City Council — 2016-05-02
Attendance
Robert A. Boisselle ; Donald L. Conn Jr. ; Scott M. Forbes ; Gail Infurna ; Jennifer L. Lemmerman ; Mary Beth McAteer-Margolis ; Monica C. Medeiros ; Peter D. Mortimer ; John N. Tramontozzi ; Francis X. Wright Jr. ; Michael P. Zwirko
Agenda
- Call to Order
- ORDER-2016-156 : Joint Meeting of the Board of Aldermen and the School Committee to be held at 7:00 p.m. on Monday, May 2, 2016, in the Aldermanic Chamber, City Hall, Melrose, MA, on the Financial Condition of the City, revenue and expenditure forecasts, and other relevant information in preparation of the FY2017 Operating Budget.
- Public Participation
- Adjournment
Minutes
CITY OF MELROSE BOARD OF ALDERMEN BULLETIN● MAY 2, 2016 Aldermanic Chamber Joint Meeting with the School Committee 7:00 PM
ORDER-2016-156 Joint Meeting/School Committee Joint Meeting of the Board of Aldermen and the School Committee to be held at 7:00 p.m. on Monday, May 2, 2016, in the Aldermanic Chamber, City Hall, Melrose, MA, on the Financial Condition of the City, revenue and expenditure forecasts, and other relevant information in preparation of the FY2017 Operating Budget. Attendee Name Title Status Arrived Robert A. Boisselle Ward 4 Alderman Present Scott M. Forbes Ward 7 Alderman Present Gail M. Infurna Ward 5 Alderman Absent Jennifer L. Lemmerman Ward 2 Alderman Present Mary Beth McAteer-Margolis Alderman at Large Absent Monica C. Medeiros Alderman at Large Late 7:04 PM Peter D. Mortimer Ward 6 Alderman Present John N. Tramontozzi Ward 1 Alderman Present Francis X. Wright Jr. Ward 3 Alderman Present Michael P. Zwirko Alderman at Large Present Donald L. Conn Jr. President, Alderman at Large Present Roll Call: School Committee Members Present: Christine Casatelli Lizbeth DeSelm Mayor Robert Dolan Margaret Driscoll (Chairman) Jessica Dugan Jaime McAllister-Grande Edward O'Connell Patricia White-Lambright, Asst. Supt. of Pupil Personnel in attendance for Supt. Cyndy Taymore Chair/Pres. Conn - stated that the Mayor would present his Budget first and would be followed by Public Participation. Motion: Suspend Rules to hear from Mayor Dolan City of Melrose Page 1 6/8/2016 4:31 PM Minutes Board of Aldermen May 2, 2016 By: Alderman Mortimer, 2nd Alderman Forbes - motion carried Mayor Dolan came forward and delivered a speech on budget and the financial condition of the city. Mayor Dolan gave the following presentation: Good evening. Tonight I present the FY 17 City of Melrose budget in the amount of $75,328,574.79. This represents a consistent practice of conservative budgeting during my term as Mayor. This is a balanced budget that was developed using a combination of efficiencies, new revenue, and reductions. The majority of the increases we see in this budget reflect increases in health insurance costs, contracted salaries and wages, and necessary operational adjustments. This budget also represents the most transparent budget in our city's history. There is unprecedented direct access through the Melrose Visual Budget, which citizens can review at any time. The Visual Budget also provides projections and a clear breakdown of where your taxes go. The concerns that I presented last year remain. The Federal Government is withdrawing, and any state assistance is partially offset by increased assessments for the charter school and other state obligations. Furthermore, our city's demographics are changing, which is reflected in increased enrollment from pre-K to grade 3. This has resulted in the need to hire additional staff to accommodate this growth with limited new revenue. This budget does not irresponsibly compromise reserves, and it reflects the will of the people as stated in the last election regarding spending and the decision not to raise our levy limit to increase revenue. Although these constraints present an operational challenge, the city is moving forward with many important initiatives. We will be finishing the renovation of Melrose High School in the summer, as well as the Hoover School project. Essex Street will also be completed this summer, finishing the revitalization of all our business districts. Our Master Plan Committee will complete their work and present us with an updated blueprint for the city. We will see the final results of the preservation of the Beebe Estate, and the sole new position in the City budget is the hiring of a Substance Abuse Prevention Coordinator. This addition will advance the good work that has taken place to fight the great epidemic of our time, which is opiate addiction. I must be clear: The challenging times that we faced in the past never prevented this administration from taking on major issues in this community head on and finding solutions. We have found solutions to problems in the worst of times that were never solved in the best of times. That is going to continue, and I would like to focus on that this evening. First is the challenge of increasing the capacity of our public schools to accommodate an influx of new students in the lower grades. Some say this challenge has been brought on by our community's collective success, and I believe that is true. Many communities are seeing decreases in their school populations, but families are coming to Melrose in droves with young City of Melrose Page 2 6/8/2016 4:31 PM Minutes Board of Aldermen May 2, 2016 children, revitalizing our city and our schools. Melrose is a fantastic place to live, and now everyone knows it. But there is no more space. The Roosevelt and Lincoln schools next year will each have four kindergartens and four first grades. The greater challenge is that the following year there will be four kindergartens, four first grades, and four second grades, and so on and so on into the immediate future. I thank God for the sound planning that this city went through in the early 2000s, when all indications and demographic studies pointed toward decreasing populations in the Melrose Public Schools and the city itself. We chose to build the Lincoln and Roosevelt schools to fit a far larger capacity than was needed