ORDER-2016-106 : Presentation regarding the Visual Budget and the new Melrose online GIS System and online applications

Transcript (~35 min @ 41:18)

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

▶ 41:05 Peter D. Mortimer: Mr. President, I make a motion to take order 2016-106. There's a presentation regarding the visual budget and the new Melrose online GIS system and online applications. I make a motion to take this order from committee.

▶ 41:24 Speaker 4: Alderman Mortimer moves that we remove order 2016-106 from the Appropriations Committee. Is there a second? Second. Second by Alderman Medeiros. On the motion, all those in favor? Aye. Aye. Motion passes. The order is removed from committee.

▶ 41:40 Peter D. Mortimer: a motion to suspend the rules that we may hear from the appropriate city officials here in attendance regarding this order.

▶ 41:47 Speaker 4: Alderman Mortimer moves to suspend the rules. Second. Second. Second by Alderman Zwirko. On the motion to suspend, all those in favor? Aye. Anyone opposed? Motion passes. The order is before you. Gentlemen, would you like to come forward and declaim relative to this order, please?

▶ 42:25 Speaker 8: Good evening, I'm Mike Lindstrom from the Mayor's Office. I'm here along with City Auditor Patrick De La Russo and City Assessor Chris Wilcox. well chris sets up i can just briefly explain uh why we're here tonight um we're here tonight to share some information on a couple new initiatives that we've released that we're pretty excited about that we feel further increased two-way communication with residents and delivering that information over a variety of different multimedia platforms um you may remember a couple years ago the city was awarded a mass municipal innovation award for the our city series and the co-winner that year as i like to call second place was arlington for their um visual budget they were runners up to us um but when the mayor and i saw that pres that program that that presentation uh we thought it was pretty awesome and we wanted to try to bring that to melrose um what melrose visual budget is it's a new online tool that's going to provide the public with a visual presentation of the approved city budget that's you know that is approved each june what it's going to do it offers a representation of the city's financial history outlook as well as illustrate key trends visual budget displays historical data as well as back to 2012 fy12 and goes all the way with future projections to fy20 it's going to allow citizens to understand how the budget has changed how that impacts them including cuts to state aid and increased reliance on property taxes i think what the most unique feature of this program is why we like it so much it actually lets you in put in your personal tax bill for your house and it's going to tell you across every city department down to how much it costs how much what you pay as an individual for your snow for snow to be cleared to what you pay for the health director um down to the penny per what your tax bill for the current fiscal year um is the other i think i think we can all speak as is alderman or by city department heads here i think we can all agree that there's a demand for information from our residents from our constituents at all times not just between 8 a.m and 4 p.m when city halls open and i think we made a lot of great advances in the last couple years with that especially with the city's twitter our online services i think the mayor's blog but what chris is going to walk you through tonight is the next step we're going to explain why visual budget is an important tool in this but also why our new melrose maps online features is going to provide the 24 7 information that our residents require when they need it I think what it's also important that he can touch on too is that these features can also lay the groundwork what may be possible for the future in terms of online permitting and different incorporating other city departments into this so you know overall by increasing transparency I think we're able to advance and deepen the civic dialogue between all of us and our constituents at this point I'm going to hand it over to Chris for a very

▶ 45:26 Speaker 11: brief presentation thank you my office fields a lot of questions as far as the budget goes one of the most common questions we get is how much of my tax dollars are going to certain departments certain functions of the city when Patrick and and Mike brought up that they went to the MMA meeting and they talked about this software I wanted to jump in on the project because I thought it would definitely help out the average homeowner that just wants to go on and find out what they're spending a lot of these budget documents are about 70 pages this is a simple version it's a visual version that the average homeowner can go on and see their where their tax dollars are being spent if you go to page three on your handout I actually just did a slide so you can follow along I know a lot of this font is very small to read from across the room the three main parts of this visual budget are revenues expenses and funds so over here in the green you'll actually see the revenues that's your tax revenue and that's actually going to be broken down into the tax levy local receipts state aid and other available funds so that's everything in green and you can zoom in and click and as you do that I entered in $5,500 which is the average tax bill in Melrose so if you look to the left hand side over here as you go in these will actually change so let's get into the expenses and then you can see exactly where that $5,500 from your tax bill has gone so on the expense side we have a broken down between schools and city departments so right here is exactly where sixteen hundred dollars and seventeen sixteen seventeen from the $5,500 goes to the city department size side public safety is

