Appropriations & Oversight Committee — 2019-05-23

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 absent · Voting; Peter D. Mortimer present · Voting; John N. Tramontozzi present · Voting; Francis X. Wright Jr. absent · Voting; Michael P. Zwirko present · Voting

Agenda

1. ORDER-2019-85 : 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). (0:49)
2. ORDER-2019-87 : 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. (1:55:32)

Minutes

CITY OF MELROSE APPROPRIATIONS COMMITTEE CALENDAR● MAY 23, 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 Present John N. Tramontozzi Voting Present Francis X. Wright Jr. Voting Absent Monica C. Medeiros Voting Absent 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

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 City of Melrose Page 1 Updated 6/3/2019 11:49 AM

Transcript

▶ 0:00 Kate Lipper-Garabedian: The hour being 7.30 on Thursday, May 23rd. I'm calling to order the Appropriations Committee. This is a committee of the whole, and I am joined tonight by Vice, or I am Chair Lipper-Garabedian. I'm joined tonight by Vice Chair Alderman Boisselle, as well as Alderman Mortimer, Alderman Tramontozzi, Alderman Zwirko, Alderman Bewtra, Alderman McMaster, and President Lemmerman. alderman Forbes since his regrets but he has a commitment related to his veteran services work this meeting is being recorded in accordance with the open meeting law you can view it live on an MTV as well streaming on an MTV and it will be available through the city of Melrose website at this point in time I'd be happy to entertain a motion for public comment so moved second we have a

▶ 0:49 Kate Lipper-Garabedian: motion for public comment made by alderman's work Oh seconded by vice chair Boisselle all in favor any opposed this is the portion of the meeting while any member of the public can come forward to speak on any item on our agenda tonight motion to close public comment madam chair second we have a motion to close public comment made by alderman Mortimer seconded by vice chair Boisselle all in favor any opposed that motion carries public comment is now over so we'll move on to our agenda and the first order before us is order number two zero one nine dash eighty five city of Melrose operating budget for fiscal year 2020 in the amount of eighty six million six hundred sixty two thousand nine hundred eighty seven dollars and 61 cents and we have I see

▶ 1:34 Kate Lipper-Garabedian: in the audience tonight several of our department heads here and able to answer questions about these proposals motion to suspend the rules madam chair we have a motion to suspend the rules made by alderman's work oh and seconded by vice chair Boisselle all in favor any opposed great so we will start it looks like with department number 141 which is our assessor good evening thank you so much for being here thank you I don't know if you'd like to start with any comments about the proposal in front of us or if you'd like to go straight to questions sure I spent a lot of time putting together this handout and I hope everyone found it very helpful any suggestions for next year definitely let me know but I wanted to try a new approach and let you guys know what's

▶ 2:21 going on the assessor's office secondly I'd like to thank my staff this has been a very busy year so I'd like to thank Janet and Sarah Lee Phelan and also Kathy Galeno on the Board of Assessors and Jane Pitts and almost forgot the our senior worker Robert Pickett and they've done an excellent job this year great customer service they spent a lot of time really just dealing with residents we've had an influx of residents at the counter and they've done an excellent job so thank you thank you madam chair so first what I would like to say is thank you to you and your staff as well for all the work that you do it's a very important role and I know that there's also a lot of education that goes throughout the year as well as changes in the I guess the market it's probably

▶ 3:17 Michael P. Zwirko: best put so thank you for that I wanted to this this PowerPoint slide that you put together for us the deck is really helpful it's a better visualization than the actual questionnaire although you basically took the questionnaire and put it into this PowerPoint so it was very good way to kind of synthesize all the information that you've worked on over the year I'm going to jump around a little bit but I wanted to first go to the the graph of new growth this is really an observation but so I know that new growth is something obviously over the past year we've had a lot of discussions about tax levies and valuations and how one gets to a tax levy limit as well as what our our levy itself is and new growth is actually something that's not calculated than

▶ 4:11 Michael P. Zwirko: that correct that's something that we can we can take in outside of that levy we can take an addition to the two and a half in addition to the tuna correct so looking at this graph I believe it's like 14 I might be wrong slide 11 I apologize and the visualization is actually very good because if you look at 2009 and and things on the on like a Main Street or in a neighborhood may be a little bit delayed if you look at it across like a stock market and where I'm going with this is in 2008 specifically September of 2008 the bottom fell out of the market completely fell out and if you look at 9 10 and 11 on this growth you're seeing the same the indication and what happens is is as the economy ripples you know from Wall Street down

▶ 4:57 Michael P. Zwirko: to Main Street we see less new growth that means folks aren't make putting additions on their homes they're not buying new appliances likely not buying new cars etc and you're seeing new growth go from in the fiscal year of 2009 from sixty six hundred thousand fifteen dollars to just below three hundred thousand then over the next six years it rockets up again there's a little bit of a blip in the previous year of 2018 but at least by this graph we hit a record of seven hundred and sixty eight thousand dollars in new growth and can you explain what some of that new growth would be even though I alluded to it just a moment ago sure I'd like to just back up a little in previous budgets we've allocated more money to inspections the economy is

▶ 5:39 great but but the reality is we have more people on the streets viewing the houses I'd say we've gone from about 200 houses to about a thousand houses for inspections so it's a combination of all the little permits in this graph we've had major projects that have plateaued or topped out things on Washington street oak grove so this is a combination of just getting out there and looking at all the permits which really makes a difference so it is a little with the market but it's also adjusting our policies in the office to go go out there and and get the growth and where were we in terms of like how does your office assess i mean it must be a very difficult proposition to say okay uh i'm I'm looking at this graph and here's where we're gonna end in 2020 so can you

▶ 6:28 talk about the process you get that I mean it's it's almost like past performance is not indicative of future results something could happen but you also have policies and procedures that you alluded to so how exactly do you come up with this this figure correct so as far as office procedures what we try and do is maximize our time if we can verify anything online if we can verify anything by aerial photography we use that any technology that we can take advantage of we use there's only two assessors in the office that actually go in the field we do hire out it's a price per parcel to hire out it's expensive so if we can do with stuff in-house it's obvious a lot easier but what we're trying to do is maximize as many inspections as we can get out there as

▶ 7:07 far as permits I believe we're over 2,000 permits a year and we only have a thousand to go to so we have to rate all those permits and find out which ones are really going to change and which ones are electrical outlet or a garbage disposal or something like that those are low value ones so it just takes a lot of time to go through everything and put our priorities where we think that the properties are going to change you get any calls on tips or nosy neighbors we get tips from everyone so people come in and talk about their neighbor if their house is overvalued in their opinion they'll point out other houses we call them comparables but sure every ten years we go to everyone's house so yeah we get info from everyone you kind of jump to one of my questions as well I

▶ 7:53 Michael P. Zwirko: wanted to talk about the new tech there's some photos of it and also the use of satellites as well as not not necessarily needing like a body on the ground as much and can you talk about that as you're bringing I think you're gonna bring that in or you've already used it towards this year but you're gonna be doing it again the upcoming year yeah so for I mean we've had multiple projects our latest one is change detection software so what we're doing is taking aerial photography and comparing outlines of buildings from one year to another we're measuring down to about a hundred square feet and we can see based off of that aerial photography any changes in the city from year to year and then we rate them based on artificial intelligence and they grade

▶ 8:33 them by whether it's an addition a deck an outbuilding a pool I believe we're one of the first in the Commonwealth to do it if not the country so I'm very proud of that and you take the data that's found and you place that into GIS so there's a desktop desktop verification what we have is we'll be implementing this probably by the end of the summer there's a grading process based off of the square footage that's changed it assigns a valuation to it and we start at the high and work our way down sometimes they might have extended their driveway or they might have put new steps in that would have a lower value than someone adding a second floor or an addition on their house and then I just have to to come to two more questions one's actually a comment but

▶ 9:14 Michael P. Zwirko: could you speak so I know that professionally you're you have a you have another role outside of your office you with the Massachusetts Commonwealth Assessors could you talk about that role as well and what that group really aims to do and I would also add that it's it's a great benefit to the city that you you have that role so thank you for serving in that capacity thank you for the last four years I've been a member of the Massachusetts Association of assessing officers on the executive board as of next month I will be president of over 1,300 Assessors in Massachusetts thank you and I've also served as chairman of the Technology Committee for last six six years plus so we can kind of see as to why we might be the first in the Commonwealth bringing

▶ 9:55 Michael P. Zwirko: this tech to Melrose yes yeah great thank you and then my final question so the this was actually on your questionnaire although you did you did mention in the in the deck so the the one big change in that this came out probably two or three months ago was the no longer is the assessor's office handling the passports can you just talk to that change correct what we've done is we've changed from a transaction based office to evaluation office at the end of the day the assessing office is the main function of that office I felt that we were devoting too much time to transaction based passports that were not only for Melrose residents but a regional service I basically stuck up for my staff address some of the issues that they had and as a result of that my

▶ 10:42 Michael P. Zwirko: my staff gets to spend time on assessing work which correlates to higher growth numbers and just better data less liability at the appellate tax board also you've seen growth in that area passports was becoming a burden passports are very time-consuming and they're very sporadic as a manager I just could not allocate the appropriate time to get assessing work and passports done in an open office where people would show up and there was no rhyme or reason for it well thank you for that it's important to note that I work at a very large enterprise company and I work in a cost center meaning we're not bringing in any profit my department for the company and your department is bringing in revenue for the city so it's it's good to maximize the profit centers

▶ 11:24 Michael P. Zwirko: that we have in the city and there are other departments that don't I mean it's a whole yin and yang but you know you are one of the people that in your department that is actually bringing in the valuation so you know appreciate the work that your office does so those are all the questions that I had at this time Thank You madam chair Alderman Tremont Ozzie Thank You madam chair good evening I just had a couple questions about some line items specifically revaluation 83,500 professional services 35 9 yes and you want just explain those two items yeah the best way to describe the professional services that's all of our inspections that's the bare minimum price per parcel 800 to a thousand parcels revaluation includes all of the

▶ 12:11 software systems that we have you know in my office we have about eight different we have commercial market we have MLS we have all these different types of software that's for that also it handles litigation it handles special appraisals when we have special use properties that we don't have the expertise in-house to do and it really is anything to do with valuations it might be mailing it consulting power bi is one of those that we're adding this year that those funds would come from that so some of that includes wages for independent contractors is that what it is correct we only have three full-time people in my office and some of the expertise especially with technology there's certain people that are experts in those fields and we do hire out for

▶ 12:56 those one other item line item I see the the mayor wants to give you four thousand dollars for furniture and fixtures can you just explain that I'm sure one of the objectives I tried to do this year is to expand our senior work off program. Mr. Pickett has been in my office, I believe this is the third year. He scanned over 4,000 documents. Those are anywhere from four to six dollars per document. We pay him roughly a thousand dollars a year and then what he's doing is geo-referencing them. So not only is he scanning them, he's assigning an address and putting them in our document management. That work is invaluable. As far as a return on investment, it's unbelievable. So I want expand that program I know we have an abundance of senior workers I'd like to