at the time or projected for the future, because we were building a school for the next 50 years, not the next 10. We built a middle school that was far bigger than was necessary for the number of students attending at the time and bigger than all demographic studies projected in coming years. We renovated Melrose High School to eliminate open spaces, putting in formal classrooms and dramatically improving the inferior design of the original building, which was built in the 1970s. We planned for the future properly, but the growth in the school-age population is unprecedented, incredibly fast, and happening all over our city-not just in one neighborhood. We have built a desirable community that was once a hidden gem and now is the hottest real estate market in America. And that is not stopping any time soon. No one could have predicted this dramatic an increase. It is not just a Winthrop School challenge. It's not a Horace Mann challenge or a Roosevelt School challenge. It is a city-wide phenomenon. Thankfully, we chose not to sell off our schools once they were closed, as we did with the Coolidge and Washington schools in the 1980s. The Beebe and the Ripley are revenue centers outside the tax base and are absolutely crucial to the budget of the Melrose Public Schools, and they also provide space for the SEEM Collaborative, which serves Melrose students. The Franklin School is a model of early childhood education throughout the Commonwealth of Massachusetts, providing exceptional and unique services to Melrose families. The Superintendent is in the process of formulating a plan in the coming months that will create an economically and educationally sustainable solution to this issue, which has few options. But one solution is not viable. The reopening of the Beebe School is not a sound option. First, the incoming kindergarten class needs 15 classrooms. The Beebe is not big enough to fit this year's incoming class, with only 12 classrooms. The reopening of the Beebe or an addition to a current elementary school would not only not solve the problem, it would force the redistricting of the entire city, creating a domino effect of movement from school to school and affecting hundreds of families with involuntary transfers. That massive citywide disruption should not be considered. The Beebe also would have dramatic infrastructure startup costs of over $1 million. The cost for new staff, new administrators, and new facilities staff would be another $300,000. And the loss of rental revenue, which is $210,000 per year, in a budget that has already been substantially reduced, makes no financial sense. And I must repeat: The Beebe is not big enough to hold our kindergarten class. Therefore, its space would be obsolete, and we would be facing the same issue again in a few short years. When we talk about the possibility of additions to schools, or building new schools, that is also City of Melrose Page 3 6/8/2016 4:31 PM Minutes Board of Aldermen May 2, 2016 not a viable option. We can't build our way out of this challenge. Major construction projects are completely cost prohibitive within the current Proposition 2 ½ levy, and operationally are not financially sustainable within our city's tax base in future years. But the fact remains that collectively, the Melrose School Committee and this Board of Aldermen have to work together with the Superintendent of Schools, because in school year 2017-18 there is not enough space in our elementary schools under the current configuration, and when the Superintendent presents a plan in the coming months, that plan must be sustainable financially and operationally for at least the next 10 years under our current revenue models. At the end of this month the Superintendent will present her proposal, which will require the cooperation of each of you and the city as a whole. The financial challenges of water and sewer rates are not simply a Melrose issue. It's a burden shared by the 61 cities and towns under the Massachusetts Water Resources Authority. I believe that we have an obligation to the citizens of Melrose to do our best to make things better through spending controls and reforms. However, we have two obligations when it comes to water and sewer rates: 1. Our rate structure must be legal under the laws of the Commonwealth of Massachusetts, and 2. The amount of revenue attained through this rate formula must meet our fiduciary obligation to the MWRA. This Board of Aldermen has learned in the past that when the rates do not meet that financial obligation, the Department of Revenue will come to Melrose, as they did a few years ago, and demand that we institute conservative practices to ensure the solvency of both the water and the sewer fund. But tonight, with the orders I am submitting to you, I am tackling this issue in a manner not done by any Melrose mayor since the MWRA was established in 1985. 1. For 30+ years, the recommendation for water rate setting was usually done in DPW offices, without a full public process outside of the vote by the Board of Aldermen to set the rates. We have created the most open process of rate setting in the city's history. We have a Water and Sewer Committee that includes a member of the Board of Aldermen and meets publicly and openly year-round. The commission discusses not only rates but all issues regarding infrastructure, policy, and mandates. This process is an open book. 2. In previous years my administration has sent down a single recommendation for water and sewer rates. In FY 2017, we are sending down ten options to this Board of Aldermen and the citizens of this city. Four are recommended by the Water and Sewer Commission. All options meet the two criteria of legality and meeting our fiduciary responsibility. This board has never been given so many options before. 3. All ten proposals eliminate pro-ration permanently in the City of Melrose. This has been a major point of contention for a number of years, and we are going to solve it, with the new rates starting in October. 