Appropriations & Oversight Committee — 2015-12-10

Appropriations and Oversight Committee Meeting

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 · Chairman; John N. Tramontozzi present · Ward 1 Alderman; Francis X. Wright Jr. absent · Ward 3 Alderman

Agenda

Minutes

CITY OF MELROSE APPROPRIATIONS COMMITTEE CALENDAR● DECEMBER 10, 2015 Aldermanic Chamber Committee Meeting 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 Peter D. Mortimer Chairman Present Jaclyn L. Bird Vice Chairman Present Gail M. Infurna Ward 5 Alderman Present John N. Tramontozzi Ward 1 Alderman Present Monica C. Medeiros Alderman at Large Present Robert A. Boisselle Ward 4 Alderman Present Francis X. Wright Jr. Ward 3 Alderman Absent Mary Beth McAteer-Margolis Alderman at Large Present Jennifer L. Lemmerman Ward 2 Alderman Present Scott M. Forbes Ward 7 Alderman Present Donald L. Conn Jr. President/Ex-officio Member Present In Attendance: CFO/City Auditor Patrick Dello Russo; Director of Public Works John Scenna; City Solicitor Robert Van Campen; IT Director Jorge Pazos; Energy Efficiency Manager Martha Grover; School Committee Chair Kristin Thorp; School Committee Chair-Elect Margaret Driscoll; Police Chief Mike Lyle; Elections Administrator Linda Lee Angiolillo; City Clerk Mary Rita O'Shea; Memorial Building Director Kathy Pigott-Brodeur

ORDER-2016-59 Appropriation An Appropriation of $1,169,941.66 from Available Free Cash to the Snow & Ice Deficit as set forth within. Recommend Passage Board of Aldermen

ORDER-2016-53 Appropriation Appropriation in the amount of $6,848.39 from A/C Sewer, Retained Earnings to various Sewer Accounts as set forth herein. Recommend Passage Board of Aldermen City of Melrose Page 1 Updated 12/21/2015 5:03 PM Minutes Appropriations Committee December 10, 2015

ORDER-2016-54 Appropriation Appropriation in the amount of $19,512.44 from A/C Water, Retained Earnings to various Water Accounts as set forth herein. Recommend Passage Board of Aldermen

ORDER-2016-55 Appropriation Appropriation in the amount of $73,241.53 from Contract Stabilization Transfer Out to various Public Works and Cemetery Accounts as set forth herein. Recommend Passage Board of Aldermen

ORDER-2016-56 Appropriation Appropriation in the amount of $19,718.89 from Contract Stabilization Fund, Transfer Out to Cemetery-Salary & Wages A/C and Public Works Adm Salary & Wages A/C as set forth herein. Recommend Passage Board of Aldermen

ORDER-2016-57 Bond Bond in the amount of $1,176,167.00 to convert city-owned streetlights to LED Recommend Passage Board of Aldermen

ORDER-2016-58 Grant Authorization to Accept a Grant in the amount of $225,000.00 from the Department of Energy Resources (DOER) through the Green Communities Division; and Authorize the Mayor to Execute a Contract with the Department of Energy Resources Recommend Passage Board of Aldermen

ORDER-2016-60 Appropriation An Appropriation of $1,292,665.29 From Available Free Cash to Various Accounts as set forth within Recommend Passage Board of Aldermen

ORDER-2016-61 Grant Acceptance of an EMD FY 2016 Training Grant in the amount of $72,724.91 from the Commonwealth of Mass., Executive Office of Public Safety (EOPS) Recommend Passage Board of Aldermen City of Melrose Page 2 Updated 12/21/2015 5:03 PM

Transcript

▶ 0:03 Peter D. Mortimer: Ladies and gentlemen, this is the Committee on Appropriations. It is a committee of the whole of the Melrose Board of Aldermen. It is December 10, 2015, at 7.30 p.m. I am Chairman Peter Mortimer. We are also joined by Vice Chairman Jacqueline Bird, Alderman Gail Inferna, Alderman John Tramontozzi, Alderman Monica Medeiros, Alderman Robert Boisselle, Alderman Mary Beth McAteer-Margolis, Alderman Jennifer Lemmerman, Alderman Scott Forbes, and President Donald Kahn. Is there a motion to open the floor for public participation? So moved, Mr. Chairman. Alderman Forbes has made a motion to open the floor for public participation. Any members of the public here tonight wishing to comment or ask questions about any item on tonight's agenda may come forward now and do so.

▶ 0:59 Peter D. Mortimer: Motion to close public participation. Second. The motion to open public participation was made and duly seconded by Alderman Aferna. The motion to close public participation was made and seconded by Alderman Boisselle. All in favor of closing public participation, please say aye. Aye. Aye. Any opposed, hearing none, public participation is now closed. And may I say for the record that this meeting is being recorded and is available on MMTV for future viewing. other venues as well for any members of the public who may wish to see it at a future date. There's no roll call taken in the Appropriations Committee, so we will proceed directly to the orders before us this evening. The first order we have before us is order 2016-59.

▶ 1:47 Peter D. Mortimer: It is an appropriation of $1,169,941.66 From available free cash to the snow and ice deficit as set forth herein. Motion to suspend the rules to ask Mr. Shannon to come up with it. Second. We have a motion to suspend the rules made by Alderman Inferno, duly seconded by Alderman Boycelle, to hear from the appropriate administrative and city personnel to come forward and enlighten us on this order. We see Mr. Della Russa was stepping forward, we see Mr. John Shannon was stepping forward. They are our chief financial officer and our director of public works, respectively. Please proceed. Thank you, good evening. Very pleased to be here, particularly in this regard to this order. As everyone is aware, we had a horrendous winter, and

▶ 3:04 the city spent just under $2.5 million on snow and ice. was historic and um we were able to close that gap within this amount of money 1 million 169 941 66. i met with the department of revenue on monday and we conferred and what i'm asking the board to do respectfully but to approve this appropriation that will eliminate the snow and ice deficit that the city had and we will not have to raise it on the tax recap thank you very much mr delarusso mr shannon would you like to add anything before we proceed to questions and comments no we can proceed questions thank you very much sir first in queue we have alderman boycelle please in the news for the past couple days there's been an announcement that fema

▶ 4:05 Robert A. Boisselle: will be giving the state of Massachusetts a good portion of money to cover us for this ice and snow storms that we've been having this past year by paying this off now will we still be available for funding from this particular pot of money that's coming in yeah through the chair absolutely we've actually anticipated over 333 000 coming back between FEMA and MEMA in support of the deficit that we incurred last year so we i'm working with uh dpw and that's going to be coming in it actually started to come in now so we are going to get our relief money with the hopefully by the end of the fiscal year we should have it in very good and john in this snow and ice deficit have all the vendors been paid or we are we still owing money to any anyone at this point no

▶ 4:58 everyone's been paid everyone's been paid and the um the folks have been closed on last winter these are our expenses and in their entirety thank you thank you mr chairman thank you alderman boyce hell president khan please yeah um i'm going to support this order um it's a shame that we have to spend this much much money on snow and ice but as everybody in this room knows we have no choice if we don't spend this money money will be taken away from us by the state I guess I'm thankful that we have this free cash to spend so that it doesn't create a further burden on us going forward and we will have little or no snow I'd move to recommend this order please mr. chairman second all president Kahn has made a motion to recommend this order for passage the motion was duly

▶ 5:53 seconded by Alderman Inferna seeing no further discussion on discussion is is that a did you retract I just had a question okay Alderman McAteer-Margolis has a quick question thank you mr. de la Russo I know sometimes we pay the balance from our next year's budget so that won't be required is that correct now you know it's like the first thing we have to pay when we set the budget for next year yeah right right now respectfully to the board um the chair what will happen is that we will essentially be entering the new fiscal year without this deficit on our back the state provided up to three years to pay this i don't want to do that i never want to do that and i think that by the collective action of this board we're able to process this

▶ 6:47 Peter D. Mortimer: and remove that liability for the next two second or third year if we in fact carried any of it forward which i think would not be a wise move so great thank you i i think that's um a great reason to support it so that we know we don't we have that monkey off our backs for absolutely absolutely thank you mr chairman thank you alderman mcateer margolis all in favor of the motion duly seconded for passage to recommend for passage please say aye aye aye any opposed hearing none This order is passed and will be recommended to the full board for our next full board meeting on December 21st. And just before you step off, Mr. Shen, I just wanted to say a quick thank you. You did an amazing job last year getting the personnel.

▶ 7:31 Peter D. Mortimer: Many of the neighboring communities, I'd speak to friends who live therein, and they'd say they could tell the difference when they came into Melrose. The streets were much better. Your people, under your leadership, did a fantastic job last year under the worst of conditions. Thanks, I'll- Thank you very much, sir. I'll pass that along, thanks. You're welcome. The next order we have before us is order 2016-53. It is an appropriation in the amount of 6,000, God bless you, $848.39 from sewer retained earnings to various sewer counts as set forth herein. We're still under suspension and Mr. Della Russa was still here. Please proceed, sir. Yes. Through the Chair, both Order No. 201-653 and 201-654 pertain to the settlement of collective

▶ 8:23 bargaining agreement. I think Mr. Van Campen is here as well. These are the funding sources portioned from both water and sewer, and I think you'll see it also rolls out into further orders down. But to begin, and Mr. Chairman, if I may, through you to the members of the committee, 2016-53, 2016-54, and 2016-55 all are related to recently concluded negotiations with Laborers Local 272. So that is to fund the first year, including a retro payment of a three-year collective bargaining agreement, just to report to the members of the Appropriations Committee happy to report this contract maintains the city's historic cost of living pattern of 1% across the board in addition this contract also incorporates what we call

▶ 9:21 Peter D. Mortimer: performance incentives most of our contracts now we're moving in the direction of incorporating performance incentives for our employees so if an individual gets an additional certification or license requirement And during the life of the agreement, that incentivizes them, they receive additional payments. So this money is to fund that contract, which runs from July 1, 2015 to June 30th, 2017. Thank you very much, sir. And before we proceed to questions, is there any interest in anyone making a motion to join the orders mentioned by the city solicitor? So moved, Mr. Chairman. Second. Alderman Forbes has made a motion to join the respective orders. That's 53, 54, and 55, is that correct? Correct. Correct.

