Appropriations & Oversight Committee — 2019-05-30
Attendance
Manisha Bewtra ; Robert A. Boisselle ; Scott M. Forbes ; Jennifer L. Lemmerman ; Kate Lipper-Garabedian ; Shawn M. MacMaster ; Monica C. Medeiros ; Peter D. Mortimer ; John N. Tramontozzi ; Francis X. Wright Jr. ; Michael P. Zwirko
Agenda
Minutes
CITY OF MELROSE APPROPRIATIONS COMMITTEE CALENDAR● MAY 30, 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 Present Scott M. Forbes Voting Present 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 City of Melrose Page 1 Updated 6/3/2019 1:22 PM
Transcript
▶ 0:00 Kate Lipper-Garabedian: On Thursday, May 30th, 2019, the Committee on Appropriations of the Melrose Board of Aldermen is called to order. I am the chair, Alderman at large, Lipper-Garabedian, and with me tonight are members of the committee, Vice Chair Alderman Boisselle, Alderman Mortimer, Alderman Medeiros, Alderman Forbes, Alderman Zwirko, Alderman Bewtra, Alderman McMaster, and President Lemmerman. In accordance with the Massachusetts General Law, this meeting is being recorded and can be viewed live on MMTV, as well as streaming on MMTV, and it will be on the City of Melrose website. Is there a motion to open the floor for public comment? So moved. Second. We have a motion to open the floor for public comment, made by Alderman Mortimer, seconded by Vice Chair Boisselle.
▶ 0:44 Kate Lipper-Garabedian: All in favor? Aye. Any opposed? This is the portion of the meeting where any member of the public can come forward and make a comment on any item in our agenda. Tonight we are continuing our budget review, and we have a number of departments to hear from, and someone's here, and Alderman Tramontozzi has joined us. Good evening. Good evening. So if you don't mind just stating your name for the record. My name is Jerry Morose. I'm a member of the public who wishes to make a public comment. Excellent. I'm seeing a repeat this year in your meetings of prior years, And it was a little disconcerting last week when we had the standard question asked of the city auditor, oh, we have audits done, don't we?
▶ 1:30 And literally there's an attempt to bring an honor by a fallacy. I misspoke there, I'm sorry. But the logical fallacy of honor by association, That somehow because an auditor says something, that means everything is correct. And somehow because the DOR certifies our tax rate, oh, everything must be perfect and correct. You know, for a number of years I've come before this board and the school committee. And I've said, what about the school security line and the end of the year report of the schools every year? And I know a lot of you have heard me say that all these times. Has anybody ever thought to ask me or to look into it and say what's going on with this? So, a couple weeks ago, in anticipation of this coming up again, I made a public records request.
▶ 2:22 And I said, can you show me, just for fiscal year 18, what the $1,445,521 was spent on for school security? Now, I can say that since 2010, we've been reporting line items. They were about a quarter million dollars for a number of years. Two years ago, in 2017, they went to $1.6 million. Just so you know, Boston spends about $5 million for school security for a year, and we're reporting $1.6 million. Boston reports $111 per student, we reported in 2017 $423 per student. Now I'm not an accountant, I'm not an auditor, I'm just a lowly member of the public who looks at something in a frame and says, you know, something's not right here. And I've brought it to the officials of the city. The alderman, the school committee, nobody does anything about it.
