Appropriations & Oversight Committee — 2019-05-13

Appropriations and Oversight Budget Hearing

This meeting starts at 52:32 in a recording that covers several meetings.

Attendance

Manisha Bewtra present · Voting; Robert A. Boisselle present · Vice Chair; Scott M. Forbes absent · Voting; Jennifer L. Lemmerman present · President/Ex Officio Member; Kate Lipper-Garabedian present · Chair; Shawn M. MacMaster present · Voting; Monica C. Medeiros present · Voting; Peter D. Mortimer absent · Voting; John N. Tramontozzi present · Voting; Francis X. Wright Jr. present · Voting; Michael P. Zwirko present · Voting

Agenda

Minutes

CITY OF MELROSE APPROPRIATIONS COMMITTEE CALENDAR● MAY 13, 2019 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 Kate Lipper-Garabedian Chair Present Robert A. Boisselle Vice Chair Present Peter D. Mortimer Voting Absent John N. Tramontozzi Voting Present Francis X. Wright Jr. Voting Present Monica C. Medeiros Voting Present Scott M. Forbes Voting Absent Michael P. Zwirko Voting Present Manisha Bewtra Voting Present Shawn M. MacMaster Voting Present Jennifer L. Lemmerman President/Ex Officio Member Present

ORDER-2019-85 Operating Budgets (City, School, Regional School) City of Melrose Operating Budget for Fiscal Year 2020 in the amount of $86,662,987.61. (Eighty-Six Million, Six Hundred Sixty-Two Thousand, Nine Hundred Eighty-Seven Dollars and Sixty-One Cents). Recommitted Appropriations Committee

ORDER-2019-87 Revolving Fund/Reauthorization Reauthorization of City of Melrose Revolving Funds table as adopted by City Ordinance June 18, 2018 and further authorized by Massachusetts General Laws Chapter 44, §53E ½. Recommitted

ORDER-2019-46 Establishment of Fund An Order Creating an Education, Public Safety & Substance Abuse Prevention Stabilization Fund Hold City of Melrose Page 1 Updated 5/20/2019 11:06 AM Minutes Appropriations Committee May 13, 2019

ORDER-2019-93 Amending Something Previously Adopted Amend Melrose Revised Ordinances, Chapter 24, Article II - Fire Department, Sec. 24-32(E) - Emergency Rescue Vehicle, to set fees for FY 20. Recommend Passage Board of Aldermen

ORDER-2019-94 Enterprise Fund Ambulance Enterprise Fund Budget for Fiscal 2020 in the amount of $939,684.03 (Nine Hundred Thirty-Nine Thousand, Six hundred Eighty- Four and Three Cents). Recommend Passage Board of Aldermen City of Melrose Page 2 Updated 5/20/2019 11:06 AM

Transcript

▶ 52:43 Kate Lipper-Garabedian: I'm the chair, Alderman Lipper-Garabedian, and present tonight are members of the committee, Alderman Boisselle, Alderman Tramontozzi, Alderman Wright, Alderman Medeiros, Alderman Zwirko, Alderman Bewtra, Alderman McMaster, and President Lemmerman. alderman Mortimer did want me to let everyone know that he did have a medical issue today and regrets not being able to attend in accordance with Massachusetts general law this meeting is being recorded and it can be viewed on MMTV as well as on the city of Melrose website is there a motion for public comment motion for public comment second okay thank you we have a motion public comment made by Alderman Tramontozzi seconded by Vice Chair Boisselle on favor opposed okay this is the portion of our meeting where any member

▶ 53:33 of the public can come forward to speak on any order on our agenda tonight if you could state your name I have a comment on a couple of items in your agenda first I want to make a statement that as you go through the budget process it would be very helpful instead of having it on the the IQ m2 you know department 211 department 931 like just get out what department it is so we don't all have to look up and see what what we want to see it would be much much more helpful I did talk to you we could go so about you know the issue about having a competent budget document to work from it would be nice if somebody would actually step forward and produce a document that shows you know in one document what our past actuals have been and and have a valid and

▶ 54:45 defensible projection of what we will spend by the end of this fiscal year we only have a month and a half left of the fiscal year it should be it should be somebody competent ought to be able to project what our actual expenses will be fairly closely to June 30th and then we could then look at in a normal budget process what we've spent how it's increased over the years and maybe there's some anomalies as to why it goes up or down in one time or another but um but you know year after year we see discrepancies in in what the projected budget is versus what it's actually spent or that we haven't spent any budget but yet it's being projected to spend all the budget by June 30th within a month you know to do a good job as Alderman as city councillors whichever

▶ 55:31 you know you need the information and I don't know why the city executive offices aren't more forthcoming with the information that you could valuably use to make the determinations about whether something's appropriate or not the second topic I want to talk about tonight is this issue of the stabilization fund and I profess my ignorance about why it's on here again I thought that was back in March and it was over maybe it's just a calendaring issue or something like that but but you know a multiple use stabilization fund is not really appropriate in so many ways in trying to say that we're going to use this funding from this particular thing toward that somehow as a as a way of legitimizing something it's just not direct if you have something that has

▶ 56:23 widely varying expenditures for legitimate reasons year by year and you want to stabilize that if you have you know crises that come up to stabilize that that's one thing but you don't mix everything together and basically what you're ending up doing is is it basically talking about another pot of money another slush fund that anybody can ready to do whatever they want at whatever time it seems like oh isn't this a wonderful thing to do in the moment because there's money in the stabilization fund but you know when that gets raided and then it's not there for legitimate purposes it's it's a different stories so there are legitimate stabilization funds we have some of them and I think they're wonderful but this particular one

▶ 57:03 Kate Lipper-Garabedian: doesn't doesn't pass the test for me thank you motion to close public comment second motion to close the comment made by Alderman's work Oh second by Vice Chair boys all in favor okay that concludes our portion of public comment I'm wondering should we turn directly to our agenda item for which was a public hearing. That was to start at 8 p.m. This is a review of the fiscal year 2020 ambulance rates. Motion to open the public hearing. Second. We have a motion to open the public hearing made by President Lemmerman, second by Alderman Medeiros. All in favor? Aye. Any opposed? So we are now open for the public hearing portion of our meeting to hear from anyone who wishes to speak about the fiscal year

▶ 58:43 All in favor? Aye. Opposed? OK. So we are under suspension of rules, and I believe we have the police department listed first on our agenda good evening thank you for being here i don't know if you want to share some remarks to start um this being police week i'd like to mention a couple extraordinary incidents involving a couple of our police officers if you don't mind over this past year if you're if you're okay with that um the first thing uh about two two weeks ago Officers Bill Higgins or William Higgins and Officers Joseph or Joe Stemegner responded to a medical call in the city. I don't want to say the street because I don't want to offend the family for unresponsive male possible heart attack.

▶ 59:45 The officers responded, they arrived on scene, clearly this man was in distress, he was gone. These officers initiated CPR with the help of Melrose Fire, Contaldo. They brought the man back and we got a lovely note from the family stating that he was on his way to recovery. So kudos to those two officers. And the other one, I don't know if you're familiar, some may or may not be, Detective Gregory Forstow. He's assigned to the DEA Task Force, and he had a career case. And it's actually an unfortunate thing, but this officer, detective, did an extraordinary job. The family lost a loved one in an opioid overdose death in 2017, January of 2017. He stuck with that family through this whole crisis,

▶ 1:00:33 kept them informed of the whole process. He was able to obtain the individual drug deal that sold the drugs to this kid, as well as a number of other residents in our city, as well as neighboring communities. Ultimately, there was a trial this January. This guy pled out, he is due, he was due actually to be sentenced last week to nine to 14 years. was a postponement on the 23rd of this month this gentleman gentleman this individual will be sentenced to between 9 and 14 years so i give a lot of credit i'm proud of all three of these guys especially greg forestel for what he did for this family in melrose so thank you thank you police budget um as as many years this is another uh interesting year for for the melrose police

▶ 1:01:22 department this past year we had seven officers i know it says five in your notes but it was actually seven officers when I went through it I was doing my best I was out of state communicating with my admin staff Kim Upton to try and coordinate the questionnaire to have it in time on Friday there was seven officers that were injured this year and we also had one officer in a military deployment right now we have two officers they're still out both of them been out for almost two years one has been over two years one is just about two years and it's really done a tremendous negative impact on our overtime so i want everybody aware of that i certainly have backup documents if you need information on that

▶ 1:02:15 something that someone may be pleased to hear about as far as our records requested this year as i said these numbers were were done long distance actually the police department did 12 requests year to date last year for the whole year was 777 so there's been a dramatic swing in records requests from the public the district attorney's office and obviously legal councils that represent individuals motor vehicle crashes for this year 400 year to date there was approximately 332 involved in a police response and the remainder 67 were less than a thousand dollars where there was a paper exchange when we got the information we did have one fatality last summer over by saint mary's i know you all might be familiar with it that's an ongoing

▶ 1:03:13 investigation i can't say much more than that tonight as far as parking year to date we've We've had approximately 5,500 parking citations issued to a tune of about $205,000. Citations, 1,066 citations. Of that 1,066, it was approximately 146 in civil. 32 arrests, 84 criminal complaints. Service calls for this past year, 12,793. and a surprising number that concerns me is our domestic violence calls for this year there was 141 calls for domestic related incidents last year was 103. i find that concerning something positive for our community this year we had year to date we've had 11 saves with narcan last year we had seven deployments we had five saves and two deaths some policies that we are working on because of a state voluntary mandate

▶ 1:04:36 that we that we went through as far as the structure the police department we're going to be creating a new blood-borne pathogen plan with a policy we have to have a policy relative to how we pick up discarded syringes we're working on that those are the two items that are outstanding a marijuana policy a safe storage of firearms policy, and obviously our active shooter program continues. Some new programs that we're looking forward to in 2020. The courts are mandating now that we'll be filing criminal complaints electronically. That's going to be a challenge for our IT department and the police department to get that online on and before July 1. We are going to try to institute some online reporting for residents.

▶ 1:05:30 Some mundane tasks, a lost cell phone, things of that nature, so they don't have to come into the police department. And we have applied for a pretty hefty grant for domestic violence. And another program that you'll see in a line item in our budget is called the Be Safe program. That enables the police department to have blueprints for all the schools. We'll share them with our fire partners, so that if there's an emergency situation at any school, including the library, the police would have a map their laptops or their mobile terminals as well as hard copies in case the terminals go down to find any area in the building that may be an emergency on site thank you and i'm available for questions alderman our rights chair Boisselle good evening chief thank you for coming i see in your

▶ 1:06:21 Robert A. Boisselle: report here that you have three new cruisers uh this year have they been uh updated to for carbon monoxide monitoring all our cruisers have a small device and it's a carbon monoxide detector that's it now in all the years that we've deployed it since they had the problem with the fords and it went i believe it was something with a seal on the tailgate or the latch um one off once very good uh how's the fleet now i mean i've been we've been told that the dpw has put a fleet report together we haven't seen that yet but how does that report reflect what you and is there any problems overall the fleet is is in pretty good shape we have two cruisers that that are earmarked for replacement I believe that's coming up one is a 2011 Ford Fusion that has a hundred eleven

▶ 1:07:20 Manisha Bewtra: thousand miles on it it has serious transmission issues and I think it's just throwing good money away that is expired it's so you're phasing out the older portion of your point while they're tired they're just the expenses outweigh the value of the vehicle that's one and then the other one we it's something we discarded because it wasn't worth even roadworthy okay very good all right thank you thank you very much thank you madam chair of course alderman thank you nice to see you too nice to see you again today um I wanted to ask if you could detail what the types of expenses that were included in overtime we talked earlier about different events and other things that come through your department that where you have to provide police details for example are

▶ 1:08:11 you talking about as far as community events community events but any other what the dollar amount is pretty large so just sort of breaking that down for some of that covers obviously a priority of shifts shift assignments to see how sectors are full with a number of injuries and I don't have the luxury of just taking officer Rex and moving them to shift why that's all selected through collective bargaining and I respect that so for instance the two offices that are still out injured around the day shift we call it the B shift the day shift and that causes us four days a week over times to fill those voids they're in overlapping so there is some coverage to support that but there's four over times

