APPRO-2024-25 : Fiscal 2025 Operating Budget in the amount of $104,140,412 (One Hundred four million, one hundred forty thousand, four hundred and twelve dollars).

Transcript (~46 min @ 51:55)

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

▶ 51:58 Speaker 2: When will be the next,

▶ 52:05 Maya Jamaleddine: next we have, um, appropriation 2024 dash 25 fiscal 2025 operating budget in the amount of, uh, $104,140,412. Um, on, um, um, we have tonight Department 1 55 infotech.

▶ 52:28 Speaker 2: Mr. GaN, thank you

▶ 52:33 Maya Jamaleddine: for being with us tonight. It's

▶ 52:35 Speaker 3: Good to see you all again. It's been a long time. Um, so if it's okay with the council, I'd like to just say a few words. Um, I typed up the whole thing, but I think I'm just gonna wing it now instead. 'cause where's the fun in that? Um, so I figured I'm new to this, uh, of several of you are new on the council. Um, so I just kind of quickly go over what we do to an extent. Um, we have, so obviously we run the city and the school's it staffing and department. Um, we have full four full-time staff members here for the city. Um, myself, our new deputy IT director, Joe who you guys have met I think several weeks ago. Um, Jared is our systems analyst upstairs and we, I'm happy to say we have a new, finally we have a full-time dedicated help desk technician for the city, which up until a month ago, two months ago, we'd never had one. Um, so that's fantastic Strides going forward. Um, on the school side, we have another four, uh, folks over there. Um, we have a systems administrator who kind of more or less runs and oversees the day-to-Day stuff, um, kicks everything back up to me to keep me in the loop. Um, we have should have two help desk technicians. We unfortunately just, uh, had one leave us this past Friday for a fantastic opportunity for the town of Concord. Um, I asked him what I could do to get him to stay and then he told me what he was gonna make and I said, well, it's been great working with you bud. Wish you the best. Um, and we have, uh, Leslie, our SIS coordinator is doing a fantastic job with all the student information stuff and keeping all the state reporting and all that kind of fun stuff up to date. Um, I could sit here for several hours and tell you about all the ins and outs and things that we do and handle day in and day out. Uh, nobody wants that except for me. Um, you know, our day to day stuff can vary greatly. Some days we have lighter loads and we kind of catch up on the housekeeping and documentation and all the boring stuff. Other times we are all running in 18 different directions and just counting the hours till the day ends. Um, but one thing I would like to say, and I kind of wanna say the same little spiel to all of you that I say to any new employee or intern that we have. Um, you know, I say to 'em, what do you want to do in it? What's your career path? What's your progression? What are you interested in? What do you want to do? Most time they're younger people and they don't really know and they just stare at me all silly, like, and wondering what I'm getting at. What I'm getting at is we have everything here and we do everything here that you would get if you went into a Fortune 500 company, if you went up the road into Boston, if you, you know, had an IT department with 35 people and several million dollars to it. We do all the same stuff, all the same equipment, we have all these same challenges to overcome. Um, we just do it on a far tighter budget and with far fewer people. So it makes it interesting. Um, so especially with us, like I said, we just had our first dedicated help desk technician. So up until actually still now I'm still running around plugging in computers and restarting stuff and mounting TVs. You know, we all do everything. So regardless of what your position is, you have the opportunity to get your hands into everything and see everything and experience everything. Um, so it's great in that sense, but it makes life challenging because if we're always behind the eight ball and trying to catch up to the latest and greatest trends that are going on in the world and not good trends, always bad trends. Um, so it can be difficult to do with the staffing and the equipment and the budgets that we have, but that's just the reality of it. And sometimes it makes life fun. Other times not so much. Um, but with that, that's the end of my spiel. I'll bore you no longer, um, whatever questions you have for the budget, I'm happy to try to do my best to clear up for you.

▶ 56:43 Maya Jamaleddine: Questions from my colleague, counselor gpe.

▶ 56:46 Mark Garipay: Thank you. Uh, Madam Chair. Thank you Mr. S Mulligan. Quick, two quick questions. On your budget you have uh, com, uh, under contractual computer. Miscellaneous mm-Hmm. Is that the third party, um, support vendor? Is that what that is?

▶ 57:01 Speaker 3: No, that is purely just, um, miscellaneous supplies for keeping daily operations up and running.

▶ 57:09 Mark Garipay: Is um, is that one up considerably? Is that come from another line item or what for that increase

▶ 57:16 Speaker 3: Computer miscellaneous or the professional services line

▶ 57:18 Mark Garipay: Computer? Miscellaneous, it looks like, am I looking at a 32,000, 1500% increase of a prior budget?

▶ 57:28 Speaker 3: Am I looking at the right? I think we're looking at Different things. Hmm.

▶ 57:36 Speaker 6: Okay. Maybe there was another, uh, uni report that got updated

▶ 57:40 Speaker 3: Perhaps. Sorry.

▶ 57:42 Mark Garipay: Then um, what do you have, uh, for that line item? It was used to be $2,000, is that right?

▶ 57:47 Speaker 3: Yes, that's where I have it at. Alright.

▶ 57:48 Speaker 6: Yeah, I show 32, but that's, that's fine. That's fine. He just not 32, we're in good shape.