▶ 3:14 So I made a simple public records request. For one year, just give me a printout from Eunice what these expenses were. Number one, I haven't gotten a competent response to my public records request, but I got an acknowledgment at least that, oh, whoops, we made an error 10 years ago, and we've been making the error every year after year after year since then. And the error, from the numbers that I've kept track of all these years, amounts to $5 million of errors. five million dollars of errors that you want us to believe that oh the city auditor has everything under control the financials of the city are perfect that because we have these four different audits of the schools and the cities and all these things that somehow we don't have to look anymore
▶ 4:03 and it's painful to hear members of the board of aldermen falling into a trap with the city staff you are the people to hold them accountable you are the people to ask questions and there's so many red flags of process that I've seen in this I remember a couple it was maybe three years ago a member of this board of aldermen was asking some poignant questions of the city auditor city auditor called her ignorant and disgusting that she would ask such questions but yet it's the role of the board of aldermen to ask those questions nobody else stood up for that member of the board of aldermen here you let it all go and you let the city auditor bully her it's your job to look at these things now i want to be clear i've been
▶ 4:54 paying attention to the finance of the city for a long time i know that there was a slush fund in the 2000s to 2010 or 11 or so called contractual obligations in the school department we were budgeting hundreds of thousands of dollars there that was never getting spent on any contractual obligations I mentioned it from time to time did the city auditor choose to look at that no now what I don't know is when the city auditor comes here and says oh these audits prove everything's correct but I really don't know and I ask you which is worse that the city auditor doesn't know the limits of the audits that we have performed or that the city auditor knows the limits of those audits and chooses to deliberately misrepresent them is the city auditor the William
▶ 5:36 bar of Melrose these are process issues and the process has to work in order for us for the public to have trust in the system that there's some accountability you know trust only comes when you've verified over a period of time that there's a track record of proven competence right if all you ever do is say oh we trust that they're doing everything correct your trust is unfounded you can't live that way as a body of accountability you need to say from time to time prove it to us show us this you know you know another line item from a number of years ago was there was a textbook line item that I know we weren't spending money in textbooks and we were putting hundreds of thousands of dollars in this line item every year as if we were spending money in
▶ 6:32 textbooks and then we did in one year we did a huge five hundred thousand dollar bond for textbooks right you've got all kinds of money but that five hundred thousand dollars was the biggest significant purchase of textbooks we've ever had yet we had reported nearly that amount of money in the prior two years did anybody here care to look at that and say well geez why are we buying a half million dollars of textbooks that we've been buying that in the last few years anyway and why is this such a thing nobody did you know we use the munis accounting system from just a very few requests i've made of output from munis it's pretty obvious to me that the people in the city who use munis really don't know how to use it
▶ 7:18 they don't know how to put out a competent report from it just the fact that your budget report you know what you're working on the operating budget that you're working on isn't more competent than what it shows it again it's a red flag there's something there why can't the city auditor put out a document that actually shows what you need is relevant in order to make make decisions about the budget you know when you lay all these things on top of one another you have to ask why when i think about the water and sewer now we know the city auditor you know got caught eight years ago and the city did as well by underfunding basically we have bad rates for water and sewer right they aren't done in an appropriate way in case we have a wet cold summer right and so
▶ 8:08 because the city auditor won't do the work and the city government won't do the work to recommend to you to do the right thing around water and sewer rates what they do is they hoard money let's keep millions of dollars there so we don't get caught with our pants down again horrible metaphor i'm sorry you know I'd like to see you there's so many people here running for office this year in different capacities I'd like to see that somebody here who's running for these offices whether alderman in the ward all the minute large the mayor that you actually care to look at the details of it you care to understand what's behind it you know in the in the in the recent override campaign I was shocked at how many people who are in this room don't don't
▶ 8:57 understand the fundamental issue of what a tax rate is and whether you can compare a tax rate from this town to another town to another town and just to make it obvious you can't right the tax rate is a calculated number from the total assessment and the total monies but to say that stone was paying more than taxes and we are as somebody else I'd like us to stick with the budget tonight well this is all budget related because if the people in the room who are making the decisions on the budget don't understand the basics of a tax rate and you say you're going to trust the city auditor and the city treasurer the two financial people of the city who come here and represent things and you're just going to accept them blindly this goes to the core of
