Public Comment

Transcript (~18 min @ 12:28)

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

▶ 12:38 Speaker 4: you Thank You mayor Inferno this time is there a motion mr. president I make a

▶ 12:39 Peter D. Mortimer: motion to open the floor for public comment Thorp a motion made by

▶ 12:44 Michael P. Zwirko: alderman Mortimer for opening the floor for public comment second second second by alderman Forbes this is the portion of the meeting where anybody in the public here this evening would like to speak on the matters before us on the agenda agree to do so at this time before we begin that I just would like the clerk to note that there have been two folks from the member board of aldermen that have shown up this evening Frank Wright and Jennifer Lemmerman

▶ 13:16 Michael P. Zwirko: anyone from the public that wish to speak oh excuse me before you do sir I'm sorry all in favor aye any any opposed unopposed please proceed sir sorry about

▶ 13:25 Speaker 5: that no worries hi my name is Fred Hopkins I am a parent of a happy eighth grader here at the middle school and based on my observations and his own accounts he's he's receiving an outstanding education in the public schools I'm here to well first of all I want to thank the mayor because I am in complete agreement with her statement about warning and i'm here to implore these bodies to use whatever means are available to them to fully fund our schools i think that as long as the state legislature is going to continue to underfund public schools by over a billion dollars a year that communities like melrose have some choices to make and i don't think we as a community can afford to just let the schools go underfunded because of the state's actions we have some long-term options politically we can put pressure on the legislature we can support ballot ballot initiatives and might bring in money but what I think this town needs to do is have an override and what I also think is that the timing of this override is pretty important I may not be that politically astute but I do have a sense that locally and nationally Thorp a bit of a wave and I think November is probably the time to capture this wave I think there are a lot of people who are concerned about lack of progress nationally and I think that's going to bring a lot of people out to the polls and I think an override is a tough ask for a lot of communities I don't doubt that this town has the means to support an override but obviously it's a matter of political will so we will look to you folks to lead us in part on this and I think November is the time to capture the interest and the turnout that'll be at the polls and I think sooner rather than later is probably a good idea on this thank you for listening to me thank you sir any

▶ 15:40 Speaker 5: other members of the public wishing to speak hi I'm Elizabeth Christopher I'm a a parent of three children in the Melrose Public Schools and I've been a Melrose resident for 16 years I'm here tonight because I would like you to vote in favor of placing an override question on the November 18 ballot most important I'd like you to speak candidly with our community about the revenue needs of our city I'm also here because there are many parents who feel the same way I do but they are not in this room tonight I've spoken to a bunch of them and the number one reason they tell me that they don't voice their opinions at meetings like this one is because they don't feel like experts about the school or the city budget they say the budget process is complicated they say there are others who know so much more than they do others who can speak more intelligently on the subject than they can but what many of them do know is this that Melrose per pupil spending is far below any other city or town around us they do know that we are at risk of losing two of our best performing principals because we pay our educators less than other cities and towns do middle school parents like me know that the highly effective team structure is being pulled apart elementary school parents feel their schools busting at the seams we know that parents volunteers that parent volunteers have given free labor to the city to run our school libraries for years we know we have one digital literacy teacher scurrying from school to school she's tasked with trying to teach kids and teachers how to make sense of the technology and digital content that is put into children's hands at ever younger ages we've heard about chapter 70 and that it is broken and that Melrose will never get enough state aid to keep up with rising costs we also know and love that Melrose is fiscally prudent the city has not used the override provision of property two and a half in almost 30 years but I'm not an expert on the city or school budget either you are you more than anyone understand that Melrose does not collect enough tax revenue to run its city and schools the way we need to you've regionalized you've thin rich services but still aging buildings can't be fixed still community leaders must live with lower than average pay and now we're talking about eliminating positions you represent us please share your expertise with us advocate for our schools and our community please speak about the needs of our city and the ways that increasing our tax revenue will help vocalize your support for an override and talk honestly and openly and fervently about what is at stake for the city if we don't pass an override

▶ 18:26 Speaker 4: soon thank you any other members of the public wishing to speak at this time