▶ 57:55 Speaker 6: Um, uh,

▶ 57:57 Mark Garipay: and then on the expanded citywide fiber optic for new public safety radios and better redundancy for better redundancy, is that completed that project?

▶ 58:07 Speaker 3: Uh, so as of the end of last week, they were finalizing clo, what they call closing the loop, making all the connections, um, to tie it all together. The public safety radios are up and running now.

▶ 58:22 Speaker 3: Mostly they're being recorded, so that's good.

▶ 58:27 Speaker 6: Okay. Um, that's, uh, that's all I have for questions. Thank you.

▶ 58:30 Maya Jamaleddine: Thank you. Next I have Counselor Vanderberg, vice Chair Williams, councilor ra, and thank counselor Stewart Councilor.

▶ 58:42 Speaker 4: Sorry, I didn't, I don't think I had my hands. Okay.

▶ 58:45 Maya Jamaleddine: Um, vice Chair Williams. Hello.

▶ 58:51 Ryan Williams: Um, what's in the professional services line? What's, what, what's In the professional services line?

▶ 58:58 Speaker 3: So that one, that professional services, uh, that is now absorbed, what we're going to use for our third party MSP that we're bringing online. Your third party, say it again. MSP. Okay. Um, so they're going to help us out a lot, which is why there's that massive increase. Um, they're going to be taking on a lot of the, um, more security side aspects. So we'll be doing a lot, lot of 24 7 monitoring, um, managing some more critical updates and patching for us in real time. So there are things that we don't have, you know, we don't have the staff to sit there and respond to this and monitor it, nor do we have the systems to monitor all that stuff as they should be. So they'll be handing a lot of that as well as, um, some offsite cloud backups and, uh, yeah. And they're monitoring all of our antivirus stuff.

▶ 59:44 Ryan Williams: So are these folks monitoring inbound traffic for threats? Both And outbound. Mm-Hmm. Um, I, so

▶ 59:51 Speaker 3: As well as status, so if a piece of equipment goes offline in that loop somewhere, they'll,

▶ 59:55 Ryan Williams: Um, because one thing that has always kind of picked at me is the issue of, of VPNs at the middle school and high school. And, um, I know that you can't like out Fox every VPN try, You just can't. But it has to be, I mean, in terms of keeping kids safe in school with safe technology uses, it has to be a really substantial job. Mm-Hmm. In order to, um, staff that and the ongoing nature of, of the, of the like arms race that is teenagers with, you know, technology. So I wonder if you could just speak to how you feel we are making progress on that front, doing better now than before, prepared to handle, you know, the cat and mouse game, um, to try and keep kids from getting access to things they're not supposed to be accessing when they're in school.

▶ 1:00:43 Speaker 3: Yeah. Um, so like you said, it, it is a pure 100% whack-a-mole. Right. Um, I am not a 15-year-old child, and I don't live in that world, luckily. So it's hard, like you said, for us to know exactly what's going on all the time. Um, we have in our firewall currently, there's a lot of ways to block a lot of that stuff. Uh, one of the biggest challenges right now is, uh, encrypted DNS, which hides the main way that you would be able to kind of predict that stuff and find it and unblock it. Um, so we're taking some strides to deal with that. There's a hint a couple different ways you can deal with it. Um, some are very intrusive and we try not to do that. Um, and others are a little less intrusive, but there's drawbacks to that as well. Um, one of the biggest problems honestly, is all these kids have their own devices. Mm-Hmm. And so they all have nicer cell phones than I do with unlimited data plans, and they just hop on that. So it doesn't matter as much what we put in their way for roadblocks. They're always one flip away to getting on their cell phone and then putting a hotspot on, and then they can connect their laptop or whatever to that directly and bypass everything. You can just put 'em in a Faraday Cage. I have joked about that and also not joked about that. Uh, but they, they are very craft. I remember, uh, probably like 10, 15 years ago, the big thing kids were doing was going to, um, Google Translate and you'd put in Google Translate the website you wanted to go to, and it would render it all on Google's cloud services in the background, and it would just show up in a pain. So there'd be nothing on the network to block. And it's like, what do, what do you do? You can't block Google. So it's, it's a cat and mouse game for sure.

▶ 1:02:28 Ryan Williams: It, it does sound like you have got, you're thinking about it, you've got ideas, and it is an ongoing effort that you For sure Are working on. So I appreciate that. Thank you. Mm-Hmm.

▶ 1:02:39 Maya Jamaleddine: Thank you. Councilor Chiro.

▶ 1:02:42 Cal Finocchiaro: Actually, my question was gonna be the same thing, um, about the professional services. Um, and I'm just assuming that that contracted vendor is gonna stay like annually, that'll be part of the budget going forward. Yes. Yeah.

▶ 1:02:55 Speaker 1: Mm-Hmm. Just wanted to check on.

▶ 1:02:57 Speaker 2: Thanks Councilor

▶ 1:02:57 Speaker 1: Stewart.

▶ 1:02:59 Speaker 4: Thank you, Madam Chair. Um,

▶ 1:03:01 Robb Stewart: you touched upon some things, so thank you. So the, uh, third party support, who, who's doing it?

▶ 1:03:10 Speaker 3: Uh, hub Technical, I'm sorry, hub Technical. Hub

▶ 1:03:12 Speaker 4: Technical. Are they local?