▶ 9:40 what your job is your job isn't to say oh what wonderful people you are you know you know you've blessed this budget so we're going to say it's fine too that's not your job your job is to look at it your job is a question your job is to say what are the assumptions behind these numbers what is the projection for this year that's legitimate instead of just some off-the-cuff oh it's what we budgeted you know we've done this year after year of the year will something ever change for it to change each of you have to be the change agents if you just keep going along the way you do it it's obvious i want to throw one more red flag that is obvious to me i mentioned before what the city auditor did when somebody challenged them at a budget hearing years ago but
▶ 10:24 the two people the people in charge of the finance of the city the city treasurer and the city auditor they exhibit the most contempt of any other city employees for members of the public to come forward to ask legitimate questions about what's going on here why would they feel that way why do they show the contempt they want to cut off public comment at a water and sewer committee meeting they want to they don't want the public engaging in this they want to do something outside the view of this it has to be done in the back room why is that it's another red flag and you know i'm starting to add up red flag red flag red flag red flag it might mean something we're never going to know you know i can do a thousand public records requests and find out the truth behind
▶ 11:10 these things i can find out you know if i find out five million dollars is wrong i can probably find out more but please don't use the word trust in this room again you can't trust that everything that's presented to you is correct you need to do the hard work about it you need to look at it and i know you're not used to doing that you need people who will do that in the end thank you for in the end what I'd like to say is that there's money we spend in the city that we have to spend right and you know we pay certain people certain amounts of money we have certain costs of things we have to do them but you can't just accept that either you have to say what is the purpose of this department you have to say why are we letting City Hall employees
▶ 12:11 go home at 12 o'clock or 12 30 on a friday while we're paying some people huge salaries that are more than what a full-time person would get typically you got to ask some of these questions not just say oh well same budget as last year with a couple percent increase that doesn't do it that doesn't change the dynamic it just doesn't change the system it doesn't make mellows better it keeps mellows stuck in the past so i asked you every time you more people come up here and present the budget? Let's find out about it. And what I really would like to say is, and this will be my final comment, is that I don't believe that the budget process should be the time where we have people talk about what happened in their department over the year. You have a whole year of non-budget
▶ 12:59 process time. The fire chief can come in, the police chief can come in, the DPW can come in. They can talk about what they do and the difficulties and the things, and you can give them the praise they need then the budget process ought to be about money and not just money about what that money is needed for and why and what justification is for it so please change the dynamic you have more time in this in this budget cycle to do that change the dynamic starting tonight ask the real question say you know why don't we even have a report of how much the individual employees are paid in an office instead of just in aggregated amounts you can't tell that Somebody might be making a huge amount of money in an office when somebody else is making a little bit amount of money.
▶ 13:41 Kate Lipper-Garabedian: So thank you. Point of order, we are well over the ten minutes. Well, thank you for your time and for your patience, thank you. Any additional members of the public wishing to speak? Seeing none. Motion to close public comment. Second. We have a motion to close public comment made by Alderman Mortimer, seconded by Vice Chair Boisselle. All in favor? Aye. Any opposed? That concludes our public comment. We have one order on the agenda tonight. is order number two zero one nine dash eight five city of melrose operating budget for fiscal year 2020 in the amount of 86 million six hundred sixty two thousand nine hundred eighty seven dollars and sixty one cents motion to suspend the rules that we may hear from mr flavin second we have a motion
▶ 14:24 to send the rules so that we can hear from the city official made by alderman mortimer seconded by vice chair Boisselle all in favor aye aye any opposed great so um we are on on deck tonight we have department number 145 treasurer collector and thank you for being with us if you'd like to make an opening statement to sort of set the context that would be fine um i in my packet you have what my opening statement would be it's with a transaction house of the city where the money comes in and the money goes out the money gets put away the money gets protected my staff and i do that we recently won the parking piece of the parking issue so that's also part of it but the statistics and the numbers are in there and what we do and what we're bound
▶ 15:14 by so any questions i mean this is again this is the same budget every year there's nothing really change one thing that got reduced the title fees because we a couple years ago we put in the revolving fund tax title revolving fund that balances up to a little over five thousand now so we don't need that money but we'd like to keep that 1500 in case we run into an extraordinary circumstance where that revolving fund gets trained down other than that it's pretty much vanilla thank Thank you. Alderman Medeiros. Thank you. Thank you very much. Thank you for this summary of all the activities that your office handles. I just wanted to actually state the numbers. So number of bills collected in 2018, is this calendar year?
