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 (~50 min @ 5:25)

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

▶ 5:23 Peter D. Mortimer: The budget order held in committee, order 2017-140. The city of Melrose operating budget for fiscal year 2018 in the amount of $77,397,009.19. We will continue on now with the departmental hearings on each of their budgets. The first budget we will address is the school budget number 300 in the amount of $26,497,499.88.

▶ 6:02 Gail Infurna: A motion to suspend the rules to bring up the appropriate people.

▶ 6:05 Peter D. Mortimer: We have a motion to suspend the rules by Alderman Inferno, duly seconded by Alderman Zwirko. All in favor, please say aye. Aye. Any opposed? Hearing none, we are under suspension. are joined by Margaret Driscoll and Elizabeth DeSalm from the school

▶ 6:21 Margaret Raymond Driscoll: committee thank you very much as Alderman Mortimer noted I'm Margaret Driscoll chairman of the Melrose school committee I am joined by Liz DeSalm chairman of the finance and facility subcommittee and Ms. DeSalm was the facilitator for the budget through its entire process I just wanted to make note for your information that the process occurred from January 24th to April 4th beginning with a budget narrative provided by the superintendent identifying three priorities social emotional learning inclusive practices and technology integration those were the three pillars around which the budget was built this year with our increasing enrollments and I we collectively very much appreciate your support with respect to modular classrooms and the construction that needs to be done to support our increasing enrollments we couldn't approve enough of the educational line items that we believe to be ideal but we certainly believe that this is a responsible thoughtful and purposeful budget and we would consider a appreciate consideration of its passage and at this point I will invite superintendent Tamar to address any questions you may have about that budget

▶ 7:46 Speaker 2: thank you very much miss Driscoll good evening superintendent a more would you

▶ 7:49 Peter D. Mortimer: like to make an opening statement or proceed directly to questions I just

▶ 7:53 Speaker 3: want to make a brief opening statement as both McAllister grand and chairman Driscoll addressed we continue to struggle with the school budget every year last year we cut three administrators because our philosophy is the importance of teachers in front of students and we were willing to make that trade-off I'm not that trade-off has resulted in some difficulties in managing the system mainly in the terms of curriculum development assessment development and evaluation of teachers we have 299 teachers that have to be evaluated every year under the new regulations and only supervisor director assistant principal principal or assistant superintendent superintendent can perform those evaluations the second issue that we have discussed with the committee before is like most of the country and like most of Massachusetts we have a growing social-emotional learning need not only is this an emphasis of the of the state but it's evidenced every day in the work we do with children we also have increasing technology needs the aldermen were generous and approved additional funding for the cio of the city so he could wire all our schools this summer in anticipation to that increasing pressure i asked for nine positions in this budget going forward when i first presented to the school committee in january they were able to fund four um we decided to focus those four positions on um the lower grades because as you all know again with your support we have a wave of in our population where next year we will probably have 15 k's for the third year in a row but i think it's important that the aldermen know that my projected high school enrollment for next year is over a thousand students so we continue to be an attractive community people are moving here for multiple reasons it's a beautiful city we have good schools we're near the train stations and that is having an impact on the schools that i would like the alderman to keep in mind as we move forward through future budgets thank you thank

▶ 10:22 Peter D. Mortimer: Thank you, Ms. Taymor. Would you like to add anything, Mr. De La Russo?

▶ 10:25 Speaker 4: If I may to the chair, we worked my office with the school department, and we did make some modifications to the actual budget, which I think is clearer in essence when one reads it. It's a lot of time involved, and a few points that the superintendent did make are true to the core. we are trying to balance the demands with the very limited revenues that we have we've just been advised that we lost another approximately seven thousand dollars in state aid from the senate's budget so that brings it down to about 1.1 percent increase over last year at the same time we have increased enrollment and demands uh just uh skyrocketing in a lot of areas it's a very well thought out budget in my opinion and and i believe that again i want to commend the superintendent and the school committee for working with the revenues they had to produce the product that they produced because it was not an easy budget process thank you thank you mr

▶ 11:40 Peter D. Mortimer: delarusso first in queue for comments questions or motions is alderman inferno oh thank you very

▶ 11:47 Gail Infurna: much mr chairman um first of all i applaud you i applaud the school committee i applaud your staff for all that they do and all the advancements and progress and your creativeness as you go through your budget budget process i think we have really gained a lot in the education curriculum through you and your team so i really applaud that while the enrollment is going up we could kind of say it's a wonderful thing but you know in the same sense i do certainly understand um the problems that it does have as we do have limited budget um and yes the alderman the city we have been very generous i think we've been as generous as we can and and as you know by law we cannot increase this bottom line tonight as much as i think we would all kind of like to in a sense but um by law we just can't do that so i think uh you've done a great job in keeping um the students all in mind all the students in mind as you have um gone through the process and as i and i know what you've gone through i mean it's very daunting it's emotional it's heart-wrenching i see it you know every other tuesday night and um you know you're you're all doing a great job and um what's it to say about this budget to go line by line i'm not going to do that there's nothing you guys have done all that and so i just really just want to take this moment to applaud you for all

