Department Presenter 151 City Solicitor 611 Library 152 Human Resources 912 Worker's Comp 913 Unemployment 914 Health Contractual 911 Pension/Retirement

Transcript (~1 h 41 min @ 26:42)

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▶ 26:28 Devin Romanul: All right. Moving on to our first agenda item and our next in the series of departmental budget presentations. We have Department 151, the city solicitor joining us this evening. None other than the City Solicitor, Shannon Phillips. Thank you so much.

▶ 26:42 Speaker 8: Good evening. Through the chair, Shannon Phillips, city solicitor. Thank you all for having me here tonight to talk about the budget for the legal department, the city solicitor's office for the city for fiscal year '27. As department head, I can tell you our department's mission is to provide in-house, high-quality, cost-effective legal service and representation to the city. We work proactively to educate and advise city officials and departments on a daily basis to ensure policies and actions are legally sound and effective. Our department, like I mentioned, functions as a full-time in-house legal counsel for the city staff, consisting of only two employees, myself and an assistant city solicitor, Amy Lindquist, who has a focus on schools and labor. And we deal with a wide variety of legal matters on a daily basis. We regularly advise on matters such as zoning, employment, labor, Title IX, civil service, procurement, licensing, education, ethics, public records, and open meeting law, just to name a few. We also prepare and review all contracts, leases, deeds, easements, and other legal documents for the city, as well as assist counsel in the administration and drafting ordinance, and the administration of drafting policy. We represent the city and schools in a variety of courts and administrative agencies. We manage and coordinate it and respond to public records on behalf of the city since last July. That's involved responding to more than 330 public records on behalf of the city and schools. And we have implemented a NextRequest software that now has made it transparent, so residents can go on and search previous public records requests as well. And every record we respond to, they're able to publicly view. We also oversee and advise on labor and personnel issues on a daily basis, which also consists of negotiating with the 12 different collective bargaining unions between the city and schools. So I'd like to just highlight some of the changes in our department's budget for this year that you might have noticed that are in the documents before you tonight. So first off, the salaries in my department. Generally, the salaries and wages have increased by 3%, so my understanding is that's a 2% step and 1% COLA. In the first line of the salaries, there's also been added for this coming fiscal year an administrative assistant role. So that's a role that's proposed to be shared between HR and legal for administrative support. Last fiscal year, I lost the full-time legal assistant in my office that had been in our office for 20 years, at least, prior to that. So it's been an adjustment with administrative tasks, just daily functions. We reviewed the needs of the department between HR and legal, and we decided a split would make the most sense for that type of administrative function. So you'll see that first line of the budget actually includes half of the budgeted salary for that position. So I think it was 18,104 would be included in that first line. You'll also notice from the budget that the legal department houses the entire insurance policy for the city and schools, that very large number you see in the last section of my budget. The property insurance line encompasses city, like I said, it encompasses city and school liability. So this includes general liability, auto, professional liability, so of city officials, department heads, et cetera. Auto insurance, property insurance, cyber insurance, which has become increasingly important in the past few years for municipalities. This year, our broker, who represents over 90 municipalities in the Northeast, did a full marketing of our policies very broadly on the insurance market. The number that you see on here was a good faith estimate prior to going out to market. Because of the timing of budget cycles, we're not able to get numbers from the insurance providers. So over the past couple of days, I received very good information from her. It looks like we're going to have some very significant cost savings on this number for this coming fiscal year. So that's under the property insurance.We also, for social engineering, so that's become a second leading cyber insurance claim. That's become really important. So that would be employees maybe being tricked into paying an invoice that's fraudulent, et cetera. Those are things in the past insurance companies have tried to limit liability and limit funds that they will pay out for those. So we now have an increase to $1 million for this coming fiscal year on that with our new policy she's marketed. We also need to take into account with this number, that council approves any potential autos or new buildings that might be coming online in the coming fiscal year, because I do pay those costs out of that line item as well. And I believe the other increase that I just wanted to highlight here was in the claims deductible line item. So that's historically been 10, but my understanding from the auditing department... This is really important for deductibles. So we have a $1,000 deductible for any car insurance type case. It's $10,000 for property. It's $25,000 for public officials liability. So this is really just so we can have a centralized place to have the deductibles, because my understanding is in the past it's been, where is this going to be paid from? Is it police? Is it DPW? Is it legal? So the purpose of increasing it that much is just so it will be housed in one location involving insurance. And I believe that's all I have. I'm happy to answer any questions you all might have.

▶ 32:06 Devin Romanul: Thank you so much, City Clerk Phillips. First, I have Councilor Kowal.

▶ 32:10 Elizabeth Kowal: Thank you, Attorney Phillips. Where is outside counsel fees? They don't look to be in this budget. Where are they generally housed or accounted for?

▶ 32:20 Speaker 8: Yep. So any outside counsel that we need to retain for specialized- Mm-hmm ... services or legal matters, usually in professional services is where we pay that out. Okay. So that's that 30,000 number.

▶ 32:31 Speaker 7: Got it. Thank you.

▶ 32:34 Speaker 6: Other councilors?

▶ 32:38 Devin Romanul: Councilor Jamaleddine.

▶ 32:39 Maya Jamaleddine: Thank you. Hi again. Hi. You've mentioned that over the past year you processed 330 public record. And as we know, that these cost a lot of money for the city. Do you mind just sharing some numbers about how much this is costing the city to process those, and how much... I'm not asking for exact numbers, but how much this is with the new system that you said that now we're going to, it's saved online- ... and people can just pull all the previous public record. How much it will save us, just in comparison of how repetitive we receive public record?

▶ 33:22 Speaker 8: Yes. Okay. So if I understand the question, so the database is very cost-effective. It saves a lot of time. Before, we were manually having to track due dates of public records requests, things like that. We were having to communicate by email with various department heads. You might have one public records request that you have to send to four different departments, and this streamlines it so you can all see each other's communication back and forth. They can upload the documents directly, you can redact the documents within the software, and then you can easily share it with the public. And there's still an internal and external chain. And the public can go on, like you mentioned. They can go on and look at previous public records requests that might be responsive to a question they have, and then they don't have to spend time submitting it. For ones that are going to be very time-consuming or might be too broad, under the public records law, we can charge a fee for that. So that's a $25 an hour usually fee we have to charge. We can petition for more. We don't normally do that. But especially some of these very broad email search type requests that we've been getting, having IT upload 3,000 different emails, and then by the time you extract those with the attachments, it ends up being 6,000. And so some of these are just, it's very time-consuming. It's difficult, I guess, to put a cost on it because we are salary employees, Amy Lindquist and myself. Like I said, we do charge, and we would require them to pay if it's going to be an excessive amount of time. Mm-hmm. But I guess it takes up a lot of time.

▶ 34:55 Maya Jamaleddine: And now for those that probably they wanted to see if we already have those records- Yeah ... online, where would they look?

▶ 35:03 Speaker 8: So it's right on, if they just go onto the NextRequest platform, they can go to All Requests and there's a search bar. They can just enter a keyword. Yeah. So they could do building permits. And search it. They could, yeah.

▶ 35:14 Maya Jamaleddine: And who is upholding that? Because I know this is also time-consuming. Is that something that your office-

▶ 35:21 Speaker 8: Yep ... is doing? Yes. So right now, if you go on the website and you do public records, they can either input it themselves. If we get it by email, by phone, it's usually myself- Mm ... or someone from schools that inputs it directly into the system as a new request just so we can track everything.

▶ 35:37 Maya Jamaleddine: And just sort of different than that- Sorry ... I know that in previous years we had some interns from school and students in- Yes ... from middle schools. Are you doing it in your, to help probably and do some interns, some hours, community hours?

▶ 35:55 Speaker 8: We haven't done that. I would love- You haven't. I'd love to start that. Yeah.

▶ 35:57 Maya Jamaleddine: Is that something that can be taken into consideration, or legally because of the nature of your office, it's not something that could happen?

▶ 36:09 Speaker 8: We could. I guess it hasn't been considered before because we would have to pay, or they would have to be getting school credit for it, usually, for internships. So we just haven't set up that type of program for my office yet. We're also not going to court on a regular basis- Mm-hmm ... which a lot of these interns want that experience. So just setting it up the right way. I think we'd have to- ... put a lot of thought into that.

▶ 36:28 Speaker 5: Awesome. Thank you.

▶ 36:29 Speaker 8: Yeah.

▶ 36:29 Devin Romanul: Up next, I have Vice Chair Vandiver.

▶ 36:32 Kimberly Vandiver: Thank you. Just curious, thank you for the detailed memo and information. I was curious as we're in 2026 and AI is starting to become a bigger topic, and in some cases it's quite good, especially for kind of formulaic tasks. Is that something that you see impacting in any way or perhaps something we could use for some of the more tedious public records requests or anything like that to save time?

▶ 37:04 Speaker 8: I think there's a lot of pitfalls still when it comes to AI. I've seen it very recently on a listserv where someone sends an email and they cited cases that were not cases. So there's a lot of pitfalls with it still. I think you have to just know that you're trusting the source and you're checking. A lot of the legal research software, that was one of the other line items on here, elect mass. We have a new contract, a two-year contract with Lexis. So Westlaw and Lexis are now offering AI-type sources within the legal research database. That was an additional cost. I think we were going to wait a couple of years to kind of see how things play out and look at what the cost of that would be and see if it would be worth it. So they do have those tools available in legal research. But it's more useful for like drafting pleadings and standard documents and things like that than it is for doing any real research or relying on that thing.

