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 (~27 min @ 1:16)

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

▶ 1:08 Kate Lipper-Garabedian: madam chair second we have a motion to close public comment by alderman Mortimer and seconded by vice-chair Boisselle all in favor aye opposed public comment is now closed so we'll turn to our orders tonight our first order is order number two zero one nine dash eight five city of Melrose operating budget for fiscal year 2020 in the amount of 86 million six hundred and sixty two thousand nine hundred and eighty seven dollars and 61 cents and we have a number of department heads in attendance tonight to walk us through

▶ 1:40 Jennifer L. Lemmerman: their budget proposals motion to suspend the rules and you can bring up the

▶ 1:44 Kate Lipper-Garabedian: proper officials second we have a motion to suspend the rules made by president Lemmerman and seconded by alderman Mortimer all in favor opposed okay we under rule suspension and our first department on our schedule is the

▶ 2:04 Kate Lipper-Garabedian: Department of Health good evening thank you so much for being here I don't know if you want to have a few start out with a few comments or go straight to questions whatever you prefer I know you have a hearing yourself tonight yep we

▶ 2:14 Speaker 1: have a board meeting that's okay that's that's no problem so the Health Department budget is relatively stable over time there's no new concepts in the budget the changes in this year's budget are a couple of things I just wanted to point out we have requested an additional school nurse who would be shared between the middle and the high schools we are we don't meet the Department of Public Health guidelines for staffing at the middle or the high school actually we need two more nurses to meet the staffing guidelines but this would be the first of the two positions to move towards that we are this year under a provisional approval from the Department of Public Health on our medication delegation because we don't meet the guidelines we've we've resubmitted our application for next year saying that we have requested an additional nurse to work towards meeting the guidelines and we're hoping that that good faith effort will allow us to at least keep our delegation for another year so that is obviously the most major change financially and two other changes in medical supplies we this is the last year of a 10-year school nursing grant that we've had through the city of Medford that paid primarily for supplies for the school nurses including things like aed batteries and pads as they need to get replaced and some other equipment some professional development that grant is done this year we still need to be able to pay for those supplies so there's an additional $2,900 added to the budget to get us through next year and the other thing you'll see is a change in pest control traditionally we've been providing goose control measures at El Pond area for many many many years but it's been funded every year through the supplemental budget in the fall so even though we know we're going to spend it every year it's never been part of our base budget but this year it's part of the base budget so that we won't have to come and ask for it in the fall and the other part of that is mosquito control which has been level funded for also many years is

▶ 5:03 Speaker 1: we've requested to be fully funded this year if you remember last summer Melrose was put on high alert for West Nile virus because we've been level funding that line item for so long we've no longer been able to treat all of our catch basins because obviously the cost of material and labor goes up so we've only been able to treat half the catch basins last year because of the emergency we got additional funds we treated all the catch basins but we we do need to keep that up especially with climate change there's more and more issues with vector diseases so we are requesting to to basically fully fund those line items everything else is you know essentially the same but I what

▶ 5:48 Peter D. Mortimer: what kind of diseases I missed the word you vector borne insect or borne insect

▶ 5:53 Peter D. Mortimer: borne every question I just didn't hear the word thank you vector vector the

▶ 5:59 Speaker 1: great word V isn't Victor ECT oh wow all right okay thank you Alderman

▶ 6:05 John N. Tramontozzi: Mantozzi well thank you thank you miss clay for coming in with your budget I got a question regarding the salary and wage item in the school regarding the school nurse is the school nurse that is coming on board is that paid out of your budget or is it the school budget all the school nurses are part of the health

▶ 6:23 Speaker 1: department they all work for the health department they're all funded through the health department except for the nurse at the Franklin School which is

▶ 6:35 John N. Tramontozzi: paid through the school department what's in his irrational reasoning I understand they're part of your employing their employees of the health department but is there a reason why they're being paid from the health budget as opposed to the school budget because they work for the city they

▶ 6:51 John N. Tramontozzi: don't work for the school department but are they in the schools at all well

▶ 6:53 Speaker 1: they're physically located in the schools but they are city employees not

▶ 6:59 John N. Tramontozzi: school department employees all right no that's fine I just want to clarify that that event some people in the public might question about the nurses good

▶ 7:06 Speaker 1: thank you actually historically the middle and high school nurses worked for the school department and the elementary schools nurses worked for the Health Department which made no sense and so about ten years ago maybe maybe more we finally moved all the nurses to the same department why don't we just pay them

▶ 7:24 John N. Tramontozzi: all under the our budget then they are paid out of my budget except I thought

▶ 7:31 Speaker 1: you mentioned the school nurse at the except for the Franklin so she's paid

