm i'm comfortable with it growing up growing up in melrose and seeing watching the budget process over the last number of years I appreciate you sending down a budget that is as late as they always have been in certain items when you do see an increase but but I I'm inclined to support this right now by my caution to to just eliminating this line item on the incentive is I would assume that this is part of our compensation and HR plan for the current year and I don't know that we can if that has been changed at all for next year or how that typically works I probably want to before we go eliminate line items on the budget I probably want to hear from HR and and probably our city solicitor just to see what what actually is is legal to do because this is an incentive that's been been in there I know it is next year I don't know how many of the employees currently all the collective bargaining ones we'd have to probably assume keep in there but some of the other ways that are not falling under collective bargaining I don't know what they're out what the policy currently is and not in morals and do we have to vote on the HR policy every year I mean compensation policy that's that's my only concern on that so I have a concern on pulling that out at this moment thank

▶ 1:23:53 Jack Eccles: you mr. chairman I will not be withdrawing my motion at this time I feel personally having read the collective bargaining agreement that's posted on the city website and human resources director Marianne Long's memo that I understand the sick leave incentive I believe that there are four items on our agenda tonight they contain the sick leave incentive so if we felt that it was a line item that would hinder us from voting on a majority of our agenda tonight I feel that we should have should have done more to try and figure out what exactly these line items are and at this time I will not be the

▶ 1:24:40 John N. Tramontozzi: driver thank you one final thing we we can move the we can move the bottom line forward and we can always make further adjustments before we vote for the final approval of the entire budget. I would hope that by that time we would hear from Ms. Long as to, because I think the incentive program is both for union contracts, and I understand the concern about the union contracts, and I agree with that, but non-union employees are not necessarily entitled to this particular incentive program as part of a bargaining union contract. So we can consider moving it forward, just to get moving on to the next budgets, but I think we need to have Ms. Wong come before us to give us the explanation to enable us to fully appreciate that line item. I'm going to address it with the other budgets that come before us and move it along with anticipation that if if we want to eliminate it uh before the final budget is uh passed we can do so

▶ 1:25:51 Leila Migliorelli: yeah i just wanted to echo what counselor uh president Grigoraitis has said that this is this is a this is part of our um union budgets our salaries i just did a quick total of the sick leave incentive in the entire budget we're talking about like i don't know but over 250 000 of of this you know size budget the majority of sick and leave incentive going to firefighters and police officers i i the rest of the line items in the budgets we're talking like two thousand dollars here i just think that if you know this is something that has been going on um in mellors for a while that we would have to address this separately um and i i just don't see the point of belaboring the entire budget process to do so uh constant gap page you have something else

▶ 1:26:40 Mark Garipay: I was actually, Councilor Tramontozzi said what I was going to, I would say we could move the budget and we could always, I believe, deduct it at the end when we do a final passage of the total budget. But I think we still need to start moving. We've got a long number of items in front of us throughout the next few weeks. Thank you. We have a motion to move the bottom line by Councilor Eccles, seconded by Councilor Giannulli and Madam Clerk, please call the roll.

▶ 1:27:09 Speaker 2: councilman Migliorelli yes councilman tozy yes councilman mcmaster councilman mcnaught yes councilor eccles yes council Garipay yes councilor stewart yes councilor thomas

▶ 1:27:32 Speaker 2: yes councilor Jamaleddine yes president Grigoraitis yes councillor sanella yes

▶ 1:27:38 Christopher Cinella: and yes one no quick time check one hour 27 minute recording

▶ 1:27:43 Christopher Cinella: next item on our agenda here is thanks for your time guys

▶ 1:27:54 Christopher Cinella: order number 2020-97 belarus police vehicle donation the maryland police request the city of belarus accept a vehicle donation from the metropolitan insurance company to be used by the murrow's police middle school sro to raise awareness for autism i just brought in chief lyle