Appropriations & Oversight Committee — 2016-05-19

Attendance

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 · Vice Chairman; 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; Michael P. Zwirko present · Alderman at Large

Agenda

1. Call to Order (11:00)
2. Public Participation (11:55)
3. Orders
4. ORDER-2016-158 : City of Melrose Operating Budget for Fiscal Year 2017 in the amount of 75,328,574.79 (Seventy-Five Million, Three Hundred Twenty-Eight Thousand, Five Hundred Seventy-Four Dollars and Seventy-Nine Cents) (24:22)
5. ORDER-2016-172 : Reauthorization of Recreation Revolving Fund #2652 for FY17 (1:56:50)
6. ORDER-2016-162 : FY17 Mt Hood Enterprise Fund Budget in the amount of $1,544,832.37 (One Million, Five Hundred Forty Four Thousand, Eight Hundred Thirty Two Dollars and Thirty Seven Cents) (1:57:40)
7. Adjournment (2:46:40)

Minutes

CITY OF MELROSE APPROPRIATIONS COMMITTEE CALENDAR● MAY 19, 2016 Aldermanic Chamber Budget Hearing 7:30 PM The public should take notice that the Melrose Board of Aldermen may, on certain occasions, have a quorum in attendance due to standing committees of the Board of Aldermen consisting of both voting and non-voting members. Members attending this duly posted meeting are participating and deliberating only in conjunction with the business of the standing committee. Attendee Name Title Status Arrived Peter D. Mortimer Chairman Present Gail M. Infurna Vice Chairman Present Michael P. Zwirko Alderman at Large 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: Conservation Commission Chair Susan Murphy, School Committee Chair Margaret Driscoll, Superintendent of Schools Cyndy Taymore, City Auditor/CFO Patrick Dello Russo, Recreation Director Frank Olivieri, Park Commission Chair Bill Gardiner, Superintendent of Mount Hood and Open Spaces Joan Bell, NE Metropolitan Regional School Committee Representative Henry Hooton, NE Metropolitan Regional School Superintendent Theodore Nickole

ORDER-2016-158 Operating Budgets (City, School, Regional School) City of Melrose Operating Budget for Fiscal Year 2017 in the amount of 75,328,574.79 (Seventy-Five Million, Three Hundred Twenty-Eight Thousand, Five Hundred Seventy-Four Dollars and Seventy-Nine Cents) Appropriations Committee

ORDER-2016-172 Revolving Fund/Reauthorization Reauthorization of Recreation Revolving Fund #2652 for FY17 Recommend Passage Board of Aldermen City of Melrose Page 1 Updated 6/29/2016 11:35 AM Minutes Appropriations Committee May 19, 2016

ORDER-2016-162 Enterprise Fund FY17 Mt Hood Enterprise Fund Budget in the amount of $1,544,832.37 (One Million, Five Hundred Forty Four Thousand, Eight Hundred Thirty Two Dollars and Thirty Seven Cents) Recommend Passage Board of Aldermen City of Melrose Page 2 Updated 6/29/2016 11:35 AM

Transcript

▶ 11:23 Peter D. Mortimer: I am Chairman Peter Mortimer, the Vice Chairman is Alderman Gail Inferna. Also in attendance tonight, we have Alderman Michael Zwirko, Alderman John Tramontozzi, Alderman Monica Medeiros, Alderman Robert Boycelle, Alderman Mary Beth McIntyre-Margolis, Alderman Jennifer Lemmerman, Alderman Scott Forbes, and President Donald Kahn. This is a committee of the whole. Every member of the Board of Aldermen is a member of this committee. This meeting is being recorded by MMTV. Rebroadcast is shown frequently and a DVD is available at MMTV if someone wants to would like to see one in the future motion open a floor for public participation mr chairman alderman forbes has made a motion to open the floor for public participation seconded by alderman inferno

▶ 12:15 Peter D. Mortimer: all in favor please say aye any opposed hearing none the floor is now open for public participation any members in the gallery who would like to come forward and ask questions or make comments about any items on tonight's agenda please do so now good evening mr morose how are you good thank you hi my name is jerry morose i'm here to comment on a couple things first when you say if we have any questions to ask does that mean we get answers for the questions or how does that process work is but my my wonderment is i don't expect an answer to that question by the way um I'm here to talk about the schools as a board this is your one time a year to talk to the schools to ask them questions now although I have a

▶ 13:14 different press I'll say opinion then power the Board of Aldermen or the school committee on the one hand I feel the schools aren't aren't funded in the way that gets the job done it's a complicated thing does it mean more funding in some ways more funding certainly couldn't hurt but in other ways we're in this issue year after year after year because we don't do anything different year after year after year and if we don't make a change at some point no results are going to change and you know whether whether we talk about a structural deficit that's only applicable to the schools rather than to city as a whole if it really is a structural deficit um you know the schools need to step up the school committee needs to step up and ask for the money they need and show why they need it

▶ 14:13 in theory they present that to you and you make a determination whether or not you want to give them as much as they ask the process we have is everybody here knows is that the mayor comes up with a number they quote balance their budget to meet that number i don't i don't agree with that pretext and we come here and the alderman vote okay we'll give you your 20 whatever million dollars there are major changes that the schools could make that could save significant money that I believe could make a better education system regionalization is one issue that although nobody here wants to hear her to talk about it and just pooh-poohs it and says oh it's meaningless there are major things we can do there's a couple tiny things we've done with

▶ 15:04 regionalization the last few years on the school side as well as the city side but there is there can be so much more it means giving up a little bit of the parochial nature of the city of Melrose and expanding out and saying what can we do with other people there's a lot of money that is not and I'll use the word wasted because we don't regionalize there's redundant functions in town have the towns all over the place that we could be a leader about this we could go to place people and say look let's partner up and do this let's figure out a way to share the expertise of a department chair for instance rather than say oh well we're gonna cut our department chairs in half and not have department chairs I'm not happy with the school department budget as it's come

▶ 15:48 forward I'm not happy that they're not asking for a competent amount of money and a way to spend it that will work for our students at the same time this is this issue of a structural deficit is in my in some ways it's a phantom issue to me I know that we budget one point two five five million dollars to pay for our sanitation budget I know in the other hand we take in one point six to five million I believe in trash fees there's a four hundred thousand dollar amount of money there that doesn't reflect in the budget. And where does it reflect? Where does that money go? Is that what goes to free cash every year? You know, I pay attention to what's put out in the public documents. I don't see anything explaining where the free cash comes from

▶ 16:41 year after year after year. I don't know how much free cash is likely to show up. Nobody's ever mentioned it on July 1st or whenever the DOR certifies it. You know, there's issues like that that haven't been talked about haven't been thought through we hear a lot of whining and complaining about not enough money all over the place but I don't see the conversation about figuring out where the money could be how we could do better spending the money I do want to say that that I am distressed that the that we're getting rid of department chairs and academic subjects in the middle school and high school I think that that is in some ways is cements a downward trend in what we do for our children if we don't have people leading

▶ 17:30 those departments people who are strong leaders in those departments leading them well keeping the teachers on board even and I want to say even though we had a full complement of department chairs the last few years and we had people who seem to be strong there are big gaps in what's done in the middle school and high school those gaps aren't going to get any smaller because we have fewer people paying attention to them or somebody who's outside their realm of expertise paying attention to somebody else's and and if we don't have a person we saw this for the few years that we didn't have the fine arts department chair if somebody isn't leaving the department you might have wonderful people who were called now lead teachers in the music or lead

▶ 18:08 teachers in the arts but they don't have number one I'll say the the authority to go and advocate effectively to be able to say we need this funding we need these teachers we need this this type of thing to go on and in the music department and arts department I believe you know went backwards some over a number of years and I fear that with the math and science and the history and social studies and you know and and I mean there's no way I mean somebody said somewhere in the school process that oh well you know music and arts are just another foreign language another global language and I understand what they were intending but the thing is that you don't have somebody who knows music and arts being responsible for it leading it making certain it happens correctly it's

▶ 19:02 not happening so of course all that you can do tonight essentially is in the end vote up or down the amount of money they're asking for you you can't even give them more money now I'm I've heard talk about you know money coming from here after July 1st money coming from here after July 1st and we'll build some of these things in but why can't we have a rational open upfront discussion about what we need why we need it how we can fund it properly and how we can and how and I don't want to leave alone how we can save significant expenses and what we educate our students we don't have to use the model from the 1840s of how we educate our students at the same point in time I want to say I absolutely don't

▶ 19:45 want and I personally can't stand this online model where you sit kids down in the classroom in front of an online program that's basically rote learning or wrote we've called drill and kill right that's what that model is morphing to now is that you see the kid down in the classroom in front of that they go home at night in front of that there's a program to the school we used to have study island we finally get rid of that we've now gone to this thing called IXL which is actually worse for our students in study island was because it purports to be more and it really is is not um you know I don't want to say don't give the schools money this year schools need money I don't want to say oh everything's

▶ 20:29 fine with the schools give them the money and don't challenge anything there's a middle ground here that we need to explore it's not a black and white thing there's a lot of gray area I believe it's a school department school committee's job to explore those areas in depth they refuse to again this is you one time as a board to say to them you know can you do something different guys can you think about a different way of approaching it instead of I mean how many times have been you've all been paying attention to school community I know you do how many times have we heard the trade-offs between elementary library media specialists and and somebody else or somebody else and somebody else and all these trade-offs are false dichotomies you know for sure

▶ 21:09 same point in time I want to highlight a fact that I mentioned at the school committee the other night that the chapter 70 foundation budget formula presumes that if I remember these correctly that the well I won't remember them correctly but what it comes down to is that the high school is presumed to be the most expensive place to educate students and I think if I remember it's you know in the order of 25 relative for the high school and maybe you know 21 relative for the middle school students per class to target average right and maybe it was like you know I misspoke this 25 for the middle school 21 elementary school it may be 17 for the high school the point is the high school deserves more money per student not less the high school deserves to have

▶ 21:59 positions funded not fund elementary over and over and over again for more than a decade now at the expense of the high school while the middle school for whatever reason rides along with the most money in our whole district when the state acknowledges it should be the least and you know part of this goes to the the idea that we call we have this team structure at the middle school and it's not flexible you can't adapt the team structure to have a couple less teachers it doesn't work anyway enough about that one other thing I want to mention about there's a thing in the packet tonight and this is goes to other issues but it's about interdepartmental funding so it's applicable tonight as well this letter from the Richard Sullivan is his name not not the other

▶ 22:50 one well Richard Sullivan I think is the guy's name that signed the letter but you know he didn't address the issue at hand in that letter about you know I brought up the issue that it says in that think of the acts question point number 17 that you know departments aren't supposed to charge departments now we know the police department charges the school department for details you know that happens we know probably the police department charges water and sewer for details for that matter but you know this person that wrote that thing was basically told it appears to me you know what we wanted as a message to be sent to the city and he wrote it and he didn't address the main issue and i gotta say that it really questions my faith in him when he doesn't

▶ 23:32 Peter D. Mortimer: understand a moot point from a mute point and if if somebody doesn't understand that issue I'm ending up right now thank ten minutes have elapsed thank you I'll bend now thank you very much thank you very much all right continuing on with the budget for the city of Melrose order two zero one six appreciate that everyone thank you public participation is still open if if any other members of the public would like to come forward. Seeing none. Closed public participation. Alderman Boisselle has made a motion to close public participation. Duly seconded by Alderman Inferna. All in favor, please say aye. Aye. Any opposed, hearing none. Public participation is now closed for this evening. Continuing on with the budget for the City of Melrose,

▶ 24:29 Peter D. Mortimer: Order 2016-158, City of Melrose Operating Budget for fiscal year 2017 in the amount of 75 million 328 574 dollars and 79 cents we have uh various budgets here before us this evening and we are ready to proceed with the budgets at this time alderman forbes yes mr chairman i'd like to make a motion to consider department number 171 the conservation department first in the order of departments um for the reason that it is a uh probably the most uh the least complex budget uh this evening and we could probably knock that one out fairly quick second alderman and alderman forbes has made a motion to take the conservation commission budget out of order duly seconded by alderman Medeiros all in favor please say aye aye