▶ 13:19 Peter D. Mortimer: that you really do thank you thank you alderman aferna next we have alderman MacMaster margolis

▶ 13:27 Mary Beth McAteer-Margolis: please thank you mr chairman um again yes also i would agree um i know what hard work it is to try to find what you can do and what you can't do and um i remember when i started in this uh field a wise person said to me for everything you say yes to you have to say no to at least one other thing and it's regretful that that hasn't changed much in 20 years but I think you're doing a better job of saying yes to the things that are good for students so that's a great that's a great way to to craft a philosophy towards towards our district I did see I just wondered if you you didn't eliminate any positions did you super one one secretarial position but

▶ 14:18 Mary Beth McAteer-Margolis: no teaching position no teaching position right I did see however that you you know a lot of your lines are zero increases but there was a lot of like 100% cuts out you know like supplies athletics some teaching areas I wondered were those absorbed in another way or as you know we have a new

▶ 14:37 Speaker 3: director of finance and she has created her own approach in conjunction with mr. Selm and some of the lines that are zeroed out is because we're trying to report better where those funds are actually spent we would have to look at particular lines to answer you whether it was a zeroed out line or whether it was just a reclassify line of...

▶ 15:05 Mary Beth McAteer-Margolis: Well, one that jumped out was like the Director of Athletics. Is that, that position has been recreated within another?

▶ 15:11 Speaker 3: It's been recreated within, so when we went from seven administrators to four, we combined positions so they've all been retitled. So for example, we have STEM, Humanities, what we call GLAM, Global Languages, Arts, and Music, And it's now the Director of Wellness and Co-Curricular Activities.

▶ 15:34 Mary Beth McAteer-Margolis: Okay. So one person still kind of covering the bases, stretching them as far as we can. Right. Right. One area that you did seem to have a substantial increase in that I found sort of exciting was, and if you could elaborate on it, at the very top of your budget was it looks like college tuition.

▶ 15:58 Speaker 3: and that had all that's collaborative tuition lab that's the out of district placements who have raised their rates

▶ 16:07 Speaker 3: no we do actually we do do Roman and I'm and I will be signing a renewal of our agreement with Salem State we do dual enrollment in foreign language with both Salem State and UMass Boston now all five of our languages will will have opportunities for students to earn college credit while at Melrose High so

▶ 16:30 Mary Beth McAteer-Margolis: one of your committee people who spoke publicly tonight was talking about creative options to look at things and when I got excited about that being maybe college tuition I was reminded that when and she also mentioned their collaborative meeting that you had with other districts and occasionally it's come up about sharing resources like foreign languages with other districts online that sort of thing particularly where we have five languages still and some of our surrounding communities don't and I just wonder if that's ever like if you can kind of tuition in kids to do like an online class if that's

▶ 17:16 Speaker 3: something you've ever considered in your which it there is a pilot program in the works Middlesex League superintendents as you all know we belong to the middle six leagues for sports. The superintendents over the past two years have become more active, we've decided to act as a as a superintendency group, not just as an athletic league. And we have begun to do a number of things together. The late start is being done as a group. We recently obtained a $40,000 grant from the Leahy clinic to do our annual YRBS survey, our excuse me, biannual. And we are discussing a pilot program for fall where we may be able to share some courses going slow because there are a number of legal and financial considerations but it is a conversation

▶ 18:06 Mary Beth McAteer-Margolis: that that we are having I'm happy to hear that because now now I hear one community isn't going to have snow days anymore because kids are going to be able to do their work at home on a snow day don't get any ideas I'm sure they want to be up at the hood sledding you know but anyways um so the top line then of collaborative

▶ 18:28 Speaker 3: tuitions is up and that would be out of district tuitions yes so uh as you may remember from your days on the committee there are two types of out of districts um tuitions is the collaboratives to which we all belong we belong to seam we're one of ten communities that belong to seam who pool our resources to service kids who we can't service in district um and then there are private out of district tuitions which are state approved schools often referred to as 766 schools who also have usually a higher tuition our goal is to place our children when appropriate more often in the collaboratives but there are times in which we need to place children in the

▶ 19:11 Mary Beth McAteer-Margolis: private 766 schools so this line item includes all of those tuitions it includes only the

▶ 19:17 Mary Beth McAteer-Margolis: the collaborative tuitions right now and um so does that mean that the out of district