▶ 37:57 Kimberly Vandiver: Thank you. That's helpful. Thanks.

▶ 38:00 Devin Romanul: Up next I have Counselor Chen.

▶ 38:02 Jason Chen: Hi. Two questions. So the 2026 actual spend is only about a third of its projection. It's right about for the contractual spend, sort of about 10,537. We only have a month left to go, but we still have to spend about $25,000. Are we actually going to be a lot less than we budgeted, or is this the timing of invoices and cash out?

▶ 38:27 Speaker 8: I don't know the day and time that this number is calculated. I have to leave that to the moderator.

▶ 38:33 Speaker 6: Probably from a few weeks ago. No?

▶ 38:34 Speaker 8: I'm not sure when she submitted this. I don't know when the actual versus projection is calculated. I know it's not- Mm-hmm ... always the night year before council on the budget, so.

▶ 38:42 Jason Chen: Do you typically expect a lot of invoices right at the end of the year? Which would explain why-

▶ 38:45 Speaker 8: No, we are using outside counsel right now for one of the negotiations, so I do expect a few more to come in- Okay ... in the month of June.

▶ 38:54 Jason Chen: All right. And then we've got some 40Bs that the developers will likely appeal. Yep. And is that potential outside counsel?

▶ 39:05 Speaker 8: Yes. We had one previously. I've used it. Sometimes we use them only for consulting, depending on how far it goes. Otherwise, we use it to-- I'm also sort of a co-counsel, but I assist them with that. So I have, yeah, used outside counsel for those services. Okay. Thank you.

▶ 39:18 Devin Romanul: Mm-hmm. Counselor Park.

▶ 39:21 Speaker 3: Thank you. I want to go back to something that you had said earlier about the property insurance. You had mentioned something, you were excited about the fact that there might be some savings in that. Correct me if I'm wrong. But could you repeat what you said? I just want to make sure I understand fully.

▶ 39:39 Speaker 8: That our broker did a full market. She went out to market on all the different policies, and she's expecting a substantial savings, beneath that 968 number that we have.

▶ 39:50 Speaker 3: Okay, so that 968 does not reflect the potential savings that we may-

▶ 39:57 Speaker 8: Oh, no. No. Okay. It would be under that is what I'm estimating. Yes. Excellent. So-

▶ 40:02 Speaker 6: But if-- Yes

▶ 40:02 Speaker 3: ... so that being said, how did we derive the 968?

▶ 40:07 Speaker 8: That's based on a, we always ask them before we submit the budget for an estimate of where they see insurance being projected. So this is before she went out to market. So that was based on an estimate. I think it was a percentage estimate that she did on the various policies, depending on what they were seeing at the time. That's usually how we do it when we submit the budget.

▶ 40:25 Speaker 3: Okay. Great. And I would love to, at some point, when that final number comes in, if you could just broadcast that to the- ... the council, that'd be great. Thank you.

▶ 40:35 Devin Romanul: Terrific. And I looked and it says the munis report was generated on May 7th, in case anybody was curious. Up next, I have Counselor Finocchiaro.

▶ 40:44 Cal Finocchiaro: Thank you. I don't have any questions, but thank you for your explanation and just thank you for advising all of us and many of us in the administration. You're very helpful. And I just want to make a motion to move to bottom line.

▶ 40:58 Devin Romanul: Second. Second. A motion to move to the bottom line made by Counselor Finocchiaro, seconded by Vice Chair Vandiver on discussion. Seeing none, Madam Clerk, will you please call the roll?

▶ 41:09 Speaker 3: Yes. Vice Chair Vandiver? Yes. Counselor Chen? Yes. Counselor Finocchiaro? Yes. Counselor Jamaleddine? Yes. Counselor Karimcheti? Counselor Cole? Yes. Counselor Park? Yes. President Freeman? Yes. Chair Romanul? Yes. All in favor motion passes.

▶ 41:27 Devin Romanul: All right. The motion passes. We'll move that to the bottom line for FY27. Thank you, Solicitor Phillips, for joining us. Up next we have line, excuse me, department number 611, the library. Joining us, Ms. Linda Gardner, director of the library. Thank you so much for joining us.

▶ 41:44 Speaker 6: Take it away.

▶ 41:46 Speaker 9: Thank you for having me tonight. I am happy to be here to talk to you about the fiscal 2027 library budget. The public library provides access to information for the entire community. This includes books and periodicals, both physical and downloadable, internet and computer access, and programming for all ages. Our staff take great pride in their work, which includes selecting and preparing materials for circulation, planning programs, circulating materials to our patrons, answering questions, and more. I'm incredibly proud to be able to work with the staff that we have, and I am so grateful for the work that they do. I'd like to take a quick moment to give you some of the year's highlights. As I mentioned in my memo, we have registered over 2,000 library cards in the past year. Last month, we checked out 14,179 physical items to patrons, which was the second highest circulation count of all the Noble Consortium libraries, with only Beverly being higher. Melrose is typically in the top three libraries, particularly since regaining our Sunday hours after the override vote. We average about 2,500 visits per week. In May, we will be hosting 52 programs for children, teens, and adults, and we are busy planning for this year's summer reading programWe have been working over the past several months to enhance offerings for our youngest patrons and will be continuing that work. I encourage you to come in and see the changes and additions. I will note on that work that all of the new items that we have been able to purchase for the children's room have been funded by the Friends of the Public Library. When we were doing our building renovation, they did a large fundraising campaign. So we received a lot of donations of funding to the Friends that has been specifically going towards that so that city funds would not be needed for that. At the other end of the spectrum, we partner with the Council on Aging to provide curated book selections for patrons who are unable to leave their homes. Library staff create book bags based on patrons' preferences, and Council on Aging volunteers deliver the bags to our patrons' homes, enabling residents who can't come in to maintain their ability to use the library. Access to information through technology has become a very important part of our services. One of our new offerings this year is a laptop kiosk. The kiosk provides patrons with access to 12 laptop computers in the library, which they can choose instead of one of our standard public PCs. This option, combined with the building's wireless internet access, allows all of our patrons to choose their own space in which to work, regardless of whether they are able to own the technology personally. Not everything is technology, though. We recently added a puzzle swap on the main floor, along with a space to sit and work on a jigsaw puzzle, giving patrons a sense of shared activity, which can help combat social isolation, and it's just fun. I've enjoyed watching people think they were just going to walk past it, and then 10 minutes later, they're still there. I am happy to answer any questions you may have about the budget.

▶ 45:25 Devin Romanul: Perfect. Thank you very much. Up first, I have Councilor Kowal.

▶ 45:28 Elizabeth Kowal: Hi, thanks for joining us tonight. I just have a question about the overtime line. Given that you're open just regular hours, I'm curious as to how and when overtime is incurred.

▶ 45:41 Speaker 9: Overtime, large percentage, it's the Sundays. It's because we've gotten our Sundays back. Full-time union staff contractually get time and a half when they work Sunday shifts. Okay. Thank you.

▶ 45:58 Devin Romanul: Thank you so much. Up next, I have Councilor Jamaleddine.

▶ 46:01 Maya Jamaleddine: Thank you. Hi, how are you? So we've heard a lot of feedback tonight, and we've received a lot of positive feedback. I wonder, how do you collect your feedback? Whether community members or anyone, do you have a system in place to collect those feedback?

▶ 46:23 Speaker 9: When we do formal things like the surveys, obviously, we get the survey results. We regularly get emails that can be sent to the library and will be forwarded to me or whoever is appropriate. People are always welcome to walk in, and do walk in and talk to staff. And if it's not me, staff forward that information to me.

▶ 46:47 Maya Jamaleddine: Mm-hmm. Now, because I do want to take into consideration some of us may not feel very comfortable going and walking directly and sharing those feedback, and they prefer other ways. So I'm glad that you have emails in place. Have you considered anonymous box that people can just put those feedback in box and you collect it, or you review it by the end of the week or day?

▶ 47:15 Speaker 9: We could consider that, yeah.

▶ 47:18 Speaker 5: Yeah. Yeah. And

▶ 47:21 Maya Jamaleddine: one of the things that you just mentioned about puzzle and jigsaw and- Mm-hmm ... based on what you decide, do you decide to on these two? Is it internal decision, or is it based on community requests?

▶ 47:36 Speaker 9: The two things we have there, it's the puzzle table and then the puzzle swap. And we had a puzzle table that we kind of always had jigsaw puzzle out in the past, and that was always very popular, and we'd have a few people mention that. And then we had also had public interest in whether or not we could do a puzzle swap. So we thought the two of them went nicely together.

▶ 48:06 Maya Jamaleddine: Awesome. And you mentioned about the fundraiser, which I remember very well last year. Do we have any money left from the fundraising?

▶ 48:18 Speaker 9: The Friends do have funds, yes. I don't have those funds personally. The Friends of Mowers Public Library is a legally separate 501 [ 3 ] . Mm-hmm. And yes, they do still have funds.

▶ 48:32 Maya Jamaleddine: So the money that was collected from the fundraising is still with them. Yes. And they will have access to it, and they control it. It wasn't directly given to you to-

▶ 48:42 Speaker 9: So there were two pieces. There was, I believe it was 200,000 that was given to the building project itself, and that was before the city council. And then there is another amount of money that they have- Okay ... that we ask them for things.

▶ 49:03 Maya Jamaleddine: Awesome. And you mentioned that you've received some feedback and via email and stuff. Do you mind sharing some of those requests, and how has it been in general?