▶ 25:22 Peter D. Mortimer: Aye. Aye. Any opposed? Hearing none, we will proceed then with budget number 171. It's the conservation department in the amount of $20,825. Motion to suspend the rules so we can hear from all the department heads. We have a motion to suspend the rules from Alderman Forbes, duly seconded by Alderman Inferno. All in favor, please say aye. Aye. Any opposed? Hearing none, we have with us the chair of the conservation commission, Susan Murphy. Good evening, Ms. Murphy. you for coming please proceed thank you and thank you for taking me out of order our budget has remained the same for several years so it may look familiar we have two major components to our budget we have a salary line item that goes to our approximately one day a week conservation agent we

▶ 26:09 have a new conservation agent this year eric devlin who's a very committed and bright young man native of saugus he's doing a great job for us if you have a chance to meet him the other large line item is our conservation maintenance line item that is primarily used to do treatments to three of the ponds in the city l pond towners pond and swain's pond for nuisance vegetation we treat to try and avoid having the ponds choked by vegetation l pond in particular has an algae problem and we're also seeing more invasive vegetation there's purple loosestrife in swain's pond and invasive water chestnut in l pond so those are the major items in our budget we also use that to take down trees where we need to and such but that's pretty much um the big items in

▶ 26:56 Peter D. Mortimer: our budget i'd be happy to take any questions motion to recommend the bottom line we have a motion to recommend the bottom line by alderman Boisselle duly seconded by alderman forbes all in favor any opposed hearing none the conservation commission budget will be recommended to the full board for passage thank you very much for your attendance this evening the next budget we have before us is budget department number three zero zero it is the school department in the amount of twenty five million seven hundred twenty five thousand six hundred thirty eight dollars and ninety cents we are under suspension still and that stands for the entire appropriations committee meeting madam superintendent and members of the school committee

▶ 27:44 Margaret Raymond Driscoll: would you join us please Thank You appropriations chairman Mortimer president Kahn and members of the Board of Aldermen for inviting us to speak to the FY 17 Melrose public schools budget as approved by the committee this past Tuesday May 17th superintendent Tamar and her staff began this process in October 2015 and she presented her initial budget to the committee on February 23rd as a level serviced budget there was a million dollar plus difference between the bottom line for that budget and what the city could responsibly provide the schools and we still needed to provide teachers and materials for two additional kindergarten classrooms and a part-time music teacher fund our higher than anticipated transportation contract and

▶ 28:36 Margaret Raymond Driscoll: address stipends for co-curricular activities so the superintendent sharpened her pencil and took a wide variety of actions to close the gap including reconfiguring content administrators by cutting three of seven grades 6 to 12 director positions and adding content facilitators in those areas to perform elements of the work prepaying some materials this year and cutting materials in other areas freezing her salary and reducing administrator salaries removing requests for an elementary specialist in order to reduce current class sizes of 35 students in many art and music classes and a technology position that would allow the new Learning Commons to remain open longer after school pulling more money from reserve accounts that

▶ 29:21 Margaret Raymond Driscoll: represent rainy day monies raising fees for education stations high school athletics and elementary music lessons and increasing early childhood center tuitions reducing the salary increases that were able to offer teachers in the collective bargaining agreement that is currently being negotiated and reducing the recommended increase in substitute teacher pay even as we continue to struggle to hire subs given the low rate by this Tuesday a balanced budget was presented to the committee and unanimously approved although unified in our vote we articulated that this budget is no longer a level service budget but one that provides the basic services needed to provide students a quality education our district is high-performing but we share the

▶ 30:08 Margaret Raymond Driscoll: superintendent's vision of a school system where we meet the needs of every child without labeling them and our staff has the capacity and resources they need to be flexible adaptive and proactive for children this budget will support improvement thanks to our outstanding students and families dedicated and hard-working staff and the financial support of the city but we no needs remain like curriculum materials additional staff members increased staff training and higher pay for educators the committee is made up of Melrose citizens and we recognize and appreciate your responsibility to provide for all city departments and we respect the inability of the city to provide all the funds needed to realize our educational vision at the pace we'd like in the

▶ 30:55 Margaret Raymond Driscoll: interest of student achievement we vow to continue our advocacy at the state level to improve increased education funding for Melrose and we ask for your support tonight of the FY 17 budget for the Melrose public schools thank you for all the work that you do for the schools and for the city and with that and begging your indulgence we would like to invite superintendent a more forward to answer your questions thank you very much chairman Driscoll alderman boy cell please wait till she see it we all have our blue binders this evening good evening thank you for coming and the other school board members for coming here this evening been watching your program on TV for the past couple months months and very interesting and very disheartening. I have a few questions

▶ 31:55 Robert A. Boisselle: though. Some of the line items that you presented in your budget, you have some of the line items that just sort of ran out of money, but still your actual expenses were higher than what was budgeted. Now, do you take the money and just rearrange it in the end to pay off that particular example? For instance, take an example the boys basketballs was budgeted for $1,400 but the actual as of 2016 as of 517 was three thousand two hundred forty five dollars is that money extra $2,000 brought from some other group that didn't spend their money or how does that work so the this two different considerations here Alderman Boisselle first of all the school committee votes categories they vote a contractual salary category and a non salary category they have bottom-line

▶ 32:56 autonomy as you well know and what will happen is during the year the business manager if necessary will put forth a memo to them asking to transfer funds if it is between categories if it's not between categories we make the adjustments we need to make to have a balanced budget we are projecting a balanced budget again this year the interim business manager has advised me that he has all confidence we will balance our budget the items that you're looking at are revolving funds it's some of them are paid from the athletic fees and what often happens in our fee in our athletics is there a cost to being successful if we run past the season there'll be additional costs incurred for buses officials venues so what happens is we are able to balance the

▶ 33:45 Robert A. Boisselle: athletic budget line every year but we do know that there are unexpected costs if we are successful I don't think any of us would want our kids not to be successful if you're in a winning streak that's right as I have said told the committee the most expensive success is the Super Bowl very good now as a month as she was discussing the chair was discussing the learning Commons is that the the name of the new facility that we're creating yes it is and we also had an influx of technology this year into the system and we also have the stem or steam program which term should we be using is still stem or steam or really matter it's called stem steam makerspace fab space fab lab hackerspace it's very

▶ 34:40 good how is the technology and the steam program coming together quite well actually I wish I had it with me I have before I came here tonight I was at the stem pathways capstone projects and one of the young ladies had done research on steam labs and had a great PowerPoint on well how effective they have been in both high school and university learning and I asked if I could have the PowerPoint and she is going to share it with me tomorrow so I can share it with the architects so that they can see that how this is taking hold among our young students who are looking forward to it it's coming together very well we're ahead of schedule on our project we're beginning the maker space next week

▶ 35:32 we're beginning the administrative suites next week we have been able through the budget to in the maker space furnish it and provide more computers higher power computers it's a different type of computer that goes in there and what our challenge is is buying the good old-fashioned saws drills and power tools that we will also need but we have every face that we can fundraise for those or get a grant very good now with the steam which is a standing for arts and so forth is the technology merging with the arts also yes it is is it saving us money and or are you teaching art in a different way you have to you have to begin to teach art in a different way. So to that end, in the Learning Commons,

▶ 36:21 there'll also be a graphics art lab. If you know any young artists or any young students who are at schools like RISD or Savannah or Parsons, you would know that a good part of their education now is computer-based. A lot of the drawing they do, a lot of the production they do is using computer programs. While a good number of students are still interested in becoming artistic painters, more and more of our students are interested in the computer design end of their artistic endeavors. So if you're doing a little airbrushing, you don't need the compressors anymore. You just hit that appropriate key and you'll get your effect. And you can change it very quickly going into a different abstract type area.

▶ 37:10 Robert A. Boisselle: If I can continue to brag about our STEM students, one of the projects I saw tonight was a young lady who spent the summer at Ackamey Technology in a group in which they developed an application in which you could apply filters to all your artwork, so. Very good. I just had one other question. In the Winthrop School, you have a line item, Winthrop Equipment slash T, that on the munis page six, item number 2420. They had a budget of $1,000 and they actually spent $3,600 on equipment slash T. Is that some sort of special equipment that they're putting in? mean the budget for this year is now $6,000 so I'm just wondering what kind of machinery we're putting it's not machinery it's I would have to check to

▶ 38:22 see exactly what what they bought with that where where my where I'm thinking it's Winthrop music so I would have to see I would have I would have no problems for you exactly what they bought on that thank you very much thank you mr. chairman Thank You alderman Boisselle alderman Lemmerman please thank you very much for this information just a few questions how much chapter 70 funding are we anticipating are we expecting at the top of my head I want to say that we're coming away with 70,000 and do you know what that is in comparison to last year no not at the top of my head and you may not know this off the top of your head either because it's still along the same lines but how many children that the analysis was based off of the the

▶ 39:21 analysis based off almost every student in our district with the exception of the tuition based ECC kids okay for the ECC students that are special ed we get proportional I think I remember from last year that we felt like the number was a little bit conservative so are you feeling it's it's more representative this year I think it's more I think the number is is is probably fairly well reported by us I think the issue this year happens to be that they did we recap unit they know you recalculated the low income and there's that new economically disadvantaged category and many of us are feeling some impact from that switch to that economically disadvantaged category okay there was a mention of administrator reduction in administrative so administrator salaries

▶ 40:24 Jennifer L. Lemmerman: was that accounted for by the consolidating the directors positions or people actually taking a pay cut would you repeat that please the reduction in administrator salaries yeah it's from it it's from they read that and the increase in fees I know that this was discussed quite a bit in the school committee and this was not an easy decision could you talk a little bit about your process for coming up with the numbers for that and the analysis that you did and speak to whether you feel that these may price families or kids out of any of these activities or services well we've dropped the activity fee as you know or you may not know we have withdrawn the activity fee for now the athletic fee is a difficult one and it goes back to what Alderman Boisselle

▶ 41:13 was raising transportation especially has gone up tremendously we cannot control that part of the problem with transportation is because we do not transport in district we don't have enough buying power and we're sort of held hostage when we go out for those bids whether it's METCO or athletics so that has that's a tremendous increase the other increase that we're feeling in athletics is the need to condition our helmets and our pads for football and lacrosse we made a purposeful decision that we would buy the lacrosse helmets because we want to make sure that they are up to standard to protect children and so we're paying for that yeah so those have expenses to it we raised the previously the athletic fees were paying about 43% we've raised it to 46% don't

▶ 42:10 forget part of that does pay for the salaries of the coaches and we're anticipating a raise in that we are we always quietly waiver children who need to be waived we don't discuss it we certainly don't want to embarrass anybody but that is taken care of very quietly whether it's music fees athletic fees or any other kind of fee the district does that constantly at the ECC they have a fees working committee including parents and they help recommend what the fee may be and they came forward with a recommendation at the education stations it's been a little bit more difficult as you know in your positions one of our major concerns that we're having across the city is not only the cost of health care but the cost of utilities ed stations the school

▶ 43:11 buildings run basically seven days a week 24 7 okay there's just we're never closed I mean I know many of you ride by at night and you see lights on whether it's an athletic league from you know the rec department whether it's a rental whether it's a school function where whether it's education stations we are always filled and always have people inside and the city has begun to ask us to consider but what the impact is of indirect services and that is part of what you're seeing happening here in terms of the ECC brought raising fees miss Rosso feels that maybe a handful of people who thought they would come and not coming but she cannot tell you for certain whether it's because of the fees or because they had decided they were going

▶ 44:03 Jennifer L. Lemmerman: to go to chime time instead you know but that's what we're seeing but as for children who are already in the district we find a way to help them participate Great. Thank you. Finally, my last question. You mentioned you started this process needing to cut a million dollars, which is a lot of money. And in Ms. Driscoll's opening statement, you mentioned some broad categories of things that we still need, that the budget funds what it funds, and there are some things we still need. Are you able to get sort of very concrete with me about are there things here that we are now not able to provide or are there trade-offs that we're going to need to make in order to provide them and sort of what is the real day day-to-day impact on the kids in the

▶ 44:58 schools as a result of some of the decisions that needed to be made well the real day-to-day impact is we have been working very hard for four years to improve the outcomes for students the directors have been instrumental in that there is no denying and I have a fantastic team I could not ask for better as a superintendent and as I've made it very clear to the school committee work will slow down there is no two ways about it work will slow down however my priority and I believe the committee's priority was to keep teachers in front of students and that's what we have succeeded in so that's a concern it's a concern because education in 2016 is endless mandates and I know there are more coming I was at my annual conference today and heard from Jesse as

▶ 45:56 to what is coming whether or not we can successfully implant whenever those those mandates are remains to be seen we are very thin we have always been thin administratively and we are even thinner now the other thing that is important is our directors double as coaches and they are in the classrooms helping new teachers helping veterans teachers as we bring forward new instructional practices or materials that's part of their job obviously they they're not going to be able to do that to the degree that they were doing it before and if you can't help teachers does it have an impact on kids is a question okay the other piece is the materials um we have a program review system in which we have an ongoing cycle of reviewing all our curriculum to date we've done um

▶ 46:54 okay social studies we're in the middle of ela we're finishing global languages um this month next month and we should be about to start math part of what comes out of those reviews as recommendations for new materials and training we're doing a lot of that in-house that's a stressor and buying materials is often out of our reach and that is a real concern okay thank you thank you very much thank you for your work on this thank you thank you alderman lemmerman president khan please yeah um i have a question that's going to sound silly but i'll ask it anyway okay i read your budget materials what is the bottom line budget that you folks voted i don't want to misspeak so we have it 28 million 400.5 for six minutes

▶ 48:08 yeah that's what i thought this isn't a trick question but i know And the way we do this is we get an overall city budget at the start of this process from the administration. And in it, they give us a budget summary on page 99. What we have, it says that the budget is $25,725,638. And until we receive this budget from you folks And after you passed it earlier this week, that was what we had for a budgeted figure. So I just wanted to make sure that I understood the situation. And I have a couple of questions for Mr. Del Russo, if he's available to take some questions. There is a difference between what you contribute and what we add through other funding sources. Right, that's what I want to ask him about.