4. For the first time, senior discounts on water and sewer will be available to all qualifying senior citizen property owners, whether they own their own home or live in a condominium. This has also been an unsolved challenge for a number of years, in City of Melrose Page 4 6/8/2016 4:31 PM Minutes Board of Aldermen May 2, 2016 particular for seniors living in condominium complexes where the units are not individually metered. 5. We will develop an opt-in program for monthly water and sewer billing in the City of Melrose. We will begin with large commercial properties to work out any kinks that may arise, and then provide citizens an opt-in option to pay monthly rather than quarterly to help manage their finances. 6. In the fall, we will present to the board the most aggressive inflow and infiltration capital improvement plan in the city's history. My administration has made every effort to hear citizens' concerns, and these proposals answer many of them. When given the authority, we do our very best to help ratepayers, to be more flexible, and to provide more choices to the Board of Aldermen. We have done all of these things with these proposals, and I am proud of these solutions. In addition to the water and sewer solutions, my administration has expanded several important discounts and exemptions for seniors and families with low income. In Fiscal Year 2016, we will grant approximately $42,000 in solid waste fee discounts, up from $37,000 in 2015. We anticipate this number increasing to approximately $84,000 in 2017. We saw an increase in low income water discounts of $77,000 in 2015 to $99,000 in 2016, an increase of over $22,000. Our reformed senior tax workoff program grew from 18 participants in 2015 to 27 in 2016, and we are already at 40 applications for the upcoming fiscal year. Beginning in September we will have the first of two drop in events to educate and enroll eligible citizens in our discount programs for water, sewer, property taxes, and solid waste, as well as veterans' benefits. We invite all citizens to meet personally and confidentially with the city hall team in a "one stop shopping" environment to help eligible citizens to continue to live and thrive in our community. It is always a priority to balance operational needs with affordability, particularly for those citizens who are on fixed incomes. In 2002 I formed a group of highly qualified citizens to assist me in taking on the great infrastructure challenge of our time, which was the middle school-high school complex. Would it be a new building, renovation, collaborative space? The options were endless. The committee completed a comprehensive study of the problem, analysis and community input was provided, and the process culminated in a community vote to rebuild Melrose Veterans Memorial Middle School. I believe it was a historic moment in our community that has brought us to the great place we are today as a city. Tonight, I call on the civic leaders in this room and the citizens of Melrose to rise up and take on another great challenge, which is the state of our public safety facilities City of Melrose Page 5 6/8/2016 4:31 PM Minutes Board of Aldermen May 2, 2016 Tonight I announce the formation of the public safety building committee, chaired by former Fire Chief John O'Brien and Planning Director Denise Gaffey. The committee will also include Melrose Firefighter and Lieutenant Colonel Robert Driscoll, former Chief of the Somerville Police Department Charlie Femino, School Building Committee Chairman John McLaughlin, architect Joe Nevin, DPW director John Scenna, historic preservationist Ward Hamilton, Police Chief Michael Lyle and Fire Chief Chris Leary. I have asked President Conn to appoint a member of the Board of Aldermen. We can no longer put off this challenge. In the fall I will seek funding for a comprehensive analysis and study. I know over the past 50 years studies have been done regarding this challenge, but this administration has never put a study on a shelf to collect dust. We have put studies into action and completed every initiative put before us, and this will be no different. I thank these volunteers for their efforts, and I look forward to this community journey. It is said every journey starts with a single step, and tonight, we have taken it. The budget process is now in the hands of the Board of Aldermen, as the legislative body of the city. Once the budget is passed, this is not the end of the process but the beginning of a new year. And like every new year, there are new resolutions and opportunities, but it can never be forgotten that the process must be guided by the citizens of Melrose. In that light, I would like to end by reaffirming my core belief to each of you that we are a community that promotes and involves an active citizenry, that works in partnership with a responsive government, that manages this City in a thoughtful, honest, and accountable manner. I thank each of you for your service, and I offer this budget for your consideration and passage. City of Melrose Page 6 6/8/2016 4:31 PM
Transcript
▶ 0:00 Okay, if the room could come to order please. Welcome everybody. My name is Donald Conn. I'm the president of the Melrose Board of Aldermen. I'm joined here this evening by Margaret Friscoll, chairman of the Melrose School Committee, and we are assembled here this evening so that Mayor Dolan can discharge his duty of giving a budget presentation which is required by the Charter of the City of Melrose. Ms. O'Shea, could you call the role of the joint bodies please? I'll start with the Alderman. Alderman Boisselle. here here alderman forbes here here alderman inferno alderman lemmerman here here alderman McAteer-Margolis alderman Medeiros alderman mortimer here here alderman Tramontozzi here here alderman wright here here alderman Zwirko here here president khan here here eight present