▶ 49:21 Speaker 9: I recognize that, as we know, there are concerns still. Honestly, the overwhelming amount of feedback that we've had in person since we started implementing the results of the survey and talking to people have been overwhelmingly positive. We are seeing more people spending time. I'm seeing a lot more buzz in the children's room. And we've had many patrons going up to our staff and making a point of thanking them for hearing the survey and for implementing changes.

▶ 49:57 Maya Jamaleddine: Awesome. That's great. Now, it was a lot of requests and questions, but what kind of support do you feel the library may need? Or what is it that you're missing as well, physical or other kind of support, to be able to accommodate more requests from the public?

▶ 50:21 Speaker 9: Staff. It's a big area because the friends can't help us with that. There's only really one source that we can get more staff from, so that would just give us more. We are working to accommodate as much as we can. But at the end of the day, in order to do more programming, more of those things, it would be staff.

▶ 50:49 Maya Jamaleddine: And when you say staff, is it a specific specialty like program manager, or with specific skills, or is it just admin?

▶ 50:59 Speaker 9: No, it would be more like, I think, library assistants, staff who can be at the desk, which gives the programming staff that we do have more bandwidth.

▶ 51:11 Maya Jamaleddine: Okay. Thank you. Thank you.

▶ 51:13 Devin Romanul: Terrific. Up next, I have President Freeman.

▶ 51:16 Bradley Freeman: Thank you so much for being here tonight. I'm a big fan of the library. I do remember when my kids were little going to the younger library, and I did love the children's room, so I appreciate the advocacy of folks, and I appreciate what you're doing to try to meet in the middle and find solutions here. I did just want to ask a little bit about the-- I see the line item in here for the NOBLE program, which is obviously the larger library network. Can you just talk a little bit about that and explain the benefits Melrose derives from that?

▶ 51:42 Speaker 9: Absolutely. So in Massachusetts, just about every library is in a consortium. There's several of them. And the library consortium membership pays for a vast array of services and resources. It includes our internet connection. I have an internet connection with the city, and one other admin does. All the rest we get through NOBLE, including our wireless. It's our server and support for our technology. It's on-site and remote staff training and consulting, software development, and support, and that's largely for the software that we use. When you check a book in and out, we have a program that has the data and information for the entire catalog and all the patrons in all of the NOBLE libraries. And then shared library resources. So for example, our OverDrive downloadables, we all pitch in together to share the cost of that resource. So it saves us and the city. The IT department would have a lot more to be doing with us if it weren't for this. It represents a fraction of what we would pay if we were doing all of these things on our own and separately.

▶ 53:19 Bradley Freeman: That's great. As a frequent patron of the library, I'm always so impressed when I go there, and they're able to tell me, "Well, Peabody has this book," or "Saugus, and it'll be here tomorrow for you." So I think that alone is a huge resource. And then I see the line item for new books. Is that purely physical books, or does that include e-books as well?

▶ 53:39 Speaker 9: Yes. So great question. Basically, that whole section represents what we're providing to patrons. So books for that line is books and periodicals. So books, magazines, newspapers, pretty much physical items. Then we have where it says download. That would be more the OverDrive and Hoopla, the downloadable items. And we separate it out that way in part because we're just required to report those separate things to the state at the end of the year.

▶ 54:18 Bradley Freeman: And are there requirements within the NOBLE consortium for investments each year in the library to improve your collection to provide benefit to the entire consortium? Do other libraries match?

▶ 54:31 Speaker 9: There's no requirement, per se. It's what we're all here for, so it's what we want to be doing. There is a requirement at the state level that we need to spend a certain percent of our budget on materials that go directly to the public.

▶ 54:53 Bradley Freeman: Wonderful. Thank you so much.

▶ 54:54 Devin Romanul: Terrific. Up next, I have Councilor Karamcheti.

▶ 54:58 Manjula Karamcheti: Hi, how are you? So great to see you. First, I think you're doing such a wonderful job with the library, and it's always been one of my favorite places in the city and continues to be. You know that I'm a library enthusiast. We've met for the past six years during budget times, and my mother-in-law was a librarian as well, so they have a very close place in my heart, and I'm appreciating the enthusiasm of the community in terms of the children's center and sort of wanting to advocate for it. So I have a couple of different questions kind of related to that, but I think my first is I'm looking at your line item for programmingAnd it looks like for the past few years, it's been $2,600, which doesn't seem like a lot for the amount of programming that you actually offer at the library. So I'm just curious about what you spend those funds on, and then how do you supplement? Because I feel like for the robust program that you do offer, that's not a lot of money.

▶ 56:08 Speaker 9: No, it's not. So that goes to literally supplies, it could be glue sticks or whatever. And it also goes towards bringing in outside programmers. We, the Friends, really have typically funded the bulk of our programming.

▶ 56:34 Manjula Karamcheti: Okay. And then, I think donations have come up a lot in terms of public comment that people have brought to our attention, letters that we've gotten. I'm making some connections between needing more staff to do that kind of work because it takes time, energy to go through donations and that kind of thing. Are there any other rules or regulations, or barriers to accepting donations and that kind of thing? More for my own learning- Mm-hmm ... trying to understand what might make that difficult for the library.

▶ 57:06 Speaker 9: We have accepted donations in the past. Right now, it's quite literally that all these people in the community previously, during the Friends campaign, donated funds so that right now we have that ability to utilize. People donated in a different way, and we're using that, if that makes

▶ 57:30 Speaker 1: sense. Oh, understood. So, actual physical donations of puzzles and-

▶ 57:34 Speaker 9: The puzzles are donations, but no, I meant that because we have all of the donations that people gave, that's why we're doing purchase-

▶ 57:45 Manjula Karamcheti: You're using that as your primary source right now. And not going into public donations- ... of materials and stuff. Yes. Okay. Understood. Thank you so much. Mm-hmm.

▶ 57:55 Speaker 1: Yeah, that's all I wanted to know. Thank you.

▶ 57:58 Devin Romanul: Thank you. Great. Up next, I have Councilor Finocchiaro.

▶ 58:01 Cal Finocchiaro: Thank you. Thank you for being here. I just want to echo what Councilor Karamu Chetty said and just sort of ask a question of what is the plan for the children's room going forward?

▶ 58:11 Speaker 9: We're open. We have toys, we have games. And the plan is to continue that, to keep that current. As the toys that we get age out, obviously not immediately, but to be replacing those with new items. With programming, continuing to try and do both staff programming, which again, staffing, but also bringing in outside people. We can do some of our really bigger programs with outside people. We just had Matt Heaton that brought a lot of people. But the staff-run programs also provide an additional opportunity for staff to build relationships with the local families instead of it always just being somebody else. So I think having that combination is important, and building out our collections. Yeah.

▶ 59:20 Cal Finocchiaro: Okay, so you would use the donations you said from the Friends- Yeah ... to build out your collection of things for the children's room? Yes. And staff-wise, from the older library, the children's area, do you have less staff than what you had at the previous library?

▶ 59:35 Speaker 9: We do. With the early separation incentive, we lost a full-time staff member. Mm-hmm. And that was full-time in the children's room. Mm. We will be getting some additional staff, but some part-time staff, so it won't entirely make up for it, but it will help.

▶ 59:59 Cal Finocchiaro: Okay, so right now, in comparison to the previous library where the children's room was, you don't have a full-time staff. You had one before.

▶ 1:00:06 Speaker 9: Correct.

▶ 1:00:07 Cal Finocchiaro: Okay. Personally, I raised my three boys here, and I brought them to the library all the time. That room downstairs was warm and cozy, and the train tables, and color, and books all around. They loved going. And so whatever we can do going forward, whether we find volunteers in the community to help at the library, or interns from the high school. I'm sure there's a lot of young adults that have creative ideas. I don't know. Some way that we can go forward and really create that space, recreate it, sort of. You know what I mean? You don't have to obviously carbon copy, but obviously we're hearing from residents tonight, previously, through email. I'm sure you get a lot of adults, but you do get a lot of young kids there, I'm assuming. Yes. Young families. So if I could make any recommendation, I would say let's kind of focus on that. I know you already are, but kind of make that a priority. So thank you. Thank you.

▶ 1:01:11 Devin Romanul: Perfect. Up next, I have Councilor Park.

▶ 1:01:14 Speaker 3: Thank you. Ms. Garner, I have two questions for you. So with regards to the overtime, I understand that the overtime can be explained by the fact that we had opened up for Sundays, and that was not budgeted for that. So moving forward, we should not have overtime. Is that correct? Can you confirm?

▶ 1:01:36 Speaker 9: No. Anytime a benefited staff member works on a Sunday- Oh ... they get paid overtime.

▶ 1:01:43 Speaker 3: Okay. I misunderstood that. Okay. So we will-still have that overtime budget line item because we have Sundays now being in place.

▶ 1:01:54 Speaker 9: Correct.

▶ 1:01:54 Speaker 3: Okay. Got that. Okay. And this seems to be a recurring theme here with the city council with regards to the children's room. And personally, just for context, we've heard from a number of constituents, both from my ward and from others, about the simple fact that some residents feel like they're stonewalled with their suggestions. And so I want to take this a step farther and ask you, with the feedback that you get, whether it be direct from the actual residents themselves, concerned parents, or the anonymous ones that you get, potentially, what is the formal process in terms of having a catalyst for change? So in other words, what does it need to take for you to actually make it good on some of the feedback that you get? Do you need to have a certain quota in terms of a change? Do you need to escalate this up to the board? Or if it's something simple, can it be done quickly and seamlessly without going through the proper... So just give me an outline or an overview of what that process or workflow is for changing based off the feedback you get in the library.