▶ 10:05 Thank you very much. That was duly seconded by Alderman Boycelle. All in favor, please say aye. Aye. Any opposed? Hearing none, the orders are joined for discussion. President Kahn, you have the floor. Yeah, you have three funding sources for the COLAs here. Yes. You have, and I need to talk in my jargon so I don't get confused. The retained earnings account, I call those free cash. So we have the water free cash, sewer free cash, and we have the contract stabilization fund. Correct. How did you determine the proportion of money that came from each one of those sources? It's based on the employees within the respective enterprise funds. So if they're in water, whatever contract provide for those employees for an increase,

▶ 10:56 same as in sewer and obviously general fund for the contract state for the contract stable they should fund itself and can you tell me for water in sewer and this is probably a little bit off and I'd probably caution myself that I was going too far if I was up where you are mr. chairman but what's in the free cash for each account and what's in the stabilization fund for each account if If you have that handy. If not, you could provide it to us at your convenience. I do have it. If I may, the Water Reserve Fund has 241,208.112. And the Soil Reserve Fund has 225,229.32. Okay, and what about the respective free cash? their respective free cash is $182,232 for water, $300,383 for sewer. And that does, for the purposes of the record, that does differ from what the report shows

▶ 12:12 on the Department of Revenue, Division of Local Services, differs by the amount of the reserve fund that we have. So when you look at their number, it'll be higher by the reserve fund amount. So if we add these two numbers together, it'll match what they have on their report. They just take it collectively. We break them out and distinguish between reserve fund and funds that are available or free cash, as we call it. And do the reserve fund figures represent last year's closed out numbers? I'm not— The free cash represents last year's activity. What about the reserve funds? been there that's been sitting there in a separate fund so that's been um standalone okay so we're going to get more money certified into the reserve fund when the books are closed on this year yes

▶ 13:02 absolutely correct we the target is again to um put in this year's effort for both water and sewer that will give you the exact target and then some that the board of aldermen and the city was trying to achieve after three years so that we'll have our balances that we want afterwards in each fund the reserve goal being 315 150 and 422 046 22 respectfully for water and for sewer so we will not only meet that number even after this transfer but you'll have additional reserves of 88 thousand seven seventy seven sixty eight for water and ninety six thousand seven seventeen seventy one for soar even after you do these transfers this evening so we landed on our feet for water and soar and it's very

▶ 13:58 strategically we landed on target I could not be more pleased by the way the year ended for both water and soar i could not be more pleased and um it was just right and i think everyone the board deserves a lot of credit for support in the the initiatives and the changes that were made uh it's representative in the figures the figures speak for themselves so it looks like we're pretty close to being where dor wanted us to be relative to the reserves for these two funds and we may not need to collect any reserves going forward um we're almost there the um you're absolutely correct what will happen is if this patent continues then we may find ourselves having to raise less in both water and sewer each year just for that reason that we've

▶ 14:47 already met our target and this and the need to build the reserve beyond that would not be necessary so we're right on the money and i'm really pleased to be able to say that this evening And just one other thing, so the public understands we play no role in the collective bargaining process. So all we're doing here tonight is we're appropriating money to pay for COLAs to fund these contracts. The contracts are negotiated by the executive and we don't approve them. We can't change them. All we can do is if we deem it appropriate, we can fund them. Thank you, President Kahn. Alderman Medeiros, please. Thank you. I just want to go back to the numbers. So the retained earnings, which are the accounts

▶ 15:44 Monica C. Medeiros: that are not exactly the accounts, that's the area from which these two expenditures in 216 53 and 216 54 as a funding source we are able what you're saying is we're able to fulfill these obligations and still meet the budgeted targeted reserve amount that we have in the budget that's exactly correct what will happen at some point between now and june 30th we will come to the board and ask for an appropriation of that difference to each fund um so that that obligation would be satisfied that's exactly correct and when when that's done you're anticipating that there'd be eighty thousand seven seven seven point six eight and water and um ninety six seven seventeen seventy one and sore that would be uh

▶ 16:46 unallocated in that sense and this is for a contract negotiation with local 272 when was this contract negotiations finalized in the last several weeks and that was for effective sort of backdated retro contract expired June 30th of 15 so retro to July 1 so we certainly couldn't have budgeted this previously no in fact i think if we go back to the budget hearings i made mention of it a few times that we funded according to what was in place thank you thank you alderman Medeiros alderman makatia margolis please my question was actually answered it was regarding the retro thank you very much anyone else in queue seeing none is there a motion please motion to recommend second we have a motion to recommend by president khan duly seconded by alderman Boisselle

▶ 17:46 Peter D. Mortimer: seeing no further discussion all in favor of recommending to this full board please say aye aye any opposed hearing none this order will be recommended these three orders that are joined will be recommended to the full board for passage at our next meeting on december 21st john the next order we have before us is order 2016-56 it is an appropriation in the amount of $19,718.89 from contract stabilization fund transfer out to cemetery salary and wages and public works administrative salary and wages as set for herein we are still under suspension still joined by our cfo patrick de la russo and joined once again by our director of public works mr john chenna speak to it gentlemen please proceed so these additional funds um are required

▶ 18:37 Peter D. Mortimer: to fully compensate a slight modification in the cemetery administrators position that took place after the budget was um was passed and we have a new cemetery administrator working out of the wyoming cemetery and her hours were increased by five to provide a um a high level service to to the customer base that's a request that we had heard continuously from customers funeral homes and also the commission the wyoming cemetery commission itself so we used the opportunity to increase the hours the order before you reflects that change the order before you also reflects some additional funding we need we had an extended medical leave amongst one of the the work is on the crew and we had to supplement that crew with some outside part-time help to get

▶ 19:34 the fall cleanup done to cover summer vacations so this order covers that as well thank you very much sir President Kahn please uh how much of this how much of these funds are going to uh part-time uh part-time labor uh 9600 of it oh sorry ten thousand one hundred and seventeen dollars of it and the balance is going to um correct the imbalance or or cover the five hours additional for the administrator for the rest of the year that's correct 9601.89 okay i have nothing further mr chairman thank you president khan motion to recommend we have a motion to recommend from alderman boycelle duly seconded by alderman inferna seeing no further discussion all in favor please say aye aye any opposed hearing none this order will be recommended to the full board for

▶ 20:34 Peter D. Mortimer: passage on the 21st thank you mr shenner is oh good miss grover your net ms grover all right The next order we have before us is order 2016-57. It is a bond in the amount of $1,176,167 to convert city-owned street lights to LED street lights. We're still under suspension. I see that Martha Grover is getting ready to approach to explain this to us. please come forward I was hoping that our Siemens contractor would be here consultant project manager I'm not sure there must have been a miscommunication but we can go ahead and do this without your option if you'd like to defer this oh no no no no no we got we got him we got to move ahead very good then thank you very much though thank you very much and ms. Grover is joined once again by a

▶ 21:45 director of public works mr. John Chenna please proceed so I've got three slides I'll get through this quickly I know you've got a you've got a big agenda tonight my name is Martha Grover I'm the energy efficiency manager for the city in the office of planning community development we've come to you before to discuss this project it's been underway since middle of last year when we created an RF RFQ went out to bid with eight other communities through me with MAPC selected Siemens in November of last year came to you in March to get approval to conduct an audit of our streetlights for the purpose of converting all of our city on streetlights to LED from high-pressure sodium you you approve that audit in April and May Siemens and CDM Smith came

▶ 22:41 into town counted and located and collected data and every one of our streetlights created a GIS map map layer that we now have access to and created an audit report we decided that it would be as this is a kind of a one in 20 year opportunity to relight relamp our community as these LEDs are projected to last you know 100,000 hours four times the lifespan of high-pressure sodium that it would be important to get public feedback on some of our choices we conducted a survey in July and August we got about 40 40 50 responses very interested people the ones who did respond and for the most part first they are very thankful that we asked what they thought they that was that was well received but we did get some response from some people who are very concerned

▶ 23:43 about the glare and brightness of the LEDs which you're going to get when you ask people to go out and look up at the LEDs but in any case the samples that we had set out were of the you know the standard LED samples from manufacturers that every other city and town in the state of Massachusetts and all over the country have installed. It's the 4,000 Kelvin. But a lot of people were concerned about they were too much too deep into the blue spectrum and especially in comparison to our high-pressure sodium, which were down in the 2,200 Kelvins, which are the orange-yellow. So based on that feedback, we decided to, we asked our contractor to seek out an alternative and just around the same time, the lead manufacturers were starting to come out with what, newer

