ORDER-2018-183 : City of Melrose Operating Budget for Fiscal Year 2019 in the amount of $79,399,945.73 (Seventy-Nine Million, Three Hundred Ninety-Nine Thousand, Nine Hundred Forty-Five Dollars and Seventy-Three Cents).

Transcript (~31 min @ 2:02:05)

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

▶ 2:02:02 Peter D. Mortimer: we'll make sure to take that department first you're right it's in the bottom of

▶ 2:02:06 Jennifer L. Lemmerman: the list but if we can take that first thank you for pointing that out thank you very much order 2018-183 City of Melrose operating budget for fiscal year 2019 in the amount of 79 million three hundred ninety nine thousand nine hundred forty five dollars and seventy three cents we have several department budget items in front of us and as just discussed we will take number 296 the parking budget first in the amount of eighty eight thousand six hundred ninety six dollars and eighty eight cents um as we have representatives from the police department we have chief lyle and we also have mr flavin with us both come forward

▶ 2:02:49 Jennifer L. Lemmerman: thank you thank you very much thank you for your patience is there an opening statement either of you would like to make on this item or should we

▶ 2:03:02 Speaker 10: move directly to questions um i just now that it's out of order i have to find the um parking's kind

▶ 2:03:07 Speaker 10: of an odd duck in this world and that it's there's three people the street involves parts of it as i said in my questionnaire we're in charge of the my office is in charge of the administration the ticket collecting the adjudication the hearings that end of it the chief is in charge of enforcement and this in the parking commission is in charge of policy so policy is not going to be part of tonight's discussion this is what you see in front of you is the budget we need to do our jobs and to and to pay our guys you know people to support that program in the last year we've expanded the program from one day to five days we've gone to merchant parking we're selling more stickers we're creating more revenue the chief is writing while these guys are writing tickets and this is represents the money we need to do what we need to do thank you straight to

▶ 2:04:09 Monica C. Medeiros: question thank you seems like it wasn't that long ago but maybe it was a little bit longer ago than I thought we had allocated some additional staff member

▶ 2:04:25 Monica C. Medeiros: part-time to to address this budget in my understanding at the time was that going to be somewhat of a temporary thing until when you look at it we have

▶ 2:04:32 Speaker 10: when you combine it with my budget we have a new we have a staff person more I'm more professional but he's able to do more charging one day of one unit of

▶ 2:04:49 Speaker 10: her salary one week one day to parking one day general fund and three days for water and sewer she started as three days in water and sewer to support the monthly billing so that position is becoming full-time we can discuss that under the other issue but parking if you look at the salaries there's not that much of a difference um so i don't um that's the answer

▶ 2:05:25 Monica C. Medeiros: you don't know and yes at that time it was uh she essentially became the parking clerk and while

▶ 2:05:28 Speaker 10: she's a full-time employee provides parking support to the public and hearings five days a week

▶ 2:05:38 Monica C. Medeiros: i mean it's certainly a helpful service to the public uh it is something that i you know i think when we made that transfer over it was under the understanding it would not be a benefited

▶ 2:05:57 Monica C. Medeiros: position so that seems like it's changed over time here um i did mention to i know there's certain certainly huge changes in the parking program including the merchant merchant parking

▶ 2:06:10 Speaker 5: this is something that we don't really offer online but i hope that we can look at that service

▶ 2:06:19 Speaker 10: what the parking parking permit stickers or like i said we're the administration part of it the parking commission and the planning department give us our material and what we provide and what we put out there so that would be an issue to take up with them

▶ 2:06:34 Peter D. Mortimer: okay thank you thank you thank you motion to recommend this budget for passage madam chair

▶ 2:06:37 Jennifer L. Lemmerman: second a motion to move the bottom line made by alderman mortimer seconded by autumn poysel discussion all in favor aye aye any opposed thank you we'll move the bottom line forward

▶ 2:06:48 Speaker 8: thank you chief lyle for thank you for your patience this evening

▶ 2:06:56 Jennifer L. Lemmerman: we will move back to the top of our list with department number 145 treasurer good night Good night, in the amount of $426,120.81.

