ORDER-2016-60 : An Appropriation of $1,292,665.29 From Available Free Cash to Various Accounts as set forth within

Transcript (~1 h 1 min @ 53:35)

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

▶ 53:30 Peter D. Mortimer: The next order we have before us is order 2016-60. It is an appropriation in the amount of $1,292,665.29 from available free cash to various accounts as set forth herein. We are still under suspension. Mr. Della Russo, would you join us?

▶ 53:55 Peter D. Mortimer: And do you want anyone else with you, Mr. Della Russo, at this time?

▶ 54:01 Speaker 2: Good evening. Good evening, sir. Again. I believe that we follow down an order.

▶ 54:19 Speaker 1: The, in this order itself, the first is the $640,000 school other funding sources. and that is the amount of money that the city provides the school department essentially been each fall in order to balance their prior years of the current year budget in this case FY 16s budget that was planned for and there I put that request in front of you this evening the the second one again we related to the school would be the medicaid transfer in three hundred thousand dollars again that's the same type of uh request that the board is familiar with from the past and we provide reimbursement to the school department for medicaid services that they provide

▶ 55:12 Speaker 1: the board's wish i'd i'll go through and each one one by one unless there's questions of whatever

▶ 55:22 Peter D. Mortimer: the pleasure of the board uh you you have the floor mr delaro so please please present it as

▶ 55:28 Speaker 1: you wish and then we'll proceed to we'll colloquy thank you the next um on the list would be um pine banks uh ball field two sixty five thousand six sixty two seventy eight that um is joined by about four items down pine banks capital outlay ball field one for fifty thousand and each year in the fall we provide pine banks with the amount of 115 000 662.78 and that's within the budget that they provided the board in capital my hope this year and i've mentioned that to president on was that we may place that in the capital outlay section of the regular operating budget each year seeing that it may be more appropriate now going forward so you may see that change in the fy 17 budget and if you do you heard it here tonight from me as we move on the next one is a request for a stabilization fund deposit which the board is familiar with of fifty thousand dollars right now there is one million six eighty seven two nineteen fifty in the stabilization fund of the city this would make it one million seven thirty seven to nineteen fifty and a very healthy balance and we've been very fortunate thank God not to have to draw on that for many years and I hope that continues the next is a request for $50,000 to put into the OPEB trust fund you saw that last year and prior we have to begin to address the obligation of health insurance liability no different than pensions responsibility and this is the contribution that I'm requesting for this year these items for the board's FSC have been spoken with with Standard and Poor's the outside auditors and I think you'll even find it on the reports from both that it's important that we do that and show that we we are responsible and that we recognize we have that liability right now in the fund there's $125,850.13. If the board approves it, there will be $175,850.13. Next is suits and claims stabilization fund. I'm asking that $50,000 be deposited into that fund as well. And again, for the purposes of those here and those at home, no one can withdraw from these funds without the approval of the board of aldermen so the funds that are deposited can only be withdrawn upon approval of this board and again in that fund i'm asking that fifty thousand dollars be deposited there's currently six thousand six hundred forty dollars and fifty seven cents that would bring it up to fifty six thousand six forty point fifty seven and i have spoken with the city solicitor and he believes this is reasonable and appropriate also

▶ 58:46 Speaker 1: as we move down essex north shore agricultural fifteen thousand nine forty three fifty five uh another student that makes five at the time of the budget there were four students we budgeted for four and has happened the prior year but year before last i believe the same event happened one more student decided to enroll and that's the additional cost next is municipal building repair 14 500 and uh i will defer that specifically to um john chena public works he does have a an itemized list of where he would ask that that be expended if the board approved it i.t prior year bill 14 500 strictly telephone bills and mr pesos is also here this evening to speak to that if in fact the board would like to hear from him next one is myself 9 750 for the auditor's office this cost is for an actuary to do the next two years of the opb um study again that relates to health insurance and the liability of the city under gas b45 we're required to do that each two years um this is the cost that's the same cost as it was in the prior two years that we had to do it so there was no increase in cost um next is city solicitor prior year bills six thousand nine oh one and again uh mr van campen is here this evening that relates to the insurance cost for the city and um obviously at the time we do the budget to the time that is finalized there can be changes in vehicles that are insured etc added to or removed and that reflects the additional cost and i think that happens again just about every fall we find that some type of adjustment that number is again is six thousand nine oh one moving down the list police radio systems upgrade six thousand five forty five sixteen and again i believe the police chief is here uh this evening there's questions on that he'd be i'm sure pleased to respond as we move down in fact i do want to mention on the next page uh police expense uniforms nine hundred and fifty dollars that is another item that the police chief can speak to

▶ 1:01:23 Speaker 1: this evening after rule of the board um as we move along we have uh expenses in the uh election i.e city clerks offices acu vote maintenance of four thousand seven hundred city clerk expenses professional services four thousand city clerk salary overtime and i believe that the office is here this evening to address any specific questions related to that in the upcoming elections and the next one on the first page is Memorial Hall again prior bills 3,000 1280 a lot of the time we find that that additional cost is due to the volume of activities at Memorial Hall for example if you use more activities generally mean more utility costs electricity lights etc so essentially it's it's volume driven I believe farmers wrote is here tonight to speak to that if the board would like and the next page again election expenses professional services the final number in total for them the request was the twenty seven hundred dollars for that purpose at the end of the day um in the event these orders are approved this evening we will have $935,746.05, and I'll repeat that, $935,746.05 remaining in free cash that we have yet to appropriate. Thank you. And again, I'll open the floor up to the board. Any questions, any department heads are here to help you. Thank you very much, Mr. De La Russo.

