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 (~28 min @ 24:15)

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

▶ 24:14 Jennifer L. Lemmerman: will move back to the top of our agenda this evening to order 2018-183 the City of Melrose operating budget for fiscal year 2019 in the amount of $79,399,945.73 we have seven departments on our agenda to go

▶ 24:35 Jennifer L. Lemmerman: through departmental hearings this evening and we're beginning with department number 211 which is the police department in the amount of four million eight hundred fifty one thousand three hundred fourteen dollars and twenty nine cents would you like to make an opening statement on this item I have

▶ 24:49 Speaker 4: given everybody my questionnaire I hope everyone has a copy I only have one we

▶ 24:55 Speaker 4: do it's in the IQ m2 for all just a snapshot for the past ten months the police department we had three officers graduate the police academy in April They will be ready for patrol in early June. One officer retired, Bill O'Donnell retired because it was a mandatory retirement March 1st.

▶ 25:19 Speaker 4: Staffing level, patrolman 30, nine sergeants, full lieutenants and myself. We have two officers that are on extended injury leave right now. One's been out for 14 months, the other one's approximately nine months. Our calls for service this past year was approximately 6,600, and that's through 430.

▶ 25:43 Speaker 4: Citations this year are approximately 1,150. There was 1,800 car stops. Our parking enforcement, it was 5,700 parking citations. Extra duty details, we brought in $138,000 in admin fees.

▶ 26:06 Speaker 4: that's all I have available for questions thank you alderman Forbes thank you I see that there

▶ 26:16 Scott M. Forbes: was a increase in the overtime budget could we just talk as is this allocation more specific or it fall in line with the amount of overtime we're projecting for next fiscal year or is this still short as opposed to prior years if you could speak on that that'd be much appreciated

▶ 26:34 Speaker 5: appreciate it done this year for both public safety groups police are fired that particular matter we've increased the overtime by $100,000 historically we have come back to the board in mid-year looking for additional funds to support overtime as the chief has indicated there are situations that come up that are totally unanticipated at the time that you pass your budget injuries extended leaves of absence etc and what we've done we're trying to mirror more closely is the actual expenditures that the department incurs on top of that as salary and wages go up we have to be very mindful that the per hour cost has also gone up so the same amount of overtime hours will cost you more just based on that fact but if you take if we took a look um in the actual budget of the police department i'm not jumping ahead but since the question was asked we did spend in fiscal 17 over 468 thousand three hundred and ten dollars i think this year you see the request is for four hundred and thirty two thousand dollars so we're trying to get as uh to mirror as close as we can and and cut down on that wide discrepancy every year it's not healthy it's not good and it's something that we have to be aware of uh period so you're absolutely correct

▶ 28:04 Scott M. Forbes: great i appreciate that because it's really more falling in line with the actual number instead of coming to the table and you know using a free cash allocation now we have it directed in the budget uh the one significant expense i just see here that kind of pops out on the line items is the radio systems it's a 50 increase from from last year is that something that we planning on

▶ 28:26 Speaker 4: doing an equipment upgrade or purchase if i may that's for the three new offices that we hired we didn't have the funds this year it's going to be paid for in july for the new radios for the three

▶ 28:36 Scott M. Forbes: officers it's approximately nine thousand dollars great okay and then just the one item i have left uh i know there's a line item for it looks like building repairs and spend zeros throughout the the route uh from 18 and now into 19. the chief could just give us an update on on the building

▶ 28:52 Speaker 4: itself well to answer your question as far as that line item many years ago DPW took over the maintenance of our buildings so that they took over our line item for that and it's their responsibility as far as repairs and maintenance of the building okay so if we have a metal finally we have a problem up front they address it versus us having private contract great all right thank

▶ 29:12 Jennifer L. Lemmerman: Thank you. President Zwirko.

▶ 29:14 Speaker 1: Thank you, Madam Chair.

▶ 29:16 Michael P. Zwirko: Happy Police Week. I had very few questions. You had mentioned something, Chief, at the very beginning, and I didn't catch it correctly. You said about administrative fees. Were those fees that came in?

