Appropriations & Oversight Committee — 2020-05-21

Appropriations and Oversight Budget Hearing

This meeting starts at 15:58 in a recording that covers several meetings.

Attendance

Christopher Cinella present · Chair; Jack Eccles present · Voting; Mark Garipay present · Voting; Jen Grigoraitis present · President, ex oficio; Maya Jamaleddine present · Voting; Shawn M. MacMaster present · Voting; Jeff McNaught present · Voting; Leila Migliorelli present · Vice Chair; Robb Stewart present · Voting; Cory Thomas present · Voting; John N. Tramontozzi present · Voting

Agenda

Minutes

CITY OF MELROSE APPROPRIATIONS COMMITTEE CALENDAR● MAY 21, 2020 Web-based remote meeting Budget Hearing 7:00 PM , Melrose, MA 02176 The public should take notice that the Melrose City Council may, on certain occasions, have a quorum in attendance due to standing committees of the City Council 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 Christopher Cinella Chair Present Leila Migliorelli Vice Chair Present John N. Tramontozzi Voting Present Shawn M. MacMaster Voting Present Jeff McNaught Voting Present Jack Eccles Voting Present Mark Garipay Voting Present Robb Stewart Voting Present Cory Thomas Voting Present Maya Jamaleddine Voting Present Jen Grigoraitis President, ex oficio Present The Appropriations Committee is called to order by Chair Cinella. This meeting is recorded and may be viewed on www.mmtv3.org Chair Cinella advises the council on a procedural matter (after consultation with the City Solicitor) that the motion to recess the previous Appropriations committee meeting is de facto motion to adjourn.

ORDER-2020-102 Resolution A Resolution in Recognition of the Melrose Police Department Recommend Place on File City Council

ORDER-2020-97 A Acceptance Melrose Police Vehicle Donation The Melrose Police requests the City of Melrose accept a vehicle donation from Metropolitan Insurance Company to be used by the Melrose Police Middle School SRO to raise awareness for Autism. Recommend Passage City Council

ORDER-2020-89 Operating Budgets (City, School, Regional School) City of Melrose Operating Budget for Fiscal Year 2021 in the amount of $88,397,961.08 (Eighty-Eight Million, Three Hundred Ninety-Seven Thousand, Nine Hundred Sixty-One Dollars and Eight Cents). Hold Appropriations Committee City of Melrose Page 1 Updated 6/4/2020 10:21 AM Minutes Appropriations Committee May 21, 2020

ORDER-2020-90 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. Hold Appropriations Committee City of Melrose Page 2 Updated 6/4/2020 10:21 AM

Transcript

▶ 16:12 Christopher Cinella: except that pursuant to governor baker's march 12th order suspending certain provisions of the open meeting law in the governor's march 15th order opposing strict limitation on the number of people that may gather in one place this meeting of appropriations committee will be conducted via remote participation to the greatest extent possible we'll post an audio or video recording transcript or other comprehensive record of these proceedings as soon as possible after the meeting on the city of melrose's website and mmtv3.org madam clerk please call the roll council of megaliarelli here council of tramantosi yeah so the McMaster yeah so the McNaught yeah counselor Eccles yeah yeah yeah so Stewart here

▶ 17:06 so Thomas so Jamala Dean yeah there's a big writers here chairman Sunilla yeah 11 present at this time I will entertain a motion for a public comment motion open for public comment second second who was the second motion for public comment made by Councilor McNaught seconded by Councilor tram Matozzi Councilor make me really yes I'm so tram Matozzi yes Councilor mcmaster yes mcnaught yes Councilor eccles council Garipay yes Councilor stewart yes Councilor thomas yes president Grigoraitis yes chairman sanella yes 11 yes you see anybody in queue if anyone would like to speak if they could raise their virtual hand give it a second so no one is raising their hand chairman motion motion to

▶ 18:20 Christopher Cinella: close public comment to close public comment by Councilor Stewart seconded by Councilor Eccles Councilor Migliorelli yes Councilor Tramontozzi yes Councilor McMaster yes Councilor McNaught yes Councilor Eccles Councilor Garipay? Yes. Councilor Stewart? Yes. Councilor Thomas? Yes. Councilor Jamaleddine? Yes. President Grigoraitis? Yes. Chairman Sinella? Yes. Levin, yes. Thank you. Just a couple quick housekeeping for our speakers tonight in queue. Please be aware that you'll see councillors from time to time raise their hand. That's an indication to me that they have a question when the Q&A begins. So that's not directed towards you, but I'm keeping a tally in queue. The other thing is, this is going to be a long meeting, I suppose tonight,

▶ 19:19 Christopher Cinella: so if anybody does need to take a break, please be courteous of your time. First up tonight, 2020-102 a resolution and recognition of the morrow's police department sponsored by counselor Stewart counselors master we have some administration and folks with us tonight to suspend the rules if we could you bring them in motion to suspend the rules second motion to suspend the rules by president Grigoraitis, seconded by Councilor McNaught. Councilor Migliorelli? Yes. Councilor Tramontozzi? Yes. Councilor McMaster? Yes. Councilor McNaught? Yes. Councilor Eccles? Councilor Garipay? Yes. Councilor Stewart? Yes. Councilor Thomas? Yes. Councilor Jamaleddine? Yes. President Grigoraitis? Yes. Chairman Eccles, I'm sorry, Chairman Cinella?

▶ 20:27 Yes. 11, yes. Bring them in now. I have Police Chief Lyle. I've got Officer Mann, Officer Marr. I believe I'm not probably saying the correct titles. And I have the Mayor. And they should all be coming in at this time. Chief Lyle, can you hear us? I can hear you. Okay, we can't see you. You must have something over your screen. We have, gentlemen, forgive me if I'm not saying your correct title, Officer Mann and Officer Marr, I'm sorry. Thank you. Can you see me now? Can't see you now. See your initials in the back of a cruiser. It's doing it, can you see me now? There we are, there we are. Sorry for the technical difficulties. Hey, it happens, it happens. Councilor Stewart or McMaster, who would like to go first?

▶ 21:59 Robb Stewart: Thank you, Mr. Chairman, I will go first. And thank you, Chief Lyle and Officers Mann and Officer Mayer for joining us today. I appreciate you being here tonight. Consular McMaster and I filed this resolution last week in conjunction with the National Police Week in honor and appreciation of the efforts that you and your entire force provide to ensure the safety and well-being of the City of Melrose. It is unfortunate that COVID-19 has prevented us from recognizing law enforcement as we traditionally do in this country and the city at this time of the year. Unfortunately, in Melrose, through the virtual meeting format that we have at our disposal, we are still able to recognize the men and women of the Melrose Police Department in

▶ 22:44 Robb Stewart: the form of a resolution, and that we are honored to do so this evening. With this in mind, we are pleased to offer this resolution. Whereas there are approximately 900,000 law enforcement officers serving in communities across the United States, including the dedicated men and women of the Melrose Police Department. And whereas in 1962, President John F. Kennedy signed a proclamation designated May 15th as Police Officers Memorial Day, the week in which that date falls as Police Week, in order to recognize the service and sacrifice of U.S. law enforcement and pay tribute to those who have lost their lives in the line of duty, whereas 307 names of fallen heroes are being added to the National Law Library Enforcement Officers Memorial this spring,

▶ 23:44 Robb Stewart: including 135 who made the ultimate sacrifice in the line of duty in 2019, whereas among Among the names included on the memorial are the Melrose Police Officer, Joseph Martin, Melrose Native and University of Colorado Police Officer, Garrett Swayze, and MIT Police Officer, Sean Collier, brother of a former Melrose Alderman and Board of Aldermen President, Jennifer Lehmann, whereas the city, the Melrose City Council honors the sacrifices of Officer Martin, Officer Swayze, Officer Collier, and Melrose Cross Guard Mary Foley, and commends all those who risk their lives while serving the residents of Melrose in order to protect our safety and welfare. Whereas, the Melrose Police Department is comprised of 46 sworn

▶ 24:43 Robb Stewart: officers, two parking enforcement officers, and two civilian employees. Whereas, in 2019, Melrose Police Department. It handled 25,188 calls for service, responded to 2,895 emergency 911 calls, initiated 230 criminal cases by way of arrest or summons, 58 civil abuse and harassment prevention orders issued 306 criminal and civil motor vehicle citations and 898 motor vehicle operator warnings. Whereas in 2019 the Melrose Police Department sponsored and supported 10 community events. Whereas the COVID-19 pandemic has placed additional demands on the Melrose Police department and exposed its members to a novel virus at great personal risk and whereas each and every day our police officers risk their personal safety for

▶ 25:50 Robb Stewart: the health and welfare of the general public, whereas the Melrose City Council expresses our sincere appreciation to the men and women of the Melrose Police department for their hard work selflessness bravery sacrifice on behalf city of melrose be it resolved we the members of the melrose city council do hereby recognize this week in the city of melrose and publicly salute the men and women who've committed their lives to public safety in our community and in communities across the nation and in recognition thereof Be it further resolved that this 21st day of May, in the year 2020, a copy of this resolution be spread upon the records of the Marlborough City Council. With this in mind, Chairman, I ask that you recognize Councilor McMaster.

▶ 26:53 Shawn M. MacMaster: Thank you, Mr. Chairman. Thank you, Councilor Stewart. I'd like to particularly thank Councilor Stewart for partnering with me on this resolution. and I'd like to welcome Chief Lyle and the other representatives of the Millard Police Department who are with us tonight. I also want to acknowledge former Board of Aldermen President Jennifer Lemmerman. As many of you know, former President Lemmerman sponsored this resolution in prior years and I had the pleasure of serving as her co-sponsor. This year, Consulate Wood and I, in honor of her and her connection to the city of Melrose, added the name of her brother, MIT police officer, Sean Collier, to the resolution, which we intend to have stand as we go forward

▶ 27:43 Shawn M. MacMaster: in future years on this resolution. We felt that was fitting, and like I said, a way to continue to involve former President Lemmerman in the process that she started. This is, as Councilor Foote said, has been a very difficult and challenging time. for the Melrose Police Department in terms of adapting and adjusting to policing during the COVID-19 pandemic. As he said, this is placing our officers at additional risk to what they already face when they come to work each and every day. So we thank you for your service. It's also, and I think President Grigoraitis from her professional work similarities, she and I encounter in our work outside of this chamber is sensitive to the issue of domestic violence.

▶ 28:36 Shawn M. MacMaster: And it's not lost on, I know, President Kyrgyz and I of the challenge that isolation in homes presents to victims of domestic violence. And neither is it lost on us domestic violence calls are the most dangerous calls for police officers to respond. So, you know, really applaud you for all that you do the way that you adjust and you do some with such grace under pressure. Finally, I do also want to acknowledge we have other law enforcement partners mostly with the Melrose Police Department to keep us safe in this community. We certainly have the Mass State Police who patrol the Fellsway, which includes part of my ward and Ward 5, and I know some of Consulate Stewart and Consulate Kermantose's ward.

▶ 29:27 Shawn M. MacMaster: We also have the Mass Environmental Police, which patrols part of the, or has jurisdiction over the Fellsway on certain matters, including areas of the ward. And finally, the Middlesex Sheriff's Office, who we work closely with, and I know that the Chief would attest to this, as it relates to our work with NEMLAC, which is the regional SWAT team. So, I just also wanted to recognize our other police partners who work closely with the Miller's Police Department. Again, thank you all for your support. Do you have anything you want to add, say, or I don't know if Timmy or Robert want to say anything? Can you hear me? can you hear me okay yes oh i'm sorry i can't hear you should you want to say if you were

▶ 30:24 and i would like to not forget our transit police department that covers the commuter rail main street and all the bus routes throughout our community i would like to thank councilor Stewart and co-sponsor councilor mcmaster for recognizing 2020 law enforcement week throughout Melrose and our country. Most importantly, I appreciate both of you for recognizing those lives lost throughout country every year. While the community in the country is seeking refuge at home, public safety continues to perform all the responsibilities amidst of this complicated, precarious situation with honor and distinction in our community. want to reiterate thanking all our officers for their commitment and their resiliency

▶ 31:11 i would like to recognize lieutenant tim maher our president of the superior officers union and officer rob mann iressa rowe at the middle school and the president of the performance association would you like to say anything chief i think you did a great job um yeah I just want to say thank you for taking the time letting the city know we're working 24 hours a day you know I'd like to say something else to some of the men and women on those police department have been working very hard since the pandemic started some of them 16 hours a day and um we're out there we're on the front lines per se we have to come home to our families and we have our loved ones at home too spouses who have to stay home with the kids some of them

▶ 32:07 Paul Brodeur: aren't working some of them have lost jobs and we we appreciate them very much we love them very much and i just want to commend the spouses and commend the men and women of the police department they're doing a terrific job and i hope that they keep up the good work so i just want everybody to know that so i would appreciate all the backup and the support continuing to make the miller's police department a great place it's a superb police department thank you thank you yeah brother did you have anything you wanted to add uh i'll try to be brief thank you mr chairman i do want to thank officer man and lieutenant maher and the chief for in particular for the you know to make sure the door gets back to the entire department and their families because as officer man said

▶ 32:51 Paul Brodeur: kind of like being in like being in military service this is a vocation where your whole family gets involved your whole family leaves with you when you go out to work and we want to see everyone come home come home safe I particularly want to commend the chief and the department for their commitment to community policing community policing is what it's all about in a place like Melrose and you know creates a level of comfort and trust with the residents that is so important that I don't think exists in every department or in every community Massachusetts or across the Commonwealth and your policing has certainly changed over the years and these guys can tell you certainly better than I can even though I had a brief amount of time as a

▶ 33:40 Paul Brodeur: prosecutor the range of things that they deal with from addiction to you know you're the kind of what we all think of as crime but domestic violence as as council McMaster spoke of you know it really does really does run the gamut the job gets more complicated each and every day then you layer something like covid on top of it and it's more grist for the mill but they continue uh to step up and you know we have a terrific department i also want to thank because it goes beyond is that you know the incident down near uh down near pine banks not only did the morris police handle it professionally but you saw their brother and sister officers from around from our surrounding communities come and support that effort I think it's really important to to

▶ 34:36 Paul Brodeur: point that out that there is that that camaraderie and support across departments that makes our job and really makes their job better more successful and finally I do want to echo the thoughts of Sean Collier and Jen They were extraordinarily close. He was passionately committed to his job, pursuing a career in law enforcement, and he didn't even get out of the gate before his life was taken. And I know the family thinks about him every day. And I know that we all do too. And it's a credit really to this community and Jen's family that that tragedy has really turned into a remarkable rallying point with Memorial at MIT and with folks continuing to remember with charity events going on all the time.