▶ 1:03:15 Speaker 3: Uh, they're down closer to their main headquarters, down closer to around Foxborough area.

▶ 1:03:20 Robb Stewart: Well, but they're, they're, they're within the state? Oh, yes, for sure. Okay. Yes. And do they, are they known? I don't, I'm not familiar with them. Are they known for municipalities? Like Mm-Hmm. Oh,

▶ 1:03:30 Speaker 3: Uh, municipalities on a lot of state work as well. A

▶ 1:03:33 Speaker 4: Lot state work. Okay, good. Good.

▶ 1:03:34 Speaker 3: And we've had a relationship with them in varying degrees, um, for the past seven years here and prior, uh, or 10 years in my previous job.

▶ 1:03:48 Robb Stewart: Okay. So, um, I know you just hired somebody for the support tickets. Uh, do they handle support? Um, can they, can they work on shift left? Try to, to Oh yeah.

▶ 1:04:02 Robb Stewart: To push some of the, the, the tickets. 'cause when I see a 45% increase, that to me is a degradation of performance. Um, And what in the, In just IT support, because even though you're getting more complicated, uh, you're not, you're not pushing the self-service out to the employees that should be handling a lot of these things themselves.

▶ 1:04:20 Speaker 3: Yes. So we have, um, the past two years we had a new ticketing system. Um, and we've been really, it has a far more robust, say, knowledge base in there where we've been trying to, over time, as you know, it is a little hard for us to just think, Hey, off the top of my head, what are the things I need to document that you as the end user want to know? Um, 'cause I work in a totally different aspect from what the end user is. So, um, you know, we do our best to fill that up. And then as new tickets come in and we help people out, we re document that stuff, push it back up there, up to the knowledge base so that everyone can hopefully go back and check it. Um, in there there's also some cool stuff where as you're entering in a ticket, it'll over cursively search that database and match or attempt to match articles that we have in there. Whole being that it'll pop up and someone will see it and be able to help themselves. Um, the reality is, uh, I can't get people to put tickets in. They love to call me and email me. So it kind of, again, circumvents that whole thing. So we are actively trying to push much more of that information out there. Um, but again, getting people to fully adopt it and buy into it different story. But yes, as we're adding more and more of these services, we're not adding more people to keep up with those services to, you know, get all that knowledge out there. The one-on-one training, you know, in real time kind of stuff. Um, so there is a trade off. The more we do, we're not getting more people to cover all of that effectively the way it should be. Sure.

▶ 1:05:50 Robb Stewart: Sure. Okay. Thank you. Um, and then are you, are you getting any demand or, uh, requests or thinking about copilot?

▶ 1:06:00 Speaker 3: Uh, there hasn't been any mention of it to me.

▶ 1:06:07 Speaker 3: Um, I am not super fan of a lot of that stuff. Um,

▶ 1:06:12 Robb Stewart: Can I give you a perspective? No,

▶ 1:06:13 Speaker 3: I, I'm not saying there's nothing wrong with it, but

▶ 1:06:16 Robb Stewart: I think if, if anybody's gonna be using any kind of chat GPT within your organization, you can't control the information that's then getting put out in the public domain. Whereas if you use a product like, um, co-pilot Mm-Hmm. You have full control over over the information because it now is contained within your Microsoft domain. Sure. So that's something I would consider as a strategy. Mm-Hmm. Uh, just thinking about it, um, sure, totally.

▶ 1:06:44 Speaker 3: There's, like I said, there's been no mention of that to me, but it's definitely something that, I mean, I'm not against that stuff.

▶ 1:06:50 Robb Stewart: So this is the line of work that I'm in and, and it is a big issue, um, across all enterprises right now in terms of how you control people using a lot of these intelligent engines. Sure. And the security risk, it gets magnified. Uh, and I think, you know, the, the number one, uh, concern that I I see that you're addressing, which is good, is cybersecurity and threat detection and being able to make sure that everything's locked down as best as you can. Um, so, and I do see that you have multi authentication, uh, identified, um, multi-factor authentication. Uh, when's that gonna get rolled out?

▶ 1:07:33 Speaker 3: Oh, it's out now Is okay. Yeah. So it's, um, we have that rolled out in our 365 tenant. Um, and we tie in as many third party services when we get them into it. Uh, so that everything is authenticating against a single SSO, um, with two factor on. So we can, you know, single throat to choke as they say. You know, we have one place to go to manage all that, to enforce policies. Um, and that's definitely a large part of when we're looking at new softwares and departments come asking for various things, that's one of the very top of the list. Like, what do they offer that, how do we tie that into our existing platforms?

▶ 1:08:10 Robb Stewart: Great. Great. And does the M-S-C-M-S-P provider, um, are they also controlling your whole DR strategy?

▶ 1:08:20 Speaker 3: No. Well, they have a hand in it, I'll put it that they're not controlling it, but they have a hand in it. Okay. So We're working with them to, to kind of tighten all that up and build a roadmap for it and everything.

▶ 1:08:31 Speaker 4: Okay. Okay.