▶ 24:43 technology, 3,000 Kelvin. So if you've been out there and taken a look at it and seen the difference, it's warmer, not quite as blue it's easier on the eye but still has the same the same lumens the same light output in almost the same energy efficiency so we then put that put that second survey out and it was overwhelming that the folks we I re-invited the people that I had gotten email addresses from and we again put it out in the newspapers and the blog and Facebook and got a probably 25 26 responses and again overwhelmingly in favor of the the warmer less blue less bright equipment so then lucky for us that's when Elena Paracas Ellis came on board our new city engineer and she and John and I sat down and Elena went out

▶ 25:46 more than several times to take a look and really rolled up her sleeves asked a lot of great questions of our contractor and we selected acuity and I'll we'll go over it'll be on the next slide but in any case as the equipment of choice so here we are tonight asking you for the appropriation and the approval to fund this and to enter into an energy services management agreement if it's approved tonight the installation there's about a four to six week lead time on ordering equipment we'd get that in sometime in February and get all this installed in February March with you know the full substantial completion doing done in April so we're talking about three thousand one hundred and city-owned streetlights I think back in 2008 the city purchased most of our

▶ 26:44 streetlights we for some reason I nobody really knows we left out 51 so this proposal includes buying the last 51 streetlights we have about a hundred National Grid accounts and some of these streetlights are on just one floodlight on a bill so it's it probably was easy to miss some of those random lights that are out there but we found them we want to buy them for seventeen thousand dollars which and then we would convert those as well as part of this proposal this is the picture of the equipment this is the acuity it's we would we would it's the top sample there it was chosen well the price was right twenty 20 less than the cree option and we were given an additional five percent off because of these

▶ 27:40 communities in this group procurement acuity hadn't yet been chosen so the acuity sales guy was ready to make a deal with the next community but they all have you know they all offer the same thing one year labor warranty 10-year equipment warranty we're going to buy we're proposing that we buy a control ready seven pin pc receptacle which means that all of these fixtures would be control ready so in the future should control the price for controls meaning dimming capability or other types of uses we might put use for the street lights they would be ready for that for that technology right now it's just too expensive we thought to invest in that at this point um acuity is already installed in newton worcester

▶ 28:34 new bedford newburyport manchester and dairy new hampshire and lots of other smaller towns with an overall expected energy savings of about 65 one of the reasons another reason it was chosen if you take a look at it looks a lot like our current street light the shape is the site is the same cost overall cost is including all of the seven pin receptacle the field adjustable output etc is 1.4 million dollars less a green community grant we probably should have proved that before anyway that's the next item on your agenda is to prove the green community grant towards this project but in any case less the green community grant less an estimated two hundred thousand dollar National Grid incentive that's pretty conservative but

▶ 29:33 Peter D. Mortimer: that's our placeholder for now with the net cost of the city of just under a million dollars with a simple payback of six years if you count the energy savings annually and the decreased maintenance the nice thing about this with a 10-year warranty your maintenance savings goes down by almost 75% and the proposed funding for this is a 10-year bond which matches the 10-year warranty funded by a reduction in the streetlight budget starting in FY 17 that's all I I got so questions thank you very much for that presentation that was excellent before we proceed is there any interest in joining the next order to zero one six dash five eight they seem to be logically intertwined so moved second alderman McAteer Margolis has made a motion to conjoin this order and the

▶ 30:31 John N. Tramontozzi: subsequent order duly seconded by alderman boy cell any discussion seeing None. All in favor, please say aye. Aye. Any opposed? We will proceed now. Alderman Tramontozzi was first in line. Thank you, Martha. Thank you for the presentation, but it's a lot of money. It's a lot of money that you're asking the taxpayers to fund through a borrowing process of 10-year borrowing. I'm going to be asked, and I need to know the answer. wrong with our streetlights I understand the proposal to change the lights maybe have some savings but can we can we can we change them as they expire on us one at one at a time do we need to go through this entire project to replace every single three thousand one hundred thirty eight light fixtures I don't know

▶ 31:25 I don't know the answer to that I'm not convinced that the borrowing that kind the money at this time is appropriate. What do you say about the thought about just replacing as they die on us? I think the purpose of this program is to continue the ESCO type of programs. When you do them all at once, you get the economy at scale, but you also get the savings right up front. The intent is to pay the bond with reductions in energy consumption so we would we would reduce the utility budget in dpw by the amount equal to the bond payment that's the intent of how to move the project forward that's what the cfo has elected to propose it's going to start next year there'll be a reduction in our dpw maintenance budget because we won't have them to maintain that's enough to cover the first year

▶ 32:30 payback and FY 18 will have to further reduce it now sometimes further reducing it also you get this energy consumption and that always goes against energy rate increases so it's a balance but it's a very aggressive way to save a huge amount of energy right up front within you know by April 1st we'll start to realize the energy consumption we could go one at a time we'll never see the energy savings that this program proposes I would also just say that we're a green community we've made a commitment to reducing our energy consumption significantly and we continue to do projects as they go along and it makes sense this is a project that pays for itself in a very short amount of time and when you don't do it you're leaving those savings on the

▶ 33:16 John N. Tramontozzi: table it's there's there's very little you can do very few things you can do in in terms of energy savings that give you a 65% energy reduction in 7% of your utility budget or 7% of your energy usage that makes such a huge difference. So from what you're telling me that the payback period is six years, and, John, what you're telling me is that we expect to see a reduction in your Department of Public Works maintenance budget and uh utility budget that will match what the the payment would be per month or a quarter or whatever that's correct that's that's that's the plan the cfo has put in place and and and is that um how do you how do you calculate that for the record i see mr de la rusa was also nodding his head you want to come up in the affirmative

▶ 34:07 in response to your question just just so we have a full record mr de la rusa Can you hear any affirmative? Pardon the interruption, Alderman, please continue. That's quite all right, thank you. Mr. Delaruso, do you have an answer for, how do you come up with the reductions that we're going to see in the budgets? Yep, let me ask you a question. We have a debt service schedule attached. Yeah. And the objective is to match the debt service cost, so for the first year it's like $14,700. Then it goes down to 113,125 thereafter. We're going to match the reduction in the DPW budget by the cost of this note every year. So you'll be able to see it as an alderman that is reduced by at least that amount.

▶ 34:55 John N. Tramontozzi: Obviously, I'd love to see it reduced by that and then some, and that only time will tell. But that's the plan is to reduce it by this amount each year, cover that debt cost, get your permanent savings on the energy, and moving forward, I think it's a reasonable and a cost-effective way of putting this new... Well, I say hallelujah to that if we're going to be able to match the cost with these savings. I'm going to try to keep an eye on that, and I'm going to hold you to that. That's perfectly fine because I'm holding myself to that, too. All right. I want to see those reductions in the expenses in the budget. I appreciate the feedback. This is important to have, important for the citizens to know that in these times when we're being asked to approve borrowing of this kind in these sums, that we're going to see some positive outcomes from that spending.

▶ 36:00 John N. Tramontozzi: state also that um if you've read the agreement the energy management services agreement as procured under chapter 25a these savings are guaranteed well i saw that i saw the by the contractor so if we fall short of those savings how do you enforce that i saw the language in the contract about the guarantee every year i'm sorry measurement and verification every year of those savings and deserve and and then you know you have to sue them uh to uh they deserve a fund that you can then attach well if they they have a bond all right collect on the bond well they guarantee and then the contract as well which I did see that too in the language and I appreciate that mentioning that thank you Thank You alderman Tramontozzi ozi next we have alderman lemmerman please thank

▶ 36:47 Jennifer L. Lemmerman: you mr. chairman thank you very much for this information I just have a couple of questions I don't know if this number if you if you have this number if you've able to run this number but in addition to the savings of just the more energy efficient lamps along with the savings and maintenance and then in addition you know one of the items that we when this first when we voted on this to go into the audit back in march another item on our agenda during that meeting had to do with the community aggregation which we are now seeing being implemented and it was just announced that through the mayor's office that the rate that was locked in was cheaper than national grid and has been a good rate

▶ 37:32 all of that taken together do you have a sense of the potential savings that the city could see you know from what we're paying now with everything for its savings but I mean John can talk to this further but it's it's mostly you have to look at it as you know what do you call it deferring on future utility cost increases hedging future utility cost increases which we know you know are going up we're paying now eight cents per kilowatt hour and you know the new contract is you know nine point six cents not all of the city accounts are going into the community aggregation because that contract is through next year some of them are um i mean the city's contract is through is still we're locked in through next year

▶ 38:32 but you know it's all of this is just part of a package of continuing to as you know electricity costs will increase and we know they will two or three percent a year um whatever we can do to to save on energy use hedges those increases. Sure. But I don't know numbers, because nobody knows the future of electricity prices. But they'll be, sure. But it's about keeping those increases down. Yes. For us. And I think the simplistic explanation of it is we're combating rate increases, because rates always go up for electricity like everything else, but we're combating that with reductions in consumption. we consume more at a higher rate we're able to keep our budget at the same level and we've done that we've level funded DPW utilities which is all city

▶ 39:24 Jennifer L. Lemmerman: utilities including schools and we've been successful and level of fun they get for two years in a row it's not because electricity is costing us less electricity is costing us more and although we're aggressive through Martha and the Energy Commission and their work and help from MAPC and renegotiating rates but we're consuming less and it's because of these projects so that's how we combat our operating costs and electricity okay thank you another question I had just trying to look at all the potential outcomes of you know whether this gets approved by this committee or not if I'm remembering correctly I just want to confirm that this is true back in March when we decided to approve the audit and going into the audit a piece of that was that

▶ 40:12 Jennifer L. Lemmerman: doing the audit would cost the city fourteen dollars and sixty cents per light is that right it if we didn't move forward with the project so if we don't move forward the project what would it cost the city at this point to just have just done this audit $45,000 okay okay so we would owe Siemens for that audit would have to then pay those costs are not included in this they waived if we do this they waive those costs and it's not that they're rolled in it's they're gone rolled in okay made sure of it okay okay thank you and finally just a logistical question when these if these are to be installed are there going to be traffic interruptions what will that be like in practice it's one bucket

▶ 41:00 truck they'll be probably three or four deployed around town I think they move pretty quickly okay we'll have police detail on the busier main streets but it's generally not required and on the residential streets we'll have a really cool interactive map that CDM is created so if any of you want to watch the trucks move in your ward as they install it's updated they have little ipads i guess it takes another two seconds for them to you can watch the installation take place kids are too old for that now my kids are too old for that now so it's sad okay great that's all i have thank you very much thank you thank you mr chairman thank you alderman lemmerman and um next in line we have alderman

▶ 41:49 Alderman Medeiros, and I have you in queue as well. Alderman McAteer-Margolis. Thank you. Thank you, I might enjoy watching that move along. Maybe you should make an app or something and just have it on your phone. When we went out and had this audit, did we do any kind of identifying of how many street lights work or how many street lights are functioning, non-functioning? They did it during the day, but that's not really the point of what they were doing. If they find as they, you know, we have an outage program that, you know, they get replaced. But if they, as they go out and start doing the installation and they find that the outage is not, it's wiring, they'll repair that as they go along.