▶ 35:32 Cory Thomas: And that's really what it's all about because that really is an appreciation of the job the sacrifice of the gentleman here and the rest of the force i do want to thank you very much on behalf of the behalf of the city thanks very much thank you mayor thomas thank you mr chairman uh thank you mr mayor chief lyle lieutenant maher and patrolman man for being here uh again briefly you know i just want to thank you all um during this public health emergency every call you go on right now you don't know what's on the other side of a traffic stop or or any kind of domestic call um mayor broder touched on it momentarily uh ago when he talked about the strength in the community uh there's dozens and dozens of police officers in melrose that are from melrose lieutenant

▶ 36:24 Jen Grigoraitis: martin one of them um too many to name right now uh but the types of community that you guys provide uh it's a wonderful thing um we just recently saw our new uh patrol cruiser um with the autism sign coming back into melrose that's a great thing uh looking forward to seeing that in circulation and uh thank you for all you do thank you see any other hands go up uh thank you chairman snella and thank you all for being here tonight i just wanted to echo everyone's comments. I'm proud to represent Ward 6 with the police headquarters located there. I appreciate all the time that Chief Lyle takes to assist us and to assist this community. And to echo Counselor McMaster, what I think is my day job, though sometimes I think it's my side job to

▶ 37:16 this, is working with victims of crime. And I know how challenging those calls can be and how much that has an impact on you and your families, yet that the job comes home with you. And particularly now with covet it comes home with you at a whole new level so thank you for what you do on behalf of our community every day we have a motion to place on file motion to recommend that we place on file mr chairman second thank you so council mcmaster motion to recommend place on file second by councilor mcnaught councilor mcnaught yes councilor Stewart yes councilor thomas yes councilor Jamaleddine president Grigoraitis yes chairman sanella yes 11 yes oh thank you gentlemen thank you chairman snell i just while we're transitioning speakers i just wanted to

▶ 38:44 Jen Grigoraitis: do a point of personal privilege and recognize madam circuit committee's kristin foote for her graduation from the mma suffolk leadership program she has spent the past i believe it's 25 fridays in class with an additional six hours of homework every week um and has never missed a beat in her duties for the council and we are i know we are all so collectively i'm glad this is being recorded um so and then i have one more request which is that given that we have mayor broder with us and i believe he wishes to speak to budget item 121 under order 2020-89 I would take a motion to take or the budget item 121 of order 2020-89 out of order I got motion by President Grigoraitis to take item 121 2020-89 seconded by Councilor McNaught. Madam Clerk, please call the roll.

▶ 39:55 Councilor Migliorelli? Yes. Councilor Tramontozzi? Yes. Councilor McMaster? Yes. Councilor McNaught? Yes. Councilor Eccles? Yes. Councilor Garipay? Yes. Councilor Stewart? Yes. Councilor Thomas? Yes. Councilor Jamaleddine? Yes. President Grigoraitis? Yes. Chairman Cinella? Yes. Reverend Yes. Mayor Broda, the screen is yours. Thank you very much, Mr. Chairman. So it's my understanding that the council had some questions or concerns about the $18,500 budget item that falls under Office of the Mayor. I am certainly happy to answer. questions that you may have yes thank you thank you mr. mayor for for coming in regarding that I think the concern is that amount for community outreach and what events in particular with is this

▶ 41:11 Paul Brodeur: 18 500 dollars to cover and in light of a lot of the cancellation of some of these events due to COVID-19 pandemic is this all is this money expected to be fully allocated and appropriated for the fiscal 2021 year Thank You council obviously the you know the decision about whether or not it gets appropriated is up to you all I think my chief of staff from what I understand I wasn't able to watch the meeting but explained in some detail what the thinking is around this and I can certainly try to get and like you a little bit more on the on the growth involving the student participatory budgeting process which accounts for the all of the increase of a line item that has been in the budget for as long as I can remember and I regrettably go back

▶ 42:09 Paul Brodeur: quite a ways the events are things like kids club the kindergarten buttons for for that that the senior spring fling healthy Melrose which is going virtual this year folks didn't know that summer stroll which looks like we will not be able to do Four Corners music festival and sometimes some one-offs we did a senior discount event once upon a time in Memorial Hall that supported that money and in fact and supported that event and um going back probably 10 years now when i was in the legislature we organized a veterans job fair and kind of um training session if you will to support veterans coming back into the workforce both identifying jobs for them and acquiring interview skills resume building things like that and also letting them know about

▶ 43:06 Paul Brodeur: benefits that they might have access to that they might have been unaware of obviously we're in a bit of of some turmoil the history of the fund is that it has never been parceled out in more precise detail than the way it is you see before you and we obviously don't know what the future is going to hold in terms of events i expect we will have opportunities to do some things a little bit later in the fiscal year support some of the traditional events like home for the holidays or um victorian fair not this september but things like that um and to give you an example i guess of why flexibility is important or why you don't exactly know what's coming up um i'm delighted to say as i just was able to confirm this earlier today that as part

▶ 43:58 Paul Brodeur: of our memorial day ceremonies this year we are going to light memorial hall with gold lighting in recognition of our gold star families that was not budgeted in any particular line item we will be taking the funds that's roughly an 800 expense that there's no way we could have anticipated that is coming out of that budget in order to be a little bit more creative given the circumstances, about the way we're going to honor our veterans this year. Again, I'm not sure I can provide any more information, but certainly happy to answer any questions that you might have. Well, I do appreciate that. I think the Council appreciates that explanation. One of the concerns that I know I have is going through this budget process and the uncertainty as to what revenue sources we're

▶ 44:53 John N. Tramontozzi: going to have to uh to balance our budget i i just a few comments if i could uh mr chairman uh on the budget itself while we have the mayor here and other department heads um i just wanted to um just just to just make a couple comments about the state and the budget uh state senate that President Karen Spilka gave details about the severity of the state's coronavirus-related budget crisis this past Tuesday night. Many of you may have seen it, an article in The Patch. She also explained the type of aid cities and towns can expect from the state when fiscal year 2021 begins. Spilka told a meeting of the Framingham City Council School Committee Tuesday night state budget deficit would be between

▶ 45:46 John N. Tramontozzi: five billion and eight billion dollars. That estimate is in line with the six billion revenue gap forecast by the Massachusetts Taxpayers Association. The 44.6 billion budget released by Governor Charlie Baker in January can't at this point be forgotten about, she said. Do not use the governor's January number when he came out with the budget. It's simply not relevant anymore. She went on to say that um she could not give a clear estimate of when a state budget might be complete and the cities and towns across the state are clamoring for details about what type of state aid will come in fiscal 2021 um and of course we're having difficulty without that information and budgeting um she said like you in cities and towns across the state we are not certain what we can do in

▶ 46:37 John N. Tramontozzi: fiscal 2021 uh spilka said uh framing him counselor counselor um how is this relevant to what we we brought them if I could have you know if I can have more minutes I'm getting there because this would this is I think relevant for the the budget process as we're going along framing here for example has begun laying off off city workers and Natick officials are talking about closing a school and slashing other parts of the school budget regarding the city of Melrose budget I want to commend the mayor for putting forth a budget which is I'm sure very difficult during this period of time to put forth and try to balance in a fiscally reasonable manner. You mentioned that the revenue prediction is that we're going to be getting the full

▶ 47:27 John N. Tramontozzi: 2.5% Prop 2.5 plus any new spending to fund this budget. But you also said that pursuant to your memo that if this crisis continues for an extended period of time and impacts the ability of certain departments to operate at 100% capacity or impacts the ability of the city to fund the critical services these departments provide, then I will be forced to consider the need to implement layoffs or an employee furlough program. If we arrive at that point, we simply have no other choice. My fear is that my prediction is we may end up getting to that point. What I'm going to be asking all the department heads as we move forward in this budget is to help us is there anything in their budgets that they couldn't cut two

▶ 48:16 Paul Brodeur: percent three percent anything and so that that comes to your budget mr. mayor and that's why the we're looking at the line items in the community outreach is one of those areas that we thought there might be a possibility for cutting one of the other areas as well as that sick leave incentive and that was something that was brought up at the last meeting and if we can have an explanation of that that would be appreciated let me interrupt so I was I was invited here to talk about a thirteen thousand dollar five hundred line item that grew to eighteen thousand five hundred dollars not to address the overall budget that having been said I'm happy to indulge this somewhat as you know I think I've been I have been on a constant basis relaying to you the

▶ 49:06 Paul Brodeur: projections and accounts from the folks like the Mass Taxpayers Foundation that producing some of the revenue projections and working towards that consensus revenue figure I will obviously continue to do that it's as important to me as it is to you we have tried to make this budget as lean as possible so i don't think you'll see large areas for abilities to cut that would obviously be up to you in this area um speaking directly to the you know to the eighteen thousand five hundred dollar line item that does include a contemplated uh outreach to students that is what we would like to do with the money we would like to do that program and support the other things we have described and and now it is now it is up to you folks to decide whether or not

▶ 49:59 Paul Brodeur: you want you want to have want us to have the ability to spend that money if if revenues get really bad I think it probably goes without saying that dramatic cuts will happen we do not feel like we're in that position right now we are again have created some hedges in case there is some reduction of state aid but let's face it if if state aid goes down 50% this budget doesn't fly I'm sure you all know that I don't need to tell you that I think they said that both in the memo and in the budget address and that to the extent the extent those comments I understand that the sick leave incentive piece has been covered a little bit and that Marianne long sent a memo that is very much in line with the memo the council received last year about the sick leave incentive

▶ 50:59 Jeff McNaught: piece if I suppose we can go into more detail on that if you'd like again I'm not sure what else left there is to say about that and certainly as long we'll be happy to go into as much detail as you want about that when her when she is before you to discuss the HR budget I'm usually really good about that my apologies Thank You mr. chairman Thank You mr. mayor for being here although I do share the same concerns with council tram and tozi and how careful we have to with this budget I am mindful of the fact of how much we're increasing it overall and how much is in this line item fortunately or unfortunately a lot of my daily job for the last 10 years or longer have been focused around event

▶ 52:01 Jeff McNaught: planning and community outreach and I can tell you that 18 5 won't cover a a small event sometimes. So I think where we may be a little hazy in this instances, we've had a lot of ideas thrown out as to what that 18-5 can go towards, you know, and we heard that it could go to police details if we try to do different things downtown, you know, surrounding boosting the reopening of businesses, which I think would be a great idea. Working with the high school students, I think would be a great idea. All of the programs that we've heard about, I think it's a matter of us just being comfortable knowing that we're going to use 18-5 responsibly towards some or all of those things. I don't think it's the largest line item that we should

▶ 52:56 Jeff McNaught: be wasting much time on. It's a very, in the grand scheme of things, a very small amount of money. That's all I have to say. Thank you. Councilor, I very much appreciate the comments and you are right to do that. Again, this is a line item that has been around for a long time. This is obviously my first budget as mayor. I don't recall this level of questioning. There's no problem with that. You're right to question every nickel, but at some point, your decision is whether or not you're going to, quite frankly, trust the administration to responsibly spend this amount of money and that is something that that is up to you thank you chairman uh mr mayor just circling back on the fact that this is for

▶ 53:52 Jen Grigoraitis: community outreach and i think we all know that that outreach during covid looks very different and i think we as a council have struggled with it as we've tried to figure out how to continue to reach the public while in a remote format and i anticipate that that's going to result in a lot of increased printing costs as we try to reach people in their homes through mail or leafleting like we did with the mask so is that could you speak if there are any plans around that with this money certainly not specific because it depends on the nature of the event but you know as an example and i don't want to tie this to the funding source but when we did the uh when the community really did the mask distribution you know we recognized we wanted to

▶ 54:35 Paul Brodeur: hit every household that was an important thing and we tried as best we could to present it in as many languages as possible which is not something that melrose historically has done that is not to poo-poo anything that's gone before but that is an important thing to be able to do and to council mcnaught's point almost regardless of what the nature of a future event might be it is going to be more complicated because we do have to think about potentially enforcement we have to think about social distancing you know we we really can't for the foreseeable future close main street and do a victorian fair type activity can we play around with main street in ways that might be able to help business as we roll through the phases

▶ 55:26 Paul Brodeur: potentially i'm not saying that is exactly what we'll do but that is the kind of flexibility that we need into into again to council mcnaught's point i don't think this money is going to go particularly far um it's going to be more expensive to do some of the things that we've done in the past um i suppose on balancing that up there are some things we obviously won't be able to do at all we would like to seek replacement events for things like certainly the intergenerational dance is obviously not something that could possibly happen in the way it has happened in the past would we like to put some creative energy into that recognizing that you know 500 or a thousand dollars that could be tapped to do something creative that we don't

▶ 56:14 Robb Stewart: know how to build yet it'd be good to have that resource obviously you know if we don't we can't and i'm not sure what else to say about that thank you counselor stewart thank you mr chair uh mr mayor i i just want to reiterate points that i made with Mr. Prendergast when he was here during our last discussion on this particular topic. I was thrilled to hear about the $5,000 additional added for the participatory events for the kids. Anybody that has a child that's been going through what they've been going through has been significantly impacted and if there's anything like that that can be sponsored by the city to be able to encourage them to figure out how we can make their lives more enriched uh make their lives to be able to to deal with uh this situation i think it's a great

▶ 57:16 Robb Stewart: thing i think it's well worth uh the investment i plan on supporting it uh and i i just want to comment and reiterate that i think that's um uh you know the benefits way out really the risk of the 37% increase on this fairly small amount. Thank you, Mr. Chair. Yeah, I want to thank you, Councilor. Is that is an idea that is not unique to Melrose. We haven't done it yet. There are, believe it or not, there are some communities, I always use Cambridge as an example. Cambridge is a lot different than Melrose, I understand that. But they do a participatory budgeting process with over a million dollars in play. I'm certainly not suggesting that, but the idea where the state has made a commitment

▶ 58:08 Robb Stewart: to civic education and a requirement around civic education. And I think we can all agree that that is a critical area that everyone needs to focus on, making sure that people are fully engaged, they are civically and civilly engaged is really important. and and to allow kids i'm a big believer in allowing our students to take ownership and to have responsibility uh and that that is the mechanism this is just kind of a baby step mechanism uh for making that happen i understand times are tight uh but i do think obviously i wouldn't i wouldn't have suggested the idea that it can be a real a real step forward for our for for our students and being able to really engage in a real practical and important real life level

▶ 59:02 Shawn M. MacMaster: in how government works, how taxpayer money is spent. Councilor McMaster. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. Good evening, Mr. Mayor. Thank you for being here. Thank you also for your work on this budget. I did wanna address two issues that I spoke about at our last meeting, the sick time incentive and the outreach. I have less concern about the outreach, but I do still have some questions. I think as you know, Mr. Mayor, one of the areas that fell into my purview at the district attorney's office was outreach. And I completely agree with you and with what Councilor McNaught said is that the money being allocated on the surface, 37% may sound like a lot, but at the end of the day, you look at the actual amount being five thousand it's not the concern that I had

▶ 59:57 Shawn M. MacMaster: wasn't and and I do understand how things worked historically having at least two prior budget cycles is that any type of an increase to me would call for more than a number and I do trust that the money if approved will be spent well and i think rob uh excuse me counselor uh stuart referenced this is the there just wasn't a description at the last meeting and i think he called for a categorical breakdown uh a good faith estimate of what this might look like but beyond that the the concern that i have is that and i said this at the last meeting that five thousand dollars i'm just not sure is going to be enough and frankly i'd rather allocate the money now than and as you know we can't increase than

▶ 1:00:46 Shawn M. MacMaster: have the administration come back before us with a supplemental budget request at a time where we could potentially be in a very different financial state and then how then are we able to do the type of outreach that we may need to do as I understand it the $5,000 is for the participatory budgeting and I think that is a great process I'm a big supporter of civic ed but then I'm left to wonder about how we will be able to afford the costs of the COVID-related outreach that Mr. Prendergast described if that $5,000 is simply for participatory budgeting. So with respect to the outreach, Mr. Mayor, my question is, how is that going to be enough? And the second part of the question is, do you anticipate that you may be coming before us again for supplemental request

▶ 1:01:40 Paul Brodeur: relative to uh outreach and um so i guess i'll start with that that question thank you um sure again as you know this is a this is a budget item that has been in the budget for a long long time i'm somewhat delighted that it is getting uh such a remarkable amount of attention compared to years past because again i think it is important um for folks both here and at home to understand uh what is going on i don't anticipate coming back unless there is a dramatic need and quite frankly there are a lot of needs as you all know that this city has um that we're not going to address because of the because of this because of this crisis um you know if there is we will certainly endeavor to turn over turn over every rock in terms of

▶ 1:02:37 Paul Brodeur: looking at some of the cares act money fema and some of the coronavirus belief money to address any number of things um but you know this is this is a fairly narrow budget and every dollar that that we we spend on this is something that takes away from something else it is it is certainly a priority but I do not anticipate asking for more unless an extraordinary need arises I can't again I can't stress enough about how much we are in uncharted territory with this thank you for that mr. mayor with respect to the participatory budgeting again which which I think is great is there a reason we would limit that just to high school students I certainly think we should involved in but what is the vision for that and um why might it not include taxpayers as part of

▶ 1:03:32 Paul Brodeur: that process well because it's for students i guess it didn't to be not to be flipped but to be simply it's designed to be a student engagement process that's also why it's not a huge amount of money and obviously um if the kids suggested something the student suggested something that's out of bounds that we wouldn't do it candidly it started the idea started as a ten thousand dollar um program with five thousand for high school and five thousand for middle school uh of course being mindful of the fact that we have students in the community that aren't part of the melrose public schools and started some inquiry with the folks um at the school about the middle school in the high school about how this might be able to work and it is not

▶ 1:04:23 Shawn M. MacMaster: fully planned out and that there was a lot of concern about exactly how we're going to figure it out is this something that would have to be stipended you know we and we didn't get that far before before covid came and so it it is a work in progress what I do know is without the five thousand dollars we're not going to do anything mr. chairman I had I had one additional question I'm sorry I was on mute and we have a lot of people waiting to come before us this evening and I'm happy to come back mr. chairman if you want to if you prefer to go through the other councils but I did have one chairman and excuse me I did have one more question and didn't use all of my time wrap it up please I also geology I had councilman McMaster thank you the last question mr. mayor so

▶ 1:05:20 Shawn M. MacMaster: I guess I should say the outreach based on well you know what you've represented I'm inclined to support that tonight my larger concern is about the the sick time incentive and if you could extend our thanks to this long for the memo that she provided us dated May 19th I still had a question about it though Because as I understand it, or at least as it's written in the memo, she describes this being something that has been offered since the 1980s and says employees are reimbursed for unused sick time, providing they're actively employed on December 31st in accordance with a calculation schedule. And it looks like it's not just for not calling in sick, but if you, for instance, use less than 24.9% of available sick days, you receive $50 a day for remaining unused days.