▶ 49:12 Right. evening yeah i'm sorry i wasn't able to speak with you today mr delarusso but um explain it so i can understand it uh how uh we bridged the difference of uh three million one hundred and forty eight thousand five hundred and two dollars i didn't put this i didn't add the sense but uh How is this going to work? Chair, principally what happens, all of them are gone, is it's a multiple-level process. The first and foremost is early on in the year, what the city does, just as you had indicated, is to advise the school department what the anticipated appropriation is for the next fiscal year. That's step one. having said that that's what we're going to provide from our I'll use this term side of the table for funding sources so they can go ahead and now they have a

▶ 50:18 number to plan with based on what we're going to propose in our operating budget the other point I want to stress out is the budget before you is an expense budget it doesn't demonstrate revenues ie so if you look at the depart the veterans department those are expenses of that department those are not the revenues of that department what's unique in in Alderman Khan's point is that and we are in many ways fortunate that we can supplement the operating budget by up what's called other funding sources and those sources help us provide services that normally we would not be able to provide Oh given the amount of money that we're able to provide the school department so whether they be grants and

▶ 51:07 we do have a breakdown which we can provide the ultimate very detailed i think it probably might be good to look at but there's a whole host of evolving accounts that are standard in the school department that are unique to the school department and some are very specific in other words they can only be used for purposes for which the revenue has been designated by either the the commonwealth, the federal government, whatever the case may be, and they're very specific to where they can use it. So when you see a number 25 million plus on the city budget, that does not take into account that the school department by law has additional funds available to supplement other programs that they operate.

▶ 51:46 So that's why I see that number 28 million. That's where the difference is. The difference is what they have here, which we can share with all the board obviously, and what we can provide as a city. you going to ask us to increase the amount of the overall city budget by 3.1 million no because what happens is all you're voting on when i report what you voted on to for out of the uh if you look at the uh tax capacity of the city and that square block what you're voting on is the twenty five six seventy five six well that's the question that's the point seven we're not being asked to approve a 28 million dollar budget no you're voting specifically on what you're going to appropriate and raise through taxation and other sources period you're not voting on the

▶ 52:38 other funding sources applicable in the school department at this time that's why our number in here is not 20 maybe i'm not maybe i'm just uh you know losing my grip in my older age but i don't remember us budgeting uh in this way before i think this is different i've never seen this before as far as i can see i don't ever remember voting a budget that didn't match the the uh the tally in the budget i can assure you it's done i mean my career that's it's done in every community and and they have to have other funding sources in order to operate the majority i understand other funding stores but i mean we have to vote the amount that's in that's correct page 19 that you've given us which is 25 million and i've never seen this before where there was a

▶ 53:29 variance between a budget that was sent down it's like that every year okay well i can go back and second look I don't remember that how much how much much I'm sorry so when when we create our budget we created on Excel sheets and what happens is the business manager then takes our budget and puts it into munis so that once you approve it we can begin to use it in the munis system so what you get what you're seeing on your munis document is all the funds we expect to use next year a combination of what the city is giving us and what we will get through revolving funds grants rentals those type of things no i understand that i just in my experience just just looking at the budget document i don't

▶ 54:21 recall us doing this this way before in terms of the fees how much revenue do you anticipate the fees are going to generate for the school district well it varies from fee to fee so on our budget document which is online as well from the athletic with where we we had projected about 258,000 from school choice about 40,000 we were applying but I'm actually going to use more from the music revolving we had originally intended 50 from education stations about 230 and the metco grant gives us about 250 then we get things like the 94 142 grant which is the special ed grant which is about 800,000 so that's where some of those monies are coming from and what about does that include tapping into reserves or what do you anticipate we we tapped into some

▶ 55:27 reserves to to diminish the the Delta this year so that so among the things we did is we we use some of our reserves to prepay some purchases that have a yearly fee attached to them we're going to use some of it to buy some of our curriculum materials for especially k2 our perishables we're going to use it to reduce some of the the obligations like licensing for example we're in the third year of our Mimsy grant we have to it's a two to one grant we're going to pay part of that in advance so that's what that's how we got the 1 million dollars reduced and I understand that you you you reduced some administrative physicians, how many, if any, actual people are being laid off as a result of this?

▶ 56:39 Nobody's being laid off. And is it possible to partner with any surrounding communities relative to transportation contracts? Is that done, can it be done? And I'm violating my principle that I always say, I won't violate asking policy questions because it's really not my job. But I was curious as to whether if there were other communities. So last year, the former business manager, Jay Bacone, did a study of that. And we would actually lose money. Our small internal van service, we make money on because actually Wakefield, Stoneham, saw a guest contract with us to transport some students. we also explored going through the same collaborative which runs transportation for a lot of my colleagues and that would have cost us an extra hundred

▶ 57:39 thousand dollars so we were sort of like in a no-win position busing for athletics and Metco are two different types of contracts I've discussed with Doreen Ward our Metco coordinator collaborating on busing she she said we tried it years ago and they ran into too many issues with kids being on time and things like that when you're going to more than one district so she is reluctant to do that and the athletic busing is but is particular to your size and your schedule you know we may be going to play Westwood but Wakefield may be going to pay play so I guess it you know the same type of sport I think that's all I have initially mr. chairman Thank You president car Alderman chairman Tosi please right thank you just a following up a little

▶ 58:40 John N. Tramontozzi: bit on what President Kahn was talking about in terms of the budget so if I get it straight so the city is giving to schools 25 million dollars to run the educational system of the city of Melrose but you budget because you need 28 million dollars to run the program the educational system yes and you anticipate this covering this difference with the other funding sources that you described are those other funding sources a guarantee of funds we budget conservatively and that's also how we've been able to build up our surplus a little since when I first came here and it had been pretty heavily depleted so we are conservative on that in our projections so you know for example if we say we're we're planning on applying 50,000 in music fees I think in reality

▶ 59:37 we end up playing 80,000 once we know how many kids have come in and taking lessons and things like that the same thing with the sports and everything else where we also do fairly well as you have to as you know is education stations has 700 children in it they run a very robust summer program and that quite frankly if she does well we do well but we still budget conservatively as to her contribution the same thing on rentals you know we rent two buildings BB and Ripley that's that's a constant we know what that's exactly going to be and we also rent out the auditorium at the middle school Roosevelt Lincoln heavily and we're anticipating when the Learning Commons is completed the performance space there will also be able to be rented all right so it looks

▶ 1:00:33 John N. Tramontozzi: like maybe yeah we will get those funds from other sources coming in to take care of the balance of the budget because I because my concern what would would have been then if there was not enough of the other funding sources coming through then you'll be back to looking to us for additional funds in the middle of the fiscal year and you know we got to be careful of that let me ask you and maybe this is a question for mr. de la Rousseau what if it if it turns out that they have an excess of other funding sources where's that extra money go there's a stay within the school department or is it going to the general funds no it doesn't enter the general fund those sources are unique to the school department so does it go into a separate fund future use or how does

▶ 1:01:24 that how is it accounted for so you have to be again very careful the state regulations around revolving funds and student activity fees are quite strict as you know and if it's a student activity fee it can only be used for those things that benefit those students you know if it's a revolving fund we have more flexibility and we can use it in other categories if we have to I'll give you an example of something that had come up where it was good to have reserves most people don't know is we had issue with the sound board and the lighting board at the auditorium in the middle of the production season you may know you're very familiar with that and luckily we had in reserves the $3,500 for the sound board and the $10,000 for the lighting board or you would have

▶ 1:02:21 John N. Tramontozzi: been there with a very big flashlight well as you know I do have a soft spot for the the arts and the theater and the music program as all four of my daughters have been successful with those programs and that leads me to another question I have is it appears then that the in the fiscal 2017 budget that it does not fund the position of the finance director is that correct yes it also does not find a separate math director and it also doesn't find a separate separate history director and and of course I'm a little disappointed in that but I understand in terms of the budgets but let me ask you this so what what was the rationale for the elimination of the finance position and will it will the programs that theater and music and programs suffer in terms

▶ 1:03:17 of quality and opportunities for the students because of the elimination of the that director position what happened is during the budget season two of the directors informed me they would be leaving given what we were facing at that time I had to seize it as an opportunity to keep teachers as much as I don't like it I and without having to lay off two people and that's when we began to think I do not do this in isolation I do it with the whole team there's 23 of us on the team including the directors including the assistant principals and we began to talk about what are our options this is an unfortunate configuration that other districts are going to I spoke to my colleagues in North Reading North Andover Waltham all facing similar

▶ 1:04:07 situations moving to a different configuration with directors because of fiscal constraints what we are going to create is and again when you have a situation like this you also have to see what are the opportunities in this situation we are creating what we're calling content facilitators we're working with both unions on this I will tell you the teachers union is happens to be pretty enthusiastic about this and so we are hoping for the best again I'm not telling you this is ideal we all know this is not ideal but what we will do is we will have teacher leaders who are expertise in their areas take charge of of what they can and have and report to directors who will have budgetary responsibilities for those areas I'm just pausing to think okay I'm sorry

▶ 1:05:06 thank you in this business very few people stay in one place forever and that's especially true among administrators and we do not have a succession system in the Melrose public schools we don't have a way to grow the next generation of administrators so when this occurred and we had to brainstorm we looked at it as an opportunity to grow that next generation of administrators that when some of our current people move on to whatever aspirations they have we have people ready and able to take over the teachers also like it because it gives them more say in their departments and they feel that they have a lot to bring to the table and they do they're smart capable people so again we're in a situation where we're trying to make lemonade out

▶ 1:05:57 John N. Tramontozzi: of lemons and you know committed people it's a one-year at school committees and systems it's a one-year trial and we will re-examine it in the spring if it doesn't work we will be asking for more money to return to the to the other structure so but that is the best we can do under the circumstances well I do hope maybe it it is a successful um it works out because uh of course my uh my fear is that once the position is gone it's very difficult to bring it back and in past experience we've seen that especially in this type of position i hate to see the uh the good works that the um the program in the productions of for example les mis and beauty and the beast and most recent too too I think we're successful productions and great opportunities for the students

▶ 1:06:52 I hate to see those disappear we had great productions before we had the director of Fine Arts also as you well remember yes and I hope it continues in that that the loss of that position doesn't affect it at all but thank you I appreciate that all right that's all I have no thank you Alderman Tramontozzi alderman Medeiros please thank you superintendent Amory you have a vacancy in the business manager position second can you talk about how the the budget process has gone and what like how you've handled that without the business manager so when mr. McCollum left I think we were already on draft for so and he had set up great systems great macros and we have Dan Sullivan with us many of you met probably know mr. Sullivan he's worked with the city for