▶ 42:37 We've got contingency built in to pay for some of that. They also identified where we need tree trimming in order to free up and make the light more visible. get a list and dpw will work through that list they also identified where the lights are inconsistent um in terms of right of um how much power and obviously how much light they give what the wattages are and we were able through the gis we're able to look at neighborhood by neighborhood to make sure it comes to my rope to make sure damon ave has more light than the side streets off the damon app for instance so we were able to do that we were and this project's going to to be able to correct some inconsistencies in the layout of the lights themselves and

▶ 43:23 Monica C. Medeiros: when when we do this we'll have a 10-year equipment warranty if we do this right in terms of street light outages will seem will we have to have a separate contract for replacement and repair of outages or how will that work with so there's a one year labor warranty so when that runs out we'll need to you know renegotiate or go out to bid or to Siemens for the continued maintenance but mostly for knockdowns I mean any where these LEDs have been installed the outage rate is less than 1% these these very reliable in comparison to our current high pressure sodium and in this slideshow and you had mentioned it the National Grid incentive and the estimate of two hundred thousand dollars which you think

▶ 44:19 is low can you explain kind of what that is this National Grid incentive so what National Grid does is they have a they have a very aggressive incentive program especially for streetlights it's called prescriptive incentive program and they take the kilowatt hour savings multiplied times 25 cents and you get about you get about $200,000 sometimes for a project of this size they'll add in another percentage if you you know certain amount and I actually have a $10,000 incentive certificate that I got from going to a conference of theirs that I'll throw in on top of that so that number is is definitely conservative it's kind of up to negotiation and what I was reading in the documentation well

▶ 45:08 Monica C. Medeiros: and you would mention we'd kind of put these switches in the light post so in the future we could do it dimming what were some of the other uses they could use for the receptacles like Wi-Fi or cameras or they're all kinds of uses you could use now I my my my eyes perked up when I saw we could perhaps provide Wi-Fi know i spoke to it right so there would be open pins that could be used for all kinds of things even reading the water meters they mentioned in the proposal that we could possibly do them from the street lights which would be kind of futuristic we could incorporate it into the system but i don't think we'll go that route the software that goes with some of that stuff is really expensive yeah yes it did seem so um so all that being said i i and just to go back to this again

▶ 46:00 Monica C. Medeiros: so we have in here there's a guaranteed savings uh and we think we're going to come out at a net net zero or possibly some additional savings by doing this and we'll use less energy we're going to own more street lights can you talk about what street lights we don't own and we won't own as a result of this are there certain streets like is the lindfels parkway us we own all of them the one just to be clear we you know um lindfell's parkway that's that's all dcr so those won't get touched um and you know all around oak grove the um what's that access road that's not us either so that you know some people will ask but that's not those aren't our street lights So I think they pretty much counted everything.

▶ 46:49 Monica C. Medeiros: We matched up against all of our accounts and our inventory that we got from National Grid, which was rife with mistakes. So that's another for once. We won't be paying for lights that we don't have because we're going to clean up their inventory. So this is a great opportunity to just get everything in order. I personally, it drives me insane when there's so many streetlights out. And right now, as I drive around town, there's a ton that are out. And it makes me excited that this has the potential for a 10-year warranty, potential for the energy savings, reduced costs in the long term, certainly reduced maintenance because I know Mr. Shenna and I have talked about it, that there's nobody from DPW that's going out and checking our streetlights on a regular basis.

▶ 47:44 Gail Infurna: so you know anything that we can do to reduce those outages it's it's part of public safety it's part of our quality of life and having you know consistency and not that aggravation geez that lights out it probably doesn't bother other people as much as it bothers me but I definitely support this so thank you thank you very much Alderman Medeiros next we have Alderman Inferno please thank you very much my question was actually answered by you Martha about the one-year labor warranty and what would happen after that so I'm all clear that so I'll just say thank you very much for all your expertise and all the work that you do in this it certainly helps us understand it better and I think you've been a great community outreach person also to the

▶ 48:29 Mary Beth McAteer-Margolis: community so thank you for that thank you very much alderman inferno next we have alderman McAteer my goal is please thank you some of my questions have also been answered but what I wanted to know was so like in the future if the lights if a light isn't working will residents still have the option of calling that lights on number and reporting it or no most likely contact DPW directly okay we want to keep track of warranty issues right we want to make sure that the vendor responds so at that point in time sometime in the spring when we come out of winter will make a change and the existing contacts will be changed that contractor will go away we come in take all the calls and then deal with Siemens

▶ 49:20 Mary Beth McAteer-Margolis: on warranty issues okay and the proposed details slide indicates that they're to choose acuity autobahn series a TBS with field adjustable output features so is Is that the kind of thing you were talking about with the options? You can manually adjust the lumens up and down. Okay, because I know there were some that we had looked at in the past that people thought there was too big a spill over, and so those can be adjusted if it's necessary? There are slight adjustments. We can't go from off to, but we can slightly adjust it. But if somebody, I mean, if it's really shining in somebody's house or something and there are options for them to contact the options to contact to the yes someone and there also are house shields that you can put on so if you've got a lot of

▶ 50:18 Mary Beth McAteer-Margolis: light coming into your second floor because install house shields okay there but one of the things that we can't correct for our crooked bowls so you know even looking at some of the samples I noticed that you know they did different things in terms of putting light on the ground based on the arm or the pole being crooked right right so so they will adjust it to the best of their ability when they're out there on you know when they're doing the installation and my other request would be if there was any way to coordinate any of this with DCR for the fells way because in I mean I'm up and down the fells way all the time at night is probably many of us are and they are horrible and there's no

▶ 51:02 Mary Beth McAteer-Margolis: you can call people call all the time and there's no I understand the slate is the state is slowly but surely switching over to LEDs on their roads but it's a slow process yeah so I mean I don't know if there's any opportunity for us to encourage that or to say could we take a few of them over you know or anything like that but I think it really is in some areas it is it is a safety issue because there might be two or three out in a row so but um great job and really excited for it to support it thank you thank you alderman mccarty margolis next we have alderman bird please thank you mr chairman and uh thanks to both of you for the the updates and the presentation um i just had a quick question to put um the savings in context can you talk a little bit um either one

▶ 51:53 Jaclyn L. Bird: of you on the the utility line item that we usually have for running the street lamps like for the annual operating budget just so people have an idea of how much it costs annually and then what where the savings will be is it like two or three hundred thousand two hundred eighty thousand two hundred and eighty thousand okay so when they see the number you know that's just under a million after the green community grant and the national grid incentive i think it's helpful for people to understand what we're paying for the the electric bill on those um every year that's what we pay okay excellent that's all i have thank you mr chairman thanks to both of you Thank you Alderman Byrd, seeing no other Alderman in queue, is there a motion please?

▶ 52:31 Peter D. Mortimer: So moved. Recommend to accept. We have a motion to recommend the order for passage from Alderman Lemmerman. It was seconded by Alderman McAteer-Margolis. Seeing no further discussion, and this is also joined with the next order, just for the record. The acceptance of the grant, an acceptance of, Excuse me, a grant of the amount of 225,000 from the Department of Energy Resources, DOER, to the Green Communities Division and authorize the Mayor to execute a contract with the Department of Energy Resources. The motion has been made by Alderman Lemmerman, duly seconded by Alderman McAteer. My goal is to recommend these two conjoined orders for passage at our next board meeting on December 21st. All in favor, please say aye.

