ORDER-2017-59 : An Appropriation in the amount of $20,000 from Available Free Cash to the Public Works –Cemetery Professional Services account for records digitizing, backup and updates of cemetery plots and burials.

Transcript (~9 min @ 25:28)

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▶ 25:15 Peter D. Mortimer: thank you alderman Medeiros uh alderman boycella has made a motion to recommend this for passage duly seconded by alderman forbes seeing no further discussion all in favor please say aye aye any opposed hearing none this order will be recommended for passage at our next full board meeting on december 19th the next order we have before us is order 2017-59 it is an appropriation in the amount of twenty thousand dollars from available free cash to the public works cemetery professional services account for records digitizing backup and updates of cemetery plots

▶ 25:57 Peter D. Mortimer: and burials motion or discussion or would you like to make an opening statement on this

▶ 26:00 Speaker 5: so just in in general terms this was going to fund various digitizing and backup of plots and burial files at wyoming cemetery and if i could go backwards a little bit on this order as well the wyoming cemetery committee for the last 18 18 24 months or so since it has turned over has made this a top priority they were working with the former i.t group at putting the hardware in place so that this software could be upgraded and it's an on it's been an ongoing project through 2000 the early 2000s plans were scanned what this project does is we'll go back to the time when the scanning stopped re-scan everything and then digitize it in such a place to such a manner that we can search it i passed along a five-phased approach to this project and you can tell this is there's a there's been a lot of thought that's been put into this we have assembled a team that includes our city engineer i.t director chief assessor jane pitts from planning has also helped because she has a lot of expertise in the gis they've guided this process along for our new cemetery administrator and given the cemetery committee the type of expertise opinion to make this work the first phase includes scanning the second the first phase is the digitizing of plans all we have we don't have anything that's computerized at the cemetery we have hard plans of everything now there's the the opportunity through technologies presented themselves is to take these hard plans and turn them into a digital file the digital files you can create gis maps from once you have the files in the computer you scan the data into it and you can have the data into these files and that's when you get start to get information behind the picture the end the last phase of the program the end goal is to have a day-to-day operating software system that the new administrator can use to search to add files to and eventually once we give confidence and that we can open up to the general public if they were to look in search for a loved one or you know where's my plot where's my information that type of that type of information can be made available so that's what the project is thank you very much mr.

▶ 28:39 Speaker 3: shanna president khan please yeah um mr shenna do you know how much money is in this uh professional

▶ 28:46 Speaker 5: services account prior to this transfer right now we don't have we don't have anything it's actually a new line that we created in the budget there's no funding in it and is it your intention to to

▶ 28:52 Speaker 3: fund this account at twenty thousand dollars in the upcoming year budget no we feel that this

▶ 28:59 Speaker 5: project that we've actually failed based on some of the pricing we received even as late as this morning that the 20 000 may be able to complete the project that's all i have thank you president

▶ 29:11 Peter D. Mortimer: khan alderman's work oh please thank you mr chairman i had a couple of questions um

▶ 29:20 Michael P. Zwirko: this is relative to phase four it says um there will be a drone flyover i was curious will the city be purchasing a drone or using a drone through a vendor no we wouldn't purchase

▶ 29:29 Speaker 5: we would hire a vendor you'd hire a vendor to use the drone and again that is that's the pick that's to improve the pictometry of the files that we have and some of the gis files we have

▶ 29:40 Michael P. Zwirko: no i mean in this instance it's actually a very smart use of the technology i just it could actually be used for other things in the city um traffic mitigation and and you know many many other things i could think of so i was just curious if the city was actually going to use these funds to purchase it to keep it in-house but it's we'll just be using outside the intent

▶ 30:01 Michael P. Zwirko: right now is to hire a vendor to do that okay um and then also i noticed that this is uh there's gonna be a significant use of gis and um i i also want to speak to the the extremely usability um of this system gis is an amazing tool that municipalities can use for multi-layered information in coordination with gps activities so i'm really happy that we're actually doing that here we do it for other things across the city i know our visual budget has leveraged gis as well so the continual use of this technology is it's fantastic i actually studied it in college as well so it's it's i'm familiar with it and i'm glad that we're doing it here and the final thing i wanted to state on the um it's also actually on phase four

▶ 30:52 Michael P. Zwirko: a lot of the members of the community on Memorial Day weekend they replaced the flags of the veterans at the cemetery and the only way the volunteers can find out if there's a veteran buried there is if there's an existing flag so the fear is is that sometimes where we might be missing some men and women who may have served for the country and I was just curious it seems that we're trying and trying to get all this information and you alluded to it earlier being the hope of being able to look up a plot or someone who is laying in rest the work the hope is is that for all this mapping that occurs we can have some very good information exactly where members of men and women who serve the country could be buried so we won't miss a flag come on Memorial Day weekend is that one of the parts of this project I noticed it in phase four and I just wanted to try to

▶ 31:49 Speaker 5: think if that's exactly what they're looking at part of the project is to digitize the file behind each grave and the data information includes whether it's a veteran or not a veteran if there's a veteran marker so that would that would be available and I think that's when we get to that point it's a good field to add into the query right so you know it's just an Excel spreadsheet of a bunch of files but you know it could have name date of death date of birth we could also add veteran status into it and maybe that would lend to something like that in the future yeah but that's the that's the the power of GIS it's a good picture but you know you really want that information behind the picture and that type of feedback is critical well thank you a good idea and

▶ 32:37 Speaker 6: I'll pass it along I appreciate that I'm all set mr. chairman thank you

▶ 32:38 Peter D. Mortimer: alderman's worker alderman Medeiros please thank you yes along those lines I

▶ 32:41 Monica C. Medeiros: I was going to actually suggest that and ask if you would be in contact with the historical commission and perhaps the library, because I think that there's so many people who, especially for genealogical purposes and otherwise, that are very interested, and certainly the veterans are very interested in cemetery plots, and I mean, Melrose is an old history, this is an old cemetery with a lot of history, that I think there would be people who are interested in it and i think perhaps willing to help and assist from a different angle other than just the the nuts and bolts of getting the information together so i just encourage you to to think about contacting them and working with them yeah i don't disagree it's a very good point and i know

▶ 33:28 Speaker 5: the veterans have a i think they call it memory project where they look at graves and in that regard and bring high school students down there i mean once the system is up and running again this funds creating the system and but when it's up and running the there are a lot of capabilities that don't exist today in terms of searching and researching records um other than doing it manually so yeah that that is another good idea and i'll bring that back to the cemetery committee

▶ 34:02 Monica C. Medeiros: as well that's good and i just wanted to point out that we did receive an email from carrie ann golden and the auditor's department and she informed us that after if all the orders tonight taking money from free cash go through that the ending balance in that account would be one million three hundred ninety five thousand five hundred seventy two dollars and fifty four cents so I just wanted to make sure that everybody had that information and the public was aware as well and just say that I very much support this order and wish you luck in implementing thank

▶ 34:43 Peter D. Mortimer: you Alderman Medeiros seeing no further Alderman wishing to be heard is there a motion please Alderman Forbes has made a motion to recommend this order for passage at our next full board meeting duly seconded by Alderman Boisselle seeing no further discussion all in favor please say aye aye any opposed hearing none this order will be recommended to our next toward the full board at our next full board meeting on next Monday, December 19th. Motion to adjourn. Alderman Suerco has made a motion to adjourn. The Committee on Appropriations duly seconded by Alderman Forbes. All in favor, please say aye. Aye. Any opposed? Hearing none, we are adjourned. Thank you, one and all. Thanks, everybody.