▶ 1:06:10 Paul Brodeur: So, essentially, the incentive, just so I understand it, Mr. Mayor, is that… Let me stop you there, Councilor, because that is something that Mary Ann Long can speak to. Here's what I do know about the program and to the extent that it is helpful. Again, it is the same program that has been around for several years. Again, I think the memo mirrors what you considered last year in terms of the budget. And, you know, the program works the way it works. And the way it appears in the budget is you basically have, as I understand it, you have to assume that everyone will take full advantage of it. Otherwise, it is unfunded. not everyone will so presumably there will be some that is essentially funded

▶ 1:06:58 Shawn M. MacMaster: to the max I would leave it to the both Marion long and to the CFO to speak to that but that is that is essentially the way that you know the extent of my knowledge about the actually mr. mayor we're voting on it tonight though so that's why I posed the follow-up question to the to the memo is that it's Just one of the questions is if you don't call in sick and you're reimbursed at the daily rate, you're getting a payout for not calling out sick. Are you still rolling over those days? So there's still some uncertainty. I do appreciate her effort to get this to us, but there's still some uncertainty about what specifically it is. um yeah i would say so the all i guess all they can the most help i can be tonight

▶ 1:07:54 Maya Jamaleddine: is to say it is the exact same program the council approved in prior years thank you thank you mr chairman and thank you mr mayor for uh coming before us today um i um actually I appreciate all the efforts in trying to be creative and supporting and recovering our community after this pandemic. We all know that, you know, we're very optimistic about, you know, having flattened the curve. However, we are cautious about the second wave. Do you anticipate that um if if we have this second wave um would you still be using this um fund or uh would you you know would it be going to the free cash um thank you for the question it kind of depends on the nature of the of the second wave again if we have a second wave that causes

▶ 1:09:02 Paul Brodeur: um a public policy response like the one we have right now then quite frankly all bets are off because that means uh you know the revenue projections we we're seeing right now that are pretty dire are no good and are probably going to get worse and we'll have to make significant budgetary adjustments that that are hard to anticipate at this time that's why i don't want want to get on my high horse about the need for social distancing but the extent that folks are watching the message that we are you know we are not out of the woods that there are some changes coming on Monday but the best practices are still the practices that we've been following around physical distancing and wearing of masks and the sanitary advice folks have been giving

▶ 1:09:53 Paul Brodeur: and the tagline has changed from safe at home to safer at home, and folks really need to be mindful of that. Yeah, that would lead me to a second question, if you don't mind, Chairman. Would this community outreach and community events would be targeted or the purpose is to support our small businesses or is it to help our community and residents? All of the above. it's flexible though i will say this to be clear about um you know business support as you know from our earlier discussions the city cannot make you know cannot provide direct financial support to businesses but what we can do are support things like you know i'll use as an example you know a reconfiguration of main street or you know the city dollars support the victorian fair which

▶ 1:10:51 in turn support our small businesses but that we still do not have the ability to do something like you know a small business grant or loan program just to be clear about that okay thank you thank you mr chairman um having heard from two of the three members of this department and um having the modest increase be explained at this time i would move uh to recommend the bottom line I think Councilor Thomas had a question. I know that thank you but we do so we have a motion to move the bottom line seconded by Councilor Thomas. Councilor Thomas did you want to say something? Thank you Mr. Chairman. Mr. Mayor thanks for staying around and answering all these questions. I'm excited for the community outreach program. I'm excited

▶ 1:11:48 Cory Thomas: to you know see us get back to you know whatever the new normal is going to look like um i'm excited to see you know a tip a traditional melrose and helping our community and our small businesses uh i'm also excited about uh what the high school students gonna come up with in the participatory uh budgeting you know we've got a lot of creative kids in our schools um you know you and i both know a couple of kids in schools very well um you know and i'm excited to see what they do come up with um whether this is the time the place to talk about this now uh but i'm gonna go back to what councilman mcmaster talked about with the sick leave incentive um i was able to get some information as well 227 employees took advantage of this in 2019 um 2009 employees

▶ 1:12:32 Cory Thomas: took advantage of it in 2020. um a number of employees have been working from home the last two and a half months um is there concern either in human resources or in the mayor's office that a number of people uh that work for the city right now are accruing more sick time than usual and potentially more people going to going to be using this uh incentive you know over the 209 and 227. yeah yeah am i am i worried that they're essentially that there's going to be some fraud or gaming the system no no not at all not fraud or gaming the system but just more people are accruing sick time people aren't using sick time right now well that here's the way it's supposed to work um is if you whether you are working from home or coming into city hall or going to

▶ 1:13:25 Paul Brodeur: the city yard or the police station wherever wherever your office happens to be or you are working at home you are at work and if you do not feel well or you're taking a vacation day or whatever the case may be you're taking a vacation day um and the fact of the location of your work um isn't particularly relevant using an example that's not directly like my my wife has decided to take tomorrow off and so i don't even know exactly what that means and knowing her the way i do it means she's going to work for like six hours instead of eight or ten or whatever that whatever the case may be um but it is you know we are the i think that the employees have been terrific they have been stepping up so i i do not have a huge concern that there's going to be

▶ 1:14:18 Jeff McNaught: um an unusual exposure because of the way we've shifted around the workplace i hope that i hope that's helpful i hope that answers the question it's very helpful you know and i'll follow up again with human resources when uh when they come up thank you sir okay so we've now spent 45 minutes on this issue we have several people waiting uh to speak before us tonight for the first time i think we have counselor mcnaught that like to say something briefly thank you mr chairman i'll be very brief i just thought that it would make sense and i know we already have a motion before us but it would make sense to add the memorandum from director long to the to the record um and i suppose i should wait until after this we'll dispose of that uh the motion we

▶ 1:15:05 Shawn M. MacMaster: we have on the floor. We'll get to that. Anybody else for the first time? Councilman McMaster for the second time. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. At this time, I'd also just like to invoke Rule 37B respectfully and also just to manage our time. There's a matter under debate. It's no longer a back and forth with the administration, with all due respect to the mayor. We're debating right now, so it's not a Q&A period anymore. Since this is on discussion, I'm fine with the outreach, and I understand Council Eccles has made a motion which is duly seconded. My concern is the reimbursement for the sick time, and Ms. Long is not before us tonight. She provided a memo. I think we could have had further clarity if she was here tonight, and I just don't think there is enough information or enough candor on exactly what this is to support it.

▶ 1:15:58 Shawn M. MacMaster: So we have two options. If somebody wants to withdraw the second in the motion, we can look to see if there's a motion to reduce the bottom line. Other than that, I do realize there's a motion that's before us that if not withdrawn, we do have to vote on. But I won't be supporting it because of the lack of information. Same point I made at the last appropriations meeting. I do appreciate the information that was in front of us. I appreciate that there's a history of how things have been handled. but I do rail has an appreciate statements that the mayor has made in the past about this being a new administration and the way that the city does things moving forward is not necessarily always going to be the way

▶ 1:16:40 Shawn M. MacMaster: that things are done that things have been done in in the past I think right now the chairman the idea of incentivizing that employees work by paying them a stipend at the end of the year is not something that is going to be palatable I think to the the general public especially when we have so many members of the public who are not working who aren't accruing sick time or a paycheck at that so I am concerned about you know the idea that we're essentially incentivizing people during this very difficult time to work and not call in sick and I would just finally say Mr. Chairman that you know we're the fiduciary body of this city and I understand that our employees work very hard but as the mayor has said tonight and on occasions and as Senator Lewis

▶ 1:17:40 Shawn M. MacMaster: said when he came before us a few weeks ago is that from a fiscal perspective essentially the sky is falling and we need to have a cushion and that cushions not going to be there unless we as a council is not only willing to scrutinize what's in front of us but also scrutinize practices that perhaps have occurred in the past. So based on that, based on the additional questions I have and just the general uneasiness of incentivizing people to work and the need to try to save some money in light of the state of the economy and the fiscal uncertainty and the possibility of state aid being cut um i can't support um uh the budget if we move forward on the bottom line tonight thank you mr chairman mr president you're

▶ 1:18:26 Shawn M. MacMaster: still under suspension i'm out mr chairman yes um so it would be appropriate for me to speak uh i appreciate the comments jack we we under 37 b the the mayor spoken already spoken more than twice on it and i think i i think it it's there's a matter on the table we're debating it right now it's not a back and forth i understand that but and i will say under suspension of the rules that i appreciate the comments i am shocked i must say that the word lack of candor was used to describe the administration's approach i think that is a disappointing tone to set as we go through a a very challenging budget you reference miss long she's not here tonight to answer the question so there there are questions that you've considered you're you're not able to answer but

▶ 1:19:17 John N. Tramontozzi: we're being asked to vote on a item tonight respectfully uh for which we don't have all the answers i don't know how we proceed mr chairman um actually i was going to make a motion to you know i think it might be time that maybe we eliminate this the sick leave incentive for all departments um and uh so i was going to contemplate that and and frankly i was going to make a motion to uh reduce the bottom line by 1 250. and the reason i was going to do that is because i think we need to set the example for the other departments that come before us because i think this might be an area where we can we can eliminate for this fiscal year um and i think based on the memo from miss long um i think that can be done because this is just a a reimbursable

▶ 1:20:09 John N. Tramontozzi: uh a new sick time uh that is um is a is a perk to the uh uh the uh the employees so um that's what i was gonna do um and i and i think you know we we should be we should be given the opportunity to address any of the issues uh whether or not we want to uh reduce any of the uh the line items before we uh move on the bottom line so i think that the motion to uh recommend is a little bit premature at this point we have uh president Grigoraitis thank you um i'm comfortable moving forward with the motion to recommend but i also just to a few comments my understanding is that the sick leave incentive program is involved is a part of every union contract that the city has so i i mean i think we're pretty limited in our ability to eliminate that for many city employees

▶ 1:21:04 Jen Grigoraitis: without entering into contract renegotiations. So I think we're kind of making something a little bit grander than it can be. And as both a public employee and someone who supervises public employees and someone who cares very deeply about the hard work of public employees, especially during COVID, the term incentive, everyone is incentivized to work. That's what salary and all those things are about and i i think to somehow demonize that for the hard-working employees of the city of melrose who have responded to this and something that my understanding is that this council has passed for decades going back to the 1980s according to marion long's memo um if i don't quite understand what we're doing unless there's something that has significantly

▶ 1:21:51 Mark Garipay: changed from years past to this year other than what we all know is an unprecedented fiscal situation that none of us have a crystal ball about right now thank you yes thank you thank you mr chairman thank you miss uh maya broda for being a uh i appreciate your explanation on the community outreach that was one of the questions i had um i'm i'm comfortable with it growing up growing up in melrose and seeing watching the budget process over the last number of years I appreciate you sending down a budget that is as late as they always have been in certain items when you do see an increase but but I I'm inclined to support this right now by my caution to to just eliminating this line item on the incentive is I would assume that this is part of our compensation

▶ 1:22:54 Mark Garipay: and HR plan for the current year and I don't know that we can if that has been changed at all for next year or how that typically works I probably want to before we go eliminate line items on the budget I probably want to hear from HR and and probably our city solicitor just to see what what actually is is legal to do because this is an incentive that's been been in there I know it is next year I don't know how many of the employees currently all the collective bargaining ones we'd have to probably assume keep in there but some of the other ways that are not falling under collective bargaining I don't know what they're out what the policy currently is and not in morals and do we have to vote

▶ 1:23:39 Jack Eccles: on the HR policy every year I mean compensation policy that's that's my only concern on that so I have a concern on pulling that out at this moment thank you mr. chairman I will not be withdrawing my motion at this time I feel personally having read the collective bargaining agreement that's posted on the city website and human resources director Marianne Long's memo that I understand the sick leave incentive I believe that there are four items on our agenda tonight they contain the sick leave incentive so if we felt that it was a line item that would hinder us from voting on a majority of our agenda tonight I feel that we should have should have done more to try and figure out what exactly these line items are and at this time I will not be the

▶ 1:24:33 John N. Tramontozzi: driver thank you one final thing we we can move the we can move the bottom line forward and we can always make further adjustments before we vote for the final approval of the entire budget. I would hope that by that time we would hear from Ms. Long as to, because I think the incentive program is both for union contracts, and I understand the concern about the union contracts, and I agree with that, but non-union employees are not necessarily entitled to this particular incentive program as part of a bargaining union contract. So we can consider moving it forward, just to get moving on to the next budgets, but I think we need to have Ms. Wong come before us to give us the explanation to enable us

▶ 1:25:28 Leila Migliorelli: to fully appreciate that line item. I'm going to address it with the other budgets that come before us and move it along with anticipation that if if we want to eliminate it uh before the final budget is uh passed we can do so yeah i just wanted to echo what counselor uh president Grigoraitis has said that this is this is a this is part of our um union budgets our salaries i just did a quick total of the sick leave incentive in the entire budget we're talking about like i don't know but over 250 000 of of this you know size budget the majority of sick and leave incentive going to firefighters and police officers i i the rest of the line items in the budgets we're talking like two thousand dollars here i just think that if you know this is something that has been going on um in mellors

▶ 1:26:26 Mark Garipay: for a while that we would have to address this separately um and i i just don't see the point of belaboring the entire budget process to do so uh constant gap page you have something else I was actually, Councilor Tramontozzi said what I was going to, I would say we could move the budget and we could always, I believe, deduct it at the end when we do a final passage of the total budget. But I think we still need to start moving. We've got a long number of items in front of us throughout the next few weeks. Thank you. We have a motion to move the bottom line by Councilor Eccles, seconded by Councilor Giannulli and Madam Clerk, please call the roll. councilman Migliorelli yes councilman tozy yes councilman mcmaster councilman mcnaught