▶ 1:03:00 Robert A. Boisselle: alderman boyce hell please thank you very much it's very informative um what was the total free

▶ 1:03:06 Speaker 1: cash that was available this year it was 3 million 398 353. okay and we've been increasing that year

▶ 1:03:10 Robert A. Boisselle: by year for the past five years i believe um if you look there should be a list um i have a list

▶ 1:03:26 Speaker 1: as a matter of fact hang on folks i'm sure you have everything right

▶ 1:03:46 Speaker 1: again through the chair to all the members uh this year again is three three million three ninety eight three fifty three last year as of july first two oh one four it was uh three million one eighty three oh twenty five prior year was two million one ninety five oh seventy four and 2012, it was $1,966,044, and in July 1st, 2011, it was $1,463,899. The five-year average is $2,441,279.

▶ 1:04:21 Robert A. Boisselle: So are we expecting to see that every year, an average of $2 million, plus or minus, one way or the other?

▶ 1:04:39 Speaker 1: it's difficult to estimate oftentimes and for a lot of reasons reasons that we can't control and I think that we will see that we use more of our funding capacity to fund the regular operations as we move forward you'll see that next year out of necessity but we have to remember that and reflect on the fact that when the Department of Revenue certifies the free cash they look at your receivables they look at overdrawn accounts they look at your chapter 90 reimbursements they look at deficits they look at all every single fund I i have every single fund to see if we have any deficits that we're carrying and why i bring that up is because so much of that is beyond our control what i mean is we can submit requests for chapter 90 we can submit requests for snow and ice reimbursement it can be approved etc but the money does not come in the door at a certain time as far as they're concerned it never came in so they can hit they'll charge the city that because even though you you have the money coming as if a certain data hasn't come in so they could reduce your free cash by half a million a million dollars in here just like that and that's what they do so our objective always is that we and again Bob I'm going around the corner just a little bit but I think it's important is that is that on our end, what we can control is what we budget. We control this number to the extent that we don't overextend ourselves. If we overextend ourselves, then you can end up with a zero free cash, a negative free cash. I remember when I was back, I came here in 92, it was over 2.9 million negative free cash. Negative, that means you had overextended yourself by almost $3 million. You had no way to pay for it. You had overextended money that you didn't have coming in. So what we do is we control it by our level of expenditures. We have to watch what we spend. If you spend too much, you're not going to see results that are positive. So we control in this room, collectively, the budget. The budget is the biggest driver of this number, outside of everything else that happens. If we're prudent, if we're responsible, and if we say to ourselves, we have to account for the rainy day. We've had so many years. When the state cuts us in the middle of the year, the reason the city has not had to cut services because the way you budget, you're conservative. And you're able to sustain hits, because you don't put all your money out there, you hold back. Because when the state cuts you half a million dollars, you want to have that in the bank. Regular general fund operating fund money, so you don't have to cut services. And that's what we do here. I have a structure that I use, and I've used for many, over 20 years, that I try my very, very best to insulate that so that when the bad thing happens in the middle of the year, we're protected. As you extend yourself too much and spend too much, and you start to crack those protective barriers, those ratios, then you open yourself up to problems, all kinds of problems. because then once you crack it and you can't fund your operating expenses then you have a significant problem it takes years and years and years to recover so I guess the short answer is we should be pleased that we have this but reflect on the fact that a lot of this money also is permits one-time revenues that you're not going to ever get again period so a lot of that's going to vanish because Because once a lot of the big developments that are completed and those big permit fees go away, this will go just like that. So you want to keep yourself aware of that also, that this is not a real IE forevermore number we'd like it to be. But the practical reason is where we are, 96% residential, we have to be reasonable that we're not going to have all major developments each and every year to help us with this. So again, using it prudently and wisely is everything, because there's no guarantee whatsoever it's going to be here next year.

▶ 1:09:00 Robert A. Boisselle: So you're saying we would be gambling, really, by depending upon this particular pot of money

▶ 1:09:09 Speaker 1: each year? Each year. I mean, I can't stress that enough. I sincerely strive so that we do have, at the end of the year, undesignated fund balance, which is really where it comes from. positive that allow us to have that but never never never run to the bank on that I don't run to the bank on what I can't control the DOR controls what this number is I may say geez I think it should be two million they'll turn around and say stop because of this this and this we're gonna reduce it by this amount no matter what even though it has nothing to do with you but because other people haven't paid you but they owe you whether it's grants that they you were supposed to get we have the problem each and every year we have to chase a lot of the grants reimbursements chapter 90 another one and we have to chase our division because if we don't get that money in even though we're owed it they hit us against this and that makes the number smaller and smaller so we have to afford we can control let's control it but also continue to be very very aggressive and when we do get grants when we do are we told we're going to get a reimbursement it's upon us to chase them because and make sure we get the money in timely because no one's gonna wake up and look out for our

▶ 1:10:24 Robert A. Boisselle: interests if we don't in the order 2016 60 1.2 million dollars is being used as free cash yes you have two items here that represent point nine nine hundred thousand dollars out of the 1.2 I understand the Medicare Medicaid fund transfer where is the money going the six hundred and forty thousand or

▶ 1:10:55 Robert A. Boisselle: half a million dollars going to funding sources so what are the funding sources

▶ 1:11:01 Speaker 1: that we talk about here I can speak in general about it but I believe I would defer anything specific to school department but typically what happens is

▶ 1:11:10 Robert A. Boisselle: Can we have the school representatives just come in?