▶ 0:56 oh no the school committee members christine casatelli here here was um to sell them here here mayor robert dolan here here margaret driscoll here here jessica dugan here here jamie mcallister grande here here and edward o'connell yeah yeah and superintendent Cindy came over here representative is here representative is in attendance is she any time representative is in attendance oh okay miss Patty white Lambray is here representing the superintendent seven members present okay we have a quorum of both parties could you please rise and join me in saluting the flag of the United States of America One nation, under God, indivisible, with liberty and justice for all. In accordance with the Massachusetts Open Meeting Law, this meeting is being videotaped and will be rebroadcast on local cable television.
▶ 2:08 We're going to do things a little bit differently this evening. We are going to hear from Mayor Dolan, if you vote that you wish to hear from him, which I hope you will. And then we are going to entertain public participation. participation chair would entertain a motion to suspend the rules so that we can hear from the mayor don't move mr. second all the morning removes that we suspend the rules to hear from mayor Dolan the motion seconded by alderman Forbes on the motion all those in favor aye anyone opposed mr. May could you come forward please Thank You president Kahn chairman Driscoll my colleagues in government department heads and citizens of Melrose good evening tonight I present my 15th budget to the citizens of Melrose the FY 17 city of Melrose
▶ 3:03 budget is in the amount of 75 million three hundred twenty eight thousand five hundred seventy four dollars and 79 cents this represents a consistent practice of conservative budgeting during my 10 years mayor this is a balanced budget that has been developed using a combination of efficiencies new revenues and reductions the majority of increases we see in this budget reflects the increases in health insurance costs contracted salaries and wages and necessary operational adjustments this budget also represents the most transparent budget in our city's history there is unprecedented direct access to the Melrose visual budget which every citizen can review at any time the The visual budget also provides projections for our future in a clear breakdown of exactly where your taxes go.
▶ 3:58 The concerns that I presented last year at this time remain. The federal government is withdrawing. Any state assistance we get is partially offset by increased assessments for things like the charter school and other state obligations. our city's demographics are changing which is reflected in the increases enrollment from pre-k to grade 3 this has resulted in the need to hire additional staff in our schools to accommodate this growth with very limited revenue this budget does not irresponsibly compromise our city's reserves and it reflects the will of the people as stated in the last selection regarding spending and the decision not to raise our levy limit to increase revenues although these constraints do present operational
▶ 4:51 challenges the city is moving forward with many important initiatives we will be finishing the renovation of Norris high school this summer as well as the Hoover School project Essex Street will be completed this summer also finishing the revitalization of all of our business districts our master plan committee will complete their work and present us with an updated blueprint for blueprint for our city we will see the final results of the preservation of the bb estate in the sole new position in this city budget is the hiring of a substance abuse prevention coordinator this addition will advance the good work that has already taken place to fight the greatest epidemic of our time which is opiate addiction i must be clear the challenging times that we faced in the
▶ 5:38 past never prevented this administration from taking on major issues this community has had head on and finding solutions we have found solutions to problems in the worst of times that were never solved in the best of times and that will continue and i would like to focus on those things this evening first is the challenge of increasing the capacity of our public schools to accommodate an influx of new students in the lower grades some say this challenge has been brought on by our own communities collective success and I believe that's true many communities are seeing decreases in their school populations but families are coming to Melrose in droves with young children revitalizing our city our neighborhoods and our schools Melrose is a fantastic
▶ 6:29 place to live and now everybody knows it. But there is no more space in our elementary schools. The Roosevelt and the Lincoln schools next year will each have four kindergartens and four first grades. The greater challenge is that the following year there'll be four kindergartens, four first grades and four second grades and so on and so on in the immediate future. I thank God for the sound planning that this city went through in the early 2000s when all indications pointed in demographic studies showed that we would be seeing decreasing populations in the melrose public schools and this city itself we chose we chose to build the lincoln roosevelt schools to fit a much larger capacity than that was needed at the time and that every study thought we'd need in
▶ 7:22 the future because we weren't building schools for one or two years we were building them for the next decade plus we built a middle school that was far bigger than that was necessary for the number of students attending at the time and bigger than all demographic studies provided in years to come we renovated morris high school to eliminate open space putting in formal classrooms dramatically improving the inferior design of the original building that was built in the 1970s We planned for the future properly, but the growth in the school-age population today is unprecedented, incredibly fast, and happening all across the city, and not just in one neighborhood. We have built a desirable community that was once a hidden gem, but is now the hottest real estate market in the United States of America, and that's not stopping anytime soon.