▶ 1:27:17 Christopher Cinella: yes councilor eccles yes council Garipay yes councilor stewart yes councilor thomas yes councilor Jamaleddine yes president Grigoraitis yes Councilor sanella yes and yes one no quick time check one hour 27 minute recording next item on our agenda here is thanks for your time guys order number 2020-97 belarus police vehicle donation the maryland police request the city of belarus accept a vehicle donation from the metropolitan insurance company to be used by the murrow's police middle school sro to raise awareness for autism i just brought in chief lyle i was here to speak on this in a second yes if i could please thank you this is a project of officers from applegate can you all hear me yes this is a project of officer jim and applegate

▶ 1:28:26 he worked on this for some time this vehicle started last fall as a project by officer are obligate to recognize autism in our community and there's a number of police officers in the Melrose Police Department that are very sensitive to this program autism and awareness and I asked the City Council to accept this on behalf of the Melrose Police Department. I see any hands go up you can put your hands up again any questions for the chief around this order I'd make a motion to recommend for passage on discussion please call the roll really yes yes McMaster not yes sir Eccles that's a garipay yes Stuart yes yes yes chairman Sinella trying to say something yes thank you few yeses for council honest we have the police police in a revolving account number 269 thank you

▶ 1:30:13 thank you for this opportunity to present the department budget for FY 21 this past year just a history this past year started off very successful we had junior police academy where we had approximately 200 girls from the junior police academy we had the bicycle safety rodeo that was a huge success turned into national touch a truck it was very very successful victorian fair the rest of the year was fairly normal to us we did have a few incidents that were uh out of the ordinary i want to get in the specifics of but one was at El Pond and I will leave it at that and then the new year began and then COVID-19 hit us all. It certainly changed the dynamics of the police department, how we function

▶ 1:31:03 day to day. PPE is pretty much a day-to-day norm for us now. Responding to calls never changed. I commend one officer, went to a multi-dwelling unit, performed CPR on an individual, knock can twice fire came in and actually did an iv knock in and saved that person's life that was about two days ago and here we are today police department budget and i asked you for to pass it and this is a copy of my yes thank you for providing that and i'm open for questions dr thomas did you have a question or you just waited vice chair migliorelli were you do you If you have a comment, just wave it to Councilor Thomas. Anybody else on discussion? What is the will of the committee? Now this order, there needs to be two motions,

▶ 1:31:59 Shawn M. MacMaster: one for the budget and then the revolving account. So obtain those at this time, one at a time, please. Chairman Snell, I believe there were some hands from Councilors McMaster and Chairman Tozzi. Oh, I didn't see you. Okay, Councilor McMaster. I'm sorry, Mr. Chairman. Is there a motion on the floor? I've just done it. No, no, no. i didn't see anybody else raise their hand and what i was saying is we need for to move this two motions one budget one for the revolver a few questions uh mr chairman chief thanks for being here again chief um can you thank you for the powerpoint i think it was very well done um and i appreciate your effort in putting that together um with respect to the backfill um for for those uh

▶ 1:32:48 Shawn M. MacMaster: uh who may be familiar with how backfield uh works um if an officer calls it sick if he's on vacation training anything of the such um you have to backfill uh the position can you just describe what and why that's taken out of overtime money well we have a minimum manning agreement collective bargaining three officer minimum and anytime we go the wonder under that we have to we have to hire a replacement officer supervisors are somewhat different sometimes depending on the shift we can get away with one supervisor but generally on nights and weekends that's not possible so for instance if the day officer is assigned a court that day and the shift falls short we have to backfill them you also have to look at

▶ 1:33:39 other things too as well these officers are forced constantly if you look at our numbers for staffing levels officers assigned to patrol there's approximately 16 officers out of the 31 assigned to patrol and that really hurts us when one of them's out one of them's on vacation we automatically go below minimum and these guys are constantly excuse me all our officers are constantly working doubles and there's a fatigue factor that certainly sets in with all of them and if you look at details details are elective option for them that's not mandated but our shifts are mandated to fill. Does that answer your question, uh, counselor? Thank you, thank you, Chief. Chief, I was glad to see that there are three, um, officers, uh, being hired and if I recall,

▶ 1:34:27 Shawn M. MacMaster: either somewhere in the charter, it might actually be the administrative code, there's a, um, an actual, um, a maximum number of how many offices we're supposed to have. Right now, we have 46. Do you, do you know off the top of your head what that number should be? I know it very well. It's 61, by ordinance okay and chief based on the overtime uh budget do you feel that um respectively we might be able to save money on overtime costs if we hired more police officers certainly that's uh there's a catch-22 to that um there was a management study in 2011-12 and they looked at they looked at our entire budget our staffing levels and so forth and melrose is like many many communities in the commonwealth where city the city has opted to use

▶ 1:35:18 John N. Tramontozzi: overtime to fill shifts versus hiring and that's where the fatigue factor comes in if you hire offices you reduce overtime if you don't hire offices and use overtime obviously you're eliminating the benefit factor as well as a pension at some point in your career while I'll throw in the sick time buyback as well. Thank you, Chief. Councilor Ciamattosi. Thank you, Mr. Chairman, and thank you, Chief, for coming in on behalf of your budget. And again, I want to echo the Councilor McMaster's thanks for that PowerPoint presentation. I appreciate it. There's not much we can do with your budget because it is salaries or union negotiated in contractual. But is there anything that you can offer us in your budget for a reduction?

▶ 1:36:14 John N. Tramontozzi: Again, my concern is that when it all said and done, and this budget goes, it is voted on and approved, that sometime in the fall, may have a revenue shortfall that as the mayor said was going to suggest in some layoffs i don't want to see that happen is there anything that we can do i can tell you that on page seven of that of that powerpoint you'll see what the police department brought in on revenue of the backs of the police officers in this community 213 000 which i believe correct me if i'm wrong goes to the general fund we're doing it you're right we're doing our part our budget is leaner than lean less than a half a percent right and you're in uh the staffing level is down at this point too so staffing level is a challenge it's been a challenge for three years for the police

▶ 1:37:11 Jen Grigoraitis: department and those three officers they were supposed to go in the academy on may 4th obviously because of the pandemic it got pushed out to june now we're hopeful that these three officers will we'll go into the academy of future offices sometime in July and you know we won't see him till next May that's how long it takes it takes nearly a year to get them from start to finish thank you chief I appreciate it nothing further thank you mr. chairman Thank You chief Lyle for being here I just had two quick questions I noticed the last bullet on slide six mentions that port file support will be transit transition to your administrative assistant due to a volunteer reducing hours is it correct to assume that that additional work will

▶ 1:37:57 be taken on without any additional compensation for the administrative assistant it's a part-time position is it now and it's a struggle just for her to complete what's in her job cast now records requests for an unfunded mandate that was that was born on the police department I believe in correct me if If I'm wrong, I don't believe the entire city combined equals the records request that the police department deals with annually. And she handles all those records requests? She does, and then she deals with all that detail invoice. So the 213,000 in admin fees are all from that part-time position. And is your, sorry, is she covered by a union or is she outside of a union? Both of my administration people are

▶ 1:38:44 Jen Grigoraitis: confidential non-union employees okay thanks so they're looking at no increase most likely okay thank you and then my additional question was is there anything that you could talk about with regard to the status of the police fleet and any concerns that you have for the coming fiscal year aside from the awesome new autism card that we just recommended for passage i'll speak as far as the that's not a fleet vehicle that is going to be a vehicle that is assigned to the SROs up at the Melrose Middle School Complex for Officer Mann and Officer Applegate to use and it will actually assist us in freeing up one other vehicle because there's usually a vehicle assigned there with Narcan and AED in case anything goes wrong

▶ 1:39:26 up at the school campus. So right now we have available, we have five cruises for line vehicles. We have two in the shop, one taking parts out to put into another one. The other, the The other line car is a K-9 car. Our officer trainer and his partner, Nero, and then we have, the rest of the fleet is admin. Like everything, as time ticks on with these vehicles, the mileage racks up. When you see an odometer at 102,000, that's really not 102,000 on that car. That's probably somewhere 150,000. That's the car we're taking parts out of to put into a vehicle that has 73,000 miles on it. it's a constant challenge we have to run it 24 7. so when a vehicle breaks down other vehicles have to pick up the load so it's a constant shift i will say it was great the new hybrid that we got

▶ 1:40:25 Cory Thomas: that we ordered last july and showed up about two months ago um a couple of officers said you know the gas gauge doesn't move at all on the entire shift so it's been a very pleasant thing we are We're fueling it up once a week versus every day. So it's been a win-win for us. Thank you. Councilor Thomas. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. Chief Lyle, thanks again for being here. Kind of following up on what President Grigoraitis just asked, my question was gonna be, do you foresee any upgrades to the fleet or technological advances, training advances, extra need for PPE moving forward in the coming fiscal year? We'll start with the fleet. I spoke to the auditor's office today. There is a big order coming down sometime later this fiscal year or early next fiscal year for three vehicles.

▶ 1:41:23 I asked the board to support that order when it comes time. As far as training, we constantly do training. This year has been difficult because I don't know if the council knows, but we try to do active shooter drills, twice a year and we were trying to schedule in the spring and obviously that's not going to happen for many reasons but training is a big big part of us and anytime i can get an officer training we will do i will say that our in-service has been interrupted officers are coming in doing virtual 9-1-1 in-service training now all officers in the police department including our supervisors required to do 16 hours of annual in service just for the 911 system uh do you do you foresee any uh additional cost for ppe

▶ 1:42:13 moving forward as we're in you know a new covid related world uh we just ordered some uh non surgical masks today we ordered two two thousand of them we've been giving them out when we can uh we also use them for our officers when they're on detail when they're in an environment where they're violating social distance. We were fortunate enough to find a company in Hampton, New Hampshire to buy N95 masks, a complete set, made in America, which is very, very good. And we also purchased them for the fire department as a combo. Each officer has one assigned to them. The event we get into a situation where know they're going into a infected area that's been good today we purchased 6 000 pairs of gloves

▶ 1:43:05 Jeff McNaught: the police department may seem like a lot but we go through a lot and i i don't see us shifting away from this in the future i think this is just going to be part of our toolbox ppe chief thank you for your answers yeah i really appreciate it thanks Thanks for being here, take care. Welcome. Councilor McNaught. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. Thank you, Chief, for being here. I'd also like to thank you for the report that you compiled for us to echo Councilor McMaster's sentiments, because it was very easy to digest. It was laid out very well. And I haven't seen them all yet, but I hope that everybody's looks and feels is nice and easy to consume as yours was. on top of that but what I'm hearing and what I'm seeing and reading your

▶ 1:43:58 Jeff McNaught: memorandum is your your overtime has been level funded the I just pull up the document but I'm not seeing a sharp decrease it overtime assignments it could be wrong but I'm on page six and for FY 20 was 861 I'm assuming that went down a little bit because of COVID and it doesn't include May and June so even with COVID the anticipated increase for overtime shifts was still very high and And I would imagine as we start to head back towards some sense of normalcy, you need those shifts. And I guess my question is if you're level funded, do you have enough money in your budget for this? I think that you're missing something on page six. Those are our records requests, 18, 19, and 20. And because of the workload for the admin staff and myself,

▶ 1:45:24 Jeff McNaught: we're gonna have to bring in supervisors to assist us to respond to records requests, because when they come, they come fast and furious. Right now we're in a minor lull because car crashes have certainly decreased in our community, like every community around us, because there's less vehicles on the road. And we're mandated to have a response or produce a document within a 10-day window. Gotcha, okay. But we'll talk about overtime if you'd like. Yeah, well, I mean, I know I got the sense from what you were conveying that things were really, really tight and knowing that we're headed into really uncharted waters and uncertain times. I think now is the time to ask to make sure that our public safety officials have what they need.

▶ 1:46:16 Jeff McNaught: We just talked about various PPE that's not going away anytime soon, and that's not cheap. So overtime and anything else, I think we need to think about everything right now. No, as far as our overtime for the police department, I use that as the base. That's not the ceiling on the police department's overtime. There's so many what-ifs with law enforcement. I have two. I have a supervisor and I have a patrolman that has been activated. One was activated last December. I had a sergeant that was activated two months ago when this crisis began, and I don't see them coming back anytime soon. That all impacts our overtime. Certainly vacation periods are going to be coming up. These officers have been working tirelessly for weeks now.

▶ 1:47:03 Jeff McNaught: And someone had brought up earlier about his fire and sick time. these guys these officers have been coming in day in day out sick time is minimal minimal right now and I commend every one of them for it but back to our overtime I don't see it make it to the end of the year the auditors office works very very diligently trying to assist us with overtime and they know they know the circumstances around it there's so many what-ifs if you look at some of those charts our detective bureau is working many many cases that is all overtime that crime just doesn't happen nine to five it happens three o'clock in the morning so it really is challenging to manage that overtime that helps you yes it does um

▶ 1:47:49 thank you and i didn't want to belabor the point i guess my general question was do you feel like you have what you need to get through the year that's the simplest way i can we won't and every year is challenging and i the honors office is aware of it that our budget is is a base not a not a ceiling thank you chief thank you chairman thanks for being here chief um your question on the on the patrol on the uh staffing levels uh fiscal year 20 you uh currently have 19 and are we down to 16 now or are we going to start fiscal year 21 and 16 under patrol Well, currently right now we have 16 patrolmen. Two officers have separated. One officer is due to retire. In FY21, we have up to seven officers that may be retiring or eligible for retirement in the fiscal year 21.

▶ 1:48:58 Mark Garipay: So, to answer your question, we have 16 patrolmen available today. One is deployed in the military. we're at 15 available 15 available right now for cover shifts 63 shifts a week there's nine shifts a day um with the three the three new position or new positions that are going to be at the academy are they in your budget numbers and do we start paying for them as soon as they go to the academy or how does that work are they in our current budget um are we realizing that right now or will we come July or I guess I would if we get back the offices that separated in January and early February the remaining salaries have to buy out of a vacation time whatever it may be that money is stayed in our budget and that

▶ 1:49:48 Mark Garipay: has been a saving grace for overtime remainder of this this year going next year the salaries for those cadets are in our budget they start out a base salary and as i said earlier we probably won't see them on the road ready for patrol duties until may of next year so in fiscal year 20 running with 19 or going with 19 patrolmen with all the overtime you're going to stop the year or go nine months with 15 right now because we have one on on military leave or 16 when he comes back if he does we're gonna uh three less three less patrolman that's what you're going to run in this year yes we are right now our saving graces of the two sros have been reassigned to patrol to bolster the ships they're working days helping us on days

▶ 1:50:42 Mark Garipay: and and also i noticed that um we went down from four to three detectives because of looks like a promotion um is that an open position or no that wasn't that was a new position that i asked the administration to support in the prior administration to support because we have a hole on our shifts because we have a traffic sergeant which is unique to our to our community that drops drops a a balance on shifts so so one shift we had one supervisor working by himself once work by himself is currently deployed in worcester uh with the national guard so by this promotion that'll help offset that shift until the supervisor comes back okay um but are we gonna so i understand that are we are we gonna re um replace the detective and

▶ 1:51:33 Leila Migliorelli: go back up to four next year is here we couldn't even consider that until the uh the office has graduated the academy okay all right thank you welcome vice chair Migliorelli thank you mr chairman And thank you, Chief Lyle, for being here tonight. I'll just echo my counselors in saying that the presentation was excellent. I appreciated the slide on future considerations and grants, and I don't know if there's anything you wanted to kind of highlight there for us to kind of think forward to. I know that we're feeling very constrained right now by these times, but I think it's always important to kind of keep an eye on the future and what you would like to do, what you would have done in circumstances

