ORDER-2019-85 : City of Melrose Operating Budget for Fiscal Year 2020 in the amount of $86,662,987.61. (Eighty-Six Million, Six Hundred Sixty-Two Thousand, Nine Hundred Eighty-Seven Dollars and Sixty-One Cents).

Transcript (~7 min @ 9:48)

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

▶ 9:43 Kate Lipper-Garabedian: favor any opposed and I recognize that alderman future has joined us so we have on our agenda tonight one order and two departments and so I'll go ahead and read the order and we'll see if we have time to start I know we're gonna try to recess right at 745 because we have the middle school students here to do to be recognized but our first order of business for the Appropriations Committee's order number two zero one nine dash eight five city of Melrose operating budget for fiscal year 2020 in the amount of eighty six million six hundred sixty two thousand nine hundred eighty seven dollars and sixty one

▶ 10:16 Peter D. Mortimer: cents motion to suspend the rules that we may hear from the representative of the vocational school second the motion to suspend the rules made by alderman

▶ 10:22 Kate Lipper-Garabedian: Mortimer seconded by Vice Chair Boisselle all in favor aye opposed excellent so we would be welcome our guests to join us from the Northeast Metropolitan Regional Vocational School thank you so much for coming tonight thanks so this is actually

▶ 10:42 Speaker 3: my eighth year coming up here first as principal and in the past for a superintendent so we're gonna change things around a little bit tonight though I'm gonna have a mr. Cohn present his budget report and then afterwards if there are any questions I'd be more than happy to answer them thanks for having

▶ 10:59 Speaker 4: me I believe you have this PowerPoint presentation in your packet I provided to all the members as well as a copy of the budget thank you and they're also

▶ 11:12 Speaker 4: available online for the public yes the goal of the FY 20 budget when we when we set out to develop a budget every fiscal year we always have two goals in mind we want to minimize the impact to our member communities we understand that our member communities have significant financial constraints melrose being one you have a 94 residential tax base very hard to raise money through taxation because it's prop two and a half and we're cognizant when it comes to that and also we want to provide an adequate level of funding to support student learning and foster educational excellence because ultimately that's what we're here to do we're here to be melrose's other other school and we want to offer the the same level of excellence that melrose public schools offers to their students at northeast so regionalization

▶ 11:56 Speaker 4: exists by definition to offer services at a reduced cost to its member communities so when we set out to do our budgets our initial goal we want to keep it keep the assessment at or below a three percent increase and i'm happy to say this year we were able to keep the assessment increase to two hundred seventy five thousand three sixty eight which is an

▶ 12:27 Speaker 4: increase of one point nine one percent and then so I'm going to talk about one of the slides where it says minimal minimizing financial impact historical assessment analysis it shows a comparison for FY 18 FY 19 and FY 20 and FY 18 we went up one point eight six percent FY 19 we went up two point three eight percent we just like an FY 20 we went down one to one point nine one

▶ 12:53 Speaker 4: percent the reason why we able to to to offset this this assessment cost or this operating budget cost and offer such a low assessment is for two reasons we have an increase in state funding our chapter 70 formula due to the revamp of the chapter 70 funding formula we received 10 million we're projected to receive 10 million 458 068 based on the the numbers why that's significant is because it represents an increase of eight hundred and sixty thousand dollars over the last FY 19 funding we're going to use all of that to offset the member assessments we also intend to receive nine hundred thousand dollars in transportation aid that we're going to use to offset we're going to receive it this year and use it to offset FY 20 we're also using 3.215 million from our other funding sources from E&D and our other reserves to reduce the assessments cost as well in total that we're we're using 4 million 975 216 of other funds

▶ 14:08 Speaker 4: to reduce member assessment so this doesn't come with without fiscal challenges that by 20 is no different we always have fiscal challenges and if by 20 we're looking to increase our cat we our capital project line by a million dollars to finance the feasibility study and all associated costs and with this additional infusion of a million dollars we projected we're going to not have to come back to the cities and towns for until 2022 for additional money increase in funding for a rehab of emergency access road while we have a only one egress in and out of the school and that's a security risk so the police chief and the fire chief have recommended that we revamp our existing access road we're using five hundred fifty thousand dollars there to in the operating budget in order to do so increases for funding for OPEB we have a forty eight million dollar liability OPEB is other post-employment benefits it's basically all retirement benefits and that are not MTRS future it's a It's a future liability, but it exists on our books of 48 million. We have increases in GIC health insurance costs, increases in transportation costs due to our new contract. Went up to about $48 per bus, and we added a bus. And additional professional and support staffing to meet student needs. So all told, our operating budget is increasing

▶ 15:34 Speaker 4: two point nine two million nine seventy five eighty four which is eleven point two eight percent however we're using that other monies that i referred to recently about um we're using two point six two million six ninety five two one six um to offset from our end from our other reserves and that equates to an increase of 275 368.

▶ 16:05 Peter D. Mortimer: Madam Chair, would you welcome a motion for recess at this time?

▶ 16:10 Speaker 5: Sorry, it didn't work out.

▶ 16:12 Kate Lipper-Garabedian: That was very succinct and well done, and you may have more of a presentation, but if you would be so kind to let us recess to recognize some of the students who are here, and then we'll come right back to you after that. Sure. So we have a motion to recess. May the Alderman Mortimer, seconded by Vice Chair Boisselle. All in favor? Aye. Okay, so we're recessed for now.