ORDER-2017-140 : City of Melrose Operating Budget for Fiscal Year 2018 in the amount of $77,397,009.19 (Seventy-Seven Million, Three Hundred Ninety-Seven Thousand, Nine Dollars and Nineteen Cents)

Transcript (~10 min @ 1:35)

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

▶ 1:13 Peter D. Mortimer: Seeing no one further wishing to come forward, Alderman Forbes has made a motion to close public participation, duly seconded by Alderman Zwirko. All in favor of closing public participation, please say aye. Aye. Any opposed, hearing none, public participation is closed. Continuing on with our city budget, in committee we have order 2017-140. It is the City of Melrose operating budget for fiscal year 2018 in the amount of $77,397,919. The first budget we have before us tonight is budget 112. It is the Aldermanic Committee budget. President Kahn, please.

▶ 1:59 Speaker 1: Yeah, Mr. Chairman, this budget is actually down 2.85% from last year. year's budget uh this budget consists of the compensation for alderman which is five thousand dollars per year uh the salary for the clerk of committees and uh the iq m2 operating expense of ten thousand eight hundred dollars and some miscellaneous expenses that we need to run the

▶ 2:30 Peter D. Mortimer: operation here and i would move to recommend second president khan has moved to recommend the aldermanic budget said motion was duly seconded by alderman inferna on discussion

▶ 2:39 Monica C. Medeiros: alderman Medeiros please thank you very much uh mr chairman um perhaps uh president khan might be able just to elaborate a little more on the seven thousand dollars for the website i know we expended uh thirty five thousand dollars earlier this year through um some some orders and uh i

▶ 2:58 Monica C. Medeiros: I was expecting that would be a one-time cost, but I see we have $7,000.

▶ 3:05 Speaker 1: Yeah, at the risk of confusing or misstating the item, I would ask the clerk of committees to respond to that, please.

▶ 3:12 Peter D. Mortimer: President Kahn has made a motion to suspend the rules that we may have from our clerk of committees, duly seconded by Alderman Zwirko. All in favor of suspending the rules, please say aye. Aye. Any opposed, hearing none, we're under suspension. Good evening. This is Ms. Kamosa. She is our new clerk of committee. she has taken the place of mary beth harrington for people out there watching uh this meeting and um i'm certain you heard the question and would you like to address it please sure so website

▶ 3:39 Speaker 2: hosting and maintenance has been historically in the i.t budget it's been transferred to the aldermanic budget because i am also the city webmaster so that i can manage the budget more closely and make sure that we're spending um where we need to and not overspending on hosting so this

▶ 4:03 Monica C. Medeiros: this way since I know what's going on I can manage it yes so they're no longer

▶ 4:06 Speaker 2: doing the same I mean I think their budget is I don't want to speak to their budget but this particular item had been this covers hosting for both the city and the schools it's actually reduced from the previous years hosting so this

▶ 4:23 Monica C. Medeiros: includes both the city and the school website and in the past that's been more

▶ 4:29 Monica C. Medeiros: than $10,000 and now in the aldermanic budget now it's in the aldermanic budget

▶ 4:41 Monica C. Medeiros: and you know I've since I guess we're talking about that and I know we're gonna we're gonna get a new website yes I'd like to see the alderman listed as a department I think sometimes this is a little bit off topic but I think sometimes people look look for us and expect to see us as a department and possibly link to IQ m2 with our agendas on the aldermanic section of the page so especially since we are going to be hosting and paying for this I think it should be kind of you know people expect to see our agendas sometimes under the aldermanic page and I was told in the past we couldn't do that because that was too many links but it would be really helpful I think to the public to

▶ 5:18 Speaker 2: do that so we'll talk more about the details of how the new website will be managed but I will say that the the new service we've hired will give all departments better ability to manage their own agendas and post them from their department on to a main calendar so that everyone kind of has ownership

▶ 5:38 Monica C. Medeiros: of their own agendas yeah I think we should have you know from the Board of Aldermen should have a link to our meeting agendas right from our page I guess so hopefully we can do that in the future

▶ 5:47 Peter D. Mortimer: okay thanks Thank You Alderman Medeiros Alderman Forbes please Thank You mr.

▶ 5:50 Scott M. Forbes: chairman so in simplest terms this is just a reallocation of funds to be more department exactly so that okay i.t budget goes down we go up the reason is because that cost is inferred by this department instead of the i.t altogether right correct okay thank you mr chair

▶ 6:07 Peter D. Mortimer: thank you alderman forbes uh seeing no further alderman wishing to hurt be heard president khan has made a motion to pass this budget to be recommended to the full board for passage it was duly seconded by alderman inferna all in favor please say aye aye aye any opposed hearing none this budget will be recommended for passage to the full board the next budget we have before us is budget 543 it is the veterans office we have our director of veterans services ms redden with us this evening good evening ms redden good evening thank you for coming it is a budget in the amount of five hundred and sixty thousand six hundred and twenty six dollars