▶ 47:38 Speaker 11: split between police and fire and you can actually go down to expenses and salary so you can go to this level pretty much for any of the expenditures

▶ 47:53 Speaker 11: or expenses in the city budget the next one is funds so this funds is good fund set up is going to be for budget stabilization a stabilization fund and OPEB every year that we change the budget will be reflected here we currently have nine years of budgets every year in January we're going to update to the next budget when the new tax rate is out and we have the approved levy so every year this will be adjusted starting in 17 going forward those are all projections so we actually have numbers going forward for any of the tax residents and and they can actually interact you know all the way to 2020 and kind of see exactly where that will be one of the other things you can look

▶ 48:37 Speaker 11: at is tablet tabular view this is actually just kind of a different way of looking at the same numbers just a you know how much it increased over one year and what the total amounts are for the people who want more numbers this is kind of where I get into it sometimes I I like the visual budgets but I also want I want to see the numbers behind it so what we do is we have a CSV which is an excel file of every single number that we use for our projections and our actuals for revenues for for revenues expenses and the funds so let me just

▶ 49:18 Speaker 11: open this up and this is this is all the revenues so we have 69 lines down of just revenues and projections all the way to 2020 and everything back to 2012 so someone can easily download that and go line by line the expenses we have 196

▶ 49:36 Speaker 11: different lines and that's reflective of everything that's in there so let me

▶ 49:47 Speaker 11: just it's a lot of data but if someone really wants to go with that level you can go to that level you can add also it's a formulas in and run with the Excel and and really show where things are going and as far as this visual budget

▶ 50:03 Speaker 11: this is right on our website this is one block right on our main page we want to make it available so people could click on it we have a brief intro to it and we have a contact just in case anyone has any questions real quickly we did if you

▶ 50:19 Speaker 8: go to that page we did set up a special email address I think it's a MVB at city of Melrose org where if you have specific questions on anything that you saw on visual budget we'll get answered for you and I would be remiss if I didn't thank the three people that put so much time into this that aren't here tonight Carrie Ann Golden and Bridget Gein from the auditor's office and also Donna Cardillo who have put countless hours into making this program work with the software developers and no way we would have been able to get it done without all the time they put into it also yeah the next item for the

▶ 50:54 Speaker 11: presentation is the Melrose maps online it's on page seven this is something that I take great pride in in the assessor's office we actually have to publish tax maps and we also have to have the assessments every year this is a website that combines both of those into a user-friendly platform for for residents businesses and anyone on boards or commissions in the city to use a lot of this data is updated every 24 hours there's no reason to call the assessor's office to get the ownership information it is available as of last night at 10 o'clock all of my data that I want updated is updated in the background and it's pushed out to this site it's been extremely helpful with other departments we have 10 different sites that we've built for other departments the planning department has their own site the assessors have their own site this is actually a version of the staff site so let me just quickly

▶ 51:58 Speaker 11: show you the site works off what's called a triple search it's either an owner a parcel ID or a location everything's factored into searching by that one of the addresses that I'll search is a City Hall 562 Main Street this has to be a one-to-one match this has to be something that's existing in the assessing database you can't put in any address that does not exist in the city of Melrose after you enter in the address you have I'd say about 50 lines of information down on the left-hand side that you can sort through everything except the assessed values are updated like I said 24 hours the assessed value is only updated once we have them approved by the Department of Revenue one of the functions I like the most on this is from the bottom of that page we can click over to the actual assessment record for that property and someone can actually get the sketch or the photo for 9,000 parcels in the city so you can go from parcel to parcel pull up this kind of detailed information we get a lot of calls from lawyers offices potential buyers of homes they love this website they go to it quite a bit since we've done a soft launch we haven't advertised we had roughly 3,000 people going to the public site and about I'd say about 877 of those were from Melrose or Massachusetts so it's it's

▶ 53:30 Speaker 11: very powerful another thing that we added to this site and this is a staff site it's password protected we have the the option of actually pulling the property up on pictometry that's basically an aerial so if you have meetings about parking areas or you're trying to look at a property this is probably one of the best images that you can get for a property you can actually

