Appropriations & Oversight Committee — 2014-06-09

Attendance

Jaclyn L. Bird present · Vice Chairman; Robert A. Boisselle present · Ward 4 Alderman; Donald L. Conn Jr. present · President/Ex-officio Member; Scott M. Forbes present · Ward 7 Alderman; Gail Infurna present · Ward 5 Alderman; Jennifer L. Lemmerman present · Ward 2 Alderman; Mary Beth McAteer-Margolis present · Alderman at Large; Monica C. Medeiros present · Alderman at Large; Peter D. Mortimer present · Ward 6 Alderman; John N. Tramontozzi present · Chairman; Francis X. Wright Jr. present · Ward 3 Alderman

Agenda

1. Call to Order (14:18)
2. Public Participation (15:12)
3. Orders
4. ORDER-2014-128 : City of Melrose Operating Budget for Fiscal Year 2015 in the amount of $70,418,700.98 (Seventy Million, Four Hundred Eighteen Thousand, Seven Hundred Dollars and Ninety Eight Cents) (16:25)
5. ORDER-2014-141 : Reauthorization of the Council on Aging Donation Revolving Account # 2811 for FY2015 (39:28)
6. ORDER-2014-143 : Reauthorization of Revolving Acct # 2665 Police False Alarm for FY2015 (1:13:35)
7. ORDER-2014-157 : Acceptance of Melrose Common Grant from the Commonwealth of Mass., Executive Office of Energy and Environmental Affairs; Fund #4010 (2:15:50)
8. ORDER-2014-153 : Requesting that the City Auditor advise the Board of Aldermen in writing of the amounts certified by the Department of Revenue each year in the Water Enterprise Fund and Sewer Enterprise Fund. (2:39:10)
9. Adjournment (2:40:42)

Minutes

CITY OF MELROSE APPROPRIATIONS COMMITTEE CALENDAR● JUNE 9, 2014 Aldermanic Chamber Budget Hearing 7:30 PM The public should take notice that the Melrose Board of Aldermen may, on certain occasions, have a quorum in attendance due to standing committees of the Board of Aldermen consisting of both voting and non-voting members. Members attending this duly posted meeting are participating and deliberating only in conjunction with the business of the standing committee. Attendee Name Title Status Arrived John N. Tramontozzi Chairman Present Jaclyn L. Bird Vice Chairman Present Monica C. Medeiros Alderman at Large Present Mary Beth McAteer-Margolis Alderman at Large Present Gail M. Infurna Ward 5 Alderman Present Robert A. Boisselle Ward 4 Alderman Present Scott M. Forbes Ward 7 Alderman Present Francis X. Wright Jr. Ward 3 Alderman Present Jennifer L. Lemmerman Ward 2 Alderman Present Peter D. Mortimer Ward 6 Alderman Present Donald L. Conn Jr. President/Ex-officio Member Present In Attendance: Rita Mercado, Chair, Board of Appeals; David Lucas, Deputy City Solicitor; Patrick Dello Russo, City Auditor/CFO; Adam Travinski, Executive Director, Retirement Board; Chris Wilcock, Chief Assessor; Dawn Folopolous, Executive Director, Council on Aging; Linda Walsh Gardener, Library Director; Jack Higgins, Parking Clerk; Mike Lyle, Chief of Police; Mary Rita O'Shea, City Clerk; Linda Lee Angiolillo, Elections Clerk; Denise Gaffey, City Planner; Nancy Kukura, Messina Fine Arts Grants; Susan Murphy, Chair, Conservation Commission; Henry Hooton, School Committee Member, Theodore Nickole, Superintendent, and Dr. James Picone, Acting Financial Director, Northeast Metropolitan Regional Vocational School; C. Henry Kezer, Board of Trustees President and Chairman, Richard Burns, Jr., Treasurer, Pine Banks Park

ORDER-2014-128 Operating Budgets (City, School, Regional School) City of Melrose Operating Budget for Fiscal Year 2015 in the amount of $70,418,700.98 (Seventy Million, Four Hundred Eighteen Thousand, Seven Hundred Dollars and Ninety Eight Cents) Recommend Passage Board of Aldermen City of Melrose Page 1 Updated 6/26/2014 6:12 PM Minutes Appropriations Committee June 9, 2014

ORDER-2014-141 Revolving Fund/Reauthorization Reauthorization of the Council on Aging Donation Revolving Account # 2811 for FY2015 Recommend Passage Board of Aldermen

ORDER-2014-143 Revolving Fund/Reauthorization Reauthorization of Revolving Acct # 2665 Police False Alarm for FY2015 Recommend Passage Board of Aldermen

ORDER-2014-157 Authorization Acceptance of Melrose Common Grant from the Commonwealth of Mass., Executive Office of Energy and Environmental Affairs; Fund #4010 Recommend Passage Board of Aldermen

ORDER-2014-153 Request Requesting that the City Auditor advise the Board of Aldermen in writing of the amounts certified by the Department of Revenue each year in the Water Enterprise Fund and Sewer Enterprise Fund. Recommend Passage Board of Aldermen City of Melrose Page 2 Updated 6/26/2014 6:12 PM

Transcript

▶ 13:49 John N. Tramontozzi: You need not come again, although I'm sure you'll be here anyway. Thank you for coming. A motion to adjourn by Alderman Tramontozzi. Second. By Alderman Byrd. Non-debatable, no discussion, all in favor, please say aye. Aye. Any opposed, hearing none, the finance committee is hereby adjourned. Thank you, one and all. order in the chamber good evening this is the board of maro city of maro's board of aldermen appropriations committee meeting this evening uh june 9th 2014. i'm chairman john chairman tozy with us also is vice chairman alderman burnt also alderman at lodges monica maderos mary beth mcintyre my goal is ward 5 alderman galen ferner ward 4 alderman Alderman Robert Boisselle, Ward 7, Alderman Scott Forbes, Ward 3, Alderman Francis Wright.

▶ 14:55 John N. Tramontozzi: Ward 2, Alderman Jennifer Lemmerman, Ward 6, Alderman Peter Mortimer, and President of the Board of Aldermen, Donald Elkhorn Jr. This meeting is being televised and recorded pursuant to the Commonwealth of Massachusetts open meeting laws. Motion to open the floor for public participation, Mr. Chairman. Thank you. At this time, we have a motion to open up the floor for public participation by Alderman Mortimer, seconded by Alderman Boisselle. On the motion, all in favor? Aye. Opposing, none. This is the opportunity for any member of the public who wish to come forward to speak about any matter on our agenda this evening. To come forward, state your name, residence, and have free opportunity to discuss.

▶ 15:44 John N. Tramontozzi: Motion to close public participation, Mr. Chairman. Second. Again, unfortunately, I see no members of the public who wish to come forward to address us. So we have a motion to close public participation by Alderman Mortimer, seconded by Alderman Boisselle. On the motion, all in favor? Aye. Any opposed? Seeing none, we are closed for public participation. This is the continuation of the City of Melrose Operating Budget, Order 2014-128, which is the City of Melrose operating budget for fiscal year 2015 in the amount of $70,418,700.98. And we will begin and call each individual department heads before us in the order in which we have posted. Just so I can, just for members of the public and the, as chairman of the committee and

▶ 16:36 John N. Tramontozzi: On behalf of this full committee and the full board of the City of Marlowe's Board of Aldermen, I want to thank all the members of each individual department who comes forward today. I think I speak for all of us that we appreciate your service to the City of Marlowe's. We thank you for coming in and speaking on behalf of your budgets. And you're doing a great job and we want to commend you for keeping the city running smoothly as it has been this past fiscal year, and we'll continue to do so, I'm sure, in the future. So with that said, we will begin the Department 176 is the Board of Appeals fiscal year 2015 budget in the amount of $15,000. Motion to suspend the rules for the evening for this committee.

▶ 17:24 John N. Tramontozzi: Right, so we have a motion by Alderman Mortimer to suspend the rules, seconded by Alderman Forbes. We are under suspension of rules, so that way any member, as we call the departments, will come forward to talk about their budget. So, with that motion to suspend the rules, all in favor? Aye. Opposing, none. So, we are under suspension of rules, and good evening. Good evening. Thank you for having me tonight. As we were discussing, this is about our FY General Fund Operating Budget for the Board of Appeals tonight. We're looking for an amount of $15,000 approximately. dollars the majority of our budget goes primarily for the salary and wages of our clerk Jessica Mitchell which is 14,000 the remaining of our budget items

▶ 18:06 are small items related to more of the incidentals related to office supplies also advertising and printing and we're looking at a small budget as well related to complying with our public notice requirements as well so that is basically our budget for the 2015 fiscal year if there are any questions on more I've been happy to answer them. Motion to recommend this order for passage. Second. We have a motion to recommend your budget for passage by Alderman Mortimer, seconded by Alderman Boisselle. Any discussion? President Conn. Yeah, just one point for people watching at home. This budget is absolutely level funded from last year. It's $15,010 this year and it was $15,010 last year. Very good, we appreciate it.

▶ 18:51 John N. Tramontozzi: with that we have a motion to recommend uh to move the bottom line of fifteen thousand ten dollars uh on the motion all in favor aye aye any opposed seeing none thank you good evening thank you very much thank you thank you ms mikado so that has uh we're moving on to the next department which is uh 151 city solicitor in the amount of 652 thousand three hundred and thirty seven dollars and 19 cents motion to recommend that bottom line for pass second all right we do have a motion to recommend by alderman mortimer seconded by alderman Boisselle good evening good evening mr chairman how are you fine thank you um david lucas i'm appearing on behalf of robert van campen whom i'm sure most of you if not all you know you know suffered unfortunately um a personal situation in

▶ 19:35 his household recently and we'll obviously keep the board of alderman apprised of that as well thank you thank you for coming forward this evening sure so any any highlights the the The budget, Mr. Chairman, is increased by approximately 3.57%. That is almost entirely due to the city's property insurance premiums rising by almost exactly the same rate that we've negotiated with our insurance agent, Laura here. Mr. DelRusso, do you have any further comments at this time, or do you want to take questions? No, just through the chair, as we just mentioned, it's primarily the increase in the insurance. And again, it was just over 3.5% or $14,723 more is what we anticipated over FY14. Any further discussion from the committee?

▶ 20:29 John N. Tramontozzi: There is a motion duly seconded on the floor for recommendation. All in favor? Aye. Any opposed? Seeing none, this is recommended to the full board for final passage. Thank you. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. Thank you. The next department up for scrutiny is the department number 135, the auditors, the budget in the amount of $356,148.39. Motion to recommend that bottom line for passage, Mr. Chairman. Second. Motion to recommend by Alderman Mortimer, seconded by Alderman Boisselle. On discussion, Mr. De La Rosa. Good evening. Again, I think the auditor's office strives to provide the best service for the best possible cost that we can, as you'll see in my budget this year. Outside of salary increases, two of the four people are in the union.

▶ 21:26 It's up just slightly over last year. And I do want to let the board know that I take great pride in my department, I believe they truly, truly work consistently to try to provide the highest level of service to all departments. It's not just the outside auditors that we work with, the Department of Revenue, but I have to tell the board that my department truly works with all department heads on a consistent basis to help them to do a good job, and I take pride in that. So, personal notes, my second year as the president of the Eastern Massachusetts Municipal Accountants and Auditors, there's 53 communities, and I believe I've been the first one that was ever asked to go for a second trim, which I did do, and third trim, who knows?

▶ 22:25 But I'm proud of that, and it means a lot to me. Welch, congratulations on that. Thank you. Very good. Any discussion on the board? Alderman Medeiros. Thanks. I see the professional services line is decreased quite a bit this year. Or actually, well, it looks like it was at 1,200, then it's been increased throughout the year up to 10,950 and actual 11. Perhaps this is, these numbers aren't correct? Not that the numbers are correct. What that represents is we were required to have studied on OPEB other than pension employee benefits to make a determination as to what the liability is of the community for auditing purposes. We did that and that's why you'll see that increase and it's something I see I believe every two years now we're going to be required to do that.

▶ 23:28 John N. Tramontozzi: And if we have to do it for reporting purposes, period, then that's why you see that change. And also, I believe we did try to reduce the actual budget by 1% when the mayor had asked, so that also represents why there's a slight reduction there, too. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Very good. Any further discussion? Seeing none, we do have a motion to recommend on the floor. All in favor? Aye. Any opposed? Seeing none, thank you. Thank you very much. We recommend the bottom line of $312,284.46. I'm sorry. I'm jumping ahead, $356,148.39. The next order, department number is 911 Pension Weekly in the amount of $5,398,331.12. Motion to move that bottom line, Mr. Chairman? Second. It is a motion to move that bottom line by Alderman Mortimer, seconded by Alderman Boisselle.