▶ 1:03:11 Speaker 9: I think it can vary based on the situation. If somebody comes in, for example, and is looking for a book on bones, and we didn't realize they've been lost, they've been damaged, we don't have any in-house, we're going to help them find one at another library, and then we're just going to quickly get a few books on bones. That can be a very informal process. With other situations, we may be getting feedback from one direction over here, but also getting feedback of people who want the opposite thing on the other side. So then we're going to be looking at that in terms of what seems to be getting the most traction and what works for the library, and again, whether it's a financial consideration, whether there's some sort of space requirement consideration, and deciding what we can do to move forward with that.

▶ 1:04:10 Speaker 3: And is that brought to the library board for discussion?

▶ 1:04:14 Speaker 9: In some cases, yes. So for example, the snack table that was very much desired, that no food in the library was an actual policy. So that was brought before the board so that they could vote that into policy that that would be allowed.

▶ 1:04:29 Speaker 3: I see. Okay. Thank you.

▶ 1:04:34 Devin Romanul: Up next, I have Vice Chair Vandiver.

▶ 1:04:36 Kimberly Vandiver: Thank you. It's good to see you tonight. So I also just want to acknowledge the feedback and the engagement from the public, especially relating to the five and under group, and their diligence to kind of keep at this and express their vision for what they'd like to see there and the changes they'd like to make. And I also really want to give you credit for the responsiveness that you've had over the last year. I know there have been some things I brought forward that I had heard about, and I've seen changes with signage, changes with some policies about late arrivals to programming. There was an issue that I think was partially a technology issue with the wait list for programs a while ago. Stroller parking area, the snack table, which you mentioned, which was obviously a big change that was considered and did go forward. We do have additional toys. We have new programming. So I do really appreciate that you've been hearing feedback and responding to feedback, and I want to really give you credit for that. And I know this is something a lot of people care a lot about, and the library is a very important public resource. And so I just hope that all around we can really be appreciative of each other's efforts and build on each other's ideas and incorporate ideas from everyone who's bringing them up, but also just really keep in mind that we're all working towards this goal, and hopefully we keep going and keep making it improve. I do have a few other questions and comments just from the course of discussion. I was just curious if you could speak a bit about if there are any ways that you usually collaborate with other libraries and share ideas or resources with them. Mm-hmm.

▶ 1:06:38 Speaker 9: Yes. So as part of the NOBLE Consortium, we are constantly in contact with each other. We actually just had our annual meeting today, and so the directors email each other frequently with whatever's going on in our own environments, troubleshooting, getting ideas. We also have those email lists for various groups. So there's a statewide one for children's and teen librarians that our staff are active on. We also have some working groups in NOBLE. So one of them, there's a collection management working group. So we discuss for that one its collections, and it could be kind of anything that has to do with collections. We all know that if you have somebody who needs a lot of Russian language books, we're going to advise that we either get them from Swampscott, Swampscott has a fabulous Russian language collection, or it could be discussing the need for more diverse authorsWhich has been a really big push for libraries. And we also work together not just amongst ourselves, but like in that particular topic, libraries can then work together to try and push publishers, because we can't have diverse authors and titles in our collections if the publishers aren't publishing them. So we also try and collaborate in that way.

▶ 1:08:27 Speaker 2: Thank you. And

▶ 1:08:33 Kimberly Vandiver: let's see. These are in no particular order, but as far as the friends' funds and donations, personally, I would just advocate for if you do have an opportunity without too much overhead to take donations and free up some funds for later, it could be beneficial. As far as the programming, I know in the past, and I'm not sure if this is an ongoing issue, but there was some limited number of signup slots for certain programs just due to space constraints. And I believe you've moved some of the programming downstairs. Has that addressed that issue, or are there still programs completely filling up as soon as they're posted, and then there are people who'd love to be in the program, but there's still a space constraint? And do you have any further work on how to make sure that there's open slots for people who want them?

▶ 1:09:24 Speaker 9: It's not entirely. We have added more of the big capacity programs. We've added some capacity to some of our smaller programs. We like to have a combination. We have people who really enjoy going to the smaller programs and not having it be as overwhelming, so we don't really want to get rid of that entirely. What we are trying to do is have a variety so that everybody is able to find something that suits them.

▶ 1:09:58 Kimberly Vandiver: Mm-hmm. Yeah, that makes sense as far as the less overwhelming smaller programs. I know sometimes their program is geared to just four-year-olds or something like that, and one of the comments I had heard was about, well, sometimes you have a sibling you want to bring with, and the sibling is two or something like that. How do you think about that trade-off of keeping it to, I don't know if four-year-old is the correct number, but keeping it to four-year-olds or also opening it up to the siblings?

▶ 1:10:25 Speaker 9: And again, we try to have a combination. I think kind of our key is trying to have different things that we can offer for different people.

▶ 1:10:41 Speaker 1: Let's see.

▶ 1:10:44 Kimberly Vandiver: It sounds like staffing is really one of the core issues, so I would really encourage any ability to do partnerships, internships, volunteers, or streamlining any tasks that the existing librarians have so that they can complete those things efficiently and be freed up, and I'm sure you're thinking about this. But there's a room in the lower level that originally was earmarked for a maker space. Mm-hmm. And I believe part of the issue there was staffing of that space, but I would also really welcome any thoughts about how else the space could be used without the staffing. Perhaps either directly by the library or even to be rented out to a business that patrons would enjoy if they had that little pop-up in the basement or something like that. Has there been any discussion about how to maybe activate that space that is there?

▶ 1:11:52 Speaker 9: We've started doing some programs with staff in that space. But honestly, that's about as far as we've got with that spot because we've been more focused upstairs.

▶ 1:12:01 Kimberly Vandiver: Yeah. Absolutely. Well, again, I appreciate you and the work that you do, and I'd love to help with any of the above. So, thanks. Thank you.

▶ 1:12:09 Devin Romanul: Up next, I have Councilor Chen.

▶ 1:12:12 Jason Chen: Thank you. And one of the great public goods that I found is the meeting spaces that you mentioned. And Councilor Karamcheti and I had a meeting with constituents there, and your staff was extremely helpful. So to members of the public that want to have an event within reason, I think the meeting spaces are a great option. To be an accounting troll, there's a couple items here that the 2026 actual is higher than the 2026 projection, like if you look at books. I'm not sure if that's an error, or is there a reason why we might get $16,000 back before the end of the year, the next month? It's okay if you don't know. I can ask our CFO separately. Maybe a system issue.

▶ 1:12:53 Speaker 9: Usually, that would be if I probably had another line that we hadn't spent within that range, that we had spent less, so we had spent more.

▶ 1:13:05 Jason Chen: Right. But this says that we had already spent it, and then we're going to spend less by the end of the year.

▶ 1:13:10 Speaker 9: That would be Carrie. I don't know why that's showing up that way.

▶ 1:13:12 Jason Chen: Okay. There's a number of items on a number of these budgets that are like that, so you're not the only one. Okay. I motion to recommend. Motion to recommend made by Councilor Chen. Second. Seconded by Councilor Kowal.

▶ 1:13:25 Cal Finocchiaro: Oh, sorry. Point of clarification. Move the bottom line.

▶ 1:13:28 Devin Romanul: Oh, motion to move to the bottom line. Sorry. A mistake on all three of us. No, two of us. And seconded by Councilor Kowal. On discussion, first, I have Councilor Karamcheti.

▶ 1:13:40 Manjula Karamcheti: Okay. We've talked about the children's room. Mm-hmm. And I think I'm trying to understand a little bit more, and we can also follow up later, because I feel like I'm a little later to this than some of the folks because my kids are in college now, so I haven't been in the children's room in a while. But it sounds likeThe children's room now is perhaps very different than it was when my kids were there, because it was cozy. It wasn't like there were a million things to do, but we spent hours there just looking at books, hanging out. And so I guess I love to think about root causes and why something happened. So I guess I'm just curious about the design process and was there sort of a design consultant for the children's room? Mm-hmm. And sort of just trying to understand how we got here. And yeah, so just curious about that, because it doesn't sound like it's the cozy space that it used to be. So I'm just curious about that.

▶ 1:14:56 Speaker 9: It certainly wasn't when we opened. I fully acknowledge that. Yeah. We have added floor rugs. We've got more posters up. We've brought more color in. Especially at the very early days. We are end caps. We're just back ordered. So yes, when people walked in, they were just looking at the steel shelving. Okay. And I mean, that's a pretty big visual impact. Yeah. We've changed the form. All the shelves were going the same direction, and I think it was just sort of kind of marching soldiers-ish, if you will. Which made me so happy that we made the decision to have all of the shelves on wheels, because we were able to just move those things around and create kind of a more dynamic flow to the room. Yeah.

▶ 1:15:57 Manjula Karamcheti: Got it. So I guess it just questions again that you don't need to answer right this second, but I guess it sounds like the board is involved in some of the decisions, the friends are involved, but I guess I would just be interested and curious because I think we all really value the library and are all on the same page about wanting to help develop the children's space into, I think, the experiences we had back in the day for our kids, and wanting that for kids now who are accessing. So just thinking about what kind of support you need, more than, I know you're getting a lot of suggestions, but also what suggestions you need support. So I guess I'd just be really interested and open to how we can help with that.

▶ 1:16:42 Speaker 9: Thank you.

▶ 1:16:43 Speaker 6: Yeah. Up next, I have Councilor Jamaleddine.