▶ 1:08:53 a week just on those two individuals alone as far as vacation so vacation time goes up as the department gets seasoned or as years of service go on so So last year we had approximately 6,200 hours of vacation, this year we're up to 6,400 hours of vacation. So that 300 hours of vacation is additional funding that we're going to have to come up with, or different creative ways to do it. In all that time that we did not use 6,200 hours of overtime, it was probably about 20% of that, injury and illness. go hand in hand as far as the police department I I categorize a you know the top five would say four hours so sick time this year was was 1399 hours but in reality that the overall usage for the year was was 2740 but actually we had a

▶ 1:10:18 cover 1399 hours of overtime and that was due to those when I said those seven injures were out injured some was on the job and some was off the job so one individual playing basketball got injured so they use their sick time whereas some is 111 F where I check all injured backfills so we had thirteen hundred ninety three hours of injuries and 976 hours of backfills for those injuries then there's something that it's also we have a light duty policy so that if somebody is out injured and they are suitable to do light duty tasks we bring them in but we still have to fill their shift with overtime so that was 776 hours military backfill we've had an officer deployed in the military since september he's due back on

▶ 1:11:08 may 18th that was his total hours of 1560 the overtime was 840. those are the big ones but there's some that like you mentioned community hours this the road race that occurred yesterday the police department covered the cost of that road race we've been doing it since its inception and and are those sort of um planned budgeted sort of overtime expenses or how does that work they just come out of the bottom line got it that's it yep it's something we accept all right thank you very much thanks for being here tonight and for your time earlier today as well welcome alderman's work go thank you madam chair thank you for being here this evening chief lyle um I wanted to say, and I never actually had a chance to do it publicly, last year, probably about six to seven months ago, you gave us your annual report.

▶ 1:12:00 Michael P. Zwirko: It was a very great bevy of information that was provided to us on all the items that the police is generally doing throughout the year. And are you going to be doing that again this year? Yes, we will. I make a goal to have it out before August 1. Okay. We get a notice from the city, the mayor's office, sometime early July. we start we've already working on it now so that when July comes it's not a monster it's something that we can manage pretty quickly we'll look forward to it this summer I wanted to talk because I know that we had some grants money that was supplied for this are you seeing an uptick in distracted driving around the city I'm hopeful that the legislators come up with that hands-free bill as far as cell phone so distracted driving is very

▶ 1:12:48 Michael P. Zwirko: prevalent in every community yeah you stand on a street corner you can see them left and right yeah it's not just talking on cell phones it's a wide variety of things people do yeah the other uh the other question i had was uh with respect to the um the fleet which alderman Boisselle brought up earlier if i remember correctly last year when we were appropriating funds for the fleet we actually you had requested uh for five yes but we were only able to due to funding to fund three yes um are there plans this year are there discussions that are occurring that those other two are going to be next on the list um i believe they're in queue later this evening one one has already been approved and the second one is tonight but uh what what's the quality of those

▶ 1:13:35 two vehicles right now um one is is no longer with us it was disposed of because it was just worthless it had major major mechanical issues and you know what it was you know 2013 it was beyond its use and from the time that we hire a police officer um and they go through the various academy what's the uptick in terms of the life cycle that they're actually on the force and on the ground you're talking about the police officer um well i've been here for 33 years it's generally by the time they're trained it's about a year about a year approximately a year from the day we start looking at them to the 10 time they get out of the academy and they're ready for for patrol ready for patrol okay thank you chief those are all the questions i had at this

▶ 1:14:22 Jennifer L. Lemmerman: time thank you madam chair uh president Lemmerman thank you um thank you chief for being here this evening and uh since you mentioned police week i just thought i'd take the opportunity to recognize that literally as we speak starting at 8 p.m. this evening in Washington DC right now is the annual candlelight vigil happening at the law enforcement memorial with over 300 names being added to the 20,000 that are already on there so yes so we do look forward to having you and your officers here in this chamber next week as we have each year thank you just a couple of questions the questionnaire that you have recognizes in a couple of places is looking at the changes year over year for the overtime backfill that's needed

▶ 1:15:08 Jennifer L. Lemmerman: for a variety of reasons in your staffing. And looking at the line here, it is level funded, but when we look back at previous years, it's been higher as the year goes on. So just confirming that that will be this year. We anticipate that we will see you again in this chamber. I believe you will, yes. I mean, we had an extraordinary year injuries and illnesses in the military deployments we never know what's going on in southern borders Venezuela I have no idea right okay thank you and then just a small item the the increase there's a 25% increase in postage is that the records requests that you're receiving okay that's great okay I think that is it thank you very much chief thank you thank you thank you thank you uh i was hoping that you

▶ 1:16:00 could talk a little bit about uh administration in your office i know um last year there was a vacancy and you know how's that going and how is your staff time administrator um outstanding selection i have made no bones about it to the administration that kim upton is an all-star in our department and we just hired a rachel jacobs jacobsmeyer and i i told city hall today that she would be in a succession plan for the future of the mellows police department years to come when i certainly retire and when kim moves on at some point when she retires we have a perfect placement certainly i would ask for more hours from here the workload is certainly there with the records request that we are really getting inundated with so that's about uh she works 18

▶ 1:16:53 hours now one part-time and uh in the past you had been using um some senior citizens to help with the work off program is that still happening uh well two of them had developed medical problems so we're waiting for them to return and well we have one on one board right now okay i'm sorry to hear that but it's okay no no no they're always welcome yes and um well so actually can you talk about where uh where we are with collective bargaining agreements and i know we just settled a contract not that long ago um both of them within the past 90 days both patrol and supervisors have settled the supervisors ratified theirs today okay excellent so for the next three years um smooth sailing are all those numbers factored into this budget the fy20 budget

▶ 1:17:50 Monica C. Medeiros: yes and so for instance like when we see for instance a increase of uh 5.2 percent in the overall salary line so that's that encompasses both sellers uh both the patrol and supervisor salaries okay great big patrol and supervisors and as we go into overtime we're probably It looks like that number is flat from last year, what we've budgeted, so it seems like we're probably going to go over. I call it the base, not the ceiling. So we start there, and obviously if we have a bad year like we did with injuries, I know that every year that we're going to have illness and injuries, Family Medical Leave Act, and the unknown on military deployments, and certainly the administration has been very good to support us in that.

▶ 1:18:35 Monica C. Medeiros: And we are expecting one back in just a matter of days. May 18th, he is due back. Richard Connors, yes. That's also very good news. Some of the other line items, like, for instance, food, is that to do with the contractual? So the food is for our prisoners, and to my surprise that one recent detainee had a food allergy, so we had to go seeking certain types of meals for that individual when that person was detained. Okay. So we had to increase that line. And then in the salary section, there's a line for accreditation, Narcan, defib, hazardous duty stipends, and that's actually a $6,500 decrease from last year's budget, which was $75,000. I'm just- That is all broken out into salaries. So when you see the officer's actual salary on the previous pages,

▶ 1:19:44 those stipends have to be added into them, and I don't have those numbers broken down, so I can't answer that. I mean, I could have it broken down and give you the breakdown completely if you'd like. I mean, just maybe a little bit of an explanation of why the decrease is there. Because Dave Roy is one of our officers that did retire this past year. Dave retired, he reached the age limit and he retired. That's probably the main factor in that. Are these stipends tied to years of service, so some officers receive more than others? In some cases, yes, the accreditation is for the patrol only, knock-in, defib, hazard duty, broken down by everybody in the police department but some work days they do

▶ 1:20:33 not get the hazard duty some work evenings they do get the hazard duty there's different breakdowns as far as that's structure thank you so when I sell reason if you are sellers every year bodies move around on different shifts and it fluctuates our salaries that's all it might just be something as simple as that all right well I think that covers the majority of my questions thank you very much thank you to your department thank you thank you for the support Alderman McMaster Thank You madam chair thank you chief for being here this evening also a special thank you to all the men and women of the Mellor's Police Department for your great work throughout the course of the year I'd also like to personally thank you for

▶ 1:21:14 Shawn M. MacMaster: all of the work that you've done with me and Ward 5 relative to traffic safety and parking enforcement so I know the residents of the ward appreciate all of your efforts thank you chief I only had a couple questions the first question relates to a matter last year I believe there was an item from two years ago that was cut in last year's budget and if I recall I think it was $7,500 for a PR firm I don't see that reflected in this year's budget did that cut carry over for the upcoming fiscal year is we still have the same company that handles so yeah I'd have to explain it to you as far as our PR our PR firm actually is a byproduct of the website it's John Guilfoyle and Associates they manage our

▶ 1:22:08 website and part of that package is they handle our PR for us at no cost and Chief does that include social media presence as well yes and as part of that contract that they required to perform so many tweets throughout the the course of the year did I send them the information they handle the tweets for me because my day is pretty pretty hectic so I may just call them I may send them a short email or a text please put something out and they shoot it out pretty quickly the most recent one was the exploded missing children that they put out i attended the conference last week and that when i was down there i was sending them information back and forth they've been very very supportive of our department and are they required

▶ 1:22:55 Shawn M. MacMaster: to um send out so many press releases a year no they uh they support me uh nine to five obviously if it's three o'clock in the morning and i call them out for an emergency yes i will get an invoice for that and chief where is that reflected in this budget i just don't see it in there and i i seem to have some recollection from a prior from last year excuse me that it was uh that it was cut if not cut completely that it was cut um by a certain amount um they're they're under computer support okay and the only other question chief that i have is i noticed there's a 25 increase in postage um does that increase correspond to the increase in public records requests and the mail associated with uh yes communicating with yes but there's no um we the most of our records requests do come

▶ 1:23:48 Robert A. Boisselle: paper copies we do get a fair amount from email voicemail the da's office fits us pretty hard but a lot of that is paper okay thank you chief thank you thank you madam chair vice chair Boisselle chief in your training section is live fire training included in that training line yes now do you have to do all the officers have to qualify in that area yes annually and so everyone's up to date on that particular live fire now that's done once a year or how many times a year do you do live fire we we try to do it twice a year so we i have a relationship with another agency and we they allow us to use their ranch um so we do our live fire at the ranch up in bedford sorry Chief Bongiorno and then we we try to do an active shooter situation we're

▶ 1:24:46 Robert A. Boisselle: working on that right now in the coming weeks we should have that okay very good going to another topic has of this morning 48 for no 41 police officers died in the line of duty this use this year within the past five months and When a question comes up to protect our police officers, we've purchased vests at this point. What is the status of the warranties of these vests, and are they wearing them? Are all officers required to wear these vests? Anybody assigned to patrol is required, and then there's exemptions as far as the requirement to wear them. If an officer is undercover, they may not have to wear them. If they do an administrative function like I do, as well as a number of lieutenants and

▶ 1:25:42 sergeants, the prosecutor, we wear them when we're out on patrol. The warranties now, what is the status of those? Each vest has a five-year life cycle. We have a grant, 50% from the federal government. called the BBB program ballistic vest program 50% from the state 50% from the government and the net cost of the city is zero we buy the first vests for our officers when they come on out of the Academy and then moving forward they go into the program okay so there's no you're not purchasing any vests this year or yes we are you are right now but it's not tied to this it's tied to the grant to the grant okay you wouldn't you would not see it on our on our budget okay good my third concept is again within the past couple months we've had not in this state

▶ 1:26:37 but in other states two school shootings yes have you done any training in our schools for the for drills of any sort or instructions to the teachers and so forth we have done a number of trainings as far as situational shootings in our schools along with our partners in the fire department we've done them in a business setting we try to do them in every every scenario we possibly can think of and obviously what goes on in the country we're well aware of what happens okay thank you very much thank you madam certainly you're welcome any member of this board wants to go to one of our trainings we'll put you in the equipment you'll see we'll see what the police do as well as our counterpart in the fire department very good thank

