Appropriations & Oversight Committee — 2017-05-18
Attendance
Robert A. Boisselle ; Donald L. Conn Jr. ; Scott M. Forbes ; Gail Infurna ; Jennifer L. Lemmerman ; Mary Beth McAteer-Margolis ; Monica C. Medeiros ; Peter D. Mortimer ; John N. Tramontozzi ; Francis X. Wright Jr. ; Michael P. Zwirko
Agenda
- Call to Order
- Public Participation
- Orders
- ORDER-2017-140 : City of Melrose Operating Budget for Fiscal Year 2018 in the amount of $77,397,009.19 (Seventy-Seven Million, Three Hundred Ninety-Seven Thousand, Nine Dollars and Nineteen Cents)
- ORDER-2017-153 : Reauthorization of the Beebe Estate Revolving Account # 2750 for FY2018
- ORDER-2017-155 : Reauthorization of Health Department Revolving Fund #2659 for FY18
- ORDER-2017-165 : Proposed Revisions to City Charter for the City of Melrose as recommended by the Charter Review Committee for consideration by the Board of Aldermen
- Adjournment
Minutes
CITY OF MELROSE APPROPRIATIONS COMMITTEE CALENDAR● MAY 18, 2017 Aldermanic Chamber, Melrose City Hall Budget Hearing 7:30 PM 562 Main Street, Melrose, MA 02176 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 Absent Michael P. Zwirko Alderman at Large Present John N. Tramontozzi Ward 1 Alderman Present Monica C. Medeiros Alderman at Large Absent Robert A. Boisselle Ward 4 Alderman Absent 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
ORDER-2017-140 Operating Budgets (City, School, Regional School) City of Melrose Operating Budget for Fiscal Year 2018 in the amount of $77,397,009.19 (Seventy-Seven Million, Three Hundred Ninety-Seven Thousand, Nine Dollars and Nineteen Cents) Appropriations Committee
ORDER-2017-153 Revolving Fund/Reauthorization Reauthorization of the Beebe Estate Revolving Account # 2750 for FY2018 Recommend Passage Board of Aldermen
ORDER-2017-155 Revolving Fund/Reauthorization Reauthorization of Health Department Revolving Fund #2659 for FY18 Recommend Passage Board of Aldermen
ORDER-2017-165 Request Proposed Revisions to City Charter for the City of Melrose as recommended by the Charter Review Committee for consideration by the Board of Aldermen Hold Board of Aldermen City of Melrose Page 1 Updated 6/20/2017 4:31 PM
Transcript
▶ 0:00 Peter D. Mortimer: I don't know. It's very difficult. You okay, John? A little allergy? Yeah, yeah, okay. No problem at all. Good evening, ladies and gentlemen. It's 7.30 p.m. on May 18, 2017. This is the Committee on Appropriations. It is a committee of the whole. Every member of the Board of Aldermen is a member of this committee. I am the chairman, Peter Mortimer, and we are joined this evening by Alderman Michael Zwirko, Alderman John Tramontozzi, Alderman Mary Beth McAteer-Margolis, Alderman Jennifer Lemmerman, Alderman Scott Forbes, and President Donald Kahn. This meeting is being recorded by MMTV and is available for future viewing on the MMTV website or on the City of Melrose website. Alderman Zwirko has made a motion to open the floor for public participation, duly seconded by Alderman McAteer-Margolis.
▶ 1:12 All in favor, please say aye. Aye. Any opposed, hearing none, public participation is now open. Mr. Moroz, good evening, sir. Hi, good evening. Good evening. I see that on the agenda for tonight you have the charter. And I'm just curious whether that's something that you're going to plan to do over an extended period of time, whether everything's going to happen tonight is that I mean I I don't want to talk too long about too many details tonight if you're if you're not going to be doing the whole thing tonight but is there any so let me just to me one of the more critical issues about the Charter is the issue about whether the the mayor is on the school committee or not and um and to me it would it would be better for the
▶ 2:15 mayor not to be on the school committee um i went to the charter review commission meetings and you know the expressions that i heard about why it would be good to have the mayor on there as well he can bring information to the meeting and he can um you know he knows what's going on in the city and that type of thing and i don't really see that as really a necessary element or component of a school committee member to do those things if the school committee needs information just like the board of aldermen bring up the city staff and representing the mayor they can do the same thing at a school committee meeting the the harm that i see as the mayor on the school committee is operating right now is that the school committee loses some of its
▶ 2:58 independence as a board even though technically they have a majority and can vote anything they want without the mayor approving it but the mayor basically has a lot of say and over the last number of years has basically set an amount of money for the school committee saying this is what you have to work with and everybody has basically followed suit with that and they basically said okay well mayors we have this much money to work with so they always talk about we have a deficit budget and we have to cut this and do this and what's the trade-off between you know this thing and that thing and that they that they desire all of them now um i believe that the proper forum to make the resource allocations in melrose about how much to city how much the schools is actually in
▶ 3:48 this room here with the board of aldermen and if the school committee asks for a lot more money than what apparently we would have if we funded the city full it's up to the alderman to say you know maybe we should maybe we should um you know fund this one a little bit less or fund this one a little bit more or vice versa but for the mayor to have the power to push on to the school committee and on to the superintendent because he does have a mayor does have more if you will apparent control on the school committee whereas if the school committee was a completely separate body I don't believe the superintendent would be as likely to say okay we got to do this you know the superintendent you know frankly probably sees the mayor as
▶ 4:33 her highest boss and and that shouldn't be the case and make the superintendents boss should be the school committee and I feel that we don't have good policy decisions made at at the budget level in school committee because of the mayor there I could go into more detail and depth and and and and I probably will at some point but but that is one of the major elements that I worry about even after the Charter Review Commission heard this and and there was a school committee a former school committee member on the Charter Review Commission who has one person's perspective as a school committee member that was on the school committee and it felt to me as if people were deferring to that one person's perspective quite a bit about well is this true or isn't this true and
▶ 5:23 Peter D. Mortimer: And if she said, oh, no, that wasn't a problem, it seemed to be to me that it was kind of like, okay, we don't have to worry about that because it wasn't a problem from this person. And I think that something as important as the charter, as the framing document of the city that actually defines where the power is, I think that's a conversation that really needs to happen here. Thank you so much for your time. Thank you very much, Mr. Moroz. Are there any other persons wishing to come forward to participate in public participation? God bless you. Motion to close public participation. Second. Alderman Zwirko has made a motion to close public participation, said motion duly seconded by Alderman Forbes.