▶ 1:11:12 Speaker 1: Is other funding sources no different in my world? Just for the record, sir, I am Kristen Thorpe,

▶ 1:11:22 Speaker 2: the current chair of the school committee, and Margaret Driscoll, the incoming chair of the school committee. Welcome and thank you for your presence here this evening. Please proceed, Alderman Boycelle.

▶ 1:11:34 Speaker 3: Well, yeah.

▶ 1:11:36 Speaker 2: The auditor. Very good, thank you, sir.

▶ 1:11:37 Speaker 1: then you'd see that they have whatever funds set up entitled other funding sources or other funding sources contractual and this is just like other applied funds this would be another source like we have on our own budget we have multiple funds that fund the operating budget of the city no different than the school department so they'll have other applied funds that will go towards funding their overall budget so this is just one of them this is one of many and that's why they count that as an element of their funding sources for the budget

▶ 1:12:12 Robert A. Boisselle: that it was just passed well my question is basically the 640,000 that's listed here you have in your budget one item or total expenses category six hundred and thirty nine thousand seven hundred and twenty eight dollars is that's what I'm trying to iron out is that 640 going to this particular account I don't know

▶ 1:12:35 Robert A. Boisselle: exactly what you're looking at that says well I'm looking at the munis budget that you submitted or the school committee submitted six months ago right

▶ 1:12:45 Robert A. Boisselle: but I don't know which line item is total total other expenses the bottom line for that particular category called other events are not the same thing no

▶ 1:12:52 Speaker 2: no okay if you go all the way to the end of the budget I'm at the end of the budget okay and the budget line is 27 million nine hundred seventy five

▶ 1:13:06 Speaker 2: thousand dollars other funding sources six hundred thousand dollars it doesn't

▶ 1:13:12 Robert A. Boisselle: give six hundred thousand I'm looking in the budget itself not the expenses categories other expenses not other funding okay I I don't have that in

▶ 1:13:21 Speaker 2: front of me but I can say it's not it's not a single line item our entire budget then we subtract the amount that that we understand that you will that will be funded this way which was six hundred thousand dollars and then and then we come up with the bottom line at the very end and so this six hundred thousand dollars pays for staff which is 90% of our budget existing staff not new staff

▶ 1:13:54 Robert A. Boisselle: so you're using free cash to basically pay staff yes we're using free cash to

▶ 1:13:59 Speaker 2: fund six hundred thousand dollars of our total budget most of which is staff now

▶ 1:14:06 Robert A. Boisselle: if we didn't I mean the average that we were getting here that was represented was an average of 240 240 400 thousand or two million four hundred thousand that would have been a decrease if you couldn't get this six hundred and forty

▶ 1:14:23 Speaker 2: thousand this year we would have to cut staff or I mean it's really we've already bought our supplies we we are contractually obligated to pay for out of district placements really there's a plan there's a plan in place so there is no we do not have a current plan for no plan if you if we didn't have this free

▶ 1:14:39 Robert A. Boisselle: cash you you would go back to ground zero and we would make a plan you would

▶ 1:14:49 Robert A. Boisselle: make a plan we certainly would and the staff will be cut half-year and programs

▶ 1:14:52 Speaker 2: would be disrupted it would have to be if we didn't get this $600,000 okay so

▶ 1:14:56 Robert A. Boisselle: you're you're planning ahead of time that you're going to get this money or where the city's going to get this money you get a share of that money at that point yes okay thank you very much and thank you for coming this evening thank

▶ 1:15:12 Peter D. Mortimer: you mr. chairman thank you alderman Boyce L president con is next please yeah

▶ 1:15:18 Speaker 3: what happened is we could all reflect back to the budget time and I can hear myself talking about this budget time and basically what we've been doing for

▶ 1:15:34 Speaker 3: over the last three years, is we've been being asked to balance the school budget with free cash. And this year, the past year, we voted to do that. And so this is essentially making the transaction that we talked about back at budget time. So that's what this is all about. And the $300,000 Medicare, Medicaid fund transfer is something that we've done for many, many years. And I believe that's also something that the school department relies on. So this is essentially doing what we indicated we would do if we didn't actually vote to do it, but that's what we did. And I always have questions about that, and I'm sure I'll have questions again at budget time if this is the way we budget this again. I hope it's not, but we'll cross that bridge when we come to it.

▶ 1:16:27 Speaker 3: As it relates to free cash. Yes, sir.

▶ 1:16:33 Speaker 3: We could drive our free cash number down if we didn't go to the two and a half limit each year. We would be reducing our total budget expenditure and we would have theoretically less money.

▶ 1:16:51 Speaker 1: Yeah, there's no question that if you didn't use your two and a half, you would be taking in less money, absolutely. Right. And therefore, spending less money.

▶ 1:17:03 Speaker 3: And it seems to me that we really now are in a position where we're kind of reliant on spending about a million five in free cash every year.

