← Appropriations & Oversight Committee · 2016-05-19 · Appropriations and Oversight Budget Hearing
Public Participation
Agenda original PDF
Minutes original PDF
Transcript
▶ 11:19 Peter D. Mortimer: I am Chairman Peter Mortimer, the Vice Chairman is Alderman Gail Inferna. Also in attendance tonight, we have Alderman Michael Zwirko, Alderman John Tramontozzi, Alderman Monica Medeiros, Alderman Robert Boycelle, Alderman Mary Beth McIntyre-Margolis, Alderman Jennifer Lemmerman, Alderman Scott Forbes, and President Donald Kahn. This is a committee of the whole. Every member of the Board of Aldermen is a member of this committee. This meeting is being recorded by MMTV. Rebroadcast is shown frequently and a DVD is available at MMTV if someone wants to
▶ 12:06 Scott M. Forbes: would like to see one in the future motion open a floor for public participation mr chairman alderman
▶ 12:09 Peter D. Mortimer: forbes has made a motion to open the floor for public participation seconded by alderman inferno all in favor please say aye any opposed hearing none the floor is now open for public participation any members in the gallery who would like to come forward and ask questions or make comments about any items on tonight's agenda please do so now good evening mr morose how are you good thank you
▶ 12:43 Speaker 3: hi my name is jerry morose i'm here to comment on a couple things first when you say if we have any questions to ask does that mean we get answers for the questions or how does that process work is but my my wonderment is i don't expect an answer to that question by the way um I'm here to talk about the schools as a board this is your one time a year to
▶ 13:06 Speaker 3: talk to the schools to ask them questions now although I have a
▶ 13:13 Speaker 3: different press I'll say opinion then power the Board of Aldermen or the school committee on the one hand I feel the schools aren't aren't funded in the
▶ 13:27 Speaker 3: way that gets the job done it's a complicated thing does it mean more
▶ 13:33 Speaker 3: funding in some ways more funding certainly couldn't hurt but in other ways we're in this issue year after year after year because we don't do anything
▶ 13:47 Speaker 3: different year after year after year and if we don't make a change at some point
▶ 13:53 Speaker 3: no results are going to change and you know whether whether we talk about a structural deficit that's only applicable to the schools rather than to city as a whole if it really is a structural deficit um you know the schools need to step up the school committee needs to step up and ask for the money they need and show why they need it in theory they present that to you and you make a determination whether or not you want to give them as much as they ask the process we have is everybody here knows is that the mayor comes up with a number they quote balance their budget to meet that number i don't i don't agree with that
▶ 14:32 Speaker 3: pretext and we come here and the alderman vote okay we'll give you your
▶ 14:43 Speaker 3: 20 whatever million dollars there are major changes that the schools could make that could save significant money that I believe could make a better education system regionalization is one issue that although nobody here wants to hear her to talk about it and just pooh-poohs it and says oh it's meaningless there are major things we can do there's a couple tiny things we've done with regionalization the last few years on the school side as well as the city side but there is there can be so much more it means giving up a little bit of the parochial nature of the city of Melrose and expanding out and saying what can we do with other people there's a lot of money that is not and I'll use the word wasted because we don't regionalize there's redundant functions in town have the towns all over the place that we could be a leader about this we could go to place people and say look let's partner up and do this let's figure out a way to share the expertise of a department chair for instance rather than say oh well we're gonna cut our department chairs in half and not have department chairs I'm not happy with the school department budget as it's come forward I'm not happy that they're not asking for a competent amount of money and a way to spend it that will work for our students at the same time this is
▶ 16:03 Speaker 3: this issue of a structural deficit is in my in some ways it's a phantom issue to me I know that we budget one point two five five million dollars to pay for our sanitation budget I know in the other hand we take in one point six to five million I believe in trash fees there's a four hundred thousand dollar amount of
▶ 16:30 Speaker 3: money there that doesn't reflect in the budget. And where does it reflect? Where does that money go? Is that what goes to free cash every year? You know, I pay attention to what's put out in the public documents. I don't see anything explaining where the free cash comes from year after year after year. I don't know how much free cash is likely to show up. Nobody's ever mentioned it on July 1st or whenever the DOR certifies it. You know, there's issues like that that haven't been talked about haven't been thought through we hear a lot of whining and complaining about not enough money all over the place but I don't see the conversation about figuring out where the money could be how we could do better spending the money I do want to say that that I am distressed that the that we're getting rid of department chairs and academic subjects in the middle school and high school I think that that is in some ways is cements a downward trend in what we do for our children if we don't have people leading those departments people who are strong leaders in those departments leading them well keeping the teachers on board even and I want to say even though we had a full complement of department chairs the last few years and we had people who seem to be strong there are big gaps in what's done in the middle school and high school those gaps aren't going to get any smaller because we have fewer people paying attention to them or somebody who's outside their realm of expertise paying attention to somebody else's and and if we don't have a person we saw this for the few years that we didn't have the fine arts department chair if somebody isn't leaving the department you might have wonderful people who were called now lead teachers in the music or lead teachers in the arts but they don't have number one I'll say the the authority to