▶ 53:16 Peter D. Mortimer: Aye. Any opposed? Hearing none, these two orders will be recommended to the full board for passage. Thank you very much for the presentation, it was a very good job. The next order we have before us is order 2016-60. It is an appropriation in the amount of $1,292,665.29 from available free cash to various accounts as set forth herein. We are still under suspension. Mr. Della Russo, would you join us? And do you want anyone else with you, Mr. Della Russo, at this time? Good evening. Good evening, sir. Again. I believe that we follow down an order. The, in this order itself, the first is the $640,000 school other funding sources. and that is the amount of money that the city provides the school department

▶ 54:35 essentially been each fall in order to balance their prior years of the current year budget in this case FY 16s budget that was planned for and there I put that request in front of you this evening the the second one again we related to the school would be the medicaid transfer in three hundred thousand dollars again that's the same type of uh request that the board is familiar with from the past and we provide reimbursement to the school department for medicaid services that they provide the board's wish i'd i'll go through and each one one by one unless there's questions of whatever the pleasure of the board uh you you have the floor mr delaro so please please present it as you wish and then we'll proceed to we'll colloquy thank you the next um on the list would be um pine

▶ 55:32 banks uh ball field two sixty five thousand six sixty two seventy eight that um is joined by about four items down pine banks capital outlay ball field one for fifty thousand and each year in the fall we provide pine banks with the amount of 115 000 662.78 and that's within the budget that they provided the board in capital my hope this year and i've mentioned that to president on was that we may place that in the capital outlay section of the regular operating budget each year seeing that it may be more appropriate now going forward so you may see that change in the fy 17 budget and if you do you heard it here tonight from me as we move on the next one is a request for a stabilization fund deposit which the board is familiar with of fifty thousand dollars

▶ 56:37 right now there is one million six eighty seven two nineteen fifty in the stabilization fund of the city this would make it one million seven thirty seven to nineteen fifty and a very healthy balance and we've been very fortunate thank God not to have to draw on that for many years and I hope that continues the next is a request for $50,000 to put into the OPEB trust fund you saw that last year and prior we have to begin to address the obligation of health insurance liability no different than pensions responsibility and this is the contribution that I'm requesting for this year these items for the board's FSC have been spoken with with Standard and Poor's the outside auditors and I think you'll even find it on the reports

▶ 57:37 from both that it's important that we do that and show that we we are responsible and that we recognize we have that liability right now in the fund there's $125,850.13. If the board approves it, there will be $175,850.13. Next is suits and claims stabilization fund. I'm asking that $50,000 be deposited into that fund as well. And again, for the purposes of those here and those at home, no one can withdraw from these funds without the approval of the board of aldermen so the funds that are deposited can only be withdrawn upon approval of this board and again in that fund i'm asking that fifty thousand dollars be deposited there's currently six thousand six hundred forty dollars and fifty seven cents

▶ 58:31 that would bring it up to fifty six thousand six forty point fifty seven and i have spoken with the city solicitor and he believes this is reasonable and appropriate also as we move down essex north shore agricultural fifteen thousand nine forty three fifty five uh another student that makes five at the time of the budget there were four students we budgeted for four and has happened the prior year but year before last i believe the same event happened one more student decided to enroll and that's the additional cost next is municipal building repair 14 500 and uh i will defer that specifically to um john chena public works he does have a an itemized list of where he would ask that that be expended if the board approved it

▶ 59:28 i.t prior year bill 14 500 strictly telephone bills and mr pesos is also here this evening to speak to that if in fact the board would like to hear from him next one is myself 9 750 for the auditor's office this cost is for an actuary to do the next two years of the opb um study again that relates to health insurance and the liability of the city under gas b45 we're required to do that each two years um this is the cost that's the same cost as it was in the prior two years that we had to do it so there was no increase in cost um next is city solicitor prior year bills six thousand nine oh one and again uh mr van campen is here this evening that relates to the insurance cost for the city and um obviously at the time we do the budget

▶ 1:00:31 to the time that is finalized there can be changes in vehicles that are insured etc added to or removed and that reflects the additional cost and i think that happens again just about every fall we find that some type of adjustment that number is again is six thousand nine oh one moving down the list police radio systems upgrade six thousand five forty five sixteen and again i believe the police chief is here uh this evening there's questions on that he'd be i'm sure pleased to respond as we move down in fact i do want to mention on the next page uh police expense uniforms nine hundred and fifty dollars that is another item that the police chief can speak to this evening after rule of the board um as we move along we have uh expenses in the uh election i.e

▶ 1:01:28 city clerks offices acu vote maintenance of four thousand seven hundred city clerk expenses professional services four thousand city clerk salary overtime and i believe that the office is here this evening to address any specific questions related to that in the upcoming elections and the next one on the first page is Memorial Hall again prior bills 3,000 1280 a lot of the time we find that that additional cost is due to the volume of activities at Memorial Hall for example if you use more activities generally mean more utility costs electricity lights etc so essentially it's it's volume driven I believe farmers wrote is here tonight to speak to that if the board would like and the next page again election expenses professional services the final number

▶ 1:02:21 in total for them the request was the twenty seven hundred dollars for that purpose at the end of the day um in the event these orders are approved this evening we will have $935,746.05, and I'll repeat that, $935,746.05 remaining in free cash that we have yet to appropriate. Thank you. And again, I'll open the floor up to the board. Any questions, any department heads are here to help you. Thank you very much, Mr. De La Russo. alderman boyce hell please thank you very much it's very informative um what was the total free cash that was available this year it was 3 million 398 353. okay and we've been increasing that year by year for the past five years i believe um if you look there should be a list um i have a list

▶ 1:03:27 as a matter of fact hang on folks i'm sure you have everything right again through the chair to all the members uh this year again is three three million three ninety eight three fifty three last year as of july first two oh one four it was uh three million one eighty three oh twenty five prior year was two million one ninety five oh seventy four and 2012, it was $1,966,044, and in July 1st, 2011, it was $1,463,899. The five-year average is $2,441,279. So are we expecting to see that every year, an average of $2 million, plus or minus, one way or the other? it's difficult to estimate oftentimes and for a lot of reasons reasons that we can't control and I think that we will see that we use more of our funding

▶ 1:04:52 capacity to fund the regular operations as we move forward you'll see that next year out of necessity but we have to remember that and reflect on the fact that when the Department of Revenue certifies the free cash they look at your receivables they look at overdrawn accounts they look at your chapter 90 reimbursements they look at deficits they look at all every single fund I i have every single fund to see if we have any deficits that we're carrying and why i bring that up is because so much of that is beyond our control what i mean is we can submit requests for chapter 90 we can submit requests for snow and ice reimbursement it can be approved etc but the money does not come in the door at a certain time as far as they're concerned it never came in

▶ 1:05:46 so they can hit they'll charge the city that because even though you you have the money coming as if a certain data hasn't come in so they could reduce your free cash by half a million a million dollars in here just like that and that's what they do so our objective always is that we and again Bob I'm going around the corner just a little bit but I think it's important is that is that on our end, what we can control is what we budget. We control this number to the extent that we don't overextend ourselves. If we overextend ourselves, then you can end up with a zero free cash, a negative free cash. I remember when I was back, I came here in 92, it was over 2.9 million negative free cash. Negative, that means you had overextended yourself by almost $3 million.

▶ 1:06:38 You had no way to pay for it. You had overextended money that you didn't have coming in. So what we do is we control it by our level of expenditures. We have to watch what we spend. If you spend too much, you're not going to see results that are positive. So we control in this room, collectively, the budget. The budget is the biggest driver of this number, outside of everything else that happens. If we're prudent, if we're responsible, and if we say to ourselves, we have to account for the rainy day. We've had so many years. When the state cuts us in the middle of the year, the reason the city has not had to cut services because the way you budget, you're conservative. And you're able to sustain hits, because you don't put all your money out there, you hold back.

▶ 1:07:23 Because when the state cuts you half a million dollars, you want to have that in the bank. Regular general fund operating fund money, so you don't have to cut services. And that's what we do here. I have a structure that I use, and I've used for many, over 20 years, that I try my very, very best to insulate that so that when the bad thing happens in the middle of the year, we're protected. As you extend yourself too much and spend too much, and you start to crack those protective barriers, those ratios, then you open yourself up to problems, all kinds of problems. because then once you crack it and you can't fund your operating expenses then you have a significant problem it takes years and years and years to recover so

▶ 1:08:12 I guess the short answer is we should be pleased that we have this but reflect on the fact that a lot of this money also is permits one-time revenues that you're not going to ever get again period so a lot of that's going to vanish because Because once a lot of the big developments that are completed and those big permit fees go away, this will go just like that. So you want to keep yourself aware of that also, that this is not a real IE forevermore number we'd like it to be. But the practical reason is where we are, 96% residential, we have to be reasonable that we're not going to have all major developments each and every year to help us with this. So again, using it prudently and wisely is everything, because there's no guarantee whatsoever

▶ 1:08:58 it's going to be here next year. So you're saying we would be gambling, really, by depending upon this particular pot of money each year? Each year. I mean, I can't stress that enough. I sincerely strive so that we do have, at the end of the year, undesignated fund balance, which is really where it comes from. positive that allow us to have that but never never never run to the bank on that I don't run to the bank on what I can't control the DOR controls what this number is I may say geez I think it should be two million they'll turn around and say stop because of this this and this we're gonna reduce it by this amount no matter what even though it has nothing to do with you but because other

▶ 1:09:44 people haven't paid you but they owe you whether it's grants that they you were supposed to get we have the problem each and every year we have to chase a lot of the grants reimbursements chapter 90 another one and we have to chase our division because if we don't get that money in even though we're owed it they hit us against this and that makes the number smaller and smaller so we have to afford we can control let's control it but also continue to be very very aggressive and when we do get grants when we do are we told we're going to get a reimbursement it's upon us to chase them because and make sure we get the money in timely because no one's gonna wake up and look out for our interests if we don't in the order 2016 60 1.2 million dollars is being used as

▶ 1:10:30 Robert A. Boisselle: free cash yes you have two items here that represent point nine nine hundred thousand dollars out of the 1.2 I understand the Medicare Medicaid fund transfer where is the money going the six hundred and forty thousand or half a million dollars going to funding sources so what are the funding sources that we talk about here I can speak in general about it but I believe I would defer anything specific to school department but typically what happens is Can we have the school representatives just come in? Is other funding sources no different in my world? Just for the record, sir, I am Kristen Thorpe, the current chair of the school committee, and Margaret Driscoll, the incoming chair of the school committee.