▶ 16:13 Monica C. Medeiros: Fiscal. Fiscal. And — That's why it's 18. Yeah. That's what I figured. But I figured I should clarify, right? Personal property, water and sewer, real estate tax bills, motor vehicle excise demands, and all of this is over 111,000 bills. Transactions. Yeah, transactions. That's a lot. My girls do a good job. I shouldn't say my girls. My staff does a great job. We wouldn't be in as good a position as we are without the knowledge, effort, and dedication. And water and sewer alone is almost 46,000 bills. And grown. and growing there's a monthly bill yes I was gonna ask has that stabilized and incrementally it's growing it hasn't been a rush it's a monthly billing but there's a steady they grew up to eight percent I think the last year we saw one
▶ 17:07 and a half percent change over I don't know if people aren't aware of it some people but again some people aren't going to want to see twelve bills in other people you know kind of maybe more for cash flow purposes wanting to take care of it every month but there was a cost to doing that and I know we had talked about parking over the last couple of years and so your office has really taken over that function like I said in the paper where the clerical part of it and the adjudication we we take care of issuing the permits processing the tickets paying the tickets mocking the licenses and handling disputes nobody wants a pocket ticket and everybody disputes a pocket ticket but that takes a process to win the number there surprised me that how
▶ 18:01 many people dispute it but that takes time and effort and energy to and we I know I had brought this up to the mayor a couple of times about potentially offering an online option for parking permits is this something that is being explored at all we looked at it the volume isn't really there I mean we initially it was kind of a mess with the merchant parking and everything and but once you have a sticker you have the sticker we're not we're not making everybody parade in here every month I mean every year for a new sticker and I don't rather than you know we do it every three years to clean it up so then it's not that we don't see that much activity on it overnight stickers we can look at it but I mean it's um there's a cost of doing that too okay
▶ 19:02 Peter D. Mortimer: thank you I think that's it maybe we'll talk a little bit in parking when we get to that thank you madam chair would make a motion at this time to if there's if people don't object to it to join budget 296 with budget 145 and talk about those kind of simultaneously maybe we can have a motion at the at the end to take care of them both that seems like a good idea thought of the expeditious kind of will He has the same paperwork, while Mr. Flavin has the same paperwork right in front of him. We have a motion to join our discussion and review of Departments 145, Treasure Collector, and 296, Parking. Second. Second by Vice Chair Boisselle. Any discussion on the motion? All in favor? Aye. Any opposed?
▶ 19:53 Okay, so all members, would you like to continue with parking or? Sure. Okay. Thank you. and so my other question in regards to parking is in the past the police were sort of in charge of the collection part of from the lots no that's a that's long gone we went to electronic meters a long time ago just comes into the bank so there's no nobody takes care of the meters in the lease on the meters isn't there but yeah we got rid of that yeah I'm driving around with the cheap buckets showing up at eastern bank with 300 in coin it wasn't very very much fun so now we don't see any actual cash passing it's just everything is going in by credit card unless they come to our window okay very good and uh do you have any kind of
▶ 20:48 Monica C. Medeiros: collection problems or everything goes mass general laws give us a wonderful tool if you don't pay we mark your license and you can't drive anymore legally so that gives us the backbone to get what we need thank you other questions on departments 145 and 296. motion to move the bottom line on these two budgets oh i'm sorry i thought you were finished sorry thank you i just wanted to bring up uh one thing that came up and so just so the public knows and that we have in from any department that has staff included the aldermen have a document that shows the breakdown of the positions and the amount per position that each individual position is paid i believe that is although that is public record if anybody wants it i believe it it's password
▶ 21:41 Monica C. Medeiros: protected so that only because it is a little bit sensitive because we're talking about employees and their pay that it's it's been password protected and so that the public doesn't necessarily see it but just the public knows that we do see this and have access to that and so it's something that you know we look at and in these budgets the increase in both parking and in the treasurer's collector's office is two and a half percent increase for both departments their salary overall so this is some most of that's contractual with the Union and what I was wondering perhaps we might look at now I know there's been a change where in past years we've seen the employees names specifically attached to their salaries since the names have been removed and it's just
▶ 22:29 the position titles is this something that we could look at opening up to the public and perhaps perhaps president Lemmerman and we could also maybe maybe consult with a city solicitor just to confirm and perhaps provide appropriate notice to city employees before doing that consider that sure great there is the annual list in the paper too yeah as a state employee yet Matt you can find me online too so other questions for mr. Flavin yes alderman's burko Thank You madam chair I just had a quick question for you on the tax taking the action of tax taking that you perform so we've received a couple of inquiries and also have noticed in the paper when some real estate transactions are listed that you