▶ 18:13 Speaker 3: go and advocate effectively to be able to say we need this funding we need these teachers we need this this type of thing to go on and in the music department and arts department I believe you know went backwards some over a number of years and I fear that with the math and science and the history and social studies and you know and and I mean there's no way I mean somebody said somewhere in the school process that oh well you know music and arts are just another foreign language another global language and I understand what they were intending but the thing is that you don't have somebody who knows music and
▶ 18:59 Speaker 3: arts being responsible for it leading it making certain it happens correctly it's not happening so of course all that you can do tonight essentially is in the end vote up or down the amount of money they're asking for you you can't even give them more money now I'm I've heard talk about you know money coming from here after July 1st money coming from here after July 1st and we'll build some of these things in but why can't we have a rational open upfront discussion about what we need why we need it how we can fund it properly and how we can and how and I don't want to leave alone how we can save significant expenses and what we educate our students we don't have to use the model from the 1840s of how we educate our students at the same point in time I want to say I absolutely don't want and I personally can't stand this online model where you sit kids down in the classroom in front of an online program that's basically rote learning or wrote we've called drill and kill right that's what that model is morphing to now is that you see the kid down in the classroom in front of that they go home at night in front of that there's a program to the school we used to have study island we finally get rid of that we've now gone to this thing called IXL which is actually worse for our students in study island was because it purports to be more and it really is is not um you know I don't want to say don't give
▶ 20:22 Speaker 3: the schools money this year schools need money I don't want to say oh everything's fine with the schools give them the money and don't challenge anything there's a middle ground here that we need to explore it's not a black and white thing there's a lot of gray area I believe it's a school department school committee's job to explore those areas in depth they refuse to again this is you one time as a board to say to them you know can you do something different guys can you think about a different way of approaching it instead of I mean how many times have been you've all been paying attention to school community I know you do how many times have we heard the trade-offs between elementary library media specialists and and somebody else or somebody else and somebody else and all these trade-offs are false dichotomies you know for sure same point in time I want to highlight a fact that I mentioned at the school committee the other night that the chapter 70 foundation budget formula presumes that if I remember these correctly that the well I won't remember
▶ 21:25 Speaker 3: them correctly but what it comes down to is that the high school is presumed to be the most expensive place to educate students and I think if I remember it's you know in the order of 25 relative for the high school and maybe you know 21 relative for the middle school students per class to target average right and maybe it was like you know I misspoke this 25 for the middle school 21 elementary school it may be 17 for the high school the point is the high school deserves more money per student not less the high school deserves to have positions funded not fund elementary over and over and over again for more than a decade now at the expense of the high school while the middle school for whatever reason rides along with the most money in our whole district when the state acknowledges it should be the least and you know part of this goes to the the idea that we call we have this team structure at the middle school and it's not flexible you can't adapt the team structure to have a couple less teachers it doesn't work anyway enough about that one other thing I want to mention about there's a thing in the packet tonight and this is goes to other issues but it's about interdepartmental funding so it's applicable tonight as well this letter from the Richard Sullivan is his name not not the other one well Richard Sullivan I think is the guy's name that signed the letter but you know he didn't address the issue at hand in that letter about you know I brought up the issue that it says in that think of the acts question point number 17 that you know departments aren't supposed to charge departments now we know the police department charges the school department for details you know that happens we know probably the police department charges water and sewer for details for that matter but you know this person that wrote that thing was basically told it appears to me you know what we wanted as a message to be sent to the city and he wrote it and he didn't address the main issue and i gotta say that it really questions my faith in him when he doesn't understand a moot point from a mute point and if if somebody doesn't understand that issue I'm ending up right now thank ten minutes have elapsed thank you I'll bend now thank you very much thank you very much all
▶ 23:51 Peter D. Mortimer: right continuing on with the budget for the city of Melrose order two zero one
▶ 24:01 Peter D. Mortimer: six appreciate that everyone thank you public participation is still open if if any other members of the public would like to come forward. Seeing none.
▶ 24:10 Speaker 2: Closed public participation.
▶ 24:12 Peter D. Mortimer: Alderman Boisselle has made a motion to close public participation. Duly seconded by Alderman Inferna. All in favor, please say aye. Aye. Any opposed, hearing none.