▶ 1:11:29 Welcome and thank you for your presence here this evening. Please proceed, Alderman Boycelle. Well, yeah. The auditor. Very good, thank you, sir. then you'd see that they have whatever funds set up entitled other funding sources or other funding sources contractual and this is just like other applied funds this would be another source like we have on our own budget we have multiple funds that fund the operating budget of the city no different than the school department so they'll have other applied funds that will go towards funding their overall budget so this is just one of them this is one of many and that's why they count that as an element of their funding sources for the budget that it was just passed well my question is basically the 640,000 that's listed

▶ 1:12:17 Robert A. Boisselle: here you have in your budget one item or total expenses category six hundred and thirty nine thousand seven hundred and twenty eight dollars is that's what I'm trying to iron out is that 640 going to this particular account I don't know exactly what you're looking at that says well I'm looking at the munis budget that you submitted or the school committee submitted six months ago right but I don't know which line item is total total other expenses the bottom line for that particular category called other events are not the same thing no no okay if you go all the way to the end of the budget I'm at the end of the budget okay and the budget line is 27 million nine hundred seventy five thousand dollars other funding sources six hundred thousand dollars it doesn't

▶ 1:13:13 give six hundred thousand I'm looking in the budget itself not the expenses categories other expenses not other funding okay I I don't have that in front of me but I can say it's not it's not a single line item our entire budget then we subtract the amount that that we understand that you will that will be funded this way which was six hundred thousand dollars and then and then we come up with the bottom line at the very end and so this six hundred thousand dollars pays for staff which is 90% of our budget existing staff not new staff so you're using free cash to basically pay staff yes we're using free cash to fund six hundred thousand dollars of our total budget most of which is staff now

▶ 1:14:06 Robert A. Boisselle: if we didn't I mean the average that we were getting here that was represented was an average of 240 240 400 thousand or two million four hundred thousand that would have been a decrease if you couldn't get this six hundred and forty thousand this year we would have to cut staff or I mean it's really we've already bought our supplies we we are contractually obligated to pay for out of district placements really there's a plan there's a plan in place so there is no we do not have a current plan for no plan if you if we didn't have this free cash you you would go back to ground zero and we would make a plan you would make a plan we certainly would and the staff will be cut half-year and programs

▶ 1:14:52 would be disrupted it would have to be if we didn't get this $600,000 okay so you're you're planning ahead of time that you're going to get this money or where the city's going to get this money you get a share of that money at that point yes okay thank you very much and thank you for coming this evening thank you mr. chairman thank you alderman Boyce L president con is next please yeah what happened is we could all reflect back to the budget time and I can hear myself talking about this budget time and basically what we've been doing for over the last three years, is we've been being asked to balance the school budget with free cash. And this year, the past year, we voted to do that. And so this is essentially making the transaction that we talked about back at budget time.

▶ 1:15:50 So that's what this is all about. And the $300,000 Medicare, Medicaid fund transfer is something that we've done for many, many years. And I believe that's also something that the school department relies on. So this is essentially doing what we indicated we would do if we didn't actually vote to do it, but that's what we did. And I always have questions about that, and I'm sure I'll have questions again at budget time if this is the way we budget this again. I hope it's not, but we'll cross that bridge when we come to it. As it relates to free cash. Yes, sir. We could drive our free cash number down if we didn't go to the two and a half limit each year. We would be reducing our total budget expenditure and

▶ 1:16:47 we would have theoretically less money. Yeah, there's no question that if you didn't use your two and a half, you would be taking in less money, absolutely. Right. And therefore, spending less money. And it seems to me that we really now are in a position where we're kind of reliant on spending about a million five in free cash every year. doing the school transfers, and I've got to believe, and I haven't averaged it out, but I've got to believe we spend $500,000 per year in public safety over time transfers in each year. Couldn't agree more, and we haven't even crossed that bridge yet. I'm waiting for a determination as to what may be necessary in those departments. Both chiefs are working on that, but absolutely correct.

▶ 1:17:44 So if we had less than $1.5 million in free cash, we would be in some significant difficulty as far as I could see. I would second that as far as being able to address these issues, particularly where we had the past winter that was just absolutely horrendous. That took $1.2 million right off our top of the table, absolutely. That was unprecedented, unprecedented. and you know and i appreciate mr delarusso you can your conservative approach um if if i if i had all the power i might take her with the top two and a half number to try to calibrate this closely but uh maybe i would run us into difficulty if i did that and as it relates to this order um are some or all of these items time sensitive are these

▶ 1:18:38 things that have to be voted this month the most important one to me is the prior order was the determination of the snow and ice deficit because i have to literally contact the department of revenue first thing in the morning to advise them the action of the board on that particular item and then we that sets the clock for the um uh setting preparing tax the tax bills the whole process and that's very very time-sensitive that has to happen timely okay um and and we've already voted that theoretically that would pass absolutely at our meeting on the 21st and the the opeb stabilization account is not a mandated uh account as yet is it um it's it's it's not theoretically, they are treating it like it's one. They've already hit us on our financial

▶ 1:19:36 statements. Standard & Poor's has already made a reference that they're very, very concerned on how we're going to be able to pay that obligation, and that will begin to reflect on downgrades on every city and town in the Commonwealth unless something is done to become more reasonable with that expectation. Based on what we know today, we would have to put approximately eight million dollars more in a fund each year just to meet the debt obligation which is more than the five million plus that we do for the pensions and under proposition two and a half as everyone knows that's just not possible in this commonwealth and that won't happen but even though theoretically you're absolutely correct although they have not mandated they have

▶ 1:20:22 my mind it's a mandate and if I don't show representation here that we're addressing it they're not going to be happy. No, I think it's, it's sound financial management to try to get ahead of the curve on this because this does look like it's going to become a large unfunded mandate in the future. Sure is. So the $15,000 expenditure for Essex Agricultural is for one additional student? One additional student. And what program are they availing themselves there that we can't provide either at our regional vocational school? vocational um well i i uh they they do provide student enrollment and names of students and um i would i guess that that must represent the courses or the yes the the they're taken and

▶ 1:21:20 Mary Beth McAteer-Margolis: they one of them is environmental science and technology one's animal science another one's animal science another one's exploratory another one again is animal science so more than that i can't speak to that so these are all things that aren't offered at northeast regional i think that's all i have for now thank you thank you thank you president khan alderman mcateer margolis please um thank you mr chairman the um you mentioned the pine banks ball field funds um and did you say that next year you're hoping to put that into the budget yeah yeah i mean excuse me don't go away school committee people i'm working up to you okay happy to stay um is that an all so you would we're hoping that next year that can be part of the budget yeah my

▶ 1:22:10 Mary Beth McAteer-Margolis: that's my expectation for the chair and um i think it's i think it'll be more representative on a consistent basis of what our obligation is under the agreement with pine banks and also when they actually do present the budget each year um it won't be in a two-part scenario for funding it'll all be before you all in one package and i think it'll be very helpful because these are um appropriations that will continue they're not just uh for the repairs and the new ball fields that were built they are continuing the maintenance and whatnot of the fields so it is an operating budget expense and i think given the chair the uh the uh relationship we have with the trustees etc that it makes more sense and i mean my concern always i mean i'm i'm i'm pleased that we have as

▶ 1:22:59 Mary Beth McAteer-Margolis: much free cash as we do in order to satisfy these obligations but my concern is always that we are paying for things that are not one-time expenses with funds that we can't always rely on particularly as far as the school department is concerned so um you know i just i i fear that we're going to be going down that road if uh our free cash you know if we if we did not go to the levy limit would we then be decreasing the amount of our free cash correct in fact the matter is if if it would reduce the amount of funds you have available period right and one of the concerns we haven't talked too much about is that there are obligations under nesco spending that we have to meet under red reform and those are dollar obligations and they want to be we have to

▶ 1:23:57 Mary Beth McAteer-Margolis: ensure each year that we've met those so making things vanish if you make this vanish it may mean you don't meet the net school spending obligation for that year and then the state will not let you set your tax rate so it's not that simple that we can exit stage left on some of these expenditures and and by exiting stage left you mean cut the budget right so there are obligations that we have that go above and beyond our own little hamlet that we have to meet in and we have to I mean we can't just decide that we're going to be cutting the budget if we're not going to meet these other obligations and the state has made it very very crystal clear that if you don't meet your obligations there they will not set your tax rate until you take action to meet your

▶ 1:24:45 Mary Beth McAteer-Margolis: obligation period department of ed has spoken a lot of the dor supports it so every year we do reports for the school and devia we have to show that not only our contribution but all the work that the school department does together makes that happen and um so far thank god we've been able to do that but it is it's a dollar number and as you know it goes up every year right and as i i think probably um miss thorpe at least remembers the times in the past when we had mid-year cuts from the state absolutely and we had to do mid-year layoffs and whatnot so um It is a concern of mine, and I hope that we can continue to find other ways to fund these than just free cash. My one other question is related to the pension.