▶ 1:07:42 many years especially on Eunice he comes two days a week and he's working with us on this and he's been able to pick it up using what mr. Picon has left in place so the adjustments he's had to make to the documents have been only basically my change log and corresponding changes to the overall budget he is the one that ultimately had to take the Excel sheets and convert them to munis being very well familiar with munis it you know he was able to do it and is this am i correct in memory serving me right this is maybe the second year that we've got the the school committee is really sort of on munis and doing more this is this is no the school committee's always been has been on yours I'd have to look at

▶ 1:08:30 Monica C. Medeiros: mr. yeah yeah yeah a long time we're expanding the use of it we're trying you know a lot of a lot of the staff have a habit of keeping double systems you know at this you know so we're trying to move everybody somewhat recently yeah yeah voted some funding for related like that so in in my recollection I can't remember us having this this kind of difference in the itemized budget with the actual budget either I think in some ways it's it's a little bit more clear in terms of what we're actually expending I know you mentioned that there is an other funding document that is with this so if you look at the draft of budgets which will be you know finalized when I'll go up as soon as we finish here here and you look at page 9 of that document online it lists all our

▶ 1:09:32 Monica C. Medeiros: other funding sources so yes so I would like to see if we could get that you know please added to the budget order that we have on the Alderman side so I think it's it's very important that you know if somebody comes you know looking to see the city of Melrose budget and they go to the document that they can really understand you know how it is that you know we're getting from you know these two different you know two different dollar items I know I had asked this last year is about how many revolving accounts we we have and one if we could get a list of those if you had a chance to work on that since last year That list exists, I believe, in Mr. De La Rosa's office. Okay. And can you talk about some of the controls that are involved in how the money is handled,

▶ 1:10:34 how it comes in and how it goes out, and how the decision is made regarding the revolving accounts? Well, their budgeted immune is just like anything else. So if I know I have $278,000 in athletic fees coming in and a total budget of almost $700,000, they're transferred as needed. Reflected immunists, if you follow immunists, you often see things that are negative and that's because they're coming from revolving funds. It's the same protocols and procedures as you would have for any other city department that may have outsourced funding, whether it's a grant or something else and I are those funds audited absolutely actually they're audited at several places they're audited by our auditor they're audited at the state level in the year-end reports they're tightly

▶ 1:11:35 Monica C. Medeiros: controlled okay and I heard you mentioned that you're doing curriculum review on a rolling you do a rolling cycle and next up is is math how how far in how far in are we into the bond that we did for curriculum materials going into year four or five going into year four or five yeah yeah at least four or five and if we're looking at math now is that going to take well it's a two years any program review was a two-year two-year review it takes us two years to go through the whole process so in some of what come and sometimes they come out of it recommending nothing and sometimes they come out of it recommending something or sometimes they come out of it recommending adjustments and sequence of of instruction it's not just about the materials it's about instruction

▶ 1:12:33 Monica C. Medeiros: sequencing of courses training for teachers it's a comprehensive review of the curriculum and also I thought that I'm not sure it was yourself or if it was chairman Driscoll that that you had mentioned an extra staff or additional staff to keep the Learning Commons open later so I had proposed we're anticipating with the new Learning Commons that students are going to want stay later in the day and we're trying to find a way to staff it with somebody who has technology abilities after school maybe even beginning late afternoon you know halfway through the school day but again it was a choice a difficult choice we had to make in order to close the difference and we dropped it from from the budget at this time yeah no I my recollection was when we

▶ 1:13:31 Monica C. Medeiros: voted the bond that we thought we were going to be able to do those kinds of things with the existing staff so I don't know which bond you're referring to all the the bond for the Learning Commons and well I still have a library media specialist I to library media specialists and an academic facilitator but again they're very much in demand and again anticipating further demand we wanted to try to ease and provide more supervision we'll have to find a different way to do it thanks it's kind of circling back I know another question I was hoping to you know we voted to fully fund all day kindergarten and you know with the understanding that when we did that it would become self funding and fund itself is is that the case

▶ 1:14:36 considering how how little chapter 70 Melrose gets I don't think anything is self funding in Melrose I think that it has been very successful we do get chapter 70 money for those children I don't think you I know that in the crowding people suggested we go back to half day of fees I will tell you about 90% of the state I believe now has full day K and it's an integral part of our education program and to go anywhere backwards would have a negative effect on not only those children but on their whole family but you don't think it's self-funding I don't think anything is self-funding athletic program is not self-funding our music program is not self-funding we're a public school system no we have an obligation we were just you know very much told that it it

▶ 1:15:28 Monica C. Medeiros: would be self on I wasn't trying to see if that's where we're at it doesn't seem like we are so on that note so you don't think that the ECC is self-funding see the CCC is self-funding I don't know where that rumor started the ECC is not only self-funding it's one of the offsets we use to balance our budget it is ACC is tuition-based the only obligation we have at the ECC is the special ed children which were about number about 32 currently out of 300 and could you explain a little bit more about the the obligation at that level I'm sorry can you explain a little bit more about the obligation that we have at that level it had you know pre-kindergarten what you know what our our obligation is in terms of education do we have to provide you know full-day

▶ 1:16:34 services like what's the special ed children or for all children or for the well for special ed I mean or for special ed children it depends on what their disability is and what their IEP is written some children need a full program and some children just need related services so it varies from child to child and those are sort of if early intervention detects this is how right so as you as you well know and obviously you remember from your days on the school committee if the child has been an early intervention and early intervention recommends that the child begins services or continue services at three they're recommended to us at 2 6 and we begin planning at 2 9 so that the day they turn 3 they can literally walk in the door so what will often happen at

▶ 1:17:21 the ECC is we will be picking up kids which we did as late as the latest two weeks ago because under the early intervention and special ed requirements that's their transition time and actually speaking of picking it do you think that your enrollment numbers for the regular you know kindergarten up do you think especially kindergarten do you think that those enrollment numbers are solid at this point or I think I think my next year's enrollment numbers are still soft I think that we will continue to see registration over the summer I think we were at last time I looked we were at 305 and we typically see between 30 and 40 registrations over the summer so so you had been I'm closer to 30 than

▶ 1:18:09 Monica C. Medeiros: 40 quite frankly and you guys have been estimating on 330 is that i'm estimating on 330. so we're close but maybe a little bit over yeah and um can you talk a little bit about you mentioned uh chapter 70. um then you talk about the charter school funding and this might be more of a question for mr delarusso um are we receiving the reimbursements that we're supposed to be receiving from the state through the chair it's my understanding we are not getting the full reimbursement i know there's been a lot of discussion because of the negative impact it has on funding um for all cities and towns because we don't get that um but from my understanding um we are still not receiving the full reimbursement we're required to get do you have any idea about

▶ 1:19:00 Monica C. Medeiros: how how short that will leave us or how short it left us last year um i can find that out for you i'll be happy to provide that for the board but um as you're aware it is disappointing because it was sold under one version and it's come across as a different version and i think perhaps if that was understood in the beginning people from my perspective would have had a different uh concept of it no certainly and we have many obligations that we have to meet based on what the state and other i know put on us and yet some of those areas where we should be getting the full amount that they are obligated by law to be funding us with a reimbursement we're not necessarily getting so we're happy to to do some research for you thank you i'd like to see that as and how that has an

▶ 1:19:54 Michael P. Zwirko: impact on our budget in particular I'd love to see it with it over the last five years particularly thank you Thank You alderman Medeiros Alderman Sweirko please Thank You mr. chairman and thank you for being here tonight and also for all the work you did it over the past couple of weeks with the budget I know that it wasn't easy so I appreciate the hard work so I chairman Driscoll during in her opening remarks made the statement that the budget reflects basic services that will be provided and maybe I didn't get that completely right but I guess what I'm saying what I want to say is does that mean does the term basic services means what we are mandated under the law I mean because it seems like I'm looking at this and I know the the good work to

▶ 1:20:39 Margaret Raymond Driscoll: get Sunday it's more than basic services right I mean so what exactly what did you mean by that and we are obviously we're in good steed with what we will be providing it under the mandate so if you could just expound on the basic services a little bit please sure what I meant by that was that the superintendent proposed a level service budget anticipating that needs always grow and change and please feel free to correct me if I'm wrong but that is my interpretation of level service because we have additional mandates more students more things to do so we are looking at originally in the first draft was the love the level service but obviously we've had to make some changes so we are certainly well over meeting the basic minimum requirements thanks to

▶ 1:21:35 Margaret Raymond Driscoll: all the good work that our staff is doing but certainly not to the extent we would like to do um that we feel that the good people of melrose certainly would like to see us do so we're always looking to do more than that so um thank you what i was trying to do is make a distinction between level funded and level service if we were funded at the same exact number you had funded us last year we would actually be laying off people okay you know expenses go up yeah contractual obligations go up level service was an attempt to continue to do what we were doing and accommodate for some additional mandates and some additional growth needs for example the fifth grade at the Winthrop the two two additional K's against it again this year the need

▶ 1:22:30 for an additional specialist at the elementary schools because you now have more kids you have to give more you need somebody you need more time for art and music that's a point two person or point four person depending on on the situation we were trying to incorporate all those things into what would be a level service so our students would continue to get what previous students had received over the past few years again as we've discussed here we kept we kept teachers in front of children we were able to add those things we needed to add to accommodate the growth we weren't able to give another specialist to the elementaries we found a creative way around it using our school psychologists and our social workers we have some more maneuvering of staff that

▶ 1:23:23 we're going to have to do internally Lincoln's going to have 425 students I think Roosevelt's going to have 420 that's a difficult number for an an administrator without an assistant principal so we're thinking about how we allocate mid-level staff so that they're there to help the principals again without adding that because we couldn't um it's those type of things that we're really struggling with and i appreciate the clarity on that the the other um question i wanted to ask is you had mentioned the departure of mr picone and then you had said that the business media dan sullivan in that role is that an interim role that he's in you said it was only two days a week that's it that's an interim role so

▶ 1:24:04 Michael P. Zwirko: is the position the position will be filled the position will be filled it isn't I mean are you interviewing currently is it open point now I needed to get this unity okay and I also noticed and apologies on my end if I missed it but it appeared at least the way I'm looking at it there is no athletic director or the Robbie or Pat Ruggiero is retiring and we will fill that as well but there's no she where don't you see her she's listed usually system-wide on the same page as me I think oh with me yeah maybe I'm looking at it I thought it was it's under the business manager role it's zero dollars maybe it maybe that's a different acronym for the you know the ad is add admin oh okay yeah I mean the munis the munis abbreviations are not always

▶ 1:25:00 helpful yeah I know it says zero right yeah page 16 the third one down it says 2017 is zero no that's administrative help desk the administrative receptionist administration straight up no they're under business manager above tech director for 2017 under mayor it says zero he may have put that in under wellness because they're also the director of health and wellness I will have to check with mr. Sullivan it jumped out at me that's why I asked no thank you for catching that um he might have moved it to the athletic department and I guess my last question is more more of a broad one with respect to what's been called as the structural deficit it has been eliminated through this budget process

▶ 1:26:25 I'm just curious it was it was kind of a tall glass of water to get rid of it's respectfully do the chase not been eliminated because the override didn't pass so what we do is this fall we're going to seek a request from the Board of Aldermen for another six hundred fifty five thousand from free cash like we did last year I believe was six hundred and forty thousand that does not include the Medicaid of three hundred thousand dollars that we do traditionally for a number of years but that will be a request before the board most likely in october in the fall yeah thank you those are all the questions that i had mr chairman thank you alderman's workout alderman forbes please thank you mr champ um i think this first

▶ 1:27:17 Scott M. Forbes: question is for uh mr delarusso can you just describe uh the vetting process for the expenses that we have here in the budget i know that you and i talked at at length sometimes where we get these finished numbers and it's like a cake with the frosting on it but we really can't cut into the cake to see where these expenses are allocated and if you know if they're justified just for example if if a line item and supplies goes up by a hundred percent I'm assuming that you've had contact with either the various department heads if it belongs to which school if there are any type of estimates that go along with that that justify that increase can you explain that a little bit to us sure I make you the chair and um I'll use the readers

▶ 1:28:01 dietress virgin if i can but i'll try to go as deep as you'd like me to what typically happens is um when we do send down it's a great question thank you when we do send out um the budget proposal and request for information from each department we specifically advise them they are not to increase contractual anything other than contractual salary obligations which are all audited by the auditor's office in the city budget so all the salaries they're audited why because we have to ensure that they're at the appropriate step level and they have quite frankly the authorization to be at that stepping level so that is significant part of what we do the second thing is that in particular um we specifically advise department heads and i you know quite frankly

▶ 1:28:56 and i get it back a little bit each year and i should get it back a little bit each year that we advise them again to not increase any line items unless there's already a pre-approved contractual obligation for example if trash if the contract is a three-year contract we're obligated for another 10 000 next year for example then that would justify the increase in that line otherwise we ask them to submit a supplemental request outside of the budget as to what items they would like to see increase or adjusted or actually decrease because that can happen too depending on the contract expires or they've changed a vendor for example um but and then what we do is um so that is all assimilated it's put together we sit down we look at them

▶ 1:29:48 through the auditor's office budget by budget item by item line and by line item to ensure that if we have an opportunity to increase a line item we obviously try to identify which one for purposes of need for purposes of departmental request would warrant it so it is in its own way it is a very laborious process which it should be And we put everyone through this process so that we can be sure that what is budgeted in that line is actually as close to what is accurate as is possible. It is clearly our consensus that we cannot fund to levels that any department would like to see. That will never happen. What we try to do is suggest that within that category, that they use their management skills and prioritize during the year what comes up before them.

