Communications from Her Honor, The Mayor And Other City Officials

Transcript (~20 min @ 4:18)

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

▶ 4:13 Leila Migliorelli: Moving on to communications from her honor. The mayor, mayor, um, has submitted a memo that is in our packet online, the agenda, and printed out for us to read along. Welcome.

▶ 4:27 Jen Grigoraitis: Good evening, Madam President Counselors. Thank you for having me. Um, I just wanted to come before you to provide an update, uh, that you received via email yesterday as we begin the budget process. And I, I wanna highlight, begin because I know, as you are all familiar, your formal role in that process won't begin until sometime in mid mid-May. When for the charter, I put a budget before you inclusive of the school department in all other city departments. As I believe you are all aware, the schools have begun their discussion of the budget and we're in what I think was a predicted but incredibly challenging budget cycle due to the failure of last June's override. I know we're hearing from a lot of members of the school community with concerns about the cuts that are being proposed. And I wanted to make sure I'm proactively letting you all and about know about the process on the city side. And I'm also gonna be doing the same for the school committee. 'cause I really do think that with collaborative coordinated communication, we can be a stronger, um, elected body moving forward. So the first thing I'm requesting of you all is, um, to provide me with some feedback and input we will be making at a minimum $1.9 million worth of cuts to the city budget. Those are the non-school supporting lines. Um, and while it is my sole responsibility, um, to put down a balanced budget, and I take that very seriously, I feel like having the thoughts from all of you about where you think we can best sustain those cuts would be incredibly helpful to me in my decision making. So to that end, I will have staff from my office reach out to you so that I can meet with each of you along with CFO Carrie Golden, so that we can answer questions and hear your thoughts. Um, obviously I know you're well aware that municipal finance is a bit more complicated than revenue in and money out. We have collective bargaining obligations, legal obligations, compliance requirements, um, things that we must have by law regardless of how much they cost and many, many expenses that we are obligated to meet that we have no control over. So I wanna make sure that we're able to provide you with information to help inform your feedback, um, prior to receiving it. So we'll try to get those scheduled between now and April 1st. And as always, we welcome any opportunity to, um, connect with you all. You can always reach out to myself or Lauren, um, or Carrie as well. I also wanted to let you know that yesterday I submitted a memo to all of our, um, boards and commissions that set fees. We have several across the city, including the park commission, um, Memorial Hall Board of trustees, the BB Estate and the Liquor Commission that set various fees for services. I have asked all of those bodies to provide me by mid-April so that they have a full month given their own meeting schedule with their current list of fees, the last time that fees were assessed or raised, and then what their plan would be for moving forward in FY 26 to increase fees to generate, um, additional revenue. None of these steps are gonna substantially, um, close the current $6.1 million budget gap, but I do think we need to be pulling every lever that we can. So I have asked that of them. I've also asked the same of all City Department heads who oversee fees. Um, I do know for those of you who've been on the council for a couple years, we fairly recently did some fee, um, review and updates for the building department, the city clerk's office. But I've asked all those departments to review again, just to make sure that we are as current as can be and as, um, competitive with our peer communities on those fees. We are also trying to think very creatively about how we can continue to shrink the deficit on the city side. So I do wanna, um, commend our HR audit and legal departments for developing an opt-out incentive for our retirees. As you know, we carry all health insurance benefits, um, for city employees, um, as well as our retirees. That's our largest line after the schools. And we currently have about 70 retirees who are under the age of 65, so not yet eligible for Medicare. Um, and they carry insurance plans as retirees. And 35 of those carry family plans. Those plans come with a significant cost to the city. So, like we have done many years ago for city employees, we're gonna offer a small financial incentive to see if any of those retirees would opt out of our benefits. Um, and then hop hopefully that would reduce some of the burden on our benefit line. So we're, we've just let folks know about the program. It will be some time until we're able to identify what, if any savings we have. I will also caveat that we continue to wait for the group insurance commission to provide us with the insurance increases for next year. They are also a public body. They go through their own public process. Um, but again, that is our largest line item at 16 million. So we are anticipating fairly significant increases and that will greatly impact all parts of the budget, including what potential savings we may see from an opt-out program. So I just wanted to let you know of those items. Um, I'll be sharing that with the school committee as well, and we are always available to answer questions as we move forward through this. Thank you. Thank

▶ 9:12 Leila Migliorelli: You Madam Mayor. Um, do any counselors have any comments, questions, um, pertinent to this memo, councilor Hamilton.