▶ 1:08:36 Robb Stewart: And I'm not, I, I'm not familiar with the environment, are you, um, are you in private data center? Are you colo or are you, uh, fully cloud right now? It hybrid. Hybrid. Yeah. Okay. So you have a hybrid model? Mm-Hmm. Okay. So, and, and are you looking to push a DM model over to the, the cloud side, or how,

▶ 1:08:55 Speaker 3: Um, right now there hasn't been that much discussion about it. Mm-Hmm. Uh, just because we've got a lot of other eggs in the air at one time. Right. Um, but again, as we're kinda, as those things come up, that's an option for all of 'em. The bigger issue becomes the funding. Um, it's one thing if you have something here, you buy it. Once you sit on it for X amount of years, you're good to go. You know, you build it into your refresh cycle for your budgeting. Sure. But now everything is now some sort of subscription as a service, storage, as a service, all that kind of stuff. So it's suddenly that year over year, as you do new things, the budget just goes bananas and, and it's hard to contain.

▶ 1:09:35 Speaker 4: Okay. Okay.

▶ 1:09:38 Robb Stewart: Um, sounds like you got things pretty well in control. Some work to do

▶ 1:09:42 Speaker 3: For sure. There's always work to do. Alright. Yes.

▶ 1:09:44 Speaker 4: Alright, Tom, thank you. Thank you. Honor chair.

▶ 1:09:47 Speaker 2: Thank you. Um, councilor, no, sorry.

▶ 1:09:54 Maya Jamaleddine: You're all set. Yeah. Um, councilor Romanul.

▶ 1:09:57 Devin Romanul: Thank you Madam Chair. Uh, this may be an, an outlier might be a couple of standard deviations away, but, um, I'm curious if there have been a bunch of cities around the country that have struggled with ransom, uh, ransoming, um, and I know it's, uh, yeah, maybe not, but I'm just wondering if this is something that we're factoring in however remote it may seem. It's, it's in the, the war stream in some way, shape, or form.

▶ 1:10:19 Speaker 3: It is a daily thing for me. Um, so I don't want to go too, too much into it. Sure, of course. I know there's certainly, but there's, we're doing a large scale shift all at once. So with bringing in the MSP, um, there's gonna be a lot of shift and lift of services and products that will allow us to, um, build out new aspects of our environment that we're lacking before, uh, to include a couple immutable stores on site, um, as well as having another level of it out in the cloud that's also immutable. Um, just meaning simply that it's right once and that's it. It can't, you can look at it, but you can't do anything with it. Um, so, so some of that I'm designing and building in house, um, others, like I said, with the MSP that's gone to the cloud. So we'll have various layers of long term and longer term storage locally here in the building offsite within the district out in the cloud. Um, and we also have, with that, uh, our main server cluster has a redundant node offsite, which when it was initially designed by the manufacturer, it wasn't designed to be a ransomware esque proof design, but afterwards, it kind of, the thought process is like, oh, it actually is. So we have that, like, if we have issues with our cluster here, whatever it may be, it can kick over to another building, which is also still segmented and segregated out from what the potential issue might be. So it's all a living theory because when it goes sideways, you just never know at what point of the whack-a-mole game you're in.

▶ 1:11:56 Devin Romanul: Right. So, no, I am glad, glad we're working on it. I know it's a, perhaps low, low frequency, but extraordinary.

▶ 1:12:02 Speaker 3: Oh, no, it's, yeah. It's a everyday thing. Especially, you know, when in lows, stones throw away and

▶ 1:12:10 Devin Romanul: Yeah. And I, I know even with some of the, the, the most advanced cities in the country get hit with it. It's, you know, you can only do so much. Right. Thank you. I'm, I'm so glad. And let us know you can, we can support you in that, in that effort. Appreciate

▶ 1:12:22 Speaker 3: It. Thank you.

▶ 1:12:22 Speaker 4: Thank you very much. Thank

▶ 1:12:24 Maya Jamaleddine: You. Any other question? But, uh, president,

▶ 1:12:31 Leila Migliorelli: Thank you Madam Chair. No question. I just wanted to say great job on your first presentation as it director. This is really helpful and very detail oriented. And, um, I'll just make a motion to move the bottom line. Second,

▶ 1:12:44 Maya Jamaleddine: We have a motion to move to bottom line made by President Elli, seconded by Councillor Repe. On discussion. Seeing none, Mr. Clerk,

▶ 1:12:55 Speaker 1: Vice Chair Williams? Yes. Councilor Repe. Yes. Councillor Stewart? Yes. Councillor Hamilton. Yes. Councillor Vandiver. Yes. Councillor Romanul. Yes. Councillor naca. Yes. President GL Yes. And Chair Jamal? Yes. Our motion passes unanimously.

▶ 1:13:09 Maya Jamaleddine: Thank you. And so, uh, in the IT department number nine 30 capital outlay it.

▶ 1:13:19 Speaker 3: Hello again. Hi. Uh, do you just want to get to it? 'cause it's the same speech. Any question?

▶ 1:13:28 Maya Jamaleddine: Okay. Seeing none, what is the will of the committee

▶ 1:13:32 Speaker 6: Make a motion to move the bottom line?

▶ 1:13:33 Maya Jamaleddine: We have a motion to move the bottom line to move

▶ 1:13:37 Speaker 6: The bottom line of the capital out by it. Budget nine 30.

