← City Council · 2024-05-06 · City Council Joint Meeting with the School Committee
Public Comment
Agenda original PDF
Minutes original PDF
Transcript
▶ 1:33 Leila Migliorelli: Great. This, um, serves as a quorum for the record. Now is the public comment portion of the meeting. So I will motion by unanimous consent to open the floor for public comment. Seeing no objections, we are now open for public comment. This is the portion of the meeting where anyone can speak on the item on our agenda this evening. Just a reminder that public comment period is an opportunity for the public to share comments. Counselors and school committee members will not respond. If there's anyone wishing to speak in public comment, you can please approach the table now
▶ 2:05 Speaker 3: and share your name and information
▶ 2:16 Speaker 4: Council, um, school committee. My name is Jonah Za and along with, uh, Tom Cardhouse, uh, who's joining me in the audience, um, I'm like to address you both as, uh, a member of the Go Melrose campaign. Um, to pass an override in the city, um, we are, uh, a group of citizens who are very interested in supporting our, our, uh, community. Um, along three key lines, uh, supporting our students, supporting our teachers and our educators, and supporting our, our community, um, through municipal government, um, and municipal services overall. Um, we understand that, um, uh, overrides are scary things to some people and, um, they suggest, you know, things have gone wrong, things have gone sideways, um, and we are eager to work with, um, our community to make sure we're pushing out, um, high quality, accurate information about, um, the financial situation that we're in. We're eager to learn more about that tonight, um, and to make sure everybody's informed about how we can support our students by providing a, uh, a supportive and encouraging learning en environment with the right, uh, volume of resources, the right ratio of teachers and aides and paraprofessionals to students. Um, how we can support our teachers by creating an environment where they feel like they're supported, um, by their peers, um, by the administration and their administrators. Um, and how we can support the city overall by making sure that we're anticipating future costs that we know are coming down the pike, um, whether they're overhead costs, materials, capital, um, or other city services and, um, employees of the city and making sure we're, we're putting the, that budget together ahead of time, uh, to make sure we can meet our requirements, um, to have the city that we all want. One that's supportive of, um, our community at large, uh, and our students. Thank you very much,
▶ 4:11 Speaker 3: Mr. Carranza. Anyone else?
▶ 4:22 Speaker 2: Hi, good evening. Uh, my name is Myron Ditmer and I live at 93 Altamont Ave here in Melrose. Um, what I want to talk about is the override also since uh, it was discussed uh, before me. Um, just wanna let you know, my wife and I have lived in Melrose for close to five decades. All three of our children grew up in Melrose and went through the public school system and I'm proud to say that all three went to some of the most, uh, elite colleges and universities in the country. The school system at that time met our educational needs and requirements, and I might add with not a single override necessary during those years, although there was always the complaint from school educators, we are underpaid, we're overworked, we need more money for supplies, computers and so forth. Always we need more of this, more of that. And where have we heard that before? From what I've heard, the decision to put it is to put another override on a ballot has already been decided and only a formal vote is required by both the school committee and the city council. Just curious, whatever happened to all that Covid money from the American Rescue Plan of 2021, which flooded into local city coffers, paying educators and teachers many times not to work while the working parents had to stay home to help home school their children. And we didn't learn a lot about what our children were being taught an opener for many parents, which leaves me with one question. When the city needs more money, it goes to the residents and asks them for the money. Please tell me who do we go to and ask for more money? Have you ever thought about that? It's a rhetorical question. I really don't expect any of you to be able to answer that question because quite simply you can't. You don't know our individual circumstances. We can go back to our parents and ask them to give us some money if they're alive and financially able. We can ask our relatives if they are financially capable. Maybe we can even ask our neighbors for this extra money. Although that's highly unlikely. The most likely scenario of getting this extra money is by tightening our belts and doing without something. For some of our residents living on fixed incomes or unemployed, this could be disastrous for others just getting by with little in savings. It may mean no more vacations cutting back on food and some basics of life. And remember, we are only talking about the override on our property taxes. What happens when you add the override money from the automatic 2.5 increase that occurs in property taxes each year? And now on top of that, our mayor wants to add another 3% levy on our property tax for the Community Preservation Act and then the extra money we need to pay for the $130 million price tag for the building and renovation of our new safety buildings that will soon be added to our cost for the next 30 years. What you then have is the perfect storm of financial disaster for the Arab average homemaker and those of us who are already on the border of financial bankruptcy today, we are all suffering from high inflation. And it's not the 3.5% annual inflation you hear about, but it's the 25% inflation for food, gas, and basic comm commodities when compared to 2019. And with interest rates at record, high borrow is not an option for most people except in recent months. Wages increases have not kept up with inflation for the past three years for all of us. Finally, I suggest that you execute cuts needed to balance the existing school budget before any override and implement tighter fiscal management tools and procedures, increase budget transparency and provide the necessary oversight to anticipate further budget deficits. We have already seen broken promises from the 2019 override where funding was provided to keep the director positions for English and global language, which do not exist today. Where did this money go? Overrides offer a temporary solution to physical challenges without addressing underlying structural issues. You know, those structural deficits we have each year in the school budget. What we are seeing now are additional overrides coming at us every five years and that is just totally unacceptable. Thank you for your time.
▶ 8:51 Speaker 3: Is there anyone else willing to speak, interested in speaking?
