Departments

Transcript (~20 min @ 1:12)

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▶ 1:11 Jen Grigoraitis: Armada here to join us if you want to come up to the table welcome. And also for the record joining us is counselor. Jamaladin. And if I could have a motion to suspend the rules motion to

▶ 1:25 Speaker 2: spend the rules second. So we have a motion to suspend the

▶ 1:27 Jen Grigoraitis: rules made by accounts. Their Echols seconded by councilor. Karmchatie all in favor any opposed so the rules are suspended. Welcome if you just want to share a little bit about the Municipal debt, and then we can take and take questions and some votes.

▶ 1:43 Speaker 4: Perfect. Thank you Municipal debt budget number seven, eleven and Municipal interest 751 are contractual obligations of the city. They have been voted on by the city council after a vigorous process and the budget for this year is simply what is scheduled for this year from those pre-approvals. so on the exempt portion the principal do is one million five eight eight nine ten, and the interest Associated is 353-273 on non-exempt debt is 2,190. And the interest is 920261. Projected debt payments budget number 752 are basically the maturing bands that were issued in January of this year. I believe they're coming due in September and they will be rolled over but at that majority that we need to pay the interest. So that is 31,77.

▶ 2:46 Speaker 2: And that is the debt budget. Are there any questions from

▶ 2:49 Speaker 1: counselors?

▶ 2:53 Jen Grigoraitis: Seeing none. I will entertain a motion to move the bottom line on department 711751 and 752 which are Municipal debt Municipal debt interest and projected debt. So moved second. So we have emotion made by councilor Williams seconded by councilor Eccles to move the bottom line on department 711751 and 752. Is there any discussion Seeing none Mr. Clerk. Can you please call the roll?

▶ 3:21 Speaker 3: Vice chair mcgrelli councilor Eccles. Yes counselor. Jamaladin. Yes. Counselor Stewart. Yes counselor Carm Cheney Yeah counselor Williams. Yes. And chair greitus. Yes.

▶ 3:44 Speaker 1: Seven yes seven. Yes. So those departments carry.

▶ 3:46 Jen Grigoraitis: Thank you for being here with us this evening. And I am going to move through some of the other department budgets for which we have memos in our packets. Those are Department 145 Treasurer collector. 916 Medicare City portion 296 parking 135 auditor and I would entertain if there's any discussion on any of those budgets and or a motion to combine those to move the bottom line.

▶ 4:17 Jack Eccles: Motion to combine second. It's just listed.

▶ 4:22 Speaker 1: Are you sorry? Are you looking to speak dismissed? You are dispatched you you are you no longer have to

▶ 4:29 Jen Grigoraitis: be here. Thank you for joining us. So we have a motion by counselor Eccles seconded by councilor. Jamala Dean to move the bottom line on departments one four five nine one, six two nine six and one three five. Is there any discussion?

▶ 4:46 Speaker 2: Seeing no discussion Mr. Clerk. Can you please call the roll?

▶ 4:49 Speaker 3: Vice chair Migliorelli Yeah counselor Eccles. Yes counselor. Jamaladin. Yes. Counselor Stewart, yes. counselor Carm Cheney Yes counselor Williams. Yes. And Cherry Gratis. Yes.

▶ 5:06 Jen Grigoraitis: Seven yes seven. Yes. Okay. So then we have Department 942 stabilization fund / opeb funds.

▶ 5:16 Speaker 1: Is there what is the will of this committee ocean to

▶ 5:19 Speaker 5: move the bottom line second?

▶ 5:20 Jen Grigoraitis: So we have emotion to move the bottom line on Department. 942 made by counselor Williams seconded by Vice chairmanelli. Is there any discussion Seeing non Mr. Clerk. Can you please call the roll?

▶ 5:31 Speaker 3: Vice chairmanelli. Yes. Counselor Eccles. Yes counselor. Jamaladin. Yes. counselor Stewart Yesler Carm Shady. Yes counselor Williams. Yes. And chair Grigoraitis? Yes, that's seven. Yes

▶ 5:47 Jen Grigoraitis: seven. Yes, so that carries. Thank you. So our next four budgets are related to the human resources department. And I know we have HR Director Lata here to join us. So please come on up and I believe I heard you say, this is your first time in person with the city council. So welcome. Yes. Thank you very much for having

▶ 6:01 Speaker 6: me here tonight.

▶ 6:06 Speaker 6: so I'm here tonight is the HR Director to present on the health contractual budget, but certainly if you have questions on any of the other budget happy to answer. So the health contractual budget for this year.

