Public Participation

Transcript (~15 min @ 21:40)

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

▶ 21:31 Speaker 3: city I thank each and every one of you members of the school committee and the Board of Aldermen for your service to our city you do an incredible job and I offer this budget for your consideration in your passage thank you very much

▶ 21:59 Speaker 1: motion to open the floor for public participation Alderman Mortimer moves that we commence public participation the motion is seconded by alderman medeiros all those in favor of the motion please indicate by saying aye aye anyone opposed motion passes public participation is hereby open this is the portion of the meeting where any member of the public can come forward identify themselves and speak on any issue relative to the city budget for the the upcoming year sir could you identify yourself please hi my name is Jerry

▶ 22:46 Speaker 2: Moroz I'd like to address a few things about the budget in whole tonight obviously as different items come up in the in the coming weeks I'll have more comments on some specific things the first point I'd like to make is that the mayor represented just now that he's turning the budget over to the Board of Alderman and we all know that based on the rules of how things operate that the Board of Aldermen he has already taken discretion away if we believe that there are limited funds I'm not implying there aren't if there's a certain amount of limited funds that the city has available to it the mayor has already coerced the school committee to adapt his allocation of priorities for the schools versus his allocation of priorities for the city side I believe that the school committee certainly didn't ask for what they think is a competent amount of funding for what they believe they need to do their job it was expressed so in the school committee process wouldn't it be better

▶ 23:56 Speaker 2: if there's a limited amount of funds for the board that's here ready and able to do it and elected by the citizens to determine how we allocate the limited funds of the city to the schools versus the city by the mayor setting a figure for the school committee and at some level coercing them to meet it he's taken that away from the board of alderman he's done an end run around the board of alderman in this process as we know the board of alderman can't increase money to an item that's been asked for they can only reduce it some people might

▶ 24:35 Speaker 2: argue that that this is just meaningless that what i'm raising but the truth is is that i believe that for the city to establish policy for this board of aldermen and for the school committee to establish policy that you abrogate your responsibility that way by allowing the mayor

▶ 25:01 Speaker 2: to do what he's done the mayor spent a fair amount of time at the beginning of his talk just now talking about water and sewer issues and um and i'm sure we'll get into those eventually But one of the issues of the water and sewer is that water and sewer is paid by rate payers. In the trash part of the city, it's basically paid by the trash fee to the different units in town. The problem with both of those things is that both of those charges to the rate payers and to the user fee for the trash fee is that you have rate payers now actually paying costs

▶ 25:47 Speaker 2: to the city through their rates rather than those being used by the tax base. Again, it's kind of an end run around, in this case, Prop 2 1⁄2, where things that ought to be borne by the tax base, paid for based on the tax rate of the city, are now being paid by water and sewer rate payers and the city is blatant about that the indirect cost the mayor says that he reduced them i think he said 15 percent or something this year oh no six six six and a half percent maybe um you know the indirect costs a lot of those are clearly costs of the city that are being foisted upon the rate payers to do that um i haven't looked the details of it but last year the city solicitors salary half of it was paid by the rate payers of water and sewer i think we'd all can pretty much establish that the city solicitor did not spend half of his waking moments and working moments on water and sewer issues these are the structural issues around the city that the mayor isn't addressing the mayor actually is manipulating and the board of aldermen and the school committee are basically passively accepting and i believe you know i take the mayor at his word that i think that it is up to the citizens to determine what they need to do for their community except every year we come to this meeting to this room and the mayor has taken away the options from the citizens through our elected representatives here to determine how we want to allocate our funds our tax base um and i find that

▶ 27:36 Speaker 2: troubling i can't not raise the issue here tonight of inflow and infiltration under the water and sewer under the sewer part of the enterprise fund um you know mwra through the rates that we pay to

▶ 27:49 Speaker 2: to the MWRA provides back to us money to use to work on inflow and infiltration things. And just in case anybody here doesn't know this already, that we have essentially about the leakiest pipes, leakiest sewer pipes in the MWRA. More than, or about 50% of the water of the sewerage, I'm sorry, I keep misspeaking about this, about 50% of the sewerage that we provide to MWRA actually isn't sewerage at all. It's water that came out of the ground in Melrose and is going to MWRA. It hasn't gone through people's houses. It's not legitimate sewerage, except now that it's mixed in, they have to treat it all as such. If we continue to only use the money that NWRA makes available back to us to do inflow infiltration work, yes, we'll improve some, as we have, but we will not get to a point where we're significantly making our leaky sewers better relative to all the other communities that are taking their same proportionate amount of money

▶ 28:59 Speaker 2: to do that. The semantics of the mayor's office these days are, oh, we're not doing a project for water and sewer anymore. We're doing a multi-year program now. Well, guess what? Same funds,