▶ 1:13:40 Maya Jamaleddine: We have a motion to move to bottom line made by Councillor gpe. Seconded. Second by Councillor Stewart. On discussion. Seeing none, Mr. Clerk,

▶ 1:13:52 Speaker 1: Vice Chair Williams? Yes. Councillor gpe. Yes. Councillor Stewart? Yes. Councillor Hamilton? Yes. Councillor Vandiver? Yes. Councilor Romanul? Yes. Councilor for naca? Yes. President Elli? Yes. And Chair Jamal Dean? Yes. Motion passes unanimously.

▶ 1:14:07 Speaker 2: Thank you. Thank you.

▶ 1:14:11 Maya Jamaleddine: Next we have, uh, department 1 75 and, uh, in the planning department, uh, with Ms. Gaffey. Hi again.

▶ 1:14:23 Speaker 1: Hey, good evening. Um,

▶ 1:14:27 Denise Gaffey: so I'm here to discuss the, um, budget for the Department of Planning and Community Development. Um, probably the most significant change in our budget, which is mostly salary, um, relates to, um, some restructuring that we have done with the conservation agent position. And, uh, just a little bit of background. I think a lot of people assume the conservation agent worked under the planning office, but, um, because there was a desk in our, in our office, but, um, historically that position, which probably started out many years ago with just very few hours, um, and um, has, uh, progressed over, over time. Um, that position had until recently reported directly to the Volunteer Conservation Commission members. So, um, when, um, we've recently had, um, um, we lost our conservation agent and thought it was a good time to, to think about that, um, the structure, and I think it makes a lot of sense. And the mayor supported the idea of, um, of having the, uh, conservation agent position report directly, uh, up to the planning director in the planning office. So that is a major change. There is no longer a separate budget, uh, line item for conservation. And the salary for this position is now in the, the planning department. Mm-Hmm. Um, it is still very much a, uh, part-time position. Um, we would, um, love to, um, provide full-time hours because there's really full-time work for this, for this position. But, um, given the city's current budget situation that is not, um, that's not currently realistic, um, we were able to increase the number of hours, um, I think maybe from 14 to 18. And in order to recruit somebody for this position, we, we had to create this, uh, increase the salary. It was woefully low. I hadn't been adjusted in eight, seven years. Seven, eight years. So, um, it is, um, now reflects a little bit closer to market conditions. It's not actually club quite at market, but we were lucky to be able to recruit somebody who lives locally and who is interested in getting back into the job market and had enough of a background to really to make this position, um, um, you know, challenging and also, um, feasible for her. And she's working out great. Um, so that's one of the, um, most significant changes. The other thing, of course, is we are not currently carrying the salary of the sustainability manager. Um, that position unfortunately is falling victim to the, um, current budget, um, challenges. And so it, um, it was vacated back, uh, sort of halfway through this current fiscal year. And we were in the process of recruiting for it, um, when we learned, um, that we couldn't support the position with the current funding. So, so we do not, we are not, um, this budget does not include the sustainability manager. Um, it also doesn't include a, um, an economic development planner. And that is a position that we have not supported in the past. But it is something that, um, the mayor's very interested in funding. Um, should, um, should the funding be the over I be successful that, um, in recent years, that position was in the mayor's office. And with the most recent change, um, with, um, the, um, economic development director becoming the chief of staff, that position has been vacant. So, um, there's a lot of, um, great work that somebody in that role can accomplish. And so it's definitely a void, um, um, that we, you know, that we can't fill currently. So we'd love to see that happen in the future. Um, if, if the override, again, is successful. Um, let's see. Primarily, those are primarily the changes. There have been some adjustments to, um, the, um, dues memberships and education seminar piece. Some of that is we are now consolidating the conservation, um, items for that used to, used to be within the conservation budget. And they do have a, um, uh, an allocation that they make to the Mass Association of Conservation Commissions that supports all the work of the volunteer members and the agent. Um, and also we have some extra funding in there for training because we do have somebody, um, new in the position. So we are trying to reflect, um, accurately reflect what the needs are going to be in the department, both for the conservation agent and also for, for the planning staff. Um, we spoke already earlier tonight about the Messina grant that is not in, that is no longer in the, in the budget. And I think those are the primary, primary things. Happy to answer any questions. Great. Thank you.

▶ 1:19:23 Maya Jamaleddine: Um, vice Chair Williams.

▶ 1:19:26 Ryan Williams: Thank you. Um, so we talked a lot about what's not in the budget. Mm-Hmm. Right. I get that. Mm-Hmm. Um, some of those positions are like, from my perspective, they're some of the most, um, kind of broadly outward facing like jobs that we have in the city. Right. And I understand that we need an override in order to re restore them, but, um, you know, I think too about the work the planning office does, you guys do so many things, you know, every, every deck that gets built, you know, all the two big developments, all of the stuff in some way touches the planning office. And you do all these reviews for every planning board meeting for all these projects. And you guys are just like inundated with all of this work. And I wonder, what do you think the appetite is to, um, or what do you think the need is to increase staffing in the planning department to the point where you could have, um, more of a focus on the community engagement, the community planning, the urban planning side of the planning responsibilities, right. Because right now you're very responsive to, um, to development. Honestly, we, we have a lot of development and, um, I think that you guys do a good job of meeting some of these needs, but I think there's also opportunity to do more like brainstorming and, you know, ideation around what planning could look like in the city of Melrose. So what, what do you think you would need in order to free up a little bit of time to have somebody available to do something like that?