▶ 53:58 Speaker 11: spin around the property and you can zoom in quite a bit and there's a measurement tool and a bunch of other tools that you can use the building department's currently using this public safety I hope to have a little more training the school departments using it a lot of people are actually using this so it's 24 hours a day seven days a week it's up and available and it doesn't bother me at all when people go in and use it certain sites we have certain passwords because we can only have 25 users of pictometry at once so but the public site is open for anyone you can have 10,000 people on at once so though that's pretty much the the site that we have some of the things we're going to add in the next few months is we're actually going to build a mobile site something that's actually phone friendly there's a lot of this information that you don't need on a phone so we're going to whittle everything down as far as the functions and we're gonna have something that we can launch we're gonna try and pull the billing information so tax bill information and maybe water bill information and add add that to our databases anything that exists with a database and an address we can add to the system and we're not paying anyone to do it this is all done in-house Jane Pitts in the planning department and I are the ones that actually administer this site and we don't pay a dime for any anyone to come in and work on it we do it all ourselves so we're slowly going to add things over over the years some of the things we have on it for federal things we have the FEMA maps that are on there we have some state maps we have the MBTA rail locations and the bus routes so as as those date as that data becomes available what we'll add it in and we're also building a lot of data in-house to one of the things that I'm building is all the sales I have a sales map every year that I do and this is a tool that I'm going to use to to show that but i'll stop there i can talk for hours on this so if you have any questions

▶ 56:02 Robert A. Boisselle: you mentioned the the pictures that you're showing here on the budget you had an actual link right at the uh welcome to city of melrose site is there a link to these maps so you said there's a public one yes but I don't see any link here we're in the process of

▶ 56:20 Speaker 11: adding a lot of online applications we had a discussion of how we want to display it it's currently under the assessing site right now there's a direct link on the handout but we are gonna add it multiple places in the

▶ 56:34 Robert A. Boisselle: website is my so right now it's at the assessor's office that's correct you might have a thousand hits by the time you get back to your office tomorrow

▶ 56:45 Robert A. Boisselle: morning maybe my next question should go to the auditor and the point all the numbers that I see here especially in the sheets I am a numbers individual also the projections that you're doing for 2018 19 and 20 is that based on a certain percentage number that you're working with or has been offered or how we how what number are we projecting for 2020 because some of these numbers numbers really go up, they certainly do.

▶ 57:12 Speaker 9: If I may, through the Chair, what we've done is a couple of things, and I just want to backtrack for one moment, because I think that's a great question. The model provides the, from 2012 to 2016, the actual numbers, the actual numbers that were voted for the budget, and the actual revenues that we, other than state aid, So we estimate we'll fund the FY16 budget, period. Because as everyone knows, the end of the year hasn't come yet, and I'm always cautious about possibilities there. But having said that, what we've done is then take, we're using 3% in general for salary increases. Now that does not mean a 3% cost of living. What happens is that within contracts, union and also this pertains to non-union, there are steps that individuals receive as part of their pay. The steps could be 2.5% between steps and on top when you add a collar on top of that whether it's 1% or 2%, you see how fast you can reach a 3% increase in salaries. It doesn't take much. Expenses we're targeting in general, again, these are general because the objective here is going forward to show that these would not be unreasonable expectations for cost. Expenses are generally 2%. What we've done is the areas that we feel, for example, health insurance, which is always the wild-tide, we feel that warrant a greater percentage. We've modified that. And we're going to do it again and again as we get closer to the real expectation moving forward on the budget. But for purposes of placement, they're not unreasonable by virtue of their category. So that's what we're trying to accomplish in the budget process. One of the things that you and I did speak about is included in that package, which I'm happy you came to my office to talk about, is the annual cherry sheet analysis, 2012 to 2017. It shows all the state aid and all the assessments that pertain to it. You will be receiving this as part of your budget package from now on. But this is also embedded as a subset into this visual budget package. So this is a subset of this. If this was my tax recap with such a tax rate, that's also incorporated as a subset into visual budget. So the objective here is to incorporate these subsets of revenue into a program that can hopefully lay out for everyone, including myself, better perspective on where the actual cost per department are incurred. And when you include these subsets, it makes it easy because people can go on the Mass Department of Revenue website, actually look up for themselves the state aid and the state assessments each year, including potentially FY17, and they can do that. However, that can be time consuming. So we've done that for you here. We've taken all the tax recap, which sets your tax rate. That's incorporated here to save steps. So it's a resource. I hope people appreciate that. I look to it also as a resource. It's just one more element that we have to better communicate to everyone. what is this budget made up of and where does the money go that you're paying out in taxes every year and as much uncertainty as there is in the budget process because I can assure you this says the weather actually changes budgets as we saw last year in particular forget about what we saw today the state aid also changes but what doesn't change is the fact that we're at 96% residential right now, where the primary supporters is the tax levy of your budget. And I don't see that percentage fluctuating in years ahead. So there is stability in these numbers because what it shows is literally that 70% of the tax of the budget is funded by taxation now. Previous years it was less, but since the state has withdrawn their support down to about 18% now, from days of maybe 24, 25%, they've shifted that burden onto the tax payer. That's all they did. And they're contributing less, and the tax payer's paying more. So this clearly shows that we're recognizing that, and also, quite frankly, as Mike Lindstrom indicated, we're trying to reach out to make it easier for people at home to say, hey, what's this all about? What does this budget mean? The budget that we pass is also incorporated in here. All prior years of budgets this board passed, five years, is in here. So instead of someone having to go back and look up every department, it's all in here. One place, one stop shopping in a way.