▶ 2:07:07 Speaker 10: Again, I hope you all read the questionnaire. That tells you what we do. I say it every year, and I heard the word earlier today, it's Groundhog Day. These are the resources I need to do my job the way we've been doing our job going forward. We are seeing an uptick in the amount of service that we provide to the customers, especially with the added parking, especially with the monthly water bills. And that's why we're going in the direction of funding.

▶ 2:07:41 Speaker 10: One day, we're funding three, the three water sewer days are staying the same for that new position. It wasn't a new position, I gotta make that clear. In 2006, I came here. In 2008, we went through a crisis. And I foolishly, being dumb, allowed that position to go away. And we created a vacuum in our office. And it was an empty hole that the women in my office for the last, how many years now, have backfilled. And now we're kind of facing a crisis as we move on. The amount of weekdays we have, I'm sorry, vacation days that have to get covered. We can't allow them to both take vacation on the same day. It's unfair, they've done service for 10 or 12 years. We need another body in there. We need some support for them. And the decision to create this position and make it full time, and it's kind of a jack of all trades, a Brock Holt for your baseball fans, somebody that can fill a number of positions and is younger and more technically, that was probably, I didn't mean younger, but she's more technically adept at handling the situations able to guide me and the staff with it so that's the reasoning besides moving that position from the three-day water and sewer only to a full-time position one day supported by the general fund one day supported by parking and three days supported by water and sewer

▶ 2:09:17 Scott M. Forbes: thank you alderman forbes thank you uh just a quick question regarding the monthly billing i know during our meetings i think we said that monthly billing is up to i think seven percent The time that you're spending in your office to only do 7%, is that something that you see viable if it doesn't pick up?

▶ 2:09:32 Speaker 10: Well, if 700 people go over, that used to be 2,800 bills. You do that times 12, what number is that that we have to deal and process every month? Right. It's another eight iterations, so it's not just 700 people. Understood. So it's that number. Whenever somebody changes, you're giving me eight more bills to deal with on a monthly basis. right and eight more questions and eight more payments and eight more transactions that have to go in and out of the systems reconciled and posted so it's it whether it's 710 I don't know what the appetite is going to be for it as it goes out there and builds more but it certainly has had an impact when you look at the questionnaire I gave you water and sewer you know there's a talk of indirects against the treasurer's office if you look at that chart who's my biggest customer water and sewer I mean that's where we do most of our work right most of our transactions not most of our work but it's there so I mean

▶ 2:10:34 Scott M. Forbes: it's not made out no and I don't think it is it's only gonna grow my question just for you is if you're if you're spending and dedicating this much time effort and resources now it's just at 7% if you see an uptick you may be needing more positions there in order to backfill any additional work that comes

▶ 2:10:50 Speaker 10: your way no I hope not I mean it's it's what it's done it's created pressure when somebody's waiting on a customer on this end I needed another body for the person in line or the phone ringing while this one's at lunch or this one's on vacation we sure needed the support in the background to maintain the customer service that the previous administration in this administration like our office to provide we could let things go to hold we could not do this But I think we we have much more pride in our office and what we do on that level that we want to continue to provide

▶ 2:11:24 Scott M. Forbes: White glove service is what we consider it. Yeah, I just know it as we rolled out this project This was something that you had to take on in addition to The actual work of the treasurer's office in itself the work that you already do frankly. I'm glad it's rolling. It's rolling out slowly

▶ 2:11:33 Speaker 10: I mean, it's I'm glad it didn't just hit us like a ton of bricks and that would have been a whole different situation

▶ 2:11:40 Scott M. Forbes: Yeah, phasing out was definitely

▶ 2:11:42 Speaker 10: but i think the younger homeowners and whatever will probably get more in tune with it especially with we made our change to city hall systems um it's a much better online bill payment system it allows you to see previous bills it allows auto pay um you know it'll just pay the bill for you if it shows up monthly so people might want to take advantage of that right well thank

