Public Comment

Transcript (~16 min @ 15:24)

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

▶ 15:25 Ryan Williams: Um, we have one order before us tonight. It's Ordinance 2024 dash one amending Melrose Revised ordinances, chapter 48 dash one Mayor, part a salary by adding additional compensation to take effect beginning January 1st, 2026.

▶ 15:43 Ryan Williams: At this time, I will entertain, uh, a motion to open public comment.

▶ 15:49 Speaker 4: So moved. Wonderful.

▶ 15:53 Ryan Williams: Second. Okay. We got a motion by Councillor Ryan to open public comment Seconded by Councillor Vandiver. All in favor? Aye. Aye. Aye. Okay. Public comment is open. If you would like to speak, please approach the table. State your name and, and speak.

▶ 16:09 Speaker 5: My name is Deborah McGowan. I live at 2 0 8 Penney Road. And I strongly urge the council not to vote for the increase in funds for the mayor. The mayor knew what the salary was

▶ 16:24 Speaker 5: when she decided to run for office, that it wasn't going to be increased. I think that, um, it's not,

▶ 16:36 Speaker 5: the budget is, has been a problem for our, the city for a long, long time. Um, there was the shortfall from the school committee, 500, $5 million last year. Um, the taxes keep increasing. We can't afford to the budget, cannot afford to, um, maintain the police and the fire departments without putting a million dollar bond that we are going to pay for for the next 20 years so that our taxes increase each year. Our, the bond is going to be, be paid back within 20 years. So it's going to be added funds as the taxes. And now we've learned that the waste management is going up 75% to 102 hundred, $375 July 1st. That's a lot of money to start taking away from the taxpayers when we're doing it. It's not a good look. When taxes increase, there's a bond that we can't afford in our budget to replace or maintain our schools. Ripley couldn't be maintained in our budget is now going to be torn down for the new police department. It's not a good look. And our waste management is $200 a year and now going up to 3 75. It's not a good look when everything sort of like goes up and you're going to give a 13,000 plus range to the mayor. It's a slap in the face to the taxpayers. If you wanna give a break, give a break so that we can maintain $200 a year for waste management instead of going up. You need to take a look at these things. Things keep take being, we keep paying more as a taxpayer each year, and I understand that. But there's no way any of us that are living in Melrose are going to get a $13,000 increase. We're, we're just not. There's a lot of people in Melrose that are living that, that don't have a salary of 130 something thousand dollars and would be happy with that. So you need to take a look at that. You need to sort of be a council that is going to take a look and be responsible for the taxpayer's money. And I urge you to say no on this. I urge you to be fiscally conservative and take a look at the taxpayer. It's not a good, it's not a good look with everything that's increasing to give a raise to the mayor. She knew how much she was getting when she signed up for it. If someone is running for public office or mayor, they know what the salary is. They have an idea of what the budget is, if they've been reading the paper and everything along that. And they need to decide whether they can live within that salary. If not, they don't run. If I'm applying for a job and I have a salary, if they give me a salary, I have to make a decision. Do I want that job at that salary or do I go someplace else? And the mayor has to also, we can't afford it. Thank you.

▶ 19:55 Speaker 4: Thank you Ms. McGowan.

▶ 20:01 Speaker 5: Good evening. Julie Dilo, uh, circuit Street. My thoughts around this are what is our philosophy? What's our compensation philosophy? Because when I look at the, the backup to how the, the mayor proposed this, I don't see a philosophy on page one. I see all of the mayors for the cities across the state. And if I look at the salaries, fiscal 23, what I see is the mayor of Melrose makes more than 65% of all the other mayors. And it's striking to see a city like Woburn, a city like Peabody that either make less or similar to the mayor of Melrose. On the second page, the title is mayoral salary. Salary survey completed April, 2023. But in this, there are towns, there's the town of Barnstable, town of Marblehead, town of Swamp Scott. Those, they're, they're pretty affluent towns. The salaries for those mayors are, are high. Barnstable is 228,000. I mean, I'm sorry, 189,000.

▶ 21:19 Speaker 5: On that page, we averaged the select cities. And it's not all the cities. We didn't take page one and average page one of all the cities we selected.