▶ 19:24 Speaker 3: tuitions have decreased at all no uh our number of students has decreased okay so again uh in this effort we truly believe that our children belong in melrose public schools and it's our obligation to keep them there to the best of our ability and that out of district placement is a last resort so to that end we have been steadily building programs in district that have enabled many of our students to stay so I believe at last count we had I think

▶ 19:53 Mary Beth McAteer-Margolis: 37 students out of district 37 and that and then we also have the students in

▶ 19:58 Speaker 3: the collaborative in addition that's part of calling the collaborative is part of out of district that's all together collaborative and private okay

▶ 20:04 Mary Beth McAteer-Margolis: that's that's encouraging that's great news thank you the are you receiving still some circuit breaker money to help offset that increase yeah yes we are as

▶ 20:16 Speaker 3: you know circuit breaker is an iffy funding source we are a little bit concerned about it in the governor's budget in my career I've had as much as 74 percent reimbursement and as low as 35 percent reimbursement and that sometimes is hit by nine C cuts if they come in the middle of the year so do you

▶ 20:38 Mary Beth McAteer-Margolis: anticipate any change in that that funding this coming fiscal year we

▶ 20:45 Speaker 3: we're seriously concerned about it as the budget makes its way through the House and the Senate we're seriously concerned about it okay second mr.

▶ 20:57 Speaker 4: Yeah, if I may, Chair, and it's, she's so correct. There's, what we know that the commonwealth has suffered significant loss and dissipated revenue for just this year alone. Often times we have seen in the past where they make that up by reducing the estimate that they provided us for a not only circuit breaker but across the board, general government, chapter 70. I would not be surprised if that happened again.

▶ 21:29 Mary Beth McAteer-Margolis: And finally, a question for you, maybe, Mr. Zala-Russo. Do you know what our charter school assessment is going to be for this coming year? And if that has increased significantly or not? I know, I understand we have fewer students going out.

▶ 21:44 Speaker 3: We do know it has increased. We have fewer students in it, but it has increased at the same time.

▶ 21:50 Speaker 4: Yeah, and I think that's actually in the packet that was provided on state aid on the second page. Okay. It's over $2 million again, and unfortunately, the reimbursement has also been underfunded significantly from the conception of the act, which was in direct, I think, a violation as to what we anticipated receiving when it was all approved and accepted. We did not get the reimbursement we're entitled to, and it's causing tremendous stress on the budget that was, quite frankly, is before you this evening.

▶ 22:26 Mary Beth McAteer-Margolis: Well, you certainly have your work cut out for you, both of you. And thank you for your efforts and your creative thinking outside the box when we can try to make it happen.

▶ 22:38 Speaker 1: Thank you. Point of information.

▶ 22:41 Peter D. Mortimer: Alderman Inferno, what's your point of information, please?

▶ 22:44 Gail Infurna: Point of information, of course, is a question. So just to follow up on Alderman Margolis question, when you talk about the out of district.

▶ 22:54 Peter D. Mortimer: Alderman Inferno, I think for a question like that, I think Alderman's work was already in queue, but I will cut. Okay, yield. Well, okay, are you done? I'm done, thank you. And Alderman's work was graciously yielded the floor. Please proceed, Alderman Inferno.

▶ 23:09 Gail Infurna: Thank you, it's just a one question. When you talked about the out of district, are you including the, Not the kids that go to the northeast vocational, but the ones that may go to Essex, Aggie, or Middlesex.

▶ 23:20 Speaker 3: No, we're talking about children on IEPs, on individualized education plans. Yes, children with disabilities.

▶ 23:26 Gail Infurna: But we pay for those kids that go to Middlesex. Middles? Essex? Essex, Aggie, ER.

▶ 23:34 Speaker 3: Yes, but that comes, I believe.

▶ 23:35 Gail Infurna: Minuteman. Minuteman is what I was thinking.

▶ 23:38 Speaker 3: Yeah. That comes off, that's another appropriation.

▶ 23:40 Gail Infurna: But you don't classify those in out of district? No, no. Thank you for that clarification.

▶ 23:45 Peter D. Mortimer: you all welcome you're welcome um alderman Zwirko you have the floor please thank you mr chairman um

▶ 23:54 Michael P. Zwirko: also reiterate appreciate the hard work uh it's a tough job uh some say the toughest in government so uh for the members of the school committee thank you for your work on this and uh superintendent and mr delarusso i greatly appreciate you being here this evening so you had uh superintendent tamar you had stated that um in january you had asked for nine positions but you got four could

▶ 24:15 Speaker 3: you tell me the five that you didn't get um a social worker um um a i.t person and um some

▶ 24:22 Speaker 3: staffing for the high school in the middle school off the top of my head i'd have one i can look up