▶ 18:36 Speaker 6: hello good evening my name is Nick Ducinardi I am a Melrose resident teacher at melrose high school and melrose high alumni on this last note i want to say that i'm incredibly proud of the growth that i've seen at mhs since my graduation less than a decade ago also i've been an avid fan of both school committee and alderman meetings since i've become a teacher really exciting stuff um it's been a busy day i am an ap coordinator at the the high school serve run four different tests today taught five classes I coach middle school track I went for a run right before coming here so I apologize for my appearance it was on that run that I got the inspiration to come and speak so here I am I could talk about the teachers we may lose if we're not properly funded or our dismally low per pupil spending or how we've done so much as a district with so little but I'm here with a simple request for all of you tonight and that is to absolutely and adequately fund our schools I've seen both my peers and administration pour over the budget trying to make cuts without hindering students and staff pursuit of educational excellence I've seen the school committee and mayor struggle to come to agreement on what an adequate budget is and how to properly fund it and tonight before you board of aldermen you have a choice to sit in silence and allow an insufficient budget to pass or to stand up

▶ 20:30 Speaker 6: for our community as school and most importantly our students so again on this night i implore you to stand up every one of you and fund our schools thank you any other members of the public wishing

▶ 21:00 Speaker 7: to speak at this time my name is jason grassleri i walked in a little late so apologies if i missed anything and i have no prepared remarks the one thing that i want to just be sure that i mentioned which i have not heard yet is that i feel like a lot of the conversation is around the school budget in particular and the deficits there what i want to be sure that we think about is that this is actually a macro issue for the town and that when we think about finances for the town and revenue for the town we shouldn't zero in on just this is only a problem for the schools there are many charts and a lot of information that i think have outlined this and everybody knows but the schools in this area in this particular area of the budget are one of the growing parts of the town and i would advocate strongly as many here would that we fund it fully and Thorp a lot of talk about an override because i think everyone in the room would agree that it's broadly necessary for melrose to kind of achieve what we want to achieve but i think to kind of communicate that fully number one the board of alderman as well as the school committee need to be out there doing it very publicly and make it a topic of conversation but potentially what also needs to happen is that we need to be more clear about where where the lack of funding is and how much of a lack of funding there is and make that happen beyond the schools so let's fund the school budget and let's pull revenue from other areas of the city let's think more broadly about how we creatively work this budget so that maybe everyone realizes how much how important it is that an override happens for the city for the city of melrose thank you thank you sir any other member of the public wishing to speak at

▶ 22:56 Speaker 4: this time take a good time appreciate it almost missed it hi i'm jerry morose um i apologize um

▶ 23:07 Speaker 8: a couple of the large issues we'll get into more details as the budget process goes on but um

▶ 23:20 Speaker 8: As far as the city operating budget is concerned, you know, it's hard to get our fiscal house in order when we don't have accurate information. And when I went through the budget this year again, I saw that it's represented in the different columns of the budget.

▶ 23:30 Speaker 8: And when you're planning a budget, you need to be able to look at your past, project to your future, and then estimate for your farther future.

▶ 23:49 Speaker 8: And when the column of actual expenses in any given line item happens to be greater than what your projected expense column is, you know your information is bad. And I've raised this issue year after year here. Everybody just shrugs it off as, oh, it's not important.

▶ 23:59 Speaker 9: but the point is that you as aldermen especially that you you can't make a

▶ 24:07 Speaker 9: good decision if you don't have the relevant information and to try to figure out whether we can apply more money to one element of the city over another is an arbitrary process if we don't really know or we don't have the

▶ 24:29 Speaker 9: the departments indicating exactly what things are going to be at the end of the fiscal year to the best of their knowledge, so we can know what the actual expenses are going to

▶ 24:37 Speaker 8: be to be able to build next year's budget off of that.

▶ 24:39 Speaker 9: And I just went over a document in the last week.

▶ 24:43 Speaker 8: It was dated June 17th of 2017, so it was two weeks before the close of the fiscal year.

