ORDER-2020-40 : An Order Requesting the City of Melrose to adopt Massachusetts General Law, Chapter 33 ,Section 59 (effect of military service on salary, seniority, and leave allowances of public employees)

Transcript (~9 min @ 43:26)

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▶ 43:33 Francis X. Wright Jr.: you we open the legal and legislative committee we are just about to entertain

▶ 43:45 Francis X. Wright Jr.: we will entertain order one on our agenda which is order 2020-40 in order requesting the city of Melrose to adopt Massachusetts general law chapter 33 section 59 effective military service on salary seniority and leave allowances of public employees this order was sponsored by President Scott Forbes

▶ 44:14 Scott M. Forbes: President Forbes thank you I appreciate all the comments that were heard tonight um i i'm in lockstep with with you you know in in terms of service when you're a member of the reserves or national guard and especially when you get into a leadership position it i want to echo the words of brian ladner it's not one weekend a month and two weeks a year if you're part of a leadership team not only you attend drills twice a month because you're going to be a part of the management weekend you're also going to be part of that friday night planning meeting so you literally you're doing five days a month five days a month times 12 is 60 days and that does not even include a two-week annual tour does not even include a week certification and because the fiscal year for the department of defense ends in september you can do one two-week tour in the spring and you can do another two-week tour in this in the fall and have it count towards a calendar year for your job but in terms of service it's in different different fiscal years so these days add up towards the end of my military career i did 75 to 80 days and if you have a weekend job and if you work in a municipality and you're trying to find a shift schedule to somebody to fill in your slot those days add up and that flexibility goes away and you have a hard time with your employer i experienced both ends of the spectrum i had a good employer that went above and beyond the call and i had an employer that did the bare minimum and did not make that experience good for myself or for my family so this is personal for me when you look at a policy you really want something that's a little bit more robust and at my job i'm actually rewriting policies and procedures as we speak because there's deficiencies is a way that we can do things better so we take a deep dive and can look at everything so what is there today may not necessarily be there tomorrow so you want to have something a little bit more permanent and something more substantial than a policy and a memo you want to have a source document and there has been a lot of conversation and dialogue back and forth i appreciate the dialogue and contributions i've had from human resources director marian long i'd also like to include in that discussion city solicitor rob van campen and mayor paul broder both who i've communicated with today um mayor broder was part of the legislative body that passed the provisions within mass general law chapter 33 section 59. so i'm definitely confident of we've that we will get there to where we need to be what i am going to propose is that we actually hold this order in committee uh being able to have a dialogue with with mayor broder and his administration if the city can produce the source document because in the memos in in everything that we have it says that the city of melrose has adopted chapter 33 section 59 of the massachusetts general laws on april 18th of the year 2000. that's 19 years ago so do where is that source document you know i'm i i i live in the world of auditing so if we just have a memo that has a date saying that we adopted it you need to peel it back and just try to find the source document so if the city can provide that for us then we have everything we need to move forward and we can vote to either reaffirm this or vote it to place it on file whatever the whatever the best course of action would be however if the city cannot produce such a document then i feel like that motion will easily just be filed to adopt massachusetts general laws chapter 33 section 59 and again we will have everything we need to move forward i want to give this administration just a little bit a little bit of time to do some digging there will be another legal and legislative meeting i believe on december 9th at which time a vote will be made to the city council and this will be voted on on december 16th so it may not happen in this committee and i'm not sure if that may frustrate some people here tonight but i think it's the right thing to do we measure twice and we cut once and finally i do want to recognize all the local veterans that are here this evening many of you are still serving many of us are not but it is our responsibility to ensure that the next generation is set up for success and that everyone has the supportive services they need in order for them to train and prepare themselves to answer that call whenever called upon so i i will hear any dialogue from my colleagues but i will make a motion to hold this ordering committee

▶ 48:54 Francis X. Wright Jr.: on discussion any member of the committee who counsels work out thank you mr chairman um

▶ 48:57 Michael P. Zwirko: first i'd like to say uh as well just echo some of the sentiments by my colleague president forbes to the folks that showed up tonight to speak on behalf of this order we all have busy lives and to give a personal story off add some important background to these orders into why they're filed so thank you very much for that and for your service in addition to what this order seeks to do i would just want to make sure if we are going to be requesting additional information from the administration that in between the time that their records or policies are updated if any benefits have been sought under the change and updated brave act proposals to ensure that we were in fact compliant with the benefits requested at the time so i would just make that

▶ 49:50 Francis X. Wright Jr.: additional request that's all i had mr chairman thank you council's work on council of utah

▶ 49:54 Manisha Bewtra: thank you um i just wanted to thank um president forbes for bringing this order forward as well as to the um members of our service members and veterans who came tonight um i think this is is you know certainly we all talk a lot about the sacrifice made by members of our military and veterans and their families but i think this really just helped put that in more concrete terms in a way i personally hadn't understood or thought of before so i just wanted to express my appreciation and i'll follow your lead in terms of what you think the right um uh you know i think the order or motion to hold it in committee makes a lot of sense um that's all for now thank you

▶ 50:39 Francis X. Wright Jr.: Any other discussion from committee or noncommittee members? Councillor Lipper-Garabedian.

▶ 50:46 Kate Lipper-Garabedian: Thank you, Chair Wright, and thank you, President Forbes, for bringing this forward to us and for the members of our community who have come forward to share your stories and your perspective. I'd echo what we've heard here tonight, and I think Councillor Zwirko suggestion is well taken because the memo that we received a while ago mentioned that this adoption happened in 2000, and I had looked up just the history of this particular statute and there have been three amendments to it since then by the general court most recently in 2018 but there were also some changes made in 2014 and 2016 that maybe expanded some of the coverage and the the types of allowances that were provided to our veterans so I think it would be really helpful to hear from the city to confirm that throughout the this time that we've had this particular ordinance supposedly in place we've also been keeping up with whatever the allowances have been from the legislature that would be helpful thank

▶ 51:52 Speaker 1: you thank you we have a motion second I second the president's motion we have a

▶ 51:54 Francis X. Wright Jr.: motion to hold this matter in committee by President Forbes is seconded by council Azurko all in favor aye opposed the ayes have it this matter will be

▶ 52:11 Francis X. Wright Jr.: held in committee thank you second item on our agenda this evening is order 2020-21 amending