▶ 8:17 No one could have predicted this dramatic increase. it is not just a winthrop school challenge it's not a horace man challenge or a roosevelt school challenge it is a city-wide phenomenon but thankfully we chose not to sell off our schools once they were closed as we did in the coolidge in the in the washington schools in the 1980s the bb and the ripley are revenue generating centers outside the tax base and they're absolutely critical to the school budget which is already incredibly strained they also provide space for the same collaborative which serves melrose students the franklin school is a model of early childhood education throughout the commonwealth of massachusetts providing exceptional and unique services to melrose families our superintendent is in the process
▶ 9:08 of formulating a plan in the coming month that will create an economically and educationally sustainable solution to this issue but there are painfully few options but one solution is not viable the reopening of the bb school is not a sound option first the incoming kindergarten class needs 15 classrooms the bb is not big enough to fit this year's incoming class with only 12 classrooms the reopening of the bb or in addition to a current elementary school would not only not solve the problem it would force the redistricting of the entire city creating a domino effect of movement from school to school and affecting hundreds of families with involuntary transfers that massive citywide disruption should not be considered in my opinion the bb opening also
▶ 10:09 would have dramatic infrastructure startup costs of well over one million dollars the cost of new staff new administrator and new facility staff would be another three hundred thousand plus dollars and the loss of rental revenue which is two hundred and ten thousand dollars a year for that school in a budget that is incredibly strained and has been reduced makes no financial sense and I must repeat the BB is not big enough to hold our kindergarten class so therefore the space would be obsolete would be facing the same issue again in a very short year we talked about the possibility of additions to schools or building new schools this is also not a viable option we cannot build our way out of this challenge major construction projects
▶ 11:00 are completely cost prohibitive within the current proposition two and a half levy and operationally are not financially sustainable within our city's pet tax base in future year projections but the fact remains that collectively the Melrose School Committee in the Norris Board of Auburn have to work together with our superintendent myself because in school year 2017 2018 there is not enough space in our elementary schools under the current configuration and when the superintendent presents a plan in the coming month that plan must be sustainable financially and operationally for at least 10 plus years on our current revenue models at the end of this month the superintendent will present her proposal which I look
▶ 11:46 forward to but it will require the cooperation of each of you in the city as a whole. The financial challenges of water and solar rates are not simply a Melrose issue. It's a burden shared by the 61 cities and towns under the Massachusetts Water Resources Authority. I believe that we have an obligation to the citizens of Melrose to do our very best. To make things better through spending controls and reforms, however, we have two obligations when we set water and soil rates the first obligation is that the rate structure must be legal under the Commonwealth of Massachusetts general laws into the amount of revenue attained through the rate formula must meet our fiduciary obligation to the MW
▶ 12:34 IRA I have learned in this Board of Alderman has learned in the past that when rates do not meet the financial obligation the Department of Revenue will come to Melrose as they did a few years ago and demand that we institute conservative practices to ensure the solvency of both the water and the sewer fund but tonight with the orders I am submitting to you I share with you in tackling the issue in a manner not done by any Melrose mayor since the MWRI was established in 1985 one for 30 plus years the recommendation from water and sewer rate setting was usually done in DPW offices in the basement of City Hall without a full public process outside of a final vote by the Board of Aldermen to set the rates working with this board we have created the most open process of
▶ 13:29 rate setting in the city's history we have a water and sewer committee that That includes a member of the Board of Aldermen, Alderman Forbes. It meets publicly and openly year round. The commission discusses not only rates, but all issues regarding infrastructure, policy and mandates. This process is an open book. Secondly, in previous years, my administration has sent down a single recommendation for water and soil rates. In FY 2017, we are sending down 10 options to this Board of Aldermen and the citizens of this city. Four are recommended by the Water and Soar Commission. All options meet the two criteria of legality and meeting our fiduciary responsibility. This board and this city has never been given
▶ 14:22 so many sound options. Three, all 10 proposals eliminate proration permanently in the city of Melrose. This has been a major point of contention for a number of years, and we're gonna solve it with the new rates starting in October. Four, for the first time, if approved, senior discounts on water and sewer will be available to all qualifying senior citizen property owners, whether they own their own home or owned a condominium. This has also been an unsolved challenge for a number of years, in particular, for seniors living in condominium complexes, particular that do not individually meter we developed an opt-in program for monthly water and sewer billing in the city of Norris we will begin with large