▶ 24:40 Speaker 4: exactly but please if it's available this evening if i may interject well superintendents looking that up the charter school numbers so everyone can have them um the reimbursement went down almost 17 to the city for over 45 000 the assessment the charge that they charge us went up uh 91 186 is just under 2.8 million dollars so the reimbursement we get went down and the assessment went up

▶ 25:07 Speaker 3: the fourth position was a English as a second language teacher as you know we have an increasing it's now referred to as EL English learners population in that position what level was that that position would have been floating through elementary and middle yeah thank you the the other comment that you had

▶ 25:30 Michael P. Zwirko: made is that next year the high school population will be at about over a thousand and uh are there i mean we had this board not i wasn't a member at the time but uh bonded for some improvements obviously to the learning center and the like and i'm just curious is there

▶ 25:47 Speaker 3: a space capacity issue at the high school not at this time um that that's the projection as of based on our current numbers as you know we lose some but we also gained some and last summer we gained 100 students across the district during the summer session yep um no we um mr merrill and mr schenner and i walked the building about two weeks ago and we have some space um on the third floor that we can capture for classroom space at this time thank you for that um in

▶ 26:24 Michael P. Zwirko: getting to the budget that's before us was there any um did you have to draw on any of the reserve funds or any rainy day funds or any of those in order to to fulfill this budget as the bottom line or is it just coming out of existing existing general revenue um two points if i make the chair

▶ 26:41 Speaker 4: it's funded in two ways one would be the appropriation from the city and if you take a quick look in the packet from the school department specifically on page nine

▶ 26:56 Speaker 4: it outlines on the last section the applied funds it's four million seven sixty seven nine eighteen and it's a host of funds everything from met go to the title one and we utilize those funds in an annual basis and that's how we fund our budget in line with these cities appropriation on top of that we did not and have not sought to use the special reserve fund that we've set up for the school department for special ed which has over 300,000 we're hoping we don't have to but again this choppy waters at the Commonwealth now so I think everything's on the table in my opinion so the available reserve for

▶ 27:47 Speaker 4: school is about $300,000 for that one particular and it is is the is there a

▶ 27:50 Michael P. Zwirko: restriction on using those funds as to where they can go is it only for special

▶ 27:59 Speaker 3: education that stabilization fund was what two or three years ago by the ultimate it was set up and I believe we have to come back in front of you if we

▶ 28:12 Michael P. Zwirko: need that those right I also believe but you could confirm for me that this budget is also inclusive of a teacher salary increase staff increases is that

▶ 28:24 Speaker 3: correct yes we are and we will be entering year two of a three-year

▶ 28:28 Michael P. Zwirko: contract okay so it's the amount of that increase is do you have that figure yes

▶ 28:36 Speaker 3: approximately is what exactly figured not approximately the exact figure is what yes it's about 85% of our budget the reason I raised that is because I do

▶ 28:46 Michael P. Zwirko: want folks to know that the school department is such a large portion of not only the budget of the city of Melrose but also the a great amount of employees and when you do a raise in that department it's a significant figure and also it's it's a worthwhile raise as well you know trying to reach some parity with other schools that are in similarly situations like Melrose is and its makeup we want to retain our teachers we have very good teachers here we tend to get teachers at the beginning of their time fresh out of college with some great new techniques that they that they bring to the school the school system in Melrose in this district and in order to retain them it's also nice to you know give them a much-due raise so I think it's important that you know we point out the fact that we're you know we're allowing this race to go forward it's also inclusive of where we stand as a district and what we want to give back to the folks that are providing the education and services to our children the there's one line item that I had a question on and and this could be but you alluded that there have been some changes and reclassifications in the budget so I think that probably answers the question but I just have to raise it it's on page seven of the school budget it's the very second to last line oh I'm sorry which page seven of what we received that munis munis fiscal 2018 school budget it's in other salaries the figure jumped out at me

▶ 30:26 Michael P. Zwirko: it's the line of financial aid salary just a significant increase and again it has to do with the reclassification um but it's a 493.1 increase and i'm just curious as to

▶ 30:47 Speaker 3: were those new positions were they consolidations that it it's not financial aid it's the franklin oh i'm sorry it's the ecc okay okay and um as you know um that's a growing population also they also we um they have uh um where i think we're projected for 304 students for them next year so it's teachers and other personnel down there so and again some of it that might some of it may be a combination of a reclassification okay but the other thing that has happened at the ecc is we've had to think about our programs and we we are running more five-day programs than we previously did we used to run more two or three day programs we're now running more five day programs so that could have contributed as well thank you for clarifying that

▶ 31:43 Michael P. Zwirko: just looking at my notes those those were all the questions that I had mr.