▶ 24:29 John N. Tramontozzi: We have, we have comment by a question from President Kahn. Gentlemen, when are we going to be fully funded pursuant to the funding schedule? What, what year will that be? As of now, the current funding schedule is 2035. Always a good question. And what is the maximum end date that is permissible right now? 2040, per Perak regs. That's all I wanted to know, Mr. Chairman. Any further discussion on this particular item, that department pension? It's pretty straightforward. Any other further comments? All right. We do have a motion on the floor. We do. All right. And on that motion, all in favor? Aye. Any opposed? Seeing none, thank you so much for coming in and answering those questions. Thank you.

▶ 25:28 So that will be recommended to the full board. We have the next department is 141, the Assembly. the assessor's office in the amount of $312,284.46. Good evening. Good evening. Want to give us a little background on this budget? Sure. This budget is increased this year. This is the start of our nine year cycle to measure and list the whole city. We actually do it in a three year period. The last time this was started was fiscal 2006. main increase in this budget is for the measure and list of the city which is a requirement by the Department of Revenue for their guidelines of assessing another item that we did address was education I just came into the office in January and a lot of my staff has not never been trained in assessing or the

▶ 26:25 software that they used I thought that I should put it in the budget and kind of make the board aware of that so those are the two items that I have that are really increased over the previous year on the reveal contract is that contract subject to a bid process or an RFP it is and how many vendors actually bid on these contracts as far as in Massachusetts I want to say there's at least 15 out there that are qualified to bid on it there's a list that i can email you if you'd like but at least 15 over 10. and how many and you may not know this mr de la rusa might help how many do we generally get in response mr del ruso um on on this case here that i don't know i don't know how many could you check on

▶ 27:14 John N. Tramontozzi: that show me please what what i'd be interested to find out is whether whether we responded we have a vendor that we always use and we become captive to that vendor or whether there's really a a legitimate bidding process going on, and not illegitimate from the city's perspective, but are there enough willing people who are bidding on these types of contracts? Thank you, Mr. President, Mr. Chairman. Welcome. Any further discussion? Motion to move the bottom. We need a motion, yes. Motion to move the bottom line of $312,294.46, Mr. Chairman. Second. Thank you, we have a motion by Alderman Mortimer, seconded by Alderman Boisselle. Any further discussion? Seeing none, on the motion, all in favor?

▶ 27:58 John N. Tramontozzi: Aye. Aye. The opposed? Great, seeing none, that will be recommended. Thank you. Thank you. So moving on to the next department is 541, Council on Aging. In the amount of $169,972.56, good evening. Motion to recommend that bottom line. Second. Second. All right, we have a motion to recommend by Alderman Mortimer. I think I heard a second by Alderman Forbes. That's correct. On discussion, on discussion. Good evening. Good evening. Do you want to tell us a little bit about? I'm sorry? Do you want to just give us a little introduction on your budget? I do. I'm pleased to be here. Outside of the salary, everything is level funded for the FY15 budget. But with the board's permission, I would like to take a moment just to describe some

▶ 28:50 of the exciting things that I have going on at the Council on Aging so the first thing that I wanted to talk about is that yesterday we had an intergenerational dance at the Memorial Hall that was fantastic and my feet still hurt from dancing it was really a wonderful event and so it will definitely become an annual it was a spring fling but the other things that we have going on is that we're aiming towards a lot more cultural programs than we have in the past. So we offered a presentation about Shen Yang, which was a performance that was given at the Wang Center, Wang Theater in Boston. We actually had a presentation before that and the presenter made many traditional Chinese dishes, so it was great. We also hosted

▶ 29:48 a holiday tea to learn about and taste the different cultures that are represented within Melrose that was very successful. We have, our art classes are really popular and there are waiting lists for both of them. One is a mixed media class and one is a watercolor class and we also have a cable, well we are part of, I don't really produce it or anything, a cable TV program that's called Have You been here, and it highlights interesting and inexpensive local spots that folks might want to visit. So this year's new intergenerational events include the dance from yesterday, and also a new group of people that have come forward, they're called the Joshua Tree Families, and they did a holiday dinner for us in December that was really well received, and that will

▶ 30:43 will be annual as well. And this year we tackled some difficult topics. We did a workshop on bullying for the seniors to help them recognize actually what bullying is because it's, it is a big problem within senior housing. And and a little bit at the senior center as well. So that was very successful. And depending on, it was just very recent, We might do some follow-up work in-house on addressing some of the problems. We also did a workshop for professionals about elder suicide. And not everybody, I was kind of surprised to realize actually that elders, the group of elders is the highest rate of suicide of any other age group. But the reality is that not a lot of preventative resources are put towards seniors,

▶ 31:41 more towards young people at risk. So, okay, so our outreach efforts continue to reach as many older adults as possible. Our newsletter, there are 1,900 copies distributed throughout the city each month. also online on the Council on Aging's website, web page on the city site. We have a friendly visitor program that matches seniors with volunteers for one hour a week, or whatever interests they have in common. It's to help with isolation. And our, this is different kinds of outreach. And our transportation, we're providing about 240 trips each month. And about 20 of those are out of town. And out of town could mean to medical appointments, or it could mean we're going to museums once a month now, different kind of cultural trips.

▶ 32:42 Mark your basket, hoo-hoo. And we have a lunch club too that goes to different area restaurants. In, in FY15, we're going to focus on a new software that we've acquired, My Senior Center it's called. And we plan to roll it out middle of June, but have it fully functional by July 1st. And that's going to help a lot with streamlining data collection. In FY15, we're also going to conduct a needs assessment of the senior population. And there'll be a presentation to the city by June of 2015, by the end of that year. The friends of the aging board are working on the city wide yard sale, which we did not have last year and I received lots of phone calls about why not. So I'm happy to say that they're working on the city wide yard sale and the raffle.

▶ 33:41 We will have it this year. We're always looking for opportunities to make the Senior Center more inviting. One of the things that we have coming up in FY15 is that in addition to we show classical movies and we show new release movies, we're going to begin a series of films that aim at cultural competency in the effort of fostering a more welcoming environment at the Senior Center. Specifically, we're going to focus on the different ethnic populations that are right around us, but don't actually come to the senior center. So, that's all I've got. Thank you for the opportunity. Very good, thank you. Are there questions? I'll move right. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. Thank you, Ms. Belopolis, for the overview.

▶ 34:31 I just had a quick question. Everything sounds great that you're doing. My Senior Center, the software program, or the, is it software, technically? Not really, I don't know what to, Is it like a key tag, almost like when you? It is, like CVS. Okay, yeah, exactly. But it's not a software, it's actually in a server out there, virtually somewhere. So you don't, you're not, you're, they're, they're all gonna provide you with the data. You don't have to manage a particular program. That's right. Just scan it in, and people can come in and choose sort of what activities. It has a touch screen. And that sort of thing, okay. Yeah. And how much did that cost, and did the city fund that, or was that funded through the Friends group?

▶ 35:09 Welch, it was funded through the Friends group, but with a donation specifically meant for it. Okay. There was a program at home in Melrose that tried to start a few years ago. And in dissolving that program, there was a grant. And the grant was split between the Council on Aging and Mystic Valley Elder Services. And so the portion that was given to the Council on Aging was put towards this software. So it was about, it was $3,700 and then it will cost $1,800 a year for ongoing support and maintenance, upgrades. Great. And that will help if you're grant writing, you'll be able to say how many people came in to the senior center and what they were there for and that sort of thing? Exactly. Okay.

▶ 35:56 Yeah. now collect with paper and pencil, and it's very, very time consuming. Great, so this will be a huge improvement. Okay, that's all, Mr. Chairman, thank you. Thank you. Alderman Boisselle and then President Conn. Thank you for coming this evening. You mentioned a yard sale, senior yard sale, have you targeted a date on that yet? Not senior, city wide. City wide, sorry, city wide. We have not, because we just want to make sure that there are no other conflicting events in the city on the day that we pick. Very good, thank you. It will be probably about two or three weeks after Victorian Fair. So end of September, beginning of October. Very good, thank you. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. Very good, President Conn.

▶ 36:36 Yeah, you have two full time people and two part time people at the present time, is that correct? Of the whole staff? Yes. There are, all together there are 16 staff people. And, but they are six FTEs, six full time equivalents. So, some folks work eight hours a week, others are 12 hours a week. The community dinner folks, they are three hours a week. So, as far as full time employees, there are only two, myself and the program coordinator. And are all of your salaries reflected in the budget, or is some paid off budget? Many are paid off budget from the state formula grant. And how many of your employees are paid in part or in whole off budget? Off the city? Yes. Let's see, one, two, three, well, even in part, I would say six.

▶ 37:41 Francis X. Wright Jr.: Six. Mr. DelaRusso, could you provide me with information as to what level of salary expenditure is made off budget for this department? Yes. And I'd like to track this for all departments to try to find out what the actual expense of all salaries and wages are, not just those that are reflected in the city budget. Okay. Thank you. Very good. Alderman Wright. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. i'm going to ask for a little bit of leeway here we're at that time of year when the seniors who are incapable are perhaps walking more than they otherwise would ride particularly those who live across the street um in our two senior housing units across the street as well as a cephalo home are they aware that the sidewalks on west foster street are about to go into construction and if

▶ 38:37 Francis X. Wright Jr.: If not, can you make sure you make them aware, and I know Mike Lindstrom could award you a notice on that, maybe you could post. I would say they're probably not aware, because I haven't heard about it from them. Okay. So I will make them aware. Okay, and that project should be starting up fairly soon. And we continue to try to make that area pedestrian friendly, but despite making it a traffic safety zone and all that, I still see the cars flying through there. there are any issues with parking i see there's a lot of cars parking in front of the bb estate which can cause problems with that crosswalk um please make me make sure that i'm aware of it the mayor's office is aware of it we can do that all right great thank you thank you mr jim yeah you're

▶ 39:22 John N. Tramontozzi: welcome all right seeing no further discussion there is a motion on the floor uh to move that bottom line. On the motion, all in favor? Aye. Opposed? Seeing none, thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Oh, I'm sorry. We do have one more matter. Order 2014-141. It's a reauthorization of the Council on Aging Donation Revolving Account number 2811 for fiscal year 2015. Motion to recommend that revolving account for reauthorization, Mr. Chairman. There's a motion by Alderman Mortimer to recommend that revolving count seconded by alderman forbes on discussion oh seeing none i guess you can go soon uh on the motion all in favor aye any opposed great so that will uh be recommended thank you thank you thank you we're all set to move on to the next department which

▶ 40:13 is a 611 library the library my budget in the amount of nine hundred and twenty one thousand three hundred and twenty five dollars and forty seven cents evening good evening thank you the budget this year as it has been for several years is most of the expense lines are level funded we do have a slight increase which allows us to meet the standard set by the Massachusetts Board of Library Commissioners and what that means for us is that we are fully eligible to receive additional funds from the state in the form of state aid that's money that is outside of the budget and can be used to supplement the budget wherever we see it most needed I'll just quickly run down the items I have made a few changes this year with the help of the auditor's office they

▶ 41:20 are mostly logistic changes but just so that's all clear you'll notice that in in line 52 2200 it has been reduced to zero that's databases that is for clarity that those funds were moved down to 527702 which is contract maintenance most of the things that we consider databases at the library are actually down warm and material supplies and materials we think of as research databases whereas anything that would be in the 5200s are really done on annual contracts so for that clarity removed those funds everything else in that series is the same I would like to point out for anyone who's not aware the library is part of noble that line that stands for the north of Boston library exchange it's a regional library

▶ 42:30 consortium and the value we get our system our database system our cataloging system through the consortium we get training on all of the systems as well as other library and professional training from them tomorrow several staff members are going to Danvers to a technology exposition where they will be able to see all the new different technologies that patrons are coming in and asking for help on and essentially the value that we get we also get databases from them thousands of databases it would cost almost the entire budget for the library to accomplish what we accomplish through the consortium by ourselves and provide that same level of service to the citizens of melrose uh moving down i have taken we used to have a very

▶ 43:38 very large item our second largest line item was books and periodicals and as technology advances the reporting requirements that we have to give to the state are changing and they want us to really break down whereas we may consider books any way that circulates it could be downloadable it can be an e-format wide audiobook they want that all broken down so i have taken the line items and the auditor's office assisted me with creating some new line items and spreading that out so that at the end of the year we're able to more clearly show how we broke that money out for the state reporting um we are 20 000 shy in this budget of what it will be ultimately because every year around september october we transfer money from our fines account into the budget

▶ 44:46 per state regulations the fines and fees account is the only other type we can't transfer donation funds or state aid in but we are allowed to use the fines money that we bring in to support uh to support the budget so we will be doing that end of september and that will be about twenty thousand dollars um and the last series is um all level funded um recreational programs is we're very fortunate to have two other areas of support we have the friends of melrose public library who were able to maintain a fairly low budget with the city for recreational programs because that's a very traditional friends of libraries activity they support a significant percentage of the programming that we do throughout the year we also have substantial support

▶ 45:53 Robert A. Boisselle: from our trustees you'll notice previously computer purchases our line item is $1,000 and we have 45 computers in the library and the the trustees maintain those computers on a five-year rotation which allows us to keep up with the technology that that our patrons are expecting um so with that and the support um of the city we have reached all of our certifications excellent alderman Boisselle and then president good evening thank you for coming uh you mentioned the decrease in your line item for books and also So I notice audio materials are also down almost 50, 30 to 50%. Yes. So you're depending more on the internet and electronic media for your reading materials and so forth? It's a little bit of both.