▶ 1:02:51 Speaker 8: I think you can see that on the lower left on any of the diagrams, the historical trends are pretty interesting. As you can see, the line graphs on any city department, which way they've moved, or where they've been stable, or where they've been shifts in policy and things like that, so.

▶ 1:03:06 Speaker 9: And it's not a perfect model, it's not intended to be. It is, though, I think a very reliable indicator of where we've been and potentially where we could go at those levels of spending. So if we all recognize that perhaps they're too aggressive, the percentages, we collectively can work to bring that down, which is very important too. So in many, many ways it's a great tool, just like what Chris has shown us tonight. Just some more tools to help everyone get a better understanding of where we're at. I like the way you say where we're going.

▶ 1:03:41 Robert A. Boisselle: For instance, on page three on the visual budget you have funds at $5.3 million for the year 2016, and 2017 it looks as though you're down to $3 million for funds. So it looks as though we're spending $2.3 million of those funds are in reserve for the 2016 budget so it gives you quite an impression well you want a good that's the number that's the visual that you see up there now right a

▶ 1:04:13 Speaker 9: good feature here is that other years will show expenses outpacing revenue however so everyone can be at peace just as the past years that we they're in here the five years and every year thereafter by law that cannot happen when you set your tax rate, the left side has to equal the right. So the variance could be like this on paper, but the reality is this city, any city in the Commonwealth or town cannot pass a budget unless it's equilibrium, revenue equals expenses. So those are out there showing the deficits at those spending levels. However, the reality is you can never be at that point because you can never have a tax rate certified unless your revenue equals your expenses, period. So that's peace of mind there.

▶ 1:05:04 Robert A. Boisselle: Very good, gentlemen, it looks fabulous and I think the public's really going to enjoy it and it may be an interesting budget cycle this year after people see this. And again, be prepared, your servers better be prepared for an onslaught of information people coming in looking for this information. Thank you very much, gentlemen.

▶ 1:05:26 Speaker 4: Thank you, Mr. Chair. And just so the public is not confused, the fiscal 2017 budget has not been submitted to the Board of Aldermen yet. And for years beyond fiscal 2016, these are purely projections. So people should not be confused that any of these amounts have been voted. This is a model for people to see what the financial projections are. They are not real numbers. Alderman will still despite the the visual aspects of this will still be voting on the budget each year and I hope that that doesn't confuse anybody and I'm sure it won't okay before I recognize Alderman Medeiros is the act of the actual past year budgets in total going to be contained in this or are we going to or are they going to be summaries of budget categories the

▶ 1:06:15 Speaker 9: actual past year budgets are all from 12 to 16 they're in there in there so

▶ 1:06:19 Speaker 4: So they're all going to be- They're all in there. Anybody could look at the full, actual past year budget, sorry.