▶ 2:12:09 Monica C. Medeiros: thank you for being here tonight thank you thank you thank you I guess sticking with the monthly billing and this is something we should probably talk about in water and sewer also but you know it's it's crossed my mind you know I did have some concerns about switching to monthly and adding this extra cost perhaps it's something where we could and I guess I'd like to hear your thoughts on it again not necessarily tonight but the idea of maybe allowing estimated payments but only billing quarterly it would that be

▶ 2:12:45 Speaker 10: more complicated we already do that I mean we'll work with any customer what they want to do they just have to contact I mean they could say we'll never turn money away you know you want to give me $100 a month and you fall behind you're still gonna pay the same interest and penalties that are required by law if you get ahead I mean you can look at it we're still going to mail you a bill that will tell you where you stand so I mean we're willing to work with anybody we have a number of people on payment plans already so those that's already there and like I said the auto pay is probably the best option for people go to monthly and go to auto pay and you don't have to worry about it but that's personal decisions on their end in your questionnaire you have the

▶ 2:13:24 Monica C. Medeiros: numbers from 2017 is that is that FY 17 or is that calendar and how does that compare to the previous year number I didn't do that yeah I mean I'm just I

▶ 2:13:44 Speaker 10: mean it's groundhog day I mean a lot of numbers that we didn't build more houses we didn't have more water and sewer accounts except for the monthly showing up and we knew that was about seven or eight hundred same personal property same motor vehicles it's about twenty five thousand it's a repetitive business but we added the parking and we added the monthly billing and frankly we were in my opinion we were understaffed for a number of years anyways and I think you

▶ 2:14:17 Monica C. Medeiros: mentioned that you undertook 42 tax title pursuits does that mean that you just started procedures no no so did we actually take 42 only if you're really

▶ 2:14:31 Speaker 10: bad no it's it's it's unfortunately it's a it's a misnomer when you do it taking all you're doing is securing the lien on the property but we really don't want to take your house but if you don't pay for three or four years and you always 30 or 40 grand we'll start to pursue it in foreclosure and people clean it up and that's what that number represents is the people that are getting because they're not doing themselves any favor they're paying 16% interest and it's just going to get worse and worse so after two or three years and the number gets to a certain number we use our lawyers and we push them through land court with the foreclosure proceeding we really in my 11 years here we've had two and they were both kind of abandoned properties yeah and again we have a cycle where we do that like we'll go after the we move perfecting the lien a delinquent tax is good for three years after three years you have to go to land court and file a piece of paper that says it's a tax taking so you file the tax taking now forever when somebody goes to convey that property they come back to us and say what do they owe and get our money But it's the best working money we have, it's 16 percent.

▶ 2:15:46 Monica C. Medeiros: So I guess that's another question that I've, I've had a lot of this lately where people

▶ 2:15:59 Monica C. Medeiros: are asking me what, what happens to our money when we've, we've got the, you know, you know.

▶ 2:16:03 Speaker 10: No again in the, in the, in the questionnaire I referred to, I'm talking about investments. In the questionnaire, I referred to the Mass General Laws that I'm bound to. I'm a certified treasurer collector. The whole way we do anything with any of our money, it's safety first, liquidity second, and then yield. We're not chasing yield, especially in this environment. Things are starting to creep up. We're position barred. But we utilize the state treasurer's MMDT pool fund. that goes against a little bit against my liquidity piece because they use commercial paper and they won't allow other investment vehicles with other banks to use commercial paper it's kind of a cheat and it allows them give them a hit head up on on banks and if you go through the laws and you go in I have a formal investment policies for general fund trust funds in OPEC and they follow of all of this safety liquidity yield you can't go out more than a year you can't go to a bank outside of Massachusetts FDIC the safety part of it you can't hold more than 250 in a bag so the strategy I mean and you have this in liquidity is the second one I just wrote eight million dollars in payrolls in the last two days you have to be able to get at the money too so it has to be liquid and frankly there's no money out there there's somebody getting 30 or 40 basis

▶ 2:17:32 Monica C. Medeiros: point but so how do we handle something like I mean if if we have say the money that's in the account for honestly for payroll but I mean we have you know reserve funds or we get cash flow in from you know are we collecting any interest on that when it's collecting what's available yeah so it mean it's