▶ 1:25:40 Mary Beth McAteer-Margolis: We don't, do we have a, we don't take any of our free cash money and put it towards the pension stabilization or the pension obligation. Well, we don't, for our regular pension obligation, chapter 32 in the regular budget, we use recurring revenue to fund your pension obligation. Right, okay. Here, where we have a fund, the OPEB, or the Post Employment Benefits Fund, that fund is where we're putting this money in. I'm sorry, which fund is it? OPEB. Okay, that's the OPEB. That's for the health insurance. Okay. it's like phase two now as we talked about there's pensions as health insurance and liability for both so that's in the same bucket the health insurance they are separate okay but now I mean I there may be a thought at some

▶ 1:26:30 Mary Beth McAteer-Margolis: point but the OPEB is the pension 50,000 to the pension no the OPEB is health insurance okay so we do not have a line item in oh no here for the pension at all no right okay thank you and thank you for your conservative approach so that we can continue to keep things afloat particularly in the school thank you for your support because I can't do my job without your support it won't happen thank you Thank You mr. Jim thank you alderman McAteer-Margolis seeing Oh alderman Medeiros please thank you I just want to first I want to make statement just in general in terms of free cash and since we've talked about it and you know one of the other options and I'm not saying that we should do this right now but some things that I've in some ways when we have free cash it's

▶ 1:27:28 Monica C. Medeiros: almost like we've collected or over collected from the tax base or maybe we've underspent but we're bringing in more money than we spent so there there is additional funds left over once we've reconciled all our expenditures that's That's why the state certifies that money as free cash. We're not over-collecting anything. We're only collecting what's legally allowed by law. We collected what's legally allowed by law, but we didn't spend all of it. Well, that's yes and no. I mean, the fact of the matter is, this is an accounting mechanism, an accounting tool. You don't have to do anything with your free cash. That can just sit there and be an undesignated fund balance, which is like a cash. Like the retained earnings.

▶ 1:28:11 each year and not do anything with this, you could just take this and rip it up and not do anything with it. You're not mandated to do anything with it. They're saying these are funds that through your operations of not spending as much as you anticipated, which is critical. You haven't spent as much as you anticipated. So there's a positive that adds to this number by simply not spending what you could have. So everyone, we share that thought with everyone. Now try to be as prudent as possible because the less you spend, the more it will be returned in that pool. Right, and some communities vote sometimes to return that to less than the next, to the tax payers to return the less than the next year's tax increases.

▶ 1:28:56 Monica C. Medeiros: You would have to be careful through the chair because if they have a structural deficit as we do, that would be a move that would be really improper. until your structural deficit is resolved now we would never go down that road back in June I think you said we didn't have a structural deficit so so I mean you know I had referred to it as that and they said oh no that's not what it is so it's just a little confusing I think to the public about what that is not confusing to me not confusing to me either but it is when we're told it's different things so yes just to go back to you know you mentioned that we've done this every year as President Kahn pointed out it has been the past three years that we've we've been using free cash and in my recollection three years

▶ 1:29:47 Monica C. Medeiros: ago around this time it came to us and it was a little bit of a surprise to me at the time because when we had gone through the budget that year I didn't realize that we were using free cash in order to balance the school budget and I feel like and I shouldn't speak for other aldermen but I feel like it was a little bit of a surprise to some of them as well at that time but my personal thoughts at that point were that I didn't want to put the school department in a place where they would have to cut things in the middle of the year and so now this the past two years after that we've we've done this in sort of a proactive manner if you will I think we've been a little bit more knowingly that we've been funding it this way although I don't I share the concerns

▶ 1:30:32 Monica C. Medeiros: about wondering if this is going to still be there the school Medicaid fund transfer in of $300,000 that's been done for quite a long time and I believe it's been that amount for quite a long time can you talk about why it is that we're sort of passing this through from the general fund and to the school department the law requires it the law requires it and this is a specific reimbursement for like you know almost everything has gone up is this a percentage is this a flat fee why is that number stayed at 300 000 when we've seen other expenditures go up if we're getting reimbursed is it only you know can you explain and talk about that sure we we don't predicate the amount of the 300 000 on the actual receipts taken in for that prior year we have made a

▶ 1:31:30 Monica C. Medeiros: determination that 300 000 is what we will provide the school department in that category to represent that cost but um that's why it doesn't have the standard with that you know a little bit more one year a little bit less than next year but our commitment to them for planning purposes is three hundred thousand dollars that's why it's there and my understanding is that was sort of a reimbursement that has to do with the medicaid portion of school salaries is that correct provided to students services and they get they get uh cost money to provide those services and there's a reimbursement process this is recognizing that and you mentioned that in many of the the different funding sources that we have grants and and other items that we're not always get

▶ 1:32:23 Monica C. Medeiros: receiving what we're owed in a timely fashion correct right um and i guess one of my questions here is on the police radio systems upgrade i see we have the the chief uh i had thought we we had expended some money or accepted a grant I my recollection could be that isn't for a radio system upgrade that's the reportable radios for our new officers we had some failures and they weren't able to be repaired so we had to replace the radios they're portable radios okay and and this is just kind of an overall thing that sort of bothers me a little bit about the way this this order has been presented to us and it's it's not uh from you chief so much as you know we we do have these two pages of the account names but we didn't really have too much detail beyond that as to

▶ 1:33:33 Monica C. Medeiros: what some of these expenditures was chief did did you provide like a memo or anything when you put a requesting and and i i'd just like to ask you know i guess mr delarusso because i think usually these are coming from from your offices when we see these rather large items that that we get a little bit more backup i know you've made yourself available by telephone for calls but you know i'd like to see us have information i know we have the department heads that are here which i'm very happy to see all of you but you know i i think respectfully we might not need to see them sitting here all night if we had a memo say for the three thousand dollars worth of prior bills at memorial hall you know kind of what that was about i've never done it any differently here we

▶ 1:34:24 are what you see is what you get on top of that we have the original invoices with us that's why we asked the department to be here this is the one for the insurance the six thousand nine oh one and it shows that all the detail one could possibly ask i don't know if that's in the past that's what we have that's what i'm saying that's but that's what the department had to have so if you have a question he can respond to you i think flooding the board with invoices was ridiculous that's why they're here this evening in case you have a question i think a a memo explaining some of these line items could be helpful and i've seen some of these in the past and i think that would help help me you do give a memo in the actual request there's a memo requesting there's like

▶ 1:35:09 Monica C. Medeiros: and he has how much information there's not that is not that's why he's here that's not included in our order that's why we have just these two pages and that's that's it but you never i did respectfully to the board i did put out a request that if anyone had any questions at all to call me directly and you did not let's let's try to talk one let's try to talk one at a time please available so that if you wanted a copy of this i'll give you whatever you want right i think moving forward i would like to see and i feel like i've mentioned this at previous meetings because you know it's it's not that that i can always pick up the phone and call during my work day to talk about this and it's that i think it should be there for all of us to see and for the

▶ 1:35:54 Monica C. Medeiros: public to see consistently not just in a phone call and uh i respectfully disagree with the information you have provided is more than adequate for conversation discussion of any order we give the board it has not changed in all the years i've been here and i've been i've been doing this for my 24th year sometimes just because it hasn't changed doesn't mean we can't do it better and i think exceptionally well quite frankly yeah so i don't agree with that so chief Chief, these are for three portable radios. Yes. And police uniforms. Are these additional uniforms? Are these that were, have these been included in any of the collective bargaining agreements, or was this included in our- Every officer that is hired, a new officer, we supply them with safety vests.

▶ 1:36:42 When we see an officer in a detail, they're provided a safety vest. We hired five officers this year. We had five vests. In addition to that, we needed holsters. officers are lefties some are righties we always keep a couple spares because they do break and that's what this is all for thank you chief lyle i also was kind of wondering if we could have some explanation on the line items related to elections and the city clerk's office absolutely hi good evening i i see that you have a few line items here could you kind of explain what these expenditures are and you know why we didn't have them in the budget and and talking to me out of of election law okay that's you that's city clerk professional services we

▶ 1:38:14 added twenty seven hundred dollars to professional services as you know I'm a one-person office and we had a busy election and with absentee voting and everything I can't do it all so we need to have somebody in there to help me just answering phones, doing absentee voting. Absentee voting is at an all-time high, and with the presidential year, we have the primary on March 1st. I need to have somebody in there. I can't do it all on my own. Yeah, just the stuff that's coming up. I mean, we have the census going out January 1st. We have campaign financing. We have the presidential primary ballots are going be available as of january 15th the elections march 1st um there's just too much to be done

▶ 1:39:02 so this is more for the the coming year or the well it's just for march yeah and it's because this election was so crazy that we weren't expecting it to be that i needed more help so we used most of the budget where we usually only i only usually get someone 15 hours a week for six weeks during election that's all I get and will you have early voting early voting will be just for the presidential election in November so that that's gonna be insane I'm gonna need a full-time person because it's we have at least twelve to fourteen hundred people absentee vote during a presidential year I can't imagine how many will come into the office when early voting is an option but we'll discuss that when they come for next

▶ 1:39:50 year's budget but yeah that's so that's just to cover much and then I have the acuvote this one is to press professional services and then acuvote maintenance is my other option that where we hired because of our equipment being old which we have discussed a few times our machines are over 20 years old we rented two machines which are now a thousand dollars apiece and we hired a person from LHS who runs does all our programming and everything to come in and work election day from 6 a.m. until 9 p.m. in case something went wrong and we think we should do it again for March we did look into the machines but we wanted the other cities to get the bugs out before we ordered them because there are a few issues people are having with them and we don't want to do it during a

▶ 1:40:49 presidential year so we are looking into purchasing all new equipment because we have to it's not really an option if they're 20 years old and we need to move to a better machine so for the next three elections we're going to need additional the machines there in case one breaks down and we're going to need the person there to be on call in case something goes wrong and uh the city clerk uh expense or expense expense professional services and overtime okay well the overtime um is the overtime um linda comes in my budget salaries and wages so her overtime is through my budget and the overtime was really for the election so it says city clerk election overtime okay that's 3 500 and then i'm requesting 4 000 professional services and that is um from january 1st this