▶ 1:30:50 So if they have to use another line item within a category, it's because they as department has believed that's a bigger priority than what was originally their objective. But that's really the leeway we provide them because they are also responsible, just as we are. to ensure that they don't exceed their line items by category period but we also try in the best way we can to give them that some type of flexibility because things will happen the budget you pass today will not be the budget that ends up being expended period it's either going to be higher or lower that's just the nature of the budget so to your question it's an excellent question And it's also, it really, it's a process that I think really never ends because as you're aware, every month we produce a report for the Board of Aldermen by department to show you where they're at, and it also assists departments to identify what they're doing, where their strengths are, and where they may be weak.

▶ 1:31:53 So if they do have issues, we like to know as soon as possible, particularly, for example, with the overtime, because we need as much time as possible to plan to help them. The later it gets into the year, the less chance we can help people at times. So the sooner they can identify an issue or a problem, please, we ask them to tell us so we can put it on the agenda and, you know, hopefully we'll be able to help them before the end of the fiscal year. So it's really a two-way street, and it needs to be that because there's no possible way, given the magnitude of our budgets, that we can operate any other way. We need the department's input. We need their trust. We need their judgment. And we try to provide as much help as we can.

▶ 1:32:40 Scott M. Forbes: Sure. I know just given my accounting and auditing background, my job is to go inside the number. Oh, yeah. And this is kind of like the opposite. But I do know that if you gave us every single piece of paper for every single line item, We would be here in October, and we still wouldn't be halfway through. You wouldn't want that. It is readily available. If anybody had a specific question, the number is easily justified. That was the point that I was really trying to make. Absolutely. In fact, one of the things that we take pride in is on the payment of bills, that we ensure we have adequate documentation. Every single item that we pay, and it's twofold. One is not only that it provides what we need, justification to pay the bill,

▶ 1:33:20 that it's appropriate that it's legal and it's proper but also as I we always tell each and every department and I always emphasize with my own staff that remember that in a year or two years or three years an auditor will come in here asked to see these bills by random selection and they want you to produce the documentation you used to that authorized the payment of this bill so pretend the audit is standing in front of you the outside auditor and before pay the bill be sure all your ducks are in a row will hold it up and don't pay it because if you can't justify it now you can't justify it in two or three years so that's the protocol that we use that's why we're i think as successful as we are we don't see a lot of um negative issues we don't

▶ 1:34:06 see revenue deficits we don't see debt appropriation deficits they don't happen by accident that because people pay attention you have to pay attention where you're going to end up in those positions because um the longer you put it off the worse the problem will be it's like anything else address it immediately and take action as soon as possible so i mean that's the protocol and um i think that helps everyone here because it all gives us a peace of mind that people are on top of it and it has to be that way thank you thank you i appreciate that point of clarification for us um i do want to get into uh i i looked through the budget and one of the two things or the two things that popped out at me were the lincoln school and the franklin where their

▶ 1:34:47 increases were i think for the lincoln is like nine and a half percent overall and for the franklin was at 19 um can we could you just go into that for us and uh so um without looking as you said as an accountant into the numbers generally uh don't forget the lincoln now is up um classrooms okay so um they're now a four four and then the rest of three strands so that's an additional um the other thing is we need to add a 0.5 esl teacher at lincoln's which i'm sure you understand at the franklin um what we have run into is with some of our special ed children we need additional related services we are probably going to have to increase some of those some of the children that we see coming in from ei

▶ 1:35:44 Scott M. Forbes: a little bit more involved than we've had in the past and you're seeing you're seeing some of that reflected including sometimes the need for another paraprofessional so that is what you're seeing okay and my last question would be hearing uh hearing the language and the dialogue tonight about cutting director positions and and i've heard the word layoffs a number of times this evening as well to me it wasn't a few years ago where the administration was saying that we were in a very financially stable and robust position when it came to our school department it seems like that this has changed in a very short period of time with this fiscal 17 budget are we in a position of financial stability or are we are we are

▶ 1:36:37 we just trying to hold on or maintain you could go into that a little bit for us I would I would appreciate that my objective this year given the information we were provided by the city as to what was available was to maintain that was my objective this year was to maintain and to not slide backwards i think you're in a situation where it's a year by year situation quite frankly i think there were some extra stresses that mr del russo can talk about on the city budget and their ability to provide funding next year but i think that given the city's ability to raise revenue you're in a difficult position you know mr. de la Rosa you think that six hundred and forty thousand dollar appropriation from free cash should be

▶ 1:37:32 Mary Beth McAteer-Margolis: able to take care of that supplemental shortfall if need be I feel the chip the I believe we're looking for six hundred and fifty five thousand in the fall if it's if it's available and that would I believe but the Medicaid would close the door for the school department to buy them what they need that was the same numbers last year last year I believe was six hundred and forty thousand six forty last year plus the three hundred for the Medicaid Thank You mr. chairman I have nothing at this time Thank You alderman Forbes alderman MacMaster my goal is please I know it's been months and it's not easy and I appreciate you presenting us with a balanced budget it's it's fortunate that we haven't been balanced it on the backs of students in terms of putting services

▶ 1:38:28 Mary Beth McAteer-Margolis: and and staff in front of students and I think we should all be very grateful for that I am concerned that there's basically a three million dollar difference that you're filling with outside funding are all of the expenses included in this budget for that three million dollars or are there so in other words like if you're getting eight hundred thousand dollars in circuit breaker are all the special ed costs included in this budget that would be offset by that circuit breaker funding that's a special education as you well know there's no projecting right one of the reason we were eight we felt a little bit more secure using reserves to buy against next year was we got past the April 1st deadline if you're familiar with speed you know that's a

▶ 1:39:18 magic date right in special ed world it means that nobody has moved in it's a very expensive out-of-district placement private out-of-district placement for which we will be held responsible for the coming year that doesn't mean we won't have move-ins for collaboratives that doesn't mean we won't have placements that are expensive unfortunate things happen to children and we have a responsibility to make sure they receive a free and appropriate public education so I can't I can't promise you that I think you know a budget is your best guesstimate and that's what we did based on what we currently have in special education and those types of but the outside district the outside placement tuitions and the collaborative tuitions are included in

▶ 1:40:10 Mary Beth McAteer-Margolis: this budget as projected yes they are they are so the current students for our current students so the outside funding sources that you're anticipating using to fill that three million dollar gap are essentially right the expenses are covered in this budget right and we believe you know one of the difficult difficult things of doing a budget before the state finalizes their budget is again where we're using information that could shift in a moment right but right now it was built on the belief that they will fund the K grant they will fund circuit breaker at a reasonable rate but you know again from your experience there's a day where all of a sudden you wake up and they've decided to go from 70% reimbursement on circuit breaker to 40% because the state

▶ 1:41:03 Mary Beth McAteer-Margolis: has a problem mm-hmm and although they say they're giving more in chapter 70 this year yeah we heard from the department today and they said don't count on it right the checks in the mail right yeah so in essence what the city is budgeting for the school department is really three million dollars short except for the fact that we are receiving these outside funds which at some point almost any time could be in jeopardy is that an accurate statement to some time I think what could be in jeopardy is the revenue realized well from your revolving accounts from your fees from your exactly tuitions right right and so those are based on sort of a break even a break point where people will say gee I really can't send my child to education stations every day

▶ 1:42:10 Mary Beth McAteer-Margolis: after school anymore exactly right right so that that was leading me to the free cash which mr. de la Rosa has already addressed in so far as we are anticipating that and we are anticipating the 300,000 in Medicaid reimbursement which makes up almost the million that you had to cut no the bill budget is built with that calculated in already oh it is yes okay the million we had to cut was above and beyond so your amount of 28 million includes revenue from that the three million dollar gap includes that almost million dollars right from free cash and Medicaid money okay all right that's that's good to know thank you I think that was most of my questions I did also pick up as I'm Alderman's work oh did on the ad position and I I'm I'm wondering if they

▶ 1:43:17 Mary Beth McAteer-Margolis: just think I think he moved him to a different line right and so out of my office yeah well because the other and the other director positions that are remaining there are three remaining right and are they in here embedded in in the high school in the middle school staffing costs and the staffing costs and so the new lead teacher coordinators whatever the new we haven't finalized and facilitators we have not we've had them before haven't we instead of Lee I mean I remember when we didn't have department heads and we had lead teachers and lead teachers at one point you're right so those positions are or are not in here they're not in there yet they're not in here yet yeah but I believe there's a line there for contractual obligations that covers what

▶ 1:44:03 Mary Beth McAteer-Margolis: we predict will be the cost of that to me it would also be helpful going forward to know like what the costs of those are specifically in relation to what the savings is from not having the directors so if and when there was a point that we could put them back we would be you know aware of it certainly I am and have been since day one with the kindergarten grants a huge supporter and a full day kindergarten. Nevertheless, the high school being our flagship, I think we, you know, may need to be looking, and I, as I know you are, for the future, you know, of how we're going to be distributing, you know, the resources that we have. And I know you work hard on that every year and every day so but I think it's a continual battle to to balance it and thank you

▶ 1:45:06 Gail Infurna: for what you're doing that's it thank you thank you very much Alderman McAteer-Margolis Alderman Inferno please I had a question regarding chapter 70 based on Alderman Lemmerman earlier question where I understand how you you didn't know the number or anything I was just curious for the public safe sake would you know whether it was going to be higher or lower just you know it's going to be slightly higher it is in somewhere this is 91 pages of documentation that I carry with me I just know I understand it's going to be slightly higher because our enrollment is higher okay all right I just kind of wanted to get that out there for the public also I actually had the same concerns about the athletic directors line here I've just gone through I

▶ 1:45:57 Gail Infurna: really can't see it in here and I just like I think mr. Sullivan when he converted to Munis buried it in with high school and middle school salaries I will ask him to you know I appreciate that but the bottom not line is accurate from the Excel sheets do you know and I should know this but somewhat maybe like Thank you, I'm not a good memory of the numbers. On the business manager's job that you're advertising, what that was. Actually, excuse me, the athletic director, what you're advertising that job for? That's contractual, and again, I'm trying to remember what we did in this new contract with the administrators, is we tiered their salaries depending on the position. And I know that the athletic director's tier is up there higher than the director's.

▶ 1:46:49 Gail Infurna: So I would say mid-90s, I would say. That's what it looks like in here from before, but I wasn't quite sure. And I really don't have many questions. As you know, I do watch you avidly on TV. But I am concerned also about the change in department heads. And I think to your credit and to your administration, we've made many gains in the past few years and it's tough to, and I'm sure you must really be feeling it. It's tough to see the progress being slowed down, and I'm going to go with your theory. It's not going to stop, but it's just going to be a little slower, so I do feel bad about that. I also like and appreciate that you want teachers in the classroom, but I guess we want it all and just can't have it all.