▶ 6:03 Peter D. Mortimer: All in favor of closing participation, public participation, please say aye. Aye. Any opposed, hearing none, public participation is now closed. The first order we will take up is order 2017-140. It is the City of Melrose operating budget for fiscal year 2018 in the amount of $77,397,000, $9.19. We are continuing discussing individual budgets within that overarching order. And the first budget we will discuss tonight is pension. We are joined this evening by our pension director and our city auditor. We have a motion to suspend the rules by Alderman's work or duly second by Alderman McAteer-Margolis. Adam, please proceed. Any other questions about the pension appropriation? Any Alderman have comments or questions?
▶ 6:59 President Kahn, please. Yes, so our pension obligation is $5,882,522 this year. Correct. And where are we on our pension funding schedule? How many more years do we have to go? Right now we're at 2038, two years above the state requirement of 2040. Okay, and what is going to happen when everybody meets these funding levels? I mean, I can't believe that this would cease to be a moving target. And I mean, there must be some talk or discussion about what will happen relative to the funding schedules. it's done every two years you know it's based on a bunch of assumptions um so it does change every year um so in terms of what's going to happen that far down the line i'm not exactly sure but that is the target date to be fully funded okay so theoretically if we keep doing this every
▶ 7:51 year until 2038 we're going to have a fully funded pension fully funded pension system that's the idea some of this money out of the budget at that point absolutely that's the idea and what i did is probably because i have too much time on my hands but um i thought what might be a nice thing to have as part of our budget information would be a summary of the budgeted amounts that we've appropriated for the retirement for the last uh for the last five years if we make this an exhibit to our budget then somebody would have a way of seeing this uh if they looked into this year's budget and they wouldn't have to be some kind of a madman who would like i did who would be going through his five budget books to pull out the five five years so what i did and actually can you show
▶ 8:36 that to make sure that what i did is i just took out our budgeted amounts for the past five years and listed them and i thought that i would uh offer this just as an exhibit to make make this a part of our budget process so that somebody could see this if they were looking online and i i made some convenient handouts for the rest of the involvement After was walking around passing things out, so everybody wants to do that, so I would pass things out. Let's not go that far. Thank you. Thank you. Chairman, thank you. So if anybody at home is interested in looking into what we've been appropriating, I only went back five years. Yeah, this will be part of our IQM2 record. Be able to see the progress of this account over the last five budget cycles, including this one.
▶ 9:40 Michael P. Zwirko: And for years and years and years, I think probably even back to when I started as an alderman in 1990, we had one non-contributory pension that we were still paying. Are we still paying that? We are not. We are not. That's the way in February this year. Okay. is not in that number that's all i have right now thank you very much president khan next in queue we have alderman Zwirko please thank you mr chairman i just uh is this you might not be able to answer this so maybe for the city auditor i was just curious this figure i mean is it a general percentage of our budget that we set aside each year when we begin the budgeting process i mean do we almost know this figure going in or is it something that we can actually i mean i know we
▶ 10:21 Michael P. Zwirko: have an obligation and a date that we have to meet at 2040 but um you know we're two years ahead of time so do we kind of have a schedule where next year we can already forecast that it may be you know 5.9 plus or i mean how do we how does this where's this figure derived yep so the number's done every two years by our actuaries um so you can know next year's in advance once this year is set we're actually working on our new one uh currently as we speak okay all right thank you thank you alderman's worker alderman MacMaster my goal is please um thank you and thank you for this so just to um give a little further explanation for the public and the board um this is the amount of money that we put aside every year for future pensions or this is what
▶ 11:01 Mary Beth McAteer-Margolis: we're not what we're paying out now this gets wired directly into uh prim who is in our investment board manager which ultimately pays back all the the pensions um each and every month going forward through 2000 and we're two years ahead of time in terms of the state says we have to have this fully funded by 2040 correct and do you have an amount for what the full funding of this would be it's kind of a moving target it's a moving target it's the number keeps going up each year until we reach the ultimate number which is going to change every two years and this is a percentage of it correct is a percentage the same every year it does that change no it changes every year it's based on assumptions it's based on investment rate of return it's based on our
▶ 11:42 Mary Beth McAteer-Margolis: interest rate it's based on amortization there's a lot of assumptions that factor into these numbers every two years we received this number from the state from prim or where do we get this number we think this number is done by our actuaries we hire an outside actuary to do this right and so then my only other question is when we look at the salary line it's listed in salaries but does that include your salary or people in the in the office no so well this number is based upon budget expenses cash flow in cash flows out so a part of it is our actual salary budget but it's a very very small piece okay because right now it just says salaries and it has the same amount so you but your salary is funded within this five 5.8 million correct
▶ 12:28 it's a piece of it yes right okay thank you thank you wildman MacMaster margolis i'll signal further all president khan yes yes um i'll need a little bit of latitude here i won't be long but um There's been a purveyor of information over the past few years who put out this theory in the local media that the Board of Aldermen is setting pension eligibility criteria and things of that nature. Does the Board of Aldermen play any role in determining who's eligible for pensions? No. Do we determine when people vest for pension eligibility? No. Do we play any role in putting people on the roll to receive future pensions? No. I just, probably one of the only things that's irritated me that people put out and it's completely false.
▶ 13:21 So I wanted, while you were here, to take advantage of the opportunity and take advantage of Alderman Mortimer good nature who sometimes lets me go off on tangents. But all matters of pension eligibility are set in Boston by the greater general court. And I have many suggestions that I could give them relative to pension eligibility, like capping the amount that any one person could ever receive at some level that's far below the levels that former speakers of the Presidents of the Senate and Presidents of UMass Boston get. Things like that could be done that could help defray pension costs. And I'm sorry to go off on a tangent, but- It's always interesting. Well, it's interesting to some, annoying to others.
▶ 14:10 Peter D. Mortimer: No, it's interesting to me. That's all. Thank you very much, President Kahn. Seeing no further Alderman wishing to be heard. So moved. Alderman's Worker has made a motion to recommend this budget for passage. Second. Truly seconded by Alderman McAteer-Margolis. All in favor, please say aye. Aye. Any opposed, hearing none, this budget will be recommended. Thank you very much for your presentation. Thank you, have a good night. Great night. The next budget we will hear is budget 544. It is the Human Rights Commission in the amount of $3,000. We are joined by Adam LaFrance, the Chair of the Human Rights Commission, and we also have Jessica McKenna from the Human Rights Commission. Commission on Women.
