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 (~20 min @ 3:24)

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

▶ 3:26 Peter D. Mortimer: the first order we have before us is order 2017-140 it's the city of melrose operating budget for fiscal year 2018 in the amount of seventy seven million three hundred and ninety seven thousand nine dollars and nineteen cents uh this order is in committee and it will stay in this committee until it all moves forward to the full board in june and we will discuss the various budgets prior to that the first budget we have before us this evening is budget 693 it is the department of the memorial hall building and we have the director of memorial hall kathy pigott broda and one of the trustees mary sexton in the chambers with us this evening ladies would you please come forward and this budget is in the amount of 199 thousand sixty six dollars

▶ 4:30 Speaker 1: and nine cents motion to recommend the bottom line for the memorial building fund alderman

▶ 4:35 Peter D. Mortimer: Robin Boycelle has made a motion to recommend the bottom line for the Memorial Hall Department.

▶ 4:42 Peter D. Mortimer: And now, ladies, would you please elucidate us as to how some of that money is spent and maybe where some of the revenue that produces that money comes from.

▶ 4:55 Speaker 2: Good evening, I'm Mary Sexton and I'm Chairman of the Board of Trustees at Memorial Hall. And I feel that Kathy has done an excellent job, and she's got a lot of exciting material to present here tonight. And I'm hoping that you will see it clear to give us the money that we're asking for. And I think you'll see after listening to Kathy's presentation why it's necessary. Hi, I'm Kathy Paget-Proder, Operations Manager of Memorial Hall. Still the best job in Melrose. in fiscal year 17 we are on track to have 361 events with 58,000 guests in our building we have a staff of four people besides myself and that has just happened over the past year because that we have found that necessary to have four people rotating through because for example in March we had 54 events and in April we have 48 and we could have four to six events a weekend so we have to turn the staff over we've had several new events this year due to the success of Murphy's boxing which is happening May 20th and you can get tickets at Murphy's boxing calm but we've gotten three other events as a result of that we got the no boundary fighting and we which is a kickboxing match which is sanctioned by the Massachusetts State Athletic Commission just like the boxing matches we've got evolved wrestling and the best way I can describe them is it's a farm team for the WWE we have people that go last year that went that was there last night fighting in this level they went up called up to the majors last year and then we also have a US amateur boxing match it's a Michael J Dunleavy foundation that again is sanctioned by the Massachusetts State Athletic Commission we've also had several new people come in AARP came in this year to do a speaking fraud networks prevention seminar we had the Boston chapter the gold star wives we just recently had the Elliott Community Health Department in Malden which serves our community Wakefield Stoneham and Malden hosts the New England Sports Museum Boston versus bully Boston versus bullies seminar and they did a parent seminar and when they saw the facility They're going to book for an evening seminar because we have the ability to do a parent seminar up at the GAR and a student seminar down in the main hall. We have our normal reoccurring events. We have the Melrose Symphony Orchestra, which is next season celebrating their 100th anniversary. We have our Zumba classes. We have the wonderful Melrose Rotary there every Thursday, which is a pleasure to host. We have our Winter Melrose Boot Camp, we have Melrose Youth Ballet and rehearsals, and we have the Melrose Wakefield Indoor Farmers Market. We also have the normal amounts of like Boston Modern Orchestra Project came back, we have Melrose High School Football Banquet every year, and presently right now over the building we have the Melrose Youth Hockey Banquet. We also this year had a lot of community, different community events. For example, we had, we have our veterans mobile food Mart every month there which has increased from serving two communities I believe we're up to serving six veterans families from six different communities we also had Melrose planning department had their public forum congresswoman Clark had her veterans benefit information fair next week we have the mayor's math challenge which is a team from each elementary school in the city on Monday we just got this on this Monday at 7 o'clock we're having a public harem hearing Senator Lewis is hosting the Massachusetts Senate Committee on global warming and climate change in our building and we have our monthly Melrose kids club is still going strong the rec department with the success of the Lego program in the summer and the film program last year that we added we've since added a nutrition seminar we've had four of them during this year and we're adding two more summer programs for next year and that's it if you have any other questions president Khan please yeah

▶ 9:17 Speaker 1: with the chairs indulgence I'd like to make a couple of general comments relative to the budget since we haven't really had any discussion about it one thing I wanted to point out to members of the public tonight is if you go to the budget the general city budget and you're interested the last 10 pages of of the agenda packet i think pages 77 through the end give anybody who's interested a good snapshot of the finances of the city it has the cherry sheet it shows chapter 78 which is aid for schools it shows uh it shows local aid uh it shows that and as we start off the total budget this year is $77,397,009.19, and it also has schedules of our long-term debt and our short-term debt, which might be of interest to the members of the general public and for people who have watched the rerun of me talking in past years. One of the things that I'm interested in is tracking the overall total debt of the city from all sources, which I think this year before we do any additional bonding is $64,901,856. But hopefully there are people who are interested in this kind of stuff. And if you want to look at it and you want to try to get a sense of the income and the expenses and the costs and the borrowing, the detail is in those pages of the city budget. so hopefully people who are interested will look at it and hopefully maybe people will even come down to our meetings and ask us questions about the budget or some of these issues um turning to your budget your budget is down slightly this year it's it looks like it's just