▶ 47:00 So the audio, you'll see below that there's video formats. So that actually, it will be the same, it used to be all come together, audio and visual and so the audio and the visual have been separated here with the books and periodicals we are moving and so we still have the books obviously but in certain circumstances we are moving towards online formats a lot of research databases we are able to get vastly more information for in many cases similar prices an encyclopedia or one set of encyclopedias costs at least $1,000 and only one person can use each volume at a time whereas as part of the databases we get we do have two encyclopedias that half of melrose could all be using at the same time so we do get a better bang for our buck in those areas mentioning that do you find that

▶ 48:12 the newspapers and journals have a difference in price lines for presenting uh going to the internet or to the digitized materials and so forth instead of buying the newspaper or the journal it's in many cases and it's sometimes a little bit tough to see because you get a package online whereas you used to be getting a single item but in cases like Morningstar has gone over to being all online and they charged roughly the same amount for the print that they did with the online but again more people are able to use it at once when it's online so that that you get a little bit more usage out of I think with the actual the regular fiction and nonfiction books I think you still get a lot more value out of having some

▶ 49:12 downloadable opportunities but also our books are still doing a booming business and circulation, so I think it's still important to maintain those. Good. Last year when you were here, you were talking about starting a project on digitizing your archives. How's that going? We finished this spring. We got a grant and had a preservation specialist come in and look through all of our special resources and she did a wonderful job and gave us a lot of material to work with, including recommendations for digitizing both the newspapers and some of the more precious items that are in the, in the local history room. Now in the final guidelines of this, will the, your clients or the residents of Melrose or

▶ 50:10 Mary Beth McAteer-Margolis: anyone be able to access this digitized materials to the internet? Yes. Very good. Yes. Thank you very much. Thank you, Mr. Jarren. Very good. President Clinton? Yeah, again, can you tell me what percentage of your salaries and wages is funded either by the trustees or by the friends group, if you know? Mm-hm. There is an amount, we have an educational incentive that is in part funded by the trustees. Aside from that, everything comes from the city. Thank you. Very good, Alderman McAteer-Margolis. Thank you, Mr. Chairman, and thank you, Ms. Walsh, for being here and for providing such a wonderful resource to the community. I did have a question on your book line again. So, I'm seeing like with the audio that you've pretty much moved it to the video line, but

▶ 51:04 Mary Beth McAteer-Margolis: the book line, are you augmenting that with donation funds from the trustees? Yes. The 20—a couple of different ways. The $20,000 that I mentioned that will be transferred in September, that all goes into the book account. Okay. And the trustees have funds that are specific to various types of books. And so they also, it doesn't come into the budget this way, but those funds are spent on books. And then the electronic line underneath, that's a new line, and that covers like your e-book agreements with Noble? Yes. Right. And are you able to track your circulation for, like, digital material versus hard material? Yes. And how's that doing? Booming. We have actually, Melrose is a very tech-savvy city.

▶ 52:05 we have done fairly limited outreach and marketing and we consistently have been the consortium is 29 libraries and we are in the top three of circulations just about every month and we have also been in the top five of new users which i i don't see how that can really last forever eventually we'll have everyone but yeah it's it's very popular well congratulations and um thank you again any further discussion seeing none i think we need a motion motion move the bottom line all right there's a motion except just um i'm sorry go ahead if i may respectfully to the chair and i just want to thank lynn's phenomenal job all the time and i appreciate that um one quick One note that I think is important, and it was brought up by Linda that a lot of the categories that we're seeing in the breakdowns are now being dictated by different outside third party groups, the state for example.

▶ 53:13 We saw this also with the human resource department where you saw distribution of salaries actually in the health department budget. You see it big time in public works where you see detailed breakdown of school costs versus city costs, electricity, heat. Those are all mandates of the Department of Education. So this is a point of information, even though at times it may look a little bit, I won't say odd, but different. It's because we, as department heads, are trying to comply the best we can with these third party reporting agencies. And they like to see it a specific way in order for us to track it apples to apples. It leads us to have to break down components even more. Because at the end of the year, it would become much more difficult to try to go back and unwind and make a determination.

▶ 54:02 For example, through electricity, what portion was to the school. We do it right up front in the beginning so that we can clearly identify where the cost is and what department incurred it. That's why you'll see those types of changes in here. It's just a matter of state and Department of Education, Department of Revenue. They're modifying the way they want to see our reports, and this is now showing up even more in our budgets. Thank you, thank you. Very good. Thank you. Chairman, motion to move? President Klein. Yeah, this is yet another example of the state government making it more difficult to analyze our budgets here on the ground in Melrose. It's like we see across the board time after time these pointy headed regulations that make it more difficult to run our cities and towns.

▶ 54:52 John N. Tramontozzi: Welch, sir, thank you. So we do have a motion to move that bottom line by Alderman Forbes, seconded by Alderman McAteer-Margolis. Any further discussion? Seeing none on the motion, all in favor? Aye. Any opposed? They're not great. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you very much. be moved to recommendation to the full board the next one is department 296 parking the higgins good evening uh in the amount of fifty three thousand six hundred and nine dollars and fifty cents motion to move that bottom line thank you chairman we have a motion by alderman mortimer to move the bottom line seconded by alderman forbes on discussion good evening good evening uh my budget is about the same as last year it's uh level funded from last year

▶ 55:38 John N. Tramontozzi: There are no real changes, except that we picked up $1,400 for the girl to cover me at lunchtime when I'm at lunch, and that was new last year. Any questions? What year are we in with the lease of the St. Mary's parking spaces? Is this a renewal year or? I think it's indefinite, just going to keep on going. Do we have a written lease at the present time? I can check with the city solicitor that I'm on that, Don. Okay, thank you. Any further discussion? Seeing none, we do have a motion on the floor. All in favor? Aye. Aye. Opposing none, that bottom line is recommended to the full board. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. The next department is 211, police in the amount of $3,660,022.62. Good evening, Chief Lyle.

▶ 56:41 Motion to recommend that bottom line, Mr. Chairman. Second. Motion to recommend the bottom line by Alderman Mortimer, seconded by Alderman Boisselle. On discussion, good evening, Chief. Right. Thank you. If I may just point out something, the police department is sponsoring a car seat day for mums and dads, young mums and dads, grandparents, guardians, at Melrose High on June 21st. It's pretty much an all day event for Melrose residents only. Officer Applegate, RSRO, and Detective Danny Ellers will be there to install car seats or check them for folks. Great, excellent. With that being said, the budget for next year for the Morales Police has gone up for overtime approximately $50,000, that's a marginal increase pretty much overall.

▶ 57:39 I will say that with the Auditor's Office, the Mayor's Office, the City Solicitor, and The HR director of the police department settled both union contracts in the past couple of weeks. This budget presented tonight does not reflect those increases. They're still calculating the numbers. With that being said, I'm available for questions. President Conn. Yeah, one thing that's an issue for me with this budget is that we're allocating $182,000 for police overtime. we spent 410 and 322 in the last two years i didn't track it back beyond that but um we should i think be budgeting a more realistic number for police overtime again we'll be running out of this overtime budget by january february and that that concerns me

▶ 58:45 Chief, your staffing level's 46 SWAN police officers, is that what you have right now? I wish, I wish. As far as the overtime, we do have a grant and it does supplement through 911 some additional funds for overtime. Also, there is another 911 grant, the EMD grant, training grant, which basically provides each officer 16 hours, including supervisors of annual training. Staffing levels, we have 28 patrolmen today, eight sergeants, four lieutenants, myself, and three part-timers. The three part-timers are administrative, one for the budget, and thank you for the support for the administrative assistant for me. Everybody on this board, as well as the mayor's office, the auditor. And recently we hired a parking warden, a civilian parking warden, Ernie Corrales.

▶ 59:35 The senior members of the board remember his dad, George was a policeman for many years in Melrose. That's our staff. And how many officers do you have who are out on military leave at the present time, Chief? We have one officer in Germany. And do you have anybody out on Chapter 41, 111F right now? We have a number of officers, approximately five that are on a limited basis, annually with family challenges and so forth with family members. They have a limited family leave act declaration. And do you expect to have any or all of those offices back during this budget year? Are we talking about the family leave? Yes. It's intermittent, so they may take a day here and there to take somebody to a physician's office or something.

▶ 1:00:29 They really don't impact us substantially. What our biggest liability right now is the military. These guys are pulled quite a bit for different deployments. We don't know, and in one week's notice we may get a notice that somebody's getting shipped out for some training or deployment. And we may not see that officer for six months. Do you anticipate any attrition in the department this year, Chief? I do not. We did have a transfer in the past, within the past 30 days, and we're looking at an interview right now to take a lateral in. We have an officer graduating the academy in the next couple of weeks. We have two officers going to the academy July 18th to Boylston, Mass. And what impact do you think that will have on your overtime expenditures?

▶ 1:01:15 Monica C. Medeiros: When all pieces of the puzzle are in there, that's going to be a substantial reduction, and also will give us additional deployment. That's all I have for now, Mr. Chairman. Very good. in materials so how many staff do we have as vacancies right now today if you go by ordinance it would look astronomical right now what we've had for the current trend right now we're down three people down three people and the officers that are going to the police academy is that going to occur within this current fiscal year or next it'll be after July 1 after July 1 thank you. Alderman Wright. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. Good evening, Chief. With regards to 111F, obviously the negative is we have officers out of an injured, as a result of a line of duty injury,

▶ 1:02:09 Francis X. Wright Jr.: but that statute also provides for the city to have the opportunity to recover any costs related thereto should that injury be the result of negligence or an intentional act suffered while on the job and responding to whether it's a car accident or on a property and they slip and fall due to a negligently maintained portion of the property do you know has any of that money been recovered over the past year we had opportunities cabinet we have nobody that's been injured in that capacity okay so they've all been injured we've had without disclosing anything yeah I'm concerned about HIPAA here yeah some of these are off the job injuries we have had a handful of minor incidents with officers okay and with

▶ 1:03:00 Francis X. Wright Jr.: regards to the officers transferred yes how many years on the job three three do we have any provision to recover the cost of the Academy from these officers there is language in the city solicitors office that I had presented with him it's not so it's being considered it's certainly being reviewed okay so because I think it's important that if we're gonna put someone through the Academy and carry them for a number of months while they're trained that we should be able to recover either that amount in full or prorated over a period of years it's not unusual nowadays for some municipalities to even have the recruits pair their own way through the academy i've seen that so it's just not fair to the city to put

▶ 1:03:47 Peter D. Mortimer: someone through the academy only to have them leave for what they see as a better opportunity somewhere else so but i appreciate you taking the lead i i see your point and i agree with your point right now i appreciate you taking the lead thank you chief thank you mr chairman very good thank you very much mr chairman i would appreciate a little bit of leeway my comments maybe a little a little bit, but I won't speak much tonight. Chief, I want to thank you very much for your department. One of the high points of Melrose is that people can feel very safe. If my wife, while I'm at this meeting tonight till 10.30 or quarter of 11, needs to go out to Shaw's to get milk at 10, I feel comfortable that she's not going to get assaulted or robbed or not even harassed by any wise guys who might be out there.