▶ 9:21 Ward Hamilton: Thank you madam President and thank you to the mayor for being here this evening. And, uh, I'll keep my remarks brief. I thank you for your leadership since, uh, taking the mantle and running with it in this city that has significant financial challenges. And in the last, uh, year plus that you've been in your leadership role, I've been impressed and proud to serve on this council, um, with you at the helm because you, you recognize the

▶ 10:03 Ward Hamilton: imp importance, the, uh, where we are financially. And so, uh, I look forward to continuing to support you in that role. And thank you for your leadership.

▶ 10:12 Leila Migliorelli: Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Just wanna state for the record, Councillor Stewart has joined us this evening. Thank you. Um, Councillor Jamal, I see your hand raised.

▶ 10:21 Maya Jamaleddine: Thank you. Thank you Madam Mayor, for being with us, uh, tonight and for providing such a important

▶ 10:28 Maya Jamaleddine: and, um, unfortunate, um, you know, information about the city budget. Um, just a point of clarification with all those tests and all those, uh, uh, you know, shifts that you're trying to make, uh, across all departments. Um, how if, if we were able

▶ 10:48 Maya Jamaleddine: to move with all these, uh, shifts that you are just, uh, sharing with us, um, where it would, uh, lead our city in terms of the budget, how much, how are we still short or are we still in deficit uh, after all these cuts?

▶ 11:08 Jen Grigoraitis: Um, it's, I would say we're probably in deficit still, 1.5 million. Again, these are all just gonna trim things around the edges. We obviously want to try things that don't impact, you know, that are not involuntary personnel departures. Um, but I, I think we will be getting to that point and I've had that conversation with department heads so that they're starting to prepare for that as we begin to move through budgets.

▶ 11:31 Maya Jamaleddine: Yeah. Thank you. Um, my other question is, I know that, um, you know, like now we do feel those, uh, cuts and schools because our students and our, uh, children are suffering and are reporting to us whenever, you know, there's a short up staff, short up, uh, teachers, we see that and we feel it, so we get more frustrated, um, as we move forward with those cuts across all departments. Um, all populations in Merose are going to feel those cuts and to feel, um, those short of resources in our city. Um, and, and the reason why I'm saying this is to just emphasize of the importance of, uh, having an override that can actually, um, um, offset that deficit and be able to lead us to a somehow I, I wouldn't, uh, be that optimistic somehow, um, um, floating in terms of the budget and in terms of getting the minimum resources for all the residents and not only, uh, the school, um, departments, but across all departments in the city.

▶ 12:54 Leila Migliorelli: Thank you. Councillor Aldine, Councillor Firo.

▶ 12:58 Speaker 5: Um, thank you madam. Um, president. Thank you Madam Mayor.

▶ 13:01 Cal Finocchiaro: Um, I sort of say that, um, I appreciate this because I feel like we are getting pulled in early and sort of able to give feedback and last year we were involved, but I feel like this is even like more in depth and I, I appreciate that because, and I, I appreciate all the options you're giving here. You're really delving in and looking where you can cut in the city. You know, like the, the, the fee the having the departments come back with, you know, the fees, um, where we can increase the fees and, um, I don't know.

▶ 13:37 Speaker 5: I just, I really appreciate this and, um, look forward to seeing what we do with the budget. Thank you.

▶ 13:42 Speaker 4: Councillor Mano.

▶ 13:44 Devin Romanul: Um, thank you Madam Mayor. I really appreciate this and, and look forward to meeting with you and, uh, your staff to, uh, give some input from, uh, from the community. But I, I wanted to ask on the 1.9 figure, is that, is that a hard number or do you feel like there's still an opportunity for, uh, that to be on a sliding scale depending upon what the school department, um, works out? Like? I'm curious to see where, uh, where those conversations are going.

▶ 14:08 Jen Grigoraitis: I think, as we've said back since February 5th when we all had the joint meeting, things are going to shift around the margins. Um, you know, for example, we just learned, I think maybe right after the February 5th meeting that our assessment for the VOC building has actually increased by 25,000 more than we had been initially told. So it's a, it's a constant involving number crunch. I'm not gonna say that things are set in stone. There is not going to be, I know there are people in this community who want to see a fully funded school budget with $6.1 million worth of cuts on the city side. We cannot sustain city operations at that level of cuts. I I do wanna remind folks that there are $20 million worth of school, um, costs, many of which are required to meet our net school spending, including all of the salaries for our school nurses, all of our DPW um, custodial staff, our student resource officers. And then all of the benefits for all school employees are housed in the city budget. So when we talk about where we can cut, it's actually a fairly restrictive amount. And again, our, our two largest lines in the city budget, our pension obligations, and health insurance, and neither of those can be cut and neither of those are set by us in terms of what the costs are.