▶ 21:32 Speaker 5: I don't know what the philosophy was for selecting page two, but if you're looking at compensation, you should have some strategy, some philosophy that says we get to this number by X. Whether it's we take an average and we say we're gonna be at the average. We say we're gonna be 50%, but we have a philosophy that we can identify why these numbers were chosen. Maybe you have more information than I do, but I'm just looking at the backup support. It. If you take out Barnstable, Marblehead and Swamp Scott, it reduces the average by about $3,000. And then the last page is just, I, it's just a list of information. Again, there is nothing that says I got to the number 1 37 5 by doing A, B, and C. It didn't say salary in 2024, salary 2025 salary in 2026. We got to that buy looking at these cities and saying we wanted to compare it to them by looking at all the cities, by some strategy. Because it looks like from what's been supplied that these were just numbers randomly picked. The closest is the average from the, from page two. It's the closest, but it's not even the number. So you should be asking where do the numbers come from? What's the strategy we're using? How do we tell the residents on a go forward basis that this is how we're gonna calculate the salary for the mayor of Melrose. Because you got to 1 37 0.5 and then a 9% increase for 2027.

▶ 23:28 Speaker 5: Cost of living increase. I work in nonprofits. That's what we get cost of living. I've never in 20 years received 9% cost of living. And I've been do, I've been in nonprofits a long time. So I implore you to go back and ask what's the philosophy? Where did these numbers come from? How can we defend this to the public? What the, the previous woman spoke of? How do you defend it to the public with everything coming down the line that you're gonna throw at the residents. And I would say, let's give her a shot.

▶ 24:10 Speaker 5: Imagine getting a job and being told week two, Hey, you don't have to do anything and in two years you're gonna get a 13, $12,000 raise. And the year after that $13,000 more and you didn't have to do anything. You just had to show up for two weeks. So we need to have some strategy, some philosophy on how we're coming up with the salary for this Mayor. Thank you.

▶ 24:41 Speaker 4: Thank you for your comment. Mr. Lilo.

▶ 24:48 Speaker 4: Anyone else sit in public comment? Okay.

▶ 24:53 Speaker 4: Anyone else online? I do have,

▶ 24:54 Speaker 1: Uh, participants online that would like to

▶ 24:56 Speaker 4: Speak. Wonderful. Please put them through.

▶ 25:03 Speaker 1: Mr. Norden, can you hear me?

▶ 25:07 Speaker 2: Hello? Can you hear me? Okay, you're

▶ 25:09 Speaker 1: Live. You can speak.

▶ 25:11 Speaker 2: Hello, My name is Scott Norden. I live at 41 Winthrop Street. Um, I'd like to speak out in support of the increase to the mayor's salary. Uh, well, I don't believe that anyone would take the job of mayor simply for the salary. I would not want the salary of the mayor to be a hindrance from attracting sspr candidates in the future. I believe that a local government has a major impact on the quality of life in the community. And as a political leader of the community, I believe it was right for the mayor to receive an appropriate salary while admit to not knowing the history of how this proposed increase came about. As I only recently learned at this meeting a few days ago. The only details in the notice that supports the change is the comparison to the mayor's salaries in other cities around the greater Boston area. I couldn't help but notice that the justification for the increase is quite different from this time last year when our public school teachers were forced to threaten the strike before finally giving a salary increase that barely kept up with inflation last year when teachers were looking to be paid fairly for their services. Similar statistics to the one being presented here tonight, were were provided to show that teachers are also underpaid relative to their colleagues in the area to assess the mayor is underpaid relative to others, even with their new contract. Teachers are as well. In addition to the relatively low pay Melrose teachers face, other issues that impact their compensation step compensation, uh, increases after 10 years. Um, step compensation increases end after 10 years where some district provides step increases until 20th year. Other districts provide salary upgrade credits to teachers, whether the city or the teacher pays for the course. And Melrose teachers have to choose rather than be granted a 20% increase over three years as proposed here for the mayor. Last year, teachers had to threaten a strike just to get around 10% over three years, years as they were told that it was all the city could afford. This happened after a school committee release misled the public saying that under the deal being offered prior to the strike, uh, would result in teachers getting four to 19% increases in the first year of the contract. I suspect you can count on one hand, if even possible, the number of teachers that would've seen a 19% increase as a result of a new contract proposed at the time, at the ti At this time last year, I was notified the school committee that given the revenue we have available in the city, we believe these packages are the very best we can offer to the educators at this time. I recognize it is easier to fund an increase to the mayor's as compared to teacher salaries. 'cause obviously we have a lot of teachers and only one mayor. That being said, we are only two years away from another round of salary negotiations with our teachers. My hope is that when the teachers come to the city with evidence demonstrating that they're also underpaid route to their colleagues that we remember this night and that they are not dismissed as they were last year, and told only to accept what the city can afford. In closing, I believe we should pay all public employees what they're worth. The cost of not doing so is already being seen in our schools and will only become more obvious unless we change course. I'm optimistic that the new mayor council and school committee understand this and look forward to seeing significant changes on this front in the near future. Thank you.

