Public Comment

Transcript (~4 min @ 53:16)

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

▶ 52:30 Kate Lipper-Garabedian: Good evening. The hour being 8.01. I'm calling to order on Monday, May 13th. I'm calling to order the Committee of Appropriations. I'm the chair, Alderman Lipper-Garabedian, and present tonight are members of the committee, Alderman Boisselle, Alderman Tramontozzi, Alderman Wright, Alderman Medeiros, Alderman Zwirko, Alderman Bewtra, Alderman McMaster, and President Lemmerman. alderman Mortimer did want me to let everyone know that he did have a medical issue today and regrets not being able to attend in accordance with Massachusetts general law this meeting is being recorded and it can be viewed on MMTV as well as on the city of Melrose website is there a motion for

▶ 53:21 Speaker 2: public comment motion for public comment second okay thank you we have a motion

▶ 53:23 Kate Lipper-Garabedian: public comment made by Alderman Tramontozzi seconded by Vice Chair Boisselle on favor opposed okay this is the portion of our meeting where any member of the public can come forward to speak on any order on our agenda tonight if

▶ 53:55 Speaker 2: you could state your name I have a comment on a couple of items in your agenda first I want to make a statement that as you go through the budget process it would be very helpful instead of having it on the the IQ m2 you know department 211 department 931 like just get out what department it is so we don't all have to look up and see what what we want to see it would be much much more helpful I did talk to you we could go so about you know the issue about having a competent budget document to work from it would be nice if somebody would actually step forward and produce a document that shows you know in one document what our past actuals have been and and have a valid and defensible projection of what we will spend by the end of this fiscal year we only have a month and a half left of the fiscal year it should be it should be somebody competent ought to be able to project what our actual expenses will be fairly closely to June 30th and then we could then look at in a normal budget process what we've spent how it's increased over the years and maybe there's some anomalies as to why it goes up or down in one time or another but um but you know year after year we see discrepancies in in what the projected budget is versus what it's actually spent or that we haven't spent any budget but yet it's being projected to spend all the budget by June 30th within a month you know to do a good job as Alderman as city councillors whichever you know you need the information and I don't know why the city executive offices aren't more forthcoming with the information that you could valuably use to make the determinations about whether something's appropriate or not the second topic I want to talk about tonight is this issue of the stabilization fund and I profess my ignorance about why it's on here again I thought that was back in March and it was over maybe it's just a calendaring issue or something like that but but you know a multiple use stabilization fund

▶ 56:10 Speaker 2: is not really appropriate in so many ways in trying to say that we're going to use this funding from this particular thing toward that somehow as a as a way of legitimizing something it's just not direct if you have something that has widely varying expenditures for legitimate reasons year by year and you want to stabilize that if you have you know crises that come up to stabilize that that's one thing but you don't mix everything together and basically what you're ending up doing is is it basically talking about another pot of money another slush fund that anybody can ready to do whatever they want at whatever time it seems like oh isn't this a wonderful thing to do in the moment because there's money in the stabilization fund but you know when that gets raided and then it's not there for legitimate purposes it's it's a different stories so there are legitimate stabilization funds we have some of them and I think they're wonderful but this particular one doesn't doesn't pass the test for me thank you motion to close public comment