ORDER-2017-165 : Proposed Revisions to City Charter for the City of Melrose as recommended by the Charter Review Committee for consideration by the Board of Aldermen

Transcript (~11 min @ 1:07:28)

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▶ 1:07:27 Speaker 1: thank you thank you very much okay we have one further public hearing that's scheduled this evening mr. Moser could you read the order please order number

▶ 1:07:35 Speaker 2: 2017 dash 165 proposed revisions to the city charter for the city of Melrose as recommended by the Charter Review Committee for consideration by the board

▶ 1:07:46 Michael P. Zwirko: of aldermen mr. president make a motion to remove this order from the table for

▶ 1:07:50 Speaker 1: purposes of holding second Alderman's work on moves to remove the order from the table for purposes of convening a public hearing the motion is seconded by Alderman Mortimer on the motion all those in favor aye anyone opposed motion passes the public hearing is hereby commenced if there's anybody who wishes to speak on this order please come forward to the table in the center of

▶ 1:08:16 Kate Lipper-Garabedian: the room identify yourself and you will be heard good evening I'm Kate Lipper Garabedia and I live at Mystic Avenue and I just wanted to talk a little bit about two of the sections of our current charter that relate to citizens being able to participate in the democratic process in our city and suggest to you that we keep the threshold numbers for both of those requirements as they currently exist so those are sections 8-1 which relate to free petitions and section 8-2 which relate to citizen initiative measures and I would recommend again that the thresholds that are required stay as they are for at least three reasons one is I think it's critically important that the citizens of Melrose know that they have a voice in the governance of our city and are able to participate in the democratic process I think that's a pillar of our nation and one of the strengths of Melrose and to that point I listened to the comments that were made by the committee that provided the recommendations to you to date I provided written testimony to them it's the record I also provided verbal testimony at the last meeting and at one of those meetings the committee members were asked whether there was any problem with the current thresholds and the two aldermen who served on that committee indicated that they had had no evidence that there have been abuses of the thresholds as they exist and so someone opined maybe this is a solution in search of a problem which I would submit might be the case here and then the other reason that I think that the threshold numbers as they exist are appropriate is because if you take a look at other city charters around the Commonwealth which I have ours are very much aligned with their numbers and in proportion to our population so just very briefly if I might the current Charter requires that 50 voters bring a free petition to the border school committee and 250 can file a proposed initiative petition I was pleased at the committee accepted my recommendation that we not increase the number required for the free petition and leave it at 50. Originally, they had considered increasing by four times the number of people necessary to bring a citizen initiative, but they reduced it to simply increasing it by 100%. But again, that would move it from 250 to 500 people in the first instance, and there's just no evidence that this has been an abuse. And I think it's a terrible time to be signaling to people in Melrose that our government is to be less accessible to them and in fact simply putting getting 250 signatures having some recent personal experience with collecting signatures isn't an easy feat and it's only the first step in a process after that the city solicitor still has to review it the city clerk then has to review it it has to go back to the public and I believe within 30 days or something along those lines you need 15 percent of all the voters in Melrose to sign on before it would even proceed thereafter so again for all of these reasons i think that the thresholds that we have in our current charter are appropriate and i would ask that you keep them as they are so thank you so much for your time

▶ 1:11:19 Speaker 1: and your service thank you is there anybody else who wishes to speak hi my name is jerry morose

▶ 1:11:31 Speaker 3: i agree with the previous speaker in regard to the citizen referendum and the free petition numbers there are a couple other issues about the charter that i'd like to raise with you one of them is regarding the inclusion of the mayor on the school committee in my view the mayor on the school committee exerts an undue influence well beyond the position of mayor on the schools and I believe it would be far better for the city and for the schools if the mayor was not on the school committee at the Charter Review Committee meetings one of the reasons given for having the mayor on the school committee as well he can bring information to them and as you well know the mayor doesn't have to be on the school committee to bring information to them or send them information if he wants or give his views on something if he'd like but what the operation whether