▶ 1:17:19 Speaker 3: doing the school transfers, and I've got to believe, and I haven't averaged it out, but I've got to believe we spend $500,000 per year in public safety over time transfers in each year.

▶ 1:17:32 Speaker 1: Couldn't agree more, and we haven't even crossed that bridge yet. I'm waiting for a determination as to what may be necessary in those departments. Both chiefs are working on that, but absolutely correct.

▶ 1:17:44 Speaker 3: So if we had less than $1.5 million in free cash, we would be in some significant difficulty as far as I could see.

▶ 1:17:51 Speaker 1: I would second that as far as being able to address these issues, particularly where we had the past winter that was just absolutely horrendous. That took $1.2 million right off our top of the table, absolutely. That was unprecedented, unprecedented.

▶ 1:18:10 Speaker 3: and you know and i appreciate mr delarusso you can your conservative approach um if if i if i had all the power i might take her with the top two and a half number to try to calibrate this closely but uh maybe i would run us into difficulty if i did that

▶ 1:18:30 Speaker 3: and as it relates to this order um are some or all of these items time sensitive are these

▶ 1:18:41 Speaker 1: things that have to be voted this month the most important one to me is the prior order was the determination of the snow and ice deficit because i have to literally contact the department of revenue first thing in the morning to advise them the action of the board on that particular item and then we that sets the clock for the um uh setting preparing tax the tax bills the whole process and that's very very time-sensitive that has to happen timely okay um and and we've

▶ 1:19:12 Speaker 3: already voted that theoretically that would pass absolutely at our meeting on the 21st and the the opeb stabilization account is not a mandated uh account as yet is it um it's it's it's not

▶ 1:19:28 Speaker 1: theoretically, they are treating it like it's one. They've already hit us on our financial statements. Standard & Poor's has already made a reference that they're very, very concerned on how we're going to be able to pay that obligation, and that will begin to reflect on downgrades on every city and town in the Commonwealth unless something is done to become more reasonable with that expectation. Based on what we know today, we would have to put approximately eight million dollars more in a fund each year just to meet the debt obligation which is more than the five million plus that we do for the pensions and under proposition two and a half as everyone knows that's just not possible in this commonwealth and that won't happen but even though theoretically you're absolutely correct although they have not mandated they have my mind it's a mandate and if I don't show representation here that we're addressing it

▶ 1:20:29 Speaker 3: they're not going to be happy. No, I think it's, it's sound financial management to try to get ahead of the curve on this because this does look like it's going to become a large unfunded mandate in the future.

▶ 1:20:40 Speaker 1: Sure is.

▶ 1:20:43 Speaker 3: So the $15,000 expenditure for Essex Agricultural is for one additional student?

▶ 1:20:50 Speaker 1: One additional student.

▶ 1:20:54 Speaker 3: And what program are they availing themselves there that we can't provide either at our regional vocational school?

▶ 1:21:09 Speaker 1: vocational um well i i uh they they do provide student enrollment and names of students and um i would i guess that that must represent the courses or the yes the the they're taken and they one of them is environmental science and technology one's animal science another one's animal science another one's exploratory another one again is animal science so more than that i

▶ 1:21:33 Speaker 3: can't speak to that so these are all things that aren't offered at northeast regional i think

▶ 1:21:40 Peter D. Mortimer: that's all i have for now thank you thank you thank you president khan alderman mcateer margolis

▶ 1:21:44 Mary Beth McAteer-Margolis: please um thank you mr chairman the um you mentioned the pine banks ball field funds um and did you say that next year you're hoping to put that into the budget yeah yeah i mean excuse me don't go away school committee people i'm working up to you okay happy to stay

▶ 1:22:04 Mary Beth McAteer-Margolis: um is that an all so you would we're hoping that next year that can be part of the budget yeah my

▶ 1:22:10 Speaker 1: that's my expectation for the chair and um i think it's i think it'll be more representative on a consistent basis of what our obligation is under the agreement with pine banks and also when they actually do present the budget each year um it won't be in a two-part scenario for funding it'll all be before you all in one package and i think it'll be very helpful because these are um

▶ 1:22:32 Mary Beth McAteer-Margolis: appropriations that will continue they're not just uh for the repairs and the new ball fields that were built they are continuing the maintenance and whatnot of the fields so it is an operating

▶ 1:22:46 Speaker 1: budget expense and i think given the chair the uh the uh relationship we have with the trustees

▶ 1:22:54 Mary Beth McAteer-Margolis: etc that it makes more sense and i mean my concern always i mean i'm i'm i'm pleased that we have as much free cash as we do in order to satisfy these obligations but my concern is always that we are paying for things that are not one-time expenses with funds that we can't always rely on particularly

▶ 1:23:18 Mary Beth McAteer-Margolis: as far as the school department is concerned so um you know i just i i fear that we're going to be going down that road if uh our free cash you know if we if we did not go to the levy limit would we then be decreasing the amount of our free cash correct in fact the matter is if if it would

▶ 1:23:35 Speaker 1: reduce the amount of funds you have available period right and one of the concerns we haven't talked too much about is that there are obligations under nesco spending that we have to meet under red reform and those are dollar obligations and they want to be we have to ensure each year that we've met those so making things vanish if you make this vanish it may mean you don't meet the net school spending obligation for that year and then the state will not let you set your tax rate so it's not that simple that we can exit stage left on some of these expenditures and and by exiting stage left you mean