▶ 11:21 Speaker 1: about one percent less than last year that's a good thing are you going to need any additional

▶ 11:30 Speaker 2: funds to get to the end of the year this year um this year no um the one percent is down because i had a staff turnover so my staff salaries start at the beginning again and that's what the decrease is i have brand new staff on board so that is why i could lower the salary but that's the only line one that's down and it is up on elevators and if you notice that but that's because of the union

▶ 11:51 Speaker 1: Okay, and I don't think it applies to your department, but I go through this tedious couple of questions with everybody. That's all right. Because for people who are watching at home, not 100% of the salaries for all departments are contained in the budget, some are paid from other sources. So I'm going to ask you the same question I'll ask everybody who comes in. are all of your salary costs contained in the budget for the memorial building

▶ 12:20 Speaker 2: that we see yes a hundred percent okay that's all for now thank you Thank You

▶ 12:23 Peter D. Mortimer: President Kahn Alderman Boycelle please oh this is a very impressive list of

▶ 12:27 Robert A. Boisselle: events that you've been having especially the boxing the wrestling and in other community activities and a lot of people are using this building now I've been in the building I do some of the activities in this building in the building is having its problems now for the past year or two I've been hearing a some sort of work plan or repair plan in different stages what's the status of

▶ 12:57 Speaker 2: that particular plan well as you know John Shannon came before you and asked for monies to for a building assessment plan and that is going to be part of the public safety assessment plan and John can speak directly to that but they're basically going to bring someone in to look at the needs of the building when that is done there is going to be a committee formed that will include chairman Sexton and myself to review specifically the Memorial Hall aspects of it and may prioritize and make a plan going forward but John China was going to oversee that in conjunction with the public safety assessment okay thank you

▶ 13:31 Peter D. Mortimer: very much thank you thank you alderman boy cell alderman Medeiros please thank

▶ 13:34 Monica C. Medeiros: you my questions are similar and along the same lines I find myself you know checking into Memorial Hall more and more every you know every week I guess and lots of great events and one of the most enjoyable places to be I think in the city I can't help but notice yes that sometimes you know there are some areas that need some repair and we've talked about that can you talk about

▶ 13:58 Monica C. Medeiros: that obviously we're having we are having more events and if there are ticketed events then there's a portion of the sales that go to the fund for the

▶ 14:10 Speaker 2: hall and can you explain that for the public and and does that money go into a special fund or into the general fund and is any of that put back into repair there's a restoration fund and for ticketed events we request one dollar per ticket sold and it's done on an honor system at the end of the event the person sends me what they feel is appropriate for how many tickets they sold for the building that money goes into a restoration fund and is overseen by the Board of Trustees presently I believe this I'm not quite sure the exact now I think it's $35,000 it's in there but the stage needs some repairs we had it inspected and the catwalks are the same catwalks who was there when it was built in 1912 so there is going to have to be some repairs done to the stage that that money right now is being earmarked for that in the past it has been to repair for example the couch downstairs was broken some of the chairs were broken they had to be repaired at one point we lost one of our though hot water he excuse me there was not a hot water heater in the building that fed the dressing rooms or the bathrooms so the restoration fund was used to do that but most of my events do not give money to the restoration fund I'd say about a third because a lot of my events are not ticketed events and so the rental fees

▶ 15:40 Monica C. Medeiros: that we charge and the rates are relatively reasonable I would say the rental rates the rental rates this is a community hall and I think the will has been to make this accessible to the community but when the fees come in do they go back into the general fund or they go to as a portion of that allocated towards repair or no the when the fees come in they get put into the general fund of the city and then the city actually supplements the budget for

▶ 16:11 Speaker 2: Memorial Hall but the board is looking at the fees because I've tried to do some research back when the last time the fees were raised and the last free rate increase was in 1994 and it was just to the rehearsal rate which is $200 for four hours it was 175 and they increased it to 200 and I can't tell beyond that when the rates were changed but I know that's the last time the rates were increased was in 1994 thank you very much thank you alderman

▶ 16:44 Peter D. Mortimer: Mr. Medeiros, a motion has been made to recommend this. It's been seconded up by Alderman Boycelle, who was seconded by Alderman Lemmerman, I think. Previously, all in favor of recommending the bottom line on this budget for approximately $199,000, please say aye. Aye. Aye. Any opposed, hearing none, this budget will be recommended to the full board for passage. Thank you for your presentation this evening.

▶ 17:12 Speaker 2: Thank you. Thank you.