▶ 14:51 I'm sorry, I'm sorry. I saw other people from the Commission on Women, and when I saw you sit with Adam, I crossed the wires a little bit. Pardon me, Ms. McKenna. Mr. LaFrance, please proceed. Good evening, Mr. Chairman, members of the board, here on behalf of the Melrose Human Rights Commission. For folks unfamiliar with the commission, we're charged with working to ensure the free exercise and enjoyment of all rights and privileges afforded to every person in Melrose. In the past year, it's fair to say the needs and issues that originally compelled the creation of the commission in 1991 are, for various reasons and in various forms, active today, nearly 30 years later. For the past year, the Commission has advanced its mission in several ways.
▶ 15:36 In the past year, we received a handful of reports of hate speech in the forms of swastika graffiti. We have remained in contact with the Melrose Police Department during their investigations of those incidents. We've also received a handful of resident complaints concerning alleged housing discrimination on the basis of either race or national origin, which we have or are presently investigating, and where appropriate, we've referred those claims to enforcement authorities. We've invited respected educators and authors to speak with or provide training to residents, commissioners, and guests on issues of race, sex discrimination, and cultural competency. The training, held here in City Hall, was recorded and broadcast through Melrose Community Access Television for all residents unable to attend to positive reviews.
▶ 16:17 The trainer in that case was later retained by the city and provided multiple training sessions to municipal employees. We had great success with that event. We have since partnered with the Melrose Community Organization more to organize a training on being a proactive bystander, which will be held and filmed next week and later broadcast for residents in a similar fashion. We've worked to build regional relationships with commissions and surrounding communities, the Massachusetts Association of Human Rights Commissions. We've worked with local faith leaders to coordinate a community interfaith vigil for the victims of the Pulse nightclub terror attack, the largest mass shooting in U.S. history that resulted in the deaths of 51,
▶ 16:54 and the Injury of 53 LGBTQ Individuals. In partnership with the Mayor's Office and the nonprofit entity, Eyes on Refugees, we held the first-ever Melrose Community Iftar Dinner, the traditional evening meal when those who are Muslim end their daily Ramadan fast at sunset. The event turned out over 100 people and was limited only by venue capacity. This year, Ramadan extends from May 26th through June 25th, and the Commission will be holding its second annual community Iftar dinner in early June in just a few weeks. Given its interest and success, a larger venue is in the works and everyone here is invited. We've partnered with local organizations such as White People Challenging Racism, supporting
▶ 17:33 their programs to engage in dialogue around race and positive social change, as well as the First United Methodist Church and its program this evening just across the street inviting residents to meet and speak with members of the Black Lives Matter movement. engaged in the local discussion on changing the name of the Melrose public schools mascot and we've advised on balancing civil liberties and ensuring a safe community relating to the so-called sanctuary city designation it's been a busy year these are merely some examples of the Commission's ongoing work in terms of funding our goal this year was to increase our programming and activities within the level funding received for the year we've met that
▶ 18:09 Peter D. Mortimer: goal we believe and we can continue to meet our goal in the next year with the same the past year has seen a more than 50% turnover in the membership of the Commission as I'm sure you can appreciate given several of the new members were recently before you were energized by our new members all of whom are globally minded citizens passionate about their community who have already contributed in significant ways and I anticipate many good things and interesting programs ahead thank you for your support and I'm happy to answer any questions you might have Thank You mr. LaFrance president Khan please yeah Before you proceed, may I correct the record, Ms. McKenna is here for the Beebe Estate. I misspoke a few moments ago.
▶ 18:49 Please proceed, President Kahn. Yeah, I probably shouldn't admit this, but I was actually here in 1991 and voted on the ordinance to create the Melrose Human Rights Commission. I'd like to thank you folks for your work. And I just wanted to point out that this is a level funded budget of $3,000. been a level funded budget of three thousand dollars for many years i don't know whether it was budgeted for three thousand dollars in 1991 i can't remember that but um so i'm going to obviously support this budget line president connors made a motion to recommend this budget for passage second duly seconded by alderman forbes on discussion alderman MacMaster margolis please thank you and and thank you and all your other commissioners for your hard work especially
▶ 19:33 Mary Beth McAteer-Margolis: Especially this year, I know you've been really active in many different venues. And I think you play an integral role in Melrose being a welcoming community. And also just to clarify, that's just $3,000, which really is a drop in the bucket for all the things you do. You're all volunteers. There is no salary line in this. And you are appointed for three year terms? Three year terms. Three year terms. And I do know that several people in the past were reappointed, so you do have several new people, and they bring a lot of energy to the group and to the community, and thank you very much. Thank you very much. Thank you, Waldman, MacMaster, Margolis. Seeing no further Alderman wishing to be heard, all in favor of President Kahn's motion to recommend this order for passage, please say aye.