▶ 1:27:27 Kate Lipper-Garabedian: Thank you. You're more than welcome. Thank you, Madam Chair. Thank you. Chief, thanks for being here. I think one thing I would just be interested in hearing a little bit more about are the top line terms of the two contracts that were recently completed. I know they're retroactive to beginning of July 2018, and I'm just wondering, obviously there was some salary increases for both union members. then were there any manage sort of concessions or things that management I don't have the contracts with me and I apologize and I could certainly get that information to you if you wish I you know I try to bring everything I possibly can that's okay the supervisors I just got an email this afternoon that they had ratified there's there what there was

▶ 1:28:13 some some segments of the unions got a fair increase others just got a standard increase the big thing I've got was with job descriptions for the supervisors the patrol officers continued to support the accreditation program I don't maybe Patrick has any additional information for the auditor but I could certainly get you a copy of that if you like sure that's your convenience and I can have it in the morning okay we appreciate that very much any other questions for the chief I do know that on our agenda we have I believe one revolving account is that right that's under our third order I don't know if we want to take that out of order so that you can address that with motion to take 2019 87 second we have a motion to take order number 2019 87 the reauthorization of

▶ 1:29:16 Kate Lipper-Garabedian: city of Melrose revolving funds table is adopted by city ordinance June 18th 2018 and I think actually I'm wrong on this and maybe that's for the ambulance is that right no no we do have a revolving count the false alarm revolving count but I think before we do that we should have a motion to move the bottom line on this okay Thank You president Lemmerman John is that your motion that's my motion yeah second we have a motion to move the bottom line on department number two one one made by president Lemmerman and second by vice chair boys all all in favor aye opposed okay thank you and now we have a motion to take out of order order number two zero one nine dash 87 related to our revolving funds table all in favor okay so we have for us order number two zero

▶ 1:30:05 one nine dash 87 reauthorization of city of Melrose revolving funds table as adopted by city ordinance June 18th 2018 and further authorized by Massachusetts General Laws, Chapter 44, Section 53E, and one half. Chairman Medeiros. Thank you. Thank you, Chief. Could you just explain, so this is the police false alarm, and it's got a cap annually of $10,000. Could you just sort of explain what that is and how it works for the public? Well, it actually assists the police department and also as far as folks with their alarm systems. I can see nothing more aggravating than a holiday week and have your neighbor's alarm going off continuously. We do give a grace period for some, and then after that, the fines kick in.

▶ 1:30:54 Kate Lipper-Garabedian: We average somewhere at $5,000 or $6,000 a year as far as revenue for the police department. That money covers the special gas for the motorcycles that have to run on a higher octane. We use Lucy's service station up on Main Street. Cow washes for the cruisers. All those costs are offset by that alarm account. Motion to accept the cap limit in description. Second. The motion to accept the cap limit in description in our table of revolving funds made by Alderman Medeiros and seconded by President Lemmerman on discussion. Chief, could I just ask? last year you mentioned that the balance was $8,200 as the $10,000 still a good cap for you that's still a fine number for us okay all in favor aye that motion

▶ 1:31:51 that will be recommended to the full board thank you very much for being with us tonight you want me to stay for the next item sure so our next item is department or budget number 931 capital outlay as far as the police department we have two two items the balance on the 2016 lease for our police vehicles yeah that's 80 thousand eighty seven thousand one seven five ninety two cents and the motorcycle lease for two motorcycles balance is eighteen thousand for the third year and final year of motorcycle leases when we design the leases for the motorcycles we did something different so that the end of the three at least we own the money motorcycles for a dollar and then we get an extra two or three

▶ 1:32:55 years out of them that's good and also the motorcycles that we purchased this time we're going to eat citations we're going to gradually go into each limitations electronic citations so the motorcycles all fitted with a laptop a printer and electronic citations in a bar scanner for a license and all our New cruisers are being outfitted with e-citations, too. Vice Chair Boisselle? How small, all that equipment's on the motorcycle? In that little box with a light bar on the back, yes. Okay. And it's spring-loaded, it pops up. Are you gonna have that at the Victorian Fair? It will be at the Victorian Fair. Please bring it. And also on a plug for the new cruiser that's coming up, it's gonna be a hybrid,

▶ 1:33:45 Kate Lipper-Garabedian: it'll be an electric slash gas vehicle. Alderman Medeiros. I imagine since this budget involves other departments that would you accept a motion to hold this department budget? I think that makes sense if there's a second. Okay a motion is made to hold this in committee made by Alderman Medeiros and seconded by Vice Chair Boisselle. All in favor? Aye. Opposed? Okay so we'll hold that in committee so we can hear from the other relevant departments. Thank you. Thank you very much. Next on our agenda is department number two two one our fire department two two one good evening thank you for being here good evening i don't know if you wanted to share any opening comments or sure i'm happy to be here

▶ 1:34:44 tonight to discuss our proposed budget for fiscal year 20. i'd be happy to answer any questions that you might have but first i'd like to take this opportunity to acknowledge the work that the men men and women of the Melrose Fire Department perform on a daily basis. It is truly an amazing thing to see. They're a fine group of dedicated professionals who are second to none in the business of firefighting and EMS services. I truly appreciate each and every one of them. And I just wanted to say thank you to them. and now i'd be happy to answer any questions that you might have on our budget vice chair Boisselle good evening chief thank you for being here and my similar question is is that the dpw has been

▶ 1:35:39 doing a review of the fleet and uh what is your status in this report that's should be coming out when dpw gets here and what is the age of the fleet that you're responsible for sure i haven't seen the report yet but our fleet is aging and i've met with the capital improvement committee and recommended replacement of two pieces of apparatus a lot of truck and an engine and we've I've had conversations with some vendors and reached out to the Union to see if they'd be willing to add a few members to a committee to form a committee to to address our needs if we're fortunate enough to get a new apparatus hopefully sometime in the next fiscal fiscal year maybe get some funds procured for that but the age the the fleet is aging

▶ 1:36:47 Robert A. Boisselle: now you you said one engine in or two engines that you said one engine and one ladder truck ladder truck okay now again your staff are the first ones that we're running out of the house or building that's on fire and your crew is running inside the building they have special gear are there warranties on these on these pieces of gear that they're wearing and are what's the status of that warranty so the the gear we're in we're in pretty good shape uh obviously it's uh every year gear ages out but it's good for 10 years has a lifespan of 10 years and it's worn not just for firefighting it's worn for basically on all our calls so it has protective barriers inside for blood-borne pathogens we'll

▶ 1:37:40 Robert A. Boisselle: use it at hazmats incidents for lower level hazmat incidents now in your staff you have a large number of EMTs that are trained firemen do they gay do they get updated training on an ongoing basis I mean new procedures new drugs and so forth are they becoming aware or did they get training to be the pertains to EMS yes yes is it on a quarterly basis or ongoing basis or it's an ongoing basis I've had to have training tomorrow night at the hospital for a couple hours those wishing to go you know duty staff will will go but they depending what level you are whether Whether you're a paramedic, you have about 60 hours every two years that you have to do training through the national protocols, national standards.

▶ 1:38:41 EMTs are a little less, about 40 hours every two years. And first- To be recertified. To be recertified. Okay. And who does that training, the hospital or other groups? The city does. provide in-house training for our EMTs and the paramedics they were they go out to different vendors that host the requirements and classes that they need very good now you have a line item professional services which went from under $1,000 to $10,000 is there something that's different this year or professional services yes last year I was able to get a grant with some emergency management money for a program a software program that we're gonna use to start tracking and identifying what we do in the fire department and it's a

▶ 1:39:46 Software, so that would allow us to be able to use our station computers and to track our day-to-day activities, track fires, our EMS calls, our hospitals, where we're transporting patients to, what level that they're being transported. Just about anything, we can track our overtime costs, causing the overtime other than just saying okay $100,000 in overtime we could break it down by computerizing what's what's driving the cost is it sickness is it vacation is it injury and if we can identify where the where there may be a problem we can attack the problem to try to minimize the cost of over time vehicle repair we can track our engines and our repair cost to to the actual engine not by the number on it but by the VIN number so that if

▶ 1:40:51 Shawn M. MacMaster: we're lucky enough to get a new piece of apparatus and all this piece becomes the reserve piece all the history and the maintenance with that piece will go with that truck because it would be related to a renumbered to another piece of apparatus very good thank you thank you very much thank you for coming thank you madam chair thank you madam chair chief thank you for being here and I think on behalf of all of us thank you to the work men and women of the fire department do each and every day as a follow-up chief to alderman boy cells question the the records management system that you described that's the smarts records management system yes station smarts okay you may recall chief that this time last year being new to the the board I had noticed that there

▶ 1:41:43 Shawn M. MacMaster: wasn't a line item for technology and I was rather surprised by that particularly that that we don't have a fire friendly dispatch system would you consider the this records management system a CAD system or is this something different this is not a CAD system this is a it's a record management system it's it's really designed for inspections and just tracking things like that however there is a component in it that will allow us to track our responses and what type of responses there are and we'll be able to draw reports rapidly to determine our needs I do remember last year you asked me how many overdoses we had and I couldn't give you that answer and Chief Lyle can give you that answer because

▶ 1:42:30 Shawn M. MacMaster: they have that computer system is the gold chief to eventually have a CAD system yes still on the wish list it is okay one of the other questions I had chief related to this particular item you mentioned in response to alderman boy cells question that the the system was funded through a grant what exactly does that cover and what should we be looking at in terms of sustaining this service in the future well last year when the emergency management director had stepped down and it was someone that approached me from Mima stating that we didn't apply for the grant so I rapidly applied for it and it was only a six thousand dollar grant but this program was prorated at the time to get it and we were able to use that funds from the grant there was no matching money needed

▶ 1:43:32 and we were able to purchase that for this calendar fiscal year so that's a cost that covers the purchase of the software and the implementation of it does it cover services that may need to be provided over the course of grades are there's no charge for the upgrades there their service is second to none any questions I have I can call them or text them we get on these chats on the computer they no extra cost so it sounds like it was a one-time cost that the grant covered do you expect that they'll be well no it's a one-time cost to get the program for that grant now there's a fee an annual fee for this that needs to be maintained that's the reason for the increase in the professional services so

▶ 1:44:26 Shawn M. MacMaster: that's something that will likely carry over in future budget okay yes chief the next question is probably not going to surprise you because I know we've had some conversations outside of this chamber and at least two conversations within this chamber and it's a question or concern that I've also raised with the administration that I know both the mayor and mr. de la Rousseau have been sensitive to and I believe are working to lay the groundwork to come up with a long-term solution but the question is about the vehicle maintenance line item which if you recall last year was $75,000 that line item is level funded this year just a few weeks ago we approved an additional $65,000 which takes that particular line item or I should say that overall cost of vehicle

▶ 1:45:21 Shawn M. MacMaster: maintenance that you know we're expecting two hundred and forty thousand dollars and in talking to you I know I learned that over the last four years we've spent a little over $377,000 in vehicle maintenance costs and as I've you know expressed before my concern is we've probably already exceeded the cost of new apparatus at least one new vehicle when you consider you know we need to replace engine for we need to replace ladder to that that cost of the last four years um it's about i would say a little more than a third of what ladder 2 would cost us and probably about half of what a new engine would cost us and i would suspect that if we go back an additional four years we are probably right around the cost of the new ladder truck so if the past is

▶ 1:46:15 Shawn M. MacMaster: any indication of the future i i think that 75 000 that is budgeted for this year is likely to to go higher considering that there are likely to be some additional costs based on the age of both trucks i believe one's 24 years old the other is over 20. and i think there's some concern that right now they don't meet nfpa standards and i know you're sensitive to that again i know the administration is as well so i'm just wondering what um and mr delarusso feel free to um to contribute as well what what plan do we have going forward to address the state of our apparatus not just in terms of looking to replace the apparatus but also preventative maintenance for our other apparatus that are currently in

▶ 1:47:03 service and then preventative maintenance in terms of a three-year plan a five-year plan a 10-year plan for any new vehicles that we purchase it's a That's a good question. So like I said, we need an engine and a ladder now, but it's not as easy as going to purchase a car. These items, they're big ticket items, close to $2 million for both pieces, and it needs to be well thought out and manufactured for Melrose, for our department needs. And once that process, the process goes out to bid and a decision is made. You're looking at anywhere between a year to 18 months or somewhere in between for it to be delivered. So, I've had discussions, and we are looking at possibly coming up with a funding mechanism, hopefully sometime in the fall.