▶ 1:24:15 Mary Beth McAteer-Margolis: cut the budget right so there are obligations that we have that go above and beyond our own little hamlet that we have to meet in and we have to I mean we can't just decide that we're going to be cutting the budget if we're not going

▶ 1:24:35 Speaker 1: to meet these other obligations and the state has made it very very crystal clear that if you don't meet your obligations there they will not set your tax rate until you take action to meet your obligation period department of ed has spoken a lot of the dor supports it so every year we do reports for the school and devia we have to show that not only our contribution but all the work that the school department does together makes that happen and um so far thank god we've been able to do that but it is it's a dollar number and as you know it goes up every year right

▶ 1:25:11 Mary Beth McAteer-Margolis: and as i i think probably um miss thorpe at least remembers the times in the past when we had mid-year cuts from the state absolutely and we had to do mid-year layoffs and whatnot so um It is a concern of mine, and I hope that we can continue to find other ways to fund these than just free cash. My one other question is related to the pension. We don't, do we have a, we don't take any of our free cash money and put it towards the pension stabilization or the pension obligation.

▶ 1:25:53 Speaker 1: Well, we don't, for our regular pension obligation, chapter 32 in the regular budget, we use recurring revenue to fund your pension obligation. Right, okay. Here, where we have a fund, the OPEB, or the Post Employment Benefits Fund, that fund is where we're putting this money in.

▶ 1:26:09 Mary Beth McAteer-Margolis: I'm sorry, which fund is it? OPEB. Okay, that's the OPEB.

▶ 1:26:12 Speaker 1: That's for the health insurance. Okay. it's like phase two now as we talked about there's pensions as health

▶ 1:26:20 Mary Beth McAteer-Margolis: insurance and liability for both so that's in the same bucket the health insurance they are separate okay but now I mean I there may be a thought at some

▶ 1:26:31 Mary Beth McAteer-Margolis: point but the OPEB is the pension 50,000 to the pension no the OPEB is health insurance okay so we do not have a line item in oh no here for the pension at all no right okay thank you and thank you for your conservative approach so that we can continue to keep things afloat particularly in the school

▶ 1:26:55 Speaker 1: thank you for your support because I can't do my job without your support it

▶ 1:27:00 Speaker 2: won't happen thank you Thank You mr. Jim thank you alderman McAteer-Margolis

▶ 1:27:10 Monica C. Medeiros: seeing Oh alderman Medeiros please thank you I just want to first I want to make statement just in general in terms of free cash and since we've talked about it and you know one of the other options and I'm not saying that we should do this right now but some things that I've in some ways when we have free cash it's almost like we've collected or over collected from the tax base or maybe we've underspent but we're bringing in more money than we spent so there there is additional funds left over once we've reconciled all our expenditures that's That's why the state certifies that money as free cash.

▶ 1:27:45 Speaker 1: We're not over-collecting anything. We're only collecting what's legally allowed by law.

▶ 1:27:51 Monica C. Medeiros: We collected what's legally allowed by law, but we didn't spend all of it.

▶ 1:27:55 Speaker 1: Well, that's yes and no. I mean, the fact of the matter is, this is an accounting mechanism, an accounting tool. You don't have to do anything with your free cash. That can just sit there and be an undesignated fund balance, which is like a cash.

▶ 1:28:10 Speaker 6: Like the retained earnings.

▶ 1:28:11 Speaker 1: each year and not do anything with this, you could just take this and rip it up and not do anything with it. You're not mandated to do anything with it. They're saying these are funds that through your operations of not spending as much as you anticipated, which is critical. You haven't spent as much as you anticipated. So there's a positive that adds to this number by simply not spending what you could have. So everyone, we share that thought with everyone. Now try to be as prudent as possible because the less you spend, the more it will be returned in that pool.

▶ 1:28:45 Monica C. Medeiros: Right, and some communities vote sometimes to return that to less than the next, to the tax payers to return the less than the next year's tax increases.

▶ 1:28:56 Speaker 1: You would have to be careful through the chair because if they have a structural deficit as we do, that would be a move that would be really improper. until your structural deficit is resolved now we would never go down that

▶ 1:29:09 Monica C. Medeiros: road back in June I think you said we didn't have a structural deficit so so I mean you know I had referred to it as that and they said oh no that's not what it is so it's just a little confusing I think to the public about what that is

▶ 1:29:27 Monica C. Medeiros: not confusing to me not confusing to me either but it is when we're told it's different things so yes just to go back to you know you mentioned that we've done this every year as President Kahn pointed out it has been the past three years that we've we've been using free cash and in my recollection three years ago around this time it came to us and it was a little bit of a surprise to me at the time because when we had gone through the budget that year I didn't realize that we were using free cash in order to balance the school budget and I feel like and I shouldn't speak for other aldermen but I feel like it was a little bit of a surprise to some of them as well at that time but my personal thoughts at that point were that I didn't want to put the school department in a place where they would have to cut things in the middle of the year and so

▶ 1:30:18 Monica C. Medeiros: now this the past two years after that we've we've done this in sort of a proactive manner if you will I think we've been a little bit more knowingly that we've been funding it this way although I don't I share the concerns about wondering if this is going to still be there the school Medicaid fund

▶ 1:30:40 Monica C. Medeiros: transfer in of $300,000 that's been done for quite a long time and I believe it's been that amount for quite a long time can you talk about why it is that we're sort of passing this through from the general fund and to the school