▶ 15:16 Speaker 3: Thank you very much. You're welcome Councilor.

▶ 15:20 Mark Garipay: Everyone else I might as well. Um, thank you for this, uh, memo and, you know, been, been here a couple times, um, going through the process. We are kind of at the beginning of this process and the city, the city side, um, it's always gone to schools because ultimately the school rolls up to our total budget. So I know we hear a lot of feedback from, from residents, um, you know, what are we, what's, what are we doing on the city side? And it's, and it's an evolving process, right? I appreciate, um, everything you're doing. I just, one other thing when we talk about 1.5, 1.9 that the, and I could be wrong, but the community also needs to realize is we take unemployment mm-hmm. On the city side, so it's really not 1.5, we are gonna be cutting probably more money because we're gonna have to increase our unemployment. Mm-hmm. So there's not a lot of wiggle room. We know over the years, Melrose has always had a tight budget and over the years they've, it's done a, took care of a lot of the low hanging fruit. There's not much left here. Um, so I just just wanna say that because I don't think the 1.5, it's, it's gonna be more, there could be more than 1.5 because of the unemployment. And I think that's a, a big point that as much as I've, I have a child in the schools too, and it's very tough. It's gonna be tough decisions for all of us. Uh, and they're not easy. So, um, I just wanted to say that. And then just one quick thing. I think I know the answer on the benefits. Um, is this just an annual thing? Like can someone opt in and next year if they

▶ 16:59 Jen Grigoraitis: Correct, they would have during open enrollment, they, like we have for current city employees, they would have the ability to, um, opt in. But we were actually surprised at the number of, you know, for re retirees, relatively young folks that are, are taking full retiree benefits. Right.

▶ 17:13 Speaker 6: Thank you very much. Thank you. Thank you.

▶ 17:14 Speaker 4: Councilor Stewart. Thank you Madam President.

▶ 17:15 Robb Stewart: Mad president. Where are we on the agenda? My apologies because I Sure.

▶ 17:19 Speaker 4: We are on updates from her honor or the mayor. Okay, great.

▶ 17:21 Robb Stewart: Alright, so we are there. Thank you. Met a mayor.

▶ 17:28 Robb Stewart: Welcome. Uh, thanks for being here. Um, so I got a flat earlier today and I was supposed to read this. I didn't get a chance to read it, so, uh, my apologies, Ken. Um, are we gonna get a spreadsheet of, uh, last year budget, uh, this year? Where we are? What, what, what are we gonna have to work with For The, in terms of you say, uh, I'm requesting input from the counselor regarding the individual suggestions and recommendations for cuts, um, to the operating budget. So I would need to work with numbers. Mm-hmm. Um, will you be able to provide a, a spreadsheet for us to be able to work from?

▶ 18:10 Jen Grigoraitis: We will, the current, the FY 25 budget, which I think should be your baseline, is currently online, as you know, it's online. And then what, um, Carrie and I would like to do is be able to answer questions. So, you know, for example, I gave, um, I mentioned that if we eliminated the Melrose Public Library, it never opened its doors next year, that that would save us $1 million in staff cuts. And I think actually some people in the community have said that's a great idea, um, which I don't personally agree with, but the, it's, it's more complicated than that. If we did not open the library next year, the state would come to us and say, that's really disappointing. Please pay back the grant that we gave you to do your library renovation, which would actually put us even deeper in the hole. So just recognizing that while there are numbers on a page and there are a lot of those available, the, um, the information behind those numbers and where the flexibility lies and the consequences of trying to eliminate some of those numbers, um, is what we wanna help provide you the context with. 'cause I recognize just looking at a page, you know, I think you can go through and say, oh, cut that, cut that, cut that. But we have, you know, contractual obligations, minimum manning. Um, certainly we have 10 positions in the city by law that we're required to have. So just to be able to provide that context to help you all think through it. Well,

▶ 19:19 Robb Stewart: I, I think you know me well enough by now that I'm gonna want to get into the numbers a little bit. And, uh, what would be, uh, what would be helpful is if, um, the console, at least me, uh, could get an Excel spreadsheet as opposed to having to look at it online. Because if I'm gonna, if I'm gonna make an informed recommendation to you, I'm gonna want to get in the numbers and play with it and, and do some analysis on my own. Uh, so if that's something, uh, that could be provided, that would be extremely helpful.