▶ 13:39 John N. Tramontozzi: have another station and a desktop for them to come in and work and all another program that we're looking at too is college interns especially for the mapping part we just need some people that would come in and help us go through the the tons and tons of data that we get every day and I would need a place to put them and and a computer also you know it does seem like it's a good investment then if you keep the those volunteers in the the senior at a comfortable place to work and certainly save on additional cost for wages that we might have to expend otherwise so thank you thank you thank you hi thanks for being here tonight can you alluded to a lot of sort of more customer service I can you expand on that a little I think we touched on it but in

▶ 14:29 terms of was it related to the increased new growth was it because of the override all of the above I think the influx this year had a lot to do with the override it's not only just figures it's also explaining proposition two and a half in in City Hall when someone has a question about proposition two and a half they end up in my office we don't send them anywhere we give them information we educate them they might not have you happy with the answer but we spend a lot of time so that they understand the process so there was a lot of time with you know on the phones at the front counter I've revamped my website probably twice a month during the whole override so there was just a lot of time this year that was dedicated towards that and like I said my staff

▶ 15:14 Manisha Bewtra: did a really really good job thank you and I I know I relied on the information you put on the website as well so thank you I think it was a great resource to point residents to if they had questions about proposition two and a half and you're always available to answer questions so thank you thank you vice chair Boisselle in your fiscal year 2020 projects i see here you have historical maps and plans preservation how far back are you going with these maps and yeah um so in in the basement we have maps all the way back to the 1800s so 1890s i want to say early 1900s and unfortunately that's the only copies the the city has I know that at some point if there's ever a disaster in this building those are permanently gone so I want to scan those and start with the

▶ 16:01 older ones and work our way forward believe it or not a lot of the deeds today still reference a lot of those old plans the 1920s the city's pretty much built out the subdivisions happened way back when so some of those plans are still relevant even though they're over a hundred years old so you're digitizing these plans are you going to put them on lines for public to look at or see what their property looked like 200 years ago so I have a couple the citywide maps yes I'd like to overlay those with the current city maps they might be a little skewed a little because the technology is better now but my plan always has been 24 7 access to all of our city records very good thank you very much thank you I have just one follow-up question on the slide about

▶ 16:47 Kate Lipper-Garabedian: new growth I was wondering how much of our new growth this past year or generally can be attributed to completely new developments or a new building as opposed to folks investing in their existing structure and then the value of that increasing and how we keep track of that so right now we're in the middle of it June 30th is our cutoff I don't have an answer for fiscal 20 as far as 19 I would say the major single-family developments were up in the Regan's Way area I would say probably about 70% was existing houses additions decks lots of renovations for kitchens bathrooms just a lot of going out and in visiting properties that are already existing as far as land where we don't have a lot of excess land so it's a very small percentage of new houses

▶ 17:41 Kate Lipper-Garabedian: okay so a lot so just to make sure I hear you a sizable portion if not a majority most years would be related to people investing in their existing homes and enhancing the value of them as opposed to the new building correct we saw a trend where people purchase properties and they redid the bathroom of the kitchen or vice-versa before they sold it they did kitchens bathrooms interior fit ups of the existing square footage correct that's really helpful I i don't have any other questions i do believe that under our department budget line 930 is this right there's some permitting software that would be relevant for your department did you just want to speak to that briefly so we don't have to sure do you want paul sure paul and i are both perfect

▶ 18:26 custodians of this account thank you for being here yeah so so as far as this account um this account deals with the citywide GIS and inspectional services so this is all the permitting software GIS software education for GIS and any citywide initiatives for GIS so it's 75,000 a year and that covers everything there's no salaries out of it it's just pretty much software aerial photography any hardware so anytime the plotter goes down or needs work this is the fun that we use it Paul can speak on the inspectional services side of it unfortunately this year we had a little bit of a setback where we one of my part-time inspector and I'll get into that with our budget I didn't have one for approximately six

▶ 19:29 months or so so I had to suspend the development of that program and we recently hired somebody so we're probably 80% there I want to get it to a 95% to roll this out so we probably have a few more months work once we can get back to it you're all aware of the influx and the the the construction boom that we're having right now is is really put a strain on my office so it's on hold for now until you know we have to prioritize and take care of what's coming in the door first before we can finish that up okay but in terms of this particular line it's it's just funded it's a flat funding yes licensing sort of package correct and it deals with everything GIS and spectral services okay any questions about this before we complete our review of the Assessor's

▶ 20:27 department open to move the bottom line of 141 second we have a motion to move the bottom line of department number 141 the assessor's office made by Vice Chair Boisselle and seconded by Alderman Mortimer all in favor opposed okay thank you very much for being here you oh and I'd be remiss to say I didn't I met your counterpart in Wakefield and he had great things to say about you department number 155 is up next our information technology those watching at home we're just getting the PowerPoint set up it is a part of our record and and available online. I have it online here, if you want to flip back, just do it from her computer, he's the expert over there so just starting off with the first thing on here our

▶ 23:51 responsibilities so it's a long list it's pretty much the same I included some things since last year but basically we're responsible for all the networks copiers printers school projectors laptops Chromebooks security systems cameras what have you 9-1-1 systems a lot of police systems so that's what our basic responsibilities are so going straight into projects completed and this is kind of following the sequence of the questionnaire that I had put out to all of you you can see I put the city of Melrose around the circle around them yeah it looks good right yeah so first project we got is identify and select a new emergency notification system in ENS we currently have code red we went through a selection process with all the

▶ 24:47 stakeholders in the city police fire emergency management communications director to select a new system is basically like an auto call system it does a lot of things it utilizes GIS from the GIS mapping for a notification we also purchased a module for this called community engagement where we can make a text number so we can put that out in the community and say you know if you'd like to be on our list for notifications text this number and then we can automatically have it shoot back another text with links to the website where they can select groups that they would might want to be in so you know vulnerable populations might be one maybe you know community you know just city events that kind of thing so that'll go a long way to engage with the

▶ 25:47 community over the next few years it's also it was less expensive than our current system Chromebook cart rollouts we did for this year is kind of low we've been consistently repairing Chromebooks in-house just saving us a lot of money We also put these Chromebooks together ourselves. Frank Sorrenti on my school team and Jimmy Ho did those. Telephone system replacement projects. Lincoln Elementary, they've had quite a few problems over there with their phone system. It's a version of our current system that we have at City Hall, but a little bit newer. I mean, our system here at City Hall is roughly close to 30 years old, and the one there is somewhere around 15 to 20. um but uh we they were having such a problem in the cost to keep repairing it was so high that

▶ 26:41 we just bought a system uh and installed it to voice over ip it goes through the network and we installed it over uh april break and so that was up and running when they came back it's basically the main office but it doesn't cover the rest of the school we need to do the rest of the schools the schools can still contact the main office but we still need to get the phones out to the rest of the school MCAS MCAS finished yesterday except for the high school biology field test which the state is having everyone do I don't believe it counts for anything but they're doing a field test so MCAS went really smoothly this year we had to build a new server for it we had no problems except for this one girl on one question she couldn't enter it in over and over again

▶ 27:35 we tried it on three or four different types of machines it was a problem with the state it wasn't there anything we could do but this poor girl so yeah oh and Judy Chan who's on my school team she did the bulwark of making this go smoothly so she was day in day out talking with the principals she helped them shepherded them through the whole setup process and getting it working and everything she did a great work job we to access for ELL so that was another thing that we had to do through the state this year thankfully a guy on my city team had had experience running the electronic WIDA but it's basically the same thing as MCAS but we do it for English language learners and we have quite a few in the district I forget how many off the top of my head I want to

▶ 28:24 say it was around three and I was more than that it was quite a few so we had that every building except for horse man in Franklin we it's all done through the Chromebooks and again we had to set up a server for and we had to buy compliant headphones and microphones they have to record everything through it and that will get submitted so that one that went off really well again that's the school staff Frank and Jimmy and Judy were really helped with that we have a server implementation that we're in the process of doing so we've upgraded all of the city servers that kind of control all the network so those are all done as a we that city is kind of a think of it as a physical box that can run multiple

▶ 29:15 virtual servers on it and which which is gonna run new munis the new unit software it's going to run it might run the new uh phone voice over ip phone system it will definitely run our new mail system which we need to upgrade we're going to do that this year as well so uh that's key we're we also did the whole file server system we're in the process of upgrading uh we did five new police cruisers just recently we've got another one we still need to do Those systems are pretty complex, and Jared Camerlango from my office has been working on those. He does a great job with those. UPSs, the battery-backed batteries that plug in server equipment switches, we did about 26 of those. We actually have another three in City Hall, we did one of the three.

▶ 30:12 We did those in the Roosevelt, Lincoln, Franklin, high school and middle schools, all the server rooms, all the closets. So basically all the phones run off the power that goes to that network equipment. So we really don't want those to go down in a power outage. We still don't have a generator at the middle school to power anything else besides pretty much emergency lighting at the middle school. again in terms of an emergency if we really had a problem here and we didn't have power there we wouldn't be able to move there there's no like the kitchen the refrigeration nothing powers and without a power is there so this will keep it going for about a half hour you'd have phones and whatnot nothing in

▶ 31:01 the server room is powered by the generator or here we don't have a generator so clever so this is the first of maybe four things I'm going to talk about that are security related some city mostly some school so clever is a system that's a cloud system that connects Google and Aspen which we have and you can connect all of our online most of our online software can connect to it so kids can get one password to use throughout the district for every piece of online software and it's the same as their Google password so we just have to make those Google passwords more secure so this way their kids aren't writing them down they're not they're they're much more secure because kids will you know or the teacher what the teachers will want to do is get every

▶ 31:46 kid in the school the same password so it's easier because they have so many different passwords so this simplifies the things makes things more secure the The Massachusetts Student Privacy Alliance, and I'll go a long time here, sorry. This is something that I've been working on for a few years, and basically Massachusetts doesn't have a document that supports the security, online security. I mean, we have FERPA, and we have Mass General Law 60323, law 603 23 which which covers basically is a mandate for the schools to protect the the student data but what mass Student Privacy Alliance they've combined with another organization the CSPA which is a national organization they've drafted a legal document that you can as a template you can use issue

▶ 32:48 vendors who are online vendors to come into compliance with a number of different security matters and the reason that's important is that they hold a lot of data and you don't want that data to get out and a lot of a lot of you mean there's the immediate where you don't want kids data just in terms of a physical harm you don't want that to be out but the long-term consequences of that are that you have kids taking assessments it takes taking assessments doing daily work in online databases and that's stored and if you don't mandate or give them a legal document that says you need to get rid of that data in a certain timely fashion if there's a break if somebody breaks in you you need to take these steps to mediate that you know learn us everything else now if you

▶ 33:44 When you think about it, a kid might be brilliant, might be having a personal issue, family issue. You don't know what it is, but is doing poorly through maybe his whole high school career, maybe for two years in high school. Well, that data is saved in one of those online assessment or online programs. If that's hacked or broken into or sold, because this agreement specifies that, also third parties, that data's out there for people, head hunters, colleges. People might hire this kid 30 years from now, 20 years from now, that we weren't responsible in protecting that data. And that kid's data got out, could ruin that kid for the rest of his life, because he did poorly on, he effed a bunch of exams.