▶ 1:48:15 Shawn M. MacMaster: Good evening, Mr. D'Alessio. Eden. And if the, once the new apparatus, if we get it, obviously our repair costs would go down because new apparatus doesn't have the problems that our current aging fleet does. But you know, just because it's new doesn't mean you don't tend to it. You have to have preventative maintenance done across the board, otherwise we'll be in the situation that we're in right now. Thank you, Chief. about the different ways that we might be able to fund new apparatus whether it's through a bond or some other means is there is there an ideal ideal way to to do that or what what are you looking at going forward and i know this connects to the larger plan that mr shena is leading in terms of

▶ 1:49:02 looking at our fleet of vehicles across the city but when we're looking to to fund vehicles that have significant costs what are the ways that we can look to do so through the chair great question and all your points i couldn't agree more right on the money um there's two things going on right now one is that we are working to provide this board um an equipment capital equipment free cash order which will ideally address some of the more pending items relative to equipment vehicles that we've talked about i i believe you'll see at least one police vehicle on that list as well from after conversations today um and that that is just that's in coordination with the larger plan sean which as the chief and i have talked about a number of times

▶ 1:50:02 both for a ladder and a pumper it is part of the larger capital plan which is coming together it is my full expectation as i'm sitting here tonight that we will address both the ladder and the pumper in the fall this fall coming up the preference obviously would be to to, and again, depending on the final cost items, an item like a pumper, for example, where you may be talking $650,000. In an ideal world, if you can pay that directly and directly expense it without having to borrow, that would be the ideal. We are going to look at that, for example, as an option. We're going to look at bonding because, as the Chief indicated to you it takes quite a while to get this equipment actually in-house once

▶ 1:50:57 it's actually bid designed and you know the hard work that has to go just in that alone in addition to you know not not discounting other writings because as you're aware we have a number of items for capital needs in the community everything from roofs to equipment to you know long-range plans that just um have got to be incorporated into the package but uh is my full expectation as i sit here this evening that in some manner shape or form i'll address both the pumper and the ladder this fall for this board and thank you mr del russo and the capital improvement money that you referenced does that come out of the money that um that the city has recovered from the uh the you override the seven hundred and fifty thousand dollars or is that does that

▶ 1:51:47 come from somewhere else phenomenal question I'm so glad you brought that up yeah again for this coming fall where we do not have to provide that seven hundred and fifty thousand dollars to the school as we have in the past it's my full expectation that God willing we have the same level of free cash certified or thereabouts we use that money strictly for capital and that's exactly would it be an expectation and again I'm just in a simplistic mode mode just to cover the cost of your pumper for example through that one allotment of 650 out of that 750 000 for purposes of disclosure this evening would be ideal um in that sense so that would be an avenue we would definitely look at again i don't have a crystal ball but um those

▶ 1:52:35 Shawn M. MacMaster: are the kind of things that now we're able to do and that we couldn't even consider before so that's an example of how the override has done something to support more than not agree more that freed up an opportunity that we didn't just didn't have before to do that my final question chief is your questionnaire you had referenced that recruitment continues to be a challenge I'm wondering if there's if there's a reason for that if you have any ideas about what we could be doing you know as an incentive to attract recruits so recruitment is as challenging I it's not just a Melrose problem it's definitely across the Commonwealth if not across the the country and people just don't want these jobs I guess but we do have a plan to try to get into the schools and actually

▶ 1:53:31 our 5k road race being organized by firefighter or Covey oh he's uh partnership uh partnered with a uh i think it's uh i'm not sure the school so i won't say but uh to have an intern a scholarship program in ems so we can maybe try to get a high school student or two to look at becoming a paramedic which would be the segue into taking a test for the fire department do we offer an educational incentive chief to the current members they they get paid the stipend for their medics okay folks get more than an emt how about for non uh how about for firefighters in in general not just those who are working the ambulance is there an educational incentive for them if they have their uh certificate yes in advance in advanced degree if someone has a master's degree do they have

▶ 1:54:29 Michael P. Zwirko: do they get yes there's educational incentives in the contract for the firefighters okay and that exists uh at all levels associates bachelors and masters and for new recruits too is that something that we would offer if they come in and they already have it yes it'll get compensated for it okay thank you chief thank you mr de la rusa alderman Zwirko thank you madam chair um thank you for being here chief i just wanted to pick up where um alderman mcmaster left off and in terms of the recruitment so um is part of the con the difficulty that we face uh the issue that you do need to be a medic so i understand that that's not prerequisite across the board and all other in other departments is that somewhat of a barrier to entry here it uh looking at the

▶ 1:55:15 Michael P. Zwirko: list from melrose the last uh certified certified list from civil service there's only 10 residents on it and of the 10 there was only one emt no medics yep so that's not a large pool to begin with even if we were looking for just straight away no credentialed uh firefighter it's not a not a big pool and do we have that requirement due to our ambulatory services yes yes basic need of the fire department yep and i was wondering if you could also talk about it says that there's um in your your questionnaire that you filled out that there are um uh there were excuse me there were four new hires but there's two that are in the um final stages could you talk about uh the new new hires the ones in the final stages yeah they're um testing there's a p-a-t-h-i-d

▶ 1:56:08 state pad test physical agility test they uh having a practice round this week and then the test will be on the 23rd so hopefully both of them will pass that they've already been given conditional letters of offer and successful completion of that then we'll give them a start date and um when do you anticipate the start date to be within the next couple of months weeks or no it would be relatively quick the the openings are there um i'm not sure what their current employments are but they're assuming they wanted to give a two-week notice i would say two weeks after the uh the 23rd maybe by the first or second week of june they would be in the door and those are all the questions that I had actually at this time appreciate I

▶ 1:57:00 Michael P. Zwirko: know that I think it was March it wasn't March was February we had about three structure fires within a week's time so that was a very busy week for the department and appreciated the efforts a couple of scary ones that could have certainly grown so you know well like I said earlier the department is they're They're very aggressive and competent in their job. And those early decision that the officers make in attacking and how they attack can minimize the damage because all those houses, of those three, and there was one earlier in February, all those structures are still standing and will be rebuilt. And that's what you're paying your fire department for. Yep. Thank you, Chief. Thank you, Madam Chair.

▶ 1:57:48 Jennifer L. Lemmerman: President Lemmerman. Thank you, Madam Chair. My questions were actually addressed by both Alderman Boisselle and Alderman McMaster regarding the professional services line, so I'll just use my time to say a quick thank you to you, Chief, and to the men and women in your department for the really important work that you do. And just to highlight, maybe not the most critical, but certainly not the least significant of which is the strong community involvement, such as the 5K that you mentioned. so i thought i'd take a moment to mention that it's on father's day lots of events around it more than just the 5k for the whole family and i believe it's um mfd5k.com is the website for anybody who's watching you might want to learn more thank you madam chair thank you chief thank

▶ 1:58:25 Monica C. Medeiros: you thank you alderman medeiros thank you thank you very much chief um appreciate that i just wanted to uh to ask are all of your um union contracts are they in agreement or is anything coming up this year yeah unlike the place we only have the one uh bargaining unit and they're in contract uh july they'll be going into the last year of the contract very good and i know we sort of touched upon it but um could you talk about what happens when we have a a new hire and about the academy and you know what that means for scheduling and um over time and sure so uh new hires they if they're not trained and we were lucky enough to get a couple of transfers that came in and they had a mass fire academy training in firefighter one and two so with a

▶ 1:59:22 two to three week orientation they were able to then be assigned right on to shift the candidates that come in the door that don't have that type of training they'll still get the two to three week training in fire alarm and then that's what they'll be assigned to the dispatch students of the department the academy has a about an eight month wait list about 219 people on the list and they only put 42 into a class one of our last hires in early april got a date of december 2nd when she'll be going to the academy and then she'll graduate in february so we won't be able to see her out on all the apparatus until that time that's that's a long uh it's a long wait yeah although the state is opening another academy which maybe can alleviate some of the

▶ 2:00:21 the backlog down at the opening one in bridgewater i think and how long is the academy the academy's 10 weeks 10 weeks and we pay the fee the academy's free the academy's free yep the recruit that goes to the academy just is receiving a weekly pay while they go to the academy and then are we covering that shift with is that cause for overtime yes most times yes uh would you say that that's reflected in what's included in the budget here i think our overtime budget is sufficient as it stands right now there is a the backfill for the academy we do have someone some vacancies and when those jobs get filled there could be more people going to other academies um but our injuries are down Thank God and, you know, family medical leave and sick time are a challenge to an overtime budget, but I think the money allotted for this budget is in line with what we can do.

▶ 2:01:36 Monica C. Medeiros: Do you have any vacancies right now? Yes, four. And where are they in your department? Are they covered in the salaries? Yeah, I mean, the two, once they come in, then it would be two vacancies. However, I think I have another pending retirement that'll be coming up. I could push that now down to three vacancies. And fire prevention, is that? Fire prevention is still closed at this time. It's still closed right now. Duties have been shifted over into the suppression, so it's being done on a daily basis. so it's being done but being done uh is is there a position in this budget yes yes that's that's uh that's correct so so should we find ourselves able to fill that position yes i'm hoping to make that position soon it's here okay um i just wanted to ask on your

▶ 2:02:35 Monica C. Medeiros: questionnaire i saw that the number of medical aids was up significantly um looks like from last year it was 1958 and this year it's 2 573 but the other calls number went down from 1790 to 802 and i'm just wondering if that's just like a if that really is so much it's a 31 increase in medical aid calls or is that just something that's a shift in lines we're trying to categorize i i don't have the last year's question in front of me so i don't um but calls that are categorized in in the medical field and um of those 2573 um those aren't all transports a lot of those could be patient refusals or no need for ems um other types of things um yeah lift assist there's a lot of a lot of those in the city so it's really how it's coded okay and uh in the

▶ 2:03:42 other calls the mva motor vehicle motor vehicle accidents again if it was an injury then it would be coded into that medical category but if it's a motor vehicle accident with no injuries and it could be a hazardous material spill or just a general assessment okay well thank you very much chief appreciate it thank you to you and your whole department and we appreciate you very much thank you very much alderman Bewtra thank you thanks for being here tonight chief um if you wouldn't mind just explaining again how um shifts for firefighters work um because they're different than sort of even other like 24 hours correct um so the firefighter works a 24-hour shift and they work two four 24-hour shifts a week so for a total of 48 hours but only over an eight-week cycle that

▶ 2:04:41 Manisha Bewtra: it averages out to 42 hours a week uh so basically a 24-hour shift is they start at seven in the morning and they would uh return home seven the next morning um the reason i asked that is you know recently at the opportunity to visit um our three fire stations and it really struck me how much um firefighters it's part of their job to sleep eat um go to the gym etc on while they're at their shifts and one of the things that came up was how this is a little outside of the operating budget but just I guess for the public to understand that how some of those expenses related to personal laundry maybe bedding food all of those are how are those paid for for those folks while they're on the job well most of the amenities in the in the station are paid for by the

▶ 2:05:48 firefighters themselves there are recliners in it that they purchase the bedding though the city used to do it the members prefer to buy stuff that's higher quality but as far as the washing machines we don't want the firefighters taken potentially contaminated work clothing home their bedding things like that we want them to come in on their civilian clothes get into their uniform if they get their uniform dirty from say a brush fire or something like that they can just they can wash it right on site most people keep two or three uniforms in their locker so that you know and of course you could obviously get not the fire side of it but you could get uh from a medical aid some some contaminants on you

▶ 2:06:47 Manisha Bewtra: uh thank you i just wanted to highlight that i don't have a recommendation in terms of our budget at this moment but um but i think that's something that the public general public doesn't see is that a lot of those expenses are are paid for by the firefighters themselves so So I think we talk a lot about grants and other ways that all of our departments are bringing in revenue for the city beyond what we see in the operating budget. And I just wanted to highlight that as another thing. Thank you. And thanks for being here tonight. Thank you. Alderman Medeiros. Motion to move the bottom line of $4,808,586.48. Second. I have a motion to move the bottom line for this department. May the Alderman Medeiros, seconded by Vice Chair Boycelle.

