Public Participation

Transcript (~13 min @ 0:40)

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

▶ 0:39 Speaker 1: We have a motion to open the floor.

▶ 0:40 Speaker 2: So moved.

▶ 0:41 Jennifer L. Lemmerman: Second. We have a motion to open the floor for public comment made by President Search and seconded by Alderman Mortimer. All in favor? Aye. Any opposed? We are now in the public comment portion of our meeting where any member of the public may come forward to speak on any item on our agenda.

▶ 1:06 Speaker 1: Good evening.

▶ 1:24 Speaker 3: Is it the same thing?

▶ 1:34 Speaker 4: No, I just, I'm going to do one call because she's going to, so.

▶ 1:40 Peter D. Mortimer: Just one, one. One page. One page, one hand up, yeah.

▶ 1:43 Speaker 5: Thank you, I'm Jerry Meroz. The page that I just handed out to you was a simple spreadsheet I created using information that was passed out last week by the city auditor regarding indirect costs of water and sewer. And I know tonight that's not on your agenda, but what is on your agenda tonight is the law department. And I want to call your attention to this spreadsheet under legal, the second line down, which under legal and the indirect cost for the water and sewer has been estimated, I'll say, at $25,661 of legal employee time toward the water enterprise fund and $25,661 of legal time extensively spent for the sewer fund. The two enterprise funds together combined to $51,322 that someone is asserting that that amount of money is being spent on behalf of the water and sewer fund, or that amount of resources are being applied from the legal department to the water and sewer enterprise funds. Now, when you look next to that, and you see that the, and I took the total FY19 budget for legal there, I apologize, maybe I didn't quite get the total, but maybe the salaries, but it's $282,061, which means that it's 18.2% of what's being represented as being used by the Water and Sewer Enterprise Fund of the total legal department. Now I want to highlight here that one of the employees of the legal department is used solely at this time, one of the attorneys is used solely for the schools. That makes the percentage be significantly higher when you look at that. I want to say that to me it has not been supported that that level of funds or that level of resources from the legal department is being used toward the legal department I would love you to ask the legal department when they have for their budget how much they actually do and I I do want to mention I took some notes the other night when mr. Della Russo was speaking and he actually used the legal department as an example when he was speaking about indirect costs and he said you know something like if we only look at the legal department there are of procurement services, contract development, authorizations, compliance, bidding disputes, collective marketing, contract negotiations, representation, contract impasse matters, employee grievances, et cetera, workman's comp matters, representation, fact finding, et cetera, contract billing disputes, claims, court related time, contract performance issues, et cetera, legal opinions regarding water and sewer matter, and he said the list goes on and on.

▶ 4:45 Speaker 5: I ask you how many collective bargaining units do we have in the city that we

▶ 4:53 Speaker 5: negotiate with you know how many things do we deal with for the schools for a whole range of different legal issues can you really say that even of the gross of the legal 18.2 percent are at water and sewer it doesn't pass the

▶ 5:12 Speaker 5: smell test to me no pun intended there I'm sorry I do want to call you next because it's also under the legal the the general insurance policy for the city that's listed in the legal department budget line items it's represented that the city pays 520 it it's shown as property insurance and it's not quite clear where everything comes up with its liability or property or whatever but what I found in the city budget was a five hundred and twenty four thousand eight hundred dollar expense in the legal department and perhaps the relevant thing is somewhere else I don't know but it's showing that the water and sewer combined use of what they say is general insurance is one hundred and fifty seven thousand four hundred and forty dollars and if in true that line item in the legal department is what these indirect costs are represented to for the water and sewer is it really true that water and sewer represents 30% of our liability that we're ensuring I the question I don't

▶ 6:14 Speaker 5: have the answer it's a question again the caveat is I don't know I'd love to be corrected if I'm grabbing the wrong number but if so please give me the correct number so I can have something to work with that's there so there are a whole lot of other line items on this sheet that aren't relevant to the legal issues tonight but I do think that it's important that we hear from every department and most of the departments are done now but these indirect cost claims without seeing what total full-time equivalent employees are estimated to be being applied to the water and sewer fund you know there's there's nothing to support those claims and and again I don't want to get into the water and sewer we'll do that again when you when it comes back to the full board shortly. However, there were a lot of rhetorical devices used here the other night, which no matter how many times you quote the Department of Revenue Division of Local Services or how many times you say MGL Chapter 44, no matter how many times you claim that some five auditors have done something. The fact is, if you had the real numbers and you could defend the numbers, wouldn't an ordinary person defend their numbers rather than use the logical fallacies of honor by association to try to claim that because somebody else might have somehow been peripherally involved that that legitimizes all these representations?

