An Appropriation from Free Cash (account 01-324001) to the Assessing Department (#141) in the amount of $9,000 to cover the cost of mailing tax impact notices to all taxpayers in Melrose.
Agenda original PDF
Minutes original PDF
A. (ID # 2026-1145): An Appropriation from Free Cash (account 01-324001) to the Assessing Department (#141) in the amount of $9,000 to cover the cost of mailing tax impact notices to all taxpayers in Melrose. Motion to Approve made by Councilor Chen Seconded by Councilor Karamcheti All were in favor and motion passed RESULTS: PASSED [UNANIMOUS] TO: City Council AYES: Jason Chen, Cal Finocchiaro, Bradley Freeman, Manjula Karamcheti, Elizabeth Kowal, John Obremski, Christopher Park, Devin Romanul, Kim Vandiver, Ryan Williams NAYS: None ABSENT: Maya Jamaleddine Sarah MacLellan, Chief Assessor, explained that their office does a valuation of all properties every year, and a revaluation is conducted every 5 years, which is FY27 for Melrose. For the revaluation, 2 the MA Department of Revenue requires a full review and recertification of those values. Melrose is required to notify taxpayers of their proposed property values during the public disclosure period. Melrose has an ordinance that requires the assessors to mail a written notice to every taxpayer in the city. It is not standard practice for other cities to require the mailing. Sarah stated this helps to facilitate transparency, especially so close to the override passage. Councilors suggested saving money by offering electronic notification. Sarah commented that people are very responsive to mailings in general, and that they notify the public by other methods also. V. DEPARTMENT BUDGET PRESENTATIONS A. Department Presenter 141 Assessor 135 Auditor 942 Stabilization Fund/OPEB Funds Capital Outlay 300 School 399 Regional School Assessment (NMRVHS) 399 Essex Agricultural 399 Lexington Minuteman Department 141 Assessor Sarah MacLellan, Chief Assessor, explained that the core function of the office is the fair and equitable valuation of all taxable property in the city in accordance with Mass Law and Department of Revenue guidelines. The department is responsible for maintaining accurate records for all real and personal property in the city. Melrose is in compliance with the annual and every 5 year review processes, which enables them to submit the tax rate/shift each year. Vendors are used for the revaluation process and there is an upward trend in software fees from these vendors. Motion to Move the Bottom Line made by Councilor Finocchiaro Seconded by Councilor Karamcheti All were in favor and motion passed RESULT: ACCEPTED [UNANIMOUS] AYES: Jason Chen, Cal Finocchiaro, Bradley Freeman, Manjula Karamcheti, Elizabeth Kowal, John Obremski, Christopher Park, Devin Romanul, Kim Vandiver, Ryan Williams NAYS: None ABSENT: Maya Jamaleddine 3 Department 135 Auditor Kerri Golden, CFO, explained that her office is responsible for providing financial information to make both short and long-term financial decisions and to safeguard the city's assets. We are charged with watching every single outgoing dollar to the city as well as reviewing the incoming money that comes through the treasurer collector's office. For FY27 the payroll manager function will be moved to the treasurer's office. During FY26 they affirmed the city's bond rating and achieved the GFOA Certificate of Achievement in Excellence in Financial Reporting. A goal for FY27 is to invest in training for all department personnel. Motion to Move the Bottom Line made by Councilor Karamcheti Seconded by Councilor Finocchiaro All were in favor and motion passed RESULT: ACCEPTED [UNANIMOUS] AYES: Jason Chen, Cal Finocchiaro, Bradley Freeman, Manjula Karamcheti, Elizabeth Kowal, John Obremski, Christopher Park, Devin Romanul, Kim Vandiver, Ryan Williams NAYS: None ABSENT: Maya Jamaleddine Department 942 Stabilization Fund/OPEB Funds Kerri Golden, CFO presented the Stabilization Fund/OPEB Funds. OPEB liability for fiscal 2025 was $155 million. The pension assessment is projected to be funded by 2038. If Melrose does not fund the OPEB trust, the rating agency reviews it and writes them up stating concerns with outstanding liabilities, and there have been no penalties to date. Motion to Move the Bottom Line made by President Freeman Seconded by Councilor Vandiver All were in favor and motion passed RESULT: ACCEPTED [UNANIMOUS] AYES: Jason Chen, Cal Finocchiaro, Bradley Freeman, Manjula