▶ 7:34 Speaker 1: from the school budget why is she paid out of the school budget Oh because until maybe last year the Franklin school was the was only the early education center which is my understanding self-funded float your own boat through the school department and so that's all the revenue that was able to be devoted that's all they could afford it's now really an elementary school it has kindergarten and so we are requesting that the school department actually it's only been funded 30 hours a week and we are going to be requesting that the school department funded full-time 35 hours a week like all the

▶ 8:19 Speaker 2: other school nurses thank you alderman boys out good evening Ruth thank you for

▶ 8:22 Robert A. Boisselle: coming just looks like a change in coding for your particular categories here you went from a six digit to an eight digit code on professional services and medical supplies is there is there a reason for the change in the

▶ 8:43 Speaker 1: sick from six to eight digits yes but it's actually an auditing office answer but I'm happy to answer it if you want me to good evening thank you great

▶ 8:59 Speaker 3: question um as we've done in the past with the facilities budget you'll see coding that is designed to isolate the school department cost from the city cost that is a we're doing the same thing here that is a patent you're going to see increasing as the years go on and the reason for that is twofold one is that for purposes of schedule one and schedule 19 which are your end of year reports for the school department required by uh by department of education we are to every year we have to report our expenditures both actual and budgeted and by coding the respective categories that apply in this case the school nurses for the school we're able to identify more efficiently and more effectively at the end of the year we have to turn our reports in because it comes directly off of munis we don't have to do the exercise of extracting what portion was school versus what portion was city and you're going to see more and more of that because that's that plays a huge role in the calculation of your net school spending so we want to be sure crystal clear and very transparent that we're identifying as we go forward more and more of that cost directly in the budget just by a simple code change so that it's easy to pull it apart it's easy to print reports to extract it we have an audit every year just on that aspect alone so it's going to be very helpful for the auditors too now you mentioned that this was in the muni system that did the software have to be updated to accommodate this new eight code digit no no so there's no extra charge at this point uh no it's uh absolutely to our advantage to do it that way okay thank you thank you thank you manager alderman's work go

▶ 11:01 Michael P. Zwirko: thank you madam chair thank you for being here this evening i just have a very quick question for you um can you uh explain a little bit more behind the asterisks about the regional tobacco coordinator uh position so um well i'll let you explain and then i'll follow okay so just for the

▶ 11:17 Speaker 1: people who are viewing at home viewing audience the aldermen have a chart that lists all the different positions within the health department and all the different funding sources one two three four five six seven eight so there's eight different funding sources for the 19 staff and that spreadsheet kind of lays out who's where and how they get paid and we do this every year so the tobacco control position is grant funded through a regional grant that is awarded to Melrose for five communities and actually again that grant is ending this year but we have or no actually ended last year this is the first year of the new round of a 10-year grant for five communities and it's significantly less than it has been in the past and there is not enough funding for it to be full-time through the rest of this year or for next year so Malden and Medford because they're the bulk of our work because they're the communities of need have agreed to make up the difference so that so that will she'll be full-time next year this year where we're negotiating with the state health department they may actually be able to give us some additional funds but we haven't been we haven't been told definitely yet so either DPH will give us some additional funds and she'll be full time for the last two months or she may have to decrease a few hours to get us through the rest of the year so I

▶ 12:59 Michael P. Zwirko: know that we the city Melrose consider the vaping products tobacco products does the state consider those the same yes okay so there I mean the state is focused on addressing the meteoric rise of the vaping issues in public health

▶ 13:17 Speaker 1: because the issue the bottom issue is nicotine which is in both products and as long as you brought it up shameless plug next Wednesday night Senator Lewis and the Department of Public Health Commissioner Burrell are holding a listening session in Wakefield Wednesday night at 630 to specifically talk about

▶ 13:37 Michael P. Zwirko: vaping well and thank you for bringing that segue the reason I brought it up is because I attended the weeding through the myths seminar last week so it was a very eye-opening considering what the school department's dealing with in terms of this this epidemic so thank you for that my final question leading on the funding source for this this grant so what will we do next year if it's a 10-year grant but the amount of the grant is actually lower are we gonna we're gonna be in the same position you think yes so it's the same amount of

▶ 14:03 Speaker 1: every year which is only $60,000 which isn't very much money and of course the salary goes up every year so that gap is going to grow every year and we identified that as an issue when we wrote the grant there wasn't any flexibility at the time as I said there seems to be some more flexibility at this point with them being able to give us some additional funds the state budget process is obviously in process one of the house is either the house of the Senate budget I can't remember which one actually has additional funding for tobacco control so that would make it more likely we could get a little bit more money but as I said Malden and Medford's health departments have are pretty sure that they would be able to fund the difference well good luck in