▶ 1:47:40 So I thank you for, thank you, the school committee and administrative team for all the tough decisions that you do have to make each well at least every other week when you meet and so thank you for all that thank you thank you alderman inferno president khan please so is the 650 free cash allocation part of the 3.1 million dollars of funds that are being applied for other sources or is it in addition the month of the dn prepared Did he include the $650,000? He included it. Yeah, but I saw it. So it's in the $3.1 million is the $650,000 free cash. That's what he said. He could verify that. Okay. We'll verify that. That's all. I was going to launch into a polemic about municipal finance and

▶ 1:48:39 being vigilant, but I don't think anybody wants to hear that. Thank you, President Codd. Alderman Boisselle, please. Just to clarify, Chapter 70, the annual cherry sheet analysis stated 4-28-2016 shows an increase of $205,480, about a 2.58% increase. Increase in population. And also as a point of information, respectfully, is that also on page two has, one shows the charter school reimbursements that all the mnemonic was talked about you know page two shows the charter school assessment so we see it on that same state aid sheet and again when it strikes home you see just so much money that we're not realizing it's striking pardon me but no no problem disappointed thank you mister thank you thank you alderman boy cell seeing no

▶ 1:49:38 Peter D. Mortimer: further alderman wishing to be heard the chair is open for a motion motion to recommend department number 300 school departments bottom line alderman boy sellers made a motion to recommend the school department budget I'd like to have the I'd like to have the actual bottom line recited since bottom line is twenty five million seven hundred and twenty five thousand six hundred and thirty eight dollars and ninety cents according to what I have here or twenty five point seven million alderman Boyce L has made his motion more specific and it was again seconded by alderman Inferno seeing no further discussion all in favor please say aye aye any opposed hearing none this budget the school department budget will be recommended the full board thank you ladies and

▶ 1:50:36 Peter D. Mortimer: gentlemen thank you for your attendance the next budget we have before us is budget six three one it's the recreation department in the amount of sixty four thousand thirty dollars and eighteen cents I don't know if it makes any sense to wait and deal with this one with the revolving fund I think we will take this budget and I do see that under our orders we have the revolving fund and generally it is our practice to take the revolving fund immediately subsequent to the budget I don't want interfere but it just it's hard to talk about one without the other for absolutely it's it is our practice it's a great suggestion and it's it's our practice anyway Thank You chairman Mortimer members of the board

▶ 1:51:31 we're here tonight to present the budget for the Recreation Department as well as discuss the record we asked for approval of the continued approval of the recreation revolving account the recreation budget budget itself is relatively modest at 64,000 it is one of those anomalies in the city where it's self funding as is as is the rep the revolving fund the salaries the full-time salaries and the of the employees of the Recreation Department of funded 37% by the general fund and 74 63 percent by the records recreation revolving account in addition to that all the part-time employees the contract employees those types of things are also funded by the the revolving account I was here last year and was expressing to the board the fact that I'm I'm fortunate to serve on

▶ 1:52:28 on the board that I do serve on due to the fact that mr. Oliveri is in charge of recreation and miss Bell is the superintendent of Mount Hood it makes things a lot easier for us and for for us to run things throughout the city on the recreation and Mount Hood side on the recreation I don't think I really have to educate too many people as to what mr. Oliveri does he's he's done a fantastic job with the recreation department the revolving account is running at a surplus consistently for the last three or four years anyway and we never had that luxury in the past when I started on the board the the breadth of the programs of the office to the cities of Melrose the citizens of Melrose covers the full gamut from the younger kids to the seniors from

▶ 1:53:19 athletics the traditional athletics to arts arts and entertainment and that type of stuff so I think kudos well fortunate to have mr. Oliveri running the Recreation Department here we're fortunate as well that the programs that he run are well attended there's probably over 12,000 participants by our count in all of the cumulative of the recreation programs we're fortunate as well due to the way that the revenues run that we're able to offer at least 180 scholarships to folks who can't afford various programs here in the city having said that the fees that that the board has set at the recommendation of mr. Oliveri are relatively modest in comparison to other cities and towns for the same services I think at least on the recreation side the city of Melrose

▶ 1:54:16 is is getting a bang for their buck and we would ask that you approve what we've often thank you very much mr. Gardner motion to move the bottom line we have a motion to move the bottom line by alderman Medeiros duly seconded by alderman tram toes I think the head show by a bit alderman voice out please good evening thank you for coming so what's what are we going to have this year for programs we've got some good stuff coming up one of the big initiatives brought on with a partnership with the Council on Aging is explosion of pickleball which is pickleball would you like to explain that yeah it's a condensed version of tennis where where seniors don't have to run as much it's more of a ping-pong version of tennis so that's that's a an

▶ 1:55:10 initiative that we're we're starting up this is as early as this summer as well as we've we've taken over a big supervision part at the strength and conditioning facility at the high school which has opened up opportunities for kids especially the high school athletes to work out after school and in the evenings so that's that's been a pretty good undertaking and we're gonna be kicking that off for the summer as well so keep on a lot of athletes active and non-athletes said that are interested in working out and the rest is a is is up in the air right now I'm sure I'm sure we kind of go season by season so now you mentioned the program at the high school are you renting out a particular portion of the high school we we have a at the high school we usually rent out

▶ 1:56:05 the mark who gymnasium when we go in where the Recreation Department pays a the school for our rentals so the weight room is a mutual agreement that the Recreation Department will step in and provide supervision at no expense for the school but in terms of gymnasiums we usually in auditoriums cafeterias we usually go in on a rental basis and and pay those fees okay it's about 30,000 a year I think we pay to the school department out of the fees that we charge for the recreation programs very good thank you very much thank you Mr. Mr. Chairman. Thank you, Alderman Boycelle. Seeing no further Alderman wishing to be heard, a motion has been made to recommend this budget for passage to the full board.

▶ 1:56:50 Peter D. Mortimer: Duly seconded, all in favor please say aye. Aye. Any opposed, hearing none, that budget will be recommended to the full board for passage. The next order we will take up is the reauthorization of the Recreation Department revolving fund number 2652 for fiscal year 17, it is order 2016-172. Motion to move bottom line, Mr. Chairman. Second. We have a motion to recommend this revolving account order for passage to the full board. Said motion duly seconded by Alderman Boisselle. Seeing no discussion, all in favor please say aye. Aye. Any opposed, hearing none, this budget will be recommended to the full, This order will be recommended to the full board for passage. Thank you. Mr. Gardner, thank you.

▶ 1:57:40 Peter D. Mortimer: Mr. Oliveira, thank you very much for coming. Mount Hood. Mount Hood. Want to do the Mount Hood budget? Alderman Tramontozzi is making a motion to take the Mount Hood order number 2016 out of order, 2016-162. Second the motion. Second by Alderman Forbes. All in favor, please say aye. Aye. Any opposed? Hearing none, we will take up that order at that time. Mrs. Bell, Mr. Gardner, would you join us, please? Thank you again, Mr. Chairman. Appreciate the courtesy. Once again, we're here to present the Mount Hood Enterprise Fund budget. We have submitted the budget this year based upon the actual numbers that we had last year as far as costs and expenses. kept it the same based upon the revenues that we've had I think I was here about

▶ 1:58:55 a month ago when we were talking about conditions up at Mount Hood we had a great year last year not the best we've had revenue wise but it was a significant increase than I had been from the year before as I think I've indicated in the past so much of what we do revenue wise depends on weather and we're already up a bit this year at this point in the year or about 10,000 up than we were last year and we really haven't even started rolling okay and it looks like it's so far if the weather holds will be in pretty good shape again this is another tough year for us as far as expenses go included in our budget of the bond costs that we have to pay this is the last big year so to speak that we have of roughly 350,000 on the bonds that we use for the athletic fields but

▶ 1:59:54 fortunately up to this point in time we've been able to to weather the storm without giving up any of the services or the of the quality of the particularly the Mount Hood golf course we've been able to maintain the facilities we've been able to keep the the fees and expenses relatively low without increase of the last couple of years and still meet the obligations that we committed to vis-a-vis the bonds my understanding is that this is the last big year and hopefully once we get by this it'll free up things have been a lot of it has to do with as I said as we're fortunate that Joan fell is in charge up there because the only time we need to talk is usually when there's problems and we very rarely talk nowadays I think that the other thing is the health of the the

▶ 2:00:49 enterprise fund I do understand or I think I understand that free cash certifications aren't an indicator of how much money that you have on a regular basis I I'm still trying to struggle with that concept but this past Last year in October, the Department of Revenue certified that there was 672,000 free cash in the Mount Hood Enterprise Funds, which the point I think I made last year, and I'll reiterate, is that may not be money we can spend tomorrow, but it's an indicator as to the health of the Enterprise Fund, despite the fact that we've had the bond costs and these extraordinary expenses the last couple of years. I think things were optimistic up there. There's a litany of improvements that have been made and will continue to be made.

▶ 2:01:32 fortunate the golf management has been a good partner in this regard um and the course even april and may uh you can't get on if you don't get up there early it's just it's incredible the the amount of the rounds that they've had in the last couple of years and a lot of it's a trivial what they do um with joan looking over their shoulder for sure we would submit the budget and field any questions you may have thank you mr gardner president khan please yeah i'm not I'm not a big fan of enterprise funds, but this is actually an enterprise fund that's a successful operation. The revenues generated from running this golf course fully funds the operation at Mount Hood. You don't use any general city funds up at Mount Hood.

▶ 2:02:20 And in addition to providing the city with a golf course, This operation is throwing off over $300,000 that's been used over a number of years to pay for ball fields throughout the city. It makes a payment in lieu of taxes to the city of approximately $72,000. And it also pays a water bill to the city in excess of $20,000. So this is like the one time during the budget process where I'd like to commend an organization that's doing an excellent job. This is an excellent, well-run enterprise fund. I wish all enterprise funds ran like this, and then we would be a lot happier, and we would not be here for as long as we are. Thank you. Thank you, President Kahn. President. Alderman Medeiros, please.

▶ 2:03:16 Monica C. Medeiros: Thank you. Thank you very much, Mr. Gardner. And I think President Kahn said it very well. well-run department and you know nothing but I hear nothing but good things and I did want to just talk with you again about water I know I had asked last year and I think you had anticipated that the water costs were going to be more so we just go back for one second last year was what I think was an anomaly there was a confluence of various factors that created a large water bill for us last year we had that extraordinary snow which we stockpiled up at Mount Hood and when it melted some of the salt and chemicals from the snow got into the ponds and when July came we couldn't utilize some of the water in the ponds

▶ 2:04:10 to irrigate the course because of the the chemicals that were involved we had go to city water in in city water the city water bill um was uh was tremendous we knew about the we didn't realize the problem would be that great once we did we we we took steps to try to look at alternative sources i think i told you last year uh alderman Medeiros when we were here and everybody that we were looking into wells yeah and i think when i was here a month ago i may have mentioned We did commission a company to come in, a geology company, a geotechnical company, I guess you would call them, to come in and educate us as to what could be done and to do some testing. The bottom line is they did the testing out by the second hole.

▶ 2:05:01 And the way I believe the gentleman put it, they fracked the rock that was down there. And what we were getting on this one well was about 40,000 gallons a minute. And once they did this procedure, it's now jumped up, as of our last meeting, I believe Mr. Ford said it was about 100,000 or 108,000 gallons a minute. So that when we did the math with the help of the geotechnical folks, it appears that even the large bill that we had on that extraordinary year would be covered by that water flow. remains to be seen we've been promised a lot of things but it's going in the right direction we're optimistic that we can handle it the city was was gracious gracious enough to work with us last year on on the lodge bill and we were

▶ 2:05:53 able to you know spread out the payments and in kind of a wait-and-see attitude they were willing to work with us on the on the fracking of this second well we also had an option with this geotech company to to do the same thing on another well that's further up on the course the recommendation based upon the output of this well was that we shouldn't spend the extra twenty thousand thirty thousand dollars to do it it's not worth it you may not get anything and what we're getting out of this well should satisfy our needs a big it's a big relief to say the least that's good to hear and now how about the quality of the water in the pond now that we've had it yeah it wasn't it was like it was a combination of three or four different things we had a really

▶ 2:06:39 really hot dry summer our well pump blew up in the beginning the season so we didn't go on on time because it had to be replaced ordering parts and it was salt in the water that just postponed us we had to have it tested once spring came to make sure that the sediments had had died down in it so it wasn't it wasn't that and within three weeks to a month we retested and everything was fine so it was it was a combination it wasn't you know one particular thing and and did we often take the extra snow up there was that just as this was an extraordinary year yeah I don't think there was any place else anything else was yeah covered thanks and um i guess then i may have a question for maybe mr del ruso i know we've

▶ 2:07:33 Monica C. Medeiros: been just talking a lot about it's kind of indirect costs coming in are there indirect costs that are coming um coming in and funding uh items in the general fund budget from mount hood yes we pay i think it's 67,000 somewhere I think it's 67,000 half a second here which I don't think is included lots of pages I just want to get the right ones okay yes we see indirect costs on the other funding sources from Mount Hood of 173 thousand sixty dollars it is that does that include the payment in lieu of taxes no that's a formula yeah is that based on number of employees or number of hours or Cindy and myself for our health and you know the whole the whole gamut yeah Okay. Thank you. Thank you, Alderman Medeiros. Is there a motion, please?