▶ 1:04:34 Peter D. Mortimer: It's a good department. I saw the letter you sent us all last week about the situation that was very handled well, kind of a landlord situation, and I see most of the guys in your department are very, very respectful, but they do the job, I don't want to name anybody, so I don't leave anybody out, but I see a lot of the guys doing good jobs. It's a great department and it's gotten even better under your stewardship. The comment I'd like to make that's a little bit afield is, I started paying attention to Murrow's government in about 1990. And I know you were on the job then. Yes. Just coming on. And I think at that time, the federal government gave us 14 police officers, maybe 15, directly paid for all their expenses were paid.

▶ 1:05:27 Peter D. Mortimer: Is that roughly accurate, do you recall, when you were a patrolman? I don't know about 15, I know there's been a number of officers that have been hired through the burn grant, yes. Yeah, and they paid for a great deal. And reflective of the comments that President Kahn made earlier about the state government creating a morass of regulations that make us harder to regulate ourselves. It goes even further with the state government and most of the federal government, they pay for zero police officers today. Is that correct? There are grants out there. I apply for it every year and I've been denied every year because Melrose is very, I would say very efficient the way we run our police department and the city government.

▶ 1:06:12 Peter D. Mortimer: And that's a shame because somebody like you as a chief who's had a lot of training and a lot of experience through the years, you get penalized for being efficient, for having a good department. Yeah, I understand, it's all of it. This is true what I'm about to say for the school committee and for the schools and everything else. But whereas the federal government used to give us a dozen approximately police officers and now they pay for zero, that leaves the city of Melrose down here at the bottom fighting for the scraps. And I pay a boatload of money to the federal government in taxes and Most of the people in Melrose pay a boatload of money to the federal government in taxes. I heard a senator from Texas, a federal senator from Texas the other day said,

▶ 1:07:04 Peter D. Mortimer: he didn't think that the federal government should pay for body armor for police officers. And somebody said, what, that's crazy. And he said, well no, I don't think that police officers should not have body armor, I just think the local government should pay for it. And I was just aghast because they keep taking more and more from us and leaving us to try to create more efficiencies, which this administration and your department in particular and the school department have done while we're down here fighting for the scraps. But it's a shame because the state government, as President Kahn mentioned, and the federal government keep taking more and more and giving back less and less. And I'll stop right there before I go into a little bit of demagoguery or a diatribe.

▶ 1:07:50 And also because I see that our city auditor, Patrick DellaRusso, would like to have the floor and perhaps comment on this matter further, so I'll yield the floor at this time. Mr. DellaRusso, please. Chair, thank you. Just the only comment I wanted to make was, and you're correct about the state, we lost the funding for the Quinn bill, which went a long way here. it was commitment made by the commonwealth to fund a certain portion for education incentive and they stripped that away and we don't get a dime now and we we've cost us hundreds of thousands of dollars over these past years and at least on a personal basis i think it's um very distressing that that did happen that's all very good alderman mcintyre thank you and we are um picking up the

▶ 1:08:38 Mary Beth McAteer-Margolis: the cost of the quinn bill correct some communities i believe have elected or have negotiated not to do that it's a modified quinn bill anybody that was hired before july 1 2010 is eligible anybody after right 2000 july 2 july 1 2010 is ineligible unless they're a transfer that is currently receiving the quinn bill unfortunately that's why we tend to see officers look to greener pastures So in terms of your new contractual agreement, which I know is still maybe hasn't been completely finalized, is there any provision or any language in that that will be providing more officers so that your OT or are you making any changes that will affect like your overtime line at all contractually? Actually, with that settlement, the overtime would go up modulantly.

▶ 1:09:36 Mary Beth McAteer-Margolis: the overtime will go up yes because every time somebody gets a raise the same dollar doesn't buy the same man hours okay so but and you're not it's not like contractually you're not being required to add any more officers and and you said you were down three people currently vacancies so do you have a plan for fulfilling those positions we have two officers going the Academy in in july we are we're looking for a transfer now you know if that doesn't work out we'll be looking to uh put an officer in the next academy that's a big big problem for a municipal excuse me municipal police right now academies are so few and far between we may not get a guy into the academy did i read that you had a couple bumped from the last academy they were supposed to start

▶ 1:10:25 Mary Beth McAteer-Margolis: today and they got they got bumped so we're fortunate uh lieutenant tim i give him credit he had a backup plan we were able to sneak two officers into boylston it's a long ride for him every day, but in six months, they'll be out. Okay. Great. And I know from my work on the Substance Abuse Prevention Coalition that that grant is, I believe, going to be in its last year, next year. And there's been some discussion about the reporting so that we can be sure we're accurately reporting any incidences or overdoses. And is that something that you have been working with the health department on in terms of? i work with jen kelly i share our information i will say that i went to a meeting last week with

▶ 1:11:09 Mary Beth McAteer-Margolis: the middlesex district attorney and the city of melrose has had one unfortunately one fatal overdose in the past two years right i can't say that about our neighboring communities right and are our officers carrying narcon uh in short order they'll be trained they will be uh on or about july one um when the details are worked out they will be it'll be in all our police vehicles and And our EMTs on the ambulance, on the fire department, are all carrying it. They've had it for a number of years. Right. I think it will be a big advantage to our community if that's possible, and I'm happy to hear that that was able to be negotiated or decided for the benefit of everyone. Thank you. Thank you very much.

▶ 1:11:52 Monica C. Medeiros: Thank you. Alderman Medeiros. Thank you. so do we have any kind of estimate for the the time frame that the the changes from the new contract that was negotiated will will be ready and will we be able to and it's probably more question from Stella so we'll be able to work that into this year's budget yes yes okay probably not from this budget but from contract stabilization or that's correct we have a portion we will Through the chair, fund through the contract stabilization fund. And the other portion will raise an appropriated or use other available funds. That's correct. And do you expect that to occur before we take our final vote on the budget? Or after? After. After. And then the line for radio systems, if I recall,

▶ 1:12:49 it's one of the things that the federal government I think has required of us is we change over our radios and was uh the narrow banning yes we have we have completed that we have completed that and is that what's included in this line item here that's our annual service contract with our vendor which is motorola and they sub it out to a company out of waltham that just moved to woven cybercom so you do think we'll use this full line well if something if we have a a malfunction on one of the mobile units in a police vehicle, it's covered under this contract. Whether it's a new one or an older one, yes, it's covered under the contract. Thank you. Thank you, ma'am. Very good. Any further discussion?

▶ 1:13:31 John N. Tramontozzi: Seeing none, there is a motion on the floor to move the bottom line on that motion. All in favor? Aye. Opposed? Seeing none. Thank you, Chief, we have order number 2014-143. reauthorization of the revolving account number 2665 police false alarms for fiscal year 2015. motion to recommend that reauthorization there's a motion to recommend by alderman mortimer second and by alderman Boisselle on discussion everybody's okay with that very good seeing none on the vote all in favor any opponents good all right that would be uh recommended to the full board thank Thank you. Thank you, Jim. The next department is number 161, City Clerk. In the amount of $250,293.55. Good evening, Ms. O'Shea. Motion to recommend that bottom line, Mr. Chairman.

▶ 1:14:27 John N. Tramontozzi: Second. We have a motion to recommend the bottom line by Alderman Mortimer, seconded by Alderman Boisselle on discussion. Good evening, Ms. O'Shea. Welch, outside salaries and wages, the budget, just level funding. Okay, any discussion? Seeing none, are we ready for the vote all in favor of the vote to move the bottom line? Aye. Aye. I'm sorry. Let's try it again. Aye. We have a motion on the floor to move the bottom line of $250,293.55. On the motion, all in favor? Aye. Any opposed, seeing none, thank you. And as some information, I just wanted to let you know that the electronic system is going live August 1st. And we'll be having training on that. So that's, it was supposed to be in January and then the state delayed it.

▶ 1:15:20 John N. Tramontozzi: Okay. Because they had to do further testing and the software. That's going to happen August 1st. Right. All right, thank you. The next department up is number 162, the election registrar. And the budget in the amount of $52,816.12. Motion to recommend that bottom line, Mr. Chairman. Second. Second. Thank you, we have a motion to recommend the bottom line by Alderman Mortimer, seconded by Alderman McAteer-Margolis. Hi, good evening. Good evening. How are you? Good, how are you? All right. Any discussion? President Karn. Yeah, this is not a budget related question. When are the terms of the current registrar's set to expire, did you know? I think they're scattered I think it's this year is um they're up to date yeah could you provide

▶ 1:16:13 Mary Beth McAteer-Margolis: to provide me with the termination date of each term of each registrar please yes thank you any further discussion oh do you want to tell us about this substantial cut in your bottom line oh because we didn't have five elections this year yeah we hope we hope so yes we're only expected the two so we're hoping no specials and are there any other special projects that you're undertaking in your department we are looking into new machines the machines are 20 years old their state has just approved in the last couple of months the new machines so they're gonna still still work on our machines but they the pots they'll no longer be able to get pots for them so we actually have to think about this

▶ 1:17:07 Robert A. Boisselle: within the next year or two about all new voting machines for and is that something that you would anticipate including in your budget going forward or we're hoping for yeah next year okay before the presidential we'd like to get all new machines in yeah it would be a capital capital improvement project because they run about 10,000 each and they have them so we have 14 precincts yeah you mention that two machines were having problems and so far are they all the same type throughout the network throughout the state no throughout the The mail rolls. Yes, we all have to vote, yes. So if two of them are failing and the others are on the edge, what are we looking for in a complete new purchase of all machines?

▶ 1:18:03 Robert A. Boisselle: What would the cost be? Yes. Welch, I'm going to find out this week. I'm going to a conference and we're going to find out the exact amount. Between 8,000 and 10,000, there's two different companies out there that are now producing, which the state has approved. The state had to approve them, they had to test them. So we're going to find out the price, and then there's software costs. So I'm thinking between $140,000 and $200,000. Now is that, would a technology change now? I mean, when you see it on CNN and so forth, there are a variety of machines that are out there. So the technology has changed instead of the. It'll be very, very up to date on the technology. Yes. Because these machines have been around, I mean, we've had them 20 years.

▶ 1:18:46 Yeah. And they're great machines. Right, they're very hardy. We haven't had a problem with them at all, but it's time to move on. So is the vendor who's repairing it, is he or she recommending a complete turnover? Yes. Oh, they are, okay. Statewide, yeah. They really want the entire state to- Changeover. Because they're not going to have the pots for them. They're just not going to, they'll service them as long as they can, but they're not going to have, they're not going to be able to get the pots. Okay, thank you. Thank you for coming. Thank you very much. Very good, Alderman Wright. Just very briefly, thank you for joining us, Linda Lee. Professional services line, I see we're cutting that, is that for maintenance of the machines or?

▶ 1:19:24 Francis X. Wright Jr.: Which one? Professional services, I'm sorry, it's a line. Professional services is for, no, that's for extra help during election time. Okay, so that's for poll workers and all that? No, poll workers are out of part time salary and wages. This is for office help. Office help, okay. And do you have someone, do you have a vendor or somebody who services the machines? Yes. Do you have somebody on site on election day, or how does that work? Yes. You do, okay. Very good. Yes, we have a breakdown, I mean they're available to me that night, 10 o'clock at night, I've been calling them. Sure, okay. Wonderful. Great, thank you very much. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. Any further discussion? Seeing none, nope, seeing none.

▶ 1:20:03 John N. Tramontozzi: So there is a motion to move the bottom line on the floor, on the motion, all in favor? Aye. Opposed? That will be recommended. Thank you, Linda Lee, thank you. recommended for the full board the next apartment is 175 the Planning Board and that budget in the amount of one hundred and fifty eight thousand eight hundred and three dollars and sixty one cents motion to move the bottom line second we have a motion by Alderman boys out to move the bottom line seconded by Alderman McAteer my goal is on discussion good evening good evening so this is the planning board but it budget which is actually the budget for the entire department it it's funds for positions the my position a full-time assistant

▶ 1:20:49 Denise Gaffey: planning director position a GIS technician and accounting account manager position and then also the energy efficiency manager it's essentially it's essentially level funded from last year it looks like the it reflects an increase of about 10% but it's actually closer to 2% because What we did was we moved the portion of the energy efficiencies manager's salary from energy commission into the planning department budget. That was just a managerial decision since that position works out of the planning office. It made more sense to include it in the planning department budget. So actually, one, you factor that and the increase is about 2.5%, which really just reflects salary adjustments annual salary adjustments and as you all know

▶ 1:21:42 Denise Gaffey: as I say it every year we we try and we because we have an opportunity to do so we we try very hard to seek out grant funding and other funding sources to help defray costs to the general fund through our department and so that is again the case this year so the budget in front of you represents about 60% of the cost of the department and we were using other sources like grant funding and community development funds to make up the difference aside from that the salary which is most most of the budget there is we are carrying again this year the $10,000 for the Messina grant program and we in the planning office are primarily just providing the financial support for that the bookkeeping if you

▶ 1:22:28 Denise Gaffey: well to process the the grant applications and I'm aware that the chair of the Bessina program is here tonight if you want to if you want to have any questions about that should be happy to speak about it and I'll take any questions that you know good president Conn has yeah Mr. Dillard Russo I would like a break out of the full cost of the salary including the grant funded portions please and why do we have the Messina arts fund and planning board wouldn't it be more appropriate for the school department to administer those funds or somebody else it's really um i don't really know the decision or the reason why it was applied to the planning office i mean we just we process the warrants we do a lot of that type of um

▶ 1:23:15 invoice transaction with all the projects that we have so it's it's a function that we're we're comfortable with you weren't busy enough and we weren't busy and and the other thing and this is just going to sound like me being irascible again but i would like these these expenditures not to be called grants and we have another another expenditure of city funds that we call grants as well and they're not grants they're allocations of city general fund tax dollars and the reason i'm concerned about it is because over the last year or so So, this program and another program, I've had five, six, ten people who are very well informed who actually believed that these were grants from other sources.