▶ 6:26 Speaker 6: is

▶ 6:30 Speaker 6: the health budget is 12,000 at 12 million 482 900 and the health contractual budget. It is a contractual obligation for the city of Melrose. The rates are set by the group insurance commission every year and of course, they're impacted by the health care inflation by the economy. So we don't have too much control over that what we have control over is the Split employee contribution versus City contribution and that's actually governed by the agreement that was made between the city of Melrose and the Public Employee committee. We are now entering our second year of that agreement and the split firm City cost versus employee cost is 84% versus 16% for Retirees is 85% City 15% retirees. And then for Medicare plans, it's 70 30. The health insurance budget is impacted by few different factors. And every time we look at the health insurance budget, it's always a snapshot in time of our membership enrollment and that's snapshot in time. We apply what we currently use the average cost for the average plan in anticipate any kind of retirements or any vacancies. So that's translated into 4.3% for them. overall cost increase in addition to that the health insurance budget is also impacted by open enrollment by the behavior of employees life events throughout the year as well as opt out in Romans and the Medicare cost increase since we do reimburse our retirees 70% of the standard Medicare cost. retirees and their spouses and survivors So that's a more or less the health insurance budget. It's constantly changing its fluid and it's our contractual obligation. I've want to thank actually our Auditors Department Patrick De La Russo carry golden and the HR coordinator Diane Barrett for helping me project the budget. It's a group effort and from year to year. We try to refine our approach so that it results in the more reasonable and is accurate as possible projection. So happy to answer any questions any of you may have thank

▶ 9:06 Speaker 1: you cancer Eccles.

▶ 9:09 Jack Eccles: Thank you Mr. For being here you mentioned. The Public Employee committee. Can you just talk about like who who sits on that and how they get there? Yes, the Public

▶ 9:17 Speaker 6: Employee committee consists of union rep of every Union and in addition to that representative of the retirees.

▶ 9:28 Jack Eccles: and they make they make decisions for non-union employees as well. Of course, yeah.

▶ 9:34 Speaker 6: Yeah and in so we're as I said in the second year of a six-year agreement that was reached between the city of Melrose and the Public Employee committee. And that governs the contributions splits between City employee City and retiring.

▶ 9:53 Speaker 5: Thanks.

▶ 9:56 Speaker 1: Councilor gemology. Yes. Thank you.

▶ 9:57 Maya Jamaleddine: Thank you for being with us tonight and for having me excited to see you in person. It's a side note. Do we have any FMLA benefits for our city employees by any chance or

▶ 10:15 Speaker 6: are you we have a family leave for our city employees? Are you asking if the city contributes to if it's a paid leave or yes, the city does not contribute towards it the employees use their personal growth whether it's sick time personal time

▶ 10:36 Maya Jamaleddine: vacation time. Okay. And is that Do we have any plan to include it and the city budget? We know that this is something that would open up. and attract more diverse population to apply to our you know jobs if we have good benefits, right because diverse population especially minorities would be looking for a good benefits and FMLA.

▶ 11:08 Maya Jamaleddine: Is one of the main things that anyone would be wishing to to get when they get employed. Is this something that you know, the city is looking to include

▶ 11:19 Speaker 6: So we have actually I'm happy to say we have very generous benefits as it relates to our cruels. Excuse me. It's something that we pride ourselves with and we recently had a conversation classification study in compared our benefits to other municipalities and we are out there with very good benefits. This is not something that we're currently planning on including because of the benefits that we have and just as a side note FMLA the employees are not eligible for a family for the first 12 months. However, we have another leave that they need to be employed only for three months that they'll be eligible to take. So we're trying to accommodate for for this type of situations. Okay. So what

▶ 12:14 Maya Jamaleddine: do you feel that? The city is providing or offering our employees that would outset the FMLA. benefits

▶ 12:30 Speaker 6: I'm sorry. Do you mind just so so you

▶ 12:32 Maya Jamaleddine: said we are we do have very competitive or very good we provide very good. Benefits so what is it that you feel that we? We're striving and in terms of providing our employees. What benefits specifically you're referring

▶ 12:58 Speaker 6: So the leave that I was referring to is not FMLA leave but it does assist employees who have to take leave shortly after they're hired. They need to be employed for. Its parental leave only for three months and it's the mass parental leave and they're able to take it. So that's something that we're trying to accommodate these employees that need to take leave right away. We also offer sick time that employees can take right away if they need to for every new hire.

▶ 13:39 Speaker 1: cancer

▶ 13:41 Manjula Karamcheti: thank you so much for being with us and I have had the pleasure being with you in person, but it's nice to see you in this setting. So one of the things I noticed in. The memo in the overall document was continued support of the Dei Mission and work on implementing the recommendations of the vision consultants. The organizational needs assessment in the Dei task force, so I didn't see and I could have missed it because I am new to this process any funds in your in the budget that was presented. I do know that there is a free cash order last year. So I guess I'm just wondering If there's been any progress on that and even though it's not in here, what are your thoughts about? Yeah how funding might be used to address some of the needs that were identified. Yes. So the