▶ 15:12 commercial properties to work out any kinks that may arise and then provide all citizens an opt-in option to pay monthly rather than quarterly to help manage finances in six in the fall we will present to the board the most aggressive inflow and infiltration capital improvement plan in the history of the city my administration and the board of alderman have made every effort to hear the citizens concerns and the proposals that i present to the board tonight answer many of them when given the authority by the state and the mwra we do our very best to help rate players to be more flexible to provide more choices in options when the board sets the rates we have done all of these things with the proposals that I present to you and I am
▶ 16:08 very proud of the hard work of my department heads to provide you with these solutions in addition to water and source solutions my administration has expanded several important discounts and exemptions for seniors and families with very low income in fiscal year 2016 we granted approximately forty two thousand dollars in solid waste fee discounts up from thirty seven thousand in 2015 with the changes passed we anticipate this number increasing to approximately eighty four thousand dollars in FY 17 we saw an increase in low-income water discounts of seventy seven thousand in 2015 jumped to ninety nine thousand in 2016 an increase of over twenty two thousand dollars in a single year our reform senior tax work off program grew from 18 participants in
▶ 17:00 2015 to 27 in 2016 and as of today we already have 30 people interested in applying to work for our city beginning in September we will have the first of two drop-in events to educate and enroll eligible citizens in our discount programs for water, sewer, property taxes, solid waste, as well as veterans benefits. We invite all citizens to meet personally and confidentially with the City Hall team in a one-stop shopping environment to help eligible citizens to continue to live and thrive in our community. Because it has always been a priority to balance, to balance the operational needs of the city with affordability, particularly for those who are on fixed incomes. In 2002, I formed a group of highly qualified citizens
▶ 17:57 to assist me in taking on the greatest infrastructure challenge of our time, which was the new middle school, high school complex. Would it be a new building? Maybe a renovation, collaborative space. The options were endless. The committee completed a comprehensive study of the problem, analyzed with community input, and the process culminated in a citywide vote to rebuild Melrose Veterans Memorial Middle School. I believe it was a historic moment in the history of the city and has brought us to the great place that we are today as a community. But tonight I call on the civic leaders in this room and the citizens of Melrose to rise up again and to take on another great challenge which is the state of
▶ 18:45 our public safety facilities tonight i announced the formation of a public safety building committee chaired by former chief of fire john o'brien and planning director diddy scafie the committee will also include melrose firefighter and lieutenant colonel robert driscoll former chief of the somerville police department and melrose resident charlie femenow school building committee chairman John McLaughlin, architect Joseph Nevin, DPW director John Shenna, historic preservationist Ward Hamilton, police chief Mike Lyle and fire chief Chris Leary. I have asked President Khan to appoint a member of the Board of Aldermen to serve on this committee. We can no longer put off this challenge. In the fall I will seek funding for a comprehensive analysis and a study. I
▶ 19:36 I know over the past 50 years, studies have been done regarding this challenge. But this administration has never, ever put a study on a shelf to collect dust. We have put studies into action and completed every initiative put before us. And this will be no different. I thank these volunteers for their efforts. And I look forward to this community journey. Because it is said that every journey starts with a single step. tonight we have taken that step the budget process is now in the hands of the Board of Aldermen as the legislative body of the city once the budget is passed this is not the end of the process but the beginning of an exciting new year and like every new year there are new resolutions and new
▶ 20:25 opportunities but it can never be forgotten that the process must be guided by the citizens of Melrose when we serve and in that light I would like to end by reaffirming my core belief to each of you that we are a community that promotes and involves an active citizenry that works in partnership with the response of government that manages this great city in a thoughtful honest and an accountable manner I thank each of you for your service and I offer this budget for your consideration and for your passage thank you thank you okay at this point the chair would welcome a motion to commence public participation someone second second alderman mortimer moves to commence public participation motion is seconded
▶ 21:30 by miss castelli all those in favor of the motion indicate by saying aye aye anyone opposed motion passes this is the public participation portion of our meeting any member of the general public who wishes to speak relative to the issue that was before us this evening is welcome to come forward to the desk in the center of the room identify yourself and you shall have the opportunity to declaim within some time limits hi my name is Jerry Rose and I'd like to speak about the budget process for a number of years I've been involved fairly thoroughly in the school department budget and the in the last few years in the city budget it's unfortunate we don't have a school department budget settled yet that could be presented here tonight