▶ 1:16:46 Maya Jamaleddine: Thank you. I just want to name that this is a budget hearing, and we've been taking that time asking about, because the library is newly renovated and there is a lot of programs. So I just want to name that, although this should have been only about budget, but, me included, I've been asking about all kind of updates, and that show how much we appreciate the work that you do and how important it is in our community. When you mentioned about the Sunday overtime- Yes ... is it our employees, regardless if they exceeded the 40 hours or not, they will get paid overtime because it's a Sunday?

▶ 1:17:39 Speaker 9: Yes. So how our system is, their regular work week is Monday through Saturday. Mm-hmm. That's five days within that work week. And then Sundays are a separate entity. Mm-hmm. And contractually in their contract, it's time and a half on Sundays.

▶ 1:18:01 Maya Jamaleddine: Time and a half. Okay, so it's technically not overtime, it's just time and a half. Yes. Okay. So even if we think of switching and having, for instance, new position, not that I'm suggesting that. New position for only Sunday employees, like Sunday staff, separate from the ones that work over the week. That will still be considered as time and a half?

▶ 1:18:31 Speaker 9: Yeah. The Sundays, it's all set out- Yes. Okay ... in the contract. Okay.

▶ 1:18:35 Maya Jamaleddine: Yeah. Just want to make sure. Do we have any exciting plans for summer program this coming summer?

▶ 1:18:42 Speaker 9: We do. I don't have that information.

▶ 1:18:46 Speaker 5: That's fine. I just want to end it on a- Yes ... more-

▶ 1:18:49 Speaker 9: It'll be starting- ... happy side note ... mid-June, and will be going through until the first couple of weeks of August.

▶ 1:18:56 Maya Jamaleddine: Awesome. I'm looking forward to hear about it, and I will reach out to have meetings and get more updates. Thank you so much for your help.

▶ 1:19:05 Devin Romanul: Up next, I have Councilor Finocchiaro.

▶ 1:19:08 Cal Finocchiaro: Yes. I'm sorry. My last time speaking, but I just wanted to kind of close the loop here. So it sounds like the library was, on the children's room, sorry, bringing this up again. Sounds like the library was built and designed, but maybe we didn't focus on the children's room. It was sort of just kind of made like this. Maybe there was an extra design kind of implemented or, I don't know, a missing piece there. So we kind of opened with as is, I'm guessing?

▶ 1:19:33 Speaker 9: I mean, there was focus on the design of the children's room. It was, I think, the small things, the intangible, not intangibles, actually tangibles. The lights, the toys, those were not part of the architecture team.

▶ 1:19:52 Cal Finocchiaro: Right. So that makes sense. And then on top of that, you lost a full-time staff for that area. Yes. So like Councilor Karamu Chetty said, and I think all of us share the same sentiment, it would be we want to support you, however that means. Advocating for that space to either get a full-time employee or somebody part-time or somebody to help you Kind of make that space what I think everybody wants it to be. So, I think that's just the goal. But it makes sense. It wasn't the priority with the design, as far as making sure that it was a similar space as the old library. But then also, you did lose that full-time staff, which I think I know who it is, and she was wonderful. So anyways, it's making more sense to all of us now. But like I said, I'm just going to reiterate, I feel like however we can support you to get that space the way we all want it would be great. Thank you.

▶ 1:20:53 Devin Romanul: And at this point, last on my list right now, I have Councilor Vanderburg.

▶ 1:20:57 Kimberly Vandiver: Thank you. I just wanted to talk about the Sunday hours for a second. Can you remind me when the contract is up? Is it currently being renegotiated?

▶ 1:21:08 Speaker 9: It's currently being negotiated, yeah.

▶ 1:21:10 Speaker 2: Okay. And I-

▶ 1:21:12 Speaker 9: So I don't know how much I can actually say about it.

▶ 1:21:14 Kimberly Vandiver: So, yeah, I would love to see if that's something that could be addressed this cycle since that is an ongoing typical expectation that we're staffing Sundays. And even the possibility to redistribute some of higher base salary across the regular week versus concentrating the overtime on Sundays, because it seems like these staff are important. They should be paid well. But I would think that the expectation would be they should be paid well kind of distributed throughout the week on whatever their normal cadence is, especially if Sundays is an ongoing schedule.

▶ 1:21:49 Speaker 9: So just to make sure I'm clear, if they work extra hours during the week, they do get paid for that. So, it is set out in the contract. It's just that Monday through Saturday is their regular week, and then Sunday is a separate thing. But yes, if they are paid more than, and I don't know how much you want me saying this, Pauline. Is it okay to just talk about what's currently in the contract?

▶ 1:22:20 Speaker 1: Currently in the contract, yes.

▶ 1:22:20 Speaker 9: Yeah. So if they get paid, I think it's more than eight hours in a day. If they work after that eight hour, they would get paid the overtime regardless of what's happening on Sunday.

▶ 1:22:35 Kimberly Vandiver: Right. Yeah, that definitely makes sense. Over eight hours in a day, over 40 hours in a week. Exactly. Depending on how far down the road you are with the contract and what else you're thinking about, I wonder if there's a way to make Sunday part of the work week for some people. But I'm sure there's more to the negotiation as well. Thank you.

▶ 1:22:57 Speaker 6: Councilor Finocchiaro.

▶ 1:22:57 Cal Finocchiaro: Sorry, through the chair. I was just going to say, I think this is just kind of across the board for union employees, right? For Sundays, like the DPW operates like that as well. Fair enough.

▶ 1:23:05 Speaker 10: I think what we're getting at is the difference between FLSA overtime and contractual overtime.

▶ 1:23:09 Speaker 3: Okay.

▶ 1:23:10 Speaker 10: So FLSA is what many of you are bringing up, over eight hours a

▶ 1:23:15 Speaker 10: day, over 40 hours a week. And then there's sort of contractual overtime that is in the contract to really attract folks to show up on Sunday, to show up during snowstorms. And that overtime, or time and a half, or two time, whatever it is, that's outside of the FLSA. So even if an employee hasn't worked 40 hours, they would get that contractual overtime. So I think these are the two types of overtime that we're

▶ 1:23:43 Speaker 5: discussing.

▶ 1:23:45 Devin Romanul: And we have coming attractions, human resources. And with no other comments in queue- Nope ... and we have a motion on the floor. Madam Clerk, please call the roll.

▶ 1:23:55 Speaker 3: Yes. Vice Chair Vandiver? Yes. Councilor Chen? Yes. Councilor Finocchiaro? Yes. Councilor Jamaleddine? Yes. Councilor Karamcheti? Yes. Councilor Cal? Yes. Councilor Park? Yes. President Freeman? Yes. Chair Romanul? Yes. All in favor. Motion passed.

▶ 1:24:12 Devin Romanul: We will move the bottom line on- Thank you ... the library budget. Thank you so much for joining us. Thank you. Up next-

▶ 1:24:18 Speaker 1: Thank you again for your time. Really appreciate it. Should we spin it again? What? Should we spin it again?

▶ 1:24:22 Devin Romanul: Department 152, human resources joining us this evening. Human Resources Director, Pauli Latta. Thank you.

▶ 1:24:36 Speaker 10: Good evening.

▶ 1:24:38 Speaker 6: Good evening.

▶ 1:24:39 Speaker 10: Thank you for having me here tonight. My name is Pauli Latta. I'm the human resources director for the City of Melrose, and I'm here tonight to present our fiscal year '27 budget for human resources, for employee benefits, workers' compensation, and unemployment. I know you have received my department memo. We have new councilors, so I will give you a brief overview of what my department does. So, the human resources department supports employees and retirees with benefits administration, wellness and health benefits, unemployment, workers' comp benefits. We manage leave of absence, accommodation requests. We ensure compliance with federal state regulations. We uphold the terms of the collective bargaining agreements, support employees with employment-related matters. I guide the 22 department heads that we have with employment-related matters, performance matters, and recently, over the past few months, we have taken on some of the school HR functions that we're very excited about. And I have to say, I cannot accomplish any of this alone, so my department consists of three members. Diane Barrett, she is the-HR coordinator for benefits for city and school, and Matt Travers, who is the HR systems and operations specialist for city and school. And I'm very grateful for that because they're very talented and capable team members. In addition to that, I want to say thank you to the mayor's office, and the team that I work with on daily basis, which is Carrie Golden, the CFO, and Shannon Phillips, primarily in the city solicitor's office. So over the past year, one of the biggest accomplishment was kind of supporting the school HR function. It started with recruiting and onboarding and training the new HR coordinator and kind of ensuring stability during that transition. And when this position became vacant, strategic decision was made to transition key HR functions, or I should say, the majority of the HR functions from the school to my department without adding necessarily an extra personnel. This, I believe, allows us to maintain continuity of services. Over the past few years, there have been a lot of gaps in the HR or benefits management function in the school, so this allows continuity of services. It improves consistency of practice, enhances the operational efficiencies, and ultimately, and that's really important to me and my department, improves the employee experience across city and school, which is also a retention strategy. In addition to merging the HR function, my department has helped lead the development of the HR portal for the school employees. This is something that did not exist prior, so, I have to give credit to Matt Travers. Again, he's very talented in these areas, so he helped develop the HR portal, which is a centralized area for platform for school employees to have access to HR benefits, policies, training. It's kind of like one-stop shop. That's on the school side. With contract negotiations, member of the negotiations team, we have four contracts that are expiring at the end of fiscal year '26. So that's clerical, laborers, library, and fire. I have to say that we are on track to hopefully be able to settle the contracts by the end of the year if everything goes well. And in addition to that, we have started the initial stages of PEC negotiations, which has to do with negotiations for our health insurance. We are in the information gathering stages. Our health insurance agreement with the Public Employee Committee expires June 30th, 2027, so we had to start the process January of 2026, and we need to have a decision by late fall of '26. And that's a big one, as we're focusing on maintaining fiscal responsibility and ensuring that we are negotiating and supporting sustainable, fair employee compensation and benefit structures. Another accomplishment for this year was workforce restoration. After the passing of Proposition two and a half, we were able to start recruiting for a lot of the positions who had left and the positions that were not filled. So it was a busy period. We recruited, onboarded successfully 12 new employees. Three were managers, department heads. Processed over 40 non-benefit hires, which is usually part-time, seasonal, and facilitated nearly 10 promotions. Many of these are DPW as positions open. There's a lot of internal movements. Another area that my department has focused on is ADA support. So I'm happy to report that we have secured CART and interpreter services for the high school graduation. So we have two CART services as well as two ASL and two deaf interpreters for high school graduation that's coming up. In addition to that, I have collaborated with the DPW department and with the Commission on Disability, and we're able to obtain a grant to improve for accessibility improvements with the Hoover School, Horace Mann, and Winthrop School.