▶ 2:17:54 Speaker 10: it's all it's all in a bank it's all so like you know like this twelve million

▶ 2:18:01 Monica C. Medeiros: dollars in an MMDT account. Like the private banks that you know we see as consumers we see like point zero five percent interest or something you know are we talking any kind of serious money that we get an interest or is it really

▶ 2:18:16 Speaker 10: you see something great and then again I can't put more than two hundred and fifty thousand of it in the bank without worrying about FDIC insurance I'm not doing my job. When I came, I'm going to go back to 2008, or 2006 actually, everything was hunky-dory and everybody in the trust funds was invested in the legal list or outside of the legal list

▶ 2:18:41 Speaker 10: and the market fell apart and principal went away and that's the decision then is safety, liquidity, and yield. There's nothing sexy about this job. If it was sexy, you'd be paying me more money to to make that kind of money it's not wall street you know it's my job is to collect the

▶ 2:18:58 Monica C. Medeiros: money protect the money and pay the money how do we we choose the bank if we can only have 250 000

▶ 2:19:04 Speaker 10: according to my investment policy so we have relationships we've had long-standing relationships with eastern bank um they're our process of banks century bank mmdt is an investment and that's i

▶ 2:19:15 Speaker 10: I mean, other ones we may do for the local branches, you know, for operations, for tax payments, we use one bank, we keep some money in there. And for the local co-ops and stuff, we might give them a small CD, but there's nothing.

▶ 2:19:33 Monica C. Medeiros: Nothing much. And so if we have something like we're gonna see later on, you know, we have, say, money in reserves and water or sewer or something like that, does the interest on that money stay in water sewer does it come back to the general fund how does no it's pooled money everything's pooled

▶ 2:19:53 Speaker 10: everything's pulled okay i mean it would cost you a lot of money to separate the water and sewer money to go out into it it would cost you more to go separate it out and create a separate collection area a separate bank a separate how are you going to get that okay you do all that

▶ 2:20:05 Speaker 10: you're going to see you have to pay people and have a separate office so it's mostly it's not i'm talking 30 basis points do the math on on a million dollars it's nothing so we're not talking

▶ 2:20:15 Monica C. Medeiros: uh separate accounts we're talking accounting right the money is pooled general fund money

▶ 2:20:24 Speaker 10: which includes water and sewer enterprise trust funds which are five million dollars worth of money people gave the city years ago the emerson fund those types of things And the OPEB money, which is money that you've discussed, which is retirement to fund benefits down the line for retirees. Those are the only three places where money goes, and that's in every city and town, this is not specifically here.

▶ 2:20:53 Speaker 5: Thank you. Thank you.

▶ 2:20:55 Peter D. Mortimer: Thank you. Motion to recommend the bottom line for this budget, Madam Chair.

▶ 2:20:58 Jennifer L. Lemmerman: Second. The motion to recommend the bottom line made by Alderman Mortimer, seconded by Alderman Forbes on discussion. I have a question. We have a queue.

▶ 2:21:08 Michael P. Zwirko: discussion we have presidents work oh thank you madam chair just a couple things thank you for being here this late this evening I had three quick two questions and one comment the question I had is regarding liens over time have we seen liens that we've been seeking to attach have those gone down over time over the past like five years or so do you have any figures on that what was

▶ 2:21:34 Michael P. Zwirko: of questions uh liens liens what kind of liens um i liens on both um real estate and water and sewer

▶ 2:21:38 Speaker 10: perfectedly oh i mean if that's pretty routine um i mean again it's a definition of words everything's a lien yeah um perfected liens they stay about the same okay so it's just it's and

▶ 2:21:55 Michael P. Zwirko: usually it's the same players okay so it's not there's not necessarily a trend collections are

▶ 2:21:57 Speaker 10: good people pay their bills right um it'll be interesting to see what happens with the water and sewer bills we have a lot of liens on that um but with the new people used to not pay their water and sewer bill and let it flow onto the real estate and probably incorrectly take the deduction