▶ 29:28 Speaker 4: So every police detail, so if somebody's doing a road job for a gas company, Verizon, or a private contractor, there's an admin fee attached to each detail. It's 15%. so over the course of the past 10 months that 15% has gone up to thirty eight thousand hundred thirty eight thousand dollars approximately in revenue

▶ 29:48 Michael P. Zwirko: understood okay thank you for that clarification the there's also the

▶ 29:51 Speaker 4: negative side of that too there's contractors to wear chaser we're taking people to court now it's it's at that point when you start chasing someone for six months I'm sorry yeah it's it's not a pleasant experience we're not in the

▶ 30:08 Michael P. Zwirko: collection business but now we are and I noticed that there's a position and administrative position that's open yes and that it's a part-time 18-hour position correct yes and public records requests come to you is that they come

▶ 30:29 Speaker 4: directly me I am the I am the access officer thank you I'm the access officer the police department we've done a considerable amount i have notes here if you bear with me

▶ 30:41 Speaker 4: so once it initiated in 1 1 of 17 we did 688 the first six months and since that time

▶ 30:55 Michael P. Zwirko: since july 1 of last year we have 702 to today so this role i would presume assists you with

▶ 31:02 Speaker 4: those responses to those requests we have to document and we have to create a track record of every single records request that comes in but my biggest thing is we need to have an answer response or something within 10 days of everything that comes into the building i'm very mindful of that and my assistant was very mindful of that that was the priority in the police department that took precedent over everything else she did and that was a daunting task so i would say you you know it all it all falls on me now there's quite a few that i'm dealing with we get them in daily they come by voicemail they come in by mail they come in by email and would you say that

▶ 31:37 Michael P. Zwirko: it's a pain point for your time and also the administrative's time it is very much so and then

▶ 31:41 Speaker 4: you deal and then that person was dealing with the details so they were actually doing the invoices for the details collecting the details records citations everything i don't know if you've seen the job description but it is quite extensive thank you for that i mean and the reason i asked

▶ 31:56 Michael P. Zwirko: the questions are because I just want to point out the fact that you know the budget being what it is it's still unable to meet the needs for these requests that come in and it's it's painful and it takes you not only out of the field but you're doing administrative work in conjunction with working with that administrative assistant to get this stuff done it has

▶ 32:16 Speaker 4: to get done so it's on me so it's statutory I understand I go in early go

▶ 32:23 Michael P. Zwirko: home late it is what it is and my last question this evening could you speak to the fleet that we currently have condition of the fleet the age of the fleet the quality i mean

▶ 32:36 Speaker 4: i know that we're on leases um we did get some new vehicles last year we have some other vehicles that are certainly um here's the word they've reached their life their life expectancy some of them their miles is considerable you know i did speak to the auditor's office in the mayor's office and and the funding is not available this year so you know next year the auto will get he'll he'll get a letter from me requesting vehicles again yeah I just hate to you hate to put money into something that is worthless there has no value so it is what we have to repair them we repair them until next year and how many total

▶ 33:10 Michael P. Zwirko: vehicles do we have including the five dogs nine I call them line cars which

▶ 33:14 Speaker 4: are the patrol cars we have nine plus the sergeant myself and the and the patrol commander have an admin and then three detectives and then two

▶ 33:29 Michael P. Zwirko: motorcycles and the trailer thank you for that and I mean these are some some themes you're probably gonna hear much of the next couple of weeks but I think it's important to bring illumination to them it's unfortunate that the administrative work has burden has gone up with respect to the records requests as well as the aging fleet and I just want to let folks know that you know we're asking our employees and our public safety officials to do more with less so appreciate the efforts you do on that thank you those are all the

▶ 33:56 Jennifer L. Lemmerman: questions I had at this time madam chair thank you Alderman Medeiros thank you

▶ 33:59 Speaker 6: thank you chief I keep it too long I'm here I'm here for you folks so whatever

▶ 34:05 Monica C. Medeiros: it takes I did want to say well I did want to ask you a little bit of well first of all I would like to say I'm very pleased to see that Narcan is actually in this budget and it looks like it's increased which I know that

▶ 34:19 Speaker 4: there were some problems with the funding the grant funding and I believe that the Attorney General did an infusion of 300,000 there was a settlement and that's we're gonna be back to where we were approximately 40

▶ 34:34 Monica C. Medeiros: holes of dose versus 70 that's that's certainly helpful and I know you're using a lot more unfortunately per I'll say this and I spoke to one of the

▶ 34:42 Speaker 4: Alderman earlier by no means that we out of have got a control in this epidemic it's nationwide it's not just a little Melrose or us or surrounding communities it's a national epidemic we're having last month there was five suspected overdose deaths in Melrose I can't confirm that because of we're waiting on the toxicology reports in the MES office takes you know three to six months to get us a record to actually know but I will say that all the records that I do get there's one underlining drug in there it's called fentanyl I haven't seen carfentanil but definitely fentanyl mixed in with heroin cocaine whatever the drug is and that usually is what the person expires from and I do see in the