▶ 1:31:37 Speaker 10: In addition to that, we have Matt Travers, he's the mayor's appointment on the Commission on Disability. I am the ADA coordinator for the city. So we have worked together with many departments to expand closed captioning requirements for virtual meetings and update municipal school ADA resource pages and just overall strengthen the coordination between the different city departments and the Commission on Disability. So, that's a little bit about my department, and I can go over the human resources budget to start with.So

▶ 1:32:23 Speaker 10: that is budget number 152, human resources. This budget hosts part of our salaries and some other expenses. The reason I said part of our salaries is because the salaries of the human resources department are split between the salary and wage line item and the health salary and wage line item. So my salary is split 75/25. 75 human resources salary and wages and 25 health insurance salary and wages. The HR coordinator is 50/50, and the HR specialist is 50/50. And our city solicitor mentioned that we are going to have a full-time role, this administrative assistant role that's split between her office and mine. And my department is covering half of that compensation through the HR salary and wages line item.

▶ 1:33:38 Speaker 10: So you are seeing an increase in that line item because in order for us to be able to successfully transition the school HR function to the city HR function, we had to get creative, try to work with the resources we have, and really maximize the talent that we have in my department. So instead of hiring an extra HR person, the decision was made that we are going to promote the staff that I currently have, and primarily Matt Travers, who is our now human resources systems and operations specialist. He was promoted, his responsibilities increased, and he was reclassified, which is why you see an increase here in the salary wages. There was also an increase in the HR coordinator's salary and in my salary to account for the additional responsibilities that were taken with the merging with the school function.

▶ 1:34:50 Speaker 10: So that's the highlight on that department. I don't know if anybody has any questions.

▶ 1:34:57 Speaker 6: Thank you very much. Councilor Park?

▶ 1:35:00 Speaker 3: Quick question. The way you juggle the salary seems like a logistical and accounting nightmare in terms of splitting it between 75, 25, between HR, health, legal HR, et cetera and so forth. So I guess my question is, is this because it is a shared resource and this is a common practice among municipalities, or is it because we are short-staffed and you are getting creative in the-- You mentioned that you are getting creative, but is this something that you see often, or is this something that you would like to eventually abolish and have it that the people work full-time in these respective departments?

▶ 1:35:44 Speaker 10: So is the question about how salaries are hosted within our budgets, or is the question about- Yes, because

▶ 1:35:52 Speaker 3: more often than not, when we go through these salaries- Yeah ... and we come across large increases per salary, they can be explained in the notes because they're splitting, and you have an extra person or half person, I should say, that is being taken on board between two different- Yes ... departments. It doesn't show in the line item, right? So I guess, is that something that we'll continuously see now that we have the override additional funds for this, or is this a common practice where we will, as the years go on, continue to split resources like that and-

▶ 1:36:35 Speaker 10: Well, I can speak right now, this is the first year that we are taking on the HR function at the school. Mm-hmm. So with the resources we have right now, we were trying to be, again, thoughtful about having my staff focus on more complex HR responsibility. And instead of paying them for routine administrative clerical work, be able to kind of outsource this to an administrative assistant that is shared. It made the most sense. Down the road, there might be changes, but with the information, with what we have now, the experience we have now, we are just trying to be thoughtful with the resources that we have. I don't know if I answered your question.

▶ 1:37:30 Speaker 3: Well, I guess if you're happy with the way this is set up or structured and you are sharing the resources, I can see the benefit of that. So as long as you're happy with this moving forward, then that's fine. That's-

▶ 1:37:43 Speaker 10: We are in the beginning stages, so at this point in time, I'm happy with the steps we've taken. But it doesn't mean that things are not going to change down the line.

▶ 1:37:55 Speaker 6: Okay.

▶ 1:37:55 Speaker 3: Thank you.

▶ 1:37:57 Speaker 6: Other councilors? Vice Chair Vandiver.

▶ 1:38:01 Kimberly Vandiver: Thanks. Thank you for your presentation. I'd like to motion to move Department 152 to the bottom line. Second.

▶ 1:38:08 Devin Romanul: Motion made by Vice Chair Vandiver, seconded by Councilor Finocchiaro. On discussion? I actually have one if you'll indulge for a moment. Yes. I do policy design and talent recruiting for municipalities around the country for a living. And did I hear correctly that we had trouble filling somevacancies. And I'm just wondering, from a budgetary perspective, if there's anything that we should know as a council for budget planning moving forward about our inability to fill vacancies, if there's very broadly anything you could share?

▶ 1:38:35 Speaker 10: Yeah. This is a good question. We do have difficulty filling the engineer role, as well as mechanic and HMEO roles. Engineers are very difficult to find. At one point on the Mass Municipal job site, there were 13 engineer openings for 13 engineers that municipalities were trying to recruit for. I've spoken to neighboring communities who have had these vacancies for close to a year. So, we are constantly discussing with public works how we can figure out a way to fill these roles. Right now, we did hire a junior engineer, and we are hiring three interns to at least try to alleviate some of the load. But realizing these are interns, it's not an engineer role. So, it's difficult. I wish I had an answer. And if I did, we would've implemented it. But, we're using all resources we can. We're using word of mouth. We're using different type of recruiting sites. It's

▶ 1:39:58 Devin Romanul: hard. Yeah. Thank you for answering. I really appreciate it. Yes. Councilor Chen.

▶ 1:40:03 Speaker 6: How would you assess our retention compared to other towns

▶ 1:40:05 Jason Chen: or places you've worked? Change has a cost, and cycling people in has a cost as well.

▶ 1:40:11 Speaker 10: I think we have great retention. Every department is different, but generally, our employees are really happy with our benefits. I meet with every employee when they leave. We have an exit interview. So if there's anything, and I always ask them what they loved about their employment, what they'd like to continue, what they don't like. Salaries is always something they like to see increased, but other than that, we are getting good feedback.

▶ 1:40:45 Speaker 6: Councilor Park.

▶ 1:40:47 Speaker 3: Sorry. Just to piggyback off of Councilor Chen comment. One of the biggest holes to fill is the city engineer. That is a big role to fill that is creating some bottlenecks here. Mm-hmm. And I know that Elena, the department head of DPW- ... has expressed concern about that. And for some reason, the people internally do not want to move forward with that position. So from your perspective, how do we fill this? Is this a role that just we simply-- Is it a matter of money? Do we need to throw more money at this position to make it more attractive? Should we actually include in schedule-- At this point, it's obviously too late. But do we need to start thinking about making certain roles a little bit bigger in terms of the budget for allocating for these specific positions that we have a hard time to fill?

▶ 1:41:37 Speaker 10: I would say this position has been vacant for a while. So every three, four weeks, Elena and I would meet and think about what can we do. Can we reduce certain requirements that are nice to have but not absolutely required? Can we increase the salary? So we have tried some movement in the requirements, in the salary. I think it's very difficult to compete with the private sector when it comes down hiring for engineers. I don't know if more money is going to help, because we are talking about engineers who are able to work from home, who have unlimited time off, who have their student loans paid by their employer, and it's hard to compete. There's a great need for engineers in the municipal world, and there's not enough in the pipeline. So I wish I had an answer on how we can do it better. We're continuously meeting and trying to come up with strategies.

▶ 1:42:58 Speaker 3: Okay. Thank you.

▶ 1:42:59 Devin Romanul: Up next, I have Vice Chair Vandiver.

▶ 1:43:01 Kimberly Vandiver: Thank you. A discussion made me wonder, when we have many of our roles covered by union contracts, how does that work if we have a role that's difficult to fill? Are we able to pay above what's in the union salary rate, or what do you do in those circumstances?

▶ 1:43:20 Speaker 10: Well, in this case, this is a management role and a leadership role in a way, so we cannot have union folks perform this work. Within a union environment, if a union employee covers for another role that's a higher role, there's a clause often that they will get paid a higher amount. Okay. Mm-hmm. Interesting. Thank you. Yeah. You're welcome.

▶ 1:43:46 Devin Romanul: That's great. I believe we have a motion on the floor, and barring any other comments from councilors, with a motion to move the bottom line. Madam Clerk, will you please call the roll?

▶ 1:43:54 Speaker 3: Yes. Vice Chair Vandiver? Yes. Councilor Chen? Yes. Councilor Finocchiaro? Yes. Councilor Jamaleddine? Yes. Councilor Karamcheti? Yes. Councilor Kowal? Yes. Councilor Park? Yes. President Freeman? Yes. Chair Romanul? Yes. All in favor.