▶ 1:24:07 And I don't really think it's appropriate for us to be acting as if expenditures of city funds are grants from the Rockefeller Foundation or something. It's not correct to call them grants. I mean, no disrespect to this program or the other program, but let's call a duck a duck. These are not grants. These are city expenditure of city funds, so I respectfully request that that nomenclature be changed. That's all I have. All right, thank you. Alderman Byrd and then Alderman Medeiros. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. Actually, I did have a question for the Chair of the Messina Grants Committee, if Ms. Cucora could come forward, and it's just a brief question, so I appreciate you coming down tonight. My recollection from a couple of years ago,

▶ 1:25:13 Jaclyn L. Bird: when Mayor Dolan first introduced both the Messina grants and the innovation grants, was that the concept was for seed money to jump start programs, And then those programs would eventually, I think the hope was, turn into their own nonprofit organization, which in the case of the innovation grants has happened. That's kind of dovetailed with the education foundation becoming its own 501c3 and so forth. And I think they indicated when they came before us that they've actually raised enough money to match the city's grants. And I was just curious with the Messina grants, is that something that's planned in the works Or is that something that has been talked about from the administration side or is it

▶ 1:25:59 simply an allocation? No. When I was given the task of creating this fund, I understood that this would be money similar to the money that comes from the state through the cultural council grants, which Which is also, to answer your question, Alderman Kahn, it is also tax money, but it is considered grant money as it passes through the organization to the individual recipients. I was given the task to create this organization that would assist arts organizations, individual artists uh throughout the city and that is what we are doing many of the organizations are established like the melrose symphony we just gave them a small grant to support the rental of music which is something that's very expensive in the process

▶ 1:27:05 We also have supported individual artists. We are supporting the wind sculpture that is going to appear in Bowdoin Park and benefit the whole city. We were given the opportunity to write our own guidelines for this program, of course with the concurrence of City Hall and the mayor and various people in charge of things around here. here and we decided that unlike the cultural council guidelines which we kind of modeled our approach on we wanted to provide the the most opportunity the most bang for the buck for the city in general in other words we don't want to fund the those programs at the library that are often funded by by the Cultural Council, and I know about the Cultural Council because I served on it

▶ 1:28:05 for about, I don't know, a millennium, but those, you know, those classes of 15 people at the library were not what we were looking for, we were looking for the bigger picture. We provided some money for the Spring Flame, which made us very happy, because that was something that affects so many people in the city. the wind sculpture, helping Polymnia celebrate their 60th Jubilee this year. So we're not in a situation where we are interested in self-funding. We have a plan and a hope to be able to raise some money, and we've been told legally we can have a separate fund of monies that come from our own fundraising efforts because i believe that that we you know we take money from the city but if we can possibly stage an event that would bring in some more money that would

▶ 1:29:08 just be terrific but you know these things take a lot of time and effort on the part of volunteers and and the volunteers in our group are um dedicated incredibly busy people in the mostly in the arts world doing other things so that's that's our picture great no i appreciate the clarification um and maybe i am not remembering it correctly on the seed money i don't know if mr delivery so you remember that or if it was something that was simply this is an allocation So that, I appreciate the background and the history. It's an allocation. I assume it's an allocation. I'm sorry. It's an allocation that the mayor had made. He made it again this year, requesting the same allocation this year. That's, no, I appreciate the clarification.

▶ 1:29:57 And could you talk a little bit about, if you could forward us the information that the committee has come up with on kind of the mission statement and all of that, that would be fantastic. Just because I have not had a chance to see that, if you have it handy. I have copies for everybody. I should have known that, and the other question I had was what is the demand like as far as the application process goes, and how many of these applications are you able to fund with the current allocation, like a percentage? With my experience on the Cultural Council, I really wanted to make it as simple as possible for people to fill out the grants. We ask, I think it's six questions, who is it benefiting?

▶ 1:30:41 We always want to see some sort of additional funding. We don't want to be the sole support of an organization, but in some cases, that has to be. Everything gets discussed and vetted. We turned down one grant this year that did not fit our guidelines, and we spent $9,990, so we gave you 10 back to spend our money by the end of the fiscal year. granting is finished and we we did 11 we gave out 11 awards 11 I don't know what I can call them if I can't call them grants but 11 allocations I'll have to change a lot of the wording in here we're going to get rid of the word grant but and as I said a very varied group of activities arts music and I already have have I think three applications for our as yet unfunded next year's process so thank you very

▶ 1:31:49 Monica C. Medeiros: much for the background on that thank you Mr Chairman thank you I just wanted to just speak a little bit about this budget as a whole I travel to many communities and have the opportunity to with the leaders of many different cities and towns and one thing I just see so lacking in other communities that don't have a city planner or that don't have a planning department that's organized and they're really trying to struggling with with vacant space trying to handle development and not really having any control over their own community and the vision and where it's going and i just i wanted to let you know i appreciate very much the leadership of miss gaffey and the importance of this department i wouldn't quite say it's exactly self-sustaining

▶ 1:32:42 Monica C. Medeiros: but all but maybe that's a goal going forward but you know there's there's more here we spend money on planning and development but it also brings in new growth to our community which does in of course increase the tax base uh and in just some of you know the grants that we have received from the state and federal government and economic you know increases our economic development and and i just appreciate it i think it's a worthwhile expenditure and i just want to say thanks okay very good i'll be back to my goals um i i want to echo that as well and um thank miss gaffey and all of her staff i i wonder if when you provide the full cost of the salaries that it takes to run those departments if you might be able to just give us a synopsis over the last

▶ 1:33:33 Mary Beth McAteer-Margolis: like say five years of how much money you've brought into this city and how much we haven't had to spend because of the staff and the resources that you've been able to access and I would just venture to guess it's probably with the schools well in excess of a hundred million dollars so it's it's money well spent in this community and I mean I've been active recently with the Stoneham Weiss farm and when you see what's going on up there and the you know they're really not very focused and in their planning they haven't had the leadership that we've had I think it really just highlights you know what we what we're very very fortunate to have which is you and your staff thank you and also I just

▶ 1:34:20 Mary Beth McAteer-Margolis: just want to say as far as the Messina grant slash allocation I think Nancy you can still call them grants because you're giving them out for us maybe we should call those allocations and I I don't remember really and I'm not sure when we had the discussions if they were you know private public or whatever that it was ever going to be seed money I think $10,000 is a small drop in the bucket for the city to commit to art to public art which is of course becoming more and more of a thing nationally and certainly in the in the New England in the Boston area I think that we should in fact fund at least $10,000 if not more than that for for these types of projects that are going to increase our cultural experience for as many people as possible and I think it's one of the

▶ 1:35:19 Mary Beth McAteer-Margolis: things that really does make Melrose fairly unique and also the a lot of the organizations that you're giving to are already fundraising on behalf of themselves they are so it's sort of like you'd be taking away dollars from maybe their projects or hitting the same people over and over again I will tell you that in in my travels through the art entrepreneurial world we are envy that that Melrose cares enough about the arts in a public way is astonishing to people in many other communities and I mean we have the community coalition which is the like a kind of a you know incubator for and we've had a couple of different arts organizations join that and and use that vehicle to fundraise so as they say I think anytime we can find a little extra money to put towards the

▶ 1:36:20 John N. Tramontozzi: public enjoyment and cultural experience and maybe with the help of the planning department since it's in their department they can even find you more Thank you, Mr. Chairman. Very good. Seeing no further discussion. And thank you to your committee as well. Thank you. Seeing no further discussion, there is a motion to move the bottom line on the floor. On the motion, all in favor? Aye. Any opposed? Seeing none, that will be recommended to the full board. Thank you. The next department would be Department 171, the Conservation Department, in the amount of $20,825. Motion to move the bottom line. There's a motion to move the bottom line by Alderman McAteer-Margolis, seconded by Alderman Boisselle.

▶ 1:37:06 On discussion, good evening, Ms. Murphy, how are you? Good evening. Good. Would you like me to give a brief summary? I'm Susan Murphy, I am the Chair of the Conservation Commission. As I think most of you know, but just to review, we have two major roles. We are a regulatory body. We implement the State Wetlands Protection and River Protections Act and corresponding city wetlands protection ordinance and we also are the custodians of the city various conservation lands our budget is level funded from last year we have two major components of it one is a salary line item which pays for our very part-time conservation agent Kathy Morgan that's a position that was created several years ago the support of the this board it's

▶ 1:37:55 been a really great advantage for us in terms of having a public presence presence in City Hall it's made it a lot easier for the our interaction with the public and I think it's also made it a lot easier for us to coordinate with other city departments we do we have a lot of overlapping interests with planning and parks and DPW the city engineer and it's really helped with our coordination so that's 9 500 of our budget the other big line item is our conservation line item that is primarily spent on doing treatments for nuisance vegetation in Our ponds, there are three ponds that we have the primary management roles on. El Pond, Swain's Pond, and Towner's Pond. So we do treatments. It varies from year to year what treatments we're doing.

▶ 1:38:42 This year we're treating El Pond for algae and cyanobacteria and water chestnut and Towner's Pond for rooted vegetation. And then we also have some smaller line items. We have a printing line item that we use to print our trail maps, which unfortunately I don't have enough for everybody because we gave them all away at Sustainable Melrose. I think we'll send one out when we do our next printing. We have an advertising budget that we use. We occasionally have to, for permitting purposes, place ads. So that's what that advertising is for, and then a dues and membership where members of the Mass Association of Conservation Commissions, which is a great resource, allows us access to state, you know, to real expert advice and advice from other communities and some

▶ 1:39:24 John N. Tramontozzi: educational money in there as well. But as I said, it's level funded, and I'd be happy to answer any questions anyone has. Any discussion? Seeing none, we do have a motion. Yes, we have a motion on the floor to move that bottom line. On the motion, all in favor? Aye. Any opposed? This will, your budget will be recommended to the full board. Thank you, Ms. Murphy. Thank you very much. Thank you. Nice presentation, thank you. The next department is number 399. This is the Northeast Metropolitan Regional Vocational School District. And that budget in the amount of $1,029,947 even. Mr. Chairman, my brother is a teacher at the voc. I'm going to need to recuse myself for this portion of the discussion.