Karamcheti, Elizabeth Kowal, John Obremski, Christopher Park, Devin Romanul, Kim Vandiver, Ryan Williams NAYS: None ABSENT: Maya Jamaleddine Department 931 Capital Outlay Kerri Golden, CFO, explained that this is a new budget for FY27 and is a result of the capital planning process started last December. Specific items are listed with funding coming from the operating budget. Free cash requests are being utilized for items not on this list. This will be recurring on all future budgets. Some councilors were not in favor of this process since it is harder to estimate the true cost of a department if some of their funding is put under Capital Outlay. This is a lot of money, and it eliminates the discussion that would normally occur on department spending. Others stated that it's a good directional change to have a Capital Outlay and that it had been discussed over the years but lacked funding. It is the city's attempt to spend money on already established needs. Kerri prefers not putting this into a stabilization fund. It's a question of 4 governance and keeping the amounts true and accurate, which can be based on the last 5 years of data. It's a learning process and is based on the availability of money. Typically human capital consumed so much of the money that it had not been possible to establish this budget prior to the override. Motion to Move the Bottom Line made by Councilor Karamcheti Seconded by Councilor Finocchiaro All were in favor and motion passed RESULT: ACCEPTED [UNANIMOUS] AYES: Jason Chen, Cal Finocchiaro, Bradley Freeman, Manjula Karamcheti, Elizabeth Kowal, John Obremski, Christopher Park, Devin Romanul, Kim Vandiver, Ryan Williams NAYS: None ABSENT: Maya Jamaleddine Department 300 School Superintendent Cari Berman and Deputy Superintendent Ken Kelley presented highlights to the City Council and explained how they restored 17 positions through the recent override. Key priorities included reducing class sizes, restoring team models at middle school, and purchasing high-quality instructional materials. The district plans to add 15 teaching positions and 2 administrative positions, with a total requested local contribution of $49,332,180. A STEM director was hired to support the onboarding of a new math curriculum. Council members raised questions about principal staffing (keeping only one principal for the middle and high schools versus returning to the 2 principal model), achievement gaps, technology spending, and enrollment projections, which showed a 10% decline over the next three years. Concerns were raised regarding the "one principal" plan that if that person unexpectedly left Melrose, two schools would be missing a key position. If that happened, it was uncertain if they would revert to the "2 principal" plan, and they would ask teachers, students and parents for feedback. Regarding achievement gaps, especially with students of color, special needs and low income, the schools will implement intervention at the middle school level, invest in HQIM for professional development and provide special focused attention. Since the override passed there are no free cash requests right now. Technology-based instruction is part of the curriculum department number, and they are evaluating Chromebook usage and its value, to determine the cost versus effectiveness of helping students. It was noted that with the projected 10% drop in enrollment over the next 3+ years and the projected budget remaining the same, this would result in a less efficient system with increased costs per student but not in a good way. Little information was able to be shared regarding teacher union contract trends and it was stated that the budget focuses on stability while building in flexibility to address unknowns and future needs. Motion to Move the Bottom Line made by Councilor Karamcheti Seconded by Councilor Williams All were in favor and motion passed RESULT: ACCEPTED [UNANIMOUS] AYES: Jason Chen, Cal Finocchiaro, Bradley Freeman, Manjula Karamcheti, Elizabeth Kowal, John Obremski, Christopher Park, Devin Romanul, Kim Vandiver, Ryan Williams NAYS: None 5 ABSENT: Maya Jamaleddine Motion to Recess to open the city council meeting made by Chair Romanul at 7:47 PM Meeting was recessed Meeting was resumed by Chair Romanul at 7:50 PM Department 399 Regional School Assessment (NMRVHS) Jay Picone, Finance Director, and Ward Hamilton explained that the district faces financial pressures due to limited state aid growth and increased net