▶ 29:16 Speaker 2: same source. I do certainly acknowledge that there's actually some actual a thoughtful process behind identifying the issues finding out what zones are the leakiest and doing something with those but until the city makes a real commitment to invest in the water and sewer and i'm sorry in the sewer inflow infiltration we will be struggling with our rate paying all those extra fees for sewer on top of all the indirect quote indirect costs that the cities allocating to the water and sewer rate payers this stuff isn't rocket

▶ 29:58 Speaker 2: science you know it's pipes in the ground it's how do you fund issues it's

▶ 30:09 Speaker 2: how do you fund the schools whether anybody here and probably none of you agree with me in most things I would hope that you would acknowledge that

▶ 30:25 Speaker 2: there's a conversation to be had there are possibilities to explore opportunities to take advantage of investments investments to be made

▶ 30:38 Speaker 2: despite all the talk and we've heard a lot of mayor's talks year by year by year all the talk is always how wonderfully the mayor's office has done presenting this quote balanced budget and at some point I feel that the

▶ 30:58 Speaker 2: aldermen need to sit down and have a significant conversation that the school committee needs to sit down and have a significant conversation about how we do

▶ 31:13 Speaker 2: things why do we do them as we do is it really important to do what we've done for the last 10 or 15 years and just keep doing it because that's how we've always done it or there is there a different way to look at different problems how does the school system actually provide the opportunity for a student to actually have an education differentiated for that student in classroom we know it doesn't work when you put all the burden on to the classroom teacher give them the widest range of kids you could possibly create in a system and tell them oh well you're not doing well at that there are different ways to do it there are different ways that we could do it now

▶ 32:03 Speaker 2: whenever I hear oh well you know we're doing a five-year process we need to get buy-in and we need to make certain we go gently into this it doesn't ever happen I've seen it happen all over the country like this that you might even have great intentions but when you're trying to port it out five years I want to know what are you doing for the students of Melrose today for the citizens of Melrose today for the taxpayers and ratepayers of Melrose today your best intentions for next year or the year after that or five years from now really are meaningless if you don't structure in today what's important for them so in in conclusion

▶ 32:47 Speaker 2: we have here essentially the same type of budget we've had the mayor controlled at whatever level people want to argue he set the number for the school committee he set the number for the city he set the numbers for his departments you could cut any one of those in in isolation

▶ 33:09 Speaker 2: but that's not allowing you to do your job the school committee already gave in to the mayor this year I urge the alderman not to I do want to point out

▶ 33:23 Speaker 2: that if we had a valid budget process we could talk more about zero based budgeting a few years ago the school committee started on a better path and then they took a sidestep and went on a different path that is arguable whether it's actually benefiting us or not what what i know in the in the city side budget that was presented in for this meeting tonight is that the column that says projected expenses for fy 17 is another irrelevant column if you're doing real budgeting you need to know what an action take the actual year to date they should be able to get a good idea of what the next two months are going to bring for May and June to project out what the actual expenses are likely to be for the total of FY 17 when you're figuring your FY 18 budget it appears to me from looking at the document that this year is no better than last year in having valid representations of that as long as there's a projected amount that's less than the actual year to date it's a little bit suspect in some fashion so I look forward to this budget process it's already constrained by what mayor has done and what the school committee has done but i think there are certainly questions you can ask not necessarily about the tiniest little details that might be important at some level but about the structural issues around this so that maybe through a budget process this year we can have a more authentic one for next year certainly i every year i urge the school committee at this time of year to why don't you start now toward evaluating your budget priorities for next year so it's not about the money it's about the principles if you have principles and you want to fund according to your principles this is the time to discuss them prioritize them as the alderman i hope will prioritize their principles as well about what they feel is

▶ 35:28 Speaker 1: important thank you for your time thank you sir anybody else who wishes to speak this evening

▶ 35:34 Speaker 4: Julie DeLillo. As I sat and listened, mine isn't about the numbers, and this may not be your responsibility, but I'm going to put it all to you, is to make sure that this year that the budget that gets posted out there is accessible to the blind and visually impaired residents of Melrose. it hasn't been in the past I work with some of them and so I think in fairness to them and for them to participate in this process that we make sure that that happens and as I listened about the changes to online building permits that we make sure that those those sites are accessible to those those citizens that we have in this city too that's it thank you motion to close public participation

▶ 36:17 Speaker 1: Mr. President. Alderman Mortimer moves to close public participation. Motion is seconded by Alderman Boisselle. All those in favor? Aye. Anyone opposed? Motion passes. Motion to adjourn the joint meeting of the School Committee and the Melrose Board of Aldermen. Mr. Chairman, Mr. Co-Chairman. Alderman Mortimer moves that we adjourn this meeting. The motion is seconded by Alderman Inferno. All those in favor of adjournment, please indicate by saying aye. Aye. Is there anybody who's opposed to adjournment? Motion passes, meeting is adjourned. Thank you, folks.