Public Participation

Transcript (~14 min @ 20:58)

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

▶ 20:22 Speaker 3: new year and like every new year there are new resolutions and new opportunities but it can never be forgotten that the process must be guided by the citizens of Melrose when we serve and in that light I would like to end by reaffirming my core belief to each of you that we are a community that promotes and involves an active citizenry that works in partnership with the response of government that manages this great city in a thoughtful honest and an accountable manner I thank each of you for your service and I offer this budget for your consideration and for your passage thank you thank you okay at

▶ 21:18 Speaker 1: this point the chair would welcome a motion to commence public participation

▶ 21:24 Speaker 1: someone second second alderman mortimer moves to commence public participation motion is seconded by miss castelli all those in favor of the motion indicate by saying aye aye anyone opposed motion passes this is the public participation portion of our meeting any member of the general public who wishes to speak relative to the issue that was before us this evening is welcome to come forward to the desk in the center of the room identify yourself and you shall have the opportunity to

▶ 21:59 Speaker 4: declaim within some time limits hi my name is Jerry Rose and I'd like to speak about the budget

▶ 22:09 Speaker 4: process for a number of years I've been involved fairly thoroughly in the school department budget and the in the last few years in the city budget it's unfortunate we don't have a school department budget settled yet that could be presented here tonight as well but I expect that to be forthcoming I I'd like to talk about

▶ 22:33 Speaker 4: some broad issues about the budget processes tonight rather than specific details and amounts the document that I have here which I assume all of you have it some way shape or form shows different columns and there's an issue that we've had the last few years as I've been trying to engage in this budget and in my work I've engaged in budgets for the last 40 years and when I want to set an authentic budget what I want to try to do is to understand where we've been historically what functions have we paid for and how much money has that cost how much have we spent in the current year to date so we have a good base starting point for the current year and then obviously since the budget process for next year starts before the end of this year we want to have a really good accurate projection of what we expect our cost to be at the end of this fiscal year so we can use that as a basis for crafting what next year's

▶ 23:32 Speaker 4: amount would be the problem that we have with the pit with the document in front of us right now is that we don't have that critical component of a projection

▶ 23:44 Speaker 4: for the end of this year that's accurate the staff in the auditor's office admits they say that the 2016 projection line is meaningless they've said that for the last few years the 2016 actual line is my understanding accurate as of april 27th at 7 49 a.m we don't know what we're really going to spend this year and every year we have this issue where we spend we're crafting a budget based on basically what we budgeted the prior year or maybe spent the prior year and we don't even see a history of that in this budget document we see the 2015 actual as the only firm thing we don't see a 2014 2013 there's no representation in the printed budget about why if it if the 2017 proposed budget is different substantially in some way what details make it that we need more money for something or less money for something what's changed one

▶ 24:41 Speaker 4: of the reasons why I try to engage in the budget is you know we have this confounding issue that's been around the last few years of a school department funding and and that people have called something called a structural deficit nobody's yet defined with that structural deficit really really is where it comes from we had more than three and a half million dollars of free cash to spend this year I even asked the city auditor today you know can you have any sense of where the you know some of the major components of that three and a half million dollars comes from and he said no he says oh it comes from all different little sources here and there and I'm like the three and a half million dollars a lot of sources and if we're generating three and a half million dollars of extra obviously that you have some new revenue coming in you don't expect let's say you have more building permits and and you know whatever other things you might even have less spending for water and for sorry I shouldn't make mention water and sewer here more less spending for snow removal but the thing is is that if nobody quantifies where we get this huge amount of money in free cash after the end of the year nobody's even trying to figure out how we can build that into the budget to provide more funds for as an example the school department to have more funds to be able to plan on working and having some can some some confidence that they'll be able to meet the goals that they have set I have criticized the school committee on a number of occasions over the years and the superintendent's for deferring to the mayor's number that he gives the school department a number says yeah this is a number you're getting this year and I asked year after year after year for the school committee to do some hard work and to figure out what they could need what they would want to make a good competent effective school system for

▶ 26:35 Speaker 4: our children the school committee attempted a little bit of that last year but it never really got into a process the school committee never said this is what we need and they never presented that to the Board of Aldermen as this is what they want and we never had a conversation in Melrose we had an override but we never had a conversation in Melrose that was I would believe competent about the issues in the schools and why the schools might need more money for something what they could do differently with the money they have which is as as important as more money and in these critical conversations are what don't happen the override process last year was a marketing proposal I didn't see there wasn't a forum where you could have a real good exchange about things the school committee doesn't provide a forum ever to have a conversation about these things don't take it personally it's true and so now

▶ 27:30 Speaker 4: we're somewhat stuck everybody's worried about this you know increasing young elementary students and we don't have money we don't have building space what are we going to do there are some issues that we've never put on the table to look at we've never talked about how to regionalize more of our functions with