▶ 2:22:18 Speaker 10: the new rules that's not going to be advantage right advantageous to them going forward so it'll be interesting to look at this year who starts didn't used to pay their bills starts paying it because it's expensive not to pay them i mean you get lien fees and demand fees and 14

▶ 2:22:38 Michael P. Zwirko: interest it's nothing to sneeze at either in the in a follow-up to that on the liens i i actually asked this question to the city auditor there is a program and this is more of kind of like a public service announcement there is a program for folks that many many elderly don't take advantage of and you do have the option of um deferring the payment on your property taxes to the city and then when you sell that property the city collects the property taxes plus interest it's almost like a reverse mortgage program but the city does offer that and in my communications with the city assessor not auditor rather that not many people take advantage of this but there is advertisements at the benefits fairs for the seniors that's

▶ 2:23:22 Speaker 10: see your local assessor for those that information i mean he deals with them on that we we maintain them we collect the payments we maintain the accounts right but as far as interaction with the public and who but i know my mother wouldn't want any liens on her house right and something eating at it even though the interest rate is lower than the 16 they still they want to give the house in whole but there are i mean there's a half of this probably eight people nine people to

▶ 2:23:51 Michael P. Zwirko: do it it's there if they need it right exactly and i'm really only bringing it up just to as an advertisement um one of the concerns that you've raised in with resources you know and i was always kind of opposed to going to monthly billing i think you know people are accustomed to quarterly billing with their property taxes i i think quarterly billing with water and sewer makes sense um so it's you know there might be a point where we get to diminishing returns and we'd like to hear from you if if in fact we do reach that with with the the frequency of monthly billing and the the drain on resources that it brings yeah i don't know if you'd ever be able to go

▶ 2:24:31 Speaker 10: backwards on it but i mean i i we're well positioned now with this what we've just done now we're happy we're a full staff office now and we're able to provide what we need to provide So, I mean, again, of course, if it goes crazy, if everybody went over, your postage is going to go through the roof.

▶ 2:24:50 Michael P. Zwirko: Well, that's, it's not only the postage, but it's the transactional work.

▶ 2:24:52 Speaker 10: And again, I'm a partner in this with the water and sewer piece, like we're the collection agency. Yeah. So, I mean, they're-

▶ 2:24:59 Michael P. Zwirko: It's a downstream effect. Yeah. I understand. And then the last comment is that you had mentioned Century Bank, that we use them sometimes. My understanding is that they're not FDIC insured, they're self-insured, aren't they?

▶ 2:25:10 Speaker 10: they're fdic insured i mean again you have to make some decisions for me to put three million

▶ 2:25:23 Speaker 10: dollars in a payroll i can't put it in three million dollars divided by 250 banks and pay people out of all that there's some you keep an eye on the banks and the integrity and the quality of the banks we've been using century the lockbox services and a number of things and we keep an eye on it all the money is liquid it can go in a day i didn't think they were federally registered

▶ 2:25:43 Speaker 10: i thought they were self-insured okay in any event those are all the questions i had thank you

▶ 2:25:49 Robert A. Boisselle: thank you for coming this evening i have one question this year you initiated a change in your online bill paying system how's it how's that going how's it being responded from the public

▶ 2:26:03 Speaker 10: consultant we haven't heard any complaints and we're seeing more payments we also i mean that's probably for the public and everything else we used to charge a quarter i mean 40 cents if you wanted to use a check now we're we're absorbing that cost so it's free if you want to pay it online so people are taking advantage of that um that's it out of my budget numbers somebody pays a bill across us a quarter to do it but it saves us on banking fees and transaction transaction costs and just overall handling paper so it's well worth it to us on that end we're seeing upticks as the world gets younger we're going to see more business over there and they provide a great product there's you know multi-language support on the back end you can pay by phone we didn't have any of that before so and you couldn't get an old bill or

▶ 2:27:00 Robert A. Boisselle: see old payments and now you can't run the system now do you find that the monthly billing you're getting a faster turnaround of payment of the bills i haven't looked at that i mean

▶ 2:27:10 Speaker 10: i'd have to we'd have to look at delinquent ones and i haven't looked at that yet i mean we kind of let that take care of itself because once a year if you're delinquent we move it to your real estate so i that's just not something on my radar okay well thank you very much thank you madam