▶ 2:08:46 Peter D. Mortimer: Motion to move the bottom line. Second. We have a motion from Alderman Forbes for fiscal year 17 Mount Hood Enterprise Fund budget in the amount of $1,544,832.37 to recommend this order for passage to the full board. Was that you, Alderman Boisselle? Seconded it. thank you alderman boy cell all in favor of this motion to recommend for passage please say aye aye any opposed hearing none this order will be recommended the mount hood enterprise fund budget this order will be recommended to the full board for passage thank you so very much for your good work thank you thank you thank you very much thanks the next budget we have before us is budget three nine nine it is the budget for the Northeast regional metropolitan

▶ 2:09:40 vocational technical school I get all those right yeah thank you mr. Nicoli yeah that's part of our requirement for graduation you can mail me my diploma wouldn't be the first time we actually have a gentleman graduating this year that I believe is 79 years old he was a veteran he never got a chance to finish high school and he came to our night school classes and he did everything and and he worked at GE for many years and became an engineer without a degree and we're actually we're having the Commissioner of Education give him his diploma we're really proud of him he did a great job he's a great guy that's a wonderful heartwarming story and it illustrates the adult classes that you have at your facility as well absolutely thank you but I digress and I'll let you

▶ 2:10:38 begin your presentation please first of all I'd like to introduce myself but thank all of you for inviting us to this budget meeting I'm Henry Hooten the Melrose elected representative on the Melrose on the Northeast Regional vocational school committee to my left mr. Ted Nickley our superintendent who is retiring at the end of this year to my right is dr. James Pecone who's our financial director and he's also retiring and to my far left is mr. Dave DeBerry who is a newly elected superintendent at the regional school first of all I just want to say this that as you all know the school was built in 1948 for 900 students presently we have about 1231 students attending the school we are definitely in need in dire need of either new school or some

▶ 2:11:43 major renovation but that's we're dealing with with now approximately 60 students from Melrose are at the regional school and 21 will graduate this year over 28 students have applied for admission for the next year among our new programs as I heard mr. boys boys they'll say really we have a stem program which deals with those youngsters who have shown great ability in math science engineering and technology is working out very well we also instilled a co-op program where youngsters are employed in the trade they are studying they receive the money they receive credit and experience and many of these lead on to full-time employment over a hundred of our students juniors and seniors are involved in this program there are a

▶ 2:12:49 couple of charts here I hope you look at because I passed out this book which I try to condense Bob Melrose and be able to see it I wish I appreciate you reading that part to charge deal with dropouts and also graduation rates but since primary we're here with a budget I am now going to turn it over to mr. Nicoli and mr. Picon to answer any questions you may have thank you very much thank you very much mr. Hoot thank you does everyone have a copy of the budget I have some extras if anyone doesn't have one this is our fy 17 budget that we submitted to our school committee for approval and it got unanimous approval through our school committee all department heads participated in the development of the budget which was subsequently reviewed

▶ 2:13:42 by myself the deputy director in acting finance director every department has was requested to keep their budget increase to no more than 1.5 percent to assist the administration keeping the FY budget request at a reasonable level even though we asked for that you know what it's like you know it it always snowballs and snowballs up so our first budget that we came up with was 6.55 and i just know that that you know that that i wouldn't feel comfortable coming in front of you folks with it i i wouldn't ask for that so we ended up our budget request for this year is 23 million five hundred and sixty thousand and sixty seven dollars which is two point nine nine percent over last year's budget that two point nine nine percent I think we

▶ 2:14:34 discussed it last year is really the only number that I can control what the state does with that formula with your assessments I can't control so that's why I work so difficult you know so diligently without finance director and our principal to come in under three percent because at least I feel comfortable that if I can come in at that I can look everyone in the face and say you know what was spending every dime that we have wisely some of the reasons we have that two point nine nine percent we have contractual obligations we're in the second year of a three-year contract and the teachers got two percent two percent and two percent and that went for all seven bargaining units in addition to that I mentioned that last year and it fell through this year

▶ 2:15:21 to the principal and myself also stuck to the two percent we didn't ask for any more than what the teachers got all the other bargaining units got so the whole school right through got two percent we we added a new teacher in HVAC HVAC and and a new teacher in metal fabrication now i'd like to explain why we have an increase there in hvac heating ventilation and air conditioning the industry's booming it's everywhere you can't see any building any new house built everything is air conditioning in humidistats and in in environmentally friendly air so it's a huge huge industry right now and we only had three teachers in that department what we like to do is go out and work in the field with these kids because you can only do so much in the shop well to have an

▶ 2:16:17 outside crew you really need four teachers because one is in the related class and then the other two are in the shop and you have classes of 21 and 21 so there's 42 students in that shop area if you take six or seven out in the field because you can only fit them in a van you can only take so many kids it leaves you know 40 kids back with one teacher so that's the reason we added an HVAC teacher in welding we were shot a teacher in that also and we're finding now that the industry they say they're going to be shot a hundred thousand welders in the next two years in New England now we just placed four young women under the age of 22 that graduated from our shop in the plumbers union and the pipe finish Union they they're all making a hundred thousand dollars or

▶ 2:17:09 more and they're just so happy one married another pipe fitter now you know they're making more money than I make and I'm so happy and so proud of them and and it's the the industry loves our kids because they want to work and they've been trained correctly they have OSHA trained they they understand how to do a day's work so it works out very well so that's the reason we increase those two positions and I wanted to be clear with that we're not just at whim and you know we do a lot of data research to find out industry trends we have shops that are that the industry is decreasing so we decrease those shops if the if the forecast is to get higher then we increase that area we also have the GIC health insurance increase of six percent I think we were actually a

▶ 2:18:00 little low at six percent but that's what we stuck to there's only so much we can do with that we're starting to look at another Blue Cross plan that swears that they can beat GIC and we have another year left on the walk-in for that so we're gonna look at that to see if we can save some money that way the state retirement contributions for support staff I discussed this last year that a non teacher MTRS employees we we were never sent a bill for them and all of a sudden last year they stay added in all these people so we absorbed that into our into our budget and the minimal increase in chapter 78 was only seventy three thousand dollars so that was that's usually a couple of hundred thousand so that was time for us to take in the area personnel the FY 17 budget

▶ 2:18:51 includes the enrollment driven request to hire additional metal fabrication teacher in HVAC I just covered that and also the restoration of the graphic arts instructor eliminated from the FY 16 budget an additional bookkeeper in the business office in our business office we used to have six people at one point and we cut it down and cut it down to bare bones we had a position there that the person was making a hundred and four thousand dollars a year and we absorbed that we we cut that position we absorbed it in the department so that three bookkeepers are doing the work of that property accountant and now it's getting to the point where the simple things like filing and in data entry we want to bring someone in to do that so they're not spending their time doing

▶ 2:19:40 that because I don't want to I don't want to sound like an ogre but I don't want to pay overtime I want things done during the day so with the addition of even a part-time bookkeeper it'll it'll get that so it runs a little smoother let's see some of the similar to other regional school districts throughout the state salaries for professional and support staff make up the greater percentage of the budget the budget request of twenty three million five six oh zero six seven is driven by fifty eight point eight one percent for salaries and forty one point one nine for non salary items and that's pretty standard it's been that way for several years with us as you know assessments to the cities and towns vary greatly depending on enrollment in the amount of

▶ 2:20:29 chapter 78 that the community is eligible to receive from the state this year four of our communities will experience a reduction in their assessment while eight will show an increase some of the district assessments per student may be higher or lower than other member districts depending on the amount of state aid Northeast receives from the member district enroll in our vocational program as you review the budget please know that Northeast Metropolitan vocational administration is mindful of difficult financial times facing every community and with the uncertain chapter 70 and it's influenced by the adoption of the state budget it's always difficult we never quite know till that budgets finished you know first we get

▶ 2:21:10 the house then we get the Senate and then you know we all struggle with it and and I my heart goes out to you folks too because you're trying to do a budget and we don't none of us know exactly what we're getting so it is difficult so that's my presentation on that part of it if you go to the second page I have everything broken down by by the declaration numbers the 1,000 2,000 account 3,000 and 4,000 that's the same thing as our state reporting numbers If you notice in the 1,000 account, it's actually at a negative 0.37%. The reason for that is we reorganized our administrative staff to save money because we had some people that were 12-month positions. They worked through the whole summer, so they would get vacation time, and they were at a higher rate.

▶ 2:22:11 what we did is we shifted that around and we and we made three vocational deans of students now rather than having a vocational coordinator so that's why you see a decrease there but an increase in the 2000 account of 28% so that was just a restructuring and I think it'll work out better all our mid-level administrators are all on the same time frame now and all at the same pay scale so again at the Dean of Students that's from the transfer the vocational coordinator also for special education we made that a ten month a year program position I mean so that job is probably I don't know six or eight thousand dollars less than it was before but it's all done by scheduling they work 202 days if we schedule it correctly their work will get done because what was

▶ 2:23:08 happening is is a 12-month position they had vacation days and they would use all those vacation days during the summer so there's no advantage to to the administration or to you folks to have them as a 12-month position so when that person retired the next position we changed the job description right off the bat so we didn't hurt anybody the person coming in knows what they were getting so it just works out a lot better it money-wise it saves us a lot any questions on that page at all if you look at the next page it just has a breakdown at the bottom for the total salary and total non salary it kind of just mirrors what I just covered but on the on the fourth page is all the assessments it's usually where we like to discuss things this year's Melrose

▶ 2:24:04 assessment actually increased by thirty three thousand six forty seven which I'm not very happy about because you had a decrease in enrollment of two but you still had an increase and and again that's that formula that I can't seem to change even though I've tried many times so your assessment this year is nine hundred and thirty thousand seven seventy nine and that averages out to fifteen thousand five hundred and twelve dollars per pupil and i took the three other towns around you to try to get kind of a broad figure saugus is actually a little higher per pupil it's fifteen thousand eight seventeen stonem is fifteen thousand six fifty eight they're higher too but then you go to malden and malden's only 9108 because of the state aid that malden gets

▶ 2:24:57 so you're below Saugus and Stoneham but above Malden your state aid per pupil cost at the total amount just so you have an idea of exactly it's very expensive to educate a kid in a vocational school there's no two ways about it it's not like a traditional high school there's just no way to change that the total cost of everything included divided by the enrollment is nineteen thousand one hundred and thirty eight dollars out of that you folks um get thirty six hundred and twenty six dollars in aid so your assessment comes out to fifteen five one two this year your enrollment is 60 students in in the vocational school and uh we just sent out a round of acceptances for the incoming class and i believe so far we've accepted 16 new students

▶ 2:25:55 for next year from melrose and that's about the average 16 to 18 and that averages you you run from 60 to 64 it seems like every year so it's right in the ballpark if we go to the next page i kind of what i try to do is i try to break everything down because i know when you get a budget in front of you it's hard to to sit and decipher all the numbers if you look at the it goes minimum contribution then transportation see the transportation column that's done by the original charter that we all signed in 1966. so what that is is that's the total amount for transportation minus the 60 reimbursement that we get from the state which we're fighting to get that up to 70 percent if in the event that we do get it to 70 you'll get a reimbursement back but

▶ 2:26:50 that averages out 402 dollars per student for transportation okay and that's even for everyone that's done by enrollment you know chelsea has 218 kids so they pay 87 838 where stoneham has 62 students that year and their transportation was 24 000. so then if you look at the budget adjustment the budget adjustment is for those reasons that i said before the two percent increase in the in the raises the health care costs the non-mtrs reimbursement that is also done by the original charter so these are really the only two things that are really completely fair because they're done exactly by the amount of students you're sending and there's no state formula involved in it and that average is out to thirteen

▶ 2:27:44 hundred and eight dollars per student so I try to break this all down so so you have a good feel of it now that if you notice if you look down a little further it says revenue from revolving special funds two hundred fifty thousand dollars like little about four rows up from the bottom that's from our our E&D and our special funds are revolving funds we put that in and that saves you two hundred and three dollars per student so we added that in to lower your assessments and like I said if in if the event that we get more transportation money back that'll get divided up and sent right back to you folks if you look at the The next page, it just has a little bit of our demographics, as far as how we're broken down, as far as nationalities.