▶ 27:54 Francis X. Wright Jr.: other towns in terms of alderman wright point of order mr president what's your point of order alderman wright the public is invited to speak on items on our agenda and we're talking about broad-based policy issues here we've gone way far i'm talking about the budget well it's the position of the chair that mr miraz is staying close enough to the budget at this point in time

▶ 28:16 Speaker 4: well I'll be very specific about the budget if you like me to be the budget has not been crafted if this is all the information that the mayor is giving to the alderman the mayor is not given the alderman the actual information you need to really develop a good solid budget with confidence there's a number for the school department in here which is just a number I don't believe that there's

▶ 28:44 Speaker 4: been a competent budget discussion in the school department about things and and talking about regionalization talking about other options about where we can get revenue or save expenses i think is absolutely relevant to this budget you know i try to get involved

▶ 29:03 Speaker 4: in issues in the community i try to do what i can to make things what i think would be better i do get a whole lot of pushback from a whole lot of people in that in that effort but in the process i actually learn a lot i learn a lot from the pushback what people are scared of what people are are worried about coming up what what what's happening in different places and and i and you know i'm not stupid i can take an insult but i learned from that insult about what that person's really believing right um many of you in this room have insulted me about my budget conversations before um one of the things and so here's a raw issue you know the school

▶ 29:46 Speaker 4: department the tiny issue in terms of the whole budget but the school department expended money for legal fees a lot of legal fees over the last year and a half for an issue that shouldn't have had any legal fees whatsoever and i'm talking about the office of civil rights process yeah i

▶ 30:07 Speaker 4: don't think that's really germane to this year okay well it is in terms of budget we you allocate money to the school department every year and the school department takes that money and spends it on thing this is my exact point takes on thing takes that money and spends it on things that were never budgeted that aren't necessarily even appropriate the fact that the superintendent makes contracts that go beyond the fiscal year to further fiscal years encumbering the city which i don't think is even legal in some ways you know if you're going to do a three-year contract with some publishing company that's not appropriate if it hasn't been appropriated the funds haven't been appropriated we shouldn't be doing that i don't you know there's probably a legal opinion here that some people say it's different but it feels funny when they do that and there's no public process there's no school committee vote to enter into a contract over this period of time to do that there are controls in the city that i don't believe are working on behalf of the city which is goes right to this budget that the money you provide in this budget whatever free cash comes out at the end of this year or the budget you craft today if we have significant free cash coming out in another year and four or five six months we haven't done the job of really budgeting effectively the fact that we had three and a half million dollars of free cash sounds like we did a great job somewhere i would say that our budget really wasn't competent if we ended up with that much money we weren't looking at everything as carefully in terms of the visual budget i thought for once i'd be able to have something in the visual budget to be able to attach to print my spreadsheet instead of scan documents that you can't even you know you know take to do an analysis and I started working with the visual budget and then I started looking at the document here and I find the numbers are different you know at the 2015 actual numbers should be the 2015 actual numbers they shouldn't vary from one document to the next whether it's in the visual budget or in this document here and and we talk about openness we talk about transparency I don't believe that there really is true openness and transparency and I want to say and this is mayor of course has left but I want to say that I don't believe that the city even though when I say something the city's in some way responds or reacts to it I don't think that I've ever felt that the city really responds authentically to the issues I raise and the principles behind them often sometimes people do something on the surface that makes it look like they're you know appeasing the public and aren't we so wonderful to listen to the public but very few people have it sit down and have a conversation with me to understand exactly the depth of behind which I have my my conclusions or my opinions in terms of the budget in

▶ 32:49 Speaker 4: closing I went through this budget in detail 75 different lines in this budget show and this shows to the meaningless of the projected budget 75 lines show a projected amount for a line item to be less presumably at the end of the fiscal

▶ 33:12 Speaker 4: year then we spent on April 27th last week 75 lines in this budget have that there if the 2016 projection if munis has it in there I can't believe that munis is that incompetent that they can't do it right I can't believe that somebody can't give the alderman the information that you really need to really know with confidence when you're approving a line item why you're approving that amount of money I urge you in this process over the next 45 days to ask the people who are under the mayor why they need this money show you a graph of every line item where it was three years ago the actual the real actual not just a pretend actual not just what we budgeted last year or the year before show you what the real numbers are so you can make a good determination and my hope is is that if we can budget more authentically we can figure out how we can plan to use the that money we find in free cash every year how we can plan to use some of that money in advance so we don't we don't cripple ourselves in terms of trying to you know trying to trying a triage in the schools every year thank you very much thank you sir is there anybody else

▶ 34:21 Speaker 1: Who else who wishes to speak this evening? Motion to close public participation, Mr. President. Second. Alderman Mortimer moves to close public participation. Motion is seconded by Alderman Suerco. On the motion, all those in favor? Aye. Anyone opposed? Motion passes. Public participation is concluded. I think that concludes the business of the joint meeting. Motion to adjourn, Mr. President. Second. Second. Alderman Mortimer moves to adjourn. Motion is seconded by Alderman Forbes. On the motion, all those in favor? Aye. opposed motion passes meeting is hereby adjourned thank you folks okay good