▶ 22:26 as well but I expect that to be forthcoming I I'd like to talk about some broad issues about the budget processes tonight rather than specific details and amounts the document that I have here which I assume all of you have it some way shape or form shows different columns and there's an issue that we've had the last few years as I've been trying to engage in this budget and in my work I've engaged in budgets for the last 40 years and when I want to set an authentic budget what I want to try to do is to understand where we've been historically what functions have we paid for and how much money has that cost how much have we spent in the current year to date so we have a good base starting point for the current year and then obviously since the budget
▶ 23:17 process for next year starts before the end of this year we want to have a really good accurate projection of what we expect our cost to be at the end of this fiscal year so we can use that as a basis for crafting what next year's amount would be the problem that we have with the pit with the document in front of us right now is that we don't have that critical component of a projection for the end of this year that's accurate the staff in the auditor's office admits they say that the 2016 projection line is meaningless they've said that for the last few years the 2016 actual line is my understanding accurate as of april 27th at 7 49 a.m we don't know what we're really going to spend this year and every year we have this issue where we spend we're crafting a budget based on
▶ 24:07 basically what we budgeted the prior year or maybe spent the prior year and we don't even see a history of that in this budget document we see the 2015 actual as the only firm thing we don't see a 2014 2013 there's no representation in the printed budget about why if it if the 2017 proposed budget is different substantially in some way what details make it that we need more money for something or less money for something what's changed one of the reasons why I try to engage in the budget is you know we have this confounding issue that's been around the last few years of a school department funding and and that people have called something called a structural deficit nobody's yet defined with that structural deficit really really is
▶ 25:01 where it comes from we had more than three and a half million dollars of free cash to spend this year I even asked the city auditor today you know can you have any sense of where the you know some of the major components of that three and a half million dollars comes from and he said no he says oh it comes from all different little sources here and there and I'm like the three and a half million dollars a lot of sources and if we're generating three and a half million dollars of extra obviously that you have some new revenue coming in you don't expect let's say you have more building permits and and you know whatever other things you might even have less spending for water and for sorry I shouldn't make mention water and sewer here more less spending for snow
▶ 25:39 removal but the thing is is that if nobody quantifies where we get this huge amount of money in free cash after the end of the year nobody's even trying to figure out how we can build that into the budget to provide more funds for as an example the school department to have more funds to be able to plan on working and having some can some some confidence that they'll be able to meet the goals that they have set I have criticized the school committee on a number of occasions over the years and the superintendent's for deferring to the mayor's number that he gives the school department a number says yeah this is a number you're getting this year and I asked year after year after year for the school committee to do some hard work and to figure out what they could need
▶ 26:28 what they would want to make a good competent effective school system for our children the school committee attempted a little bit of that last year but it never really got into a process the school committee never said this is what we need and they never presented that to the Board of Aldermen as this is what they want and we never had a conversation in Melrose we had an override but we never had a conversation in Melrose that was I would believe competent about the issues in the schools and why the schools might need more money for something what they could do differently with the money they have which is as as important as more money and in these critical conversations are what don't happen the override process last year was a marketing proposal I
▶ 27:15 didn't see there wasn't a forum where you could have a real good exchange about things the school committee doesn't provide a forum ever to have a conversation about these things don't take it personally it's true and so now we're somewhat stuck everybody's worried about this you know increasing young elementary students and we don't have money we don't have building space what are we going to do there are some issues that we've never put on the table to look at we've never talked about how to regionalize more of our functions with other towns in terms of alderman wright point of order mr president what's your point of order alderman wright the public is invited to speak on items on our agenda and we're talking about
▶ 28:02 broad-based policy issues here we've gone way far i'm talking about the budget well it's the position of the chair that mr miraz is staying close enough to the budget at this point in time well I'll be very specific about the budget if you like me to be the budget has not been crafted if this is all the information that the mayor is giving to the alderman the mayor is not given the alderman the actual information you need to really develop a good solid budget with confidence there's a number for the school department in here which is just a number I don't believe that there's been a competent budget discussion in the school department about things and and talking about regionalization talking about other options about where we can get revenue or