▶ 2:07:37 Kate Lipper-Garabedian: Any further discussion? All in favor? Aye. Opposed? Thank you. That will be recommended to the full board. I think that takes us to order number five. Order 2019-94, Ambulance Enterprise Fund Budget for Fiscal 2020 in the amount of $939,684.03. Motion to take concurrent action along with order number 2019-93, amend Melrose-Lavias Ordinances, Chapter 24, Article 2, Fire Department, Section 24-32E, Emergency Rescue Vehicle, to set fees for FY20. We have a motion to join, is that right, join the orders listed in number 5 and number 6 on our agenda tonight so that we can discuss them together. Seconded by Vice Chair Boisselle. All in favor? Aye. Any opposed? Okay, so we're now discussing both agenda item number five and six.

▶ 2:08:56 May we have Mr. Mergenthal to come up as well to speak on rates? Perhaps first, well, I'm not sure which one of you might be able, if I still have the floor. Sure, go ahead, Alderman Harris. just sort of discuss the number of calls and just kind of the overall budget it's great to be back sorry I missed last year actually I think I I was sick last year but here I am again and I'm happy to say that you guys are nothing if not consistent your your call volume has stayed very consistent between 1500 to 1600 transports revenue has actual cash from annual service has been pretty consistent around 950 and you know as you all know every year there's a lot of thought that goes into it there's even been years where rates have been held

▶ 2:10:11 level and I'm happy to say this is one of the more knowledgeable and responsible bodies that we see in terms of the thought that you put into your budget and and your rate setting there's a small increase and not to be redundant from the past years but I'll put it out there it's really pretty much a two-pronged analysis it's it's basically taking your cost of running the service and then we basically use your historical data which at this point now we've got some pretty good data about eight years worth and like I said it's remain pretty consistent. We're then able to project numbers in, payer mix, payer mix by payer mix, I mean, the mix of between patients who have Medicare, Medicaid, commercial insurance,

▶ 2:11:14 and then folks with no insurance, and kind of plug those numbers in and have a projection, which I think is the chart that you guys have in front of you. And that's the same chart we've used for lo these many years and while I always give the disclaimer in caution it's not an exact science we've always been kind of in the neighborhood and we've always tried to be pretty conservative and in how we break it out over time you've got the same challenges as everyone else in health care when it comes to the billing higher deductible plans are certainly an impact on the billing side we actually about two years ago we actually implemented a new service we actually use it even for our ambulance service and in Cambridge also

▶ 2:12:08 then in all the towns that we bill for where we have a an entity a third party actually takes a look at all of the insurances that we submit to them and see if there are deductibles and for patients who have deductibles we actually are able to hold the claim until and we set up a period of I think let's say it's about 70 days and usually by the time that goes oftentimes the hospital has hit the deductible or something else and then the ambulance services is better able and it makes sense too because frankly the you know the hospital bills make the ambulance bills pale in comparison and and ambulance is historically the the first bill that comes in based on the time of service so ambulance service is often disproportionately hit and the patient

▶ 2:13:08 is disproportionately hit in appearances wise by the ambulance deductible and this has helped alleviate that for us and all the cities and towns that we bill for the other the other piece is certainly the replacement of commercial insurance by connector programs oftentimes that will result in patients where the reimbursement be much higher in a commercial plan to being closer to the Medicaid reimbursement level having a couple of those patients can can swing your bottom line having some of those deductibles can swing your bottom line but so far so good like I said we've got eight years of data on you folks all the data and the projection here is based on the historical payer mixes that we've

▶ 2:13:58 seen over the recent years so year over year we feel pretty confident with where you're gonna land but again you know it's not a credit card you do not necessarily know what your call volume is going to be or what your pair mix is going to be but we all do the best to make the best estimate and I know we actually have some new members here since probably the last time you've been back so actually could you just explain your your title and sure so way back when when the world was young and the ambulance was reinstituted here in Melrose chief O'Brien at the time and Patrick asked me to come in and and take a look at the how we would reestablish billing it was one of the things that was one of the biggest obstacles in in the ambulance that was previously run

▶ 2:15:00 and I think in combination with being able to get the manpower and the being able to go to the paramedic level getting a better handle on the billing everybody worked together including many of the folks in this room to reestablish the ambulance and bring it back in-house again and hey certainly there was you know the first year yeah you can end up throwing some darts in terms of what you think the payer mix will be and what you think the volume will be but thankfully we had some some good historical data from from your partner Cataldo ambulance who is you know they've they've always been an important player here too and the data from them was very helpful and we're able to be in the neighborhood and show how and it's proven out now over boy now

▶ 2:15:52 I think nine years now that the service is sustainable and it's worked out well well we I I'm the CEO of pro EMS in Cambridge and so we do 9-1-1 in the city of Cambridge we also do paramedic intercept service out along route 2 and Emerson Hospital and we now bill for I want to say approximately 35 cities and towns in Metro Boston from all the way up to oh gee as far north as the New Hampshire border all the way down to Cape Cod now the other thing is is that we also do other services that we incorporate in because I now and again get a chance to emphasize and put my paramedic hat on and Melrose was a big part of that so Melrose is we have also a pretty robust training function at our place we have two large classes of paramedic paramedics every year I think

▶ 2:16:54 several of our graduates and even some of our field staff have landed in Melrose over time and the Melrose paramedics regularly come to Cambridge we have a we have a large simulation lab with lifelike mannequins and instructors that Melrose has always availed themselves of in terms of keeping their medical and paramedic skills sharp that's critically important where you know you those are skills that go rusty on you and you need that kind of training and Melrose is right up to speed in keeping that up the other thing that we do is we do patient satisfaction surveys and those are things that you get you folks have seen in the past and Melrose has always been well above the the benchmark and we send a patient satisfaction survey to every single

▶ 2:17:52 patient everyone that's transported and even patients who are not transported where we have data and a name and address and a way to mail them satisfaction survey last year I just I had a chance to check the numbers before came tonight and last year Melrose actually had about 300 surveys returned from patients with a satisfaction rate of over 95% so it's a lot of times it's it's not just kind of the blood and guts and the rescue type stuff a lot of times it's how the folks in the street work with the residents work with the patients and you know a lot of it is is being able to connect with a patient and being someone that's that's there in a what's always a difficult time and result results like that from such a large portion of people sending sending

▶ 2:18:48 back comments and sending back scores I think speaks volumes for what your department is doing here and in this chart just so everybody can really understand it so it's broken down into types of payers medic Medicare Medicaid insurance and bill patients so that's the percentage that we're looking at of each of our payer mix and how that's exactly right and you can see the dramatic difference in and and so some of the metrics we would use are the prime metric that we use is net revenue per transport how much actual dollars you bring in on average for every time someone goes to the hospital and if you look at the numbers you can see it's very dramatic in that the commercial payers could make up almost two-thirds of your revenue and ultimately only

▶ 2:19:49 account for 20 or 25 percent of the patients transported and that is the the constant struggle in health care that paradigm that cost to shift where Medicare and Medicaid are paying so far below what it costs to provide the service and so you know it's that it's that classic conundrum and health care problem that we all have of the of the $10 aspirin it's it's now it's a $20 aspirin at this point but you know one person is has Medicaid so maybe it's only paying two dollars for the aspirin and Medicare is paying three and commercial insurance is paying ten and someone who would no insurance whatsoever is paying zero and that all has to go in and balance out the other piece is that since the inception of the ambulance and and many of the other

▶ 2:20:45 towns follow the same policy you have all always endorsed having the most humane collection policy possible and that's something that I think has worked well for for this community and many others we serve ambulance rates can be a shock to some folks when they get that bill however this body and many others that we work with are all consistent in how patients are treated very humanely and many bills are written off as financial hardship the last thing that we would ever want to do is have someone be discouraged from calling 9-1-1 for fear of the for fear of the of the bill and again this body for many years has been very supportive of that policy and I think it's worked well thank you and so just I think it's important to note that between Medicare and Medicaid

▶ 2:21:47 Monica C. Medeiros: Medicaid, that's 74% of our payer mix. And so they're generally not paying the full price of an ambulance, right? So people say, how on earth can this cost so much to go such a short amount of time? And that's definitely part of the mix. Are you aware of, I know there's been some discussion at the state level that may, I mean, I think it's really important that we set these rates here it's something that's not really our normal business but at the same time in the municipality our goal is to pay the cost and not overcharge people and always to find that balance I know there's some efforts at the state level to sort of fix the rates and I think that's a little bit dangerous because we might not be able to pay our costs and at the same time we don't all

▶ 2:22:40 want to collect more than what we should it's a tremendous issue going on right now it's been a pretty much a constant battle for for probably going on seven or eight years now on Beacon Hill and folks have all banded together the Mass Municipal Association the fire chiefs of Massachusetts the PFFM Mass Ambulance Association, Mass Municipal Association and the fire chiefs and the PFM are very much leading the way now up on Beacon Hill to try to find legislation that sort of cuts it down the middle but you know at the same time eliminates surprise billing. That's something that we've always worked on and always always had as a goal which you know is certainly everyone is there's constant downward pressure in the rates. Those rates that you see in front of you, Medicare, that's

▶ 2:23:40 pretty much, and I'm not talking about adjusted for inflation. I am talking about dollar for dollar. That's about the same reimbursement that you got about, I want to say, 11 years now the Medicaid rate is exactly the same since 2008 so as you can imagine the costs have gone up in the last 10 years but the government reimbursement has not historically Medicare is only reimbursing somewhere around half to 60 percent of the cost of an ambulance service Medicaid is probably is bouncing somewhere around 35 percent of the actual cost of transporting someone to the hospital and so that that is where that comes into play and it's absolutely critical that everybody work together to make Beacon Hill aware and and now

▶ 2:24:43 Capitol Hill aware that EMS is different it's locally controlled and and EMS doesn't have a waiting room it's it's harder to control costs when you when you don't have a waiting room that's for sure and it it is different and you know when we're up there talking to folks we you know we say well and this is gonna be odd but we're actually going to tell you that we're different you know and everyone kind of cracks up but we actually are it is different and and we think we can show that and we've gotten some very good support up there but it's a it's a constant battle and we hope that you guys will always be there and with your folks at the MMA also and you have been but we all need to keep going

▶ 2:25:32 Monica C. Medeiros: forward and and working on this issue and I'm not sure if you or chief could talk about our response times and what what's our average response time our Our average response time is possibly three minutes, once we're out the door. Do you attribute that to some degree to having three stations? Well, that goes without speaking. If everybody's in where they're supposed to be, Engine 3 has the farthest response to, say, Penny Hill Road, that section of the city, Broadway for sure. So you're looking at some five-minute responses just to those areas alone. And that's from Engine 3? That's from the east side, from the commons, yeah. Is there any particular line items that you'd like to address here, Chief?