▶ 1:12:42 Speaker 3: whether or not it's necessitated by the mayor being a school committee but the operation of the school committee in the last number of years with the mayor on it has been that the mayor has basically limited the school committee's ask for the schools and the school committee hasn't sat there sat down and said this is what we want and assert as an appropriate amount of money from the city to fund the schools the mayor has in advance limited the school committee from asking more than what the mayor wants I know they could outvote him but in practice it seems like it's limiting the progress of our schools by the mayor being there that basically intercepts if you will asks of the school committee

▶ 1:13:29 Speaker 3: that they might make otherwise in some ways it turns their budget process upside down it gives them a final number that they have to ask for and they end up asking for that number and they don't go through the mechanisms of what they need and why it's important and and what they need and ask the alderman to provide them and it doesn't allow the alderman to then do their job to help a portion under the alderman's view where the different various resources of the city get applied another issue that I would like to address besides the mayor on the school committee is the who is the supervisor of the city auditor it feels to me as if the city auditor ought to be a position independent of the mayor an auditor doesn't shouldn't be a person who's beholden to the mayor's view and the mayor's employment and i think the city auditor ought to be more under the board of aldermen than as an employee of the mayor similar to your clerk over here an employee of the board of aldermen the city auditor then wouldn't it feels to me right now that the city auditor is constrained to present what the mayor wishes to present rather than to give a full independent unbiased assessment of various

▶ 1:14:56 Speaker 3: issues that come before this board and for this board to make true open fully informed decisions i think it's critical that it have a resource in the city government that is giving if you will a non-political view especially when we're talking about the monies of the city

▶ 1:15:22 Speaker 3: there was some discussion at the charter review committee meetings and and i don't think it's reflected in the document that's recommended to you but what struck me as a as an important consideration is that if the Board of Aldermen has a two-year term of office

▶ 1:15:43 Speaker 3: it feels that at a minimum the school committee ought to have a two-year term of office as well the Board of Aldermen this board seems to function just fine having an election cycle every two years there doesn't seem to be a benefit to having a four-year term for school committee members in any way one other

▶ 1:16:06 Speaker 3: relatively minor thing is that there was a member a former member of the school committee that was on the Charter Review Committee and in my view the process of the Charter Review Committee wasn't served well by by the inclusion of that school committee member because any school related matter was that anybody brought forward a number of people from the city that went and spoke at public brought forward issues about the schools in the school committee and the former member of the school committee would basically ended up being the arbiter of what was appropriate or not appropriate vis-a-vis the schools in the Charter I don't believe that the school committee you know if a school committee member or former school committee member has an opinion about something they should be able to in a welcome to bring it to the Charter Review Commission but in the future I think it would be it would serve better if that member wasn't on there because the other members of the Charter Review Commission tend to defer to that you know a composition of boards is an important element that we don't typically define within the Charter about who's on the Commission on women and who's on the traffic Commission and who's on different things but I mean some of those we do have certain people there but I believe that just as the mayor in the school committee cannot if he's not on the school committee can offer testimony to anything the mayor cares about to the school committee the same thing as a former school committee member or a school committee member can offer testimony to a Charter review committee regarding the inclusion or changes of Charter documents there are a number of different things in the

▶ 1:17:53 Speaker 3: Charter that you know I recommended to you or not recommended to you which I comment on but um those are the major ones at this point in time um thank you for your time thank you

▶ 1:18:11 Speaker 1: thank you it appears that everybody who remains in the chamber at this point in time has spoken so it does not appear that there's anybody else who wishes to speak public hearing alderman Zwirko moves to close the public hearing the motion is seconded by alderman mortimer on the motion all those in favor aye aye anyone opposed motion passes this order has been held at the board and has not gone to committee and absent any other dispositive motion it would be referred

▶ 1:18:40 Speaker 6: to the committee on appropriations motion return the order to committee on appropriations

▶ 1:18:45 Speaker 1: baldwin's work almost refer the order to the appropriation seconded by alden forbes is their discussion relative to the motion all those in favor all right everybody opposed motion passes this order will go to the committee on appropriations please now turn to