▶ 1:44:08 Devin Romanul: All in favor. We'll move that to the bottom line. Thank you so much. Up next, item number 912, workers' comp. Okay.

▶ 1:44:23 Speaker 10: So the workers' compensation budget, you can notice there is an increase to the 2027 line item by 50%, from $100,000 for workers' comp medicals to $150,000.And the reason for that is to more accurately reflect the actual cost associated with workers' comp medical expenses. Just to give you a little background. So right now, I was looking at the budget and realized we have a long-term recipient of medical benefits, and this long-term recipient already accounts for 50%, or 72,000, of this 150,000 line item. Last year, this recipient accounted for 60%, leaving us with a very small margin to work with. And if we have any type of a more significant medical cost, such as surgery, it depletes that line item very quickly. And I know most of you have seen me here at the end of the fiscal year asking for more money. I've been fairly consistent, and you will see me again in few weeks asking for more money for this line item. So, it made most sense that we reflect what's more or less the actual cost, so I don't have to come here at the end of the fiscal year.

▶ 1:46:05 Speaker 6: We appreciate it. Councilor- Yeah ... Finocchiaro.

▶ 1:46:07 Cal Finocchiaro: Thank you. The explanation makes sense. Just want to make motion to recommend. Second.

▶ 1:46:11 Devin Romanul: Motion to recommend made by Councilor Finocchiaro, second by Councilor Kowal. I think we mean move the bottom line.

▶ 1:46:19 Speaker 3: Oh, I thought this was because it was a fund or a...

▶ 1:46:23 Cal Finocchiaro: Oh yeah, a revolving account? No? Oh, it's not. It's a-

▶ 1:46:27 Devin Romanul: I think they're going to move the bottom line. But you know what? I think this has come up enough. I think we should track down the solicitor who was just here. So I will take care of that tomorrow. Motion to move the bottom line. Motion to make the- ... chair do that tomorrow. On discussion. Seeing none, Madam Clerk, will you please call the roll?

▶ 1:46:44 Speaker 3: Yes. Vice Chair Vandiver? Yes. Councilor Chen? Yes. Councilor Finocchiaro? Yes. Councilor Jamaleddine? Yes. Councilor Karamcheti? Yes. Councilor Kowal? Councilor Park? Yes. President Freeman? Yes. Chair Romanul? Yes.

▶ 1:46:56 Devin Romanul: All in favor. All right. All in favor? We'll move the bottom line. Next up, department 913, unemployment.

▶ 1:47:02 Speaker 9: Okay.

▶ 1:47:03 Speaker 10: Department 913, unemployment, you will see a significant decrease in this line item. And the reason for this decrease was that we had to budget for the many school layoffs we had last fiscal year. And, I had projected what I thought was safe amount, not worst case scenario, because that would've been scary. I'm glad to see that that line item did not get used as much as I had projected. So therefore, we are level funding to the previous fiscal year, which was at $100,000.

▶ 1:47:49 Speaker 6: Terrific. Councilors? Councilor Finocchiaro.

▶ 1:47:52 Cal Finocchiaro: I was just make a motion to remove the bottom line. Second.

▶ 1:47:54 Devin Romanul: Motion to move the bottom line made by Councilor Finocchiaro, seconded by Councilor Kowal. On discussion. Councilor Chen. Is this 2026 projection then far off, and we're closer to the 2026 actual?

▶ 1:48:09 Speaker 10: Oh, yes. We are at the 2026 actual, which is what we have expended so far. So the projection was, we had a lot of layoffs at the school, and I projected last year. So I projected for about 13 weeks of benefits. During the summer, school employees don't receive unemployment benefits because they get paid for the summer. So it seems like maybe, I assume many of them may have found employment during the summer months, so they didn't need to collect our unemployment benefits past the summer, which is a good thing. But it's really hard to predict employee behavior if they're going to... Or former employee behavior, if they will be using the unemployment benefit, or they will try to use the summer to find employment. Thank you. You know. This is really an outlier. This does not happen often.

▶ 1:49:09 Jason Chen: Yeah. A point of information then, for anyone who knows, is this projection rolling and updated based on our... Yeah, like it was updated on May 7th? Or is this something that was done a long time ago in the beginning? Which is not really useful because a lot of the percent changes are comparing the 2026 projection to the 2027 proposed.

▶ 1:49:31 Speaker 6: Does anyone know

▶ 1:49:34 Maya Jamaleddine: what goes like- Mr. Chair, do you mind to explain your question? I'm just not getting it.

▶ 1:49:38 Jason Chen: Yeah. So the 2026 projection-

▶ 1:49:42 Speaker 10: Yeah

▶ 1:49:44 Jason Chen: Holly just mentioned, is something that she projected earlier in the year, like at the beginning of the fiscal year, right? But I understood it as, that's our latest view on where we're gonna end up on June 30th.

▶ 1:49:57 Speaker 10: Oh, no. Mm-mm. No? No, no. Mm-mm. So, I spoke to our CFO about this particular line column, 2026 projection, which is, I have to say, very confusing, and you have the right to ask all these questions. What this column shows is the budget, the original budget, 2026 budget, and then any encumbered amounts that were rolled from the previous fiscal year. So you have the 2026 projected original budget amount, which is 411. And to that, we have added the encumbered, anything that's left over from the previous year that was encumbered. And that's how you get the 418,000This right now means nothing because the actual cost that we have spent on unemployment is $155,000 so far. I can tell you that in our April bill, we have only three former employees, and the April bill was only $7,000.

▶ 1:51:09 Speaker 3: Yeah. It's confusing.

▶ 1:51:11 Jason Chen: It's just frustrating because then the percent changes don't mean much if that's not actually where we think we're going to end up. And

▶ 1:51:19 Speaker 10: sorry. I think the-

▶ 1:51:21 Speaker 6: It's not a-

▶ 1:51:22 Speaker 10: Oh, no

▶ 1:51:22 Speaker 6: ... it's not for you to answer. It's just a- Yeah ... more a-

▶ 1:51:25 Speaker 10: I think the changes-

▶ 1:51:26 Jason Chen: You're looking at the numbers and you think, "Oh, well, it means we project to end here," then you look at the percent change based on that. So- Yeah ... what we should be doing is looking at the actual and then maybe prorating or asking directly, "Hey, where do we think we're going to end up?" And then we use that to calculate, okay, how's it different from next year, but...

▶ 1:51:43 Speaker 10: Yeah, that is a confusing column. I agree.

▶ 1:51:46 Maya Jamaleddine: Through the chair. Just from what we've done previous, because we don't have Carrie with us, I think my suggestion, if you want to send an email- Yes ... and she'll provide all these explanations. It's tricky with that, but I totally see your point. For future meetings and hearings, it would be differently framed and differently explained for us.

▶ 1:52:21 Speaker 6: This is actually my first rodeo, so yes. Terrific. Any other councilors?

▶ 1:52:29 Devin Romanul: Seeing no further discussion, Madam Clerk, will you please call the roll?

▶ 1:52:32 Speaker 3: Yes. Vice Chair Vandiver? Yes. Councilor Chen? Yes. Councilor Finocchiaro? Yes. Councilor Jamaleddine? Yes. Councilor Karamcheti? Yes. Councilor Kowal? Yes. Councilor Park? Yes. President Freeman? Yes. Chair Romanul? Yes. All in favor.

▶ 1:52:45 Devin Romanul: All in favor, we will move the bottom line on 9.13. Up next, department 9.14, health contractual.

▶ 1:52:55 Speaker 10: All right. So department 9.14, health contractual, as I mentioned earlier, it holds some of our salaries, and the rest are just contractual benefits that we provide to our employees and retirees. I already went over the salaries. The benefits have increased. The group health insurance line item has increased by 9.9%, and the Part B Medicare reimbursement line item has increased by 7.3%. So, the reason that our group health insurance has increased is because we had increase in the premium rates. The rate increases for non-Medicare plans for fiscal year '27 range anywhere from 4.1% to 13.6%, and the premium increases for the Medicare plans ranged anywhere between 4% and 7.5%, and it amounted to this percent increase. I can give you a little information on how we create the budget for the group health line item because it is the largest line item that we have. It is always a moving target, so what we do is we take April 1st membership listing, so the number of employees and retirees we have on our health insurance for April 1st, and then we plug in the new rates for fiscal year '27.

▶ 1:54:50 Speaker 10: Then we find what the average health plan cost is, and we use that number to project the cost. This year, for fiscal year 2027, the average cost is 20,000. We have found that per plan. We have found that this has worked well in the past. The CFO and I are constantly meeting and trying to figure out if there's a better way to project, to predict what the health insurance cost would be, and this has worked well. A while back, the approach was to use the most popular plan. The difference between the average rate, 20,000, the most popular plan for fiscal year '27 is $10,000. Mm-hmm. And it's not realistic that we're going to have every new employee that will take a family plan and the most popular, most expensive plan. So, we have adjusted. We take into consideration any new hires that will be on our health insurance for July 1st that we have not accounted for during the time that we create the budget. We take into consideration vacancies that are coming up. We take into consideration employees who are younger than 26 that currently don't have insurance, but as soon as they turn 26 within the next year, they may get on our insurance. So that's certainly a liability that we have to consider, and we also account for any employees whom don't have insurance with us that at any point could potentially get on our insurance, and that's how we get to the final number.I'm happy to answer any questions.

▶ 1:56:58 Speaker 6: Councilor Kowal? No, I'm just going to make a motion to move it to the bottom line.