▶ 35:26 Monica C. Medeiros: salaries section we do have a line that includes it's 75,000 for defibrillator hazardous duty Narcan and accreditation stipends can you talk just a little bit

▶ 35:45 Speaker 4: about that line item and as far as accreditation so we're like every other community in the state we're all trying to get to accreditation which is basically the same standard that the city of Boston has Saugus has Wakefield has every city and town in california we all want the same standards so when there's a challenge to that standard they're not just challenging melrose they're challenging everybody that has that same standard use of force whatever it may be that's one as far as our aeds every cruiser is outfitted in an aed when the officer starts a shift or a shift they grab their aed and their knox alone or nakian is attached to it so when they go to an emergency call and an unknown they go in with both

▶ 36:27 Monica C. Medeiros: so this is for a lot of the training that's associated with administering administering drugs or handling a defibrillator um to keep these as a first responder we go in

▶ 36:38 Speaker 4: you know and then you know we wait for the next level of care which is a paramedic for the fire

▶ 36:47 Monica C. Medeiros: department and is this training that the officers go through annually or is this something that it's

▶ 36:55 Speaker 4: So if you look at our training line item, it's part of their in-service. So every year you do, so over three years you get recertified on CPR. So year one, year two, and year three. So it's a constant refresher course every year. And then they get recertified.

▶ 37:11 Speaker 6: And they get recertified, okay. And then the training line, it looks like it's actually down.

▶ 37:15 Monica C. Medeiros: Is that because we've had the new officers come in and go through the academy?

▶ 37:20 Speaker 4: Yes, that's why it reflects the swing up and down. there's nowhere to put new officer line i mean you would be here for a week with all the little things that we do so that's where he goes into the best place for it okay thank you thank you very

▶ 37:36 John N. Tramontozzi: much alderman Tramontozzi thank you madam chairman um i just want to go back to that administrative assistant position we were talking about earlier how long have you been without an administrative assistant uh about three weeks now oh it's just short term then has it i mean as uh in in the position previously had been a part-time position it's been a part-time since 2009. it's is the

▶ 37:58 Speaker 4: position posted i believe that the hr is looking into it now is there um is there any special um

▶ 38:01 John N. Tramontozzi: educational requirements for it uh this person i understand does some answers records requests and all is it just a matter of um training or is it uh some of it includes typing some of it is

▶ 38:13 Speaker 4: you know organizational skills uh it's an office setting it's within the building but it is an office setting answering the phone considerable amount of filing dealing with the public

▶ 38:30 John N. Tramontozzi: uh not always pleasant public but dealing with the public is um any any has the city looked at any possibilities of volunteerism for that type of position i do have volunteers and they're my

▶ 38:36 Speaker 4: lifeline so from the milano center we have two volunteers one does a lot of records for us the

▶ 38:44 John N. Tramontozzi: other one does a lot of filing for us because i mean i think this community is is a wealth of people who would be happy to assist um whether they're seniors at the milano center or something yeah some somebody who's looking to uh that be right off of a real estate tax program um i mean i think that's at least for the time being that's something that can do and maybe in the future as well but thank you i appreciate it that's all thank you

▶ 39:13 Robert A. Boisselle: talking about the fleet of the age of the fleet and so forth i believe in the past budgets we were in a process of every few years moving vehicles offline and so forth now in the capital outlay budget line item one is police vehicles you have a hundred and five thousand one hundred

▶ 39:36 Speaker 2: hundred seventy six dollars listed is that for your group I believe a lease

▶ 39:39 Speaker 4: payment is approximately eighty seven thousand and change all the two

▶ 39:46 Robert A. Boisselle: motorcycles as well one hundred and five thousand dollars for two motorcycles no

▶ 39:49 Speaker 4: no part of it eighty seven thousand and changes for that for the vehicles that we got a year and a half ago and the remainder is for the new motorcycles

▶ 39:59 Robert A. Boisselle: that we just okay so it's not for new vehicles it's for basically it's the

▶ 40:02 Speaker 4: second year of uh police vehicles it's part of the second payment it's part of the lease project

▶ 40:12 Manisha Bewtra: it's a four-year uh okay good thank you thank you thank you thank you thank you um i was noticing on the memo you sent that you mentioned um the doj grant for the middle school resource officer

▶ 40:25 Speaker 4: yes um when does that end i think the last year of the payment is is we got an extension so it'll be probably september it'll expire and then we own it for one year as part of the grant process so we own it my goal here is to never go without an sro in either the high school or the middle school i think it's a need i actually think there's a greater need in the middle school than in the high school to get these kids that are going down the wrong road to bring them back in line before

▶ 40:53 Manisha Bewtra: they get to high school could you expand on that a little bit in terms of the role that um the

▶ 40:58 Speaker 4: resource officers plans they both have multiple tasks one is they're a big brother they're a mediator for when there's a problem with another student they're also police officers so there's a police officer in the school event that something goes on so if there's any type of a i hate to use the word threat at the schools they're the first person in so they have multiple roles down there

▶ 41:19 Speaker 6: at the schools thank you so many questions alderman mcmaster thank you madam chair thank

▶ 41:24 Shawn M. MacMaster: Thank you, Chief, for being here. From the staffing information that you provided in the budget questionnaire, I didn't see any mention of there being a public information officer. Does the department not have a designated PIO?