▶ 34:31 And on a daily basis, his homework and whatever was in that system, and it wasn't good. So I take that very seriously. So we're working with them to draft legal documents with Amy Lindquist at the schools. School committee policies, I rewrote three of these with Jim McDonald and Ed O'Connell. Much more granular, much more protective of students and families and the district, outlining teachers, outlining what you can and can't do. I've got basically those same set in the city side that I've drafted and they're in development right now. Cyber security, we did a cyber security assessment this year with grant money that my predecessor got. We did a whole wireless wired and network security, cyber security penetration test to see if we were lacking anything.

▶ 35:32 We rebuilt six labs, that was part of . implemented power savings software at the schools we should we should environmentally responsible which was the biggest thing but it shuts the computers down it's also going to have a significant energy savings we'll get to see what that would be but it's should be pretty good you consider that the computers are now not running for half the time that they they were we put in monitoring for our environmental environmental monitoring for our server rooms, heat and humidity. So we jump to salaries. So there are two split salaries in IT, myself. I'm 60 on the city and 40 on the school. Second is financial systems analyst who's here this evening who's 75 from IT and 12.5 from water,

▶ 36:29 12.5 from sewer, which I think she probably does more than water and sewer. I have four staff fully paid by the school budget on the school design and three staff on the city. Significant changes for the budget, there's an increase in my software licenses. We're going to have to do this year. We had a percentage increase in all of our licensing and we took on some licensing that was previously paid for by the DPW. And this year we're going to have a $44,000 drop for systems that we had been paying for for the past five years. Things coming up, munis upgrades, I guess we'll just save that for the appropriations, maybe when we go talk about it, but we're going to do a version upgrade, we're going to have a content manager, we're going to do employee self-service,

▶ 37:20 I think I talked about employee self-service last time I was here in the time of content, which allows people to go on the web and see their accruals and a whole bunch of stuff. Generator, we have a grant out for it, we still really need that. that if we don't get it through the grant we still really need to ask for it. So we might have to look for funding . Telephone system, hopefully, that's, you saw it on the Tuesday the 21st. For the telephone system for free cash. That will replace all the telephone systems in the city. We've got a one-on-one Chromebook initiative. I'm not sure, we didn't talk about that here. talk about the school committee but already you don't need more about new email server I talked about we're going to need to do clever we're going to do a

▶ 38:16 John N. Tramontozzi: whole we're going to do like four or more online software software with that and wireless we have to reconfigure the wireless this this summer at the schools so any questions well thank you well I appreciate the presentation thank you a very good learning experience and going over your budget and new presentations it appears that a significant portion if I say so you know a good chunk of the budget is for the schools so you you provide a lot of services to the schools themselves uh well which which part of the well i i guess what i mean is other than this and this might be a good question for mr delarusso uh my next couple questions because i'm gonna i wanna know if um if this the the the amount of services that is budgeted to you

▶ 39:10 that you provide to the schools how does the schools account for that and is that calculated to the per pupil spending that we hear about when we look at what we spend for the schools so oh well so i mean on the city side the city budget that you see that's the city side uh that's just city side um and my staff does do a lot of work on my city staff does a lot of work on the school side that isn't accounted for in the school budget so there's a there's quite a bit we do a lot of work for the school with schools the in terms of that's the salaries the the cost for software licensing is pretty much the in Chromebook repair some some hardware repair on there but mostly it's software is significant that's part of the school operating budget so I mean I'm not sure

▶ 40:16 John N. Tramontozzi: if that answers your well it kind of it does I think it counts for people spending so so it is is any of the your budget that is it's work done for the schools is that calculated into the per pupil spending calculations that we we do because because the school doesn't pay you pay the city back right they will they pay directly my salary yeah putting aside the salary line but the other lines pat you mr delarusso do you understand what i'm saying good evening good evening yes um through the chair that's a great question there's um two avenues by which um we recover costs for purposes in net school spending and to the department of education one is called the schedule one and the others are schedule 19. and within those schedules they have allocations for

▶ 41:08 for example nurses staffing information technology capital so we are where we can recognize that cost and and they and it's allowable to be considered toward net school spending we absolutely capture that each and every year so we capture the budget going forward we also capture the expenses of the of the prior year year after year after year after year so we understand so that we can see what the true spending for the schools really is even though it's coming out of the city by side of the budget yeah it's a great question because you know there were some communities for example health insurance is a classic where some actually have health insurance reside in the school budget as i did in plymouth when i was there some communities like us don't do that right we

▶ 41:56 have it sit in the city side so not to get an allocation credit but for the net school spending we take full account of all the health insurance related costs related to school department employees etc likewise for for example the public works budget the same thing yeah we have the green team does work in the city for the schools but they're paid out of the city-wide budget correct you have to take that right and that that's why you'll see that even on the schedule 119 for use of facilities etc you'll see allocations just for those purposes and if you look in the facilities budget itself you'll see the coding as i did several years ago which isolate the cost relative to the school expenses versus the city expenses so it's clear for everyone to see and it helps in

▶ 42:41 Robert A. Boisselle: the end of year reporting so we have all that information so that's a good thing okay excellent thank you thank you thank you vice chair Boisselle up pat before you before you leave sure i'm not going too far i don't think going to the agenda going to the operating budget under 525 303 licenses uh basically the projection was for just about 19 000 but it goes to 48 000 uh that is that extra thirty thousand dollars from this for the schools no no well no so where is that extra thirty thousand dollars increasing for this year for for licenses but it's so that that's an additional uh we have to re-up our antivirus software this year um and that's a big chunk uh that's roughly 16 000 of it uh we also took on some software from public that public works previously paid

▶ 43:43 for just made sense for me to just do all of them all of the software licenses at the same time we also had a percentage increase in all of our software licensing which we have usually every year it's usually around 5% there was something else well oh yeah we have a new server that new server that was talking out with with exchange is that a license is it there's a I mean if I but let me put it this way if I buy a server that's $30,000 it will be a hundred thousand dollars 70 000 with the software on it that i have to re-up every year uh it's really what we're buying nowadays is a little bit of hardware and a lot of software because that's where the money is okay while we're on this operating budget sheet the wide area network communication spending is

▶ 44:37 Robert A. Boisselle: zero for this year as of this date and the net service is also zero is there a reason that yeah Yeah, I've got, I've got those all, we just haven't been able to get to them, but I have stuff I've. All right, so there's a billing operation going on. Sure. At this point. Okay, moving back to the presentation, the file server project. You have a new file server was installed to house files from users. What files are you holding? Is this users from the outside or users from the city government or school department? Just city. What is that? Just the city. now we have a we have a storage area network that's that's seven or eight years old maybe almost nine the end of life the drives are slowing down it's in

▶ 45:29 multiple tiers it was purchased over a long period over that a few different years so it's in different chunks and it's kind of all outdated so that's running the that's the backbone of all of our services slowing everything down so we're trying to move to a smaller platform that has a you know a lot of storage on it that will get rid of some of that kind of lower the costs that was that sort of answer yeah yeah keep going that server is gonna house exchange so is it being more of an archiving of files and so forth right so like capacity so the file server that we have right now it mostly runs off of that with a front end on a server now we have all the files people have user files we have department files and we have personal user files now what we've just

▶ 46:40 moved to recently as part of this project is to go to a much more secure what they call redirected so when you log in your documents in your map and your desktop and everything goes up to the server before we couldn't do that because our systems are so slow it goes up there as soon as you log into another computer it looks just like the computer you were on before um we could do that with the existing software we had we already paid for we just didn't have the hardware to do it on so we're in the process of moving all of our other the departments and the public stuff public as in public within the city so stuff that needs to get shared between departments in a secure fashion so that's all getting over to a new platform okay you're talking about security uh you you did an in-depth

▶ 47:32 cyber security assessment for the cities and for the school department did we pass yeah i mean they weren't able to it's that's a that's a really hard question to answer i would almost need like a half hour just to give you a brief understanding of this yes or no would be appropriate like a 230 page document out of it so it's it's very in-depth right now we just don't have resources to really implement all of the stuff that was in that because it's so extensive we implemented a lot of the things right up front a lot of it is is social it's just having policies in place to let people know that they need to do this that and the other thing to keep their data safe so I have written policies that I've implemented password policies and some

▶ 48:21 other things those three new policies okay yes we are much more secure very good the new the new moonies modules the Tyler content manager and the employee self-service was that requested by the auditor in the HR department or was this by the company that put this together and offered it to the city no it was it was more it was a it was kind of a conglomeration of things we've involved HR in the in the in the in the process the it really comes down to process speed of process ability to archive what we're doing do it paperlessly and digitally so that tyler content management instead of storing everything that we do day in day out you know purchase orders quotes everything we can tag it onto a onto you know a purchase order an

▶ 49:24 invoice everything uh w-9s uh to vendors with uh it also the tyler content not the employee self-service comes into uh where we want to streamline our uh payroll so right now we every week which is just blows my mind we go through the process of printing out advice forms for every check putting them in envelopes mailing them out throughout the city so everyone can get a paper version of what they're they're basically ech most people don't get a live check anymore uh i don't know why we i'm not sure why we do it every week probably should do it every other week most municipalities are but um and it's all paper it's just we we need to go digitally we need to have a place where people can see their accruals when they need to check it and and it's just you

▶ 50:25 Robert A. Boisselle: know um it's what people expect to nowadays good uh you mentioned the generator the city hall we're going for a grant what's what's what was the actual cost to put this generator in to purchase it and to install it what are we how much are we looking for somewhere between six and seven hundred thousand and that would power the whole building uh including this room which probably considered a shelter area our server room our emergency management room which would be down in an emergency yeah now the new phone system that you that you've been discussing and so forth because of the failing or non-functional aspects of some of the communication systems in City Hall how much would that That cost us, if we did the entire city offices.