▶ 1:30:57 Monica C. Medeiros: department the law requires it the law requires it and this is a specific reimbursement for like you know almost everything has gone up is this a percentage is this a flat fee why is that number stayed at 300 000 when we've seen other expenditures go up if we're getting reimbursed is it only you know can you explain and talk about that sure we we don't predicate

▶ 1:31:22 Speaker 1: the amount of the 300 000 on the actual receipts taken in for that prior year we have made a determination that 300 000 is what we will provide the school department in that category to represent

▶ 1:31:40 Speaker 1: that cost but um that's why it doesn't have the standard with that you know a little bit more one year a little bit less than next year but our commitment to them for planning purposes is three hundred thousand dollars that's why it's there and my understanding is that was sort of a

▶ 1:31:52 Monica C. Medeiros: reimbursement that has to do with the medicaid portion of school salaries is that correct

▶ 1:32:04 Speaker 1: provided to students services and they get they get uh cost money to provide those services and there's a reimbursement process this is recognizing that and you mentioned that in many of the

▶ 1:32:13 Monica C. Medeiros: the different funding sources that we have grants and and other items that we're not always get receiving what we're owed in a timely fashion correct right um and i guess one of my questions here is on the police radio systems upgrade i see we have the the chief uh i had thought we we had expended some money or accepted a grant I my recollection could be that

▶ 1:32:56 Speaker 7: isn't for a radio system upgrade that's the reportable radios for our new officers we had some failures and they weren't able to be repaired so we had to

▶ 1:33:12 Monica C. Medeiros: replace the radios they're portable radios okay and and this is just kind of an overall thing that sort of bothers me a little bit about the way this this order has been presented to us and it's it's not uh from you chief so much as you know we we do have these two pages of the account names but we didn't really have too much detail beyond that as to what some of these expenditures was chief did did you provide like a memo or anything when you put a

▶ 1:33:42 Monica C. Medeiros: requesting and and i i'd just like to ask you know i guess mr delarusso because i think usually these are coming from from your offices when we see these rather large items that that we get a little bit more backup i know you've made yourself available by telephone for calls but you know i'd like to see us have information i know we have the department heads that are here which i'm very happy to see all of you but you know i i think respectfully we might not need to see them sitting here all night if we had a memo say for the three thousand dollars worth of prior bills at memorial hall you know kind of what that was about i've never done it any differently here we

▶ 1:34:21 Speaker 1: are what you see is what you get on top of that we have the original invoices with us that's why we asked the department to be here this is the one for the insurance the six thousand nine oh one and it shows that all the detail one could possibly ask i don't know if that's in the past that's what we have that's what i'm saying that's but that's what the department had to have so if you have a question he can respond to you i think flooding the board with invoices was ridiculous

▶ 1:34:56 Monica C. Medeiros: that's why they're here this evening in case you have a question i think a a memo explaining some of these line items could be helpful and i've seen some of these in the past and i think that would

▶ 1:35:04 Speaker 1: help help me you do give a memo in the actual request there's a memo requesting there's like

▶ 1:35:10 Monica C. Medeiros: and he has how much information there's not that is not that's why he's here that's not included in our order that's why we have just these two pages and that's that's it but you never i did

▶ 1:35:19 Speaker 1: respectfully to the board i did put out a request that if anyone had any questions at all to call me directly and you did not let's let's try to talk one let's try to talk one at a time please

▶ 1:35:33 Speaker 1: available so that if you wanted a copy of this i'll give you whatever you want right i think

▶ 1:35:38 Monica C. Medeiros: moving forward i would like to see and i feel like i've mentioned this at previous meetings because you know it's it's not that that i can always pick up the phone and call during my work day to talk about this and it's that i think it should be there for all of us to see and for the public to see consistently not just in a phone call and uh i respectfully disagree with the

▶ 1:35:58 Speaker 1: information you have provided is more than adequate for conversation discussion of any order we give the board it has not changed in all the years i've been here and i've been i've been

▶ 1:36:11 Monica C. Medeiros: doing this for my 24th year sometimes just because it hasn't changed doesn't mean we can't do it

▶ 1:36:15 Speaker 1: better and i think exceptionally well quite frankly yeah so i don't agree with that so chief

▶ 1:36:19 Monica C. Medeiros: Chief, these are for three portable radios.

▶ 1:36:27 Monica C. Medeiros: Yes. And police uniforms. Are these additional uniforms? Are these that were, have these been included in any of the collective bargaining agreements, or was this included in our-

▶ 1:36:37 Speaker 7: Every officer that is hired, a new officer, we supply them with safety vests. When we see an officer in a detail, they're provided a safety vest. We hired five officers this year. We had five vests. In addition to that, we needed holsters. officers are lefties some are righties we always keep a couple spares because they do break and

▶ 1:37:00 Monica C. Medeiros: that's what this is all for thank you chief lyle i also was kind of wondering if we could have some explanation on the line items related to elections and the city clerk's office absolutely hi good

▶ 1:37:39 Monica C. Medeiros: evening i i see that you have a few line items here could you kind of explain what these expenditures are and you know why we didn't have them in the budget and and talking to me out of