▶ 27:55 Speaker 4: Thank you. Mr. Den. Do we have anybody else on line for public comment?

▶ 27:59 Speaker 1: Anyone else would like to speak in public comment? If so, raise your digital hand please.

▶ 28:07 Speaker 1: I think we're good. Okay. I don't see anyone of their answers.

▶ 28:11 Ryan Williams: Alright. Thank you to everybody who spoke. Uh, motion by unanimous consent to close public comment.

▶ 28:15 Speaker 1: Someone's hand Just went up. Oh, nope. Okay.

▶ 28:16 Speaker 4: Well then I retract my motion and let's hear from them. From them.

▶ 28:25 Speaker 2: Hi, uh, my name is Jimmy in Vandi. I live on Mont app. And basically, uh, just would you like to have the city and the, uh, council use some common sense that we all have to use when, um, we're getting, uh, potentially erased? It's always tied with what you've done work-wise, performance-wise. And it just seems strange that this is not tied to that. She's only two weeks in the to the job. I say we need to wait and ask and reevaluate within a year as to the performance she's doing. It shouldn't just be because she's here and other people being paid more. That's not how I get a raise in my job. It's not because of what other people around me are making. It's based on my job performance. And that's what her raise or any other person's raise should be based on. Thank you.

▶ 29:14 Speaker 4: Thank you. Ms. Vandi.

▶ 29:18 Ryan Williams: Do we have anyone else online or in the room who wishes to speak?

▶ 29:29 Speaker 4: Hi, my name's Danny Fsco. I live at 1 72 Waverly Ave. Um, and I just want to contribute that I believe that, uh, raises salary, et cetera, should be merit based. Um, I understand that they need to be to be voted on, uh, and agreed upon in this particular city and other cities like ours. Um, I also agree that a city like Melrose or believe that a city like Melrose should have a salary range for a mayor that is somewhere between 125 and $185,000 a year. But, uh, coming into a position and receiving a a raise preemptively, we'll say it's, it's almost like a sign-on bonus. And, and I do believe that there needs to be some performance at a mayoral level that really reflects the basis for that type of merit increase. So I think it's slightly premature to move in the direction of voting on a raise. And instead we would need to have some type of results before actually moving to a decision to vote on a raise. I think it's just a personal thing for me. I've taken many lateral moves in an attempt to broaden my understanding and ability to perform the job that I'm moving into from the one that I had previously. And really had no regard for the pay that was being offered in the position that I was moving into. I honestly didn't even think about the pay. I just wanted to look at the job. So I look at a mayor's role and I think somebody else had mentioned that it's, you know, the job is for the people we're you guys are public servants. Uh, it's a position that, uh, you know, isn't exempt from raises, but, uh, but I, I think that there needs to be some performance that's involved, uh, in states the basis for, for the the raised vote. Thank you. Thank you Mr. Sco. I think

▶ 31:19 Speaker 1: We're good. I don't see any hands. Okay.

▶ 31:20 Speaker 4: Last call. Alright.

▶ 31:23 Ryan Williams: Seeing no other participants online or in person, I will now motion by unanimous consent to close public comment and seeing no objections. Public comment is now closed. As a reminder, this is ordinance 2 2 4 1 amending Melrose Revised ordinances, chapter 48, 1 Mayor Party a salary by adding additional compensation to take effect beginning January 1st, 2026. We have no representatives from the administration here to speak on this order tonight. And I'd like to point out for the, um, for the public that this order was put down by Mayor Paul Broder at the end of his last term. So Mayor ti um, is not going to be here to speak in this because it would be kind of unethical for her to, to speak on this order tonight.