▶ 51:29 Robert A. Boisselle: About 100,000, we've got around 100,000, and that includes wiring, because it's going to take some cabling, because we're no longer going to use the existing telephone cabling. Okay. It'll be completely network based. Now, it's been intriguing to watch the school committee meetings and so forth concerning the upcoming one and one Chromebook rollout now are the kids bringing in their own byo DS at this time they're bringing them in here and there yeah they can they're allowed to bring in their own devices now how does that work with accessing outside in other words instead of doing school keeping the computers in school they're taking them home accessing the internet on their parents account how do you get through the security and safety of the

▶ 52:25 data that's coming back attached to that computer yeah so so I like to take the approach and there really isn't an alternative approach so so that we need to be strong in our digital citizenship kids are out there doing whatever they need to do even in school if they're on a on a phone that has their own 4g cell plan they're not on our network they're doing whatever they like so I think the the most the most effective thing that we can do for our students is have those things happen in school have the teacher address it when it happens and explain what it is that they need to be aware of in school because we're not gonna be able to filter their lives we're not gonna be able to filter the lives outside

▶ 53:16 of school they need to be able to drive before they get in the car and and we need to teach them you know the rules and responsibilities of being online being a good digital citizen to other people who are also online so it's the parents responsibility just like anything else would be outside of school if you take the if you take the digital part out of it move digital out of it altogether it's just like anything else that is the responsibility of a parent to oversee with their children but when that child brings that computer into to the school and plugs into the Wi-Fi does Google or the the program or the system edit the their book their BYOD we had hired or viruses or anything not viruses

▶ 54:08 at the present time but we're what we're asking for is a Chromebook one-to-one Chromebooks don't have viruses right now they update themselves so in terms of upkeep and maintenance from parents and students we don't need to we don't need to do anything for that we still have the ability to filter what they use when they're under a when they're using one of our Chromebooks or when they're using one of their Chromebooks and one of their school accounts so under under the COPPA law their children children under 13 cannot have an online account anywhere so that's one of the reasons we have the Google Apps for Ed and we have that district-wide so the kids can communicate in a controlled environment

▶ 55:03 Robert A. Boisselle: good you also mentioned that you repaired 50 of these Chromebooks maybe more maybe more okay now if you're in this one-in-one program who repairs the Chromebook at at this point do we still repair it or do you have to go to a referee local rep to get it fixed yeah so part of the problem that we have right now with Chromebooks is I'd say 5% of those damaged Chromebooks are because of regular use 95% is vandalism so the kids are peel it like they'll get a screwdriver or something in there peel the bezel off they'll they'll break the screens off they'll peel every time they peel a key off that keyboard I got to spend another $40 to replace the whole assembly of the top of that keyboard board part of the Chromebook when kids own these or the parents bought them

▶ 56:02 they don't tend to do this as much so if it's the responsibility of the parent we so what I did was I worked with Dell to build a Melrose specific site that's I haven't really put out there yet but I negotiated a lower price for parents the cheapest is like just under 200 with no warranty i did three additional warranty options one of which is an accidental damage which is unheard of it's like 45 or something to get the accidental damage which is unbelievable so the kid could throw it across the room and break it and send it in and get another one with the 45 additional you know that's the 200 that's if they spend 250 on the chromebook they can have that accidental damage now these chromebooks that the students

▶ 56:51 are getting are they going to be stamped in such a way that you can't sell them on on a black market or outside that it's well i mean you could we could put stickers on them so the kids know what what whose is whose um we'd we'd indicate that somehow in all the chromebooks but you know they can get peeled off or whatever they could but they're not like they don't have a high resale value on the open market um they're they're 200 um so they're not like people aren't really stealing them to sell them all right yeah I mean I in my in my experience we I've almost I don't know that we've I don't know that I've seen any Chromebooks since I've been here in three years I haven't seen any get stolen from the carts that

▶ 57:34 Robert A. Boisselle: we have we like 18 well I know some of the schools what they've done they've lasered in the school emblem on on the cover and if any of them are stolen well some of them actually have transponders put into them because the school owns them and if you lose it right they can check where it ends up well so that's a look that's a little too much tracking we're trying to keep the cost down yeah to the district if parents want to get them laser to do some something with them that's weak they are they're all stamped with the Dell serial number which we can will know because we're gonna we're gonna do a couple days before school year starts we'll know all the serial numbers and who the kids are so if there's no indication on it of a sticker or anything else we'll know who

▶ 58:22 Jennifer L. Lemmerman: it belongs to we there is software out there too where it triangulates the position of any wireless device within a building envelope I've used that before in previous positions it's nice it works really well again it can it can get costly but very good thank you very much Thank You madam chair president lemon thank you thank you very much for this information I think you basically address this and though in the last set of questions but just to be very direct about it on the one-to-one pilot do you anticipate a need whether it's staff time or otherwise an increased need in your budget to be able to provide IT support and that influx of devices so the superintendent that's it's somewhat superintendent question we're gonna try this first year to use existing staff

▶ 59:22 and resources to accommodate the one-to-one program if at the end of this year we evaluate and see that we'd be more successful by adding staff or some some additional funds for what whatever it might be we're gonna look at that so for right now at least for this fiscal year you feel like the breakdown of the salaries in your department that are paid for by the city versus paid for by the school is is correct and if that needed to be adjusted at all you would know that after the pilot I don't foresee a lot of I don't foresee a lot of additional staff time for these I did throw out the idea that we could maybe do a student like genius bar in the library where we could maybe stockpile parts because we're trying to get with a standard Chromebook so we would have

▶ 1:00:15 Manisha Bewtra: those parts available but I'm not sure if that's going to really crystallize this year okay all right great thank you thank you alderman Bewtra thank you I think I wanted to ask a couple questions about the the emergency notification system and the new systems for the patrol vehicles I'm just curious what precipitated those changes was and what are sort of the benefits of the new systems and are there kind of trade-offs we're making as well well speaking to the well let's go the police cruisers we got new cruisers we're always working on those things yeah but we got new cruisers and those were for those new cars so we can get those is it a new software as well on their new it's new hardware the software is basically Windows going with the same software the

▶ 1:01:11 same IMC that we're using we're gonna do an upgrade soon to make their connection a little bit maybe more redundant going forward but Tom small again in my my team here at the city's been amazing with the we when I first started we had calls every day about the police software just constant and we almost see nothing now because he's on top of it and he works with them we've identified staff over there who can do a lot of the troubleshooting they work really closely they talk every day and we keep on top of any problems as they come up so for the ENS we're gonna gain definitely gain feature sets we did not have prior The problem with the old system was that it was cumbersome. It was twice as expensive for half the product.

▶ 1:02:11 That company decided to slash their price in half when they found out we were looking around for other companies, so that tells you something. This is much more user-friendly. The graphical user interface, it's logical, it makes sense, it does so much more, it's so much easier. many users as we want they charge us for every additional user they charge us for the number of minutes of any call we used we had to buy a block of number of minutes so we can use it anytime we want for whatever we want all the time any as many users as we want it also it also has like like I said the community engagement which we don't have that at all right now it also interfaces with with the new state notification system which we can get certified to use it's

▶ 1:03:03 Manisha Bewtra: just it's a great system all right I called a bunch of other municipalities to ask them how they use it and they love it great and more generally can you speak to it sounds like you have to sort of balance user experience in terms of whether it's a police whether it's the school department whether it's the auditor's office fire all of those different users for each different type of software but also cost and I guess the back-end piece can you just speak to like how you go through that process and how different users are involved in those decision-making processes yeah so I like to involve as many people as I can from the get-go way early on we're talking about something a year from now so example of one of those projects is that ENS software where we had I came up

▶ 1:03:58 with probably a short list of maybe seven systems there really aren't like the there of like a big four or five and we evaluated all of those that we got demonstrations from all of them as we everyone attended we all watched the demos we talked to all the people um we looked to see if it met what each department was looking for because everybody was coming from a different place um and this one this one hit all the marks and it was a good price so uh and we were able to force them into some freebies so that's always good and finally was your part your presentation done in Prezi I was curious thank you I'm just curious thank you those are all my questions yeah I just had one quick question I remember last year when you were here we talked

▶ 1:04:52 about the fact that this building doesn't have a generator and that was concerning and it's you I think you mentioned the time that there was maybe a grant opportunity can you remind us where you were applying for a grant and the timeline looks like for that right so so part of our part of the um there was a uh vulnerability grant uh that we we met with several it was more of a it was more of an overall city and emergency and hazardous mitigation plan uh meeting we had it up at mount hood and what came out of that were our priority priorities as a city for hazardous mitigation uh with the with the kind of looming uh statistical data showing that with um with temperature rising that will have a significant increase in emergencies over the next 20 years so out of that our top

▶ 1:05:54 our top selection was the generator um the grant we applied for that grant didn't get it uh we applied for a second can you were with with like what entity was it a state oh it's a state uh like through yeah like do you remember which executive office or forget which which do you do you remember which i forget which okay but it was a state grant it was the mvp sorry yes thank you yes okay great mvp and then uh we just applied for and i don't remember the engineering did it so i forget what where they applied to for it but it's it's been a lot of effort okay and do you know when the grant app that we've applied when is when do awards become public i don't know when that award is i'll have to check okay all right if you don't mind getting back to us on that i'd

▶ 1:06:44 Michael P. Zwirko: be interested to know so that we can continue to track this thank you yeah it was just submitted maybe two weeks ago so great uh alderman Search thank you madam chair i'll be very brief um thanks for the presentation and the information um the questionnaire was quite lengthy and i think it goes to show how much of a hub your uh your department is with all the employees and you're basically touching every building and probably every single employee so um so thanks for the work it's it's it's amazing how much IT has grown and permeates all of our lives so my question though is it's about a year ago I think where Peter Mortimer coined the term cyber gangster I had I had to say it tonight but I read an

▶ 1:07:32 Michael P. Zwirko: article today I actually wasn't aware of it at the time but I apparently like two weeks ago with the city of Baltimore I got hit with an attack and they still are not up and running and it's failed it's prevented them from collecting um collecting revenue um so i know that we've um gone through great efforts to to prevent that and there's vulnerabilities in every system there's vulnerabilities in the system i have at my house my company etc um so in addition to and i'm bringing it back to the comment as you know you're kind of the hub of everything um and this there's great costs when it comes to software licensing servers everything that encompasses your department just staying as vigilant as you can I mean I know people are gonna click on a link you

▶ 1:08:17 Michael P. Zwirko: have that type of a trap that gets set but you know vulnerabilities in our system in addition to the comments that were made by the chair with respect to the generator just trying to keep on the forefront of those things so what challenges do you see is the long-winded way of saying my question what challenges do you see uh for the next year in the in this area and and which ones are priorities that could actually be addressed um the challenges that i see are uh we need we need redundancy so we need we need a mirror image of say our main servers at another location that's also generator back so that if this site went down we could pull up that site there's also I mean again that's what we need two generators one over there and one

▶ 1:09:07 over here outside of that there's also intrusion detection systems and protrusion prevention systems which we don't have the funds for but they're getting amazingly complex and what they do is it's somewhat artificial intelligence where they you put it on your network and it watches it watches the daily operations who's accessing what folders how often whatnot it builds the database of all those things it if a system like a if a virus or malware goes in tries to in a certain person's name tries to get access to something folder that they that they shouldn't even be looking at that doesn't make any sense sense why they're at look that location or it starts hitting a couple different folders at the same time immediately shuts off their account so they can't do

