← City Council · 2014-06-16 · City Council Regular Meeting
Public Participation
Agenda original PDF
Minutes original PDF
Transcript
▶ 1:26 Speaker 1: All those in favor of the motion indicate by saying aye. Aye. anyone opposed motion passes at the minutes of june second meeting are hereby accepted thank you
▶ 1:34 Speaker 5: motion to open the floor for public participation second alderman medeiros moves that we commence
▶ 1:37 Speaker 1: public participation the motion is seconded by alderman voicel on the motion all those in favor anyone opposed motion passes this is the portion of our meeting where any member of the public can come forward and speak relative to any order that is on our agenda and before i call people up to speak i would also like to indicate that our meeting is being taped by mmtv and will be rebroadcast for your viewing pleasure at periodic intervals during the coming weeks is there anybody who wishes to speak relative to any order that is on the agenda this evening my name is arnold conch
▶ 2:18 Speaker 2: 66 cram or lane melrose massachusetts i'm here to comment on one of the items in the budget involving the free tree planting program. I'm not talking about replacement trees. Most people are, a lot of people aren't aware that any homeowner may request a tree along the, quote, tree belt in front of their house or in certain cases it can be set back on their property. When I discussed the offer of free trees with the DPW management last fall, they said that they buy 50 trees a year at $200 each, and almost all are used for requests for a free tree, not replacements. To plant the tree requires a three-man crew, a truck and a backhoe, and sometimes permits from utility companies. Except for watering, maintenance is provided for a year. The funds come from the mayor's free cash account, which comes from the general fund voted on by the aldermen. Not surprisingly, last fall, an alderman told me of a homeowner requesting a tree to improve the view of the house and then sold it. Basically, we're talking about a taxpayer-subsidized expenditure that should not be used to enhance private property and only be used for a replacement tree. Should a homeowner desire a tree, I am sure it could be arranged at their expense. Thank you.
▶ 3:53 Speaker 1: Thank you, sir. Thank you. Anybody else who wishes to come forward, please do so.
▶ 4:02 Speaker 5: Motion to close public participation.
▶ 4:03 Speaker 4: I have a, hold on, I see some movement back there.
▶ 4:06 Speaker 1: Alderman Infern is moving to close public, is somebody, oh, I saw some movement.
▶ 4:14 Speaker 6: Thank you, is this the public hearing on the?
▶ 4:16 Speaker 1: No. No, it is not. This is public participation.
▶ 4:19 Speaker 6: Thank you, I wasn't clear when I just walked in. I'm Jerry Morose. Speaking tonight about the budget that you're considering tonight. There are a lot of good things that the city does with the money that we get from tax payers and from beyond.
▶ 4:43 Speaker 6: And the city is in good shape.
▶ 4:52 Speaker 6: There are some issues with our budget though that trouble me a little bit in the way that we fund certain things.
▶ 5:00 Speaker 6: Much of what we fund apparently, and I use the word apparently because it's impossible to look at the details of the city and what we spend money on. But apparently are funded by things that aren't quite in what I can tell
▶ 5:16 Speaker 6: coming from the tax base pay for things that ought to be funded by the tax base. And I paid a lot of attention to the school department and where a lot of expenditures are paid there and things happen there but on the city side as well I see certain things that are payments made by people that then are applied at some level toward what I believe would be city functions and I'm going to mention a few things and the reality is I don't have the data to prove one way or the other which is I'd like to be able to understand it but but let me give you an example it's my sense from not seeing expenditures in the school side that the schools are paying for the water and sewer they use. It's not clear that those schools' water and sewer are being paid by the tax base. It feels as if the school's water and sewer costs are at some level being borne by the rate payers of the water and sewer enterprise fund, which means then that we have people who
▶ 6:11 Speaker 6: use water and who use more water paying a disproportionately large share of their burden
▶ 6:21 Speaker 6: toward the school system even the trash fee you know that the trash fee it doesn't seem like the trash fee that we all pay in the aggregate the the $200 per year is actually all going to cover the trash itself and that there's not other expenses that are paid around that we don't know because we don't see exactly what all these what all these costs are and and those are just a couple examples i could go on about the people who use the schools the the recreation department basketball um kids and their parents who pay a huge amount of money toward using the facilities of the school now we know that a lot of that is a profit to the school you know what they pay goes beyond what it costs for the custodians and maybe for the utilities and that type of thing and so So those funds are used to pay for more services or responsibilities of the city that shouldn't be borne by certain segments of the population based on their use of certain things. Education stations is another similar thing where we make a profit off of the parents of younger kids in Melrose, the kids who are school age or even a little bit before. And the question isn't do we want to fund all the things we fund, but the question is what's the responsible and appropriate and at some level responsible way of funding them if our taxes that we have currently and under prop two and a half we're limited won't pay for the things that we seek to do as a city should we be more honest about what we're seeking to do and try to reign either reign that in or be more open and honest about what we need to have higher taxes to be able to pay for those functions instead for the last number of years we've we've we've applied costs of the city it feels to me as if we've applied costs of the city we've applied funds of individual people towards cost of the city and that troubles me and I and I and you know there's no other venue to come and talk about this except under a budget discussion and which is why I come here today there are a couple other issues on another side that i do find concerning as well you know the the city charter puts the mayor on the school committee and i i pay attention to what happens with the mayor and the school committee and how it's represented that way you know the school committee even though their budget doesn't show it spends about 45 million dollars in the city money it's it'll probably be more than that this year and in the mayor as a member of that school committee has already a an opportunity
