An Appropriation from Free Cash (account 01-324001) in the amount of $20,020 to the Elections Department (#162) for upgrades to Poll Pads and Printer.

Transcript (~4 min @ 46:20)

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

▶ 45:47 Devin Romanul: Do we have anybody online? No one online. All right. In that case, I will motion by unanimous consent to close public comment. Seeing none, public comment is now closed. Before we move on to our agenda, I'll just note for members of the audience, we have a full city council meeting starting at 7:45. We're legally obligated to start that on time, as well as have public hearing shortly thereafter. So the choreography of this will be, we'll do some of this work, we'll move out to public-- Excuse me, for the full council meeting, and then we'll gavel back into Appropriations to deal with our agenda. All right. Unless we go at lightning speed. So first up on our agenda is ID number 2026-612, an appropriation from free cash in the amount of $20,020 to the Elections Department, 162, for upgrades to poll pads and printers. Joining us is City Clerk Zaffini. Thank you so much.

▶ 46:37 Speaker 1: Nice to be here. Don't have a choice, but here I am. Nobody in public comment is here for the poll pads. I'm a little disappointed. We were told by the vendor that we use, LHS, they help us with all of our elections and all of the hardware that we use for our elections, that our poll pads that we use to check in all of our residents for early voting and on election day are no longer going to be compatible with the software. We purchased them in 2020, but they are from 2019. Unfortunately, the software, like all of our software, our Apple Watches, and everything else, there's a life expectancy, and this one is going to expire. So at this time, we have 28 poll pads that we need to update, and the quote that they provided to us was the 20,020, and that would be for the hardware and the software. So I was just requesting that we take this out of free cash. I think it's going to be about a six to seven-week delivery date. I would like to have them all ready for the primaries in August.

▶ 47:53 Devin Romanul: Wonderful. Do we have any questions from the committee? Council Williams.

▶ 47:57 Ryan Williams: Hello. Sorry. Hello. You mentioned that the iPads were last purchased in 2020. Did they give you any idea of whether this is sort of a thing that happens every five or six years?

▶ 48:11 Speaker 1: I did ask them that, but they told me that, no. It might be another seven to 10 years before we might have to do the same exact thing again, or hopefully things would be changing. They couldn't tell me that.

▶ 48:25 Ryan Williams: And to be clear, the cost of these iPads, which is broken down quite nicely in the agenda materials, includes what's called a sled, which is a case, a hard case- Mm-hmm ... that makes the iPad usable in the field. A carrying case, which protects it from being smashed when a bunch of people throw them in a bin, dead tired at midnight after an election. Um And then the tablet itself, and then there's a $100 fee to install software on each one, which is a little egregious given that it takes them five seconds to do it, but that's not anything that we can really control. So, it's a shame because I hate to see us get strong-armed into having to buy stuff five years later, but you say they'll take them back?

▶ 49:10 Speaker 1: What we currently have, yes.

▶ 49:12 Ryan Williams: Yeah. They'll take the old ones back and repurpose them, and we want to make sure with this upcoming election that we've got everything as tidy and tight as we possibly can. Correct. So I'm in favor of this, and I appreciate the thought that you've put into the memo. Thank you.

▶ 49:25 Speaker 1: You are welcome.

▶ 49:26 Jason Chen: Up next I have Councilor Chen. I did call LHS Associates today because I was curious, and it is five years because of the iOS operating software, which gets obsoleted with newer hardware for iPads. So we should expect to purchase another 28 iPads and software in about five years.

▶ 49:44 Speaker 1: Thank you.

▶ 49:46 Devin Romanul: Any other colleagues have any questions? All right. What is the will of the committee? Make a motion to recommend. Second. Second. Motion to recommend by Councilor Karamcheti. Seconded by Councilor Williams. Madam Clerk, will you please call the role?

▶ 50:01 Speaker 7: Yes.

▶ 50:04 Speaker 2: Councilor Van Devin. Yes. Councilor Chen. Yes. Councilor Finocchiaro. Yes. Councilor Jamaleddine. Yes. Councilor Karamcheti. Yes. Councilor Kohl.

▶ 50:15 Speaker 1: Yes.

▶ 50:17 Speaker 2: Councilor Park. Yes. Councilor Williams. Yes. President Freeman. Yes. Chair Romanul. Yes.

▶ 50:23 Devin Romanul: That motion passes. All right. Motion passes- Thank you ... and will be brought up in our next full council meeting. Thank you, Madam Clerk. All right. Up next, ID number 2026-614, an appropriation from free cash in the amount of $50,000 to the Melrose Cultural Council for the purposes of grant funding for arts and cultural events and programs in Melrose. Joining us this evening is Mayoral Chief of Staff, Lauren Grimek. Thank you so much for joining us.