▶ 1:52:17 well we can certainly start with the first one is microsystems the company's located in melrose there at one point where our cad system our community dispatch records management system and their housing housing excuse me some of our cad documents way back when when when the police department went from microsystems over to imc which is which is our current system i don't know what happened that was before me but a lot of our reports have never made it over that would be the cost to have that transferred over from the microsystems software to our current system they have been very good to me supporting the police department when we're looking for an old case or criminal trying to locate information on he or she they've been very excellent to help

▶ 1:53:08 us out but it's really something we need to do number two the crime scene barriers the reason I asked for those and some of you folks remember we had a suicide at El Pond late last summer it was pretty graphic it was very little way to protect that crime scene we use increased police vehicles we use an ambulances fire engines whatever we could and then we he was the body was on plain view the radio system we were notified approximately two months ago that our portables will no longer be supported at after the end of this year what that means is they go to the junk pile for parts for our radios that's a constant thing that we strive for we're expecting increases when that comes I certainly I'll let the administration know prisoner detainees up to a hospital

▶ 1:54:06 with them and that as a police officer not a cell monitor to go up we did was something with creative supervisors came to me about it that it was a better option when we were dealing with people that were under the influence of alcohol to pay for the taxi ride home than the housing in the police department until they sobered up firearms and I talked to the honors office about this that we needed to upgrade our firearms. They're, you know, some 12 years old. Like anything else, they do have a shelf life and we need to replace them. They're looking to support us. The rest is dues and membership. The simulator would be a wonderful tool for the police department, not just to supplement our firearms practicing, but there is programs to support simulated

▶ 1:54:58 incidents of crimes and bias and i think it's a win-win and i can see you smile and it supports iraq shooter events some of these items are you know our cost effect somewhere can be a large a large item we're going to e-citations and that's a new trend in law enforcement electronic citations that's a grant through the state there's no cost to us you can see our uh typical grants that we strive for every year thank you thank you chief um and appreciate um your you know commitment to um to implicit bias training moving forward certainly we can talk offline if they do some federal contacts that would be willing to come up here and assist us once we get through this crisis thank you councilor gemality

▶ 1:55:53 Maya Jamaleddine: Thank you, Chairman, and thank you, Chief Lyell, for being with us today. I would like to echo your comments and commend our Marill's Police Departments. I know they've been working tirelessly during this difficult time, and some of them have been bringing affected with this pandemic based on previous conversation with you. This would explain some of the uh probably overtime um that uh we had this year um do you think this is uh part of the pandemic um that increased the overtime yes it has we've set up a separate line item in our own in-house system one is just for coping for tracking so if it is reimbursable uh through the state or the federal government we have the numbers ready our admin staff is constantly

▶ 1:56:57 Jack Eccles: committed to keeping our records for emergency management the health department obviously the administration and the auditor's office thank you so much and thank you for all you do for our community thank you for the mass thank you mr chairman and thanks for being here chief um I just would like to go back to the grants for one second I know a lot of things that we hear from our constituents and obviously you probably hear on the phones Is about traffic enforcement? So can you just talk a little bit into the state of traffic enforcement and specifically the traffic enforcement grants? And if they're new fiscal 21 is there going to be improvement? I know that there's a resource strain that it prevents it prevents most of it from going on

▶ 1:57:45 I can say this to counselor that we've got reimbursements in there for months and we haven't gotten them yet. I know they're coming I just don't know when and we constantly apply for our grants some years We're fortunate and some years are not but we have to develop a program I was talking to our traffic side and so I can talk about it the other day as far as our Commitment to the community and the traffic safety, but you can also see the numbers of offices that we have It's difficult. We do have he's been out for a spell right now but he is due back within the next week to 10 days. So he has a fair workload ahead of him. I don't know if you folks have noticed, the radar trail is down on 11th Street right now.

▶ 1:58:31 Our new radar trail, that serves no purpose. It obviously alerts the driver, their speed, their traveling, but it's constantly gathering data. And what we do with that data is we maximize our efficiency for traffic enforcement. So obviously at three o'clock in the morning, traffic's a lot different than three o'clock in the afternoon right now it's probably not a fair assumption as far as getting our data because there's less vehicles on the road because speeds go up we're well aware of that thank you chief welcome anybody else in queue i do not see anybody else raise their hands raise your hand if you guys what is the will of the to make a motion to the bottom line second motion to move the bottom line by Councilor stewart seconded by Councilor

▶ 1:59:21 tramitose adam clerk uh if you could please call the roll and again bottom line um of the police account that we have to see Councilor Migliorelli yes council Tramontozzi yes councilor mcmaster yes Councilor mcnaught Yes. Councilor Eccles. Yes. Councilor Garipay. Yes. Councilor Stewart. Yes. Councilor Thomas. Yes. Councilor Jamaleddine. Yes. President Grigoraitis. Yes. Chairman Cinella. Yes. 11 yes. Thank you, Chief Lyle. Thank you. Have a good evening. Councilor Migliorelli, did you have a question? We have the revolving account, please entertain a motion to move the revolving account 2665 under order 2020-90. Everyone jumped at once. I want to entertain a motion. Motion to move the revolving account for the police department.

▶ 2:00:39 Christopher Cinella: Motion to move, okay, motion to move the revolving count 2665 by Councilor Eccles, seconded by Councilor Thomas. Madam Clerk? Councilor Migliorelli? Yes. Councilor Tramontozzi? Yes. Councilor McMaster? Yes. Councilor McNaught? Yes. Councilor Eccles? Yes. Councilor Garipay? Yes. Councilor Stewart? Yes. Councilor Thomas? Yes. Councilor Jamaleddine? Yes. Councilor McNaught? Yes. yes president Grigoraitis yes chairman sanella yes 11 yes next on our agenda item 540 bb estate and revolving account number 2750 and pertaining to both order 2020-89 and order 2020-90 we have some folks from so i'm bringing in the ladies who have been so patient um tarika and jessica who made them panels good evening ladies thank you for your patience thank

▶ 2:01:51 you thank you it's all yours thank you for your patience no problem um my name is jessica mckenna i'm one of the new co-chairs of the bb estate uh with me my colleague tarik elliskew she's our treasurer um we thought it best that we both both come in case we've got lots of questions or not uh as some of you may be aware the bb estate former president gene gorman who was serving the bb estate for many many years has finally decided to step back and retire from her term on the bb estate so we've had a little bit of turnover here myself i'm a co-chair along with bill butler um we've identified a couple new members for trustees we've got one who we're looking to get on and we've got another empty slot on the board of trustees right now so we're

▶ 2:02:50 looking for a good candidate to help us out um we've uh had a pretty good year this past year with a mild winter we've had no problems with the boiler or other systems at the estate which has been very useful um we've uh brought in a little bit of administrative assistance to the board of trustees this year with gene moving on uh we've been working with a gentleman named jesse mcdonald who actually is an employee of the friends of the fells who rents some office space at the estate and he's been very useful help us out when we've had individuals who are interested in some of the rentals come see the property or other small checking on some other some of the systems at the house quite frankly he's kind of like

▶ 2:03:46 our on-site on-site eyes and ears right now that's been very helpful to help us with management we've done a couple projects in the past year that include some outside work, some major trimming of some of the rhododendrons that were very large on one side of the house. You may have noticed that. We've done some work on some of the plantings in the front of the house. We've had a volunteer that's been very helpful last year. We're hoping he'll be able to continue to help us this year. We had some help from the DPW this past year with over the gravel path that used to run in the front of the house and we've also done some interior work we did a painting in the upstairs meeting room and we had a one major expense out

▶ 2:04:39 of our revolving fund this past year which was replacing the rug in the main corollary which had it had been very stained and it was really time to go so that's a rug that we hope will withstand many many years of use. With that I'm going to hand it over to Tarica. Can you unmute yourself yourself, Tarica? Tarica? She's unmuted. Let's see. Anything? Yeah, we hear you. We can hear you. We can hear you. All righty. Great. I'm not really sure what the problem was there, but yeah, we've been fortunate this year to have pretty steady rentals, which has helped make our expenditures, especially with the significant purchase of the rug for the double parlor, kind of balanced out, which left our other account to kind of mainly cover utilities and supplies so it's been a

▶ 2:05:59 pretty good year we'll be a little bit cautious looking ahead in terms of the impact of kovat on our rental and if you went back on mute there yeah maybe it's because she's on a phone yeah I'm calling and put my back on mute you hear I can hear you can you hear me yes we can right now okay yeah I could clip there for a while let's see so our rental income this year was pretty strong which was helpful in terms of offsetting the expense of the rug for the double parlor I think we are all a little bit cautious as we look ahead at the impact of coronavirus on our rental income for the future we've had you know many events that we've had to have cancelled and obviously anything for the summer early fall has also gone questionable but we are hopeful for the

▶ 2:07:17 John N. Tramontozzi: future any questions thank you we have councilor Tramontozzi thank you mr. chairman I want to thank you for your service to to the city at bb estates is always a you know it's a beautiful uh building that serves a wonderful uh function for the uh for the city um your budget is level funded um as from last year we appreciate that and just for the benefit of the council and the public could you just tell us you have a 30 000 annual cap revolving account and you can tell us what that purpose is um the revolving how you use it sure um terica go ahead go ahead terica okay yeah so the revolving accounts used kind of for our more special projects um things that you know our regular account wouldn't be able to accomplish

▶ 2:08:22 so um replacing the rug for the double parlor is a great example of that a few years ago we undertook an exterior preservation project with some significant repainting woodwork repair so these kind of more significant um expenses are what a lot of our rental income will go into the revolvings to kind of save for the rainy day and the revolving account accepts donations as well if there is any to be made and as well as the rental receipts right um to my knowledge we haven't had any just straight up donations but definitely our um our regular monthly renters with maeve and the friends of the bells um and then our events our special event rentals are what largely fund the revolving account thank you counselor thomas thank you mr chairman uh thank

▶ 2:09:21 Cory Thomas: Thank you, Ms. McKenna and Ms. Leskew for being here. The BV State's a beautiful building, quickly emphasis on old. How are the guts of the building? Are there any capital improvements scheduled ahead of the next fiscal year or the year we're going into, the roof, heating system, et cetera? Not at this point in time. We're in pretty good shape. Our heating system has been holding tight. We had a year or two where we had some problems had to give it a lot of attention but it's actually been working pretty well for us the structure is pretty good and the roof not given us uh problems we did haven't looked over when we did do that major project a couple of years ago where we did the exterior siding and

▶ 2:10:07 all the woodwork we did make sure we're up there inspecting the roof and checking out uh the condition when we're doing the the cupola up top and a couple years prior to that we did do the balustrade replacement project that was happened before i joined the board so we don't have any major capital projects planned for the coming year we're looking to spend part of our time doing some more landscape improvements and maintenance especially since one of the primary ways people are going to be able to experience the estate this summer and fall is just going to be enjoying some of the grounds well thank you very much for that you know and that's great to hear i know you had a wonderful pride event last year out on the lawn um you know it's such a beautiful building and you

▶ 2:10:57 Robb Stewart: know a lot of newcomers to town might not know the history of that building you know and you know what it's hosted before was the uh school central administration building for a long time uh the bb school when that was a public school i used that building for for years um so it's great to hear it's in good shape thank you very much for being here thank you also stuart thank you mr chair uh thank you miss mckenna and his last cue for for being here tonight um as the award three city counselor uh the bb estate is uh kind of a pride of of the ward and it's great to see that you're willing to uh continue to to maintain its beauty and uh uh the the ward appreciates that i'm sure as well as the whole town um just a couple of questions again around the robot do you have any

▶ 2:11:50 Robb Stewart: anticipated uh spend that you have tagged for the revolving fund for the coming fiscal year one of the things that we are exploring currently with some of our landscape improvements is looking at replacement of the chain link fence along west foster street and so that's something that we're exploring right now so if we utilize that that would be one of the ways we might consider it great and with the um the lack of safe funding and rental uh have you explored or are in conversations about alternative ways that you can leverage the property uh in the coming months we have not begun conversations around that yet but uh do anticipate right now our june yeah june sorry meeting is going to be focused on reviewing

▶ 2:12:50 our current uh cleaning procedures and protocols and reviewing our rental agreements that we have and looking how that might have to be changed as we look ahead and and we do invite it open for event rentals how that will look different not considered other other revenue opportunities yet at this time but I hope to that we do have that conversation after we figure out what's next okay well I look forward to hearing what the plans are for the coming year given the situation and I'm sure the the folks that we represent do as well. So thank you for both of your time. Thank you, Mr. Chair. Thank you for being here. One quick question. How many how many rentals did we have that we had to cancel over the last three or

▶ 2:13:49 Mark Garipay: four months and were we able to rebook them or did they just cancel outright? Do we have them? Yeah, I would say we probably had four or five that were affected um i would say of that probably two of them have just said go ahead and keep the deposit and we'll reschedule for whenever we're available to um one of them was a like an annual event kind of like a regular birthday party so she just said can you apply this to next year instead um so that's that's what we have so far okay uh thank you and uh just i want to echo with what Councilor Stewart said regarding looking forward to see what other opportunities are out there to generate some revenue over the next year in light of the unfortunate unfortunate circumstances we see ourselves and over

▶ 2:14:43 the next next few months thank you anybody else I don't do I saw anybody raise their hand a motion to move the bottom line second motion in the bottom line made by president Grigoraitis seconded by Councilor Garipay clerk please call the roll Councilor Migliorelli yes also Tramontozzi yes that's limit master that's limit not yes that's where Eccles yes that's a Yes. Councilor Stewart? Yes. Councilor Thomas? Yes. Councilor Jamaleddine? Yes. Grigoraitis? Yes. Chairman Sinella? Yes. 11 yes. And I want to take a motion to the revolving account 2750. Let everyone jump at once. Make a motion to move the bottom line. Second. second motion to move the bottom line by Councilor Garipay on the revolving account

▶ 2:15:57 2750 seconded by vice chair Migliorelli madam clerk council member early yes council Tramontozzi yes councilor mcmaster yes council mcnaught yes Councilor eccles yes councilor Garipay yes councilor stewart yes councilor thomas yes councilor maladin president Grigoraitis yes chairman sanella yes Councilor Jamaleddine i think our bandwidth is down and yes thank you uh ladies ladies i'll take you out thank you very much thank you anybody need a two-minute recess yes mr chairman i move to take a two-minute recess second Okay, two-minute recess by Councilor McNaught, seconded by Councilor Stewart. Madam Clerk? Councilor Migliorelli? Yes. Councilor Tramontozzi? Yes. Councilor McMaster? Yes. Councilor McNaught?

▶ 2:17:08 Christopher Cinella: Yes. Councilor Eccles? Yes. Councilor Garipay? Yes. Councilor Stewart? Yes. Councilor Thomas? Yes. Yes. Councilor Jamaleddine? Yes. Yes. Yes. Yes. Yes. counselor president Grigoraitis yes chairman Sinella yes okay I'm gonna pause the recording thank you back in two and two and button a couple gigs left recording yes we are recording next item 611 library and again the continuation last night with us yes I just made her a panelist she'll be in momentarily can you hear me you can hear you yes just can't see you yet linda hello welcome back thank you thank you for your patience tonight and last night and screen is all yours if you want to continue from where you left off or give us the uh you just digest version of you however you want to do it okay um so

▶ 2:18:26 So very quickly, it has been quite a year for all of us. We had the retirement of two long-time staff members, respectively, after 32 and 37 years. The library is known for longevity amongst its staff. I think it's one of our strengths. We are wishing them all the absolute best, and we're very grateful for their years of service. Marianne, who is retiring next week, has had a unique experience of conducting her first virtual training process right before she leaves. Virtual service is not entirely new to libraries, but the physical building has always been the primary point of service. We completed a new strategic plan last year and a significant topic of conversation among the committee members was that the community building aspect of the public library is so important, but that the modern library has also grown beyond its physical walls.