▶ 1:38:08 Speaker 5: of election law okay that's you that's city clerk professional services we added twenty seven hundred dollars to professional services as you know I'm a one-person office and we had a busy election and with absentee voting and everything I can't do it all so we need to have somebody in there to help me just answering phones, doing absentee voting. Absentee voting is at an all-time high, and with the presidential year, we have the primary on March 1st. I need to have somebody in there. I can't do it all on my own. Yeah, just the stuff that's coming up. I mean, we have the census going out January 1st. We have campaign financing. We have the presidential primary ballots are going be available as of january 15th the elections march 1st um there's just too much to be done

▶ 1:39:05 Speaker 5: so this is more for the the coming year or the well it's just for march yeah and it's because this election was so crazy that we weren't expecting it to be that i needed more help so we used most of the budget where we usually only i only usually get someone 15 hours a week for six weeks during election that's all I get and will you have early voting

▶ 1:39:27 Speaker 5: early voting will be just for the presidential election in November so that that's gonna be insane I'm gonna need a full-time person because it's we have at least twelve to fourteen hundred people absentee vote during a presidential year I can't imagine how many will come into the office when early voting is an option but we'll discuss that when they come for next year's budget but yeah that's so that's just to cover much and then I have the acuvote this one is to press professional services and then acuvote maintenance is my other option that where we hired because of our equipment being old which we have discussed a few times our machines are over 20 years old we rented two machines which are now a thousand dollars apiece and we hired a person from LHS who runs does all our programming and everything to come in and work election day from 6 a.m. until 9 p.m. in case something went wrong and we think we should do it again for March we did look into the machines but we wanted the other cities to get the bugs out before we ordered them because there are a few issues people are having with them and we don't want to do it during a presidential year so we are looking into purchasing all new equipment because we have to it's not really an option if they're 20 years old and we need to move to a better machine so for the next three elections we're going to need additional the machines there in case one breaks down and we're going to need

▶ 1:41:14 Monica C. Medeiros: the person there to be on call in case something goes wrong and uh the city clerk uh expense or

▶ 1:41:22 Speaker 1: expense expense professional services and overtime okay well the overtime um is the overtime um linda comes in my budget salaries and wages so her overtime is through my budget and the overtime was really for the election so it says city clerk election overtime okay that's 3 500 and then i'm requesting 4 000 professional services and that is um from january 1st this is to process um for the dogs registration starting january 1st i'm requesting 4 000 because we now have like close to 1900 dogs that we register and we bring in close to 40 000 a year and this we need additional help to process the dogs the dogs okay so we've gone to the dog

▶ 1:42:14 Monica C. Medeiros: i couldn't help it all right thank you very much um and i see in the back mr pesos

▶ 1:42:31 Monica C. Medeiros: thank you good evening good evening um so we have some prior year bills yes i refer to this as

▶ 1:42:42 Speaker 2: mostly being telephone these are mostly telephones uh so of the fourteen thousand dollars that are there uh approximately about ten thousand of those are uh overages for the previous year and the 4,000 of that were some bills that did not get encumbered in time so even though the money was there they did not get paid so they had to be kind of

▶ 1:43:08 Monica C. Medeiros: rolled into this request here when you say overages are these like mobile

▶ 1:43:12 Speaker 2: phones or these just regular these are these are a variety of different land lines yes so these are mostly different landline services in in your experience

▶ 1:43:23 Speaker 2: does this happen frequently i can't recall it it it does and uh for this year we tried to budget this number more precisely than we have in past years so the this request in prior years was a lot larger than this um this request ordinarily um with the exception of that 4 000 that was just bills that didn't get encumbered in time it's about would have been about ten thousand dollars um which is a lot less than it has been in prior years i've come in the past looking for fifty to sixty thousand dollars a year uh in overages because we didn't budget that number as tightly

▶ 1:44:00 Monica C. Medeiros: really as it should have been okay thank you thank you very much for coming thank you uh and i see uh

▶ 1:44:29 Speaker 5: I see we have $3,012.80 in prior years bills I had a 17% increase in events from the year before I'm level funded for electricity and gas so I just at the end of the year didn't

▶ 1:44:40 Monica C. Medeiros: enough money to pay for guests 17 increase in events in in a number of events in a number of

▶ 1:44:45 Speaker 5: events and i also had an increase in the hours a lot of our events last year were eight hour rentals instead of five hour rentals and also we had uh three percent of my events actually they were for four per day so that means i'm eating the entire day or ac and all day very good thank you

▶ 1:45:08 Monica C. Medeiros: you and I think last but not well not quite last but we've mr. Shana on the maintenance municipal building repair 14,500 these funds are being used to

▶ 1:45:29 Speaker 2: purchase some new furniture desks and office furniture in the training room and the mezzanine mayor's conference room and the office of planning and

▶ 1:45:43 Monica C. Medeiros: community development so these are really hopefully one-time expenditures

▶ 1:45:48 Speaker 2: yes we will be doing all the painting we've done some of the painting ourself and house cleaning the rugs and this is just gonna update those those three

▶ 1:45:59 Monica C. Medeiros: locations with some new furniture Thank You mr. shut up mr. de la Rousseau I

▶ 1:46:12 Monica C. Medeiros: have to be honest with you that the item that really bothers me on this list here is the Essex North Shore agricultural line item because prior to our budget hearings I had sent over a number of requests related to the school budget for questions so that I would do it in advance I know they were a lot of