▶ 1:06:24 Speaker 9: Yes. They're all in there. Also, what's in there is only in there for 17 is the governor's budget proposal for state aid, and that's it, because that's the last piece of information we had when we went live was the governor's proposal for state aid, and that's it.

▶ 1:06:43 Speaker 8: So the next time 17 will be updated is when the budget's approved by the board.

▶ 1:06:47 Speaker 4: I'm not supposed to ask questions, but I've got one more. Who's going to be responsible for distilling and inputting the financial data? Who owns this?

▶ 1:06:55 Speaker 9: We have a team, as Mike indicated, my office principally. We're responsible, and we'll make sure that it's updated with the actual data that's passed by this board.

▶ 1:07:06 Speaker 4: Okay. Alderman Medeiros, I'm sorry to preempt your time. You have the floor.

▶ 1:07:12 Monica C. Medeiros: That's just fine, Mr. President. I think it complements it. um the dreaded question I must ask I think it's very exciting is how much

▶ 1:07:22 Speaker 8: does this cost the cost of the whole program was a one-time cost of $3,000 that we when we approved this program you guys you guys approved an order for it last year it's a one-time cost there's actually really quick there's like nine towns using its Arlington and over Mansfield Cohasset Essex Somerset born Lexington ourselves and what we've recently done also is at by being selected as a community compact there was a night an additional IT grant that was available and we actually formed a regional we won't have any more cost for this program but to possibly enhance and add some more user-friendly like dashboard and things the communities we applied for a regional application through the community compact for money to further enhance this next year but if not we're comfortable with the level of data that's being provided here but any time there's an opportunity for some state money we thought is a regional

▶ 1:08:17 Speaker 8: there's no like ongoing no there's no maintenance cost all the money was trained they trained us this gov and that that's it that's great and then

▶ 1:08:24 Monica C. Medeiros: just back to I think what mr. Della Russo had said that or I'm not sure if mr. Lindstrom that the last thing that's in there is the governor's budget governor's budget proposed budget so that has not just so the public knows that too that the legislature may very well that's a moving target out with different numbers too so that again is and you said that the actual real numbers are in place from 2012 to 2016 I thought when I saw the drop down that mr. Wilcox put up that there were some previous years prior to 2012 there no I

▶ 1:09:03 Speaker 9: don't maybe just be partial I think that might be part of what you could put in I

▶ 1:09:10 Monica C. Medeiros: think we decided look like 2007 so it's just poor angle I guess this gives good

▶ 1:09:16 Speaker 9: perspective on what was spent in previous years Donna would kill me if I

▶ 1:09:22 Monica C. Medeiros: had any more years so this has in it right now the operating budget are any of the outside enterprise fund budgets incorporated in here like water sewer enter no they are not do you anticipate that you know coming on board in the

▶ 1:09:44 Speaker 9: future well these two reasons really what the first and foremost is that this was designed for the operating budget I secondly those are self supported by fees and rates and not supported by taxation so at some point if one of these and as Mike was saying one of those enhancements would allow for that absolutely we'll put that in I just we can get that additional grant to do that

▶ 1:10:10 Speaker 8: I'd love to do that I think the point of the first iteration of the software was to be able to actually get tax bill it was taxable in the operating budget to enter and to be accounted for which was the goal of this first round and so

▶ 1:10:20 Monica C. Medeiros: things like when it's we see things like funds like that doesn't include anything just that's that's kind of off-budget it doesn't include like like the revolve

▶ 1:10:34 Speaker 9: funds or all the evolving funds under 53 and a half no it does not so that stuff

▶ 1:10:39 Monica C. Medeiros: is completely separate how about and you know some of the things I guess that I that I'd like to see incorporated and perhaps it is and especially the Melrose maps maybe some election stuff the wards and precincts yep we have that I just

▶ 1:10:56 Speaker 11: show you real quick so as part of the layers I included it on page sorry page eight we have zoning let's go to the whole city this was a fun one this was out of the trash days so a resident if they're a new resident or they're moving to another part of the city they can actually go in and see the trash day and

▶ 1:11:28 Speaker 11: as far as there you go I can tell you this year this came in handy I use this tool to estimate the override in a certain precinct for someone I used I actually traced all the parcels and I was able to answer that question in a couple hours instead of a couple days so it's very powerful to have this on my side in the office but yeah anytime there's any change to this map we'll