school spending requirements. The total assessment for Melrose is $2,066,354, consisting of $1,585,598 in operating assessment and $480,755 in debt service. The presentation highlighted key challenges including salary obligations, new instructional staff needs, transportation costs, and operational expenses for the new school building, with Melrose experiencing a relatively lower increase of 5.9% compared to other communities. They discussed the higher cost of the Voc compared to regular education, with a councilor noting the $27,000 per student cost versus $17,000 for regular Melrose students, though he viewed it as an investment in skilled trades. Melrose currently has 74 students enrolled at the Voc and the most popular programs are electrical and plumbing. The new school has space for another 400 students and Melrose should anticipate more students, possibly another 120, attending there in the future. Motion to Move the Bottom Line made by Councilor Finocchiaro Seconded by Councilor Chen All were in favor and motion passed RESULT: ACCEPTED [UNANIMOUS] AYES: Jason Chen, Cal Finocchiaro, Bradley Freeman, Manjula Karamcheti, Elizabeth Kowal, John Obremski, Christopher Park, Devin Romanul, Kim Vandiver, Ryan Williams NAYS: None ABSENT: Maya Jamaleddine Department 399 Essex Agricultural Kerri Golden, CFO, presented the budget for the 8 current students from Melrose. Motion to Move the Bottom Line made by Councilor Karamcheti Seconded by Councilor Finocchiaro All were in favor and motion passed RESULT: ACCEPTED [UNANIMOUS] AYES: Jason Chen, Cal Finocchiaro, Bradley Freeman, Manjula Karamcheti, Elizabeth Kowal, John Obremski, Christopher Park, Devin Romanul, Kim Vandiver, Ryan Williams NAYS: None ABSENT: Maya Jamaleddine Department 399 Lexington Minuteman 6 Kerri Golden, CFO, presented the budget for the 1 student from Melrose. Motion to Move the Bottom Line made by Councilor Karamcheti Seconded by Councilor Finocchiaro All were in favor and motion passed RESULT: ACCEPTED [UNANIMOUS] AYES: Jason Chen, Cal Finocchiaro, Bradley Freeman, Manjula Karamcheti, Elizabeth Kowal, John Obremski, Christopher Park, Devin Romanul, Kim Vandiver, Ryan Williams NAYS: None ABSENT: Maya Jamaleddine VI. APPROPRIATIONS FOR FY27
Transcript
▶ 1:04 Devin Romanul: Up first on our agenda is Appropriation 2026-1145, an appropriation of free cash to the Assessing Department, 141, in the amount of $9,000 to cover the cost of mailing tax notices to all taxpayers in Melrose.
▶ 1:20 Speaker 1: Good evening, Chief McClellan. How are you?
▶ 1:22 Speaker 3: Good evening, Chair Romanul and councilors. Thank you for having me tonight. So I'm Sarah McClellan, Chief Assessor and Chair of the Board of Assessors. The Assessing Department is requesting a $9,000 free cash appropriation to cover a requirement in the city's code of ordinances. So to provide background on this, the Assessors Department values all property in the city every year. But every five years, the Massachusetts Department of Revenue requires a full review and recertification of those values. For Melrose, that revaluation year is the upcoming fiscal year, 2027. So the revaluation process is fairly involved. It's basically an audit conducted by the Bureau of Local Assessment that ensures that our assessments are fair, equitable, and reflect 100% of full and fair cash value. The Bureau conducts a series of statistical tests, ratio studies, and a data quality review. The process involves extensive reporting, a public review period, and eventually final certification by the Department of Revenue. As part of the revaluation, we're required to notify our taxpayers of their proposed property values during what's called the public disclosure period. So the state allows communities to fulfill this disclosure requirement by posting the proposed values resulting from the revaluation on the city's website. However, Melrose has its own ordinance that requires the assessors to mail a written notice to every taxpayer in the city. So the $9,000 we're requesting would be used strictly for the cost of printing materials and postage to send those notices out. This will ensure compliance with the local requirement, while enabling the department to focus on prioritizing the timely and accurate completion of that revaluation. The city is not able to set a tax rate until we receive the final certifications of values from the Department of Revenue. So, I'm happy to answer any questions that you have about that.