▶ 28:52 save expenses i think is absolutely relevant to this budget you know i try to get involved in issues in the community i try to do what i can to make things what i think would be better i do get a whole lot of pushback from a whole lot of people in that in that effort but in the process i actually learn a lot i learn a lot from the pushback what people are scared of what people are are worried about coming up what what what's happening in different places and and i and you know i'm not stupid i can take an insult but i learned from that insult about what that person's really believing right um many of you in this room have insulted me about my budget conversations before um one of the things and so here's a raw issue you know the school
▶ 29:47 department the tiny issue in terms of the whole budget but the school department expended money for legal fees a lot of legal fees over the last year and a half for an issue that shouldn't have had any legal fees whatsoever and i'm talking about the office of civil rights process yeah i don't think that's really germane to this year okay well it is in terms of budget we you allocate money to the school department every year and the school department takes that money and spends it on thing this is my exact point takes on thing takes that money and spends it on things that were never budgeted that aren't necessarily even appropriate the fact that the superintendent makes contracts that go beyond the fiscal year to further fiscal years encumbering the city which
▶ 30:27 i don't think is even legal in some ways you know if you're going to do a three-year contract with some publishing company that's not appropriate if it hasn't been appropriated the funds haven't been appropriated we shouldn't be doing that i don't you know there's probably a legal opinion here that some people say it's different but it feels funny when they do that and there's no public process there's no school committee vote to enter into a contract over this period of time to do that there are controls in the city that i don't believe are working on behalf of the city which is goes right to this budget that the money you provide in this budget whatever free cash comes out at the end of this year or the budget you craft today if we have significant free cash
▶ 31:07 coming out in another year and four or five six months we haven't done the job of really budgeting effectively the fact that we had three and a half million dollars of free cash sounds like we did a great job somewhere i would say that our budget really wasn't competent if we ended up with that much money we weren't looking at everything as carefully in terms of the visual budget i thought for once i'd be able to have something in the visual budget to be able to attach to print my spreadsheet instead of scan documents that you can't even you know you know take to do an analysis and I started working with the visual budget and then I started looking at the document here and I find the numbers are
▶ 31:42 different you know at the 2015 actual numbers should be the 2015 actual numbers they shouldn't vary from one document to the next whether it's in the visual budget or in this document here and and we talk about openness we talk about transparency I don't believe that there really is true openness and transparency and I want to say and this is mayor of course has left but I want to say that I don't believe that the city even though when I say something the city's in some way responds or reacts to it I don't think that I've ever felt that the city really responds authentically to the issues I raise and the principles behind them often sometimes people do something on the surface that makes it look like they're you know appeasing the public and aren't
▶ 32:30 we so wonderful to listen to the public but very few people have it sit down and have a conversation with me to understand exactly the depth of behind which I have my my conclusions or my opinions in terms of the budget in closing I went through this budget in detail 75 different lines in this budget show and this shows to the meaningless of the projected budget 75 lines show a projected amount for a line item to be less presumably at the end of the fiscal year then we spent on April 27th last week 75 lines in this budget have that there if the 2016 projection if munis has it in there I can't believe that munis is that incompetent that they can't do it right I can't believe that somebody can't give the alderman the information that you really need to
▶ 33:29 really know with confidence when you're approving a line item why you're approving that amount of money I urge you in this process over the next 45 days to ask the people who are under the mayor why they need this money show you a graph of every line item where it was three years ago the actual the real actual not just a pretend actual not just what we budgeted last year or the year before show you what the real numbers are so you can make a good determination and my hope is is that if we can budget more authentically we can figure out how we can plan to use the that money we find in free cash every year how we can plan to use some of that money in advance so we don't we don't cripple ourselves in terms of trying to you know trying to trying a triage in
▶ 34:17 the schools every year thank you very much thank you sir is there anybody else Who else who wishes to speak this evening? Motion to close public participation, Mr. President. Second. Alderman Mortimer moves to close public participation. Motion is seconded by Alderman Suerco. On the motion, all those in favor? Aye. Anyone opposed? Motion passes. Public participation is concluded. I think that concludes the business of the joint meeting. Motion to adjourn, Mr. President. Second. Second. Alderman Mortimer moves to adjourn. Motion is seconded by Alderman Forbes. On the motion, all those in favor? Aye. opposed motion passes meeting is hereby adjourned thank you folks okay good evening again everybody my name is Donald Kahn this is May 2nd 2016 and