▶ 15:00 Manisha Bewtra: those efforts and thanks for your time thank you thank you for being here I really appreciate this chart with the staff and funding sources and again for those falling at home if you're looking at the attachments it's department 511 budget document 2 although the one you have tonight is updated oh that's

▶ 15:19 Speaker 1: updated I apologize so just so you know I don't know I just printed this out

▶ 15:21 Manisha Bewtra: right before the meeting so I may have the updated one in front of me anyway but I really like this chart because it's nice to see how the different positions are funded I was curious what the ones mean are those one hour or is

▶ 15:37 Speaker 1: it one good question I was it's a format issue I I was trying to it means that they're full-time and they're entirely paid by that grant got it as you can see some positions are not full-time so for example the public health nurse is 14 hours by Melrose 11 hours by Wakefield so I tried to be clear about that other full-time positions like my own position is 65% by the Melrose budget 35% by the Wakefield budget and then I kind of gave up and just said one means that they're

▶ 16:16 Manisha Bewtra: entirely paid by that grant got it I think later on if you can provide supplemental information in terms of the unless that is actually what is reflected in our budget document here the the amounts for the grants are those

▶ 16:34 Speaker 1: actually reflected in these numbers or no you have that's a municipal budget avenue right those are so really municipal so it would be great to just

▶ 16:40 Manisha Bewtra: have that because I think it is nice to have the full picture of how the

▶ 16:46 Speaker 1: department is funded I mean how much each of the grants are yeah oh that's

▶ 16:49 Manisha Bewtra: easy yeah and because it's just nice to know and then I guess a follow-up question to that is who does the grant writing and how are those because those that that is a time-consuming process in and of itself writing the grants and

▶ 17:07 Speaker 1: maintaining them that would be me got it point of information the tobacco grant is $60,000 a year the mass in motion is $40,000 a year the regional substance

▶ 17:22 Speaker 1: abuse coordinator is a hundred thousand dollars a year the stop grant is forty

▶ 17:30 Manisha Bewtra: thousand dollars a year that's it great so that's a significant amount of revenue that is brought into the department through grants and are those annual or I think some of them are more like three-year grants actually the

▶ 17:42 Speaker 1: State Health Department has moved to tenure grants okay which is really good if you have one and really bad if you didn't get one and these the stop grant is a federal grant that's four years and the substance abuse coordinator is a state grant which I believe is five years I think great thank you for that

▶ 18:10 Manisha Bewtra: information um the other question I had was I recall this time last year prior to the override we had talked about both school nurse staffing levels but also substitute nursing and I know that within the fiscal year I believe we had changed the hourly wage for substitute nurses I wanted to just get a sort of update on how that's working since then and what you're projecting out for this year and is that funded on the school side or is that through again through

▶ 18:44 Speaker 1: the department that's in the professional services line item it's actually most of the professional services line item not all of it so yes we did increase the hourly rate from $20 an hour to $30 an hour which mayor inferno did it was actually I think one of the first things she did his mayor which was huge we're actually in relatively good shape for school nurse subs because we had a retirement last year and she has come back as a sub this year we also have another retirement at the end of this school year and she plans to be available as a sub and if we get this additional nurse for the middle and high school if we're in a crunch and we don't have a sub for the elementary school we have somebody who we can float over to an elementary school so that we shouldn't be in a position next year assuming we have the other nurse that there's ever a day that there's not a full-time nurse in every school we've kind of had to fudge it a few times last year but we should

▶ 19:47 Manisha Bewtra: actually be in good shape excellent thanks for those updates motion to

▶ 19:53 Kate Lipper-Garabedian: include the updated table into the record second the updated table that we have in the record made by alderman warmer seconded by alderman Medeiros all in favor any opposed I just have two quick questions it's great to hear that that we are able to sort of budget for pest control at the outset of a fiscal year instead of waiting to make up the difference in the fall last year when we met just to talk about the budget there was a concern about vermin and rats specifically and I haven't heard as much about that lately but I'm just wondering is that still a big problem in the city and what's and there we still sort of addressing it and the ways that you described last year anything new there

▶ 20:36 Speaker 1: i thought i'd get away without talking about rats tonight um well we are starting to get some complaints but again it's really just recently started to get warm it's not any different than the other communities around us it's it's not a it's not a local issue it's actually a country all across the country issue nobody really knows why most of the Rodent control efforts are done on private property. So it doesn't cost the city we have had some infestations on public property where Public Works works really hard with private contractors and That's the only time it really costs the city money the only other time is sometimes we've brought in a Licensed pest control operator to do a community meeting and we've paid them to do that usually out of the revolving fund so I would anticipate that we will it will be an issue this summer like it has been the last few summers and part of your