▶ 20:25 Peter D. Mortimer: Aye. Any opposed, hearing none, this order will be recommended to the full board for passage. This budget will be recommended to the full board for passage. Thank you very much for your presentation, Mr. LaFrance, and thank you for responding to the questions. Thank you. Have a great evening. You as well. The next order we have before us is budget, the next budget we have before us is budget 542. It is the commission on women in the amount of $2,000. Good evening, Ms. Williams. so this was the first year that the full first full year that the Melrose Women's Commission was active and I think for our first year we've done quite a bit we had four high-impact community events since we started we had the dream girl
▶ 21:17 movie with a discussion afterwards about young entrepreneurs and it was really well attended we held it at the Commons and I think that this space was almost full there were some people standing we also had the equal pay panel and that was in conjunction with the Massachusetts equal pay coalition and the following week we had the economic empowerment series and it was three different talks going on well to two and then one and one of them was negotiation salary negotiation and that was received very well many people commented that it was especially good in terms of the equal pay legislation is not in effect until I think mid 2018 and there were some tips on what to do before that time before that legislation goes into effect we also so the it was understanding your
▶ 22:33 credit and budgeting and then that was one week and then we also had debt reduction and retirement planning for the other classes and all of these events were sponsored with the only cost pretty much being some advertising and food so we were very fortunate in that we were able to either get things at no cost or partner with other people today I sent the Women's Commission strategic plan that we have come up with and so those that will give you specific information about who we partnered with and the specific types of goals that we've had because we felt that that was important to do since we were the first people to organize the Commission we wanted to make sure that we create a strong basis for other people who are on the Commission going forward let's see
▶ 23:41 we have also focused a great deal by creating a Facebook page which has already received quite a bit of attention and has 348 followers on Facebook which is quite a bit and we've also set up a MailChimp account so that we can get the word out for women's issues of topics of interest on women's issues and we've a particularly popular feature of our Facebook page is we have done profiles on the on women in business in Melrose and that has really taken off and has gotten people talking we also plan this year to be doing profiles for city employees who are women and in for the future we plan to we anticipate again doing the Victorian Fair a veterans group I think it's a presentation on female veterans in conjunction with the Melrose Veterans
▶ 24:53 Jennifer L. Lemmerman: Association and a booth at Healthy Melrose and we're we also have a child care committee which subcommittee which has also received a fair amount of public participation for a subcommittee which is I think really good do you have any questions for me are there any Alderman wishing to be heard Alderman Lemmerman please thank you mr. chairman thank you for coming down and presenting all that I just wanted to point out one that this is the request for next year is level funded to the previous year which is $2,000 much like the Human Rights Commission that we just heard from this is all volunteers you all have jobs and families and things going on and give of your time to this Commission and I think particularly starting it from scratch is is something that is
▶ 25:43 Jennifer L. Lemmerman: challenging and takes a lot of capacity to just organize and I think this group has done a great job not only organizing yourselves but also being quite productive as we just heard just as a side note I had no idea there were so many women owned businesses in Melrose until I started following those Facebook profiles they're really good so thank you for all that you're doing and you know this is some exciting stuff coming up and some some great work that's been done already so I move to recommend to the bottom line Alderman Lemmerman has made a motion to recommend the bottom line for this budget duly second by Alderman MacMaster, Mark Margolis on further discussion. Alderman, oh, I struck the cue there.
▶ 26:24 Peter D. Mortimer: Seeing no further, Alderman wishing to be heard. All in favor, please say aye. Aye. Any opposed? Hearing none, this budget will be recommended to the full board for passage. Thank you very much for your presentation. The next budget we have before us is the BB estate. Is there any appeal to combining this with order 2017-153 in currency on the revolving account? Moved by Alderman Zwirko. Second. Duly seconded by Alderman Forbes. All in favor, please say aye. Aye. Any opposed, hearing none, so we will also take reauthorization of the BB estate revolving account number 2750 for fiscal year 2008. Welcome Ms. McKenna, please proceed. I hope everybody here is familiar with the BB estate and had time to admire the new paint job that we were able to undertake last year, courtesy of the grant.
▶ 27:16 colors which I hope people are aware are actually the historic colors of the estate we actually worked with a historic preservation consultant prior to the taking on the paint job to actually do some color sampling and matching to figure out what the original colors were of the estate and do some other analysis of some small tools like nails to figure out when certain pieces went on to the estate but as I hope you've had time to admire the outside we We had a couple of unexpended funds from that grant that we're able to do a couple of improvements inside last year using that as well. We're able to repaint the main double parlor, which is the large space in the BB estate, and also upgrade a small storage room into a small kitchenette,
▶ 28:05 which helps with our ability to continue to promote the BB estate as a good event space and continue to promote it for rentals. Thank you very much, Ms. McKenna. Are there any questions, comments, or motions from any aldermen? President Kahn, please. Yeah, this is another level funded budget, and the trustees of the BB estate are all volunteers as well. It's $7,900, and this is money that goes to the upkeep and maintenance of the building, and also pays the utility bills for the building. Correct. And there's really nothing else in this budget other than maintenance funds and energy costs. Correct. Therefore, I would move to recommend the bottom line of this budget. President Pond has made a motion to recommend for passage the bottom line of this budget.
▶ 28:56 And if I may infer the conjoined revolving account as well, sir? Yeah, are there any changes to the revolving account for this year that are proposed, Mr. De La Russo? No, the final is the exact same amount as last year. This is a revolving fund that receives donations and the money from rental of the facility and they're plowed back into building issues as well. Correct, and to take a spoiler, other maintenance issues. This year we're actually planning to use some of those revolving funds to continue repainting many of the spaces downstairs to freshen those spaces up. And to do a little garden replanting and refurbishing. Thank you. Thank you, President Kahn. President Kahn has made a motion to recommend the budget to the BB estate and the adjoining revolving account.
▶ 29:50 Mary Beth McAteer-Margolis: On discussion, we have Alderman McAteer-Margolis, please. Thank you, thank you for- Excuse me, was there a second on the President's motion? Second. Seconded by Alderman's work, please proceed, Alderman McAteer-Margolis. Thank you, Mr. Chairman, thanks for coming. Can you tell us, do you have any idea how many rentals you have during the course of the year? there's a lot going on there and I've frequented it many times but it seems like there's always kind of something can pop it up it kind of fluctuates we have a lot of showers we have a lot of tea parties there's been a caterer out of Arlington that has done a lot of events and has promoted us as an event space and we've done a little cross promotion on our website and so we've
▶ 30:31 Mary Beth McAteer-Margolis: actually had a little uptick in tea parties we do not rent it out really in July or August we've got one rental lined up this July because there's no central AC so it's not very appealing I don't have a number in front of me but it's been fairly steady is it something that you've as a board considered over the years whether you would add any air conditioning downstairs we have not entertained that function in the last two three years since I've been on the board of trustees it would you know it doesn't it would be a lot of invasive work and I doubt it would be something we would consider unless we were doing a very major overhaul and you might not really get a good return on it in terms of your investment yeah and we'd have to do a lot of changes to hide some of that
▶ 31:23 Mary Beth McAteer-Margolis: ductwork well that that's great that's it's a lovely it's a lovely venue for many of the events that I've attended there and I imagine the fact that you've added that little kitchenette has sort of increased some of things like the tea parties and the showers and the in the catering events it does it has has made it a friendlier space to use caterers or people setting up have a little space to put stuff sink to wash in it's you know there's no stove or foot you know there's a tiny fridge it's just a place to lay stuff that's a little bit out of way and it's actually been really real helpful asset to have if people were interested in finding out more about renting it they could go to BB yep we
▶ 32:17 Mary Beth McAteer-Margolis: do have a refreshed website and we do have rental information on there along with pictures capacity floor plans and people reach out to us and can take little visits and tours to figure out if it's a space that they'd like to host their event at and you do still share space with the Council on Aging in the back and also it's against violence upstairs which is a tenant of the building correct yeah and hopefully next year in our cycle of painting we'll be able to move up to the conference room that's actually utilized by some of our of tenants and can be utilized by the city as well to freshen that space up a bit. Great, well, thank you for your dedication to the building and to the whole board.