▶ 1:09:56 anything that that goes a long way in curbing any of that kind of and there are a lot of systems out there that are really nice so those are something we can look at we again we have to up our antivirus if we can plug that into maybe another system-wide system like that doesn't does kind of a handshake with those and can improve you know kind of get more cloud cover there's also the stuff we've already done you know we're increasing password complexity you know we're trying to teach people what it takes to do make a password that's not crackable all sorts of things systems we've set up that are now available on the newer operating systems on the server that will catch things and shut off a user account with what we have right now we've implemented some of

▶ 1:10:54 Michael P. Zwirko: those some of the encryption between VPN connections between servers all that kind of thing we're working on so I'm sure if that answers no it does because I was wondering about challenges and the foresight so yeah yeah it's good to see that you know we're kind of staying vigilant on those those things I mean they can just cripple us you know and it could be it could be one department it could be the police department it could be school department it could just be assessors department you know it could be citywide so collectors and yep right hey roll right no one's happy safety that's when people get really upset yeah no I appreciate the efforts and your time this evening Thank You madam chair

▶ 1:11:32 Kate Lipper-Garabedian: you and also just for the good of the order um there are we also have debt department equipment number 930 and capital outlay 931 each of these has some um investments in your department they're all flat funded over from fiscal the proposal for fiscal 20 flat funds them for um today so that it it looks like things um you know office supplies i.t printer copy communication and then under capital outlay we have technology for both the city side it looks like and then the school i.t tech so these are all flat funded yes i mean i know it seems ridiculous that 1.5 million over five years should seem like it's enough but um right now what i'm facing in capital improvement over the next five years is significantly more so um we have to figure that out okay

▶ 1:12:30 Kate Lipper-Garabedian: motion to move the bottom line of 638 894.28 second we have a motion to move the bottom line made by alderman mortimer seconded by alderman Zwirko this is for department number 155 information technology all in favor aye aye be opposed thank you very much for being here tonight thank you motion to move the bottom line for department 930 department equipment we finished all the categories oh um i think that's correct well i think we did hear from the um inspectional services on that on 9 30. so we could move that if we'd like yes move direct recommend the bottom line for department 930 for department equipment second we have a motion to move the bottom line for department number 930 made by vice chair Boisselle and seconded by alderman mortimer this is for departmental equipment

▶ 1:13:31 and we have heard from i.t and then the assessor and inspectional services any questions or discussion all in favor be opposed great all right the next department on our schedule is department number 241 inspectional services good evening welcome back so i don't know if you'd like to share any opening remarks or go straight to questions my name is paul johnson i'm the director of inspectional services the building commissioner and the ada coordinator i've been in the city approximately 12 years now we issue permits handle complaints review projects and it's been quite busy lately and i'll open the floor to questions great father's work go thank you madam chair thank you for being here this evening thank you appreciate the work of your

▶ 1:14:36 Michael P. Zwirko: department and like i said earlier you're not a cost center you're someone that brings value into the city so appreciate the work and it's also interesting to see the interplay and the the the teamwork between you and the assessor's office earlier that was clear when uh mr wilcox gave his presentation so yeah some of the things he's bringing is quite valuable to us i use it every day they use the flyovers and whatnot it helps a great deal when i have someone on the phone a resident and they're talking about putting an addition on their back door and hold on what's what's your address let me pull it up and let me look at it yeah it's a great tool great asset to have no it isn't it's it's a good partnership as well so

▶ 1:15:22 Michael P. Zwirko: we talked about you know your office and I've spoken with you on a whole host of city city issues and concerns and you know my feeling is is certainly with the growth but beyond the growth and the upgrades that you want to perform in your office it seems like you're understaffed and I mean would your and because you are bringing money in to the city I think there would be a benefit to any sort of additional resources human resources are there any ways in terms of even can you talk to what your office does now and could you talk to what your office maybe could do in that area I mean is you know because I know that you know the assessor's office talked but they contract out you know the benefit

▶ 1:16:10 there there's no salary there's no benefit there's no other encumbrances let's say with those those those line items so could you just talk about that a little bit because I know I know how pressed you are not only for time but but resources yeah resources are very very strained okay we cannot as and many of you've probably heard from me unable to take on any additional responsibilities you know we do we do have a professional services line item you know and in there it's it's as needed I say as needed but you know we're gonna take that word away it's needed mm-hmm right now he's part-time I have him three days a week per diem you know it's it's probably been there three weeks now and I'm already starting to see the benefit of that I definitely

▶ 1:17:04 could use him full-time and i'm sure that's a conversation we'll have after the election in mayor whoever it may be that'll be my top priority to bring on another full-time building inspector um it i'm the only one that can do certain things uh so i need someone else as you know neil said redundancy you need someone there that can pick up and handle things that code reviews that type of things that only the an inspector can do so we've we've done a lot I mean just just alone this year we've already processed 29 over 2,900 permits total permits for the department Kathy Alphans done an amazing job we've just that alone she has to process 2,900 checks you know so she has to put them in and account for those put them in a

▶ 1:18:03 sheet stamp them you know so it's there's a lot more involved than meets the eye that people see with those visits in person visits during that oh yeah yeah yeah yeah I was able to do a seven week tracking period and we're going to do it a little more extensively but in that seven week tracking period you see in the questionnaire you know we had and I'm gonna say approximately 1,500 phone calls it's documented 1,500 silly me you know in my mess loses my sheet so it's in excess of 1,500 phone calls in a seven seven week period we had over 1,100 people walk in the office in a seven week period you know and it's just that led into a decision that we came up with with the mayor and I have to give her credit is to close the office on Fridays to the public it'll

▶ 1:19:11 get takes I'm getting used to I've already heard positive a lot of positive things out there from contractors homeowners and this gives us the staff the opportunity to process that paperwork take that application and put that data into the computer print out those do the review process the checks uninterrupted you know that's the key uninterrupted you know you could have 10 permits to process and put in the data in and you're getting people walking in constantly you got to get up and help them you know that's what we do you know I get it but we need help we're definitely gonna need help and that's gonna be a conversation yep you know but the staff has done a great job I mean we've on top of that we've so far this year we've responded to 21 emergency

▶ 1:20:07 calls after hours our inspectors get called mostly electrical and for electric services and whatnot that get ripped off the house if during a windstorm or buy a car going through a building and that that doesn't that's what I track because that's what we pay out that doesn't count for what I go out on when I'm salary I don't keep track of those you know so that's just for this year we're up close to seven a little over seven hundred thousand dollars in permit fees we've taken in so far this year one of the I spoke earlier we had to suspend the development of that tracking system which now with this new person if we get caught up in the next couple of months I you know that's one of the things I want to get up and running when that goes online that will

▶ 1:21:02 be in-house for the first three months so we get used to using the system and then when we go public with it people will actually come in and they'll have to put their own data in so that it's gonna take a lot away from Kathy putting the data in the in the system for each permit is that a common system is that a system that's using other municipalities so if I'm a contractor it's right now it's an I think 15 towns communities 15 communities so if you were to use it in Westboro or whatnot and you're already registered there you have a pin number mm-hmm so I once you put your pin number and all the information automatically fills all the information is updated nightly as far as assessors records and my records so if owners change you get

▶ 1:21:50 Michael P. Zwirko: a closing someone ownership changes it's automatically updated everything we put in during a day it'll be automatically updated to him every night so right now through geo he we They have to actually physically print out a report, and they have to go through it so they can capture all that new growth. So that's what this new system is. Those are all the questions I had. Again, thank you. I know it's busy. It's kind of the old saying, right? It's a good problem to have. There's growth here. There's a boom. It lands on you. So, thanks to your staff. Thank you, Madam Chair. Alderman McMaster. Thank you Madam Chair, thank you Mr. Johnson for being here. I wanted to follow up on what Alderman Zwirko said.

▶ 1:22:36 Shawn M. MacMaster: He talked about a reference the importance of human capital and I just wanted to get a sense from you in terms of what you might need in terms of other resources that may help you you know better serve the public and alleviate some of the pressures that you face and I asked that based on what we talked a lot about tonight with other department heads um with the you know the emphasis on technology on software mr ellis talked about the importance of going digital so i'm wondering you know is there technology needs that you have beyond technology that you're currently using when i look at the budget for your department i don't see a line item for technology or software so what more if anything might um we be able to consider providing inspectional services

▶ 1:23:29 next budget cycle uh to you know help you respond to some of the needs that that you're facing right now that's a great question um so maybe i should just preface that with one more question do we have the ability right now does the public have the ability to apply for permits online no and if not so if not why and then would that be helpful to you yes uh let's address the future needs um first if you would uh the technology part that permit tracking that i'm talking about that will eventually go online i envision that that would hopefully i would i would think uh sometime in 2020 uh go online that at first electrical plumbing short form windows doors roofs things that don't need plans that you could do that from home you wouldn't have to come in the office at

▶ 1:24:32 all comes into our we get an email with it goes into our system we'd review it if there's something missing an email goes back out you're missing things if it's approved the email would go it's approved they print their own permit the homeowner would get an email that their permit was approved we have tablets that we'll be able to use real-time inspections we'll be out there look at it if there's an issue you know we can write it up put it in the permit we can send an email to the contractor the so there's no confusion so those types of things help a huge part of this will be that the public will be putting their own data into the system which will alleviate a lot of time for Kathy that free up time to do other things that we

▶ 1:25:24 can't get to another thing we suspended this for the past so I want to say four months was the certificate of inspection program where the state mandated you You have to do churches, alcohol facilities, daycare centers. There's a whole host of three families, five families, all the way up from three family ups that you have to do. Some are annually, some are every five years. I suspended that. I just couldn't keep up with that program. I had to choose what I had to do and allocate the resources to the right place. You know, with the 2,900 permits and you're going out two and three times for an inspection, you know, Chris was saying earlier, the assessor, he's one and a half bodies to go out and do assessing.