▶ 3:26 Devin Romanul: Any councilors with questions? President Freeman.
▶ 3:29 Bradley Freeman: Yeah, thank you. I just have one quick question. Not so much about the appropriation itself, but about the practice. Is it standard with other cities and towns to require the mailing as well, or are cities and towns moving away from that practice and just using electronic communications?
▶ 3:40 Speaker 3: So it's rare that it's required by ordinance, because this was from 1986. So it started in 1982, the revaluation, I believe, or right around that time. So it was new to the city, and it was more a way to inform residents when we didn't have all the other communication methods that we have now. But here and there, communities do do it voluntarily, especially when there's kind of things that have happened, like we've had the override recently and things like that. So it does help facilitate transparency and people, they'll be able to look over what their assessment is, and if they have any questions, they come to our office. During the actual disclosure period of the reval, taxpayers come into our office and look at their assessment and they-- If they have any questions or if they feel that it's not correct or accurate, anything's inaccurate, they can address those at that time during the disclosure period, before the abatement period. So it actually helps protect our overlay for that year.
▶ 4:54 Bradley Freeman: Thank you very much. And I recognize you can't comment on this, but that perhaps is something we as council should look at moving forward, whether it should be a voluntary practice for the city. Thank you.
▶ 5:02 Devin Romanul: Mm-hmm. Terrific. Up next, I have Vice Chair Vandiver.
▶ 5:05 Kimberly Vandiver: Thank you. This is a really interesting topic. We just went through an override and I think there's certainly a value to educating people. There's a lot of confusion about what drives property values over time and your value versus someone who just bought and how those are compared. But I'm just curious about this as an avenue, and if you could speak to, from your experience, how many people do usually engage with this process when we send the mailings out, and what's their reception like, as far as do you think we're reaching an extra 5% of people in the city who would otherwise have questions and now they understand things? Or, how much do you think it really impacts?
▶ 5:41 Speaker 3: So with the mailing? Oh, well, the mailing will be-- Anytime we do mailings, people are very responsive to it. But we haven't done a mailing of this nature. With the last reval, it was something that was overlooked. But now it's realized as it's part of the... ordinance like we have. It's an ordinance and we need to abide by it. But generally, with the disclosure process, just with the online, the regular process, at the same time as the public disclosure process, we do a press release and we do other communications so that the community is aware that we're in reevaluation and the impact. It's kind of like an impact notice to the community, but through the other channels. So I'm not sure what the difference will be, but I think it's going to be a greater impact because whenever we do a mailing people, it's just like their tax bill. It's like people will all receive it and react to it if they want to, if they want to look at anything or, they are always free to come into our office or call us or email us or anything with questions.
▶ 7:01 Speaker 4: Thank you.
▶ 7:01 Speaker 3: Yeah.
▶ 7:03 Speaker 1: Other councilors?
▶ 7:05 Devin Romanul: Councilor Chen.
▶ 7:07 Jason Chen: So what I hear you say is other towns are, they don't have ordinances to send mail, but they're still engaging residents through email and maybe some mail, and people can opt in to receive hard copy or email. And I think to maybe President Freeman point, there's a larger discussion that we should have about how do we save on postage costs and still engage people on a variety of mailings that we do. So maybe not for this discussion, but something that we'd want to engage you with.
▶ 7:33 Speaker 3: So other communities, annually don't usually do any kind of written communication.
▶ 7:40 Speaker 5: Because their ordinances don't require-
▶ 7:42 Speaker 3: It's rare, yes. That's very rare. Some, like Weston, the Weston assessor, they voluntarily do it just to provide, because they have a lot of activity with people wanting to know their assessment and the changes and everything, so they just provide it voluntarily, and they budget for that every year. So they budget for that mailing in their assessing budget every year just to provide, that's how they want to provide transparency. But it's rare that it's a written communication. Any time that anybody wants to come in and get their property card, they're welcome to it at any time, which is a detailed property record card. But publicly, on the assessor's website, you can get your kind of condensed version of your property record card and your assessment. That's always available.