▶ 33:03 Peter D. Mortimer: Thank you, Mr. Chairman. Thank you, Waldron, MacMaster, Margolis. We could use some of that air conditioning in here tonight, I think. So President Connors made a motion to recommend this budget for passage with the commensurate revolving account, duly seconded by Alderman Zwirko. All in favor, please say aye. Aye. Any opposed, hearing none, this budget will be recommended to the full board for passage. thank you very much for your presentation miss McKenna have a great evening thank you you're welcome the next budget we have before us is budget six one one it is the library in the amount of nine hundred and ninety thousand seven hundred fifty six dollars and sixty five cents we have the director of the Melrose Public Library Linda Walsh in attendance this evening
▶ 33:44 to tell us about the library budget good evening good evening this has been a busy and active year for the library. Melrose continues to be one of the busiest libraries in the Noble Consortium. Almost 22,000 items were circulated just last month. We are proud of our efforts to improve services through partnerships in particular this year. We have really enjoyed working with the SDM Foundation on Main Street. We've been able to send patrons needing a little extra help with technology to them and they invited one of our reference librarians to demonstrate a library database pronunciator to the people who are going there. It's an active and effective relationship that we're really looking forward to continuing with them. We're also excited
▶ 34:42 about a pilot program with the Council on Aging to provide delivery of library books to homebound Melrose seniors this is a service that we used to provide somewhat but we couldn't sustain with our staffing levels so we're very happy to have found this collaborative potential solution we are continuing our work on digitizing our local history collections which can be seen on the MPL digital heritage collection page through our website. This year we've sent our collection of Melrose Town reports to the Boston Public Library for digitization. It's a free service that the Boston Public Library offers so we have to apply for each project and get on a list and then we send our items off and may professionally digitize them and send them back to us.
▶ 35:43 Additionally, our local history librarian has spent the past three months with staff at the Noble Consortium to digitize our Melrose postcard collection which just went live on our website. The collection includes 150 postcards of Melrose from back when people would send postcards that had the local communities. Many of them were donated by the Brattle Bookshop in Boston. And a portion of that collection is currently on display in the library lobby. We are currently implementing the Science is Everywhere grant that our children and teen librarians applied for and received. We've purchased books, a mobile maker space for children and we're having special stem oriented programming throughout the year it's been a lot of work and great fun we had a program on
▶ 36:45 how to tune up your bicycle by yourself during and happened to fall everybody was gonna ride their bike to the library and it was one of the last surprise snowstorms and but the kids all showed up with their bikes and learned how to tune them up so maybe they were they were outside today it's just been it's been busy it's been it's been great and all these programs and initiatives and services would not be possible without the ongoing efforts of the library staff and the support of the city the staff continue to be focused on providing the best library services that we can for the Melrose community and we're looking forward to our build a better world summer reading program this summer and an active and successful fiscal 18 year there's a few notable items in this
▶ 37:45 year's budget that I'd like to quickly review lines five to one zero zero zero and five two one five hundred printing and postage for each of these these needs are decreasing bit by bit for the library so we've brought each of those lines down by $1,000 to offset increased costs in contract maintenance the noble line budget has an increase the increase in this line reflects the current contractual cost of membership and noble our library consortium membership pays for a vast array of services and resources including our internet connection server IT and library support on-site and remote staff training and consulting and software development and support they also advocate for us to negotiate better deals with vendors and the without them the costs of doing
▶ 39:03 everything that we do without the resource sharing we wouldn't be able to do it in contract maintenance there's a $2,000 increase that increase was what was moved from printing and postage those two lines this line item for us covers a variety of contracts including microfilm machine maintenance we still get a lot of microfilm usage website hosting software contracts for the library's museum pass program and meeting room and calendar programs items like that the I just want to point out computer purchases 530 100 is level funded this line item in the budget takes care of small needs such as printers and barcode scanners the library trustees fund all of our computer replacements throughout the building which is a cost of roughly 8 to
▶ 40:13 ten thousand dollars per year that they take responsibility for if you go down to lines five three four one hundred through five three four two forty those lines all collectively there what I think of us are a lot of our direct service to patrons lines it's audio and visual supplies books periodicals network e-content in total they represent the variety of resources that we provide directly to patrons for their use substantial trust funds are used to supplement line five three four two hundred books and periodicals as well as in the fall there will be a $15,000 transfer from our fines account to supplement the books and periodicals. The demand for print material overall has remained steady, however the demand for ebooks and online reference resources
▶ 41:24 has risen. Line 534-220 represents our Overdrive subscription which we negotiate through noble the demand for this service is extremely high and Mel Rose is one of the top users in the consortium funds from in addition to city funds funds from state aid donations and the friends group will be used to to support that growing collection line 5 3 4 240 pays for EBSCO databases which provide over 4,000 titles for consumers and students and that line is budgeted to cover that cost and also our WorldCat database which provides both staff and the public with access to data about books and materials worldwide. The next line down, museum passes. You'll notice it's level funded. Roughly two-thirds of our museum subscriptions are paid
▶ 42:36 through the Friends of the Library, the library trustees, and patron donations. Recreational supplies, 534-800. Due to increased fundraising, like the mini off evening the friends have been able to support the library's programming needs a higher level than they previously had and so recreational supplies we put that towards the the lines above with the electronic resources and materials going directly to patrons and the friends are filling in that gap five four zero six hundred education and seminars is also level funded because of our regionalization resources many library seminars are freely available to us in Massachusetts so we've been taking advantage of that whenever possible and funding for events such as annual conferences are requested
▶ 43:41 Michael P. Zwirko: from the library trustees and I think that was the overview any questions thank thank you very much Ms. Gardner I identified you as your former name Ms. Walsh when you came up because when you called me today the caller ID popped up as Linda Walsh but Ms. Gardner is your proper name so let correct the record on that first in queue we have alderman Zwirko please thank you mr chairman thank you ms gardner for being here this evening and for your presentation tonight great programs that you've been running so i have to ask although we were told previously when we made the application that we wouldn't hear until july but i'm just curious have we heard on the status of the application any update there with respect to you know the funding for improvements we have not um