▶ 31:47 Peter D. Mortimer: chairman thank you for the time Thank You alderman's work oh seeing no further alderman wishing to comment or question oh I'm sorry I just wanted to

▶ 31:51 Mary Beth McAteer-Margolis: have some clarification because mr. de la Russo referred to the packet on the school department which um i don't seem to have i have the munis budget um the munis budget online shows that the general school fund budget at 31 million 265 327 dollars which is different than what i have under my worksheet for tonight that's correct and that's exactly what it should show

▶ 32:22 Speaker 4: because the only and if you look on this page here again in the packet on page 10 school department packet you'll see there's three lines in this section and the first refers to what's being funded by the city which is the 26 497 409 I'm

▶ 32:44 Mary Beth McAteer-Margolis: sorry to interrupt you mr. DeLarue so we don't seem to have that information my

▶ 32:48 Speaker 4: saying is that it was put it up and to the sorry I I'm perhaps I've missed it

▶ 32:52 Mary Beth McAteer-Margolis: in my I've been looking for it in my I've been looking for tonight too is it in tonight's agenda packet okay

▶ 33:13 Speaker 4: applied funds as the port right but right similar to what we quite frankly we do on the city side there's other funding sources etc but it's all in there and and the again the budget here and immunists you want to show and you need to show the expenditures by the in total because you have to understand you can't discount expenditures in a particular school department because you wouldn't be showing the true costs of those of that department so um

▶ 33:42 Speaker 3: again to the committee as you know you work off of the immunist budget but we have also supplied you with our version which is an excel sheet because it has background information we thought you would find helpful we expected it to be on your website it is on ours but if you would like us to send you copies we would be more than happy to send you copies it's probably just a matter of

▶ 34:06 Mary Beth McAteer-Margolis: of linking it to our site but I have not been able to find it on our in within our agenda packet for this evening certainly this clarifies it and it's it's not something that we're unaccustomed to having but I think it would be helpful for the rest of the committee to see that packet and understand where where the rest of the funds are coming from the applied funds

▶ 34:33 Speaker 3: again again the the budget packet that we prepare is more detailed and munis allows so that's why we thought it would be good background information but I

▶ 34:43 Mary Beth McAteer-Margolis: sort of thought that this year with the transition to a new business manager perhaps you weren't going to be using that so I personally didn't think to ask for it I apologize but I will pass this around so the rest of the board can see it because i'm sure you would like an approval on that bottom line tonight is that a motion well i

▶ 35:06 Mary Beth McAteer-Margolis: would like to have the other committee members see it so are there thank you very much alderman

▶ 35:09 Peter D. Mortimer: mcintyre margolis are there any other alderman wishing to make comments or ask questions or

▶ 35:19 Michael P. Zwirko: make motions at this time i'll make a motion to recommend the bottom line alderman's worker has

▶ 35:21 Peter D. Mortimer: made a motion to recommend the bottom line of this budget for passage duly seconded by alderman inferno seeing no further discussion all in favor please say aye aye any opposed hearing none this budget will be recommended to board for passage thank

▶ 35:48 Mary Beth McAteer-Margolis: you very much everyone mr. chairman could we just ask that that document be included in our agenda packet for added to make a motion to have that added to

▶ 36:01 Peter D. Mortimer: agenda packet alderman McNaught margolis on a point of personal privilege has made a subsequent motion that that package that we make a request of the superintendent to send that package along to us said motion was duly seconded by alderman's werco is there any discussion on the motion please seeing none all in favor of the motion to make that request to the superintendent please say aye Aye. Any opposed? Hearing none, that request is hereby made to the superintendent to please be sure to send along that package to us. Thank you very much, Superintendent Tamor. The next budget we have before us is budget 399. It is the vocational school and the Essex agricultural budget in the amount of $901,976. We are still under suspension in this committee for the evening. And we have with us members of the Northeast Regional Metropolitan Vocational School, their school board as well as their chief financial officer and their superintendent of schools as well. And speaking for Essex Agricultural will be Mr. Della Russo.

▶ 37:36 Speaker 2: Welcome gentlemen. Thank you Mr. Chairman. Good evening. Welcome, good evening.

▶ 37:43 Speaker 5: proceed mr hooten my name is henry hooten i'm the elected uh official uh at the bonassies regional school committee and uh i'm here to present the budget to you people from our part of you we try to be as transparent as possible i passed out um material relative to the budget and made sure that we underlined everything that was pertinent to melrose as you can see there are two items that And I know that from a financial standpoint, the people would be very well-

▶ 38:15 Peter D. Mortimer: Mr. Houten, would you please fold your comments for a minute? Motion to recess, please.

▶ 38:21 Speaker 5: Sure, motion for recess.

▶ 38:22 Peter D. Mortimer: Second by Alderman Aferna. All in favor, please say aye. Aye. We are lacking a quorum, one more time. Okay, no problem. We are now returned from recess. Thank you very much, Mr. Houten. Please proceed.