▶ 1:26:17 He has to go out every time he sees one of my permits. Well, I have to go out there myself two times, maybe three, plumbing inspector twice, the electrical inspector twice, so there are a lot of resources that are used that way. on top of the general everyday educating the residents of how the zoning works how the building code works they're two separate issues um and getting them to where they need to be whether they want to put an addition on or they want to put a deck on you know it's it's our goal in the office is to educate and make sure when someone leaves that they know what they're doing down the road whether they're just starting i i want to pull a permit how do i do it or i'm looking for a contractor what do i look for those types of questions are daily you know three four

▶ 1:27:10 times a day um and we try not to say hey go on the city's what the state's website and look that up you know we give them the links we talk to them about it so there's a lot of education that goes along with it and increasingly I've been doing this now 25 years and increasingly over the last I want to say eight nine years the codes themselves have become more intense especially with energy the new addition of all energy and conservation and whatnot and so it adds time to your review process another step that you have to look at to make sure someone's code compliant so it is labor intensive technology and staff you know time you know times the the golden answer you just don't have enough time to do everything so earlier in your your

▶ 1:28:10 comments this evening you talked about suspending a program you mentioned to you I think he talked most recently about one related to churches and whatnot and then you mentioned something earlier about another program that program that was suspended the earlier one that you the software to develop the permit tracking development yes what is that called mr. Johnson it's a it's a permit tracking system right now right now we use geo TMS so when the data comes in we input it so we're able to look up by address and pull up an address right now we have back in our computer to I believe I want to I think it's 1990 any project that was done at that house I could see if the inspections were done we can see what happened see notes the public has access

▶ 1:29:07 Shawn M. MacMaster: to that now through our website there's a portal there for it but it that's all it's good for is tracking it in-house there's no real-time inspection reporting if i have a problem out in the field or i have a question i have to call kathy she has to look it up in the computer for me so the software hasn't been updated in years they don't come around anymore they're just collecting their money and it's time to get rid of them so as we as we consider software to use in the future would you be looking towards software that provides the the current capacity for which the public can access information and that's helpful to you and your staff but that would also allow the public to to request permits online yes

▶ 1:30:01 yes it's it we yes our services would increase greatly um they're working in the background they had a product set up with the fire department and i'm not sure if it was this one another one but it's all set to go so it's another module the fire department could take it's it's very user friendly uh it's easy for us it's cloud-based so there's no room on the service here in city mall uh melrose in city hall um and in the sense that if we don't like something in the workflow we take it out make it easy for us make it easy for the user so the system that we currently have if just to make sure i got it right go tms is that right so is that do we pay a contract is there an annual fee is it just a licensing fee where are we right now it is a

▶ 1:30:55 Shawn M. MacMaster: fee based percentage of the fee so whatever our fees are it's a percentage of the fee per month so we print a report every month so based on the volume of use but the amount of dollars that run through our system so it's based on the fees collected and if we want to get out of that relationship that we have with G o TMS how do we go about doing that is that just an executive decision that you can make or yes okay yes so do you think that's that's something prospectively that you know and I know there's a lot to consider considering six months from now we'll have a new administration but is that a conversation that you want to with the next administration about utilizing technology that can allow you

▶ 1:31:45 Shawn M. MacMaster: to do more and allow the public to access more information it's it'll be a conversation but it hopefully will be in play by then you know it's an ongoing project the money's there for it so the funding so it's something that's going to happen and it's just going to progress and develop and the reason I asked those questions is beyond our you know fiduciary responsibility as a board we obviously want to be what we're concerned about also is the equitable distribution of resources and we want to make sure that your department has the same type of resources being a busy department that interacts so closely with the public to better serve the public and to make your job and the job of your team uh easier and you know right now somebody can get a birth certificate online you

▶ 1:32:42 Shawn M. MacMaster: can pay bills online um we heard from the auditor you can watch this meeting uh online you know streaming live uh so you know as as we move forward i would just be mindful of the fact that we obviously want to ensure that all departments have equal access to the type of technology that's needed to better do your job and i think you know not only will that better serve the public it will alleviate the pressures that you talked about the walk-ins the phone calls the some of the data input that kathy is doing right now it will improve the turnaround on inspections allow you to get out into the field more and it will i think most importantly prevent us from having to close the city office um one day of the week so those are all things that hopefully we can get to

▶ 1:33:33 Manisha Bewtra: um you know over the next year and to the extent that i can be supportive or we as a board can be supportive please let us know thank you thank you mr johnson thank you madam chair of course alderman vitra thank you thanks for being here tonight i know it's a long evening for you um in terms of where you might need more support and I think the answer is all of the above but in terms of I guess that in your office the customer service facing aspect of people coming and asking questions versus out in the field can you is there a way to quantify that or kind of is it one or the other again I get them so there's people who come into the office right and now you've determined in order to get all of the paperwork done and all of that you're

▶ 1:34:25 Manisha Bewtra: closing the office on Fridays but there's some cost to the public of that even though I think on the other side there's a benefit my question is that role involves a lot of customer service in terms of your interfacing with folks to what extent is that you yourself versus other folks in the office and is that something where you need more support within the office or do you see that the inspections that need to happen out at different properties are where you need more support I believe that the initial my first goal is to print have a full-time inspector that's where we need the support I need someone there that is able to sign that permit and issue it without me having to look at it I need

▶ 1:35:18 someone that's able to go out into the field and handle a complaint and write up an order you know a lot of unfortunately over the past you know eight years or so a lot of what we do has become a lot more legal you know our documents that we produce and our letters that we write as such that you know they're done in a manner where if we do have to end up in legal proceedings we're on sound ground um so i i think our you know my initial would be to have another full-time inspector you know like i said i put it in the budget as an as needed but but it's needed uh he's three days a week he doesn't know it eventually i'm going to steal them for four days a week um so that's that's the initial the the

▶ 1:36:15 Manisha Bewtra: i think a lot of it will pan out when we do are able to roll out the permit tracking but i'm on a little bit of a wheel here because i can't roll it out unless i can get to it i can't get to it until i have someone else that can handle what i have to do i can't perform those administrative duties that some of these other managers may have someone that could do the same thing they can do okay that helps and you know we talked a lot about the benefits in terms of the revenues from permit fees I think another thing we haven't maybe addressed as directly is the impact of because you're you know you're so stretched things taking longer do you do you have a sense maybe not that you have to quantify in dollars but just a sense of what impact that might

▶ 1:37:12 have on our ability to capture new growth because I guess obviously infections are delayed obviously you know I take great pride pride that where the communities 28,000 people we're doing you know just the building permits alone when you look at that number when I left Malden 12 years ago I had 60,000 people in that city I was doing 1,300 permits a year when I left when I came here I said that you know maybe half the people this will be a nice job and and I it's attributed to the staff is what it is because contract everybody that walks through our door cannot say enough about Kathy at the front counter and in the staff in general that you know I've been on both sides of the counter I'm public that's what we're there for to serve the public and I believe because

▶ 1:38:20 Because of the service we do give and the attention to the service, if you talk to contractors in town, they can walk in my office nine times out of 10, they ask Kathy, they can come in and see me, they walk right in to see me and ask questions and we look at the code together. So with that said, my theory is that, hey, it's easy to get a permit in Melrose, not easy they're doing the wrong thing, the process is easy, therefore the rise in permits. When you have a process that's hard and cumbersome and you have staff that are out there that are grumpy and we've all run into inspectors on other things or that don't have a pleasant attitude, that homeowner or that contractor might say, I'm not going to pull it, I'm going

▶ 1:39:08 Manisha Bewtra: to take my chances. Are there people that get away with it out there? Sure, sure. Are there roofs that I see being done that don't have permits that I drive through? got to choose what I have to do and the more important stuff is to take care of the residents that are doing the right thing thank you for all of that work you you mentioned sort of I mean I really appreciate this narrative and that you have all of this your call volume and roughly quantified I'm just curious how you how you do track those things now so in a spreadsheet or it's a system for that I with with the permit tracking that's that is part of your permit tracking process great we can pull up these reports um including how like

▶ 1:39:55 Manisha Bewtra: people came in the door and email seven week tracking period I initiated my student my staff we put a piece of paper on each one's desk I said when you get up and help someone at the counter make a mark when you answer the phone make a mark that's great it's really helpful to have that those sort of benchmarks and tracking so one I'm sure it's somewhat gratifying to see it yourself or overwhelming I don't know kind of surprised me to be honest with you yeah yeah it's pretty incredible I wanted to ask mr. de la Rousseau some questions as well thank you so it sounds like we have this need for additional hours with this part-time inspector currently what kind of impact do you anticipate that that

▶ 1:40:52 would have and where how how are we gonna fund those hours I get I guess through the chair I haven't had the opportunity to really look at the different alternatives typically what we would look to do is see if during the fall typically after September we look at a staffing the levels what may or may not be available and based upon the needs I mean there are some opportunities where you could actually reduce the consulting line if you want to use that term and put apply that towards a more permanent type position so you can gain more hours but it hasn't cost you the full cost of a salary that's typically probably where we could see this going where you have existing resources about 20 some odd thousand you could apply that to a permanent person

▶ 1:41:43 Manisha Bewtra: 35 hours whatever the case may be and um win that way and that provide paul with i think um someone at the caliber that i believe he's searching for right now um so yeah there's definitely things we can definitely look at all the way thank you um that would be my approach great and i i'm just looking at the narrative again to see if i just missed any reference to this but uh mr johnson if you could just talk about i guess timing in terms of the ebb and flow i'm sure there's a lot of activity in the summer um like what your gear looks like in terms of volume of activity and how that cycle looks uh it has not slowed down it's it's held steady I our office has not slowed down with the exception of

▶ 1:42:37 one year probably I want to say seven years ago we slowed down for like two and a half months from Christmas to February other than that it's been constant steady steady steady without there's no slowdown it's just non-stop um and it just goes to the home values and and you know i believe there was a question earlier to the assessor of of uh new growth how is that renovations whatnot um you know i'm better suited i think to answer that and i would say you're probably 85 percent renovations to existing buildings that doesn't you know we do have a lot of new growth we have projects in line that I hear coming up so forgive me I forgot what you asked oh just I think you answered it I was just asking like what does your year look like does it

▶ 1:43:42 slow down in the winter it doesn't slow down right up until today you know everyone wants to get something done for the long weekend and we understand that and you know so in addition to the part-time I went out did so we did only to 15 inspections today just because you know you're gonna get that influx we're not here Monday so but I want to speak to I know you know we brought up the closing of the department on on on Fridays and I believe it's been a sound decision I really do you can get more done I've got more done sitting there from 4 o'clock to 6, 6.30, 7 o'clock at night in my office because the phone doesn't ring, then you do all day. So those four hours on Friday, they're invaluable.