▶ 1:57:02 Devin Romanul: Oh. Motion to move to the bottom line made by Councilor Kowal. Second. Second by Vice Chair Vandiver. On discussion?

▶ 1:57:09 Speaker 6: Seeing none, Madam Clerk, will you please call the roll?

▶ 1:57:11 Speaker 3: Yes. Vice Chair Vandiver. Yes. Councilor Chen. Yes. Councilor Finocchiaro. Yes. Councilor Jamaleddine. Yes. Councilor Karamcheti. Yes. Councilor Kowal. Yes. Councilor Park. Yes. President Freeman. Yes. Chair Romanul. Yes. All in favor.

▶ 1:57:26 Devin Romanul: Thank you so much. We'll move that to bottom line. Thank you so much, Director, for joining us this evening.

▶ 1:57:31 Speaker 10: Thank you. Have a good night. Thank you.

▶ 1:57:33 Speaker 6: You too. All right.

▶ 1:57:36 Speaker 2: Oh, we have one more.

▶ 1:57:38 Speaker 6: We've got one more.

▶ 1:57:40 Devin Romanul: Pension and retirement. We got pension and retirement coming up.

▶ 1:57:42 Speaker 10: Yes. That is not me.

▶ 1:57:44 Speaker 2: Woo-hoo. You waited all this time.

▶ 1:57:45 Speaker 7: Been a long time. Oh, my goodness.

▶ 1:57:49 Devin Romanul: Drum roll, please, for department 911, pension and retirement. Thank you both so much for your patience and grace this evening. We really appreciate it.

▶ 1:57:59 Speaker 5: Sure. Last but not least.

▶ 1:58:01 Speaker 6: Right. Certainly.

▶ 1:58:04 Speaker 5: Members of the council, thank you for your time this evening. My name is Christine Rizzo. I am the Assistant Executive Director for the Retirement Board. I currently solely run day-to-day operations as the board seeks to hire a new executive director. To give you a little color, if you think that hiring an engineer is tough, try looking for an executive director for retirement. It was vacant for about eight months prior to April of 2025, when Adam Travinski was the director, and then we hired somebody in October of this past year, and he resigned in April of 2026. So. And with me tonight is my fifth board member for the Retirement Board, Michael Lucas. He's going to help answer some financial questions you might have.

▶ 1:59:03 Speaker 4: If I can. Yes. I'll do the best I can.

▶ 1:59:05 Speaker 3: Yes. Oh, yeah.

▶ 1:59:06 Speaker 5: So, this is a statutory appropriation under Mass General Law Chapter 32. With pension reform in 2010, this assessment of the petition for appropriation cannot be reduced from prior years from previous years.

▶ 1:59:30 Speaker 4: So, this is an appropriation that we voted at our August 27th, 2025 Retirement Board meeting, and it was approved by PERAC in a letter dated December 3rd, 2025, and the city's portion of the appropriation is $8,272,164.

▶ 1:59:55 Devin Romanul: Thank you very much for the presentation. Any councilors with questions?

▶ 2:00:00 Jason Chen: Councilor Chen. So, it looks-- I recall sometime in December, we added an extra 500K to our PERAC contribution. Yes. And I was wondering what the benefit is to pay that off quicker, and-

▶ 2:00:17 Speaker 4: So-

▶ 2:00:17 Jason Chen: We pay the principal down- Yes ... and then do we then have to pay less overall on our PERAC?

▶ 2:00:24 Speaker 4: Well, the annual amounts that the city will pay aren't really going to change until the last year. You're getting the benefit of it earning interest over the next... 2030. 12 years.

▶ 2:00:41 Speaker 6: 2037, right?

▶ 2:00:41 Speaker 4: Like over the next 12 years. So, that final payment will probably be just less, but it's not going to reduce the amount of time that it's going to take to pay down that liability.

▶ 2:00:52 Speaker 6: I guess I'm wondering

▶ 2:00:55 Jason Chen: if it was good to pay off an extra 500K then, and it may be more a city finance question.

▶ 2:01:02 Speaker 4: Oh, it's always good to keep putting in extra. If you're just throwing funds at your debt, then you get that benefit of over the next 12 years. It's going to accrue that interest and reduce your liability. Yes, definitely. It's just such a huge liability that, yes, an extra $500,000 is great, but you're only kind of chipping away at it, that it's not really going to change much in terms of the actuarial accrued liability. This is going to take some time to chip away at. And we're all in favor of taking a higher appropriation from the city with the override, if you want to keep throwing additional funds at it, because the city is going to be facing an OPEB liability after the pension liability is paid off. I'm sure the city council is aware of that.

▶ 2:02:03 Speaker 6: Vice Chair Vandiver.

▶ 2:02:04 Kimberly Vandiver: Mm-hmm. Thank you. I'm somewhat aware of that, but could you go back a step or two and just explain that so that we're all kind of completely informed about those liabilities? And my understanding is that many cities throughout Massachusetts are in a similar situation. We have really large outstanding liabilities, and so I would love to hear more about that, as well as what we should anticipate over the next decade, needing to address.

▶ 2:02:35 Speaker 4: Well, a number of years ago, there was a GASB that required cities and towns to put a big fat liability on their financial statement of OPEB and pension even longer before that. So, it's just one of those things that you really want to pay down in order to maintain a good, strong bond rating.So, I'm sorry. Can you go back to your question?

▶ 2:03:08 Speaker 2: I guess

▶ 2:03:13 Kimberly Vandiver: one basic part of the question is what is the total amount that we have outstanding, and how long do we have to pay it?

▶ 2:03:21 Speaker 4: So cities and towns are mandated by the state. You have to have a zero liability by 2040, by the beginning of FY 2040. We're slated to be done in 2038.

▶ 2:03:36 Speaker 5: 2038. And some towns and municipalities are already fully funded.

▶ 2:03:40 Speaker 4: Most, yeah. We're kind of in the middle of the pack, but I think by 2035, there's only going to be 25 municipalities left that have a liability on the books, and by 2036, that's going to be about 12. So we're still kind of an outlier in that sense.

▶ 2:04:01 Kimberly Vandiver: Okay. And for my understanding in the public, so OPEB is other post-employment benefits. So those are things that we promised to employees when they were our employees, but we haven't put aside the money to pay for that yet.

▶ 2:04:12 Speaker 4: Yeah. I think Melrose has maybe like $1.3 million in assets to cover OPEB, but the OPEB liability, and I looked at the most recent financial statements that the city has, and that was 2024, the OPEB liability on your books is $172 million. So 172 million minus 1.3, that's going to be your next big liability, so you need to get the pension paid off and then attack OPEB. And Melrose isn't really an outlier in that sense. A lot of cities and towns are faced with that. But it is kind of like a scary thing that cities and towns are waking up to.

▶ 2:04:53 Kimberly Vandiver: Right. Okay, so we have about 170 million to pay off over the course of 15 years?

▶ 2:04:58 Speaker 4: OPEB doesn't have a hard deadline. Okay. I think right now most cities and towns are just trying to pay it as they go. Okay. But it still has to be shown as a liability on the books. But yeah, pension is a little more strictly enforced, especially, obviously, by the state agency, PERAC. So it's just one of those things. This is just usually a really simple line item, and I don't want to belittle your guys' roles at all. But I'm a resident here. I totally appreciate what all you guys do. I almost came into this meeting saying, "You guys don't really have a choice. You have to give us this money." "And if you don't, you guys are going to get in trouble. The state will withhold your state aid, and you'll get letters." But anyway, I am happy to be here to elaborate on just how important this really is.

▶ 2:06:03 Kimberly Vandiver: Mm-hmm. Okay, and last question from me. So it's about eight million this year. Do you know, will that be consistent year over year? Will it grow a little bit every year?

▶ 2:06:13 Speaker 4: Yeah. So we have Stone Actuarial Consultants, Stone Consulting. They're our actuary for the pension system. And they give us a whole schedule just in terms of we generally know what we're going to pay over the next 12 years. We could forward this- I sent you the funding schedule.

▶ 2:06:36 Speaker 2: Point of clarification. Oh, thank you. It's in our agenda packet. Oh, wonderful. Yeah.

▶ 2:06:39 Speaker 4: All right. It's just one of those things that we're getting there, and thank God for the override passing, too. I was watching meetings over the past few years, and I know how difficult it is. So luckily, we don't feel as bad asking for this to be paid off, but it just has to. It has to.

▶ 2:07:01 Speaker 2: Mm-hmm. Thank you.

▶ 2:07:02 Devin Romanul: You're welcome. Other counselors have discussion. Counselor Finocchiaro?

▶ 2:07:05 Speaker 3: Do we have a motion on the floor? We do not. Okay. I make a motion to move the bottom line.

▶ 2:07:09 Devin Romanul: Second. Motion to move the bottom line made by Counselor Finocchiaro, seconded by Counselor Karamcheti. On discussion? Seeing none.

▶ 2:07:15 Speaker 6: Madam Clerk, will you please call the roll?

▶ 2:07:17 Speaker 3: Yes. Vice Chair Vandiver? Yes. Counselor Chen? Yes. Counselor Finocchiaro? Yes. Counselor Jamaleddine? Yes. Counselor Karamcheti? Yes. Counselor Cole? Counselor Park? Yes. President Freeman? Yes. Chair Romanul? Yes. All in favor.

▶ 2:07:32 Devin Romanul: All right. That motion passes. We'll move the bottom line. Thank you both, again, for your- Thank you ... patience and information. No worries.

▶ 2:07:40 Speaker 5: We thought we were first. And we ended up being last.