▶ 1:40:16 All right, very good. See you shortly. We'll see you shortly then. Alderman Mortimer, you're free to go. It could be a while, Peter. good evening gentlemen how about that we know we know you but maybe the members of the public may not know you so if you can just identify yourself for for the public benefit that's why I asked you to identify yourself because people go to that ballot box and they you know want to see who they're checking the name off right is mr ted nickley our president superintendent of schools mr superintendent far right is mr is dr james picone who is our acting business manager doctor good evening present time welcome and to my left is pat del russo thank you just a little bit of overviews for those a who are unelected for the

▶ 1:41:15 first time having served in this board i know what it's like the first time to be elected you don't know what's going to happen or anything else but i'd just like to give you an overview of the vocational school at the present time we have an enrollment of 1261 students of these 1261 students students, 323 are classified as somewhat in need of special education, and 636 students would be classified as low-income students, their parents being not meeting the rules of the economics of income. The total number of students at Melrose, this is freshmen, sophomores, juniors, and seniors, seventy-three forty of which in some way needing some type of special needs now has graduated last Friday evening 21 students of which 100% of these 21

▶ 1:42:24 passed the MCAS 12 students will go on to a two-year school two students are going on to a four-year school one student is in the Navy four students who will be in the workforce and two students are still out there looking for employment as far as the students are concerned we have an award we give an award to the students for instance on the football team they won the Commonwealth Conference and made it to the tournament didn't do that well in the tournament but made it as long as well as the ice hockey team and the girls softball team as well one male at our school was selected as vocational student of the year in massachusetts which it takes in a large number of vocational schools and more than 30 students were recipients

▶ 1:43:24 of the abigail adams scholarship it shows that we're making a lot of progress up there as far as new programs we are dealing with the stem program if you listen to president melrose school committee know they're involved with the stem program which is science technology math and engineering the emphasis will be on robotics marketing advanced manufacturing and computers these are the things of the future we're also going to be interested in going green looking for jobs in the area of ecology in the green aspect of as far as the we also have a co-op plan co-op plan is very important we restored a co-op plan we had to cut it because of budget limitations seniors are eligible they're allowed to go to

▶ 1:44:26 work go out to work leave school go to work do hands-on in their field and at the present time I would say there are 55 students in the program 47 which will be getting a job as a result of the program this coming year as far as our building our building if anyone has been up at to see our building you know that it is an older building it was built in 1968 and it's a need of some type of restoration if we have to do a feasibility study which we've got to get all 12 communities to go along with it and that feasibility study will tell us whether we need a new building or we can build an annex to the building the new building would give us 70 percent reimbursement it's a 70 30 deal which hopefully would be

▶ 1:45:30 good for us if we go to the annex situation it's predicated on the fact that the building has to be stable and lasting for 50 years before they'll approve it in this category So that's the two things we're dealing with right now. And January 9, 2013, we had a fire. I don't know if you people are aware, but we had a fire up there. The fire cost us over a million dollars. We were able to salvage a lot of things, able to move kids around. No one lost time. No one lost their trade expertise or anything else. So we were able to cover it. And that's basically a rundown. What I'm going to do is ask Mr. Nickley and Dr. Pocone to answer any questions you may have about the budget. If you dealt with the Pocone family, you must have met his son, who is the business manager for Melrose Public Schools.

▶ 1:46:37 Okay. So with that, I will field questions. President Kahn. President Kahn. I know the question. I did have the opportunity with to go up and visit with the superintendent earlier this fall, this spring, and I appreciated the opportunity. And I'm going to give my disclaimer that I always give as I start this discussion. In no way does anything that I say about the budgeting This will detract from the great job that you folks do and the great service that you provide. And I'm going to try to, Mr. Houten, poor Mr. Houten has been listening to me since 1990. So I'm going to give you the abridged version of the speech tonight, Mr. Houten. This is the problem with this budget. This budget does not allocate the cost to the communities

▶ 1:47:44 based on a per pupil division of services. It's a complicated formula developed by the state pursuant to which they take into consideration things like the median income of the community, the assessed value of the community's real estate, and things of that nature. So how does that affect us? What happens here in Melrose is we end up paying a far, far greater per pupil cost than other communities do. I figured out, and my math could be wrong, and I stand ready, willing, and able to be corrected, but I figured that paying $1,029,947 to educate 73 students translates into in in excess of $17,000 per student that we're paying to educate our Melrose students at the vocational school. That's a problem for me when I look at the per pupil cost that other communities are paying.

▶ 1:48:53 I don't believe it's right. It has no reflection on any of the people who are sitting here at this table, but I don't think Melrose should be required by the state to subsidize and buy down the contribution of other communities, and how does that affect us on the ground? Welch, I look at our budget and I see that two years ago we were paying $771,797. We went up 10% last year, we went up 13% this year, We've gone up 23% in our assessment for this school over two years. That's not going to be sustainable for Melrose if this continues. And I'm not going to, you don't have to worry, I'm not going to give you the 10 year or 15 year history. But in 2005, our assessment was $159,000 for in excess of 50 students, so this budget has just

▶ 1:49:55 through the roof I fear that in another 10 years we'll be paying three or four million dollars I have a real problem with the budget I have a real problem with the formula it's a problem that I've been spouting about for years nobody seems to care or listen but it is an unfair formula it's not right someday somebody's going to have to do something about this because Melrose can't sustained 23% increases over two years. I told you I'd give you the short version this year. Welch said. Very good. I think that's on a lot of members of this board's mind. Alderman Wright. Just very briefly, thank you, gentlemen, for joining us. You had a million-dollar loss on a fire. Did you carry property insurance?

▶ 1:50:44 Robert A. Boisselle: Yes. Okay. And how much of that were you able to recover? We covered some of that. We covered lots. Okay. Very good. And so that doesn't necessarily relieve the fact that you probably lost use of space, but at least you recovered the financial loss. Great. Thank you very much. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. Very good. Any further discussion? Oh, Alderman Boisselle. In your presentation here, you have a lot of negative numbers that are floating around and so forth, but there's one section that's not negative. If you have reserved for the negotiations on page five, reserved for, is this contract negotiations? Yes. With the staff? All the contracts for professional and support staff are up this year, June 30th.

▶ 1:51:29 Robert A. Boisselle: So we're in the negotiations right now, every five minutes, for 211 people. Okay. So on page 8, you have the NEASC accreditation. In fiscal 13, you spent $43,000, $14,000, $5,000, and $15,000, nothing. Is this, what is this accreditation for? Every 10 years, every, every school in Massachusetts gets re-accredited by the New England Association of Schools and Colleges, and since we already had our accreditation, there's no need to We'll do that in seven years. Okay. Very good. I noticed in your, you, you talked about engineering and math as your priority. But in your program, you have engineering down about 10 to 15%. Is there a reason for that? Or, would you have the same, you seem to have the same staff, but you have a decrease in the

▶ 1:52:30 But you have a decrease in the amount that you're asking for, you have a new teacher coming in? No, we actually just shuffled things around. We had one program that was getting a steady reduction in students that were enrolling in it. And we try to watch the labor force, we try to watch labor trends, and we try to watch what students are choosing for their career tech areas. So we had this one area that it was down to three or four students choosing in a year. But we began reducing that without laying anyone off, retraining people, and shifting people over to begin this new engineering academy. And with the engineering, you mentioned in the robotics situation, or new classes that you're starting and so forth.

▶ 1:53:16 Are you finding the number of students going into the robotics? It's fantastic. We just began it. And when you start something new, the correct way to do it is do it slowly, like everybody knows. You just jump in, that's when you fail. So we introduced it to high level 11th graders. We had 30 students within a week come in with their parents. We sat down with them, explained to them how the program's going to work, and they signed up for it right away. And the way the program's going to work is, in Melrose High School, I know they're addressing STEM. But they address it in a slightly different way. As the vocational school, I always want to find a niche. Something that the high schools and the other districts can't do or won't do.

▶ 1:54:03 So we still can sustain our kind of identity. So what we're going to do is the academy kids will go into drafting and design. Say they want to build a pen. They'll design it, they'll think tank it, they'll draw it in a 3D with Inventor or Solid Works. Then they'll take that out, they put it into a rapid prototyping machine, it'll make it out of plastic. A perfect pot, it'll come apart and everything, accurate to within, I think, ten thousandths of an inch. Then that'll go over to the robotics programming lab, and they'll take a flash drive, and they'll do a program to actually make that with a CNC machine. Then they'll make one out of wood, they'll make one out of plastic, and then the flash drive will go over the metal fabrication.

▶ 1:54:52 In metal fabrication, they'll plug that flash drive into a plasma cam cutter. It'll cut the parts out with a plasma cutter. Now we just got a brand new robotic arm, the first one in the state in any vocational school. And we bought that through Perkins Grant money. And I just sent four gentlemen to Ohio, two one week and two another to get trained. That'll weld the part up. Then that part goes to auto body and collision, where we're making a section there for painting parts. They'll paint the parts, then we're going to have them get together, and in teams, they have to take these things, package them, put the little peanuts in it and everything, pack them up, and find the cheapest way to ship it to Shawsheen Valley Tech.

▶ 1:55:37 I began a collaborative with Charlie Lyons at Shawsheen, because he doesn't have the robotic arm, he doesn't have the CNC machines, but he has a tremendous machine shop. So I said, why should we buy everything? If you have half of it, and I can buy half of it, and then we can collaborate. So my parts will get mailed to Shawsheen, his parts will get mailed to Northeast, and they have to interlock, they have to work together. Because this is a global economy, and these students, they have to learn to be able to build something that works in Korea, works in Canada. Nothing's built in one factory anymore. You buy a car that's coming from probably 30 different manufacturing areas and then just assemble.

▶ 1:56:21 Mary Beth McAteer-Margolis: So that's what we're trying to do. We're trying to create that manufacturing engineering end of it, rather than at Merrill's High they might be sending a kid to be a physicist, to send a kid to be a chemistry major. That's not what we're doing. We're doing it in the advanced manufacturing engineering end, and that'll be our niche. Very good. Very informative. Thank you very much for coming. Thank you. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. very good i'll be back to my goals oh um thank you and um thank you for you providing some great programming this year i've noticed that you've really kind of increased your funding for student directed activities and and those kinds of things that you're talking about

▶ 1:57:04 Mary Beth McAteer-Margolis: i think are are really well they soften the blow a little put it that way and it is it is again no reflection on all the good work that you're doing for those kids and all the work that Mr. Hooten is doing to represent us. But, you know, when we see like an almost 18% increase in the cost of our assessment, it is somewhat overwhelming. I know in the past some of your predecessors have been advocating up at the State House for a re-examination of that. Have you had had any success with that? Welch, we thought we were going in a very good direction about a year and a half ago. There was a district down in Dover, in New Bedford area, and they actually brought it to Superior Court to try to bring it back to the original district agreement.

▶ 1:57:59 Back in 1968, when we all signed this agreement, it was by enrollment. And in 1993, with education reform, that's when it changed to a wealth-oriented formula. But it went to Superior Court and it was upheld in the New Bedford Superior Court to keep ed reform the way it is. But Donald Wong, I know, has gone to legislatures. He's tried to do a lot with some of his constituents to try to at least regulate it a little bit. And that seems to be the issue. And that's the issue that I have to overcome when I come to towns more than cities. The cities get more of a break, more aid. You know, just for an example, if we look at Melrose and Stoneham. Melrose had 74, Stoneham had 73. Their assessment is different by 1,029,000 to 1,099,000, and it's to do with the aid.

▶ 1:58:55 It's not so much that you folks are paying more, it's not that you're getting subsidized. If you look at Malden, Malden gets $9,363 per student in aid. You folks get $3,307 per student for aid. So that's where the difference becomes. It isn't that Northeast gets any more money. Our foundation budget's $17,225 before our other transportation and everything else. And like Chelsea, we end up getting $3,427,000. They get $2.7 million in aid for their students that come to Northeast. And I understand it's low income and I understand what it is, but I understand you folks. You're battling to try to keep good quality things happening in your town and keep your head above water. So, and I offered, when I was in Stoneham, I offered, I said, if there's anything I can do to help you out,

▶ 1:59:53 Mary Beth McAteer-Margolis: if you want me to go testify how difficult it is for the small cities and towns, I'll gladly do that. And I'll continue that fight with Representative Wong at the State House. Welch, I think, particularly going forward, when you begin the conversation with MSBA about your building, and I think I did just recently read an article about that, I think it's really going to be vital then to make sure that there is some equitable distribution. Now, just a point of interest, any capital improvement or any new construction goes back to the original district agreement. It will not be assessed like the budget is assessed. Okay, I wasn't aware of that. And like Mr. Houghton said, we're the third highest in the state for reimbursement.

▶ 2:00:43 Mary Beth McAteer-Margolis: We're actually 73%. And if we can do some green initiatives where Dr. Pocone had some ideas about saving rain water, we might be up to 75% reimbursement, which is a tremendous deal, I guess if we want to look at it that way, even though it is expensive, but if we get that back. we can we can lend out our planning department on a consultancy basis and they can let you know what we did at our middle school to get some extra extra points i did have a couple of other things specifically one was you noted that the increase of the substantial amount was due to transportation so you had to renegotiate your transportation contracts we just went out for a a new contract and unfortunately the pilot provider did not get the job in the start of July.

▶ 2:01:36 Mary Beth McAteer-Margolis: They did not get it? They did not get it. Because they were not the lowest bidder? Uh-huh. Okay. So, but I believe I saw that the state is going to perhaps reimburse or more fully fund regional transportation. Is that something that you participate in? They're talking about that, but the conference committee and the House and the Senate, the conference committee, they haven't really come up with what the reimbursement is going to be yet. We're hearing somewhere around 90%. We think it's going to be 56 to 60%, so we really don't know what the number is until the budget is finally adopted and signed by the governor. Okay, because that line item alone, you're predicting almost over an 11% increase.