▶ 38:35 Speaker 5: two items that uh you're going to be more interested in from the financial aspect one is that the total assessment has gone down and the minimum contribution has gone down from last year as well so at this time i'm going to introduce mr debarry who's our superintendent and mr picon who's our financial director and turnovers to them for any questions you may have relative to

▶ 39:03 Peter D. Mortimer: of the budget thank you very much mr hooten are there any questions comments or motions from any

▶ 39:10 Speaker 4: alderman at this time do you do you have i do have something set yeah oh yeah sure so hello everybody i was here last year in the capacity of principal but i had already gotten a superintendent appointment so i sat and took notes next to mr nickley and um you know one of the things you know i want to start with is thanking you for giving us the opportunity to come here tonight and share some of the positive things and hopefully we can give you the opportunity to ask any questions or if you have any concerns we really want to hear those things if i may take a minute to talk about some of the things that have gone on in the past year and i'll i'll be brief at northeast to highlight some of the things that the melrose students have done and some of the things the school is done currently we have about 45 melrose students i also checked back historically we've had over a thousand students from the city of melrose attend northeast since its opening already 13 8th grade students have confirmed that they will be attending northeast from melrose 13 and it's a it's a rolling admission right now so that very likely will be more who confirm you may or may not be happy to know that some of those students applied from charter schools and are now leaving some of the charter schools and coming to Northeast when we were here last year we were designated a level 2 school we had a drop off with some of our mathematics numbers I am proud to say that today we are a level 1 designated school again so we worked very hard to get back to that we increased scores in all areas of our MCAS this past year to get back up to level one so it was a really great accomplishment some of you may be a know about the Abigail Adams scholarship which allows students who received at least one advanced score in passing scores on the MCAS they have free tuition at any state school we had a record number students this year 73 students received the Abigail Adams scholarship award and that's just from one class five of those students were from Melrose in addition to that our class a senior class president is a Melrose resident Nick white in our football captain this year in CAC all-star Anthony Sousa is also a Melrose resident so we're very proud of the students that come here from Melrose co-op is booming as of now we have over 100 students out working in co-op positions many of those students are almost guaranteed a position upon graduation the success rate following that track has been amazing and and

▶ 41:58 Speaker 4: we're very happy about that when we looked at the possibility of a new program this year because we're always trying to not only improve but we're always looking at the job market and we're always looking at new opportunities I met with our recruitment director and we talked about some of the programs that students are looking to come here for and in some of the programs that they're actually going to other vocational schools for because we don't have overwhelmingly in Melrose there was a real desire for a robotics and automation program Melrose and one of other towns I'm significantly when our recruitment officer went to the eighth grades the students repeatedly were asking if we had a robotics and automation program so i'm happy to say that the robotics program will be opening in september it is fully grant funded as of now everything from the equipment to the tables to the teachers are going to be paid for by perkins grant and is not reflected in the budget at all we are expecting a boost of applicants in the future from from melrose and hopefully that's still considered a good thing in addition to that we do a lottery of labor every year and what that is is every year we choose a town and we pick it out of a hat that receives ten thousand dollars worth of labor uh the equivalents of labor from northeast um often towns who win it use it to fix cars to build different you know things in the in the parks and areas we do all sorts of things very happy to say that Melrose was the recipient this year and was picked for that ten thousand dollar lottery for labor so I've been in touch with the mayor's office and we're actually in the process of updating the signs around town so we're working on some designs for city hall the public library and we are very excited about that because we recently bought a CNC milling machine state-of-the-art for our carpentry shop in the Melrose project is going to be the very first project that's done on that machine so in the next few months hopefully you'll drive around town seeing really nice signs and that will be the Northeast students who will work on that so that's my piece on what's going on within the school and if you have any questions on that I'd be happy to answer it before we turn over to the the dollars and cents with mr. Picon very good thank you mr. Dubeck mr.

▶ 44:42 Peter D. Mortimer: Picon would you like to say anything or proceed directly to questions I would I

▶ 44:45 Speaker 5: was just gonna go over the goals or the how we developed the FY 18 budget if you like to hear about that um i don't want to take any more time than we have to um it's it's really up to the committee um if you have questions i'm certainly be happy to answer them um if they should

▶ 45:03 Peter D. Mortimer: you have any budget questions i think from what i can gather from the body language that um i think the members of the committee would would not mind hearing a short presentation yeah sure i can be

▶ 45:14 Speaker 5: happy to do that so the goal of the fy18 budget when we set out well we wanted to first minimize the financial impact to our member communities we understand that there's cities like Melrose have financial constraints you know a very set revenue source sources that come in on the annual basis so any increase a significant increase in assessment would be problematic and then secondly we

▶ 45:38 Speaker 5: wanted to provide an adequate level of funding to support student learning and