▶ 21:45 Kate Lipper-Garabedian: staff am i right that you do some you inspect and look at dumpsters for

▶ 21:53 Speaker 1: example in our commercial districts and yep we do that they are inspectors out anyway but in addition to her usual rounds she she has a basically a Main street route that she checks particular areas that have been chronic issues okay great and my last

▶ 22:08 Kate Lipper-Garabedian: question is we also have as part of our public the public record um a large spreadsheet that breaks down um salaries by individual and i noticed for for your salaries you know we can see health director health inspector substance abuse coordinator so some of these salaries am i right are are actually provided not through uh provided by grants is that correct so the source of the funding may not be clear or is this all money that is from our tax dollars good question

▶ 22:42 Speaker 1: none of those that are listed there are paid by a grant okay the director's salary and the two inspector salaries are partially paid by wakefield and that's on your spreadsheet got it so the full amount is is shown but then that the reimbursement goes

▶ 23:08 Kate Lipper-Garabedian: back into the general fund okay so we can none of anything that we see in health again is from tax dollars but some of them might be we were getting reimbursed from Wakefield right okay thank you so much any other questions

▶ 23:28 Scott M. Forbes: motion to move the bottom line thank you I'll be quick I just want to say thank you for the questionnaire provides another layer of information that I know we started doing these a couple of years ago but it answers a lot of the questions and identifies some of the gaps in terms of what we had last year in terms of what we are projecting for this year though I may have missed it but the professional services line on $9,000 can you just explain what that is because that looks like a new line item under contractual no it's it's not a new

▶ 23:56 Speaker 1: line item it's the same line item some of it it's primarily well it's the goose control it is substitute school nurses and I believe that's the line item that alderman Boisselle was asking about because it's broken out now so that some of it will be directly attributed to the school foundation budget at the end of

▶ 24:24 Scott M. Forbes: of the year okay that's fine and that was the but that that's the reason why there's a new a-digit number on there as well right okay all right and then my my other question just because this is the first the first apartment that we're talking about in terms of budget if I could just have this DeLaRusso just come up and give us the summation of all the different categories that we're looking at here because there are about four or five different columns that have 2019 on them so it's always a good idea just to have you come out here and explain it first and foremost so we can go right down the line without having to wash rinse and repeat

▶ 24:59 Speaker 3: certainly and thank you and through the chair um everyone i believe should have this description um of each column for purposes of this evening um first column is quite frank what it says it's fiscal year 18. this was the amount that was actually expended from from the prior fiscal year year. The second one, it says original budget 2019. This figure represents the original amount voted by the Board of Aldermen for the current fiscal year. The third one is the 2019 revised budget. This figure represents the adopted budget in any automatic transfers and or appropriations which would include increase or decreases to the budget. The fourth column is fiscal 2019 actual this figure represents the actual amount of the expenditures and outstanding encumbrances for the current fiscal year as of the date of the printout so on this printout here the before you it's on the left-hand column which is say 0 5 0 2 2 0 1 9 so those acts that are actual column represents the expenses as of that date obviously as time goes forward the expenses will change and i would expect that the department heads would bring with them the most current when they do go before you to discuss their budget to bring it up to date

▶ 26:31 Speaker 3: fiscal 19 again actual this figure represents the actual amount of the expenditures and outstanding encumbrances for the current fiscal year again as the date of the printout which i just said does not include expenditures or outstanding encompasses from prior fiscal years

▶ 26:48 Speaker 3: fiscal 2019 projection this figure represents the adopted budget in any automatic transfers and appropriations which would include increases or decreases to the budget fiscal 2020 the mayor this figure represents the amount proposed by the mayor for the upcoming fiscal year in this case fiscal year 2020 and the right hand column is the actual percentage change which is calculated by dividing the new proposed budget for fiscal 2020 by the original budget amount of the current fiscal year of fiscal year 2019. but thank you for asking this question because that comes up every year and it's good to bring it up out front yep that's good to get it out of the way first and

▶ 27:26 Scott M. Forbes: and foremost so and then 2020 projections you know obviously there are discussions with department heads looking at past data projecting for future you know I know we always see is the numbers in the cherry sheets but there's a lot more layers behind these numbers am I correct yeah okay thank you

▶ 27:49 Kate Lipper-Garabedian: very much thank you thank you we have a motion to recommend me by alderman Mortimer and seconded by vice chair Boisselle any further discussion all in

▶ 27:56 Speaker 2: favor thank you madam chair I'm just moving to the next piece I'd like to