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 (~9 min @ 38:10)

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▶ 37:41 Michael P. Zwirko: comment mr president second Thorp been a motion to close public comment by alderman mortimer seconded by alderman Boisselle all those in favor aye aye any opposed public comment is now closed we are just a couple minutes past but it is the public hearing portion of this meeting we do have a public hearing i'll read the order it is order 2018-183 city of meadows operating budget for the fiscal year 2019 in the amount of seventy nine million three hundred ninety nine thousand nine hundred forty five dollars seventy three cents motion to open the public hearing second a motion

▶ 38:13 Michael P. Zwirko: to open the public hearing made by alderman Medeiros seconded by alderman lemmerman all those in favor aye opposed public hearing is now open any folks to hear the pleasant today in the public that

▶ 38:26 Peter D. Mortimer: would like to speak motion to conclude the public here we got one oh i'm sorry mr morose i didn't

▶ 38:35 Speaker 4: see that thank you good evening hi good evening i'm jerry morose um i wanted to speak at the public hearing here about the school department budget and um i've raised the issue here before and i just want to to emphasize again that the school committee has voted in in their official capacity for two line items it doesn't matter what they've put out in their public record in the process of going through a budget but they voted two line items and the two line items are for the schools of salaries and non-salaries and Thorp a reason why a school committee is elected

▶ 39:15 Speaker 4: and that's actually to establish the policy of the schools and what the schools will set as priorities and how they'll meet those priorities and when the school committee just sets it as a

▶ 39:40 Speaker 4: salary and non-salary they're not effectively using their responsibility to be able to say this is what we care about in the schools all they're saying from what they've represented is though we care to spend this much money on labor this much money on non-labor and that's not an effective policy assertion which is their job as a school committee i've talked here before about the department of revenue letter 94 660 which talks specifically about the role of the school committee and and it is from 1994 but the reason why it's so relevant is that that was the letter that came out after ed reform of 93 that framed the new role of school committees versus the superintendents and how those things play out this is nothing new in Melrose

▶ 40:27 Speaker 4: last few years the school committee's been doing this and prior to that the school committee was making a different policy statement they'd often say we're going to vote this much money for this school and this much money for this school as much money for this school and although that was somewhat arbitrary in terms of what your your policy projection is into the schools at least it was framing whether you agree with it or not that the hoover school would get this much relative to the high school and and for a number of years as i've said for for many years that the high school has been well underfunded relative to the other schools in melrose um you know we already

▶ 41:06 Speaker 4: had one cycle where the the school committee you know asked for a certain amount of money and the mayor took it and sent it back and um you know they they did their little their change of things but i think that it's not outside the purview of your body to say to the school committee you need to do a better job than this you need to actually assert what your priorities are what your values are this is an important time for the schools and yet we still don't have anything that the school committee has said to the superintendent about what they care about they've said just spend this much money on people and this much money on non-people and although in a perfect world the the superintendent would do all the perfect things and have everything come out well you can't rely on that as a matter of policy and i know it sounds crazy to be saying this that everybody expects that oh they're going to spend the money just as they did it this way or that way but we don't ever really know that we we see what they allocate every year um I think I pointed out at a school committee meeting recently, the school department has to report to the Department of Elementary and Secondary Education how much the money they spend in certain functions in the district. And I've long tracked that reporting and have seen real inconsistencies from the reporting and what they establish that they pretend to do in public to us at Melrose. Now they're probably anomalies, but when I see a huge amount of money towards school security that i know we never spent on school security it's a red flag there and i've seen other issues over the years and i've i've brought them forward but and and typically when i bring them forward i get the response from people oh well this you know thing has gone through three levels of audits and it has to be perfectly correct and and i want to be clear that the audit that's done even the little audit that's done of the schools there is basically a crosswalk audit right it basically says okay here's what you have in your categories and this is how they go through a crosswalk to port over to what the categories of the department of elementary and secondary education have but even that hasn't been authentic for the school security line to stand out like that and other lines as well i don't believe that the school department is doing their job a in setting policy and then b in following even the policy that they project to the public even if it's not binding that of the budget that they go through it doesn't come out at the end of of the year another misrepresentation that is not on them it's just a structural one in through the process is that you know the Melrose schools as reported to the Department of Education spends about fifty million dollars a year it's not thirty million twenty eight million or thirty five million it's fifty million dollars when you factor in all the other costs the utilities costs that aren't coming through in the school budget the health insurance costs the retirement costs and it's fifty million dollars and so you

▶ 44:07 Speaker 4: all obviously know that I'm not sure the public does because when I hear the public come to say things at meetings like this I hear the public you know saying oh well you know they spend this much money and and and you know you're the ones who have to pick up the rest of it in terms of funding the health insurance and the retirement in the city budget and that's shown there but this idea of salaries versus non salaries and how that's expressed comes across to you is basically a fed-a-com plea that you have to do it this way and um and obviously you don't have the control to tell them how to spend their money but they have an obligation to tell you and to tell the superintendent how they want the money to be spent so i would love to see one year any year pick a year for this body to say to the school committee you got to do your job you have to say what's important to you as a school committee member and have them go on the public record about this is what we feel needs to be done in the schools differently and we always want it to be differently because we always want it to be better than it is today when we do the same year after year after year we aren't on a trajectory of improvement we're on a trajectory of status quo and a trajectory of status quo in a changing world is basically a deficit and um i know i'm talking big things here i'm not talking about any specific budget item i could list a hundred of them if you wanted um and obviously everybody's looking at the clock and you don't have a time for that i can tell um anyway thank you for for your time tonight and um and i i would like to hear what your position is about what the schools have done if anybody here has looked up um you know the role of the school committee and what their job is is to to be able to tell you um and whether it's you know we have a city council here we have town meetings and other places the town meeting the city council can't tell the school committee how to spend the money but the school committee has an obligation to tell you how they intend to spend the money and they haven't done that thank you Thank You mr. Moroz any other members of the public

▶ 46:16 Peter D. Mortimer: wishing to speak at this time motion to close public comment mr. president

▶ 46:19 Michael P. Zwirko: second I think the motion you'd like to make is to close the public hearing oh

▶ 46:22 Peter D. Mortimer: yes we're on the have public hearing for the budget thank you very much Thorp

▶ 46:25 Michael P. Zwirko: been a motion to close the public hearing it was made by alderman Mortimer has been seconded by alderman Boisselle all those in favor aye any opposed the public hearing is now closed we'll move over to the next section which is the communications from her honor the mayor and other city officials order 2018

▶ 46:43 Speaker 1: dash 200 and appropriation from free cash item account number zero one dash three two four zero zero one in the amount of seventy eight thousand seventy dollars to police overtime account 0 1 2 1 1 1 dash 5 1 1 0 0 0 that order will