▶ 6:48 Speaker 3: and 38 cents please proceed hi um so if you look down the budget we've pretty much level funded benefits over the past couple years and this year we've dropped that down a little bit a lot of our veterans are aging and unfortunately we have had a few pass away this year and we've also been able to transition some of our clients onto a more permanent form of benefits social security disability VA compensation things like that so we're dropping that number down a little bit because we feel like we'd be closer this year to that number mileage supplies all of those things stayed the same we did request some increases for dues training and outreach do you guys want me to speak to each of

▶ 7:34 Peter D. Mortimer: those items or what if you're not sure you could wait for questions to see if If we'll address those specifically. Please proceed. Yes, President Kahn, you're second. I'll wait until the- Yeah, when she's finished, Alderman Forbes is first by signal, and you're second. Please proceed, Ms. Ryburn.

▶ 7:52 Speaker 3: So over the past 12 months, we've had an average of 55 to 60 clients, month over month. We've seen some growth in some areas, but those are medical only clients, which are less per month than your average client. So we've had some kind of ups and downs. The office is growing. had some staffing changes this year as well which many of you know we had a new administrative assistant join us just six weeks ago or so so she's still kind of getting the handle on things we've increased the number of events we've done we did the Vietnam pinning ceremony where we have a Korean War medal event coming up soon we just got back from DC with the operation recognition group so we've stayed very busy we're doing all kinds of things and if anyone has any specific questions I'd love to answer them thank you very much miss Redmond

▶ 8:39 Peter D. Mortimer: for that presentation our first in queue is alderman Forbes please Thank You mr.

▶ 8:45 Scott M. Forbes: chairman thank you very much for being here tonight I know that you've done an outstanding job here ever since Ryan McClain has been out on active duty orders it's been a seamless transition I can say that everybody here can say that you you picked the ball up and you know no you haven't skipped a beat so just a couple of things the four hundred thousand dollars in veteran benefits can you just just briefly describe how that works is that the the money that is applied we get reimbursed back just go over that a little bit because that is

▶ 9:20 Speaker 3: the main ticket item in your budget it's by far the largest number in my budget so what happens is we run a program called chapter 115 and for anyone who lives at or under the 200% poverty level we're able to administer benefits out of my office to help cover out-of-pocket medical expenses so that could be co pays at the doctor an ambulance bill and then if they're far enough under the federal poverty level then there's also a monetary benefit that they get every month it's very similar to the temporary assistance for needy families benefit that you can get through like one of the Malden transitional assistance offices but it's especially for veterans and earmarked from the state at 75% on the So of the $400,000, if I hit that number, 75% of that would be reimbursed back to us one fiscal year later. So in 2018, we will receive $75,000 reimbursement for $17,000. In 2019, we'll see $18,000, so on and so forth. And it's done on a quarterly basis. So every quarter, you get one year ago's quarter's reimbursement. I hope I explained that enough.

▶ 10:22 Scott M. Forbes: That's great. I appreciate that. Finally, I do see this $4,000 blocked out for a war memorial. yes can you can you just kind of tell us what's going on or what we're looking

▶ 10:34 Speaker 3: forward to fiscal year 18 please so that line item is earmarked for flags and for when there's money left over we're gonna try to do a cleaning of the veteran headstones down at the cemetery a few years ago before Ryan left they took a section and they really cleaned those up very nicely so with money left over at the end of the year we'd like to do that again but really what that fund is for is to replace the large flags that the fire department uses the ones that are flying on top of Memorial Hall and all of our tall flagpoles so that's our like flag budget which we typically hit this year we were really fortunate that the weather didn't destroy as many flags as we had expected so that's what that is for and we want to clean up the white stones down there some of them are

▶ 11:17 Scott M. Forbes: looking a little not awesome yeah all right thank you very much I thank you for your service thank you thank you mr. chairman thank you very much alderman

▶ 11:21 Peter D. Mortimer: Mr. Forbes, next we have President Kahn, please.

▶ 11:26 Speaker 1: Yeah, Mr. Chairman, I'll pass. I just wanted to make sure that we explicated how the reimbursement of the benefits were paid. And I'm satisfied that everybody who was watching should understand.

▶ 11:36 Peter D. Mortimer: When we get to 2019, 2018 is going to make 2017 look like 2016. That's the way it's going to be.

▶ 11:45 Speaker 1: Well, now I'm not so sure that everybody watching is going to understand.

▶ 11:49 Speaker 4: I don't think that helps.

▶ 11:51 Peter D. Mortimer: All right, very good. Any further Alderman wishing to be heard on this budget?

▶ 11:57 Scott M. Forbes: Motion to recommend.

▶ 11:58 Peter D. Mortimer: Alderman Forbes has made a motion to recommend- Second. Budget for passage. Who seconded that please? Second. Seconded by Alderman Zwirko. Seeing no further discussion, all in favor please say aye. Aye. Any opposed, hearing none, this budget will be recommended to the full board for passage.