▶ 45:46 Speaker 5: foster educational excellence at the school so regionalization exists by definition to offer services at a reduced cost to its member communities and Melrose being one so our initial budget goal we wanted our assessments to come in or below at three percent which would be about a four hundred fifteen

▶ 46:02 Speaker 4: thousand dollar increase over FY 17 budget I'm proud to say that our actual

▶ 46:08 Speaker 5: assessment came in at two hundred fifty seven thousand five eighty seven which

▶ 46:14 Speaker 4: is one point eight six percent over last year which if so historically if you

▶ 46:17 Speaker 5: look at FY 16 FY 17 FY 18 ice when I say look at I'm sorry you don't have this in

▶ 46:26 Speaker 5: your packets or anything but in FY 16 our assessments went up five five

▶ 46:29 Speaker 4: hundred fifty four thousand FY 17 we went up six hundred ninety one thousand

▶ 46:31 Speaker 5: but in FY 18 we went up only two hundred fifty seven thousand so we really tried

▶ 46:44 Speaker 5: to minimize that impact on the member communities so how were we able to do this we were able to take advantage of a significant increase in chapter 70 funding based on the formula calculation and the DOR calculation of the minimum contribution a lot of our minute a lot of our member communities minimum contributions went up which means they needed they were required to spend more

▶ 47:04 Speaker 4: money per per student at Northeast so this equated to four hundred and forty

▶ 47:12 Speaker 5: four thousand dollars more in chapter 70 than we received in FY 17 so that was a significant revenue source that we were able to use to offset the operating

▶ 47:21 Speaker 5: budget costs the state also determined that regional transportation is going to be level funded at a 73% rate I'm a little wary about that with 9c cuts on the horizon um we plan on using six hundred and thirty thousand dollars to offset the fy18 budget

▶ 47:37 Speaker 4: that is not at the total 73 percent because i expect that to be cut um additionally we intend

▶ 47:41 Speaker 5: to use six hundred thousand dollars from our excess and deficiency fund i think you've received

▶ 47:51 Speaker 5: a letter um the mayor's office received a letter saying that we uh we need to use uh 592 000 we're

▶ 47:58 Speaker 4: So we're going to use $600,000 from our existing deficiency funds to offset the operating budget.

▶ 48:01 Speaker 5: So in total, we plan to use $1.23 million of other funds to reduce the member assessments.

▶ 48:08 Speaker 5: And that's an additional amount of revenue of $680,280 that we used in FY17.

▶ 48:21 Speaker 5: So we had a number of challenges. Obviously, our budgets didn't just go up $257,000.

▶ 48:28 Speaker 5: We had ratification and funding costs of new three-year employment contracts with six of our labor unions. We have increases in GIC health insurance costs, we have increases in transportation costs,

▶ 48:43 Speaker 4: and we also added additional support staffing and professional staffing to support student needs.

▶ 48:50 Speaker 5: So in total, our operating budget went up 937,867, and that includes obviously our existing

▶ 48:56 Speaker 4: contractual obligations with salary.

▶ 49:00 Speaker 5: But because we had an additional $680,000 to use to offset that operational cost, that's

▶ 49:09 Speaker 4: how you end up with the 257,587 for the total assessment.

▶ 49:19 Speaker 4: And as Mr. Houten mentioned, Melrose's assessment went down 138,495 compared to their FY17 assessment.

▶ 49:24 Peter D. Mortimer: Thank you very much, Mr. Picone. You're welcome. Mr. DelaRusso, would you like to say anything about Essex Agricultural?

▶ 49:31 Speaker 4: No, just in essence, I always enjoy Because the amount, the kind of work that they do is very specialized. And it's good to know there's an alternative out there for those that don't decide the traditional route to college that is really extremely beneficial and I want to commend you all. Thank you. That's nice, it's a nice, nice feature to have.

▶ 49:56 Peter D. Mortimer: Thank you, Mr. DellaRusso. Are there any Alderman wishing to be heard at this time? Alderman McAteer-Margolis, please.

▶ 50:02 Mary Beth McAteer-Margolis: Thank you, thank you gentlemen, and congratulations on your new position. I'm sure it's been a challenge. How many staff members do you have?

▶ 50:13 Speaker 1: Do you have the exact count?

▶ 50:14 Speaker 5: We have about, let's see, we have probably about 200 total staff members.

▶ 50:20 Mary Beth McAteer-Margolis: About 200? Yep. Okay. And you were able to come to contractual agreements with all of the unions that are represented in the building?