▶ 41:37 Speaker 4: It generally falls on Lieutenant DeCordo when we're dealing with the local media. But as far as news media, the Boston media, it falls on myself. But I also hired a firm, John Guilfoyle and Associates. They handle our website and part of that package of the website is we have free PR for them Monday through Friday during the business hours. We've had incidents on the weekends where I brought them in. There's a small fee attached to assist me when I'm dealing with the media.

▶ 42:07 Shawn M. MacMaster: So the PIO's responsibilities are not split between public relations, communications and public records. You, following up on what President Zwirko said, you have, for a public records request, come through you you delegate them to a civilian administrative assistant yes and then i work with

▶ 42:24 Speaker 4: that person so say if it's a sensitive case and there's information that there's clearly an exemption because of the information they're requesting it goes through me and then if it's a legal question i deal with the city solicitor okay and so with respect to the public records

▶ 42:38 Shawn M. MacMaster: request this is on top of the admin's other work that is set forth in the job description

▶ 42:46 Speaker 4: that currently exists this is a this is a new unfunded mandate then there's another one that just came out as well you may be well aware of it because your position in your your other life through governor baker signed in early early april i do have a question about that but just a couple

▶ 42:59 Shawn M. MacMaster: more questions chief um so based on the public records requests that do come in some may be fair to say some may be rather straightforward a request for a police report some may be more

▶ 43:13 Speaker 4: elaborate than that yes some are very complex can you discuss that a little bit i dealt with harvard University they were looking for biased information on police departments it was very extensive and the information they were they were requesting wasn't very simple to to provide them it was very very time-consuming and then they backed off after a number of police departments gave them the same response in this is a considerable amount of information that you want in its labor-intensive and they backed off and they said they would revisit and get back to us and that was just one i spent a couple days on that any reference that you have 10 days to respond

▶ 43:50 Speaker 4: to a request that yes absolutely every every single request that we get whether it's a very simple one as a car accident or you know somebody's requesting a report for damage to property there's a response within that 10-day window okay so i know it may be difficult to quantify

▶ 44:10 Shawn M. MacMaster: but how much time would you um would you say goes to facilitating those requests specifically as it relates to the the job that the admin is doing or was doing it would probably 10 to 12

▶ 44:22 Speaker 4: hours a week that that that much time and then then it was oversight by me and then it's not just that part there's also the record keeping of each request the spreadsheets that they were created so if there's ever an audit um we have the proper information okay as you referenced um chief

▶ 44:38 Shawn M. MacMaster: as you know over the years i've had an opportunity to work with you and the 53 other police chiefs in middlesex county and one of the things that i've heard recently and over the last year is concerns about the constraints of responding to unfunded legislative mandates as you know recently the massachusetts criminal justice reform act was passed there's a data collection and reporting piece relative to that as well quarterly data has to be presented but before it's presented it has It has to be collected and maintained and analyzed. Who's going to be responsible for doing that?

▶ 45:13 Speaker 4: That's a work in progress right now. It's probably going to wind up on me. The admin person, when we get the new person, is already going to be overwhelmed. It would be myself or if I have to bring in supervisors to review and handle that, they will do that during their off hours and they'll be compensated.

▶ 45:31 Shawn M. MacMaster: So bringing in superior officers at a rate of what, probably $75 an hour to pay them overtime to

▶ 45:39 Speaker 4: administrative task if it's a requirement under the law we do we have to do to comply there's only so many different ways I can slice myself to get

▶ 45:50 Shawn M. MacMaster: these tasks done do you believe you need a full-time administrative assistant to

▶ 45:53 Speaker 4: meet these unfunded you know I've asked for a number of years and the funding just hasn't been available for it and hoping that maybe we can work with the auditor's office and City Hall to get it done do you know if any other area

▶ 46:03 Shawn M. MacMaster: police departments of comparable size have a full-time administrative assistant i would say