▶ 44:37 we did have every applicant library has a team of reviewers which includes an architect so we did just recently have an architect come and walk through the library and they were very very professional and told me nothing poker faces tried um and we did actually I'll mention mention here so everyone knows after that happens extra copies we were required to submit several copies of the application when we submitted and one of those was returned so we will be we already have a copy of the application at the reference desk for in-house use we will now be able to add a copy that will be able to circulate for a brief period of time if people want to take a closer look and thank you for making that application available to
▶ 45:37 Michael P. Zwirko: the public at the reference desk I know folks wanted to see it as well and it's just a great resource to have it there it I looked at it it's voluminous it's probably about four inches thick so you know bring some coffee if you're gonna read it but it's a nice resource to have available and that's nice for the disclosure and to have that there so thank you for doing that I I also want to say I also liked your idea that the the friends put out on the mini golf night we supported that and it was a lot of fun and it was a great chance to kind of see the library in a more casual setting so you know I think the programs that you offer really cut across the swath of the socio-economic fabric of Melrose it's a great resource libraries are a great institution you're doing a
▶ 46:20 wonderful job I just wanted to say thank you for that and appreciate the update on the application process thank you thank you thank you alderman's work Oh president Kahn please yeah thank you for explaining all the changes to the to the budget other than the salary lines in terms of your staffing can you just tell me how much you have for full-time staff now in part-time we have about 14 full-time equivalents and of that there are including me there are 12 full-time and then we have one benefited part-time 25 hours and are all of the budgeted salaries set forth in your in your budget yes there's nothing that's being paid from any other funding source and people should understand that you know
▶ 47:17 Peter D. Mortimer: the portion of the general fund budget for this operation of nine hundred and $95,000 is supplemented significantly by library trustee funds and fines and periodicals and things of that nature. So it costs more to run this library than we're spending in our general fund budget. That's all. Thank you, President Kahn. Is there a motion, please? Motion to move the bottom line. Alderman Forbes has made a motion to move the bottom line on the library, duly seconded by Alderman McAteer-Margolis. If there's no further discussion, all in favor, please say aye. Aye. This budget will be recommended to the full board. Thank you very much for your presentation and your responses to the questions. Have a wonderful evening.
▶ 48:02 Peter D. Mortimer: Thank you. Thank you. The next budget we have before us is budget 511, it is the health department. Is there any appeal to joining this order with the commensurate health department revolving account number 2659? Mm-hm. Alderman Lemmerman has made to join the two orders, the health department budget and the health department revolving account. Said motion was duly seconded by Alderman Forbes. All in favor, please say aye. Aye. Any opposed? Hearing none, the health department revolving account budget will be joined with the health department main budget. I didn't want to step away from the mic while I was talking, I would have jumped up. this budget is in the amount of 881 thousand 206 dollars and 51 cents miss
▶ 49:02 clay please proceed good evening everybody I just passed out the annual spreadsheet that alderman con requests that lists all of our positions and where they're funded or how they're funded so we have 19 positions and they're funded from eight different sources the our budget here the Wakefield budget federal grants state grants and the school department budget so there's a lot of sources there a hundred thousand of our total budget is actually paid back through the town of Wakefield so and then the rest is you know all different stuff so the budget is is pretty much the same as last year with a couple of exceptions we have continued we have the new interface line item which is paying for the interface program we only put half the amount in
▶ 50:11 for next year because this year we put the whole twelve thousand five hundred which will pay for the first half of next year so we only put the other half and and then in FY 19 we'll go back to the full 12,500 so that's their new line item for animal shelter because the donation fund that we had has been used up and that pays for when we pick up strays or this year we've had a number of animals turned into us by residents who could no longer care for their pets it's really sad but then we we pay to house them for a brief amount of time until we can rehome them and I think those are the only yeah those are the only differences from the past Thank You miss clay are there any alderman wishing to have questions comments or motions please alderman MacMaster my goal
▶ 51:13 is I know we did a little promotional show on MMTV for the interface program Can you give us a little update on that? How's this going? The interface program is going well. We are getting a number of referrals. And the conversations I've had with people who have given us feedback about their experiences when they've called the interface program have been extremely positive, very, very positive. I haven't had any negative feedback. As far as the number of people who have been calling, we're pretty much on par with what we would expect at this time and we continue to do outreach in a lot of different ways including the MMTV we had a half-hour show occasionally we have it on Facebook we've been talking to local
▶ 52:04 merchants the school department of course is an active user so we're trying to get the word out to everybody I think it's a fabulous program it was so interesting right after we we did that there was a big article in the Globe about trying to get mental health care particularly for adolescents and how they people were getting like names for you know providers that were deceased in fact or not providing or not taking their insurance so I think it's a great resource for the community and I hope that they'll continue to take advantage of it yeah I can't get any referral like do you link have you linked up with the hospital at all on it we have we've talked to the hospital about it they have their own similar service that they have a person in the ER to help people
▶ 52:51 navigate but that person isn't there 24 7 and we're trying to do it you know together with it we've also been doing outreach to the Hallmark Health doctors so that they have that information and that resource in their and their office it's really I can't even begin to say what a fantastic resource it is for for everybody and I really think it addresses the first barrier which is access and where do you even begin to start looking to find a resource and in terms of your funding sources for your salaries do you anticipate that any of those will be changing within the next year the only grant that well the mass in motion grant and ends the end of this June but has already been reauthorized for three more years the tobacco grant is done at the end of next fiscal year
▶ 53:51 and the RFR will be coming out which of course will reapply for the regional substance abuse grant we're only in year two of seven so the only one that you know is on the horizon is tobacco and they are acts the state health department is really kind of shifting their focus to communities with high smoking rates and but we try to remind them that you know it's smoking the The vaping issue, especially with the youth, is huge, and there's need in all the communities. Thank you, thank you very much. Thank you, Alderman McAteer-Margolis. President Kahn, followed by Alderman Forbes, please. Yeah, and thank you for preparing this document for us this year, Ms. Clay, I appreciate it. So four of the people who are working in your department are fully funded by grant funds at this time.