▶ 24:49 Speaker 9: That document there, when I compared it to the actual in the budget this year, that it

▶ 24:55 Speaker 9: shows what the actual fy 17 was it is so far off in so many areas um how can two weeks before the

▶ 25:05 Speaker 8: close of the fiscal year have things that are that are you know double digit percent off for what the

▶ 25:10 Speaker 9: projection is going to be for the last of the year now i want to be clear nobody actually did that

▶ 25:12 Speaker 8: on june 17th but that's my point is that nobody's making an effort to determine what are we actually

▶ 25:16 Speaker 9: spending money on how much money do we really need for a certain item i've been tracking for a few years in a spreadsheet now you know what we say we're going to have for a certain year what we budget for the next year and that we actually spend the following year and Thorp so much discrepancy there and year after year somebody needs to do the work to tighten it up because whatever you do here as a board of aldermen if you do it and you're going to go through the whole motions of looking at every department and every person coming in and talking about it but if the fundamental numbers in front of you aren't real you can't make a good decision for the city you can't apply the resources the limited resources we have in the most efficient and effective manner to get the best outcomes if you don't have that good information so i urge you as alderman to demand that the the departments the mayor submit the information the the city auditors submit the actual information in the best way they can be not just think that you're they don't respect you enough to give you real information um in terms of the school budget since the school

▶ 26:25 Speaker 9: committee i don't want to neglect you here tonight um you know in 1994 the department of revenue issued a ruling call uh it's 94-660 and it went to the heart of what a school committee's obligation

▶ 26:38 Speaker 9: is in terms of framing policy and it basically said that a school committee can't just vote x number of dollars to the schools we're going to let the superintendent make those policy choices

▶ 26:48 Speaker 9: the school committee has an obligation now over the years our school committee has in my view never done an authentic policy expression through the school

▶ 26:59 Speaker 9: budget but this year it's about as bad as ever when you talk about labor versus

▶ 27:10 Speaker 9: non-labor as a policy expression that doesn't do it you need to figure out what you're going to apply your labor to have an impact on not just a general labor versus non-labor. And I would, I, you know, the school committee already voted. I don't know if it's unprecedented for the school committee at this point to go back and say, can we look at this a little bit more carefully and make some expressions of policy? Like make the expression of should the high school have funding that's more appropriate even than what's expressed in

▶ 27:40 Speaker 9: their current budget now? You know, there are certain things that are listed by the superintendent, But the school committee didn't make it a policy and when you fail to make that policy when you fail to take the stand About this is what I believe is best for our in this case of the the schools our children

▶ 27:58 Speaker 9: You're not having the impact on moving The ball where it needs to move year by year by year and every year again I use the word arbitrary here because at some level your arbitrary classification of labor personnel versus non-personnel school supplies is the other thing, that doesn't make the policy expression that you, frankly, were elected to make. And why I bring these issues up, and you all know that I can get into the nitty-gritty and the weeds of every detail that's in the budget if we need to, but why I bring these larger issues up right now today at this forum is because the city has to evolve right we can't stay the status quo Melrose that we've always been we have to evolve this year is unprecedented to use the word again that the school committee has actually said we want more money than somebody's told us we can have I applaud that at some level as I said at the school committee meeting a little while ago I'm still conflicted because the schools actually haven't made those policy decisions haven't made the hard choices about how can they figure out how to apply the resources differently than the status quo to make a better thing for our children but again in order for the city to evolve over the long term we need to have attitudinal changes policy changes position changes and and I want to put out here loud and clear is that money is not the solution in and of itself money can always help something but adding more money and applying it in the same status quo way as we've done for a number of years hasn't made the grade in terms of getting our schools to where they need to be and so you know Thorp a lot of talk about an override at this point and frankly that's premature because we would the last thing we want to do is to apply more money to a system that's failing at some level we need to make the system fixed and then apply more money in the in the if you will the

▶ 30:09 Speaker 9: the more productive manner that a fixed system can bring so thank you for listening to me I appreciate that I look forward to the budget process thank you

▶ 30:24 Michael P. Zwirko: any other members of the public wishing to speak this evening seeing none motion

▶ 30:29 Peter D. Mortimer: to close public comment second president madam chair Thorp been a motion made by alderman

▶ 30:34 Michael P. Zwirko: mortimer to close public comment that has been seconded by alderman forbes all those in favor any opposed hearing none public participation is closed at this time also entertain a motion

▶ 30:47 Peter D. Mortimer: to adjourn so moved mr president madam chair then a motion to adjourn by alderman mortimer

▶ 30:50 Michael P. Zwirko: seconded by alderman Boisselle all those in favor aye aye any opposed we are adjourned