▶ 1:41:50 is to process um for the dogs registration starting january 1st i'm requesting 4 000 because we now have like close to 1900 dogs that we register and we bring in close to 40 000 a year and this we need additional help to process the dogs the dogs okay so we've gone to the dog i couldn't help it all right thank you very much um and i see in the back mr pesos thank you good evening good evening um so we have some prior year bills yes i refer to this as mostly being telephone these are mostly telephones uh so of the fourteen thousand dollars that are there uh approximately about ten thousand of those are uh overages for the previous year and the 4,000 of that were some bills that did not get encumbered in time so

▶ 1:43:01 even though the money was there they did not get paid so they had to be kind of rolled into this request here when you say overages are these like mobile phones or these just regular these are these are a variety of different land lines yes so these are mostly different landline services in in your experience does this happen frequently i can't recall it it it does and uh for this year we tried to budget this number more precisely than we have in past years so the this request in prior years was a lot larger than this um this request ordinarily um with the exception of that 4 000 that was just bills that didn't get encumbered in time it's about would have been about ten thousand dollars um which is a lot less than it has been in prior years i've come in the past looking for fifty to

▶ 1:43:53 sixty thousand dollars a year uh in overages because we didn't budget that number as tightly really as it should have been okay thank you thank you very much for coming thank you uh and i see uh I see we have $3,012.80 in prior years bills I had a 17% increase in events from the year before I'm level funded for electricity and gas so I just at the end of the year didn't enough money to pay for guests 17 increase in events in in a number of events in a number of events and i also had an increase in the hours a lot of our events last year were eight hour rentals instead of five hour rentals and also we had uh three percent of my events actually they were for four per day so that means i'm eating the entire day or ac and all day very good thank you

▶ 1:45:06 Monica C. Medeiros: you and I think last but not well not quite last but we've mr. Shana on the maintenance municipal building repair 14,500 these funds are being used to purchase some new furniture desks and office furniture in the training room and the mezzanine mayor's conference room and the office of planning and community development so these are really hopefully one-time expenditures yes we will be doing all the painting we've done some of the painting ourself and house cleaning the rugs and this is just gonna update those those three locations with some new furniture Thank You mr. shut up mr. de la Rousseau I have to be honest with you that the item that really bothers me on this list here is the Essex North Shore agricultural line item because prior to our budget

▶ 1:46:23 Monica C. Medeiros: hearings I had sent over a number of requests related to the school budget for questions so that I would do it in advance I know they were a lot of questions and at the time you had indicated that you know there were some questions that I had asked that might interfere with the collective bargaining so I stressed the ones that I was really interested in and one in particular was about Essex Aggie and this was because a constituent had come to me and said that his son was on the waiting list there and it sparked a memory that back in March we had appropriated some extra money for an additional student and at the time it had stuck out to me because I thought it was rather late in the year for us to be noticing that we had an extra student at the time it seemed like

▶ 1:47:27 Monica C. Medeiros: it was just some accounting and so I did bring up this question about how many students would be going next year I noticed it was the same exact amount as as the superintendent's memo from march that we had budgeted in this current fiscal year's budget and if that was going to be adequate and if perhaps if we had additional students on the waiting list was that factored in uh that night in june 22nd in our budget meeting i specifically asked you and mr percon if if there if that budget number was enough and if there was any students on the waiting list and you both kind of looked at each other and answered that no that there there weren't at this time and i really knowing that i had had this call

▶ 1:48:19 Monica C. Medeiros: from my constituent i i second guessed myself and i second guessed you i have to be honest and i went and i checked with essex aggie and in fact we had a student on the waiting list and you know that we had already applied and was on the waiting list and works they were expecting five students to come at that time and you know I don't know whether you checked with Essex Aggie or not but I feel like you weren't 100% truthful with me at that time and I found that to be disrespectful to me and and to this board and to the public and and it's also more troublesome because here we are and we have to of course fund that student and I I waited to say something because I really hoped that you know perhaps you'd come to me and

▶ 1:49:18 Monica C. Medeiros: tell me that geez you know you had overlooked this and it had been a mistake but you know it's here and obviously we need to pay for that student but I'm kind of disappointed in the fact that my questions from budget time still haven't been answered and in fact that one really wasn't answered a hundred percent truthfully I want to speak to the chair that's an ignorant comment because it shows you're incapable incapable of understanding how this budget is put together and it's a disgrace that you would make that comment to me in front of this board and impugn my integrity well you are you are deserving of nothing less than an indirect answer which I'm going to give you at that time that's the number we were told that's the number I budgeted

▶ 1:50:08 mr. McCone and I sat there we waited to the last moment I got this invoice dated 1119 that I was advised there was an additional student did you check that thought that you would impugn me and suggest that it's my responsibility to go to to do this due diligence in an effort that is never ever been upheld in the past really disgust me and that respectfully to the board I have nothing else to say about this order Alderman Medeiros you still have the floor now please yes I guess I'll just opine a little bit to say that I would think that if I had asked that question that they might have double-checked with the school and with their own records because it's this our city superintendent public schools that

▶ 1:50:58 submit those applications so they should and mr picon was here and was involved in those requests and i think they should know that information they may not have realized that they needed to know it until i asked it but certainly they should have asked it thank you thank you alderman medeiros are there any other alderman wishing to be heard i recommend the We have a motion from President Kahn to recommend this order for passage. Duly seconded by Alderman McAteer-Margolis. Any further discussion on this motion? Alderman Bird, please. I'm going to be brief. I just want to say that I understand wanting to have accountability and wanting to have information. This is the second time in a month that I have seen an exchange between a member of the board and

▶ 1:51:51 Jaclyn L. Bird: department head that you know has been adversarial I don't think that that's the most constructive way for us to move forward we have real challenges here I mean we have I think we've done an incredible job if you'll give me a minute because this is one of my last meetings I think we've done an incredible job putting as collectively all of us everybody in this room everybody around the horseshoe here putting money into stabilization accounts putting money into trust funds making sure that we're taking care of those savings pieces I also think it is important to ask the right questions I think we each have a different appetite for how much information we want on some of these details and how specific we want people to be but when I look at the

▶ 1:52:36 Jaclyn L. Bird: fact that we have you know real funding issues with the schools that we are concerned about the reliance on free cash I think that one of the best things that we can do going forward is to make sure that we're all on the same team team here you know we have to make sure of that this six hundred forty thousand dollars that we you know I don't like to call it an IOU because that seems like we're doing something wrong but if we didn't have that IOU to the schools would be cutting six hundred forty thousand someplace there's no way to get around the fact that it's either carry it over with free cash make cuts for somewhere else in the 72 million dollar budget or raise revenue which the city just voted against so we have real issues we need real solutions but I

▶ 1:53:16 Jaclyn L. Bird: think we need to have a recognition that we're all on the same page on that and you know and give each other the benefit of the doubt and in and and be respectful to one another I don't see this getting easier over the next couple of months as we look at this budget and I certainly hope that it's approached with a spirit of coming together on that so you know I respect both of you I think that you know you both play an important role here and that's all I have to say Mr. Chairman, I'm certainly going to support the order. Thank you, Alderman Byrd. Seeing no further Alderman wishing to be heard, a motion to recommend this order for passage was duly made by President Kahn and duly seconded by Alderman McAteer-Margolis.

▶ 1:54:01 Peter D. Mortimer: All in favor, please say aye. Aye. Any opposed? Hearing none, this order will be recommended to the full board for passage at our next meeting on December 21st. We have one final order before us. It is order 2016-61. It is acceptance of an EMD FY 2016 training grant in the amount of $72,724.91 from the Commonwealth of Massachusetts Executive Office of Public Safety, DOPS. Chief, would you come forward? We're still under suspension. Motion to recommend. Second. We have a motion to recommend by Alderman Boisselle. Second. Duly seconded by Alderman Lemmerman. On discussion first, we'll hear from you, Chief. I'll give you a brief overview. This is a grant that we've applied for the past several years.

▶ 1:54:56 It's a two-part grant. It's the EMD, Emergency Medical Dispatch, and our training. Annually, each officer has to complete 16 hours of in-service training for our 911 system. the EMD grant that portion is $18,000 we have an EMD resource Cataldo ambulance handles that for us so a 9-1-1 call comes in for a medical it's transferred from our dispatch to Cataldo ambulance who deciphers it it's a BLS or an ALS call they contact Melrose fire they respond appropriately and we pay eighteen thousand dollars for that resource it seems to be the best way for for us to handle it at this time liability wise and other the 16 hours of in service for all our officers we have three positions in the police department

▶ 1:55:44 Peter D. Mortimer: and dispatch one is unstaffed so that's why the entire police department has to be trained in that for the 16 hours that's pretty much it Thank You chief anyone wishing to be heard on this seeing none there was a motion to recommend before us made by alderman boyce allen duly seconded by alden leberman all in favor please say aye aye any opposed hearing none this order will be recommended for passage i do have one more point i should have brought it up this is a non-matching grant yes that was that was in the literature thank you are we good to adjourn we have a motion to adjourn from alderman forbes who seconded that please second second by alderman inferna all in favor please say aye aye any opposed

▶ 1:56:27 Peter D. Mortimer: Hearing none, the Committee on Appropriations is adjourned. Thank you, one and all.

Appropriations & Oversight Committee — 2015-12-10

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