▶ 2:19:37 In the past few months after the physical library was closed, our digital library and virtual services have expanded to meet the community's needs. We offer readers advisory and reference services over the phone or via email. Our programming has switched to Facebook Live Baby Steps and Toddler Times, and we have Zoom book groups for all ages. We have participated virtually in community outreach for events such as Unicorn Day and worked with schools to ensure that students know about our resources. Coming up, we will be participating virtually in the Human Rights Commission's Pride event. There have been many learning curves for us all, but the library staff immediately accepted the challenge of continuing to provide services to the public in the best ways that we currently

▶ 2:20:26 can. In fiscal 21, we will be reimagining our services as we continue to battle COVID-19. We look forward not only to resuming services as safe protocols allow, but to incorporating some of the new virtual skills the library staff has developed in the last few months. The Friends of Melrose Public Library have sponsored a virtual product to provide summer reading services for all ages, just as they normally sponsor our in-person summer reading programs. Our staff have been busy learning that software and developing summer programs for all ages. When we eventually move back towards the to physical library services, incorporating these digital and virtual skills will only improve the access that we're able to provide our residents.

▶ 2:21:20 In terms of the actual budget, the fiscal 21 budget has no significant changes, although there are a few adjustments. We have had the two retirements in fiscal 2020, one earlier this year and one this month, and those resulted in internal promotions for staff members. The expense budget reflects the request for level funding outside contractual obligations. Trustee, state aid, donation and friends funds will be used for costs not covered by the budget. Based on actual expenditures over the last 3 years, I have reduced the telephone budget by $500 to allow for a modest and necessary increase in the books and periodicals budget. The Noble line item has a $594 contractual increase. Noble is our

▶ 2:22:13 acronym for the North of Boston Library Exchange. It is the consortium that we are part of as a library. This is a very modest increase for the support that we received from them the lines 5 3 4 100 through 5 3 4 240 it includes audio visual books periodicals downloadables I consider these all our most public facing line items these are what we use to purchase the things that we offer directly to our patrons. Our books, our downloadable books, our access to databases, all of those resources. They have a $1,130 increase in total. These line items all go directly to our patrons and thankfully we have the flexibility that as patrons have not had access to the physical materials we have been able to increase their access to to our downloadable materials those are

▶ 2:23:35 really the key elements of the fiscal 21 budget and in closing I will say that I have always known that the success of our public library is ultimately the result of the hard work professionalism and dedication of our library staff their ability to pivot to virtual services this year immediately using virtual conferencing technology to maintain communications and develop ideas has been impressive to me to say the least I am always proud to work with them and more so now than ever thank you uh counselor thomas thank you mr chairman and thank you director gardner for being here uh for your patience last night and for providing all that information for the library's budget on both nights i feel very fortunate to be the city council liaison to the melrose public library

▶ 2:24:28 Cory Thomas: our library is one of the most recognizable buildings in the city and is an integral part of our community and a source of civic pride i have a lifelong connection to the melrose public library my mother instilled a love of reading in me at a young age we spent countless hours at the library like many mothers and fathers in melrose i always enjoy taking my own children to the library's children room to watch them play and start their own reading journey a huge part of our library success is the hard work and dedication of the library employees it is so comforting to see so many familiar faces each time i visit the library one of the most familiar faces at the Melrose Public Library is in the children's room where she has worked with grace, enthusiasm,

▶ 2:25:08 Cory Thomas: patience, and an ever-present smile while helping nearly four decades of children and parents and many as both children and parents including myself and counselors Garrapay, Sineller, and McNaught. Mary Ann Stanton, thank you for your years of service to the City of Melrose. You've been a source of comfort and warmth to the generation of Melroseans and you'll be greatly missed thank you for imparting your local books in your con in your kindness the countless children of melrose throughout the years we hope you enjoy your well earned retirement uh for anyone that's interested as well there'll be a drive-by of the public library this saturday uh next saturday may 30th at 1pm leaving from cedar park to honor marion's name for anyone that would like to

▶ 2:25:51 Mark Garipay: to participate thank you so much miss Gardner thank you thank you chairman thank you miss Gardner for being here just a couple quick questions are the utilities does that go into the DPW facilities budget yes that was changed when the DPW centralized several years ago okay and looking at your your staffing um are most of the employees are they part of a collective bargaining group so our benefited staff with the exception of myself and our assistant director are part of a collective bargaining group so that is 11 of our staff okay and uh one other question you had mentioned that uh with um the stanton retiring and the previous uh retirement at the beginning of the year those were those positions were filled within within the current staffing um current employees were

▶ 2:26:56 Jack Eccles: promoted yes did we have did we fill those uh their positions or are they open positions currently there is one position that is currently open that we are looking at filling now okay um okay that's it right now thank you thank you so much for being here dr. Gardner I know I'm a big big use for the library have been really lately do you know if if going forward since we're looking at at least the first few months of the fiscal year being probably you know a reduced physical capacity of the library if not just completely closed if there will be like an increased in as far as book acquisition goes in concentrating on digital resources and ebooks yes and we have always started to increase our ebook purchasing we also have a

▶ 2:27:56 John N. Tramontozzi: commitment from our friends group to help with that process as well thanks so much thank you mr. chairman thank you miss Gardner for coming in today and congratulations to those the two employees are retiring and you've adjusted quite well with the coronavirus situation I enjoyed seeing some of the YouTube or video readings to the children it did a nice job let me ask you this is a fair to say that there's no employees of your department have been laid off or furloughed as a result of the coronavirus that is correct I think that's citywide all right um can you explain to us um what the line 513 000 the overtime budget is used for yes so the overtime budget is used for um during the school year when we are open on

▶ 2:29:00 sundays um that a contractual line item for um for union members uh used for during times excuse me during times that we are open and we need to use staff members to fill in when part-time people aren't available to do so and they go over their hours so that's a contractual benefit so this this line item was budgeted in 2020 for $15,000 but the year-to-date you know you've spent nine thousand nine hundred and twenty eight dollars and sixty seven cents what is that what is accounted for that reduction is the fact that schools closed we have not since we have been using as much overtime obviously when we have been closed because we have not needed to cover those extra shifts and you don't you don't anticipate the need

▶ 2:30:09 to cover those extra shifts because at schools closed and at this point we don't even know whether or not they're going to be open to come September well would be a matter of whether the library is open rather than the schools was the library open on Sundays so when I say school year that's just it's September to to June thank you so I appreciate the the the budget I know this is the contractual one what's a downloadable AV it's up 387 percent an increase is that is for downloadable it's overdrive and a product called hoopla and the actual you'll notice that the 534 240 is down by 30% and the dollar amount actually equals out we out a database that we used that was primarily staff facing we

▶ 2:31:27 John N. Tramontozzi: found a free alternative for that and put those physical funds into into the have a line item that would better service the public okay that's great thank you so I appreciate that thank you at this time I'm gonna make a motion to reduce line item five one three zero zero zero by five thousand dollars I reduce that to ten thousand taking the bottom line I'm doing calculations right now uh reduce the bottom line budget to one million one hundred and four thousand seven hundred and ninety five dollars and ninety cents thank you we have a motion uh we do have um president Grigoraitis was in queue do you want to say something did you raise your hand earlier yes i had a i had a question but do we need to address the motion i don't know if there's a

▶ 2:32:28 Jen Grigoraitis: second for the motion well we're still in discussion with linda so then we'll get to the motion okay thank you thank you miss gardner i just um as we think about the library hopefully being able to open at some point in a safe capacity i imagine that's going to require a significant amount of ppe for library staff do you know will that be a part of the dpw budget or is that something that is expected to come out of your budget no i am i actually have been speaking to city hall and dpw this week i will be coordinating with dpw regarding necessary pp and safety measures okay thank you very much anybody else wish to speak counselor mcmaster thank you mr chairman uh good evening mr governor thank you for being here thank you for the uh

▶ 2:33:21 Shawn M. MacMaster: comprehensive uh questionnaire you put together for us it's much appreciated Ms. Gardner, my question is with the line item of salary and wages, 511000, a 0.2% increase, which amounts to $1,485.24. The document, the salary document that we're provided does not, although we can see a comparison on the the budget analysis overall from year to year by line item. We don't get that on the secondary document that we're provided that shows the actual salaries. Can you explain is that increase of 0.2 percent is that in conjunction with collective bargaining agreement or is that going somewhere else? So that reflects the fact that some employees have retired and new employees have been brought in at different levels and it does not reflect contractual increases outside of step increases.

▶ 2:34:38 Does that include the one employee who we've already hired or does it also account for the employee who you mentioned um for the position we're we're hiring for is it a combination of that employee the one who's already been hired yes okay um okay thank you anybody else wishing to speak for the first time with a motion um i believe that reduced the budget to 1 million 104 705 95 95 yeah counselor McNaught has his hand up thank you mr. chair I just had a question through you for council chairman Tosi I wasn't clear where we were reducing the 5,000 from I think I know was it that audio download line Joe oh thank you for if I may mr. chairman who's we chairman would be the overtime budget line five one three zero zero zero which is up which is the

▶ 2:35:42 John N. Tramontozzi: mayor's budget at fifteen thousand I'm proposing reduce it by five thousand dollars to ten thousand motion made to reduce the overtime line item one three zero zero zero five thousand to ten thousand five thousand dollars making that line item 10,000 meaning that bottom line for the budget of one million one hundred and four thousand seven hundred and ninety five dollars and ninety cents seconded by Councilor McMaster clerk if you could please call the roll council trauma says his hand up also Thomas thank you mr. chair miss Connor in your professional opinion do you think that reduction of five thousand dollars uh will be offset by some of the the staffing that was not completed over the past

▶ 2:36:48 few months because of the work shutdown it really depends on what the future looks like you know uh it's hard to know what the next year is going to be will we be open on sundays in september um Once we do reopen, I can guarantee you that we will be remarkably busy. We'll be all hands on deck. Sure. Typically, over the summer months, your hours are reduced anyway. No Sundays, reduced Saturdays. That overtime budget primarily goes through September, so we would not be spending that for the part in July and august anyway because we're not open on thank you so much dr stewart on discussion on this uh motion thank you uh chair samuel thank you ms gardner for being here uh my question uh to you is uh regarding uh the overtime

▶ 2:37:56 Robb Stewart: if it is indeed reduced to ten thousand dollars and uh school does uh begin in earnest with some modifications but nevertheless you're able to use uh the full year from school how does that impact you from the standpoint of not having the full fully budgeted amount of fifteen thousand dollars oh we would not have enough um um we not give us enough to get through a full year of sundays and what would you need to do if we did not have that we would not be open as many sundays um we would need to find a way to cut back those hours okay thank you miss garvin thank you mr chair anybody else on discussion madam president thank you mr chairman just as a point um i believe the sunday hours in particular

▶ 2:38:55 Jen Grigoraitis: for families with young children with working parents that's often the only time that they're able to access the library i know how critical that was to me when my children were young and i just also want to say how much i appreciate the efforts to add in programming on weekends for families that aren't don't have a parent at home during the week so i imagine when and if the world goes back to some sense of normal that there will be many families that will be looking forward to going somewhere other than their house when they can so thank you for that thank you mr chairman anyone else on discussion vice chair i think counselor Garipay had his hand up before me so i'll i'll let him go first that's my second time you you haven't spoken yet i don't

▶ 2:39:37 Leila Migliorelli: believe so thank you um i i also agree that if we are coming back from a pandemic and the library is a great resource for families um to imagine a world in which we have to cut sundays out because we are trying to save you know five thousand dollars out of the budget i i just don't agree with that um i recall when i was canvassing one of the most um outspoken people i talked with was a young girl who was coming back it was a saturday in the summer and she was extremely disappointed because the library was closed um and i had a long conversation with her parents about that and i feel like the libraries are a place um to gather for communities it's um you know it's something we want to be encouraging and i i feel like if we are closed now people are going to want that

▶ 2:40:26 Mark Garipay: resource going forward so i will not be voting to cut that 5 000 out of this budget i'll say i got that a quick question on the budget right now the year-to-date spend is as of the end of May is nine thousand nine hundred twenty eight dollars but that doesn't really sorry when what was the day we actually closed the library was it the 16th of March it was Friday the 13th 13 so so that nine thousand nine twenty eight and overtime was spent between September and actually March March 16th or 16th correct right 13 sorry some has been spent since then for contractual obligations of pre-scheduled shifts but outside of that yes it was all spent fire okay thank you just like to echo what I what I'm

▶ 2:41:28 Jack Eccles: Councilor Migliorelli and president said that it would be coming back from a pandemic would be a shame to cut services I would say in many departments there's going to be a tremendous demand we saw it in a little different capacity but when we reopened the city yard we saw the flood of the community that would it went down there I think there's a lot of pent-up demand for the library as well and I think we're gonna see and to have little or no flexibility from a payroll perspective when we're looking at situation like that i think is is um could be a little could put us in a bind where we would end up getting services given the current situation so i won't be supporting this cut as well anyone else on discussion raise your hand

▶ 2:42:17 being none madam clerk please uh continue council of Migliorelli no council of Tramontozzi yes Councilor mcmaster yes council mcnaught no councilor eccles council Garipay councilor stewart no councilor thomas no council jamala dean no president Grigoraitis no and chair sanella no who know and yes motion fails Thank you, Linda. Thank you again for your patience tonight and last night. Chairman, a motion for the reduction in... I'm sorry? That was just for the reduction. Now I'll entertain a motion to move the bottom line. We've got a couple people in queue. I'll take that back. I just want to follow up on that open position. Is there any way where the facility potentially could be closed over the next few months where we may be able to delay that hiring until we have a clear cut direction on where and when we're going to open the facility?

▶ 2:43:40 we're working towards limited services which would be the short answer is no but we are working towards what's called curbside pickup which would actually be that interim when we are starting to go back into the building and offer new services different way which is quite labor-intensive but will get books into the hands of the people. We will be doing that simultaneously to continuing to offer all of the virtual programs and going into the virtual summer reading program that we've been planning. So we'll actually be increasing the workload this summer, even if we are still primarily closed. So we are quite eager to fill that position. One other, I find it interesting with, you guys are doing a great job with the virtual learning, virtual, how you send everything up virtually.