▶ 2:02:21 Mary Beth McAteer-Margolis: Absolutely. Right. And then I had just one other question on page five where you have your contractual amount reserved there. Below that, you have retirees' health insurance trust, and you have it listed as a 100% increase, but it's zeroed out from 2013. I'm just wondering if that's a… It's out of that. It's zero. It's obviously zero. You're not funding that any longer? No. Okay, but you are providing a retiree health insurance in a separate line. I know okay And then also on that page you have a capital projects account and is that just? That has nothing to do with The potential new building going forward. That's just other capital improvements that we know when we go to the MSBA, we're giving them an accurate description.

▶ 2:03:24 Gail Infurna: So that's going towards your study? It's for a land survey. Right. Okay. Before we even can go to anyone for a feasibility study, the MSBA came out and said, well, where's your land lines? And we looked at three different plans, and three different plans were different over the last 50 years. So they said, before you even can go for a feasibility study, you need to get your land surveyed. Okay, great. that's that's all i have thank you very much thank you for all your services that you're providing to our students thank you very much mr chairman um the northeast vocational is a little near and dear to me i had a son that graduated from there and doing very well in life very successful so i appreciate everything that goes on in there um i do like the um addition of the red lines where

▶ 2:04:12 Gail Infurna: the red uh you know print it really kind of helps look at it i think i'm going to talk about a quiet elephant in the room right now and and certainly anything that i say it reflects nothing on what the programs are um i know in our public schools and we all don't like it but there are fees there are sports fees there are more trees there's all sorts of fees i wonder and i remember back in the mid 2000s when my son was there we really didn't have any fees have you looked at into doing any fees and i understand there's a lot of socioeconomics that are you know differ from melrose but it is a fact here we are paying an awful lot of money and our children are paying fees in melrose um and certainly while we appreciate everything that the vote does

▶ 2:04:59 Gail Infurna: i'm just wondering you know is there been any talk of fees so that our towns and cities can lessen maybe a little bit of um there has there has been talk about it this year the first year We are at 51% free and reduced lunch poverty level children. And it's never an easy thing to talk about because there would have to be amendments made for the students that couldn't pay it. And it's just a real touchy situation. My son played all four sports and we didn't pay anything. Yeah, it is something that we did begin to talk about this year, yeah. I understand there's going to be some socio-economics and some people will fall under some sort of a program for you, and that's great. But I think it may be time with this budget that there's something to look at.

▶ 2:05:53 We're talking about a sliding scale for income levels. Sure. And it is difficult for us, too, because we don't have the same contact with students right through elementary school. We get the students straight out of eighth grade from 32 different middle schools. Where I know, I live in Saugus, and my wife runs the Saugus Youth Soccer. She knows every kid from four years old up, and she knows their families. She knows who can pay, who's just a phony and they say they can't pay, but they've got three cell phones and they're running around. She knows it all, there's no pulling the wool over on her, but when we get students, it's a difficult thing. We have a hard time even getting them identified as who's free and reduced lunch.

▶ 2:06:45 And that's a huge issue for us, because some of the parents are very proud. Some of them just want free everything. So you try to weigh that out, but it is a discussion that we have begun. think it's i just don't know how smoothly we can do it but we have begun to discuss it but thank you very much and like i say i do like the red imprint on this for next year that really kind of helps it helps it a lot so thank you very much very good thank you um a couple questions uh just sort of in in general to the regional school um we are no longer funding any sending any students to minute man um as of through the chair as of fy15 um today we have no students that have currently enrolled at the minute man that's correct and i think if my memory serves me right

▶ 2:07:45 Monica C. Medeiros: that the students that we had had there uh were there for the robotics program so now that you guys are doing here we don't need to to send interested students so far away that student i believe was costing me in the vicinity of melrose transportation thirty five thousand dollars which is quite a lot and and we are sending one student one student to essex aggie okay um again through the chair the information that i have is three students three students and again that's the total assessment is between tuition and transportation is fifty eight thousand twenty seven dollars and and what program do you wear what program there um no it doesn't indicate which program on here on their memorandum it just

▶ 2:08:42 Monica C. Medeiros: indicates the assessment the charge to the city for and the number of students and maybe yes the the gentleman here from northeast can kind of talk about uh you know we have for instance in in the middle school and you know great robotics program and the kids are very excited about this i i can see this becoming something that could be very high demand what is your criteria for accepting students in and are there any programs where you're not able to take the students that That's a great question because that's one of our issues that we've run into the last two years. Is we have students that the way the labor trends change and the job market changes. And dental assisting, it was a very small program.

▶ 2:09:33 And we used to take about ten students a year as freshman into that program and choose it. Welch, it grew and we expanded it last year and now there's 20 students in there. This year we had 31 students choose at first choice. So we looked at it, and we're looking at another program that's kind of low. And we had a 0.5 teacher there, and we're thinking of possibly switching a 0.5 up to dental assisting. We had a cosmetology room that was kind of underused. It's not that it wasn't used, but it's underused. I met with the school committee, we talked about it. We're actually going to take that room over and make that a dental assisting room if everything goes correctly. As far as drafting and design, our drafting design is flourishing and we have some of the highest level kids in that program.

▶ 2:10:26 So we're buying more equipment, we're tying this robotics into it. We're trying to really challenge students because we have a lot of really gifted kids and I don't want to ever hold a student back. So if they want to progress, I want to be there for them, and that's the way we've been doing it the last few years. And you kind of open things up to the public for people to come in and get their hair cut, things like that. Do any of the kids ever go out and work on a project off site? Absolutely. We have a house building program that we just did the foundation and It was all set for September, right on Montrose Ave in Lakefield. We've worked on Revere City Hall. We did the visitor's center. As you go into Break Heart Reservation in the Saugus side, the vocational school kids built that.

▶ 2:11:24 And then our students go out to Tufts in the dental school and they work there. They work at the Chelsea Soldier's Home as the nursing assistants. We have the electrical students go out. We pulled all the Cat 5 wire for, I think it was Revere cable for the access for the computer. So, carpentry, welding, HVAC, we went to Melrose. We did the senior- Senior citizen. Great. We maintain all their air conditioning, put new fans and belts and changed to Freon, and it's great for the kids. It isn't just a win for the community, it's a win for me too. For these students to get out in the real world and learn how to act, learn how people look at them, learn that they can't use vulgar language, learn that they have to be neat and clean and pick up, it's a tremendous opportunity for my kids.

▶ 2:12:17 Mary Beth McAteer-Margolis: That's good, I'm glad to hear that. I'm glad to hear that we have used, taken advantage of, utilized, taken to the fullest advantage, I don't know how you put it, some of the school. And hopefully we will do that again in the future, so thank you, thank you. any further discussion all right when you were talking about the robotics in the CAD program did you happen to have one of those new 3d printers oh yes oh you do yeah we had one about three years ago and it became obsolete and the company actually came in and helped us out took the old one back and we leased a new one and it's phenomenal if you if you've also developed some some relationships with suppliers for donations and things like that all the time, right?

▶ 2:13:06 Absolutely, I have a list that I did, but I don't want to take up everybody's time. Just for donation things that we tried to do, we had a load of lumber from Rocky Hill Farm. He brought, it was a gentleman in Saugus, he brought up about 30 logs and they were huge. And we called the company from the central part of the state and he came out with a lumber cutter. And we made a great lesson for the kids, we cut all our own pine, we have big wide 24 inch pine boards. We taught the kids how to stack it and season it. I made a trip about three, four months ago to a place in Peabody. And I was looking around, it was a plumbing supply place, you had the most ungodly, ugly toilets. There were these mauve and green, like in my mother's house.

▶ 2:13:57 Mary Beth McAteer-Margolis: And I'm saying, my God, what are you going to do? He says, these have been here for 35 years. I said, I'll give you $10 a piece for them. I got 30 toilets, and the most ugly things you've ever seen in your life, but I got 30 toilets for the school. Carrier donated probably $80,000 worth of air conditioning units through Total Temp in Wakefield. So we have a lot of good connections with industry people that are helping our kids out tremendously. well and it helps our um bottom line as well i'm sure so thank you for your efforts so i asked about that because it was a story about a kid recently who with his dad designed an artificial hand i saw that that he needed so and like now they're going to like build it in his class he

▶ 2:14:46 John N. Tramontozzi: has one and they're going to modify it and make it so you never know maybe you'll get a student like that and they'll become a rich alum and yeah help us out thank you thank you mr chairman very Very good. All right, seeing no further discussion, I think we do have a motion on the floor, do we not? No, we don't. Welch, let's be safe side. Do we have a motion to move the bottom line? So moved, yes. Second. Alderman Forbes moves the motion to move the bottom line, recommend the bottom line, seconded by Alderman Boisselle. On the motion, all in favor? Aye. Any opposed? Seeing none, one opposed. Thank you very much. Thank you. Thank you. Mr. DelaRusso, is there a separate budget item for the Essex Agricultural?

▶ 2:15:30 Gail Infurna: How does this work? It's just a separate line item within the 399 budget category. And you see men and men in tech is zero. Thank you very much. Do we have to vote on that separately? Is that a separate line item? So that needs to be moved separately? no no but it just just the breakdown just shows you that each what each school represents it was all part of that same okay very good mr chairman yes would you entertain to take order number two oh one four dash one five seven i think miss gaffey is sitting back there are you waiting for that one which um the grant yeah the grant the melrose common all right all All right. When I saw her sitting back there, I thought, hmm, that must belong to her.

▶ 2:16:18 Robert A. Boisselle: All right, why don't we take order 2014-157, acceptance of the Merrill's Common Grant from the Commonwealth of Massachusetts Executive Office of Energy and Environmental Affairs, fund number 4010. Mr. Chairman, just a question here on the regional school assessment on 399. We mentioned a budget of $1,029,947, but the budget for regional school is $1,087,974. Does that have to be amended, or is this all one package? It includes Aggie. Is that a yes or no? No, I rely on the clerk of committees, and she has advised me that we're all set. Okay, good, thank you. you um miss gaffigan do you want to come forward so tell us about this grant i will i i think you've heard about it already once before but now i'm officially in front of you to announce that we

▶ 2:17:22 Denise Gaffey: the city has received this grant from the state environmental agency it's the our common backyards grant program and it's a um 200 000 grant towards specifically towards improvements to the mellows comments so it's really we've heard about this really exciting project um we were thrilled when we saw this uh come across our computers back in january this opportunity which we immediately pursued and um we were successful in getting this grant so we're very excited about it um it's going to allow us to to build all new replace the tot lot equipment at the commons and of course as you know the commons is is any for anyone who has young children here the commons is heavily used it's a great resource the tot lot equipment there is is is great equipment but it's

▶ 2:18:15 Denise Gaffey: okay it's outdated it's old and so with this grant we're going to be able to replace completely replace both sets of tot lot equipment we will be able to upgrade the seating areas add new landscaping new trees and we're also looking at a possible water feature so we're going to explore the feasibility of that water feature as part of this grant which would be a really nice amenity and nothing that we have a feature that we don't have anywhere else in the city so it's a 200 it's $200,000 grant and it's a two hundred and fifty thousand dollar project we have from fifty thousand dollars that were required to contribute towards this project and the mayor has already allocated the funding from the open space fund for that this is fund

▶ 2:19:02 Denise Gaffey: these are funds that we already have in place so there's no direct impact on the the city budget for this program which is great so tonight this the language in front of you is the authorization to accept the grant and to allow the mayor to sign contracts and execute the grant program there's specific language in here that the Commonwealth required us to to stipulate it talks about it being a reimbursement grant which is is is very typical as a lot of the grants that we do are funded that way so we pay the bill and then we get reimbursed um but they and they also required language in here that stipulated that this this was a um these were this is a park resource that could not be used for any other purpose which is of course something we're very comfortable with so um we're here to

▶ 2:19:54 Peter D. Mortimer: ask for your authorization for this language very good any discussion what is the will of the uh the committee what should i recommend second all right so we have a motion to recommend by off um seconded by alderman bird on further discussion alderman mortimer i'd just like to thank miss gaffey because this park is in ward six and it's a great piece of work by your office in the administration, and although it is in Ward 6, I'm sure it's going to be used by the entire city as it is now. It's, aside from Mount Hood, also in Ward 6, it's one of the biggest parks we have in the city. Usually around for lacrosse, soccer, softball, and there's already been kids. But it is getting a little bit crowded up there down in that corner near former Alderman Salamanca's house.