▶ 7:57 Speaker 5: I do want to, again, say that indirect costs are a perfectly legitimate thing to apply as an accounting metric or measure to what does something cost, and of course it's an estimate. And I want to be clear that nobody, certainly not me, has ever said that indirect costs are a wrong accounting measure or somehow there's something fundamentally deficient about them.

▶ 8:27 Speaker 5: I'm trying to pick my word carefully here. My concern with what's been done in terms of what's been represented year after year after year about the indirect costs is that they aren't real they aren't accurate nobody has showed us I mean I wanted to show you here even tonight with my what I did in a spreadsheet simple spreadsheet took me about 10 minutes to most the time to grab the numbers because frankly the city site stuff isn't well the indirect crossings that were put out they aren't machine readable which is unfortunate but the issue here is is that it was showing in the indirect cost what the percent of the water and sewer budget was somehow making implying that these indirect costs are somehow commensurate and they were small numbers of course of the water and sewer budget because we all know that the largest huge piece of the pie for water and sewer budget goes the MWRA and for those MWRA costs we don't have a whole lot of contract negotiations going on a bargaining unit negotiations going on or insurance needs or health insurance needs or pension needs when you look at and I will show you this next time but when you look at what the actual percentage of the non MWRA cost of the water and sewer is it is huge the indirect cost of the of the non MWRA cost and so I put that out there I would love to hear the whoever representing the city solicitor tonight to um you know please represent how these percentages and not just declare that they're appropriate i'd like to hear how they're appropriate do we actually have data do we have you know time sheets for different personnel even just within the legal department they use time slips and and see what their time is built at do we have any evidence of that to be able to prove that these numbers are correct are our losses attributable to water and and sewer, or even our exposure of liability due to water and sewer, really this percent of the whole thing? If so or if not, where are those calculations? Why aren't they here in front of you as the alderman so that you can make your own confirmation

▶ 10:48 Speaker 5: or determination that the figures that are in front of you that you are going to vote on are indeed appropriate that they aren't just you know you have to do your due diligence and i've heard different people over the years claim that well we have to trust what the city gives us and you know i wasn't a huge fan of ronald reagan but trust but verify is the apt term here right that you can trust somebody so long as they prove your trust and how do they prove your trust well you verify it from time to time and see what it is so again tonight with the illegal um i apologize it isn't tonight is it tonight it is tonight so actually let me jump into the it one that was my last thing i was thinking about um it's showing here that oh i'm sorry a couple other things here 285 000 is what we apply to it and um we're saying here that that the water and sewer combined is 21 percent of that at sixty thousand dollars um you know maybe there's a server dedicated to the water and sewer billing system maybe there's a little piece of munis there um um but if it is part of that and is munis under it as well i apologize i should more prepared here tonight but if munis is under it um if you look at the software licenses and again if somebody has better information than i was able to call from the from the budget please let me know but i was finding that the indirect cost for water and sewer that were applied as represented last week is seventy eight thousand nine hundred and twenty eight dollars the total software and licenses that i see on the city website on the city fyi 19 budget was about i believe 88 000 for munis supplies is what it says and i assume part of that is a munis license um and then there were another about 19 000 as i recall for licenses i combined the two to make 107 355 dollars but please tell me what i'm missing when i calculate here that 73.5 percent of the i.t software and licenses budget is being applied as an indirect cost to water and sewer thank you for your time tonight i look forward to hearing your conversation discussion i especially look forward to hearing um if if if members of the board here can find the answers to my questions

▶ 13:23 Jennifer L. Lemmerman: thank you thank you mr morris any other members of the public here this evening wishing to speak

▶ 13:26 Peter D. Mortimer: motion to close public participation madam chair second we have a motion to

▶ 13:29 Jennifer L. Lemmerman: close public comment made by alderman mortimer seconded by alderman boisselle all in favor portion is now closed we will move on to the orders before us beginning with the departmental budget hearings that are on our list first madam chair if i may