▶ 1:46:37 Monica C. Medeiros: questions and at the time you had indicated that you know there were some questions that I had asked that might interfere with the collective bargaining

▶ 1:46:52 Monica C. Medeiros: so I stressed the ones that I was really interested in and one in particular was about Essex Aggie and this was because a constituent had come to me and said that his son was on the waiting list there and it sparked a memory that back in March we had appropriated some extra money for an additional student and at the time it had stuck out to me because I thought it was rather late in the year for us to be noticing that we had an extra student at the time it seemed like it was just some accounting and so I did bring up this question about how many students would be going next year I noticed it was the same exact amount as as the superintendent's memo from march that we had budgeted in this current fiscal year's budget and if that was going to be adequate and if perhaps if we had additional students on the waiting list was that factored in uh that night in june 22nd in our budget meeting

▶ 1:47:59 Monica C. Medeiros: i specifically asked you and mr percon if if there if that budget number was enough and if there was any students on the waiting list and you both kind of looked at each other and answered that no that there there weren't at this time and i really knowing that i had had this call from my constituent i i second guessed myself and i second guessed you i have to be honest and i went and i checked with essex aggie and in fact we had a student on the waiting list and you know that we had already applied and was on the waiting list and works they were expecting five students to come at that time and you know I don't know

▶ 1:48:51 Monica C. Medeiros: whether you checked with Essex Aggie or not but I feel like you weren't 100% truthful with me at that time and I found that to be disrespectful to me and and to this board and to the public and and it's also more troublesome because here we are and we have to of course fund that student and I I waited to say something because I really hoped that you know perhaps you'd come to me and tell me that geez you know you had overlooked this and it had been a mistake but you know it's here and obviously we need to pay for that student but I'm kind of disappointed in the fact that my questions from budget time still haven't been answered and in fact that one really wasn't answered a

▶ 1:49:41 Speaker 1: hundred percent truthfully I want to speak to the chair that's an ignorant comment because it shows you're incapable incapable of understanding how this budget is put together and it's a disgrace that you would make that comment to me in front of this board and impugn my integrity well you are you are deserving of nothing less than an indirect answer which I'm going to give you at that time that's the number we were told that's the number I budgeted mr. McCone and I sat there we waited to the last moment I got this invoice dated 1119 that I was advised there was an additional student did you check that thought that you would impugn me and suggest that it's my responsibility to go to to do this due diligence in an effort that is never ever been upheld in the past really disgust me and that respectfully to the board I have nothing

▶ 1:50:41 Peter D. Mortimer: else to say about this order Alderman Medeiros you still have the floor now

▶ 1:50:43 Monica C. Medeiros: please yes I guess I'll just opine a little bit to say that I would think that if I had asked that question that they might have double-checked with the school and with their own records because it's this our city superintendent public schools that submit those applications so they should and mr picon was here and was involved in those requests and i think they should know that information they may not have realized that they needed to know it until i asked it but certainly they should have asked it thank you

▶ 1:51:15 Speaker 2: thank you alderman medeiros are there any other alderman wishing to be heard i recommend the

▶ 1:51:21 Peter D. Mortimer: We have a motion from President Kahn to recommend this order for passage. Duly seconded by Alderman McAteer-Margolis. Any further discussion on this motion? Alderman Bird, please.

▶ 1:51:36 Speaker 6: I'm going to be brief.

▶ 1:51:38 Jaclyn L. Bird: I just want to say that I understand wanting to have accountability and wanting to have information.

▶ 1:51:47 Jaclyn L. Bird: This is the second time in a month that I have seen an exchange between a member of the board and department head that you know has been adversarial I don't think that that's

▶ 1:51:57 Jaclyn L. Bird: the most constructive way for us to move forward we have real challenges here I mean we have I think we've done an incredible job if you'll give me a minute because this is one of my last meetings I think we've done an incredible job putting as collectively all of us everybody in this room everybody around the horseshoe here putting money into stabilization accounts putting money into trust funds making sure that we're taking care of those savings pieces I also think it is important to ask the right questions I think we each have a different appetite for how much information we want on some of these details and how specific we want people to be but when I look at the fact that we have you know real funding issues with the schools that we are concerned about the reliance on free cash I think that one of the best things that we can do going forward is to make sure that we're all on the same team team here you know we have to make sure of that this six hundred forty thousand dollars that we you know I don't like to call it an IOU because that seems like we're doing something wrong but if we didn't have that IOU to the schools would be cutting six hundred forty thousand someplace there's no way to get around the fact that it's either carry it over with free cash make cuts for somewhere else in the 72 million dollar budget or raise revenue which the city just voted against so we have real issues we need real solutions but I think we need to have a recognition that we're all on the same page on that and you know and give each other the benefit of the doubt and in and and be respectful to one another I don't see this getting easier over the next couple of months as we look at this budget and I certainly hope that it's approached with a spirit of coming together on that so you know I respect both of you I think that you know you both play an important role here and that's all I have to say Mr. Chairman, I'm certainly going to support the order.

▶ 1:53:48 Speaker 2: Thank you, Alderman Byrd.

▶ 1:53:50 Peter D. Mortimer: Seeing no further Alderman wishing to be heard, a motion to recommend this order for passage was duly made by President Kahn and duly seconded by Alderman McAteer-Margolis. All in favor, please say aye. Aye. Any opposed? Hearing none, this order will be recommended to the full board for passage at our next meeting on December 21st.