▶ 2:27:29 Jennifer L. Lemmerman: chair thank you for the discussion the motion made and seconded to move the bottom line on this

▶ 2:27:36 Jennifer L. Lemmerman: uh all in favor aye aye opposed that will move forward moving on to the next item on our agenda it's department number 711 municipal debt in the amount of three million nine hundred nine thousand

▶ 2:27:46 Peter D. Mortimer: nine hundred and nine dollars madam chair i make a motion to join this budget with the subsequent budget number 751 municipal debt interest we have a motion to join 7-1-1 with 7-5-1

▶ 2:27:54 Jennifer L. Lemmerman: municipal debt interest in the amount of one million six hundred forty two thousand two hundred and eighteen dollars and one cent it's been seconded by alderman Passed on discussion all in favor of the motion to combine aye be opposed these are before you as combined

▶ 2:28:17 Scott M. Forbes: department numbers alderman forbes thank you so this would be our annual payment principal and

▶ 2:28:22 Speaker 10: interest correct this is all the debt you owe all the amortization sheets that represents what's owed by the city for previous authorizations and borrowings and what's due this year for principal

▶ 2:28:35 Scott M. Forbes: and interest payments okay and then as of now do we know how much total debt we have outstanding

▶ 2:28:42 Speaker 10: as a municipality I don't know as of now but as you should have the statement of

▶ 2:28:53 Speaker 10: indebtedness that was I don't know if that was attached or not but right now June 30th 2017 we prepare this port report on an annual basis inside and outside 51 million 666 839 you said that was as of June of 17 correct mm-hmm okay

▶ 2:29:22 Monica C. Medeiros: thank you madam chair thank you thank you and could you just explain the two

▶ 2:29:29 Speaker 10: line items the that are in each department exempt non-exempt yes exempt is your debt exclusion you passed years ago for one of the schools the debt

▶ 2:29:38 Monica C. Medeiros: exclusion so that's that's what we see that money's all that and and when does that uh complete 28

▶ 2:30:11 Peter D. Mortimer: 20 28. thank you any further discussion nobody else join budgets yep

▶ 2:30:14 Jennifer L. Lemmerman: we have a motion to move the bottom line of the two conjoined department numbers 711 and 751 made by alderman mortimer seconded by alderman forbes all in favor aye aye any opposed Those will be moved forward as well. 752 is up next, projected debt, $147,444.

▶ 2:30:37 Speaker 10: This represents the, when you borrow or when you authorize, you don't go right to market and bond it.

▶ 2:30:45 Speaker 10: You do temporary interest for a couple years until the project's done to see how much it costs, to see what you need to borrow at the end of the day. so for a year you typically temporary borrow for a year and in this case we're doing two years this is the money this is the amount of interest due on the 6.35 million we borrowed last november

▶ 2:31:11 Speaker 10: for the um modulus and this is an actual bill motion to accept the bottom line on this budget

▶ 2:31:21 Jennifer L. Lemmerman: madam chair the motion to accept the bottom line made by alderman mortimer seconded by Alderman Boisselle on discussion all in favor aye any opposed we'll move forward as well

▶ 2:31:32 Jennifer L. Lemmerman: last departmental budget hearing before us this evening is 916 medicare city portion in the amount

▶ 2:31:42 Speaker 10: of seven hundred sixty thousand dollars um I think you had a discussion on this last week about this year's budget and every year I get to see everybody to discuss this to get more money for this this represents for every dollar that goes out that's not tax deferred off out of a cafeteria plan the health insurance and everything else the city's responsible to pay the federal government 1.45 and it's hard number to find because you can't tell as you earlier heard today we can't put a number on it so we always lowball it if if you pay another 200 000 in And over time to this department, that's 1.45% of that. I need that back in my budget. If you pay, even to renegotiate a contract and to give them back pay, I need 1.5% of that, 4.5% of that. So it's always been a guess. We've always guessed it too low. We've always had to come back. This year we're trying to address it and get ahead of it, and we hope this number holds. Or if we need any money next year, it'll be less.