▶ 23:25 Michael P. Zwirko: the the seller will be the city of melrose um or the buyer rather um it's listed and i don't know if it's correct but the reason i asked the question is because there are times where the city does have substantial liens on homes and can you talk about the entire process of how this how how it works through your office it's basic tax collection 101. if you don't pay your taxes we put a stick there's a statutory lien on it through mass general laws after a year if you haven't paid it we perfect the lien and we file something at the registry you don't pay it we apply the other the subsequent taxes onto that if you reach high enough we'll start foreclosure proceedings and take your house and 13 years i've been here we've taken three houses it usually
▶ 24:17 doesn't reach that point a third party steps in such as a bank and or a relative um it's I mean we put the names in the paper once a year last year we wound up taking a house realizing a pretty good game on it but it's it's a process I mean it's just it's steps so right now we're getting ready in July or August will start going after 2018 and back and there's a cost with all that i mean 75 bucks a document to put it in there so we want to give people some time and the interest rate kicks from 14 to 16 so we'll let it go for a little while to save them the two percent but um it's it's just it's what we do um i'm not sure what specific questions there would be well we never sell anything in the paper i don't know what that is so you you noted that there was a um
▶ 25:19 there's a gain on the house that we sold does that go into the general fund right to the bottom after expenses yep and taxes are paid obviously so well taxes have been gone once we take it and foreclose on it we don't pay taxes we just write them off but I think we got three hundred and fifty thousand for that and then when you get done with the lawyers and the auctioneer and everything like probably 280 290. so maybe then i think the tactical was 50. it was silly to let it go but you never can tell what people that was the only question i had thank you thank you motion to move the bottom line on these two budgets uh the treasurer collector in the amount of 341 thousand seven hundred forty dollars and sixty three cents and the parking budget in the amount of eighty
▶ 26:15 Kate Lipper-Garabedian: 63,732 dollars and 16 cents second. I have a different different number. I have a different number for at least 296 All right, but essentially essentially, you're looking to move the bottom line on department number 145, which um my printout from may 2nd suggests it's 432 513 dollars and 66 cents and then the parking department to number 296 which the bottom line there is eighty nine thousand two hundred forty four dollars and forty four cents so we have a motion made so moved by Alderman Mortimer and seconded by Vice Chair Boisselle all in favor aye any opposed so that recommendation we made to the full board and then we have also on our agenda tonight three lines 7-1-1 for municipal debt 751 for municipal debt interest and 752 for projected debt
▶ 27:18 so we're on 7 1 1 municipal debt municipal debt this is everything we've issued in the last 20 years 25 years It's the payoffs of everything, all the bonds that we owe, the exempt debt and the regular general fund debt. And these are obligations that we agreed to when we issued the bonds and this is the money we owe. Any questions about Department 711? I guess I'll ask. So can you give a couple examples just for folks watching at home? Would this include the bonds that we issued to the middle school, some of those big projects or is it different from it's everything we've ever borrowed for some of its exempt I think that's the middle school I'm not familiar with it's one of the schools it's that runs out in 2028 and then that goes off the exempt line and
▶ 28:30 there's another small state piece of that where we got some money that's also part of a school the other stuff it's you know your roads your textbooks I mentioned earlier those types of things it's I mean we've issued a lot of debt in the last five or six years well since I've been here not five or six years since I've been here we issued debt every year and this is the result of that you should have in your packet the breakdown of what each thing is I don't know if you is that included if not I can give it a crystal we have it I mean I give it to you every year, so I don't know. I'd like to make a motion to include a copy of the report, if Mr. Flavin could provide it for us through the clerk of committees.
▶ 29:28 Second. The motion to include the report Mr. Flavin is referencing, which I believe provides additional information about our municipal debt, made by Alderman Medeiros, seconded by President Lemmerman. All in favor? Aye. Any opposed? Okay, so we'll add that to the public record. And Alderman Medeiros. Thank you. thanks so much in this just some inclusions that would include for instance the the curriculum bond that we bonded a few years ago that was mentioned earlier tonight things like the modular classrooms modular is the modular hasn't been issued as a bond yet you're gonna see that in the temporary debt piece we're bonding that in November and that's why that number's kind of high is that we took some time to get it in we had to kind of feather it
▶ 30:20 into the five percent and um we all it just didn't make sense to borrow it on its own so we have a and it's cheaper to have it in the short-term debt than it is in the long-term debt so we kind of managed it that way and in august with that and the streets project being bonded in november then they'll become part of this permanent debt and things like the science labs at the high school yeah I mean it's anything anything anybody ever said come borrow gas DPW garage school HVAC police dispatch textbooks high school science lab mova windows fire station repairs some of those items we received some reimbursement back from the state or we were you know we were awarded grants and um that was figured out at the time at the time so we
▶ 31:15 Kate Lipper-Garabedian: didn't actually borrow that money unless no no so um we received the money right at at the time of construction if we borrowed 1.5 and got 1.3 you probably saw an order for 1.8 you know if you got a 300 000 grant and 1.5 it was handled that way thank you thank you any other questions on this department a motion to uh join this budget with the subsequent two budgets on our agenda this evening so we have a motion to join municipal debt with uh the other line items municipal debt interest and projected debt maybe alderman mortimer second seconded by alderman forbes all in favor aye any opposed so now we have joined those three sections Can I, I'll just ask a couple more questions, if that's okay, about sort of the borrowing