▶ 8:38 Speaker 5: With that, I motion to move to the bottom line.
▶ 8:41 Devin Romanul: Motion made by Councilor Chen. Second. Seconded by Councilor Karamcheti.
▶ 8:45 Bradley Freeman: Point of order. This is a free cash request- Oh, right ... not a-
▶ 8:48 Speaker 1: Oh, right, yes. Did I say move to the bottom line? Or did I say-
▶ 8:51 Speaker 6: That was the motion
▶ 8:52 Devin Romanul: ... motion to approve. Motion to approve. Motion to approve made by Councilor Chen. I'll second the motion to approve. Seconded by Councilor Karamcheti. On discussion of first item, Councilor Finocchiaro.
▶ 9:00 Speaker 7: Thank you.
▶ 9:02 Cal Finocchiaro: I just wanted to ask you, is there, like, an educational component, too, with the impact notice? Mm-hmm.
▶ 9:07 Speaker 3: There is. Yeah, so it will describe the... So it will have each taxpayer's assessment, like new assessment for fiscal year 2027. It's kind of going to be like a mail merge. So once the new values are certified for the fiscal year '27 by the DOR, we'll get those values back and it'll be like a mail merge, and then we'll send it out. So it'll have your new value, and then it will say, "We've done a reevaluation this year, and on average, the single-family properties went up by X amount or down by this amount, and the condos went up this amount." So we usually do a little blurb about that. And each year, like you can see from five years ago, our disclosure did that as well, but that's more posted like in our press release in our public disclosure period, yeah.
▶ 10:03 Speaker 7: Great. I think that's really important for the residents to see. Yeah.
▶ 10:05 Speaker 4: Thank you.
▶ 10:06 Devin Romanul: Next I have Councilor Park.
▶ 10:08 Speaker 5: Thank you. Just two quick questions. One is, is this mailing done once a year? Is it an annual?
▶ 10:14 Speaker 3: So the ordinance, it only specifies to have it done in the reevaluation year, which is quinquennial, it's every five years with the Department of Revenue that we have this reevaluation period. Okay. So we only do it once every five years.
▶ 10:29 Speaker 5: Okay. And this mailing will go out to every residential property in Melrose.
▶ 10:34 Speaker 3: No. It'll go to every taxpayer in Melrose. Taxpayer, okay. So that will include personal property accounts, it will include commercial property accounts, industrial.
▶ 10:45 Speaker 5: Yeah. Got it. Okay. So it's fair to say then $9,000 will cover every taxpayer in Melrose, correct?
▶ 10:53 Speaker 3: It'll just be a letter mailed, yeah. So it's the processing, the mailing, the printing. Yeah, like bulk mailing.
▶ 11:01 Speaker 5: Okay. Wonderful, thank you. I just wanted to let the record show that if we were to have any other department come up with a mailing for every taxpayer in Melrose, it should cost about $9,000. There you go. You have it bench noted.
▶ 11:16 Devin Romanul: All right. All my colleagues' questions having been answered and a motion made, Madam Clerk, will you please call the roll?
▶ 11:21 Speaker 2: Yes. Vice Chair Vandiver? Yes. Councilor Chen? Yes. Councilor Finocchiaro? Yes. Councilor Karamcheti? Yes. Councilor Kowal? Yes. Councilor Abramsky? Yes. Councilor Park?
▶ 11:33 Speaker 4: Yes.
▶ 11:33 Speaker 2: Councilor Williams? Yes. President Freeman? Yes. Chair Romanul? Yes. All in favor? Motion passes.
▶ 11:39 Devin Romanul: All right, the motion passes. That will move on to full council. Thank you so much. And moving on to our departmental budget presentation portion of our programming. Up first, Department 141, the Assessor's Office.