▶ 2:26:30 Monica C. Medeiros: No, the ones that were increased were all serviced. And we talk about some of the capital and the other line items. Now, this is an enterprise account, so the ambulance is paid, the capital expense is paid out of this. Rita. Okay. Thank you very much. I think the, oh, and sorry, could you just talk real quick about the proposed change in the per mile rate from $42 to $45 per mile? Is there anything of the mix that's in that? No, not really. mean the it's it's kind of a standard increase and for you folks mileage is a very very low line item um we have some towns where the average transport distance could be as long as much as 15 miles and for you guys the average is is closer to two um it's one of the benefits of the

▶ 2:27:28 relationship that you have with melrose wakefield hospital and having a community hospital right here in your city it's a it's a it's a big difference in terms of uh the partnership you guys have with them i believe they're your medical control um as well as at the um as having a community hospital right in the city we're in cambridge we have a similar situation we have two in the city and it makes a huge difference in terms of being able to have units available and stay within the community actually i have one last question for you uh just do you have any suggestions for us since we're talking about uh you know trying to fill vacancies and recruitment do you have any recruitment suggestions i i gotta tell you the um the the recruitment and retention

▶ 2:28:16 problem exists not just i mean back in the day you would you would see it a little more in the ambulance in ems and now that that has actually um entered into the fire service and the police There is a tremendous recruitment problem, and everyone is all sort of at a loss on how to try to fix it. For lack of a better analogy, a lot of people are throwing spaghetti against the wall to see if they can do something, but we're all doing stuff with, you know, so for us, for example, our EMTs, they enter, they start working a pro as an entry level EMT. not hiring to be emts we're hiring them when they suggest that they want to be a paramedic want to be a physician's assistant want to go on and we have that luxury of putting them right into our

▶ 2:29:11 paramedic program and we give them half price tuition um and even with that that's it's it's tough the um and you know there's it it's really something and it seems to be somewhat cyclical with the economy also but it's it's a it's a different world now a little bit and there's just not that kind of deep pool of recruits that we used to see and it's something that we're all gonna have to work together to overcome fire police EMS everyone because we're all now confronting the same thing came we're just having a tremendous problem recruiting and everyone is doing the best to run now youth academies and connect with folks in the schools offer different programs and training it is not a pro and it's not a problem

▶ 2:30:05 Monica C. Medeiros: isolated to Melrose it is everywhere and it's all over the country it's not just here it's everywhere this is a this is a profession that's highly regarded at least among us for sure and I think throughout the community and a great opportunity with a relatively low economic barrier in terms of you know we see what we see in other professions for college and student loans to come in and you know have a profession that pays relatively well and yeah lifestyle and be our heroes so the the pay and benefits have gone up across the board for everybody but the other thing that someone said earlier in this in the session was the as it was you remember was as folks are running out these guys are running in and you know you you do have to have a certain chip in your head

▶ 2:31:06 Michael P. Zwirko: you do I mean it's that that is an unnatural reflex that many of us end up possessing and uh that's that's if if you have that and a willingness to learn um it's a it's a rewarding job police fire and ems thank you thank you very much alderman's work go thank you madam chair a few quick uh questions here and thanks for being here again uh missed you last year so appreciate you being here tonight um i just want to make one quick comment first on because it alluded to it earlier in the surveys that we get back and I think it's important for folks to remember that our ambulatory service being in-house being unified uniformed men and women of the fire department they're able to provide better care at a call for service specifically because

▶ 2:32:01 Michael P. Zwirko: they're familiar with the residents the clientele so to speak whereas if it's a third-party vendor that's maybe not as familiar with Melrose even the roads or the individuals I don't think the level of care is going to be as high these are our neighbors and these are our friends so I think that that's one of the reasons it's also another reason why we should continue to advocate to keeping the program in-house so I think that's that's certainly one of the reasons the the 95% approval the care that's provided at the call I did have a comment or question rather on the rates that you're that we're seeking to raise I didn't see any other market information so these rates are these generally speaking across the industry below market are they competitive with

▶ 2:32:49 the market are they where do we feel that they're being captured yes I'm sorry I kind of interrupted my own train of thought which was the the rates are always a two-pronged analysis we're looking at the cost of providing the service and then we're trying to get and we're looking at the pair mix and we're plugging in a rate that will get you close to covering your cost of providing the service the second prong of that analysis is the rate reasonable and the way that we look and see if the rate is reasonable as we look at all the surrounding cities and towns that we have data on and now we actually have data on oh boy somewhere in the neighborhood of a hundred surrounding cities and towns and you guys are are pretty much just square right smack in

▶ 2:33:36 Michael P. Zwirko: the middle the increases aren't aren't exorbitant and they do seem that they're in line of just general rising costs I mean it almost just does seem like an annual increase so to speak so generally speaking I'm in favor of them thanks the questions were answered earlier on the collection rates and the various percentage of our customers I appreciate that breakdown you would think that our collection rate from insurance would be a little bit higher but apparently the government's a better payer but they're just pay at a lower rate so that's for sure yeah those are all the questions I had thank you alderman McMaster Thank you madam chair mr. Mergen doll it's nice to see you in the chamber tonight I

▶ 2:34:24 Shawn M. MacMaster: missed you here last evening or I should say last year and as you know we've had an opportunity to work together outside of this chamber in a professional capacity and I've had a chance to work with your team at pro EMS as well so I have no questions I just wanted to again thank you for being here and just really say that as somebody who works with police fire and EMS across the county we can't really be any more fortunate than to have pro handling our billing you guys are arguably the the best in the business you're a very data-driven organization I know you were the first to bring first watch to Massachusetts and you had an opportunity to sit here and listen a little bit to some of the questions that we asked the fire chief and you know perhaps as we move forward

▶ 2:35:09 on trying to better support the fire department in terms of some of the technology that it needs to, you know, to do its job, we might utilize your expertise about some of those opportunities that exist in the future. Yeah, First Watch actually is a great opportunity for everyone to capture data. One of the questions was on overdose data, and we've got a program now where First Watch will capture overdose data and send it in real time to the people that crunched the numbers. Cambridge is very fortunate to have a very robust public health department. There's actually two or three epidemiologists on staff, and so we've got that capability. We could also work and build that up in Melrose too, where that data is sent to a central source.

▶ 2:36:11 there's protected health information is is actually scrubbed but it allows you to collect data on the the overdose the patient's outcome age gender the location so you can actually locate hot spots where there may be more attention needed on the overdose side and so that's that's something that we can absolutely work with the chief on getting up and running and some of that data might be helpful for our efforts and looking to obtain grants that exist to support some of our needs but again thank you for being here thank you for all of your work please extend my thanks and my regards to your team at a pro sure well thank you nice chair boys oh going back to recruitment you mentioned going to the schools and other places but have you

▶ 2:37:07 done an outreach to the military the veterans that are coming out of the Iran Afghanistan the medics and so forth yeah it's you know that's really a heck of a study in bureaucracy when when you come out it's you're very well trained to be an EMT but you would actually have to take quite a bit and you're actually like have training that's well beyond being an EMT but that's really to handle more trauma and to be a civilian paramedic requires a lot more on the medical side so the the folks who want to go come out of the service and become a paramedic would almost have to take the entire paramedic class again even though they've come out of the military in some pretty precarious situations and

▶ 2:38:02 I've seen a lot but they the it and there really is no good bridge program that program that bridges the military medic into the civilian role it's been tried in a few places but they haven't been able to really make it work all that well is there a reason why it's not working well is it more financial or just basically the individual becomes bored and he's that individual is well beyond the training that he's receiving yeah we have we we actually in our for our paramedic program we usually have each class oh so we have two classes and and we max out at 42 in each class there's usually a waiting list and we actually usually reject actually a fair number of people too but usually have four or five folks that are on the GI Bill in each class but it's it's hard

▶ 2:39:03 when you come out of this out of the military and you've been in that role and you've been in some some pretty tough spots and had a lot of training and had a lot of expectations to go back and sit through another year of school that's a tough one so I think that's one of the barriers for sure to making the transition I think it would be easier if we all nationally and and the EMS is not only regulated at the local level but it's very much regular at the state level and if there's some way to somehow herd herd all the cats to get a training and regulatory framework where we could better bridge someone from military to civilian rather than an entire year I think that would help tremendously but

▶ 2:39:58 we haven't seen the capability to be able to do that yet okay thank you thank you madam chair any further questions or discussion we have two orders that have been joined before us I don't know if it should be two separate motions or not but I'll move one to approve the bottom line of the ambulatory budget second okay we have a motion to move the bottom line of the ambulatory budget that is duly seconded all in favor aye opposed okay that will be recommended to the full board move to approve the rates as proposed in the outline outlined in the accompanying memo okay so that was moved by Alderman Zwirko to accept the rates proposed or the fees for fiscal 20 seconded by Alderman Tramontozzi all in

▶ 2:40:55 Michael P. Zwirko: favor aye thank you so much for being here tonight thank you thank you everybody the last order on our agenda is order number two zero one nine dash forty six in order creating an education public safety and substance abuse prevention stabilization fund sponsored by alderman's work oh yeah so we're still under suspension of the rules I would ask that the city auditor come before us at this time just to answer a few questions and I also just wanted to just an introductory note here and I'll move that this be included there was a for the alderman that are here this evening there was an email that was at your respective desks it was an email that was sent today from city solicitor to myself and the clerk of committees Kristen foot I asked that that be added

▶ 2:41:58 Michael P. Zwirko: to this order it that that email response is in direct relation to a question that was brought up by two aldermen the last time this order was before the Appropriations Committee I'll also add that there was a comment that was made in public comment about this this order I think it could be lost in terms the reason this is called a stabilization fund is because that is exactly what the Massachusetts Department of Revenue calls this fund it doesn't necessarily mean that the fund is set up to stabilize anything that's just the name of the fund so I'm using the litter excuse me the language provided from the Massachusetts Department of Revenue so I don't want people to get lost in the actual terms quite simply all this is trying to do

▶ 2:42:48 Michael P. Zwirko: this this order is taking the three percent excise off of adult use recreational marijuana which we have passed in order to collect and dedicate it to a specific fund called a stabilization fund so it segregates the monies received and can then be appropriated for the purposes of education public safety and substance abuse prevention before I get to my questions for the city auditor I just want to quickly just state some some facts so we will the city of Melrose have adult use recreational marijuana probably not in the calendar year of 2019 but likely soon thereafter as stated on May 6th when the mayor presented the budget she did indicate that their office has not budgeted in fiscal year 20 any amount for adult use

▶ 2:43:44 Michael P. Zwirko: recreational it's too much of an uncertainty which again speaks to the what I feel is the the positive necessity of creating this stabilization fund i will also add that i recently went on a tour of the garden remedies facility and in doing so i asked the staff some questions generally speaking and they were even hesitant to to give figures but they did based on one of their other businesses in another location since adult use has been legal and the doors have been open for sale they're making between forty and seventy thousand dollars a day when you add that math out although i believe that it will decrease over time as more and more facilities open and it becomes less of a prohibitive product but long story short if you were to use even the low end and say forty

▶ 2:44:39 Michael P. Zwirko: thousand dollars a day the three percent on that is twelve hundred dollars times 365 does equate to about four hundred and thirty eight thousand dollars per annum so that amount is something that certainly could be used I don't anticipate that it will be that high and I don't really want to give figures as to how how large that pool of monies could be because I do feel that over time we'll see it certainly decrease but setting that up mr. de la Rousseau since you're here before us if you could speak to the the Massachusetts Department of Revenue they were very deliberate in allowing for this fund to be created not to step into the shoes of the Department of Revenue but in the they don't freely

▶ 2:45:27 allow us to create such funds often and and I think that if you could speak the deliberateness and also the rarity of such yeah yeah through the chair me a couple of things and it's true they they specifically carved out this stabilization fund if communities decided to adopt it for that purpose so they could they could identify a purpose within the community pardon me for which they could um set these these funds aside because as alderman cerco said we have yet to receive the revenues for this fund and allows us in the future to plan for the use of the funds. A couple of things that are particular to this fund. First of all, it is a carve-out, as indicated. Secondly, I think what it does, and again, for purposes of municipality,

▶ 2:46:28 it does provide the ability to look at something over a three-year term and make a decision if, in fact, it's working the way you intend it to. If, in fact, the community decides to adopt this, there's an out. It's not forever. You may decide to adopt it for a three-year period, see what happens, see if it actually performs the way the community has anticipated it was going to perform. And if it does, you may decide to retain it. On the other end, if you decide that it's not performing, you may decide to disband. That option is up to the community. But I will say, from the position of budget pressure, one of the things that we constantly find, it's not just in Melrose, is there's always concerns from, whether it's Standard