▶ 1:44:37 You know, I've had instances where, you know, someone called, well, I can't make it there. The only day I can make it there is on Friday. You know, if you can't do that, let me know when you're coming in. if you pick a Friday let me know I'll make sure we get you in the door I don't want to say that on TV but I just did no one watching you know for the past 12 10 years so we haven't had inspections on Fridays inspections I've tried to be in the office to do the paperwork and that's what I reserved it for and what the phone calls and the people still come in and you just unfortunately it's just so busy you know you need that dedicated time to do this that makes a lot of sense and make actually as I think about it maybe even if you had

▶ 1:45:31 Shawn M. MacMaster: that extra support in the office keeping that in place might be the way to go there's another avenue to open it back up on Friday Patrick could find the money for us to come in on Saturdays and work overtime well I really appreciate like I said the thoughtfulness and your your narrative but also all your time here tonight thank you Walter McMaster Thank You madam chair I just had to follow up questions one follow-up question and one question I didn't think of asking initially the follow-up question relates to the permits is there any type of permit right now that would require somebody to actually appear before you to seek so pursuant to the building code is there a particular type a job that would you know you wouldn't be able to do it online for whatever

▶ 1:46:22 reason whether it's legal or otherwise that somebody would need to yeah physically yeah there are I envision seeing what we call short some may call short form job jobs where it's roofing siding windows a renovation of a bathroom where you're not changing these things structural anything with plans for the initial it was still gonna have people come into the office with the plans but I'd love to get to a paperless office that you know five years down the road four years down the road if with the public in the the the contractors that we have out there you know the some we're always going to have the older gentlemen that don't work on the computer and you know as time goes and progresses that goes away and that issue goes away so I've spoken to my

▶ 1:47:29 counterparts and Everett Malden who have gone paperless and and you know I've even used it personally the one in Everett to do permits and it's the great it's the way to go it's the future that you know you'd be able to scan in your plans and we'd be able to review them online and then that gives us a digital record and you know and not have paper so out of all the permits that your department issues over the course of a year what percentage could theoretically be sought online so what percentage based on what's required of the public submit I mean would it would it be more than half it would be close to it that's a hard number to hit I I wouldn't know until we roll it out but uh you know there's a there's a good portion of it that certainly could you know because

▶ 1:48:34 you can only do what the code allows you the nuts and bolts of the code so you can't mail a permit in a building code you can't mail it in you have to come in your license you know you can't drive on someone else's license you have to plumbing code allows the plumber to mail in their permit okay electrical code allows the electrician to mail their permit in so it's how the code is written uh so there are we already have we process uh applications now that you know come in without a person we in the mail we get them by mail and uh it's a good portion of plumbing not so much electric in terms of uh of revenue um your department took in a significant amount of revenue last year uh over seven hundred

▶ 1:49:24 Shawn M. MacMaster: and eleven thousand dollars and um you may be able to answer this question uh if not mr de la rusa does that money is that reflected in local receipts is that where does that where does that money go through the chip right to local receipts what's that right to local receipts local receipts absolutely so that's in there with uh mail to vehicle excise other excise rentals everything so based on what we took in last year um and i think the prior year because i don't know what we had for local receipts for males tax or occupancy tax i think the year prior we We generated, if I recall, $225,000 in mails tax and $25,000 in occupancy tax from the town line end. Does that sound about right? Yeah, probably.

▶ 1:50:19 Shawn M. MacMaster: So that's about a quarter of what we take in in terms of revenue from everything that Mr. Johnson does in his department, which is significant. So to me, based on what we already take in and based on the influx that you talked about, the new growth that you talked about and that Mr. Wilcock talked about, it seems to be an opportunity to perhaps increase what we're already taking in. And if I recall from last year's budget hearing, I believe Alderman Forbes asked about the fees. And if I recall correctly, we haven't increased fees since maybe 2013. Is that? You are correct. Does that sound right? What is the, and I understand fees are different, but what would be the standard cost? I guess maybe the average cost of a permit that somebody would seek from your department.

▶ 1:51:13 Right now, for one and two family, it's $12 per thousand of the job plus a $15 administration fee. Commercial is $16 per thousand of the job. so it's it's based on their total cost of the job okay that's the building portion and um i don't think i have enough time to go into the electrical and plumbing fees that's all right well i mean we'll stick with the building per unit cost let's say somebody's putting a shed on on their uh their house a couple hundred dollars maybe yeah no no no our minimum fee is 55 that covers you up to i think three grand if i do the math that's somewhere in there so a typical shed cost you a 55 permit how about a deck you know i see decks coming in now at you know 15 25 000 for costs

▶ 1:52:06 Shawn M. MacMaster: it just it's i'm seeing additions you know 225 000 300 000 dollar additions going on houses so so there seems like there's an opportunity so i'll just arbitrarily pick out a number that the permit fee is 200 if we raised fees by you know 10 that 20 additional dollars i think to somebody who wants a new deck or you know a new bathroom is is pretty nominal but i think an aggregate when you look at you know what that would bring in in terms of revenue uh you know considering that you know we are limited in what what we bring in um we're not just limited we're extremely limited um that that's something that we absolutely we might really need to consider looking at absolutely and again i know there's uncertainty that you know there's six months from now we'll have a new mayor

▶ 1:52:58 Shawn M. MacMaster: but um i think it's a conversation that maybe we we start having as a city because um you know almost you know three quarters of a million dollars currently in revenue just on fees that at the end of the day is not going to be you know have a significant impact on somebody looking to to make in addition to you know to their home or some sort of an improvement by way of remodeling I think that's an you know an opportunity that that we might want to think about so thank you thank you motion to recommend bottom line for department two for one inspection services we have a motion to move the bottom line second made by mr. Boiselle and seconded by alderman Sherman Tosi I just like to take a moment to thank you for all the work that you have done for

▶ 1:53:46 Kate Lipper-Garabedian: me and also for me personally I remember several years ago I think before I was even on the board somehow you found the time to come out to our house and look at it with me and give me some suggestions yeah I might have I think is before I was pregnant but it was very helpful and it just goes as a testament to the customer service priority that you place on the work that you do and just sitting here listening to my colleagues ask these really helpful questions in your really informative responses makes me think that your your office is not only sort of a revenue generator for the city it also is an engine for our continuing economic fatale vitality in the city in terms of enabling people to invest in Melrose and then you also somewhat play a public

▶ 1:54:29 Kate Lipper-Garabedian: safety role which because when someone pulls a permit there you're providing them with a second set of eyes to confirm that what they've had done to their home or their business is safe or occupancy and that's incredibly important yes our primary role is public safety that's right so thank you very much for being here we have a motion Julie second it all in favor opposed I believe we have a revolving account we do Oh a revolving account I apologize thank you and my apologies no worries we do also have the revolving account order before us it's order number two zero one nine dash eighty seven yes do you want to speak just briefly about that your portion of that that portion of the portion i have is uh maxed out at i believe 15 000 if i recall and that is used to

▶ 1:55:34 fund the certificate of inspection program that we spoke of so that's the revenue that revenue from that goes into that fund and it's a And the inspector is paid per diem, per inspection. So it's a state mandated program that not a lot of communities have, because they don't have the resources. I was fortunate enough that it was up and running for the most part when I got here. and so it's been very very it's something to look keep going you know we have to the state tells us to do it so we'll keep going this is number two six five eight motion to approve the revolving account two six five eight for this line second have a motion made by aldermen's work oh to approve revolving account number 2658, seconded by Vice Chair Boisselle. All in favor? Aye. Any opposed? No? Okay, now we promise you can head out. Thank you.

▶ 1:56:54 All right, and we have with us tonight Mr. De La Russo. We are on to that budget, number 135. Good evening. Thank you again. I'm Patrick De La Russo. I'm the CFO in the City Auditor. um and i believe i'm going on something like my 27th year doing this congratulations thank you so uh i'm really uh very pleased to sit in this chair um i i have distributed a memorandum dated uh may 13th and for the benefit of um those at home and those here this evening that haven't uh had a a chance to look at in essence the budget is outside of salary and wages is principally level funded the cost that has increased is the cost of the actuarial report which is considered other post-employment benefits from my actuary you'll see that cost up about thirty eight hundred dollars I

▶ 1:58:11 I believe if you recall last year when I sat here I indicated that was now going to be a permanent fixture in our budget and what happens right now is they do this year will be a I'll call it a a semi actuarial study and then the following year they do a full actuarial study and that's brought going to be the pace from now on going forward so I would anticipate next year seeing then increase because of the full nature of the actuary cost in fiscal 21 the year after this but that's what does for the long haul so again outside of that that the contractual salary increases those for the Union and non-union including myself and I do receive eleven hundred and seventy five dollar longevity payment I'm the only one in my department that does but everything else

▶ 1:59:16 Michael P. Zwirko: I think you'll see is is pretty status quo there's any questions um you know I'm here to answer them ocean to move the bottom line for Department 135 auditor okay we have a motion to move online made by vice chair boys I'll seconded by Alderman Tremontuzzi Alderman Zbirko thank you madam chair so just with this budget so there's there's a line audit services I believe that's what it stands for it's about forty five thousand dollars yes so we just went through a very long arduous campaign on the override and I heard a lot in the public chatter that you know somebody needs to audit the city budget the city budget needs to be audited this needs to be done but in fact and I think that's what this line goes to or at least a portion of this line goes to our budget

▶ 2:00:13 is audited every year on an annual basis per our Charter and we do complete that function isn't that correct absolutely correct great point I if I could speak to it for a moment please we're now when enterprise a well over 100 million dollars so we're big we're a big show now and we have the firm of powers and sullivan cpa that i've used for a number of years we are mandated because we go to the market we borrow to have an audit each and every year as we always have had since i've sat in this chair that's the nature of what we do that's a requirement we have never gone a year without an audit that i've since i've been here i also want to commend this board and for this continued pursuit of the best of the best because the auditors that we have

▶ 2:01:07 are without a doubt not just auditors their partners to this community and we don't talk enough I don't particularly talk enough about that the partnerships that we've been developed we not only have my opinion the best auditors you can get in the Commonwealth because they also audited for the Department of Revenue it's not by accident that we have the best because that's what we do we definitely have the first Southwest the best of the best in my opinion for a certifying bank we have the best of the best actuary Larry Larry stone of actuarial services he's a fixture we bring the best of the best in for this community that's all I will ever work with that's all I have ever worked with the reason that we have a double a plus is because of that not just the fact

▶ 2:01:58 that um we've been prudent conservative what this board has done and i can't commend you enough for doing that i'll never be able to thank you enough as a board for the support you've shown me and the positions that we want to take and they're very very difficult at times given the nature of how thin our margins are here but we surround ourselves with the best of the best and the annual audit from the time it's done it's already started again i've already started the audit for this year a month ago I've already started the actuary working on the actuarial report for this year and next year it's a never-ending audit and if anyone would like to see the audit it's uploaded they're welcome to see it

▶ 2:02:43 we also audit all the federal and state grants by law we do that and as you're all aware we participate each year in the art of the Department of Education for our Schedule 1 and our Schedule 19, which is also audited each and every year. So without hesitation, that's what we do. I'm pleased to say we have partners, not just firms. And candidly, the amount of time I spend in consultation with the outside audit firms and the actuary might surprise the board because I spend a tremendous amount of time. The decisions we make here in this in this um hall impact the financial statements that you have in your hands every decision we make there's an impact every transaction we make there's an impact it's my

▶ 2:03:38 responsibility to say is it impact going to be good or bad is that a right decision to make i often often often two or three times a week will ask the seasoned experts to to chime in on what i'm considering doing whether it's a reflection of a transaction or a journal entry whatever the case may be because i want the best decision made possible that's what i do and um i'm pleased to say that the financial statements for this year are even better than last year with the three quarters a million dollar increase on our fund equity 9.7 million dollars probably the highest the city has ever had so the decisions we make are proven to work all our enterprise funds um came in at a positive position again no deficits this year outside of snow and ice it doesn't