▶ 2:44:48 We only had a glass ball to be able to look into the future. Once we get up and running and get back to our new norm, do you see that potentially with all the virtual options that it may reduce some of the foot traffic into the facility, into the library? I don't. I think it will happen. Over the years, we have so frequently had things that have happened, the advent of the internet, that we keep saying, oh, people will be coming in less, people will be coming in less, and it never seems to pan out. We actually have people coming in more and spending more time now um what i think will happen is that we'll be able to continue to utilize this so that people who are able to come in and have that sense of interacting with their

▶ 2:45:45 Jeff McNaught: community members will continue to do so but we will also be able to reach more people um who maybe the timing doesn't work out for them to come in at a specific time so i don't think it will diminish our physical services but i think about access to people great thank you very much you have a question i did just a quick uh statement thank you mr chairman thank you miss gardner um my uh my other thought was if we go back to a small opening which i imagine we're going to do with everything might not be a line item that we want to reduce because i imagine i need more staff and more hours to control a socially distanced library so i just wanted to mention that thank you anybody have a president vigoritis i just i have a motion to move the

▶ 2:46:42 the bottom line. Second. Motion to move the bottom line as agreed or not is seconded. Discussion? Madam Chair, if you could call the vote. Councilor Migliorelli? Yes. Councilor Tramontozzi? Yes. Councilor McMaster? Councilor McNaught? Yes. Councilor Eccles? Yes. Councilor Garipay? Yes. Councilor Stewart? Yes. Councilor Thomas? Yes. Councilor Jamaleddine? Yes. President Grigoraitis? Yes. Chairman Cinella? Yes. Robin, yes. Again, thank you, Linda. Thank you for your patience. Thank you very much. Good night. I will take her out of the room. Ten more things and we're almost there. She's gone. Next up, item number 693, Sailor and Soldiers Memorial Building. you want to bring in yes we have chairman mary sexton and uh kathy pickett broder coming in

▶ 2:47:52 executive director a little slow tonight can you hear us ladies you're muted now can you hear us yeah yeah we're all set then good evening um i'll try and make this brief i know it's been a long evening for everyone um on behalf of the board of trustees of memorial hall i would like first to thank all of our city councilors um on their dropping to um passing the bond on may 7th which will greatly with all the work which needs to be done starting with the roof and all other exterior repairs only but only on the outside this is such building and hopefully we can bring it back to its historical charm it's such a hidden gem in melrose i think you'll all agree to that i would also like to thank denise gaffney for all

▶ 2:49:10 she has done over the years denise was instrumental in the first project that we did maybe 15 years ago um and she's quite aware of everything that has happened in the building and she has a vast knowledge of everything so it's it's great to have her with us um we as trustees really appreciate you denise a special thanks to all the newly elected city councillors and we look forward to working with you uh in all of you in the future uh we would also like to thank excuse me our director kathy pickett broda who has spent much time helping this city especially as co-chairman of the melrose house which so many people have donated funds to um and we thank you all for that um just lost my footing here sorry i'm falling asleep sorry

▶ 2:50:14 Let's see. I'd also like to thank Mayor Paul Broda, who has been instrumental in so many of the things that have happened here, especially with this COVID-19. Thank you, Mayor. It's certainly not least on my list, but I want to really mention how grateful we all are to the friends of Memorial Hall, who have stepped up also getting donations to keep this historical building as the focal point in melrose um and i know they can't wait to do the interior but until we can get the roof done um we can't do anything um there's so many people who have helped uh during this difficult time with the copic 19 virus we're all in this together and i'm proud to be the chairman of this board and I'm also very proud to be living in Melrose.

▶ 2:51:13 So thank you again, and I'm gonna have Kathleen take over from here. Thank you, Mrs. Sexton. Very impressive that you have the background of Memorial Hall in the back, with your dedication. Hi guys, it's been a long night. Thank you for your time. I appreciate it. As you know, Memorial Hall was closed, I hate to say this out loud, on March 12th, 2020, due to the COVID-19 pandemic. We will end fiscal year 21 with a 188 completed events and 32,394 guests, but who's counting, with a revenue of $82,270.50 to date. That may increase if I can book events for the August. Memorial Hall became the headquarters for the Mayor's Melrose Health Program, and these figures that I just stated do not reflect any events that

▶ 2:52:16 Malice Hubs did in the building or any of the attendees that came through. All events that were scheduled for March through June, which is 94 events, were canceled or rescheduled. We offered credits or refunds to our customers, their choice, and most of them took the credits, to my delight, towards future bookings. The rest have applied their credits to reschedule for the fall or future date In FY21, 10 customers requested refunds, which reflects 20 events. Because most of them took the credits, our fall season, especially September, I'm booked solid in the fall for the first time. Memorial Hall staff have been working during this time in the building cleaning and performing minor repairs. But as the headquarters for Melrose Hope, they've had to come in and clean, for example,

▶ 2:53:09 our weekly grocery delivery. were in here two days for that. The mass delivery program we were in here for several weeks on for several days most of the weeks actually and the building has had to be cleaned and reset every time every day that someone was here. This cleaning now takes twice as long as we have to abide by the COVID-19 standards. As the governor announced on Monday we fall under phase three category. We will now be closed the month of June so the staff is going to take this opportunity to do some additional repairs, and trust me I have a list, in addition to preparing the building for the opening. Memorial Hall staffing includes four operations assistants with a budgeted total weekly allotment of 57.5 hours for those four positions. I track

▶ 2:54:00 the hours of each staff on a weekly basis and compare it to the hours and dollars that I should be at for the year so I don't overspend my budget. And why I do that is because the staffing needs are varied depending upon the event cycle for example the typically event cycle for Memorial Hall includes highest volumes in the months of March October and December where July and August are typically slower or do not need as much staff for example you might remember I had the Lego program for three weeks but that doesn't require set up and tear down for three weeks but it does require cleaning so I can use less hours then this allows me to save a bank those hours during the slow season so when I come to October I can utilize and I need all hands on decks I can utilize those

▶ 2:54:45 hours additional additionally I'm sorry I lost my okay so that fiscal year 21 the cycle will change definitely I have booked events that were canceled I had already booked events that had canceled on a May March and April to the fall season a lot of them took September events which means we will have a high volume starting the last week in August through December like November will not be slow September will not be slow additionally the Cova 19 standards that I have seen as of today for phase one may require us to have two of the staff on duty during event as opposed to one and typically that may be someone who counts how many people in the building depending upon what the phase three standards turn out to be the Memorial Hall restoration fund which is to remind

▶ 2:55:38 everybody the dollar per ticket added to the price of the tickets by the event organizer so it is paid by the purchaser of the ticker and not the event organizers has a balance today of a hundred and eighteen thousand two hundred and thirty nine dollars and ninety three cents this is due in large part to a very generous donation to the trustees of Memorial Hall the restoration fund has been utilized in the past to install a new lighting system so for example the MSO did not no longer had to rent lighting for their concerts easing and a lot of my dance companies didn't have to rent lighting it also was used for repairs to the building the maroon seats that you see around people sit on them with pens and they stab them and rip them the at the

▶ 2:56:25 couches that are outside the bathroom many regret if if someone puts a hole in invariably kids sitting down there ripped it. I've actually had to repair those three times in 11 years. The plaster repair over the doorway as you were walking in. Replacement of the 30 year building locks that our keys just weren't working in and the locks had not been replaced in 30 years so who knew where keys to the building. Our elevator broke that was very expensive and the replacement of a water heater in addition to when I first came into the building I discovered there was no hot water to either one of the dressing or the bathrooms by the stage because there was no hot water heater on the side of the building the trustees have tasked myself the executive director to

▶ 2:57:07 use the restoration fund in particular to hire an art historian to inventory catalog appraise and restore the various historical items in the buildings for example the paintings in the Grand Army the Republic room upstairs the GAR room and there's two cabinets up there that have historical items in it and there is also some prints downstairs in the basement in a room leading down to the basement that have been secured for security reasons. The goal of the Memorial Hall team is to have everything in place to be COVID-19 compliant. This would include the social distancing guidelines, the cleaning procedure, staff training, signage, and approval of all of the procedures has to be done by the Melrose Health Department. We would like this in place so when phase three begins

▶ 2:57:57 we will be ready to open. However, this will all depend on what the health data is showing at the end of phase two when phase three will start. It also will depend on what the phase three guidelines are and it also will depend when the guidelines are given out. For example, the guidelines were given out last Monday for reopening of phase one one week later as we continue forward in this endeavor our number one priority number one above all else in reopening is the safety and health of both my employees and the customers that enter our building and I will take your questions thank you um so I have Councilor Stewart and Councilor Tramontozzi and then Councilor Garipay. Did I miss anybody? Councilor Stewart? Thank you Mr. Chair and thank you Mr. Brouder for that very

▶ 2:59:03 Robb Stewart: detailed description. You actually covered a lot of the questions that I had with your overview. The main point of interest that I have is on the big ticket item on on your um on on your budget where it's uh close to 150 000 for the salaries and wages and where this comes into play is uh based on what you're just talking about um so you can open based on when we get to phase three and you know none of us are uh uh looking in we could all look at the crystal ball right but none of us really have a good sense of when that really is going to happen so I'm interested in understanding your perspective on your resources as they go down in low hours and if you've had an opportunity to forecast various scenarios of okay you you're anticipating you would like to

▶ 3:00:06 Robb Stewart: open up in August but in the situation where you cannot based on data and the delays and we don't make phase three until say October have you looked at how your resourcing plays out in those different scenarios actually I want to open up July 4th first and just feel I want you to know that's what I'm planning on because I'm part of a it's a we all have our organizations that we belong to i am part of the facilities managers of historic sites and museums and we just had our zoom meeting this afternoon and the speaker was the ceo of the greater boston commission visitors bureau and the executive director of the mass office of travel and tourism and the ceo there was only i mean there's only 60 of us in this group i was kind of

▶ 3:01:04 i was amazed that they came and spoke to us but she the ceo is part of mayor walsh's task force and she she was saying to us you should plan for july 1st like um because if all goes well and we if it becomes the three week thing then we would open for july 1st however she cautioned us saying that we will know more when the restaurants open up in phase two that will affect how we open up because we'll get more guidance on how they execute stuff so the other night at our board meeting my trustees also said we should plan on july 1st because we should be prepared for this now as i said earlier july and august is typically a very slow month for me and i do not use a lot of hours in july and august so by not having us open in july and august

▶ 3:01:50 i'm not going to be really saving a lot of hours because i'll be using my staff to bring us up to speed so we can open july 1st if whatever the guidelines are however in september i'm going to be slammed and typically september is a slow start for me but i am booked solid for september if someone wanted to book a date in september it would have to be a weekday probably on a tuesday or a thursday and november in the beginning of november is typically solid and i'm starting to get requests putting places on hold for november so my slow season is going to help me accomplish my now busy season of september to december and that's the scenario I've been playing out how I work with this. The other part of this is if I do have to have

▶ 3:02:36 to be COVID compliant, an additional staff person whose only job it is, is to count how many people enter and exit the building. Then I'm going to, I only usually have as all of, you know, one staff person on duty for the event besides myself, who just runs around and takes care of the event stuff. You know, when things are missing or broken, I'm going to have to have someone else whose only job it is gonna be make sure that I have the right amount of people in the building. So I do not believe I can reduce my salary because in January when we're slow, then I won't have them do maintenance because I'll have to make sure I don't run out of my salaries by the end of the year. Great, thank you for that.

▶ 3:03:23 Robb Stewart: One other question that I have for you is when we get to the COVID compliant scenarios that you're speaking of and I don't know the details of this but I assume there's going to be a certain level of social distancing that will be required within the hall which means that you can't have full capacity of the hall so does that impact the revenue or is are you looking at more fixed price engagements to rent the hall I'm interested in how that works the Board of Trustees voted the other night to keep all the rental rates and the rental contract exactly as is so there will be no increase or decrease in the rates the rates are pretty low now in terms of the social distancing again I don't have a crystal ball and a lot of

▶ 3:04:16 my friends and a lot of my peers in this industry we talked a long time about that and we see what the restaurants are doing then we will know more of how we we do it. Because for one example, say I blocked off the chairs so that you can only fit six feet apart, but a family comes in. Well, they can sit next to each other. So how can I block off the chairs? I mean, there's a lot more thought that has to go into this. And that's why the governor has not changed. We can only have gatherings of 10 people, no greater than 10. And he did not change that at all. He didn't touch it. So I really need to wait for phase three guidelines to come out and on our call today we're advised watch how it goes with the restaurants watch their

▶ 3:05:01 John N. Tramontozzi: guidelines because that is how it's going to lead into our guidelines because phase three is only indoor performance centers and movie theaters that's phase three phase four is large concert venues like fenway park and gardens phase two includes the restaurants great well it's clear that you've put a lot of thought into how you're going to manage this budget and the upcoming activities given these extraordinary circumstances. So I appreciate your input. Thank you. Thank you, Mr. Chair. Thank you. Dr. Tramitozzi. Thank you, Mr. Chair. Thank you, Kathy, for being here and for the budget and all your assistance with the Melrose Helps organization and the assistance to the community we appreciate that um let me ask you this uh kathy

▶ 3:05:56 John N. Tramontozzi: is it uh is it fair to say that employees of your department have been laid off or furloughed because of the coronavirus no that no one has been said earlier no one in the city has been furloughed or laid off uh going back and following up on the council of stewards uh questioning about the salary and wage line. I noticed that 2020 budget was $142,979.07, but to date the budget line has only been exhausted at $105,605.19. Can you explain to us the difference? I have a lot of service contractors, contracts that are coming up right now, and that that will especially the professional services item that item usually gets spent in may and june and the electricity and gas building hasn't been open as much so that's why it's lower

▶ 3:06:54 John N. Tramontozzi: right now maybe i'm confused i'm just looking at salary and wages line you don't pay do you pay independent contractors out of the salary and wait i'm sorry you're talking about the salary? Well, 1.2% increase. No, no, no. But look at the 2020 year-to-date spent. There's only $105,605. That's what... My guys aren't working the same amount of hours. They normally work. Okay. Thank you. That's the explanation. I thought that was probably the case because of corona, they're not being used and utilized as necessary, right? Correct. Because this would been an incredibly busy season for me this would have especially june think about that's my dance recital month i had 12 dance companies coming in in june right no i appreciate that um is it

▶ 3:07:46 John N. Tramontozzi: are your employees unionized employees non-union non-benefit non-union employees okay so um what i'm trying to do is my concern is as again from what i've said before is I'm not confident that the state funding source that we're going to get the full funding from the state in that in the fall we're going to be looking at either supplemental budget or some other way of raising funds and you know as what has been said earlier you know we are all in this together and I think that we need to try to do something can is there anything in your budget can you see anything uh to give uh a two two percent three percent anything for a budget um cut no not without closing the building okay now what i've been trying to do and i

▶ 3:08:50 John N. Tramontozzi: don't don't get me wrong and it's not personal but i'm trying to make a point of other departments as well as they come in i would like to see their salary and wages uh level funded at the 2020 budget and see if that can be done and i understand there's some limitations because of union contracts uh with that in mind i would propose that that line item five one one zero zero zero only be reduced by $1,685.48, which would be level funded to 2020, leaving the bottom line budget total at $207,738.65. And that would be in my proposal. I'd be happy to hear anybody else who wishes to um change that but i i'll put that in the form of a motion um and uh to do that motion i did not hear a second yeah one thousand six hundred and eighty five dollars

▶ 3:09:54 John N. Tramontozzi: and forty eight cents mr chairman i'd second for at least the purpose of a discussion because i right thank you i'm not necessarily looking for seconds now at this point but i just want to make it clear that at least i want the opportunity to present to the council uh so that we don't fire we don't move the bottom line without an opportunity for anybody for that matter who may wish to make adjustments uh to the uh the um the budget i mean we we have an obligation to the taxpayers and the citizens of the community uh to enter into that discussion we i mean if you look at um the um the powers invested in us by the city charter section 6-4 the city council may delete decrease any amounts except expenditures required by law so when we review the operating

▶ 3:10:52 John N. Tramontozzi: budget we have that um in in general laws chapter 44 section 32 that the city council may by majority vote make appropriations for the purposes recommended and may reduce or reject my recommended in the annual budget and i think we have to seriously look at this uh in in light of these unprecedented uh times so that's all i'm young so we have a motion on the floor and on discussion i have a few people though still in queue to speak come back to that Vice Chair Migliorelli. Thank you, Chairman. Thank you, Kathy, for being here tonight. I just want to thank you also for all your work on Melrose Helps. It's been such a huge thing for our community, and you've done a tremendous amount with that project.

▶ 3:11:46 Leila Migliorelli: I want to kind of get back to something that Councilor Stewart had brought up in terms of scenario planning. I know that we are all anxious to get back to normal life, But the reality of what I've been hearing, you know, in terms of event planning and planning events in the future is that we may not be looking at a return to events of this size, of the size of going to Memorial Hall until 2021. Have you gone through an exercise, like planning for what that would look like? I mean, it's in all, I think it's something we need to seriously consider. I think there's lots of elements of our lives that may change or may get slightly back to normal. But, you know, there's a reason why this is phase three. I mean, it's a lot of it is very hard to keep people socially distanced in that kind of setting. It's an enclosed facility. And so as much as I hate to be like a, you know, bursting anyone's bubble here, we do have to look practically forward and consider the possibility that we may not be, you know, gathering in large groups.