▶ 2:20:48 John N. Tramontozzi: So I'm sure with some expansion, it will help to ease the congestion a little. And there's already some neighborhood meetings planned, so we can address the parking and make sure that it's a win-win for everyone all around. And thank you once again for your work. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. You're welcome, very good. We do have a motion to recommend on the floor. Are we ready for that vote? All in favor? Aye. Any opposed? Okay, that will be recommended. Thank you. Going back to our budget, last but not least the budget in department number 652 is Pine Banks in the amount of $227,814.14. Mr. Keezer, good evening and sorry to keep you waiting. Good evening. Saving the best till last. Yeah, saving the best till last.

▶ 2:21:55 Mr. Keezer, how are you? Fine, thank you. I'm Henry Kieser. I'm president of the Pine Banks Park Board of Trustees. With me tonight is Rick Rudolph, class of 1967, Melrose High, and member of the Sports Hall of Fame. You're welcome. I did not attain that level of expertise. You were on the debate team, weren't you, Hank? The Hall of Fame was rededicated this weekend. we prepared a report for pine banks and for those of you who have sat through this before it's a joint venture between the city of Melrose in the city of Malden created by statute of the Commonwealth in 1905 which mandated a minimum amount of funding from the two cities based upon the assessed valuations of each and projected on the assessed valuation of the lesser so if you

▶ 2:22:53 look at the first page you'll see there's a girl there playing softball that is a testament to the mayor's Cup I have to be agnostic and on who won that particular game but that's on our new softball field we have the clerk certificate here indicating that we had our meeting for the purposes of adopting the budget this year at which we had both mayors very active and present reviewing the numbers pages four and five show the assessed valuations of the two cities with the relevant number marked in red and you can see that you could buy the entire city of Melrose for three point five billion dollars which is somewhat less than a basketball team these days the funding formula is on page six and that's based upon the statute which is recited there in the

▶ 2:23:50 bottom part of the page but basically it takes that very large number three and a half billion dollars and multiplies it down so that each city should be looked at to put in two hundred and thirty nine thousand dollars for total minimum budget of 478 and that's that's our par for the course on this last year we started a little bit of a different analytical process and that was to get an idea of the full compensation and benefit package for our staffing and that is shown on page 8 and brought forward on page 7 but if you look at that you can see the center column there that says budget that indicates the current compensation level for each of our employees we have a small reserve for overtime but the total current compensation there is one hundred and

▶ 2:24:46 $146,000. Then if you go to the pensions, benefits, and insurance, these are items that we hadn't broken out before. You can see that you add those up and we've got $147,000. So that means that the current compensation seen by our employees is matched and exceeded by the pension benefits and medical. But if you look at the figures that are included there, it was surprising to me to see that health insurance was actually a relatively minor projected increase this year. It's 0.69%, which was surprising to me. The increase there was a 4.74% increase in pensions, both to active and retired staff. Now, these numbers come from Mary Ann Long and the HR department here in City Hall. I have to say that she's done a terrific job

▶ 2:25:40 in working with us to get these numbers put together and integrating with her like person in Malden City Hall so that we, for the first time, this is the second year we've done this, we do have an idea of what the compensation breakout is. If you look at the column that says budget, that's the unified budget for the park. Then if you look at the next column to the right, that's the dollar increase over prior year, the percentage increase over prior year, and the dollar request from each city and again this is we're trying to make sure that the contribution is on an equal basis from each city and if you bring that forward it shows on page seven on lines one through five are the salaries and wages and then you've got going down on the columns numbered on

▶ 2:26:37 the left utilities insurance vehicles maintenance supplies professional services to a total at line 42 these are non-recurring more or less capital items last year or we have a continuing amortization of the ball field project amortization which has got about four or five years left these are the two improvements of the rugby field and the artificially turfed baseball field line 45 and 46 our last year's projects just to show that what we were doing lines 49 and 50 are acquiring a new lawnmower and a leaf vacuum so that if you look at the the total which is on line 55 on those non-recurring capital items we're down $35,000 off what we had last year for the similar line items 56 through 69 or a recap and item 70 shows the total which is for this year it's a six

▶ 2:27:42 hundred and eighty seven thousand dollar budget which is down eighteen thousand dollars from what we had last year and that includes capital items that would be probably reviews but reviewed by this board later in the year and we are somewhat above the statutory mandate amount I think the surprising thing on that is the the benefits on the compensation and salaries so that is the the financial report we have the report of the superintendent which is on page 9 and following pages indicating who we have playing up there some of the clubs that take using the park. I know Chief Lyle has a Mother's Day road race that has run out of there and has been very popular. On page 14 we have an update of

▶ 2:28:39 the satellite photo showing the new field configuration after the most recent improvements and showing the layout of the trails that were there. The trails were marked by an Eagle Scout from Melrose named Victor Fink who just graduated this last May from Johns Hopkins and he walked each of these trails with a handheld unit stopped every six feet took a measurement of exactly where he was and the elevation so those are fairly accurate which is a good thing to know it's a nice little trail map that we would like to have up and available for the general public on page 15 these are some items of equipment that we bought with private grants the first one there you can see there is called a Polaris Scout that's a four-person transportation that would

▶ 2:29:30 allow us to get up onto those trails to make sure that we don't have people camping out which has been a problem not only in the summer but also in the winter and we're afraid of fires occurring up there so this would allow us to get three people as a crew up to any particular place on that map in the event of an injury perhaps or of a fire and then we also bought that little plow which you can see in the bottom it fits on the front of our Bobcat which we acquired two years ago these all came from private contributions I believe that in addition to the $50,000 contribution we have for field amortization we're pulling an average about forty forty five thousand dollars in other private grants and those are for various things such as buying this

▶ 2:30:26 equipment and funding summer jobs for students principally between high school and their first year of college when my recollection was I was totally useless in this place that was needed there are some line notes on the financial reports on page 16 uh generally we're working on a one percent increase on current compensation which was the benchmark that mary ann long told us was going to be viewed as uh where we're going from the city and then a lot of the other things are just items that we uh we just discussed so if there's a question mr president Welch very nice report excellent uh we appreciate that as usual sorry for the lateness of the delivery alderman voyzel on the last page on page 16 the first line

▶ 2:31:22 the park leases its employees from the city of melrose and salaries and wages that you have up front on page seven indicates about 146 864 dollars now is that paid to the city of melrose we have an agreement with the uh with the city of melrose that we will have all of our individuals working out of the mall melrose hr department so that uh that supplanted the pre previous system where one week we had someone working for melrose and the next week they worked for malden and the problem with that was then we had an injury and it became a question of whose workman's comp was going to pay for it and then that was just a matter of chance which week it was that didn't seem particularly rational way to address things and it also seemed

▶ 2:32:17 to us that melrose had a better shot at some of the programs with better cost effectiveness so now they are employees of melrose leased to pine banks park the compensation comes from melrose and then is reimbursed quarterly from the city of malden directly to the city of melrose it's my understanding and talking with marianne long and her like counterpart in malden that that system has worked very well and so you mentioned reimbursed to the city of melrose malden pays melrose their share going to the the auditor how does that come back into under what line item does that come back to us it comes in through the chair to uh your local receipts versus the general fund received and that essentially funds as the president said those particular items that

▶ 2:33:13 are resonant with that our budget funding comes from all the tools that goes into the general fund absolutely approximately 146 is that what we're talking about yeah i'd say yeah the contribution from each city projected at 147 278 57 is shown on 40 line 43 page 8. that would be the amount of the contribution coming from malden to melrose broken into a quarterly number actually if you look at line 52 on page eight i have it down there thirty six thousand eight one nine point sixty four contribution malden two melrose every quarter okay very good thank you thank you Thank you, Mr. Tarrant. All right. Any further discussion? Alderman Medeiros. Thank you. I didn't see that we really went through the items on page 12 for the upcoming projects.

▶ 2:34:09 Those are included in this budget or expected from outside funding sources? I believe they are included for the most part within our budget. There aren't an awful lot of major things there. The major thing would be fixing the wall on Main Street. Just so people at home know, and thank you for staying so late, but things like window replacements, tear down and removal of the two old buildings near the maintenance shed, parking lot lines, new gates, fences, replacing an oil tank, and leaking pipes. Sounds like home. Sounds like home. It sounds like some of Melrose is all the Victorians. Thank you, as always, gentlemen, for your hard work in keeping up this wonderful resource that we have. I see that in the pending projects, you've got tree removal by the City of Malden.

▶ 2:35:25 Is the city, do our, do Melrose DPW, do we do any work down there for you? Maybe Mr. De La Russo? That I couldn't tell you. Okay. In the past, we've had a greater contribution from the city of Malden for the tree removal. And in that, we end up having a compensation going down to them for, normally it's overtime for the guys to take down the trees. But it is something that we can't handle just because of training and workings, confidence, insurance matters. But they've been very good at assisting us. We try to figure out ways to have Melrose Public Works get the opportunity to help as well. I hope that works. And the other thing you mentioned was people like camping out. So that's illegal, obviously.

▶ 2:36:13 Welch, yes. They're homeless people. Okay. But they're not really interested in finding a home other than the one up there. We had someone in there in January with three feet of snow living on a tent. So it's up to you as trustees and the management of the park to try to help relocate these people or whatever? Welch it's problematic because you can see where the line is running through the park on the satellite diagram. The police are very sensitive to the fact that their jurisdiction ends where that line is and isn't part of the park in general. So the greater burden falls on Chief Lyle's group, and frankly, the staff that we've got at Pine Banks aren't in a position to be telling people to move on or forcibly removing them.

▶ 2:37:04 We have a great problem with squatters. We have a problem also with dog enforcement, which is something that Joan Bell has been sharing tools with from Mount Hood. But there's very little that we can do other than call the local police and hope that they'll be able to come down and help. I suppose it's not surprising in this day and age, but it's... Nothing surprising these days. Distressing. Distressing, right. Do you ever offer the park to any organized groups for camping or anything like that, for like Boy Scouts or anything overnight? No. Our groups are generally disorganized. the we don't really have the facilities yeah but it's it's something that if we the local Boy Scout said there was a way to do something that that would be

▶ 2:37:58 something to consider there are a couple of troops that do Boy Scout troops from both cities who utilize the park for day and evening events that they're having cookouts some of them have their meetings in the sheltered areas nearest the little pond up there but as far as overnight we really don't have the facilities for that right or the personnel to have 24 hours to oversee we We had a walk for cancer that used to have an overnight at the park, and I was always concerned that the irrigation system would turn on while they were tenting. I remember when it rained so hard, it was almost worse than the irrigation system down there. That's all. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. Alderman Burry, did you have something?

▶ 2:38:58 John N. Tramontozzi: No. Any further discussion? Motion to move the bottom line. Second. have a motion to move the bottom line by alderman Medeiros seconded by alderman Boisselle on the motion all in favor aye aye thanks for coming we will uh that will be your budget will be recommended to the full board final passage thank you and one final thing um mr doloroso i think we have order number 2014-153 requesting that the city auditor advise the board of alderman the writing of the amounts certified by the department of revenue each year in the water enterprise fund and sewer enterprise fund what's the will of the board are we do we get that information yes every year the state sends us the city a letter this one's this year was dated monday october 21st 2013. so i'll be happy to

▶ 2:39:53 John N. Tramontozzi: give you a copy of this as soon as i get it all right it goes to most most bodies now but let's time all right so um can you forward that to us absolutely absolutely get it once a year generally it's in the fall october november um president clint yeah i filed this order because i think it's important for us to track the certifications of these reserve accounts and receive the information timely and i would ask the committee to pass this order please okay any further discussion is there a motion to um is a motion to recommend the passage to the board it's uh that motion is uh by alderman bird seconded by alderman mcintyre my goal is any further discussion seeing that on the motion all in favor aye aye be opposed great that will be uh recommended

▶ 2:40:40 John N. Tramontozzi: to the full board thank you thank you very much thank you motion to adjourn mr chair second again motion to adjourn by alderman mortimer seconded by alderman boys out on the motion all favor Seeing none, we are adjourned. Good evening. Thank you.

Original documents

• Minutes (CivicClerk PDF)
• Agenda (IQM2 PDF)
• Bulletin (IQM2 PDF)
• Minutes packet (IQM2 PDF)
• Agenda packet (CivicClerk PDF)
• Agenda packet (IQM2 PDF)
• Other (CivicClerk PDF)
• This meeting on the city portal