▶ 2:04:26 Michael P. Zwirko: happen by accident and i think that's probably the biggest message there's a tremendous amount a tremendous amount of work done so that it doesn't happen that we fall into a crevice and we can't get out that's not what we do here thank you for answering that and i just the reason i wanted to point it out is because it gets thrown around a lot but the reality is is that we do it and to a lesser extent every may and june this body here performs its own audit could not agree more of the departments with our questioning and and with the materials that are provided and really throughout the year questions come up i always bother you in october or november asking when the free cash is going to be certified we reach out to you on various questions about

▶ 2:05:10 Michael P. Zwirko: either a line item that's coming up or even something that the department of local services may have come out with for explaining you know regulatory notice as well as the as the Assessor alluded to earlier this evening the phone calls that come in and came in during the override effort and they certainly were directed at your office many many times so you always strive in addition to all the work you do you strive to have a very customer service focused office we appreciate that I know it can be very time-consuming but it is it is greatly appreciated and i wanted to say thank you for that with respect to this budget 135 those are my questions but i do have questions later on some of the other line items but thank you again to you

▶ 2:05:53 and your staff thank you i appreciate that because i really sincerely believe that i have the best of the best right now in my office i've been very fortunate um and they they work tirelessly they're experts at what they do and that's what we strive for any further questions we have a motion before us duly seconded all in favor any opposed okay that will be recommended to the full board thank you very very much thank you and we are now on to i believe department number 9 42 stabilization fund and opeb funds and we have also in our record a memo random from you dated may 16th yes thank you very much um as a sort of a mini spin-off to the original um conversation of uh we just had a moment about the budget the disorder here requests um funding for two funds and the first is the

▶ 2:06:51 regular stabilization fund of the city we're requesting another fifty thousand dollars be appropriated to that fund that will bring that fund over two million dollars And the second is a request for an additional $50,000 to the OPEB Trust Fund. Last question. No question. And the objective here on both ends is that we are able to continue the process of applying funds to both the Stabilization Fund and the OPEB Stabilization Fund to again to demonstrate to the rating agencies the bond the bond companies that are interested in buying our bonds that we are consistently keeping our reserves up to a pace that is mirrors the increase in our exposure in our liabilities we can't lose sight of the fact that we have to be consistent I

▶ 2:07:56 think i said that last year probably the one thing that this city can really pride itself on we make a decision on a financial basis and we're consistent year after year after year that's what makes things happen that's what they look for they don't want to see spikes they don't want to see sporadic behavior they want to see us acknowledge the fact that we have obligations to provide safeguards for the city's assets in the event of an economic downturn or some other situation that may occur that's beyond our control that's the objective of having your your stabilization funds there are situations whether it's loss of state aid federal aid as we've all experienced in the past or quite frankly some you know go for a bit of catastrophe to your

▶ 2:08:40 own community that you have to rely on outside of your regular budget they want to see that you have that and they want to see that every year you apply that the opeb fund is one of great interests because that's probably the major obstacle as to why we get on a triple a community i have spent time with our certifying bank and walls are outside auditors but particularly the certifying bank because they have the most experience for southwest with the rating agencies and what they look for for people that are triple a um this the objective here is twofold one is not only are we going to be consistent with what we told standard and pause and i believe everyone should have a copy of that also the 18 report not the 17 that we have we are going to

▶ 2:09:33 talk to them again in the fall i would expect the same time frame october and as we told them last year we have made it a policy to continue this process of applying funds to this trust fund the other side of the table which i want to bring to this board's attention because it's something that is over here that i'm considering as an uh for a thought uh to address the opeb issue is that if in fact we're able to renegotiate the health insurance agreement with the the public employee committee, and if in fact we're able to realize savings as a result of that, to apply a percentage of those savings to this trust fund. That would go a long way, I believe, to demonstrate, to stand in a pause that not only are we

▶ 2:10:29 being valid and consistent on the budget basis, but we are looking for ways to address this liability over and above what we've done in the past that's if you read this credit report that's really what they're asking us to do come up with another funding stream in my opinion that shows us you're taking not only are you funding this but you're taking even a more aggressive position on the funding requirement of this liability so that would be something that we may see in the next several years materialize if it does something i am going to embrace and give strong thought to but again the need to do it is there we did it at the right time in 2013 we set the fund up we did it for the right reason and again this is the next page now we have to

▶ 2:11:26 continue with that effort and show that we're on top of it and encourage those that want to buy our bonds that this community not only does the minimum they're actually going over and above and look at any effort they can to address this issue that says an awful lot when a community that doesn't have a lot of commercial industrial base but you still make that effort that's a significant acknowledgement to them that you're really conservative and you're really being prudent than what you do have that would be my thought thank you madam chair um a couple of questions just on the stabilization trust why why don't we even in a small amount increase that line item each year why do we stay at 50.

▶ 2:12:17 Michael P. Zwirko: i mean it seems to me that everything goes up right costs go up we our levy goes up um why just 50,000 I mean it would seem you know you do 50 then 55 then 60 then 65 maybe just to kind of keep pace with things especially in the low interest rate environment that we have and I'm just curious as to why that light item has just always been static relative to the regular stabilization fund that's a great question it's two reasons one is we have a reserve policy that we share with um standard employees as well as important that we maintain five percent a combination of our free cash and our stabilization i think if we take a look at where we landed this um in fiscal 19 um we're probably at like 6.2 or 6.5 that actually made me a little bit higher so we've

▶ 2:13:10 met our five percent threshold but that's a great question if we were simply dependent upon the stabilization fund to meet that reserve requirement could not agree more but we we couple it with the free cash that we strive for every year to have three to five percent and between the two we meet that reserve requirement for standard and pause and that's why if in fact things begin to materialize in a different way absolutely and free cash begins to pull down for whatever reason then you're absolutely right we look to make it up on the other end and that's why when they talk about in the report from standing and poised the way we're flexible we're not unwilling to do those things they stress that that's why they they like the rating we are willing to move in the direction

▶ 2:13:54 Michael P. Zwirko: we need to so that we're consistently meeting these object targets that they want to see us meet and we're not afraid to make those changes that's a great question though what are the the holdings of that 1.9 which will soon be over 2 million is that um are the holdings of that fund uh under the guise of custody of uh mr flavin yesterday so i can save that question then for him oh yeah absolutely yeah he does he has multiple on avenues where you invest that money i'm sure i'd be happy to share that with you but but that's principally the reason why and and the the other question you pointed out the standards and poor there was a uh a paragraph i probably won't be able to find it but uh some somewhere along the lines of over the next oh here it is

▶ 2:14:41 Michael P. Zwirko: actually over uh 72.1 of direct debt is scheduled to be repaid within 10 years which in our view are positive credit factors i'm reading that directly from the standard report yeah that's a that's a great figure i also feel like that's a figure that will never be attained because uh life happens and um whether or not we're you know going to improve some of our municipal buildings or or whatnot the reality is is while 72.1 of our debt could and is scheduled to be repaid within 10 years we're going to supplement that with other projects yes absolutely we are and that's a great point um one of the interesting um dynamics with that is that we historically have a very high percentage over 65 percent pay within 10 years

▶ 2:15:34 because the way that we operate where the policy of this board is not to use more than five percent of general fund we layer it intentionally we layer it so that as projects fall off that's when we would add a project to fill that space in so instead of adding to the pile we'll just keep it flat our debt unlike any community in the commonwealth i would challenge goes this way most go this way just take a look as goes this way why because the whole objective is that at any point in time no matter who the administration is in this building the objective is you always always always want to leave the community with an option to borrow and to invest in the community you're not just borrowing money what you're doing is you're investing in the community there's two

▶ 2:16:22 different dynamics the investment is where Standard & Poor's and Moody's they take value in they want to see that happening so you're telling them because you're so you're set up so structurally sound that you don't have to worry about funding your infrastructure projects principal ones because you have the capacity but you did it by design so no matter who the administrator is we have a 30-year program I don't know if most have five-year programs we have a 30-year program that can actually go out that far right to the end and show that we have the capacity to take on projects so this community never has to be at risk of not being able to take care of its own house and it's been that's by design thank you sir and um we could spend

▶ 2:17:12 Michael P. Zwirko: the next three hours discussing opeb oh yeah we sure could but the one point i want the actuary trusting three hours is it's tough it's it's it's it's it's one of the um the bubbling issues across the commonwealth uh for sure i hear about it all the time and um my only comment that i will say is um we are addressing as um is it called gasby 74 and gasby 75 is that right so and and the report by standards and poor's indicates that i think we're somewhere in the high 400 000 range of uh of what we have in reserves for opeb um yeah you have almost half a million if in fact this gets passed and it's and while that is paltry compared to what the liability is because we're matching what those two um uh statutes or i don't even know what they would be called the gasby 74

▶ 2:18:04 Michael P. Zwirko: and 75 require we're okay but i just will note that in the standard and poor's if there's one kind of weather report that it essentially that's what a bond report like this indicates if there's one area where we have a weakness it's it's opeb liability but we're not alone yeah i mean that what a great point because it's so it's so true because every com every city in town the commonwealth is under the same umbrella um as well as the state itself so the solution in in in my opinion will not would be more than putting money away because i have a i have a difficult time in this environment thinking that a community could put away in that case another 7.5 million dollars a year to this effort i think you're going to see that planned changes are going to take over

▶ 2:18:51 and to reduce the liability whether that means that at a certain point you know as you're hired employees in the future may not be able to have the type of health benefits in the past but on a structural basis i don't see how else they can you can really address that in a reasonable way because you know as you know the numbers just become um much more of a challenge in the two and a half environment just that's that's reality i just wanted to highlight that piece yeah that's a great point so yeah thank you those are all the questions i had yeah that's the will of the committee we're going to uh move the bottom line of let me see grab the number stabilization funds 942 second we have a motion to move the bottom line for department number 942 stabilization

▶ 2:19:38 funds made by alderman's work go seconded by vice chair blue cell all in favor aye aye opposed that recommendation we made to the full board for uh number 931 capital outflow we may have also addressed all of those i was looking both looks like we've done police we've met with elections we've done i.t i i guess i'm not sure what pb project i expect that's from the pine banks we have we share the debt obligations 50 50 with malden that's our 50 share okay so we haven't gotten there yet so we'll hold that in committee for now but that's what it is any further business just as a for the public who's still watching or who may watch later just a reminder that on sunday we do have our annual memorial day event so that begins on sunday

▶ 2:20:31 Kate Lipper-Garabedian: with a coffee social hour at 10 a.m at memorial hall and then a tour of the veterans monuments starting with the honor roll on main street at 11 a.m the memorial day parade begins at 1 30 leaving from memorial hall heading down main street to the wyoming cemetery on sylvan street where there will be a ceremony as well motion to adjourn a motion to second turn duly made and second it all in favor aye opposed all right thank you

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• Bulletin (IQM2 PDF)
• Minutes packet (IQM2 PDF)
• Agenda packet (CivicClerk PDF)
• Agenda packet (IQM2 PDF)
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