▶ 1:20:57 Denise Gaffey: Um, yeah, we certainly can't do it with our current staffing. Yeah, that is true. I mean, we do, um, we are somewhat victims of our own success, I guess in the sense that we've been very proactive in recent years with the zoning work that we've done and to try to promote the kind of like, uh, responsible development we think that, um, melrose's needs and benefits from. So we are incredibly busy reviewing projects and also, pardon me, um, There's one right now. And also, um, um, so yeah, we're incredibly busy reviewing projects and, and also trying to, to work on special initiatives when we can like, um, zoning work, um, or, um, planning the longer range planning. I mean, we do, we do try to keep up with the long range planning work. Like our master plan is pretty up to date. Um, we recently completed a, um, a housing production plan. You know, the office was involved in the net zero plan, of course. Um, we just recently completed an open space plan. So we are trying to think always to think long term and big picture. Um, but I think we would need, we would certainly need to have more capacity in the office to do more than what we do right now.

▶ 1:22:10 Ryan Williams: And I wanna put in, they told me I have to sit closer to the mic. I wanna put in a plug as I always do for transportation planning, that I know that we have great folks in public works and no disrespect to them and all that, the good work that they've done, but planning and engineering, as you know, are separate disciplines and planners cannot do what engineers do and engineers cannot do what planners do. I firmly believe this and I believe that it is, um, hurting us to not have a person in the city who can bring that vision, that kind of values-based planning experience to the transportation context in the city. We've done a lot without that from the engineering perspective. We've done a lot of work and I appreciate everything that they do in public works and engineering. But I do think that as we think about staffing in the works, I'm sorry in the planning department, that we should be thinking about ways to introduce professional transportation planning expertise onto the staff in some way. Whether it's sharing a position with some other city, whether it's contracting, you know, whether it's hiring a person who's kind of fresh outta college and has that degree, but maybe can be more of a generalist and do other things too. I don't know. But that's my, my bid.

▶ 1:23:21 Denise Gaffey: I appreciate that and I do not disagree. I think that would add a lot of value.

▶ 1:23:27 Maya Jamaleddine: Thank you. Thank you Councilor Ro

▶ 1:23:30 Denise Gaffey: Thanks for being here tonight. I just, I was wondering if you could talk a little bit about, um, you have the goals for FY 25. Um, it says meeting the compliance requirements and deadline for the MBT communities zoning. Mm-Hmm. So we we plan to do that. Yeah. Is that, so what is, can you talk a little bit about that? I like, Um, sure. Yeah. So, so, um, probably most people are aware of the MBTA community, um, um, uh, zoning, uh, law that was passed, um, a couple years back. And, um, we are, um, an MBTA community. We are served by the commuter rail, so we're considered a commuter rail community. So we have that extra year to comply, which, um, the, the, um, rapid transit communities, of course had to comply by December of last year. And commuter rail communities have to comply by the, by December of this year. So we are, um, in the process of, um, and what that means is we, we, we have to have certain, we have to have a certain, um, amount of zoning districts that, um, that allow for a certain, that are zoned for a certain product number, a certain production of housing. So it's, it's an order, it's an initiative to try to enable, um, um, greater housing production because there's such a shortage. And we are currently, you know, we, we have submitted a pre-application to the state with using the, their zoning tool and putting in our, the information about our zoning, um, districts and our, um, initial, um, input into this tool indicates that we comply with the current zoning that we have in place. So, um, we are just, um, we are, we have to, we've recently got some initial feedback from the state on, on this, um, preliminary, um, submission that we've made. So now we have to just complete the final submission. We are also in the process of working with a consultant to do an economic feasibility study because that is required if you are in a community that, um, requires anything above 10% affordable housing. So we have a, um, uh, affordable housing requirement in our zoning ordinance that requires developers to kick in 15%. So the commonwealth through this initiative wants to make sure that the affordable housing requirements in communities are not working against housing production or not limiting developers from building housing. So that is the purpose of the economic develop, uh, economic feasibility analysis, which we're currently, um, working with MAPC on. And so once we have the results of that, um, which we think are not gonna show any limitations because we see it in the field, we see it happening. So we expect that to not be, um, um, a liability and to support our application to the state. Okay. I, for some reason, when I read it, I was like, is there a deadline to build all these buildings or No, No, no. It's only about zoning. And I think that is a mis attached misconception. Um, I don't have it off the top of my head. Um, Like how many pieces of land to be zoned. Yeah. Is there like a, do they tell you ahead of Time? Well, yes, I mean, it is, we have a certain, um, number of housing units that are zoning. The zoning districts that we I, that we identify that meet their criteria have to, you know, have to be able to produce. But it is not about producing housing, it's just about having a zoning in place.

▶ 1:26:52 Speaker 1: And that has to be done by the end of this year.

▶ 1:26:57 Speaker 2: Yes. Thank you. Oh, you're welcome. Councilor Vanger.

▶ 1:26:58 Kimberly Vandiver: Thank you. Um, I was curious about, um, you know, as we're doing this work, um, especially related to density around transit and things like that, if we've seen any, um, data about successes or, or good trends as far as do we, do we have anything around usage of the commuter rail and our people? Are we seeing, you know, an increase in usage there that means people are less likely to be commuting in via car to, and, you know, and causing traffic? Or have we seen anything around, um, availability of housing and affordability that's trending in a good direction that, you know, that we've seen already?