▶ 2:28:39 And you can see that we're 65% Caucasian white, then 3.3 African American, 1.78 Asian, 30.25 Hispanic, 0.0 Native American, and 1.62 other. But if you look down a little further, it has our special education. says 23 five aren't we 26 we're actually at 26 percent for special ed now if you look at the state level state average it's between 16 and 17 percent and we're very proud of that we're very proud that that kids with learning disabilities really is successful with us and when we get to the chats in the back I mean there's no better feeling in the world to have a student come in that's had a a real hard time in a middle school that it's really barely making it in in this kid once he's feel something and actually gets in there and starts

▶ 2:29:40 working their self-esteem comes up the confidence comes up it's a really good thing and so that 26% is I'm proud of that you know and some parents say oh geez you got a lot of special ed kids yeah and I'm proud of it so you know I don't see that as a detriment at all I'm proud of that and our low-income we're still at 51.8 percent free and reduced lunch if we look to the next page we just grabbed the vocational schools in our area pretty much we didn't use Lynn because that's a city school but Essex Tech this is the per pupil cost Essex Tech is 21 6 greater Lawrence 20 greater Lowell 18 Minuteman 28 to Shaw Sheen Whittier and then where are we okay we're at 20.309 so we're right in the middle we're not the cheapest but we're not the most expensive and you know that

▶ 2:30:44 you send people to Essex Tech and you know I'm gonna discuss that a little bit later because you also send kids the Minuteman for school choice and I'm going to get into that in a minute because I think I promised you last year that I was going to do something about that I think I remember that so if we go to the next page these are our cohort of graduation rates over four years now if anything makes me proud it's this if you look the green is all our students the red is our special education students in the blue is our low-income students in In Northeast, our students as overall, 97% graduation rate. The SPED population, 95.3. In the low income, 95.6. That's pretty close to the highest in the state.

▶ 2:31:42 So, and the reason I'm telling you this is because the students that you send us, we take care of. And I know it's expensive, and I know it's hard to come up with the money. But at least you're getting what you're paying for, and that's all I can do for you. High school dropout rate, the next page. Our dropout rate for 2014-15 was 0.5%. Some districts in this state are 20%. So the kids that come stay, because that's always been my pet peeve. Kids coming in in the ninth grade or the tenth grade, taking a seat and then dropping out before they finish. Because they took a seat from another student, we have a waiting list, we have 700 applications, and we can only take 330 kids. It really used to annoy me to have kids just bounce around, in and out, and take a seat from someone who really should have been there.

▶ 2:32:38 So we've worked on this, and it's getting better and better, that retention rate. Then the next page is just our attendance and our dropout rate again. Now, one thing that I did, I just mentioned about our STEM program, and I remembered sitting here last year. Matter of fact, I save every one of my budgets from the year before, and I have a whole file of them. And I read this to you folks last year. It says science, technology, and engineering, and math, STEM. We needed our STEM program to be different from the traditional high school programs who focus on more advanced chemistry, calculations, and theory. The Northeast program has been geared toward applied design, engineering, problem solving, and manufacturing.

▶ 2:33:26 And I read that last year to you folks. And I made you a commitment and a promise that that was going to disseminate throughout our whole program, not just our STEM program. Well, if Dave, can you, Dave's my prop man. I hope this isn't on TV. It is. I just, this is one of our projects and I'll explain it. had a parkway down by Stearns and Hill and I didn't want to carry it here we just had to move the car because I would have looked like a nut walking down okay now this is one of our stem projects and I promised that it would be active in every one of the shops so this particular project is in the metal fab prod in the metal fab shop every morning I would drop my daughter off at Saugus middle school and they had two fields one was the soccer field and one was the

▶ 2:34:21 baseball field the baseball field had no geese on it none at all the soccer field was covered hundreds and hundreds of geese and I'd go to pick my daughter up later on and her from the knees down she's all green it dawned on me what it was what they're kicking so I'm saying what is it so I called the the director of softball for Saugus and he says we have these little things you stick in there a silhouette of a rottweiler he says in there and they keep the geese away you just gotta kind of move them a little bit and they keep them away I says how much are these is there about thirty five forty dollars apiece so I wouldn't checked it out and it was just thin foam core you know just like real

▶ 2:35:08 real junky stuff so I went to the metal fab shop and I told the kids I said we have to come up with something to keep the geese away I says how are we gonna make a lesson out of this I says what a geese afraid of so the kids research that they came you know blah blah blah and the main thing was wolves and I said well I really don't think we should make wolves for the lawns you know what's what type of dog looks the most like a wolf so they came up with a German Shepherd so they went on clip art and they downloaded a program for that so we came up with that so now I said let's talk to the PAC director and find out what's the biggest problem and the biggest problem is they have to always move they don't move at all so the kids came up with this if you could if you

▶ 2:35:54 could show them Vanna this actually move side to side once it's stuck in the ground it has like a 30 degree movement to it so when the wind comes it'll move a little bit so it was the kids went online they got all the programs they made 25 of these in one day these cost us $11 a piece to make okay and I'm gonna donate it to your PAC department okay and this is stem this is the vocational stem okay and this is what I try to explain last year and I was I knew in my head what I wanted it to be but now to show you it makes it work so these this is problem-solving this is manufacturing this is this is high-level thought process and that's that's an example of it so any questions Alderman Inferno please thank you very much mr. Nicoli sorry I really don't have many

▶ 2:37:06 Gail Infurna: questions you always come well-prepared Henry thank you and thank you for all your work in this pamphlet it really explains it very nicely everything is right in there I just have to say first of all I love your enthusiasm and I wish you the best in your retirement but my son is a graduate of the vocational school and you described when you were talking about your special ed the self-esteem you described mark you know and a hundred percent a successful you know 29 year old man now and so I thank you for all that the vocational school has offered all of our students I almost wishes I know it costs more but I just think it's really a nice option for so many of the kids and I don't think a lot

▶ 2:37:50 Michael P. Zwirko: of our kids really take advantage of it and find themselves in grade 12 at the high school with not much of a of a goal you know with something so I do thank you for that night you're very welcome I'm proud proud to be there thank you alderman inferno alderman Suarco please I thank you I'll see you barely see behind Cujo there so and again I want to echo the remarks that all the minute furnace said that there's a neighborhood kid that lives in my neighborhood around the corner from me and he goes there and he actually went there with the intention of becoming a plumber and then after he went through his first year you know you have all the trial you go through all the trades and he's now in

▶ 2:38:35 Michael P. Zwirko: business tech and that's it's it's a shift obviously from one be a plumber to business tech but he truly enjoys it and in the middle school he was very good at math so I think that's kind of how he ended up there yeah so he's gonna be a junior which is amazing but so he really likes the school but I did have one question that I saw and I just I didn't know if it was actually a position or not it was on page two it's your first table security monitor seems to have a large increase in it is that actually is that a position I mean or is it actual security monitors and and what is the position if it is that would be Frank's position right yeah all of them combined right that's exactly right yeah what we

▶ 2:39:20 did is we didn't add a position but we had one in a grant in that grant we're trying to spend more of that money on technology so and if we keep them in a grant we have to pay that fine to the MTRS if it teaches paid by a grant you have to pay nine was at nine point five percent so we're trying to get more and more of the salary positions out of the grants and use the grants specifically for major technology because it's easier to when you have a lump from a from a grant to be able to spend it on technology because it's an approval process also and it gets approved a lot more easily when you're spending on technology so that was a transfer from a grant for that that monitor position and yes we do have security monitors in the building if that was another question

▶ 2:40:10 Peter D. Mortimer: you had I just didn't know the difference between the two we have positions yes we have as you come into the building we have security monitor that that that buzzes you in and you get a fast pass badge they run a quarry on you more or less and we also have one in the parking lot to check people in and one that circles inside the building those are all my questions and thanks for your time you're welcome Thank You alderman's work oh is there a motion please move the bottom line second alderman boy cell has made a motion to move the bottom line for budget 399 the vocational school in the amount of nine hundred and thirty thousand seven hundred and seventy nine dollars duly seconded by Alderman Inferno all in favor please say aye aye

▶ 2:40:55 any opposed hearing none this budget will be recommended to our full board for passage thank you gentlemen thank you very much thank you for your good work and you really appreciate it I love working with you folks of water here thank you in the office you can just leave it against the wall right over there we'll take care yeah next year I'll just be a guest here Good luck. Thank you. Thank you very much. Thank you. Thank you. Bye-bye. Take care. The next budget we have for this evening is also under Budget 399. It's the Essex Agricultural Vocational School in the amount of $109,692.00. Mr. DelaRusso, will you be addressing that budget, sir? Good evening. Good evening. If I may, I received an email from the superintendent dated April 23rd, 2016.

▶ 2:42:39 And it reads as follows, it says although enrollments are not finalized, we want to provide you with data from Melrose that stands after this first round of acceptances. The current enrollment, dated October 1st, 2015, it reads, is a total of five students. The 2016-17 projection for Melrose is projected at six students, which is one more. And Mr. William H. Lapuni, the Superintendent Director of Essex North Shore Agriculture and Tech District indicates that remember that non member community assessments for 2016-17 based on beginning the school enrollments 16,000 464 per student and 1,000 818 per student for transportation and he indicates that we We hope to provide you with another 2016-2017 enrollment update based on student confirmations

▶ 2:43:48 in upper grade acceptances in June. And it goes on to further say, please communicate this information to the appropriate municipal officials so they can make appropriate budgetary projections for the coming years. And there's a number here and a contact if we have any questions. But in essence, as of today, we've been advised that there will be six students, not five, as we had last year, and they're going to update us again in June. If there's any changes to that, but in essence, that's what we have. Thank you, Mr. DelaRusso. President Kahn, please. Yeah, Mr. DelaRusso, just if this changes before we finalize our budget, if you or the school committee could let us know as to any change in this number.

▶ 2:44:38 These are for people who are taking courses of study that the Northeast doesn't offer. I'm through the chair. Please. Yeah, my understanding is that from the year that the 2015, if I may respectfully through the chair, some of the courses that were listed that they were taking environmental science and technology, animal science, exploratory, and so there's three of them that would take in animal science. So, obviously, I guess they're courses that are just not offered elsewhere. And so it looks like we're being charged about $850 more by Essex Agricultural than we do per student for East. And again, obviously, as soon as any updates come in next month on enrollment, advise the board once I receive it thank you very much president Kahn alderman

▶ 2:45:40 Inferno please thank you mr. chairman but I'm all set once again I think alderman president Kahn looked at my notes alderman Medeiros please thank you well we're I guess still in a vocational school budget do we have any students at Minuteman and are they considered in this line item I through the chair I did check with the school department and as of now that we don't have any knowledge of any students that met a minute and do we have any knowledge of anybody on the waiting list there I do not at Essex at Essex no other than this document no I don't thank you thank you alderman Medeiros seeing no further alderman wishing to be heard motion move the bottom line of three of department number three nine nine Essex Aggie of a hundred nine

▶ 2:46:35 Peter D. Mortimer: thousand six hundred ninety two dollars Alderman Boycelle has made a motion to recommend this budget to the full board did someone duly seconded by Alderman Forbes seeing no further discussion all in favor please say aye aye any opposed hearing none the Essex Aggie budget will be recommended to the full board for passage. Thank you, Mr. DellaRusso. Thank you. Thank you. Having concluded all our business, we have a motion to adjourn from Alderman McAteer-Margolis, duly seconded by Alderman Boycelle. All in favor, please say aye. Aye. Any opposed? Hearing none, the Committee on Appropriations is hereby adjourned. Thank you, one and all.

Original documents

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