▶ 50:33 Speaker 5: are in we're negotiations with the unions right now but we we feel that there's an adequate amount in the budget to lead to ratification of those

▶ 50:41 Mary Beth McAteer-Margolis: contracts okay so I just wondered because you had mentioned that and I know in the past we've kind of tried to keep an eye on the parity of that with our public schools do you feel like you're working towards that or absolutely

▶ 50:56 Speaker 4: we can't yeah we can't say right now but going back the last three years as you know we were at 2 2 & 2 and we were able to get significant teaching periods back from the the teachers as well so one of the things we look at before we start negotiations are what the 12 communities are at and we're usually put on the low

▶ 51:24 Mary Beth McAteer-Margolis: end of the 12 communities and and I know you have a great professional staff so So highly skilled in their fields and that's certainly a valuable resource. So I'm sure you need to be sure you are able to keep them and attract new people. So that was my question. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.

▶ 51:44 Peter D. Mortimer: Thank you very much, Alderman McAteer-Margolis. Alderman Inferno, please.

▶ 51:48 Gail Infurna: Thank you very much, Mr. Chairman, and thank you for all that you do. And the Volk is near and dear to me. my son was a graduate and I'm a little embarrassed mr. DeLaRusso to probably be asking this question for all my years that I've been sitting here but you report on the Essex Aggie part of it what happens to Minuteman and Sha Sheen and like why don't we get any sort of a report on them if I may work right now

▶ 52:22 Speaker 4: No, we're not being asked to fund the Minutemenos, we are being, we are funding the Essex Agricultural. And again, they're looking at the same number of students as last year, six with different disciplines.

▶ 52:39 Gail Infurna: So we pay for the students that go out to Essex Aggie? That's correct. Who pays for the kids that go out to Breda Lowell and Minuteman and Shawsheen?

▶ 52:52 Speaker 4: I don't have that information, but I can get that for you.

▶ 52:54 Gail Infurna: I'm just curious. I don't know why this year it's kind of come to me. Because I was actually thinking, I had a little thought as the kids that go off to Essex Aggie, I'm sure you're aware of what programs that they're enrolled in. Yes. is it anything that you would be doing so that we could keep all the kids or most kids like over to what these and increase the Northeast vocational

▶ 53:19 Speaker 4: absolutely and again to refer back to the robotics and automation the majority of the students that were leaving to go to other schools at a much higher rate in most cases we're leaving for robotics and automation so I hope now is that we have it they will be required to go to Northeast they won't

▶ 53:41 Speaker 1: have a choice since we have that program correct yeah uh-huh yeah great okay

▶ 53:48 Mary Beth McAteer-Margolis: thank you Thank You Wilderman in front of a signal I'm sorry I just said one other question I forgot mr. chairman so the amount that we're being asked to approve this evening includes the vocational assessment mr. de la Russo as

▶ 54:02 Speaker 4: well as Essex agricultural that's correct is two separate assessments the first is the 792 284 right for the bulk and then the second one being asked to is the 109 692 for Essex Aggie she's gonna be been advised as of this date to

▶ 54:20 Mary Beth McAteer-Margolis: assume six students right and that as we know in the past has can change if

▶ 54:26 Speaker 4: absolutely yeah they hold that out there and so it's sort of a mini moving target

▶ 54:31 Mary Beth McAteer-Margolis: you want to call it that right as and and also um can the voc assessment change based on if we have more students entering next year or students who don't go it'll be based on the chapter i'm sorry

▶ 54:41 Speaker 5: the october one numbers yes so no no it won't it won't change for fy 18 but fy 19 if we had

▶ 54:50 Mary Beth McAteer-Margolis: additional it'll be reflected then yes okay thank you very much thank you thank you wilderman

▶ 54:54 Peter D. Mortimer: MacMaster margolis um did someone make a motion no i'll make a motion motion to recommend the bottom Ms. Werko makes a motion to move the bottom line for this budget, duly seconded by Alderman McAteer-Margolis. Seeing no further discussion, all in favor, please say aye. Aye. Any opposed? Hearing none, this budget will be recommended to our full board. Thank you very much. Thank you very much for your attendance.

▶ 55:15 Speaker 4: Thank you.

▶ 55:16 Peter D. Mortimer: Thank you for your presentation. Good luck.

▶ 55:18 Mary Beth McAteer-Margolis: Thank you. We'll be looking for those new signs. Okay.

▶ 55:21 Speaker 5: I was looking for the metal dog.

▶ 55:23 Speaker 1: Oh, the dogs. The dogs last year.

▶ 55:25 Speaker 4: They're swimming around. The dogs. We love the dogs. Okay. We have a few more. If you need more, let us know. I have an order of six. Yeah.

▶ 55:35 Speaker 2: You're back. Really? Serious? Talk to Joe.

▶ 55:37 Speaker 4: All right. Thanks.

▶ 55:41 Peter D. Mortimer: Thank you very much. Thank you for your presentation.

▶ 55:45 Peter D. Mortimer: The next matter to come before the Appropriations Committee is Order No. 2017-141. It is the Mount Hood operating budget in the amount of $1,564,505.59.