▶ 9:03 Speaker 6: to decide if they want to do something innovative with the schools when you're when you're applying 45 million dollars to something you know if they wanted to carve out 10 000 or 100 000 or 200 000 say to do something innovative that would be great the city budget that we have now though gives the the mayor ten thousand dollars essentially to decide about what he sees as my or maybe he has some advisors of his or something to help decide what they think is innovative I have a disagreement with that what I see those funds being applied to I don't see as as innovative I'm not saying they aren't worthwhile there aren't some great things but that isn't that isn't kick-starting innovation in our schools it's not getting people to think completely differently about how we educate students how we how we construct our education system here. It's basically, historically, been about applying, you know, let's do this nice thing and this nice thing, and this is a worthwhile thing, but it's not innovation. And so it's a small amount of money, $10,000, and it almost seems ridiculous to be bringing it up here. But philosophically, like my other side of my statement tonight, philosophically, the schools can do something innovative if they want to. The mayor can certainly has enough power in the school committee to to advocate for a reform agenda or an innovation agenda he doesn't do that there I don't know why the city gives the mayor money to do that separately another thing along that same line that comes to mind actually is the the Messina grants that we've started a couple years ago you know we've always had the shouldn't say always but for a long time we've had the Melville's Council for the Arts cultural Council and um and it's a group of people who long-standing have been together to decide you know how to use whatever funds we have for arts for our city and to now go in and we've done the last couple years and it's on the the proposal again this year is now we're going to carve out another $10,000 to give to a separate group of people again under the mayor at some level to decide about arts and and it just feels to me that we are a bigger city than putting everything under the realm of the mayor's purview at some level about who he picks to put on a certain committee of that type of thing and and again it's troubling these these are not huge amounts of money as money goes but as principles go I believe that they do amount to a fair amount of Melrose deciding what's important to us are we being open and upfront about what we're trying to do and what the true cost of that is or at some level do we you know I'm not going to ask the question I'm going to say the statement I believe that we hide the true cost of certain functions of the city government in schools so that it's not exposed to people to be able to make an independent assessment of quote is that amount of resources worth what the result of that
▶ 12:10 Speaker 6: function is. And you're looking at a big budget tonight, and you're probably long past the idea of looking at details. And I guess I would hope that as we go into next year, that some of these issues we start to think about, and think about more honestly about, and I shouldn't say honestly, think about more carefully about what is the true intent and what is the true result of these little things that we do that seem innocuous but at some level they kind of go to the core of at some level undermining prop two and a half and I'm not even advocating here whether we should be raising taxes beyond prop two and a half and not I think we just should be open and upfront about it the
▶ 13:04 Speaker 6: The other, anyway, I just hope that, well, this is the other thing that actually is one last thing of concern to me, is that the budget you're apparently working off of tonight, the proposal, and I think I saw it on the website, it's dated April 24th. And I brought this up to people a month and a half ago or so that there are some anomalies in that April 24th budget. There are a lot of FY14 actual columns amounts that are higher and some are significantly higher than what the FY14 projected amount is. And when I'm doing budgets in my realm of things, you know, I want to have that projected being as accurate as possible because that projected is what I'm really basing my decision for the next year on. And for you to still be working on that April 24th document, and this is almost two months later now, and the fact that, you know, it could be a simple mistake why those figures are so out of whack in some cases, but that that's still the public document we're working off for the budget doesn't give the public confidence that we're really looking at these numbers carefully and trying to figure it out. We hope that behind the scenes somebody has and there's just an anomaly there and nobody's figured out how to take care of that and the numbers are all transferring perfectly. But I would rather see things from June 16th on that document or June 12th on that document to be able to make a real comparison about are the things we're budgeting for FY15 really in line with what we needed to spend in FY14 and that we have spent in FY14. Anyway, thank you for your time.
▶ 14:38 Speaker 1: Thank you, sir. Is there anybody else who wishes to address the board on public participation?
▶ 14:48 Speaker 5: Motion to close public participation. Second.
▶ 14:50 Speaker 1: Alderman Inferno moves to conclude public participation. The motion is seconded by Alderman Forbes. On the motion, all those in favor? Aye. Anyone opposed? Motion passes. Public participation is hereby concluded. Chair would entertain a two-minute recess so that we can set up for our joint public hearing with the planning board. So moved. Second.