▶ 1:27:36 Denise Gaffey: So I think the data around transit use is a little tricky right now and would be skewed based on the pandemic. And, um, frankly, a lot of the work that's occurring on the, on the, on the MBTA right now. Um, so I haven't seen anything really recent on that. Um, I mean, we have, we've been involved in studies around, um, around parking and parking utilization. I think that's kind of interesting data 'cause it does illustrate that, um, that we can support a lot less parking than what our typical, what a, you know, typical housing development would be required to provide. So that was, um, and that has sort of been an impetus for us to look at some at, um, allowing for a little more discretion when it comes to parking, because parking is a, is a driver for housing costs. Parking is very expensive. It's, it's a, it's not an optimal way of using land and it is a factor in increasing the cost of housing. So, um, so that is some interesting data that's out there.

▶ 1:28:41 Speaker 4: Mm-Hmm. Great. Thank you.

▶ 1:28:42 Maya Jamaleddine: Thank you. Uh, Councilor gpe.

▶ 1:28:45 Mark Garipay: Thank you, Madam Chair. Uh, just, uh, cons, conservation, conservation maintenance, um, that came over from the conservation budget, I'm assuming, is that, is that for treatment or the ponds? What, what's that money used

▶ 1:28:56 Denise Gaffey: For? Yes, that is the, the funds that are in, um, for, um, pond treatment.

▶ 1:29:01 Mark Garipay: And are we still treating annually all the,

▶ 1:29:02 Denise Gaffey: All the ponds? We are still, we're in the third year of, um, the, um, chestnut removal, um, operation at L Pond. And that will be kicking up, kicking in again in, um, in July.

▶ 1:29:14 Mark Garipay: Is that paid through this line? I thought we did a free cash

▶ 1:29:17 Denise Gaffey: That is a separate, it has a separate funding source. So this is, so there's that plus this is, is, is used towards treatment at, um, the other ponds, Swains and Thomas.

▶ 1:29:27 Mark Garipay: Okay. Um, and then quick question on salary and wages. Um, are, are your, within your department, are they non-union or union?

▶ 1:29:35 Denise Gaffey: So we have two union, um, employees. Okay. So who are not affected by the, the, the, um, the cola, you know, who are getting the COLA adjustment.

▶ 1:29:49 Mark Garipay: So I was, I thought we would've made a seen a little decrease 'cause we didn't fund the full-time position, but we moved in a part-time position, and it still went up three, 3.2%. That's why I was Right.

▶ 1:30:00 Denise Gaffey: It's a good, it's a good point. And, um, that is because, um, the sustainability manager in the past had not, um, been fully funded through the department budget. So, um, we had some other funding sources for that position, which unfortunately just or coincidentally are not, are not, um, no longer available, but sort of for the entire length of time that our previous sustainability manager was here. She, of course, was very aggressive about getting, um, grants and incentive funds and was able to support, um, a significant proportion over her salary, but it did decline over the years.

▶ 1:30:41 Denise Gaffey: So does that make sense? So that's not, yeah. Okay.

▶ 1:30:44 Mark Garipay: I just thought it would've, if, if it was getting paid from another source, um, would have, okay. I got it. Thank you. I'll close it up.

▶ 1:30:54 Maya Jamaleddine: Councilor Stewart. Thank you, Madam Chair.

▶ 1:30:55 Robb Stewart: Uh, just coming back to the MT MBTA community zoning, uh, discussion. Thank you for clarifying that. Those was actually very helpful. Um, do you anticipate any, uh, third party, uh, participation in the final submission? Do we need to go contract anything out or are we gonna handle all this in house?

▶ 1:31:19 Denise Gaffey: No. Yes. Yes. Okay. I mean, the, the, the state has used had put together, um, a tool that was not, that is, you know, relatively easy for us to use to plug in our data. And we have some pretty, um, technically savvy people in the office, including our, our, our mapping support, our GS analyst, who's been able to really help us with that

▶ 1:31:40 Robb Stewart: Effort. Okay. So no additional cost then anticipated on, on putting that together? Correct. Okay. Great. Um, and I feel like all I'm doing is complaining tonight. Uh, I just have a little bit of feedback on the way finding signs. Oh. Uh, they're, um,

▶ 1:31:59 Robb Stewart: some of them have not been very stable, if you will. Uh, one got knocked down by wind, uh, and that

▶ 1:32:08 Speaker 1: We're aware. Right.

▶ 1:32:09 Robb Stewart: And, and I've also heard

▶ 1:32:11 Denise Gaffey: That wasn't, that one was not reinforced, um, was clearly not reinforced well or when it was installed. Um, so has since been repaired and has actually been, um, moved to a different location also. Right,

▶ 1:32:25 Robb Stewart: Right. And the other feedback that I have is some of the way finding signs are sort of a bit captain obvious, right. You know, when they're stating something that's pretty much right in front of you, uh, and I question if there's better use of that funding to provide something that may be a little less obvious, like, for example, where Kona Park is versus you know, where the high school is when it's right in front of you. Uh, so to me that that is, um, you know, if we're gonna get money to do these, I I'd I'd ask that the de the department consider, you know, where we can get good benefit out of that. Um, and where that can be most useful. Um, and I've gotten this, this is feedback that's come to Sure.