▶ 1:11:50 Monica C. Medeiros: update it okay and is there capability or something maybe to look forward to of incorporating some of the mapping of trails or things like that at Mount Hood

▶ 1:12:05 Speaker 11: or around in some of them right now the the way that we're actually doing trails open street map is of open source GIS site and that gives residents the ability to take a GPS on trails and actually map themselves and with some techie types they can actually add layers to this there are some trails that are over by the golf course that are in there I guess I can ask the Conservation Commission or recreation if they have any additional information and

▶ 1:12:35 Monica C. Medeiros: we can get it up I think that at times that maybe the open space project that Denise Gaffey had kind of led that a while back I think they had talked a little bit about it so it'd be great if it could be incorporated and you know especially if we get to the point where there is a phone app terrific to take

▶ 1:12:55 Speaker 4: with you thank you thank you Alderman Mortimer which one was out it was the

▶ 1:13:07 Speaker 1: map of the entire city yep no it's just kind of it's where oh yeah this is this

▶ 1:13:13 Speaker 1: is the one I'm interested yes does anyone know what this parallelogram is

▶ 1:13:21 Speaker 11: here are these lines those are outlines for the surrounding city so that parallelogram is revere this is revere it actually touches melrose down the 99 line

▶ 1:13:31 Peter D. Mortimer: that's correct this is and that address that's that's a pretty comfortable property we get a

▶ 1:13:38 Speaker 11: we get a chunk of tax on the town line yeah the i think the uh motel hotel down there is actually partially in melrose that's all i have thank you mr president hey is there anybody else alderman

▶ 1:13:49 Mary Beth McAteer-Margolis: thank you um this is this is going to be um fabulous for those people who are up at 3 a.m and want to data mine i'm only disappointed that we don't have the um water and sewer funds on there that'll be the next step i think if you can get any of those um kinds of funds in there eventually it will be helpful to everyone um but i think it's great I think it's really awesome. I've just been playing around with the site a little bit while Chris has been going through it. And I actually looked at the map site a couple weeks ago, and I wondered, when you were talking about having it linked to other departments, so when you look at the zoning map and you can see what different neighborhoods are zoned for, does it link then to the planning department or the zoning regulations? So people, like if people want to build an addition on their house, they can see where their house is and then they can link to see that they have such and such a setback or such and such a height restriction or that kind of thing?

▶ 1:14:58 Speaker 11: Yes, we have the option of spatially showing where the zoning is, but also on each parcel we can attach data to it. And part of the assessing data is the actual zone. so at some point we could put a link where they click on whatever the zone is and it can go to a document that stored all this is actually I should have mentioned this earlier this is all in the cloud we're not paying for any server for this we're not helping the IT department is only providing as I call the lights on this is a web-based product and it's on the cloud but we could restore one of those zoning documents on could link to like the

▶ 1:15:32 Mary Beth McAteer-Margolis: zoning ordinances anything like on the trash piece where it says the trash day could link to the trash ordinance that says how many barrels you can put out or

▶ 1:15:43 Speaker 11: whatever my yes one of my projects that I really want to do is where someone enters in an address for maybe a potential house or maybe the current residents and they see all the bills and everything city related and those links would be very important there where they can click on and get the documents that are relevant to their property and not just general documents and I think it's

▶ 1:16:04 Mary Beth McAteer-Margolis: It's just amazing and I congratulate all of you for pursuing this and doing it in house so effectively. So good luck with it.

▶ 1:16:14 Speaker 4: Thanks. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Anyone else?

▶ 1:16:18 Speaker 4: Orders before you, what's your pleasure?

▶ 1:16:20 Peter D. Mortimer: I'll place on file, Mr. President.

▶ 1:16:22 Speaker 6: Second.

▶ 1:16:23 Speaker 4: Alderman Mortimer moves to place the order on file. Alderman Boyce-Hell seconds the motion. On the motion, all those in favor of placing this order on file indicate by saying aye. Aye. Aye. Anyone opposed? That order will be placed on file. Thank you for coming in.

▶ 1:16:36 Speaker 11: Thank you very much.

▶ 1:16:37 Speaker 9: Thank you very much. Have a good evening. Great presentation.