▶ 8:56 Speaker 5: Hi, uh, my name is Arnold, uh, cave. I'm at, uh, 2 96 Porter Street in Melrose. I have a 10-year-old, uh, daughter
▶ 9:03 Speaker 1: and a 7-year-old daughter as well.
▶ 9:05 Speaker 5: And, uh, in addition to coming as a father, I'm also here
▶ 9:11 Speaker 5: as a, uh, CPA that's not the Community Preservation Act, but rather a certified public accountant. Um, and just looking at, um, you know,
▶ 9:17 Speaker 1: you look at the FY 22 school budget, it was 38.6 million
▶ 9:24 Speaker 1: and it's gone up about 22% as to what it is in FY 24, at about 21% as to what it is an FY 24. Now, if the may, if the, uh, superintendent's aspirational budget of of approximately 51 million passes, that would represent a 32% increase, you know, a 32% increase in just three years, how many residents have seen their income rise by 32%?
▶ 9:49 Speaker 5: I don't think many. Um,
▶ 9:51 Speaker 1: back in 2019 there was, um, I think there's, there's three current school committee members that were here during the override debate of 2019. There were two demographic studies that were produced. Um, I think it was call-ins, and I don't know that the name, but I didn't know the initials were NEA SC at that point. They said there was gonna be 400, between 400 and 600 more students by 2024, which, which we're in now according to desi. Um, and I assume those numbers are correct 'cause that's what the foundational budget is based upon. Back in 2019, we had, uh, I believe it was 3,945 students according
▶ 10:30 Speaker 2: to Desi, the records with Desi.
▶ 10:33 Speaker 1: And today we've got 303,892.
▶ 10:36 Speaker 2: Now certainly there's, there's increases within the middle,
▶ 10:40 Speaker 1: but overall it's less than what we had in 2019.
▶ 10:42 Speaker 2: Is part of that override in 2019,
▶ 10:45 Speaker 1: if you remember the 5.18 million, 1.905 million, so almost $2 million was allocated to hiring 28.5 additional positions as part of that override. Um, and guess, but now, so that 28.5 positions, if you remember correctly, the school committee says, Hey, we need to do all this now
▶ 11:05 Speaker 2: because these 400 students are gonna be here
▶ 11:07 Speaker 1: by the time 2024 comes. Guess what? They never came, they never came. Same as the BB school. We never opened it. Now one final point i I do wanna make is I had contacted, uh, Ken Asse him here tonight.
▶ 11:23 Speaker 2: Um, one thing I, I mean as a CPI, just as a baseline,
▶ 11:25 Speaker 1: I'd want to know, I understand that the superintendent
▶ 11:29 Speaker 1: feels he has to do a a needs budget, right? Okay, this is what he feels he needs, but I think as a baseline, you know,
▶ 11:36 Speaker 2: what could we run the school with what we have today? We may not want it, but what would the shortfall be with what we've got today?
▶ 11:43 Speaker 1: You know, what would we need to do to keep the same programming?
▶ 11:48 Speaker 2: What's that number? I understand the number's 4.1 million for your needs based budget, but what's it for a level a level service budget?
▶ 11:56 Speaker 1: So, and, and unless you can answer that,
▶ 11:57 Speaker 2: you know, I didn't know the whole thing.
▶ 11:59 Speaker 1: You know, you've gotta get this in by six 30, you know, you've only got 35 days. The law requires you to, to put this on the ballot,
▶ 12:06 Speaker 2: but it's rushed anyway. You look at it, this whole thing is rushed.
▶ 12:09 Speaker 1: We'll put this all together at the last minute.
▶ 12:10 Speaker 5: Um, so I just think it's,
▶ 12:12 Speaker 1: it's time we need to take a step back.
▶ 12:14 Speaker 2: What do we need for a level service budget
▶ 12:18 Speaker 1: and then let's come with that.
▶ 12:20 Speaker 2: And then now, as far as, I mean, I'm not, we've been having free cash averaging over 6 million
▶ 12:25 Speaker 1: and if you, if you don't believe what the, um,
▶ 12:31 Speaker 1: and it's gonna be significantly higher once they certify the FY 24 free cash. And I know you say, oh, we don't wanna use free cash
▶ 12:35 Speaker 2: because it's um, not, not a re because it's not reoccurring. It actually is reoccurring. It's the same receipts we're collecting, we're just underestimating it.
▶ 12:43 Speaker 1: I think you actually made that a comment in one of your, um, one meeting when you, when you're in the city council, but it's the same.
▶ 12:50 Speaker 2: But even if you look at the division of Labor and services, they say you should have a a percent, a 3% floor between three and five, five being the max 3% floor, even with the free cash, it's, it would be go much beyond that.
▶ 13:01 Speaker 1: Um, so I think we need to just take a step back.
▶ 13:04 Speaker 5: So thank you for your time.
▶ 13:05 Speaker 3: Thank you Mr. Cave.
▶ 13:13 Leila Migliorelli: Is there anyone else interested in speaking in public comment here? Is there anyone online, Mr. Clark?
▶ 13:17 Speaker 2: Uh, there are no, uh, participants with their digital hands raised at this time. Okay.
▶ 13:23 Leila Migliorelli: All right. Seeing no one else I will motion by unanimous consent to close public comment.