▶ 1:33:10 Denise Gaffey: Yeah. Yeah. I mean, we did work, um, very closely with a committee of people of, of residents and, um, city staff and a consultant actually. And I mean, the goal was to try to, um, promote walking and, um, and bicycling. So we were trying to point out some, um, areas of interest that people could, could walk to and bicycle to. Um, in addition to trying to promote our business districts, that was another goal. Right,

▶ 1:33:37 Speaker 4: Right. Okay. Okay. Thank you. You're welcome. Welcome.

▶ 1:33:40 Maya Jamaleddine: Thank you. Co uh, vice Chair Williams

▶ 1:33:43 Ryan Williams: Through the chair. I just wanted to, um, comment on

▶ 1:33:47 Speaker 4: Councilor Stewart's suggestion.

▶ 1:33:50 Ryan Williams: I actually did have my own sign complaint, which is the one on the corner of the tennis courts that's overhanging the sidewalk. And it's too low, so you can actually hit your head on it if you're tall enough when you walk by it. But I think the, um, the goal of the way finding science was necessarily to find your way for people who aren't familiar with Melrose. So a person who's standing in front of the high school that doesn't know it's the high school and just kind of looks over there and goes, what's that? And then they look at the sign, which is right in front of them, and it says, high school. I laughed at the same thing because the Cedar Park sign is like right in front of Cedar Park and it's like Cedar Park right here. Um, but the truth is, as someone pointed out to me, the goal of that is for people who are unfamiliar with Melrose, who may have taken the train in or something, or who are exploring a new part of the city that they haven't seen. So some of them are extremely obvious to people who have lived in the city for a while or who are familiar with the neighborhood, but that's kind of part of the, um, the design to my understanding. I do think there's some room for improvement with them, but it's a good first start.

▶ 1:34:46 Denise Gaffey: Yeah, it was, absolutely. It's a pilot program and I think, um, we have learned a lot through it. I mean, definitely some of the, the fabrication of some of the signage was not ideal. So we've been working with the fabricated to try to make sure these are gonna hold up over time. Um, so, but I appreciate the feedback. Second, happy if you, if you hear more feedback like that, we would love to hear it. Okay. Um,

▶ 1:35:12 Maya Jamaleddine: counselor gpe and then Counselor Van.

▶ 1:35:15 Speaker 6: I was just gonna make a motion to move the bottom line.

▶ 1:35:19 Maya Jamaleddine: We have a motion, uh, made by counselor Garipay paid to move to bottom line. Second, seconded by counselor, um, Seward on discussion, counselor Vandiver.

▶ 1:35:29 Kimberly Vandiver: Um, since we're giving feedback about way finding signs, I just wanted to add in the one thing that I've heard a little bit about is the font size and how, you know, we have walking and biking and driving directions. And if you're on a bicycle, you know, you're not, you're going too fast to read the smaller font size. And if you're, you know, if you're walking a, that might be fine. And, you know, just kind of considering the, the intended audience and what is gonna be the right size to be visible to them as they're viewing the sign. Um, it's the one thing I've heard. Okay. But I agree, they're a great, great start, and I agree with the goal Of those signs.

▶ 1:36:08 Maya Jamaleddine: Thank you. Thank you. Any other, uh, councilor Romanul?

▶ 1:36:10 Devin Romanul: Just one very quick narrow, uh, question on the MBTA communities conversation. Um, in the event, I know you said it's not like liquid, but in the event that the, uh, consultant or if you're working through MAPC, the study indicates that the 15% affordable housing threshold is having a deleterious effect on, um, housing production, however unlikely. Is there kind of a next step that we would, would we have enough time to alter course before the December deadline?

▶ 1:36:38 Denise Gaffey: Um, I, I, you know, it would take a little bit of time to change zoning. I'm just, I'm just putting it out there that I think it's really, really, really unlikely.

▶ 1:36:48 Devin Romanul: I'm, I'm out here asking you like really far out questions tonight,

▶ 1:36:50 Speaker 1: So. Sure. No, no, no. But I appreciate it.

▶ 1:36:53 Speaker 4: No, thank you. I appreciate.

▶ 1:36:55 Maya Jamaleddine: Thank you. Any other question and discussion?

▶ 1:37:01 Maya Jamaleddine: Okay. Seeing none, Mr. Clerk,

▶ 1:37:03 Speaker 1: Vice Chair Williams? Yes. Councillor Garrette. Yes. Councillor Stewart? Yes. Councillor Hamilton? Yes. Councillor Vandiver. Yes. Councillor Romanul? Yes. Councillor Finocchiaro. Yes. President Elli? Yes. And Chair Jamal Dean? Yes. That motion passes unanimously. Thank you.

▶ 1:37:23 Maya Jamaleddine: Thank you. Um, next we have, um, the last two items on our agenda. Uh, department number 2021, fire Department.

▶ 1:37:43 Speaker 6: Good evening.

▶ 1:37:55 Speaker 6: On the screen, we have a, just a presentation of our budget. Um, I'm sorry if you folks have to turn around and get back to it, but, um, the fire budget really is divided to two fire and the ambulance. Um, we see our trucks outside there, outside of headquarters.