▶ 46:09 Speaker 4: as far as you know bordering communities they all have at least one full-time some have two full-time and some have additional part-time i believe that's all i have thank you chief thank

▶ 46:27 Kate Lipper-Garabedian: you madam chair thank you alderman lippert garabedian sure maybe just following up on alderman mcmaster's questions um which are sort of illuminating um i was you know i think it's striking that the overtime line item is as high as it is I understand that to alderman Forbes question it's to reflect sort of our historical practice and what we might expect in the coming year but I'm wondering if you can just speak maybe to me in the public about the fiscal soundness of planning for a lot of overtime as opposed to having a full-time administrative assistant or an additional um lieutenant or patrol person on staff if you have any thoughts about that

▶ 47:12 Speaker 4: um i would certainly the city ordinances we're supposed to have 61 we have approximately 44. um sorry can you i'm sorry city ordinance it's been driven into my mind since 1986 when i came on i was supposed to have 61 i was badged 45 when i came on right now our badges are 32 for patrol uh we're gonna have a you know three more officers coming on that'll bolster that too somewhat but we're gonna lose another one in the fall who's retiring forced to retire um certainly i would love to have more bodies uh it's you can only do what you're within your

▶ 47:48 Speaker 4: financial constraints obviously the city has a number of different things that they they deal with day in day out i will say that we track every overtime hour which can be flipped into dollars pretty pretty easily i mean i have notes here i can give you examples for the past three years vacation time it's always been a monster for us and in fy 16 we had 5 500 hours of vacation time in 17 it went up to 5 900 hours these are just round numbers this year was 6 000. so as as the department personnel go years of service they go from two weeks to three weeks and that all has a value to it there's additional 40 hours that we have to fill voids and cover but so if you look at the vacation hours is this year it's 6,000 hours but actually our overtime hours was thirteen hundred and twenty eight hours so we do absorb quite a few cost hours through deployments shift personnel we don't just let everybody pick their vacation there's a there's a process to it you these are my red flags um injured backfill it was 1100 man hours this year prior years it was 500 hours i know every year that i'm going to have an injury there'll be an injury there'll be an illness we had some serious illnesses with some of our officers this past year our sick hours are up but if you look at the whole thing we had 1900 hours in sick time but actually only 1100 in overtime to cover those same shifts so we do our best to absorb the costs and still you look at

▶ 49:31 Speaker 4: very large numbers for overtime thank you and i'm not and i haven't even got into the military yet

▶ 49:38 Speaker 6: our military guys right does that help it does well it sounds complex and challenging so it's

▶ 49:45 Speaker 4: very challenging but you know i love doing it and the lieutenant that runs it does an excellent job

▶ 49:56 John N. Tramontozzi: lieutenant maher yeah thank you i just want to go back to this administrative assistant situation with the records request that does not the um the statute um allow for us to bill to get some revenue for uh fulfilling some of these requests before uh before january of 2017

▶ 50:13 Speaker 4: it was yes there was a fair amount of money you could charge but when you start charging the the first two hours are free and it's a nickel a page sometimes it's not even

▶ 50:27 Speaker 8: worth the time to send the invoice out well I mean if you're gonna be spending

▶ 50:31 John N. Tramontozzi: yourself at 30 cents I understand but if you can be spending I mean you mentioned one one particular case we were spending you know 11 hours and I mean that's one that eventually they backed off and probably one game an estimate what that

▶ 50:42 Speaker 4: was said to produce it and they obviously said whoa and then we're gonna times you know 52 police departments I don't think we're gonna do that right so

▶ 50:49 John N. Tramontozzi: Oh, no, but my point being is that if there is a significant request that's going to require a significant amount of time, there is a mechanism for requiring prepayment for that, right? Yes. And if the prepayment that we receive or the monies that we receive fulfilling these requests, does that go to the general fund? Yes, it does. It does. Do we know how much we collected, say, last year, last fiscal year?

▶ 51:16 Speaker 5: We can find out.

▶ 51:17 John N. Tramontozzi: I mean, I'd be curious to see what, you know, what we're getting from that, those requests.

▶ 51:24 Speaker 8: All right. Thank you.

▶ 51:25 Speaker 7: Thank you.

▶ 51:30 Speaker 7: Additional questions?

▶ 51:33 Speaker 1: Is there a motion? Motion to recommend the bottom line. Second.

▶ 51:36 Jennifer L. Lemmerman: We have a motion to move the bottom line by President Zwirko, seconded by Alderman Boisselle. All in favor? Aye. Any opposed?

▶ 51:48 Jennifer L. Lemmerman: That Department Number 211 will be recommended to the bottom line when we vote on the full budget.