▶ 32:10 Kate Lipper-Garabedian: and the way that that would work. So when we go out for a bond, can you just explain to folks, you know, the timeline by which we have to pay it back and sort of if it depends on the bond itself or if there's a standard approach? I'm not sure I understand the question. So if we had, if we had to take on debt to address, I think you mentioned a fire station, we might package that with a few other things so you pass an order to fix the fire station for eight hundred thousand dollars they go start the project they do it for eight hundred thousand dollars we don't have eight hundred thousand dollars you've authorized me to go borrow it we need to find some money for a while and then every november is the season when we go out
▶ 32:56 we might issue a abandoned bond anticipation note which is temporary debt it lasts a year so see and wait we want to see if you spend the whole 800 000 so when we don't borrow 800 000 if we don't need to we wait for the project to finish we end up in that situation sometimes they come in under there's been you know this the last few years it's been in our interest to go out and borrow it because the interest rates they were almost paying us to um to take you know to give us the money and um but we we manage that we have a bank an advisor with first southwest they help us with all of that they're pros in the field they serve a number of communities you know we do the whole thing it goes out to the street they manage that process we get a
▶ 33:43 standard and poor rating um then we set up a sale date and they distributed all the uh you know the offering we do an os an official statement it contains all the city's data and a lot And a lot of information in that, it goes out to Fidelity and those guys, and they come in and we typically, you know, we'll see five or six bids on it and you go by the true interest cost and it's pretty, again, it's one of those standard things that just, I wish we didn't borrow so much because I wouldn't have to work so hard. So it sounds, there's a standardized, standardization to it, but it also sounds like it's somewhat dynamic where you're sort of keeping track of how a project is going because you can
▶ 34:32 be nimble about how much you're going to borrow and when. Right. I mean, we don't, I mean, it's pretty much, we have planning and the execution of the projects has been great. They go out and they do something and it's done. The module is a perfect example, I mean, so it's, yeah, I mean, it's a year or two we We generally do the short term interest to see where we are, and then we go from there. Okay, thank you. Alderman Mortimer. Thank you very much, Madam Chair. Our ratio of budget in terms of the relevance or the comparison, the ratio of the entire budget, it's around 5%. Is that correct? No, it was around four. All right, yeah. So now you plug in against the budget with the override. So now it is at 4% right now, it was getting near 5%.
▶ 35:32 Peter D. Mortimer: Right, around 5% which, and the point I'm trying to make by virtue of that question is that although we do have money borrowed and bonded for a lot of the necessary operations to maintain a city. We are very prudent in keeping our budget ratio, our loan and bond ratio very low in comparison to the entire budget. In other words, we don't borrow recklessly. We're very cautious in our borrowing. Absolutely not. I mean, as an example, this is the highest year and it's because of the school module is hidden for the first time. for the next three years, I mean, from here on out, it's a decline, from 3.99 to 3.78 to 3.29 in subsequent budget years. I'm sure there'll be other projects and there'll be other things that will come along, but
▶ 36:27 now they can fit into that slide with debt falling off. In spite of the old adage that self-praise is no praise, compared to other municipalities and compared to just borrowing for we're a municipal corporation here and for corporate borrowing in general, that's a very prudent approach that the city of Melrose takes, would that be correct? And the S&P report dictates that. I mean, the reporting agencies and the people who evaluate us and look at us, they all speak highly of us. With AA+, this over rate, second highest. Yeah, highest rating Melrose has ever had, is that correct? that this override helps us get to the wanted triple A, which in the end of the game gets you lower interest rates. People, they realize the quality and your ability to repay the debt is
▶ 37:24 Peter D. Mortimer: stronger. And it's the very rare municipality that has the double A plus that we have now, and I would say there's probably only a small amount of communities that ever get the triple a rating but we're very close to it maybe it doesn't yeah there's a couple of things that stick but i mean we'll work on them and see hopefully we'll get to them but that double a plus that we have now that's the highest melrose has ever had and we've had it for four or five years now i think four or five years consecutive of very very high bond ratings and again self praise is no prize but that would that would speak to very very good management for the city of melrose fiscally i think so and the proof is in the pudding thank you that's all i have thank you vice chair boyza
▶ 38:11 Robert A. Boisselle: let's go back to the account 752 the projected debt and temporary interest you have a six digit number there so i'm assuming that belongs to the school department yeah i mean you should have had a breakout of that too um in 2019 actual at this point it's about 143 000 for projection for 2020 is $606,000. What is the $500,000 paying for? Checked it in temporary debt interest. There's two, I mentioned it before, there's two projects, the middle school and 5,896,000 is coming due, will issue it in November. The projected interest due May 1st will be $142,125. There's a principal payment that has to be made of $211,000. There's roads and streets for 1185. There's projected interest of 42125, we don't have to pay a principal payment.