▶ 17:13 Peter D. Mortimer: The next budget we have before us is budget 541. It is the Council on Aging in the amount of $184,647.80. Alderman Boycelle has made a motion to recommend. Bottom line on this budget for passage, duly seconded by Alderman McAteer-Margolis. We are joined by the Director of the Council on Aging, Dawn Falopoulos. Good evening, Ms. Falopoulos. Good evening. Good evening, nice to see you.

▶ 17:47 Speaker 3: much thank you you as well again so again so outside of salaries the FY 18 budget is level funded and if if it's okay with the board I would like to tell you about some things that are happening at the Council on Aging in the Milano

▶ 18:03 Peter D. Mortimer: Center okay we're trying to stick mostly to the budget tonight okay so if you could try to keep the budget focused we can have a little bit of leeway on that but let's let's try to keep it focused okay yeah two minutes of fine absolutely

▶ 18:18 Speaker 3: okay um so I really just wanted to say that um we had done a 55 plus assessment and we presented it to the Board of Aldermen in June of last year so our primary focus for FY 17 has been to address the action steps that were a a result of the assessment so so so I was going to tell you about which action steps we've addressed is that appropriate thing to talk about okay

▶ 18:51 Peter D. Mortimer: okay um so that'll be fine but we do have a lot tonight so we're trying to keep it keep it budgets focused so we we are now holding annual senior picnics

▶ 19:05 Speaker 3: and in collaboration with Mount Hood, we are working on a pilot program with the public library to bring books to homebound seniors. Several city departments gathered together. We had two resource fairs so that seniors could sign up for all the city abatements and discounts at one time. And the senior center is being upgraded. So far we've done Tierney Hall and then we're starting the classroom actually tomorrow the DPW did all the repairs for these upgrades and then the Friends of Milano Center are funding the upgrades we're beginning to offer day trips that was also requested it was requested that we

▶ 19:50 Speaker 3: host smoking cessation program but sadly only one person signed up so we did not have it but we'll try again next winter we created a financial assistance directory and centralized the senior housing information and we created a resource guide which our newsletter publisher is going to print for us which

▶ 20:24 Speaker 3: is great and we're providing rides to the farmers market we've adapted the property tax work program because the retirees coming in have a higher set of skills than the placements we had been doing in the past that's working out really well and we have a new minibus it arrived end of last week so we hope to have it on the road in two weeks and Northern Bank has donated the minibus and it's beautiful um maybe we will all take a ride in it um so i think that's it we're gearing up for the city-wide yard sale it'll be on september 23rd beautiful so if i'd be happy to answer any questions um that anybody has very well president khan please so it appears your your

▶ 21:11 Speaker 1: budget's up about two percent from last year's is that correct the salary part is and again the

▶ 21:21 Speaker 1: increase was in the salaries and all of your salaries all salaries paid by your department are contained in your budget is that correct the city budget pays for

▶ 21:27 Speaker 3: four positions and my state grant pays for two positions okay and how much does

▶ 21:37 Speaker 3: the state grant pay for those two positions about 37,000 and what

▶ 21:41 Speaker 1: positions are currently funded by the grant the office assistant in the

▶ 21:44 Speaker 3: the Council on Aging office, half of the senior center assistant, which is the afternoon person in the Milano Center, and half of the drivers.

▶ 22:03 Speaker 1: And with respect to the current fiscal year, do you anticipate needing to transfer or appropriate any money to get to the end of the year? No. Okay, that's all I have.

▶ 22:13 Peter D. Mortimer: Thank you, President Codd. Seeing no further, Alderman Medeiros, please.

▶ 22:19 Monica C. Medeiros: Thank you, just thank you for that, I appreciate knowing what the funds are being used for. Are you seeing enrollment and activities and engagement activities at the center increasing or decreasing, or how is that playing out?

▶ 22:38 Speaker 3: I see that the volunteers are, we only have 50 volunteers, but they're putting in many more hours than in the past. And there are more people participating, and they're participating in more programs. So there's, it's up about 848 people participate in the year. There's over 2,000 programs. So altogether, it's about 28,000 duplicate count. So those 848 people come 24,000 times.

▶ 23:20 Speaker 3: Thank you. That's very confusing.

▶ 23:21 Speaker 2: Thank you. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.

▶ 23:22 Peter D. Mortimer: Thank you, Alderman Barrow. Seeing no further, Alderman, wishing to be heard, there has been a motion made by Alderman Boisselle and duly seconded by Alderman McAteer-Margolis to recommend the bottom line on this budget. All in favor, please say aye. Aye. Any opposed, hearing none, this budget will be recommended to the full board in June. Thank you very much. Alderman MacMaster, please stay right where you are. Alderman McAteer-Margolis has made a motion that we reauthorize and increase the council on aging donation revolving account number 2811 for fiscal year 2018, said motion to take that order out of order was seconded by Alderman's Worko.