▶ 19:50 Jen Grigoraitis: So we, that doesn't exist at this point in time. So right now we're getting department head budgets. They've been asked to submit for level services, and then I'll go through and make my cuts. So I was hoping to have you all inform my cuts. I think creating a draft budget is something I'm a little hesitant to do because that becomes something that I think lives in the public without any permanency. And we would certainly, before any document was made, public wanna make sure that the people that are gonna be directly impacted by those cuts are aware of it.

▶ 20:17 Speaker 7: I'm talking about the 25 Oh

▶ 20:19 Speaker 8: Yeah, the 25. Yeah, we can get you that. Yeah, it's online. Yeah, Yeah. In Excel. I don't know if it's in Excel, but we can try that. Yes.

▶ 20:26 Robb Stewart: Can you get, can you give me a version Excel? That'd be great. Thank you. Thank you. Madam P? Yes.

▶ 20:32 Kimberly Vandiver: Councilor Vandiver. Uh, uh, thank you Madam President. Thank you Madam Mayor for your updates, uh, through the chair. If, um, if it would be helpful to other counselors, I did put last year's PDF into a spreadsheet and I would be happy to share that, um, with anyone if that format is easier for people. Um, my my other comment, I mean, I think, I think, uh, to echo everybody, you do an amazing job always. And, and this is very clear and and helpful to us. Um, my comment on it would be that, you know, so much of this has been part of the conversation for us for multiple years and, and for the school committee and, and seems very expected and obvious in a lot of ways, but much of our community still is unaware. And I know that there's a lot of communication that you do in print through email on the city website and, and, you know, at these meetings. Um, but I would just urge you to get, continue to get creative about how to make people aware that this is coming. How to make people aware that these decisions are being made. Um, you know, public forums, posters in stores, the Chamber of commerce, you know how, however else, I mean, I know you're on MMTV, but just really thinking about every possible avenue to, to make people aware that these, these things are being considered and why this question is, is being asked. Mm-hmm.

▶ 21:52 Speaker 4: Thank you. Yeah. Councillor Garbe.

▶ 21:54 Speaker 6: I'm all set. All set. Okay. Sorry.

▶ 21:56 Speaker 4: Um, thank you.

▶ 21:58 Leila Migliorelli: Um, I, I just wanted to say, uh, thank you for all this work. This is incredibly helpful and I know responsive to a lot of our questions and community questions. Um, just wanted to add that, you know, this is my sixth budget process and, um, after having heard throughout the years, um, a lot of concerns about the schools and cuts on city side, and I will admit that, you know, starting as a parent, I wondered too, wow, can we, can't we cut more on the city side and why? And, um, I, I understand why it's hard for some people to look and, and see that, well, there looks like there's so much money here to cut, but when you really dig in deep, there isn't as much because of all the obligations. Um, so I look forward going through this, look forward to going through this process. Um, providing this type of information is helpful and I think as counselors we can do our best to help communicate to our constituents about these budget issues. In terms of communications, I know the mayor has several outlets for communications that, um, her and her staff have been using. Um, and I think by us talking to people and communicating, um, you know, in whatever channels we choose to, I think, um, that's something we should do. So thank you very much.

▶ 23:10 Speaker 8: Thank you all. Thank you.

▶ 23:11 Leila Migliorelli: Um, we appear to be having some issues with our Zoom platform right now. Yeah.

▶ 23:17 Speaker 1: I don't know what happened. It just literally just completely that completely disconnected.

▶ 23:22 Speaker 1: Um, And I keep trying to get back in and it's saying it's having a problem, so,

▶ 23:26 Speaker 4: Okay.

▶ 23:31 Speaker 4: I dunno what's going on. Alright, um,

▶ 23:34 Leila Migliorelli: Let's Move through our agenda. Um, we are fine to kind of move through everything. Um, I'll, I can read out loud the orders. Um, I can do it Madam Clerk, if you're trying to do that. I can do that for,

▶ 23:47 Speaker 1: Well, it's just trying to Load back in. I don't know what's happening. I apologize. I don't know. It just went off. All right.

▶ 23:55 Leila Migliorelli: Alright, let's go then. Um, new business filings by the honorable mayor appointments. Actually I can do this anyways. Madam Clerk, your voice is gonna go.