▶ 2:47:17 & Poor's or Moody's, whoever, that communities are under intense pressure on the operating budget to provide the needs and services that could actually exceed what they're used to seeing for cost or initiatives that come up that they simply can't afford um we've seen oftentimes um many years before we look at simple initiatives that we just don't have the ability to afford in the budget i think you saw that tonight you know ten thousand dollars a lot of money to us fifteen twenty thousand a lot of money to us um so in some some ways um it would show it would take some pressure off and stand and applause they they like to see stabilization funds for the just for that purpose they are taking some stress off the regular operating budget the same stream of revenue that

▶ 2:48:10 funds everything else and then some so in that sense you would be able to provide some budget relief however the opposite is that the decision would have to be made by the community as the purposes for which this fund is being established and obviously the expenditure would have to come again through the executive office to this board and the decision would have to be made if in fact that is something that the board chooses to fund or not so in in over and those are in general terms so if i get any specific questions again i'll do the best i can to address it this evening if not i'll do what i can to get you an answer thank you for that so i i also um there's there's a bill that's pending right now at the legislature to use two percent of an excise on alcohol sales

▶ 2:49:02 Michael P. Zwirko: and dedicate those to substance abuse prevention efforts so these there is not necessarily a trend but there is a need in the municipal level for some sort of fixed funding or an additional revenue source to address some of these unforeseen costs that have ballooned certainly in light of obviously the the opiate crisis fentanyl crisis and and additionally to tackle some of these the issues with the municipalities dealing with the new legal product which hasn't previously been legal and the reason that the carve-out is for those three areas in my order is because one only needed to attend May 1st program at the high school called weeding through the myths to understand how prevalent the vaping issue is at our high schools in

▶ 2:49:55 Michael P. Zwirko: addition to there's they don't have the staffing to really enforce this problem furthermore guidance counselors are being taken out of their role to check it to work as hall monitors to try to enforce issues with the vaping at the high schools you have equipment whether it be turnout gear for the police excuse me the fire department or SCBA repairs that needs to be addressed the police I mean countless items I think there was a couple of years back here that this board voluntarily funded Narcan to be used because the police department actually ran out segregating these funds that are directly related to the issues concerned with this new legal product I think makes prudent sense I think it's it's appreciative of the Department of Revenue to allow for this

▶ 2:50:46 Michael P. Zwirko: to occur other municipalities have done it I carved this order out from the city of Springfield they made this fund available specifically to address the neighborhoods that are impacted by the new retail facilities within their community and to do for beautification efforts here in in Melrose knowing the fiscal pressures that we've experienced over time I felt that addressing not only substance abuse prevention but also police and fire as well as education was the target of where these monies should be directed should we collect any any amount so I brought this order before us in order to at least allow the ability to forecast to use some data over three years this once opened if opened has to

▶ 2:51:37 Michael P. Zwirko: remain in place for three years but it then can be removed over time you could alter what it's dedicated to you could reduce some of them you could expand but I think taking it out of the general fund being able to account for it separately while this product is in its infancy while we see the market evolve is probably the the wisest thing to do then we can appropriate knowing at the end of the fiscal year how much money is in the stabilization account and what it could be used for it would it would I would presume and I would ask mr. DeLaRusso to answer this question that it would help the budgetary process knowing that there was $300,000 in the stabilization fund when you're drafting the general budget for let's say the fire department would you say that

▶ 2:52:29 Michael P. Zwirko: that's that's true mr. Delver so the the nature of which the purposes for which the fund is established would would make that decision that'd be who this understood so obviously the if there is stress and if the fund would cover that area with the stress that would be obviously be helpful and we've seen recent repair bills that we've appropriated through free cash if they were for fire apparatus it certainly could be used there with that I've spoken enough I appreciate the city auditor to be here to answer questions I will leave it to well let me move to add the the letter from the city solicitor to this order so I'll make that motion now but then I will finish with my my comments and questions second you have a motion to

▶ 2:53:24 Francis X. Wright Jr.: add the email from mr. van Kampen sent today to the order seconded by alderman all in favor aye he opposed okay we will add that to the order in the public record um and alderman wright thank you um i appreciate the order and i appreciate the intent of the order um i guess i would ask that the auditor um do we have any way of estimating what the revenue will be from the sale of marijuana recreational marijuana in the city of Malrose at this time I do not okay and we have any way of estimating what the services would cost us under a stabilization under the goals of the service a stabilization fund that's being proposed as far as well it's set up for particular purposes and And, and I don't, I'm trying to figure out what those costs will be.

▶ 2:54:34 Francis X. Wright Jr.: And I, I assume they'll be based on what the income is. And perhaps be supplemented by the general fund. But I guess my, my point really is, I think that we, the goal I think is, is certainly admirable. But I think fiscally, it would be more responsible of us to wait to see what the revenue will be. I'm concerned that the services that may be required which are the goal of this order really won't be self-evident to us for several years and I think at that point at some point down the road a year or two three years down the road it might be worthwhile to revisit this but at this point without knowing what what revenue is going to be and yet committing all that revenue whether that's a lot of money or a little

▶ 2:55:28 Francis X. Wright Jr.: money um away from the general fund to to again admirable purposes but as you indicated uh mr delarusso uh you know ten or twenty thousand dollars is a lot of money to the city of melrose And we have other bills to pay, and there are often grants that provide the services that this stabilization fund may be intended to cover that we could look to. And if we can go to a grant and not have this money dedicated away from the general fund, there was a lot of talk about this money going to the general fund and helping to supplement the city. but now to dedicate it for something else without knowing exactly what we're talking about how much revenue what the costs are what what services we might need I think we're putting the car a little bit ahead of the horse I

▶ 2:56:25 Francis X. Wright Jr.: understand the concern about vaping certainly we've seen a lot in the news about vaping and the impact that's having on our youth but I've also seen other municipalities address this in a much more aggressive manner they've addressed not only the age at which kids can buy vaping products but also the location and I think you know maybe we can look at other ways to to address vaping in the city of Melrose and not just the effects of it but the the ability to obtain it so again intent is admirable I'm just concerned that we're getting out ahead of ourselves we're dedicating a source of revenue without knowing what that revenue is going to be and we're a community that fiscally has lived on the Raiders razor's edge for a number of years and I'm concerned that

▶ 2:57:31 John N. Tramontozzi: by removing this money from the general fund and purposes for which we may need it um we will um be at some point in the future not be able to meet our our needs as opposed to our wants which these are admirable wants thank you ottoman chairman tozy thank you madam chair um when this uh when this order first came before proposed order came before the board um from a couple months back, I expressed reservations about it. I don't think this specific stabilization fund is appropriate for the same reasons that Alderman Wright have mentioned. The funds should go to the general fund. If we want to fund some cause, we can do so out of the general funds. and right mentioned there are grant money available to handle some of these issues that

▶ 2:58:39 Shawn M. MacMaster: that we may be faced with so my reservations about this have continued you know despite the fact that the city solicitors expressed an opinion that we can we could valid validly legally establish the stabilization fund it doesn't mean we have to and i don't think it'd be appropriate to do so at this time so i i would not be voting in favor of it um at this time thank you alderman mcmaster thank you madam chair i'm inclined to support uh this order that's been brought before us by alderman Zwirko originally you may recall that i was opposed to it and my opposition was not based on the spirit of the order but it was based on wanting to be consistent with my other votes relative to marijuana but the reality is we are going to be bringing this revenue into the city

▶ 2:59:33 Shawn M. MacMaster: in the form of an excise tax through the department of revenue and we need to do something with the money and to me i think it is important for us as a board through voting to support this um to really mandate that money be set aside for costs associated with the social impact costs of legalized marijuana and whether that's in the form of substance abuse prevention whether that's in the form of police training for trends that may arise as a result of what we're seeing this guarantees that there is money that is earmarked for those purposes as well as more purposes and it ensures that this becomes part of our policy making in the city and that it's prioritized um i you know i think we're not going to be able to forecast

▶ 3:00:37 Shawn M. MacMaster: what the costs are um we're not going to be able to forecast what the the revenue will be i still think the revenue is a as a red herring i don't think it's going to be as much as people anticipate but we are going to be bringing in revenue we need to do something with it and i think the prudent thing to do is to put it towards the costs that as i said will be associated with legalized marijuana i mean the very fact that there will be more marijuana in our community poses a risk for diversion into the hands of youth so to me that calls for additional efforts to raise awareness with young people children and teens and to try to affirmatively take some steps to prevent the misuse and abuse of substances so again i'm in support of this i want to thank

▶ 3:01:37 Monica C. Medeiros: alderman's worko for filing it and i'm hopeful that others may be in support of it as well thank you madam chair thank you alderman Medeiros thank you um yes i was previously in support of this i remain in support of this i think for some of the very reasons that both alderman twerko and alderman mcmaster elaborated on tonight in particular i mean this is this is new revenue coming into the city from a new source that we don't know that much about yet not just as a city but or a state or even the country and when we do know what we do know is that historically we've had sometimes a hard time funding some things like Narcan some things like the substance abuse prevention coordinator which we used to have a grant for and we no

▶ 3:02:29 Monica C. Medeiros: longer have things like sometimes training that we that are new mandates that come up and I think this could certainly provide us an avenue to make sure that that there is some revenue for those things but that being said this is is this is a pretty broad category and you know we don't know what the revenue will be it may be a lot it may not be as much but it is new and it's something that we is not yet stable but these are broad categories of public safety and education and substance abuse prevention so I mean certainly there's things like and sorry another thing that sometimes we haven't always had funding for is to go out and and do the checks at the different establishments that serve liquor you know so these are these are all issues where I think you could see

▶ 3:03:29 Monica C. Medeiros: these funds being a very good match for but you know if we brought in hundreds of thousands of dollars and found that there was you know millions of dollars in this account after the course of a year or two there's no doubt in my mind that we couldn't find you know something under the car the categories of education or you know even if it wasn't all substance abuse prevention I'm sure that we could find things under the categories of education or public safety that we could fund from from this this account and again it is something that we could change in three years so I definitely I would be supportive of creating this at this time thank you president Lemmerman thank you just a couple of questions for you mr. Leroso can you describe any other carve-outs

▶ 3:04:15 that we have from any other sources or going anywhere else in the city right now any of the cover the only the cover that we have in relation to stabilization funds we have for example the special revenue fund is the stabilization from the school department special education and that's ideally a combo and for that purpose we have the contract stabilization fund which is is designed to address union, non-union contracts as well as regular staff funding agreements and that nature. We have the Suits and Claims Stabilization Fund, which is considered a CAVO specifically for suits and claims. We have the Capital Stabilization Fund. Again, we have a CAVO for capital. Hopefully, we can put funds in that to address capital needs

▶ 3:05:11 to the community and so we have a number in that sense that a condo specific for those purposes and you know they serve their purpose we see it every time we come up for a contract for police a fire or the like that we have to seek to the contract stabilization fund to help address it because on a regular basis we can't typically you couldn't do that so those those times and those funds for those specific purposes I consider those condo because they're dedicated just for a specific purpose okay and um are they they set up in the same way that technically you could vote every three years to continue them are they they're set up in a different way again through the chair I would have to confirm that

▶ 3:06:07 on the other funds but my my expectation is that this is a standard stabilization fund and like the others that i mentioned earlier there there's no um end date perhaps we don't close the fund at the end of the year the money in the fund the stabilization fund the city stabilization fund the big one that we have um that's for example that that just stays year after year unless there's a request to be drawn down on it there's no expiration date saying on the end of June 30th they have to close these funds up that doesn't happen I'll confirm it with the funds but that would be my expectation I don't know why they would deviate but I could I'll find that out thank you and with this one with the

▶ 3:06:48 Jennifer L. Lemmerman: opportunity to revisit it in three years is that something that a vote would be triggered in three years or I'm not sure if I'm asking you something that you have looked at or not and if not maybe you could let us know but would it vote automatically be triggered in three years that would come to us and we would have this analysis we would go through this process or unless otherwise requested by say an alderman or the administration a vote wouldn't happen and it would just keep going on its own inertia yeah again I'll confirm this through council but my expectation that you wouldn't see a red flag come up per se but I think if the board collectively decided this isn't operating the way we anticipated and once that 36 month period was up decided to take action to dissolve it um i don't