▶ 39:42 There's also band interest, because we've currently borrowed the money already. and those two numbers are 175-897-33 and 35-352-50 and that comes up with your 606-499-83 okay thank you uh as a motion could we incorporate that document into the uh package second motion to incorporate the document into the package made by vice chair Boisselle seconded by alderman mortimer all in favor thank you thank you thank you thank you so we will do that as well and those will be we we can get those up on the public facing website as well motion to move the bottom line on the three joint budgets 711 751 and 752 second we have a motion to move the bottom lines for municipal debt municipal debt interest and projected debt made by alderman Mortimer and seconded by vice-chair Boisselle is
▶ 40:34 Monica C. Medeiros: there any further discussion miss Alderman Medeiros just a one-click sort of clarification from what I think a question or a comment that chairman And Lipper-Garabedian mentioned earlier, I think she even asked about the term of how long we can borrow for. And that is, just to specify, that's determined by whatever we vote for each project, we vote to bond it for a 20 year term, then I believe it needs to- No, a mass general law dictates that you're not going to borrow for a fire engine for 30 years or 20 years. building you will 20 or 25 or 30 to max it out you know it makes sense on a building to borrow it for longer term because the people that are going to enjoy it in 25 years will be paying for it
▶ 41:28 on some level if you all loaded it up i mean like anything you like to pay things off fast but if you're paid off a five million dollar project in 10 years and people are using it in 15 and 20 they're getting the free ride so there's some thought to that and it also it balances out i mean it's in the in the law i mean there's specific borrowing limits for everything that you do so when we have an order before us that comes with a debt schedule projected debt schedule and we show that it's say borrowing for a term of you know some things are five years some things or 20 years can you do you have the authority to to extend that date any longer no you you could pay it off earlier if i could go shorter but i can't go longer and and you must have all of those
▶ 42:21 orders before you when you go out to bond and take that all into account and again i work with my bank in in the past several years you've had the opportunity to refinance a considerable amount of our debt yeah we did that a few years ago i forget the savings but it was significant so you're always looking for that kind of thing right i mean that's that's when like i said a few years ago they were almost paying us money so it made sense to refund so but now it's everything's starting the creek back up again thank you thank you we have a motion on the floor duly seconded any additional discussion all in favor aye aye opposed so we will make that recommendation of the full board and i think that that concludes our for you is there more 916.
▶ 43:12 oh i am i apologize you're right our last one 916 the medicare city portion so do you want to just introduce that for us yeah I mean people that have been here for a few years get to see me twice on this usually at this budget and then we don't budget enough and I have to come back in the spring and get some more money and make it whole this year we went through it we looked at the contractual obligations and you know what the raises were going to be through the Union and everything else and came up with the number and we also had to add in the the money that's going to salaries that are going to result from the override because every dollar that we pay out now we got to give the government one point four or
▶ 44:00 five percent so just it adds up and this is the this is what the number that we think we need this year questions for this section of the budget 916 motion to the bottom line on this budget madam chair second motion to move the bottom line of eight hundred sixty three thousand three hundred and thirty one dollars fifty fifty cents made by alderman mortimer second by vice chair Boisselle all in favor all right now i think you have finished thank you so much for being here and um we appreciate you bringing those additional records for the record yeah i'll have to find out what happened here because i mean generally they go right in with the packet i must this i i probably thought someone else was doing it and they thought i was doing it so okay but now
▶ 44:52 Peter D. Mortimer: you have them okay great okay uh yes um thank you very much for a little bit of latitude madam chair i would like to take this opportunity to announce to the public that i will not be seeking re-election for the position of ward 6 alderman thank you very much for the time thank you do. Is there a motion to adjourn? So moved. Second. Motion to adjourn made by Alderman Zuberko, seconded by Vice Chair Boisselle. All in favor? Aye. Opposed? All right.