▶ 14:31 Speaker 6: Visions so the hundred thousand dollars were supposed to be for to implement Visions recommendations in as we know some most of you know, that the Visions report was the final report was just produced. So some of the recommendations are trainings for employees as well as designated role to lead RDI efforts. So we are planning on using this hundred thousand dollars towards that and currently it will be able to update more the Appropriations memo. That's due June 16th in outline how the 100,000 what's the best plan to use them to advance our di work but essentially currently we are speaking with Consulting with mapc as well as with other municipalities who have the eye positions and Taking it very seriously. It's a critical role. So we want to make sure it's thoughtful in that we are prepared for this role to succeed. So there's certain things that we are learning needs to have in place in order to that will set the grounds for the success of the DI role. So we're speaking with this communities trying to learn from them their best practices. Try to avoid any pitfalls and really benefit from what they have learned. So for example, some of the discussions that we are having with the mayor's office. So my God Fleischmann and I work in closely. Some of the discussions we are having have to do with let's say the focus of the role. Is it more external or more internal some of the job responsibilities really trying to map out how it's going to what the structure of the position will be itself. But also how it's going to fit in the structure of the city of Melrose and in the meantime discussing the DI work has to be Department level. It can be just coming from one department or one person so some of them We have started with di practices best practices for recruiting for example over the past year and I'm happy to report that we have some positive results in addition to that. The mayor has been conducting the evaluation for department heads and every department head is to have a DI goal. So it's something that's kind of infiltrated and that's what I'm talking about the ground war that we need to lay the groundwork because we want it's critical for this position to succeed. It's critical. We have a very clear kind of scope of what the responsibilities are and clear expectation. In addition to that. Now that we have the recommendations we're looking into different type of what it's culture sensitivity training again the department level as well as potentially having Di professionals exam that's gonna hold webinars or talks that will help enhance the skills of our employees of our department heads and kind of at a multicultural and towards the work that we do.

▶ 17:56 Manjula Karamcheti: Great. Thank you so much. I appreciate you. Welcome that that response.

▶ 18:01 Speaker 1: Any other counselors of questions counselor Stewart?

▶ 18:04 Speaker 7: Thank you.

▶ 18:06 Robb Stewart: There's a lot I just oh, I have no questions for I just want to compliment you on the health contractual benefits. I know how challenging that is this day and age in this environment for you to keep a reasonable. um growth minimum on that is impressive and shows Acumen to the concern for both the tailoring the the benefit to your employees balanced against the the realism of the budget that we have in front of us. So I just wanted to mention that complement. I know how that difficult

▶ 18:43 Speaker 6: that is. Thank you. It's a group effort. You're welcome.

▶ 18:45 Speaker 7: Thank you can just ask before we take

▶ 18:47 Jen Grigoraitis: a vote too quick follow-up questions on the health contractual. What's the current split between employee and employer on is it 70 30 80 20 employee?

▶ 18:59 Speaker 6: Employers, so it's 84 16 84 the city 16 the employee. And that's for HMO PPO plans. We have an Indemnity plan for employees. That's 60 40. And that's the reason the split is different. It's more expensive plan. That's for you can leave anywhere in the country and have coverage. I think we have only few employees who have that plan.

▶ 19:32 Jen Grigoraitis: And I know the group insurance commission is the you know, bargaining unit for all of the state and Municipal members and for state employees. I think that it's either 80 20 years. I mean,

▶ 19:45 Speaker 6: it's it's a last year sometimes. Yeah. Do you know if our

▶ 19:46 Jen Grigoraitis: split is in line with other municipalities municipalities? I'm impressed that we've been able to keep it 8416 just as we've continued to see, you know, shifting of healthcare costs on to employees. I would say

▶ 19:59 Speaker 6: we we're more or less in line we're doing And our employees are very lucky to have this split. We in the PC agreement. There's a plan starting July of 2024 to start very slowly Shifting the contribution to Let me see. It's by a percent. So it will be 8317 and then the following year. Again by a percent and by the time that the PC agreement comes to an end, it should be 80/20 split. but that's really broken down over several years. So it make it easier on the employees.

▶ 20:50 Jen Grigoraitis: Thank you. That's helpful. If any other questions, I would entertain a motion to move the bottom line on departments one five two, nine. One, two, nine one three and nine one four. So move second, so we have a motion to move the bottom line on 152912-913 and 914 made by counselor Carm Shady seconded by councilor Williams. Is there any discussion Seeing none Mr. Clerk. Can you please call the roll?

▶ 21:20 Speaker 3: Vice chair Migliorelli Counselor Eccles. Yes counselor. Jamaladin. Yes. Counselor Stewart. Yes Council crime Shady. Yes. Counselor Williams. Yes. And chair Gratis. Yes.

▶ 21:35 Jen Grigoraitis: We have seven. Yes seven. Yes. So those bottom lines are all moved. Thank you mislata for being here. It was lovely to be with you in person you