▶ 3:07:41 Jennifer L. Lemmerman: think i think that legislation would allow you to do that i think that would be initiated by the board okay um but i will confirm that with council thank you and i assume if if it were in three years or six years or however long closed for any reason that would just go back to the general fund whatever was was left yeah my expectation is generally they would close to the general fund there was some provision um yeah for other funds um in the past like some revolving funds that there may be an option to actually transfer some of that from one fund to another but i think that's a very limited opportunity i'm not sure that would apply here okay at all um i agree with alderman master i think this scenario is unlikely but if we were to find

▶ 3:08:29 ourselves in a situation where we had all kinds of extra money there's no way to pull it out of there and put it anywhere else right um other than through the um chair i other than the sense that the board i believe it may be an opportunity to change the purpose for the use of the fund and again that may be the way to have the funds attributed to a different purpose i'm originally designed that may be an opportunity you have because um uh with the legislation so we'll confirm that but you know what i mean if you yeah all of a sudden you want to add another purpose for it for example sure and as a as a fund and does that have to happen within the does that have to happen on the three-year christ oh within that period my guess is if you've set up for a b

▶ 3:09:19 Jennifer L. Lemmerman: and c and you want to change it my i'm not sure if there's any expiration date on how often or if you know it can't change it more than once a year or something i have to check on that okay thank you very much um i i spoke on this last time i i had similar concerns to those raised um tonight um by alderman wright and i you know they remain for me i i think the i i felt a little better by the vote every every three years but i do feel that if it's not automatically triggered i mean the reality is that things once they're set up and in place and implemented and moving they do tend to move on their own inertia and it could be difficult to to change that um i think that even if we don't find ourselves with lots of money um in it there are

▶ 3:10:07 Jennifer L. Lemmerman: priorities there's a prioritization process that could be impeded by this um that there could be an emergency somewhere else even if we don't have a ton of money in this in this fund um that could be because i agree it could be used other places um within those three buckets but there could be some place outside those three buckets we just don't know yet we just don't know enough um about what we're looking at what our needs are going to be and that remains for me so um i i still have concerns about this order thank you i um alderman any alderman which you see for the first time I just wanted to also state that I appreciate the intentions of this order I think I'm struggling with the categories a little bit and I I think

▶ 3:10:55 Manisha Bewtra: substance abuse prevention as I mentioned in the last meeting feels very directly tied but I think aldermen's worker you mentioned the example from Springfield and that were that that was used towards beautification and although we're a very you know different community we have an order before us and legal and legislative that is sort of intending and getting at some of those economic development concerns so for me right now i'm i do appreciate i think the intentions of trying to create some more transparency around a new source of revenue for our community but also addressing substance abuse challenges within the community and education needs um substance abuse specific education needs but uh i share the concerns stated by alderman wright and president Lemmerman thank you

▶ 3:11:49 Monica C. Medeiros: alderman medeiros thank you i just want to um touch i think there's a little bit of confusion and and certainly we can have the legal counsel uh clarify this but i believe the three pers the sorry the three-year time frame is on the directing the revenue source into the stabilization fund I believe the funds would stay in the stabilization account until the you know mayor and Board of Aldermen voted to move them out but you know I the school budget this year alone for instance is thirty thirty three million dollars I want to say I've stopped my head and you know I find it hard to believe that you know we couldn't move money out if we got a lot of it but I believe the vote is very similar to the meals tax for instance or

▶ 3:12:41 Monica C. Medeiros: the hotel tax where you know the Board of Aldermen voted quite a long time ago to to put those in place and they had to be in place for three years and then after three years the board could could change it I do think there's you know Also the potential here, which I know Alderman Zwirko proposed ordinance says to direct 100% of the funds raised from this marijuana excise tax into this stabilization fund. but there is also the option to you know break that down to a percentage of say 25 percent into this fund um which may be something that this uh board may wish to do or alderman's work will maybe favor alderman wright thank you um we all recall you know there was a lot of uh disagreement

▶ 3:13:41 Francis X. Wright Jr.: as to the location and whether or not we should have a recreational marijuana shop in the city we we voted as a community to have one we've stated our position as to where it should be located and and that is where it will be located um but obviously it was a lot of interest citywide in this in this issue um so i would ask mr de la ruso um if we were to commit a hundred percent of the three percent local excise tax to this stabilization fund would any other revenue um from the sale of recreational marijuana be realized by the city with any other revenue is there any other i mean if the marijuana is being sold recreationally out on route 99 in melrose right and there's a three percent local excise tax that we've adopted and we're going to

▶ 3:14:44 Francis X. Wright Jr.: dedicate all of that three percent to a particular stabilization fund is there any other revenue coming in from the city from that particular sale that will end up in the general fund i'm not talking about like real estate taxes or water and sewer bills or anything like that i'm talking about is there any other source i think the answer is no i think yeah it's it's some people saw this when they voted for it as a way to raise revenue to allow us to for the city to pay its bills and we're always you know we did pass the override but we certainly didn't create a surplus of money we we created a situation where we're able to maintain uh i'm just concerned again that if that the community understand that if we dedicate all of this money to a to a great cause

▶ 3:15:41 Francis X. Wright Jr.: that without knowing how much revenue we're talking about and without knowing what the cost of the services that are intended to be provided are going to be that we that we've made a decision here today without being fully informed so i mean i i was thinking along the same lines as Alderman Medeiros which is if we were to pursue this in any way shape or form I think it should be closer to the 25% as opposed to the hundred percent but that's just my thoughts thank you thank you thank you thank you madam chair so I just wanted to address some of the questions and comments that came up since I introduced the order this evening first thing I would say is I'm absolutely open to any modifications that this board

▶ 3:16:40 Michael P. Zwirko: sees fit so I'm willing to work in a way that addresses or assuages any concerns that folks may have alderman Medeiros is correct that under the under the law you can't go below 25% of the dedicated funds but you can drop to that amount could be 50 could be 33 could be 62 whatever it just can't be 24 or 24.9 or anything below and you know just like we talked earlier about the benefit of the override freeing up about three-quarters of a million dollars in a free cash appropriation this also does that same budgetary maneuver in the sense that if you know that the funds are dedicated for a certain amount of services then you don't need to budget in the general fund for those services they're going to

▶ 3:17:33 Michael P. Zwirko: be used through this fund and everybody here is said the same theme they've just come out in a different area they've they're they're uncertain about the revenue they're uncertain about the demand they're uncertain about the amounts and that's why I think it's that's why that's why you would enact a pilot program and I think of this more of a as a pilot program this way with the monies being segregated you actually know what the revenue is that is coming in and you say to yourself all right well after three years we don't have to continue this pilot program and we should have three years or maybe two and a half years by the time actually adult use is sold in Melrose but the account will still be open for that period furthermore I mean if folks wanted to

▶ 3:18:18 Michael P. Zwirko: attach a trigger where this board has to vote whether or not to continue the stabilization fund three years from its creation I mean I'm happy in writing that into the order as well just to assure that we the Board of Aldermen soon-to-be City Council will have that vote so that this doesn't continue in perpetuity without folks you know if there's a turnover on the board three years from now and no one's here anymore so we could certainly do that and our clerk would be more than willing to record keep that date we could do that but I do think that this is work because of the uncertainty that's that's actually why I favor it I think the segregation allows us for better bookkeeping it allows us for better forecasting it allows us to understand

▶ 3:19:03 Michael P. Zwirko: what the revenues are I feel that the revenues are going to taper off quite frankly certainly in the next three years with the proliferation of retail sales especially in Greater Boston the power of the monopoly just isn't going to exist as much and therefore the revenues will decline and there's no shortness of need especially in these three areas so I'm you know I'm happy to to you know to modify this as folks see fit certainly I guess I favor a hundred percent because then you know it's better you know your amounts better but if folks feel more comfortable at 50 25 75 whatever that amount may be as long as we have some funds that I feel are dedicated to areas that are going to be impacted by this as a to offset those costs as well as to kind of prepare for

▶ 3:19:57 Michael P. Zwirko: this this new world that's approaching us very soon I'm happy to do so I do think that we have some outstanding questions for the city solicitor that have been raised tonight so I think it's it's probably a good time to retain this into committee again although I'm hesitant to do so just because I don't like it when things languish but we do have some really good questions and I think we've had some very good debate about the intent so I would ask that this be held in committee so we can get those answers from the city solicitor as well as folks think a little bit more creatively about some of the concerns they have and how this could ultimately be addressed and maybe this this pilot program could move forward so I'll move that we retain this order in committee

▶ 3:20:43 Kate Lipper-Garabedian: second okay we have a motion to retain a committee maybe aldermen's work on seconded by Alderman Bewtra if you don't mind I haven't had a chance to speak on this and I don't have a firm position but I actually don't think we're languishing I think this is really productive conversation and I appreciate very much you bringing this proposal to our attention to give us the opportunity to think about you know a burgeoning area of revenue potentially for us and and sort of new landscape of law my quick review I did see that Springfield as you mentioned did set one of these up and they've set the rate at 33% and that is being directed to neighborhoods within a 1.5 mile radius of the dispensaries so they're sort of targeting the you know the money toward

▶ 3:21:32 Kate Lipper-Garabedian: the places that are most likely to be impacted immediately by the dispensaries and looks like they further directed it to educational and recreational programming for youth and adults neighborhood business incentives infrastructure improvements and recreational community sites again close to that dispensary so it's just something interesting and then I'm not sure if this passed or not it looks like in January at least there was a proposal before Lowell to consider setting aside 25% so the minimum as you've mentioned of the revenue collected to go directly to municipal buildings and specifically school buildings from the revenues and that's a school district I know that is working on a new high school and we have some you know significant facilities

▶ 3:22:16 Kate Lipper-Garabedian: demands so both of these communities I think have considered a stabilization fund and done it at less than a hundred percent so that's just something to take into account you know I see the rationale for segregating the money in so far as it's going to be a completely new revenue stream and it's sort of uncertain you know what we're looking at and it gives us an opportunity to perhaps really target our attention on it and research sort of or keep track in real time over what's happening I think we could do that even without a stabilization fund and so far as we have good data that demonstrates the different revenue streams that we have so we could be really intentional about while making sure we're managing that and overseeing it.

▶ 3:23:12 Kate Lipper-Garabedian: I do think it's good for the municipality to be able to be very nimble year over year in terms of what the constituents really need and prioritize, and I can think of things that a new influx of revenue could allow us to do that's outside perhaps the purview of the stabilization fund. for example, significant improvements in our I&I issues to really maybe aggressively lower rates on water and sewer. So I don't know that I have a firm opinion on this at this point in time and I appreciate the opportunity for us to continue to review maybe any modifications you think about making Aldermen's Work Go and I appreciate everyone's thoughtfulness on this order tonight, especially as the hour gets a little later.

▶ 3:24:03 Michael P. Zwirko: So we have a motion, any further questions? Sorry, and I'll make this very quick. So there was another comment that you reminded me of something, Madam Chair. I believe if there were other revenues that we could attain from recreational marijuana, it would be in the community host agreement, and I do not know, so I will add that to the list of questions to follow up with the city solicitor on. I think certain community host agreements actually do get, using the parlance of our times, a rake of total sales, and I don't know if we have one in ours. So, but there could be potential revenue streams that was brought up by another alderman, so I just wanted to raise that. I'll request that information as well.

▶ 3:24:40 Manisha Bewtra: Excellent. All right, a motion has been made and duly seconded to hold this order in committee. All in favor? Aye. Any opposed? Okay, we will do that. And I'll entertain a motion to adjourn. Thank you. So moved. Second. We have a motion to adjourn any of the aldermen's work. I want seconded by Alderman McMaster. All in favor? Aye. Any opposed? you we are reconvening the legal and legislative committee we had recessed before we had to with recessed in order to start the appropriations public hearing I am vice chair of legal and legislative Manisha Bewtra and we left off with comments from colleagues around the chamber next in queue was alderman Zorco Thank You madam chair so this this order that's before us I I think it may

Appropriations & Oversight Committee — 2019-05-13

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