▶ 54:52 the regional substance abuse person the regional tobacco person a very part-time youth coordinator in the very part-time massive motion okay and everyone else is funded either through Melrose budget or a blend of Melrose and Wakefield budget or the school budget one of the school budget pays for the school nurse at the EEC and the public health nurse position gets a component of funding from a revolving funds to make up the money that we make from the flu clinics which of course has been decreasing every year and I would say in within five years they'll there'll be no money from flu clinics so the full workforce would include all the people listed in our budget and then four other grant funded
▶ 55:45 Scott M. Forbes: positions that you've just described for us right but in my position though I also responsible for two other positions within the Wakefield Health Department that are fully funded in the Wakefield yeah I'm just trying to focus in on our operation over here okay that's all I do Thank You president Codd Alderman Forbes please Thank You mr. chairman this budget represents a 2.1% increase over last year it's about $20,000 half of that is your salaries and the other half to split up between contractual and supplies and materials, which you explained to us. So I don't really foresee any issues with the budget. The one question I would have would be the revolving account. Is it the same parameters as last year?
▶ 56:30 Peter D. Mortimer: Yes. We have a $60,000 maximum from years ago when flu clinics, you know, we did thousands of people in flu clinics. We purchased a lot of vaccine. I mean, a lot of money came in, we don't need 60,000, but it's there in case we ever needed it for something else. And we're always looking for new opportunities. Mm-hm, okay, so I have, thank you, Mr. Chairman. Thank you, Alderman Forbes. Is there a motion, please, on the conjoined orders? So moved, motion moved, bottom line. Alderman Forbes has made a motion to recommend the budget for the health department and the authorization of the health department revolving account 2659 for fiscal year 218. It was duly seconded by Alderman Makatia Margolis.
▶ 57:17 Peter D. Mortimer: Seeing no further discussion, all in favor please say aye. Aye. Any opposed, hearing none, thank you for your presentation. This budget will be recommended to the full board for passage. The next and last order we have for this evening is order 2017-165. It is proposed revisions to the city charter for the city of Melrose, as recommended by the charter review committee for consideration by the board of aldermen. We have with us deputy city solicitor, David Lucas, and former school committee chair, Kristen Thorp, who worked very hard with the charter review commission, as well as Alderman Zwirko, who was a member of that charter review commission. And Alderman Tramontozzi, who did Yeoman's work as well.
▶ 58:14 Please proceed, lady and gentleman. Thank you, good evening Mr. Chairman, good evening members of the committee. My name's David Lucas, I was the, I served as the president of the committee, of the charter review committee. And I'm Kristen Thorp and I was the vice chair of the committee. Alderman Zwirko obviously was the clerk of our committee. And first and foremost, Mr. Chairman, I would be remiss not to publicly thank and mention all the members of our committee whose level of professionalism and expertise was off the charts. It was effective. We got viewpoints from many different professionals in the city to the point where one of the proposed changes we've made is actually in the future to require that
▶ 59:05 school committee have a designee on on future committees right now it's appointments by the mayor and by this by the Board of Aldermen there were many points I'd say a majority of them that if Miss Thorp had not been our committee we would have missed these issues truly her expertise was fantastic and in the future we should have a designee from the school committee on there the members of our committee other than the three I've mentioned where alderman Tramon Tozzi Park Commissioner William Gardner James shear Robert Healy Louis Izzy and we had a ninth member who unfortunately had to resign so I'm not even gonna mention his name we had about five public meetings they were well attended we listened to some very interesting comments from the public and
▶ 59:53 it was very nice to hear that members of the public took this as a very serious proposal that comes up every 10 years or should come up every 10 years what I want to do is just very generally and very quickly go over some of the changes that we've recommended and as I said during all these public meetings these are only changes we're recommending to the Board of Aldermen the Board of Aldermen can wipe them off totally they could adopt them in part the Board of Aldermen is full authority here the Board of Aldermen can adopt changes that we recommended against but at least considered and I believe I'm not certain but I believe the board has an enumerated list of each vote that we took and we wanted to include all of those so that the committee so that the
▶ 1:00:39 board could see those votes was which failed as well but were important issues for discussion as the Board of Aldermen may want to take those up themselves so some of the more notable changes that came that were recommended by our committee where probably the biggest one is changing the name of the Board of Aldermen to the City Council that did pass our board now some of these weren't unanimously voted by our committee but they certainly were recommended by our committee changing the term of the president of the Board of Aldermen from one year to two years that's primarily because the current president of the Board of Aldermen is just doing such a fun phenomenal job and because we're running out of space on the inside of the building for pictures
▶ 1:01:20 a removal of the ban against the mayor from receiving compensation outside of his public office that was a change that was recommended not only by our board but was very popular among some of the members of the public who showed up to our meetings removal of the requirement that the mayor in order to suspend a public official or department head have to file a document with this a public document with the city clerk explaining all the reasons therefore and the termination not becoming effective for 30 days there could be reasons why a determination should happen immediately and there could be some reasons why a termination you know may be private for different reasons empowering the school committee and not the Board of Aldermen as the Charter currently reads to fill a
▶ 1:02:09 vacancy on the school committee if a vacancy occurs and there is not a so called losing candidate for a school committee who ran during that previous election who was able or willing to serve currently the charter says the Board of Aldermen would appoint that final school committee member we could you tell who came up with that issue and we also recognized that as as we get closer and closer to a fully electronic age it's imperative that notices of public meetings for the city be put on the city website as they are now but it should not just as a matter of course but probably as a matter of a policy so we've recommended that in addition to public notices being on the city bulletin board right behind me that these also go up on the city website
▶ 1:03:01 some of the very quickly some of the matters that we considered which failed a vote and within our committee we did not propose but they're laid out before you would be to put the position of the city auditor under the supervision of the Board of Aldermen instead of the supervision of the mayor as as the auditor is at present to increase the the time constraint within which an elected official may take a second or a new public position in the city that is an elected official right now under Mass General Laws no elected official can take as i'm sure you know can take a paid position within the city um for a year there was a recommendation that that be extended to two years but that is not something that our committee
▶ 1:03:49 recommended as a whole um and i'd say uh the only other major um major proposal that that failed was that there was a um a motion to increase the required number of signatures for for free petitions from citizens from 50 to 250 signatures and after a great discussion in our committee we voted unanimously to not change that provision if there's any other specific question mr chairman we are happy to to answer them um whether by process or substance thank you very much mr lucas miss Thorp do you have anything to add at this time i would just mirror what mr lucas said it really was an excellent group they listened to each other we we talked about the pros and cons of so many issues uh it was a great great group of people to work with um and
▶ 1:04:49 what we came out with i'm i think the process was uh successful and have have have at it Alderman Zwirko, by the way, did way more work than will be publicly recognized. He really went above and beyond. Very good, thank you, Alderman Zwirko. President Kahn, please. Yeah, thank you very much for submitting this material to us. And my understanding, Mr. Lucas, is it your recommendation that we have a public hearing relative to this order, is that correct? I would think so. I know that there are members of the public that would probably enjoy being heard. Right, and there are a lot of issues that have been raised here, and there's a lot for us to discuss. And as the speaker of public participation was wondering whether we were going to vote on this tonight, and I certainly don't want to vote on it tonight.
▶ 1:05:41 I think we need to have a public hearing, and I'd like to have a few meetings where we discuss some of these issues. This is an important subject matter and shouldn't be breezed through. It's unfortunate that we have this at the same time that we're deliberating on our budget, which makes it more difficult for us. But I look forward to discussing a lot of these issues as we go forward and hearing from the public, and you also are indicating that the method of moving forward on this would be seeking approval of a special act by the great general court. Correct, exactly. I think that's all I have for now. President Conner, if the committee would allow me a little bit of latitude in as much as this is a working committee and
▶ 1:06:36 Peter D. Mortimer: it was sent to us by the Charter Review Commission, in regards to your comment, would you be thinking along the lines of holding this in the committee, maybe setting public hearing in July when we're done with the budget? Do you have any further elucidation on that concept? Yeah, I don't think we want to send it back to the full board. We need to have it in committee. I think we need to have a committee public hearing and we probably need to have I certainly think we need more than one meeting to discuss these issues. Particularly now where we're in the midst of the budget and we don't have huge blocks of time available. I concur, would you be thinking along the lines of setting a public hearing for July, an initial public hearing?
▶ 1:07:18 Peter D. Mortimer: I really hadn't given great thought to when you're going to hear the public. All right, why don't we leave that? We'll leave it in committee most likely, depending on motions made and further discussion. And we can- What you may want to do, Mr. Chairman, and this is only a suggestion, is if we leave this order on the calendar as we go through budget deliberations, we could set a public hearing and a prior budget meeting if we needed to. Very good, all right, so we can ruminate on that, mull that over a little bit. Further Alderman wishing to be heard, Alderman Zuerchel, please. Thank you, Mr. Chairman, and thank you, Chairman Lucas and Vice Chair Thorp, for the work. It was a pleasure working with you on this, and it was an accelerated time frame, but
▶ 1:08:01 Michael P. Zwirko: a time frame in which we hit our target nonetheless, so thank you for that. And I do want to just say the section of the charter, I believe it's section 9-6, although I think it's going to change to 9-5 if this is approved, does state that a charter review Committee should be impaneled every 10 years it was 12 years since the last review so it was not only overdue but but welcomed as written in the Charter so invoking that clause was timely and important I'll also say that hopefully if this occurs every 10 years as the Charter declares it gets a little bit easier the more you do it maybe the less you have the change or as the demographics of Melrose change or situationally you might find something
▶ 1:08:48 Michael P. Zwirko: that's either not in the Charter that needs to be inserted or just generally over overhauled so you know again I've used this a lot when I describe it but it's just simple good hygiene I'm not going to get into much of the discussion I this became my life for six weeks as it did as it did yours I'm probably too familiar with the Charter now at this point but as we have more discussion I certainly will weigh in but I do want to thank the members of the committee my colleague Alderman Tremont Ozzie for his work and I'm looking forward to future discussions and what I would say is to the the members of the both the public and the Board of Aldermen there was about 40 items that we voted up or down
▶ 1:09:28 Michael P. Zwirko: on there may be some that are missing that you've thought about so bring those to the discussion but you know we tried to leave no stone unturned and I always felt and I continue to feel that it's important to ask the questions and it's important to you know take bold stances and approaches to these things whether or not they land in a change or they're approved or rejected it's fine as long as you have the discussion so with that I yield my time but I did was really really proud of the work that was done so thank you mr. chairman thank you very much alderman's work up thank you to make a motion a hold order to zero one seven dash one six five in committee second alderman Forbes has made a motion
▶ 1:10:13 Peter D. Mortimer: to retain this order in committee to hold this in a committee said motion was duly seconded by Alderman's work Oh since this is a working committee and we're out of suspension mr. Lucas has indicated that he would like to add thank you mr. chairman I just had a question when the committee's next meeting is scheduled for you will be notified just that's okay well we have them asking the reason I'm asking is section 9 6 of the Charter says the recommendations of the special committee I really don't want to throw a wrench in believe me shall appear on the Board of Aldermen's agenda for action before the 15th day of June in that year and if not so scheduled by the city clerk this matter shall come before the Board of Aldermen for action at its next meeting
▶ 1:10:55 Peter D. Mortimer: held following the 15th day of June and no other business shall be in order until such report has been acted upon by roll call vote now I don't know what that if that action means an up or down or if that action means scheduling a public hearing which sounds like what's going to happen but that's something for the board to consider between now and the next committee meeting many meetings between now and yeah good okay and plenty of them uh thank you president connor has indicated that uh just for members of the viewing public who may not have heard um that we have plenty of uh appropriations committee meetings we we have one coming up monday um so we'll definitely address that and that's a interesting fine point yeah i may send a communication to you in that in that regard
▶ 1:11:40 Michael P. Zwirko: before the next meeting right you've read that is is setting a public hearing deemed to be action or does it mean a uh a vote a substantial vote uh alderman's workout did you have further comment i was just going to comment i'm familiar with that provision i wasn't too concerned about it because i knew we'd be taking some action and to set a date however if it's the will of the committee or the chairman it may be of interest to seek an opinion from the city solicitor on the definition of action in this regard it could certainly be something of just placing a public hearing and deliberating further but if the committee wants further clarity we could seek that opinion from the city solicitor just just throwing it
▶ 1:12:18 Peter D. Mortimer: out there as a suggestion I will definitely take that suggestion and I will confer with the city solicitor on the morrow are there any further comments to be made I we have a motion to retain this order in committee from From Alderman Forbes, duly seconded by Alderman Zwirko. Seeing no further discussion, all in favor please say aye. Aye. Any opposed, hearing none, this order will be retained in committee. Thank you Mr Chairman. Motion to adjourn. Thank you very much. We have a motion to adjourn from Alderman Forbes, duly seconded by Alderman Tramontozzi. All in favor please say aye. Aye. Any opposed, hearing none, Committee on Appropriations is hereby adjourned. Thank you, one and all.