▶ 3:12:53 Leila Migliorelli: and so i just was curious if you had kind of gone through that or if you were able to look at the budget and sort of show us you know what percentage um overall you would see it decreasing by if you have to stay close to the the remainder of 2020. no i if i have to stay close to the remainder of 2020 no i have not done that i i have looked at scenarios that i'm going to open up july 1st if i'm going to open up august 1st if i'm going to open up september 1st um if we stay closed through the end of the year i have no idea what's going to happen lila i can be honest council i don't know okay and i have not looked at that and a lot of the scenarios on my meeting today they're all looking at um we had someone from the director of gourmet

▶ 3:13:42 Mark Garipay: catering there and she has she shared her reopening plan and it does have different scenarios but the scenarios are they're opening up in the very latest in september that's been the hope of all of us i will say that any money that is not spent in the salary goes into free cash from my budget thank you for clarifying that it goes into the free cash budget so the money that i have left over is going into free cash thank you for clarifying that i think that's an important point to bring up for the rest of this council thank you thank you chairman thank you uh ms pickerbroder for your detailed uh summary i appreciate that we all appreciate that um i'm involved with an organization that also has a hall that rents and we feel the pain that um

▶ 3:14:39 Mark Garipay: that uh that you're saying regarding the summer summer rentals there's just no there's just no revenue coming in and and we look at our season from september to june really that's um that's that's when you're that's when you're making making your money um with that said it looks like you have you have a good plan on really you manage your part-time staff you really backload them that you know they're not working a ton during the slow months it's really saving up to um saving up to saving up the budget for for the busy season so you know after we enter this you're right we do not have a lot of unknowns um i mean sorry we do have a lot of unknowns uh going into the going into the season but we're still three months away i i

▶ 3:15:24 Mark Garipay: don't necessarily want to want to cut the budget uh right off the bat with uh with so many unknowns because then we're just going to have to come back we can always we can always move money around at the um at the administration's request if another department needs it or or if you don't use all the salaries as you mentioned you can go to free cash um i do have a question regarding professional services uh i've seen uh 15 000 what goes into that line item um that is all my service contracts and my inspections for example all the fire extinguisher inspections the kitchen hood inspection the hvac contract the um there's a water contract that goes with the hva system that is separate there is a technical the computer the technical side of the hvac um service contract as

▶ 3:16:16 well as a physical maintenance side of that and there's a little bit um not the elevator the um it's one of the contracts i'm forgetting it's mostly all the contracts and services that i have to and inspections that have to go on in the building like my my hood inspection i'm sorry my counselor the hood inspection is also involved in that and this making machine has to get cleaned once a year that's all out of professional services okay thank you um you had mentioned that we most of the um events that were cancelled over the last well through from march on have rescheduled or what percentage of those have rescheduled um out of the 94 i don't know 20 events have uh refunded and have had refunds the rest have had credits but out of those 20 events

▶ 3:17:07 Mark Garipay: 10 of them are the Melrose Symphony. So 10 events have canceled completely and not rescheduled, but the Melrose Symphony has requested a refund, but they are still planning on their season for next year. So when you say that the ones that we hold events and dates and then credit them back, are we going to realize less money next year because we moved? we're gonna realize that less revenue next year because we moved the bookings out and you know really just pushed off the revenue we we took it in this year correct we took probably the most of them had deposits only because you have a percentage I'm sorry but all of the actually all of the refunds except one were deposits and the credits have all been deposits except for one that we've

▶ 3:18:04 Maya Jamaleddine: given so but I will realize I'll come to grab I will realize that less revenue because for example beer and bites paid for their 50% deposit um Beetlejuice paid for their 50% deposit and we're just moving that 50% deposit to next year so next year they only have to pay into the rental fee so there will be less revenue next year all right great thank you thank you thank you chairman And thank you, Ms. Pickett-Broder, for being with us today and especially for being at Memorial Hall when you're coming before us. It brings so much good memories for us and I miss being there so much. I wanted to thank you for all the hard work throughout the years, and especially for helping us in a very meaningful event for me personally.

▶ 3:19:06 Maya Jamaleddine: I can never forget that you would be waiting for all of us to get there, and you wouldn't leave until everyone would leave to ensure that everyone is safe and everything is running smoothly. I cannot count the events that I've attended and I've seen the hard work and the amazing work that you've done. Thank you so much. My question is, have you considered any virtual events with this new plan and new opening? I forgot about thank you for asking that counselor. I actually a lot of people I don't know if you're aware a lot of the wedding facilities are doing zoom events now they're doing zoom weddings where just the family of the bride and groom can go to it and they're at the facilities and then they are promising that later on they would have their

▶ 3:20:08 some type of reception. We just got asked the other day if we could have a zoom recital here and what would happen is if I'm allowed to get to 25 people we could have 25 people that was socially distance the dance company would have have it live they would zoom it and then parents could watch it on zoom however right now I can't say yes to that because this I'm still under the state guidelines of only a gathering of ten if I can get if he changes it when the restaurants open it's a gathering of greater than 25 then yes yeah i have spoken to this with one dance company in particular we're going back and forth to figure out how we can do a zoom recital because as most of june was all the recitals and they have to if they want to redo them we have to get creative

▶ 3:21:00 and they're going to have to do them in july or early august or not at all because their seniors will all be going off to college thank you and uh one more question last question um anything that the council can do for you um to support the memorial hall during this um pandemic well you guys just gave me a permission to go get two million dollar bond thank you very much um but i would like to make a point of clarification about the malice helps project because i don't want this was not just me i was the co-chair with chris wilcox and um patrick pendergast i also used city hall employees over 18 departments were part of the Melrose Helps team from day one and then in addition to that we had over

▶ 3:21:50 250 volunteers from the city of Melrose that signed up to do the Melrose Helps program it was not a one-person show at all I mean my co-chairs Patrick and Chris were just as involved as I was and I have to honestly tell you it was it's a nice feeling to know that you helped people it was amazing the response that we got i was just talking mary that you know one week we decided to give them loaves of bread and the phone calls that i got from people that were the seniors that hadn't gotten a loaf of bread in a week with amazing so it was my pleasure and honor to do it really it was very um fulfilling for me we are grateful to have all of you thank you so much alpha mcmaster thank you mr chairman good evening miss pickett broder thank you for uh for all that you do and uh

▶ 3:22:40 Shawn M. MacMaster: you're you're very modest you're always uh so unassuming um and i do appreciate you recognizing everybody who was involved and is involved in melrose helps but i do think you deserve some special recognition because you always need a very strong leader on the ground level so um i just want to echo what um my fellow counselors have said and recognize you for all of your work um My question, Ms. Pigott-Broda, is with respect to the revenue that was brought in last year. You mentioned that I believe $82,272 is what Memorial Hall brought in from events, and that's about 39% of what the total budget request is from Memorial Hall, which is a very modest increase of 0.9 percent from from last year the question

▶ 3:23:36 Shawn M. MacMaster: is from the revenue that's generated is any of that applied to any of the eight line items at all or does the city completely subsidize those line items and those line items just to be clear salary and wages electricity gas heat elevator maintenance building repair and maintenance professional services miscellaneous supplies and marketing supplies is there any money from that that revenue that is used to fund any of these line items in any amount um that revenue goes directly into the general account so it when I get a rental check goes right into the general account so i directly i don't believe it comes back but it's going into the general um revenue account for the city so the general fund you you find excuse me the general fund

▶ 3:24:32 Cory Thomas: yes so that's not that doesn't go somewhere else within the um within some sort of um internal account that's used for any other purpose it's it's it is revenue that we're getting as a city okay thank you and um i think that answers my question that's all i have thank you um let's pick it for you thomas thank you mr chair um kathy pickerbroder thank you so much for being here and thank you for mary sexton um if mary's still there please say hello to her and hope she's doing well um thank you for all the information you provided and thank you for proactively getting ready for the return to business i hope many other businesses and organizations and programs in melrose are actively planning uh for a return to business so thank you for that um we do have a responsibility

▶ 3:25:30 Jack Eccles: to challenge this budget um however we just voted less than a month ago um for an investment in memorial hall you know i i don't think right now is the time to be looking to cut memorial house budget um on the heels of that approval for that bond Councilor Eccles. Thank you, Ms. Perkins-Picabreda, for being here, and thanks for all you've been doing. I just had one question. If you or the trustees had any conversations about giving refunds for renters who might find capacity restrictions unacceptable. unacceptable so for example if someone was going to have a an event in july or september but shows that they couldn't because they wanted to be able to fill the entire venue is that something that you'd be honoring and is that something that you kind of anticipate

▶ 3:26:22 based on the volume of some of the events that you hold your year um the board of trustees when this first started tasked me with um the ability to offer whatever my customer needs it's their decision to work with each individual customer to give them a refund or credit or anything that works with them um to help them and if that means that they want to cancel the event because they it's not the event they originally anticipated then they have the option to tell me what they want to do but the board of trustees immediately said do what you can to help our customers and just in our contract we have a force majeure and that is why i brought it to the um trustees we We had a meeting, March 12th, and we had a meeting

▶ 3:27:09 like immediately that following week to discuss that because as a force majeure, legally you don't have to give refunds. I mean, that's what a lot of people are running into, but ethically, of course, the trustees and media said, no, whatever we need to do to help our customers, because a lot of them are like, the refunds I've given to a couple of dance companies, it's paying their electricity. I mean, these are small business owners, a lot of them that rent my place. These aren't people that have a lot of money. Thank you for that question. thank you i believe i saw any other hands up do you have a motion um council tramitose to reduce the overall budget to 207 738 65 is that correct that is correct it's just a minor 1685 dollars and 48 cents

▶ 3:27:58 and seconded by council mcmaster point of information mr chairman i'm just unclear exactly i just want to be certain i seconded it for the motion of discussion but which is that coming out of a particular line item or is that coming directly just off of the bottom thank you for that um yes it'd be coming out a line item zero one six nine three one dash five one one zero zero zero salary and wages one thousand six eighty five forty eight correct council mcmaster you second that anything any other discussion around this call the roll please council meg liarelli no council Tramontozzi yes mcmaster yes Councilor mcnaught no Councilor eccles no counselor Garipay counselor stewart no counselor thomas no

▶ 3:29:06 counselor Jamaleddine counselor president Grigoraitis no chairman sanella counselor maladin no two yes ten i'm sorry two no ten yes motion fails what is the will of the committee for We're going to move the bottom line of Memorial Hall, about 693, in the amount of $209,424.13. Thank you. Motion to move the bottom line made by Councilor Garite, 693, Saylor and Toldo is no more of it. Seconded by Councilor Thomas. Madam Clerk, call the roll. Councilor McGlee-Rooley? Yes. Councilor Tramontozzi. Yes. Councilor McMaster. Yes. Councilor McNaught. Yes. Councilor Eccles. Yes. Councilor Garipay. Yes. Councilor Stewart. Yes. Councilor Thomas. Yes. Councilor Jamaleddine. Yes. President Grigoraitis. Yes. Chairman Sinella. Yes. 11 yes. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you.

▶ 3:30:38 Thank you very much. We have item 291, emergency management. I'm bringing in Alan Alpert at the moment. There he is. Alan, you are muted and no video. You're muted and no video. I don't know if you can hear us. I can hear you there we are there you are okay thank you for your patience would you like to uh give us uh presentations getting late yeah it certainly is uh unfortunately I haven't had the opportunity to meet the new council which I certainly look forward to in the the months and days ahead just to get a little communication going about what it is that we do in emergency management. As most of you probably know, I'm relatively new in Mill Road as I completed a career in the City of Chelsea for almost 35 years as Director of

▶ 3:31:59 Emergency Management and also Superintendent of Fire Alarm, the 911 Director. But after a few months of retirement, it was time to go back to work, and Melrose had an open position that had been open since the late Ed Kelly retired several years ago. Up until we got into the COVID-19, it was just the basic day-to-day operations of emergency management under the four phases of emergency management. Since COVID-19, things have changed a lot, most of the normal operations have ceased. And through the Office of Emergency Management, working with our partners on the federal level, the state level, and our partners locally, since it was a federal declaration, everything emanates out of FEMA, the Federal

▶ 3:32:55 Emergency Management Agency, to the individual states' emergency management agencies, and from the state emergency management down to the local directors. So I'm in constant contact with MEMA, like everybody else inundated with emails and communications and directives. And now we're starting to enter the phase of recovery. So it has been very busy. I went hired, it was hired as a part-time employee, 18 hours a week, which is coming out to more than that. But in any event, that's not an issue because there's no place to go anyway. So the budget is level funded from last year. There are no changes out of the entire budget, less than $5,000 is for the day-to-day operations and the remainder of that is salary.

▶ 3:33:59 Robb Stewart: So if anybody has any questions, I'm certainly more than willing and able to answer them. Let's do it. Yeah, I'm just, thank you, Mr. Chair. Thank you Mr. Albert for being here and thank you for jumping into a fire, so to speak with dealing with the COVID situation. Can you talk to all of the activities that you provide to Melrose for this COVID situation and what would be missing if you didn't exist during the recovery? Well, if there was another director would go on just the same. In Massachusetts general law, it states that every municipality must have the director of emergency management by law. It doesn't say who it is. To me, the last dedicated director was the late Ed Kelly. And in the interim, it was the fire chief

▶ 3:35:11 and the health director. But what I can just as briefly summarize, what I have been doing is in addition to conference calls and WebEx and Zooms with our partners out there and our partners out there, FEMA, the Federal Emergency Management Agency, MEMA, State Department of Public Health, CDC, and then our internal departments working with the health department, the fire department, the police department. MEMA has made available personal protection equipment and for fire, police, and EMS. And through the State Department of Public Health, they have made similar supplies available that go through the local health department. So between Ruth Clay and myself, we are the ones that have been bringing in

▶ 3:36:10 the state resources for that. And just coordinating efforts and equipment and also at the same time, Having gone through a number of these in my past profession, knowing what was coming down the road, we started out very early planning for the reimbursement from FEMA. So I have been working with our department heads to lay out the schedule so that when we start doing the reimbursement requests, all of the elements needed are properly documented and the department has been doing a phenomenal job at that. Great, thank you for that. And can you elaborate a little bit on what your other charges and expenditures are for the emergency management, other charges? Well, this was a budget that I inherited.

▶ 3:37:11 Robb Stewart: It has basically, actually there has been a reduction in some lines from the time that I came in. Since there aren't many line items, the other charges and expenditures are basically a catch-all for something that's not covered in a line item? Sure. What just caught my eye, just at a cursory glance of the budget, is when you had a 2019 year-to-date spent on the other charges and expenditures, you originally budgeted 1575 and then you spent only $45. only forty five dollars so there's been two year of spend of either zero or forty five bucks and you're then still allocating fifteen hundred dollars for this next year i'm wondering if it's required is my my question um well this current fiscal year that we're in is is the

▶ 3:38:08 first year that i've been here for a a full budget and between the fact that when the covert issue struck us it was january and we were only about six months into the budget i really didn't have a chance to make any types of purchases uh for any type of equipment and then it came along and then everything came to a screeching halt so for this year's budget uh probably not a lot of money will be spent but going into next year's budget one of the things that i want to try to improve is our communication system that we have in emergency management uh the previous director the radio equipment that he had was older and since the time that he left uh fire and police have gone from uh ehf radios to uhf radios which we don't have any in our department matter of fact

▶ 3:39:07 i have a borrowed radio from the fire department until such time that we can purchase a couple of of radios to have inter-agency communications, not only within our own departments, but with our regional partners. And radio equipment is very expensive. Right. Well, there's that line item for $2,000. That's well understood. You can see that nothing got spent this year, so obviously it was held off a year. So I see how that's just a carry Okay. That being said, I question the need for the $1,500 on the other charges and expenditures. I'm just looking for a valid reason for that to be there from you. Well, again, not having had the opportunity to do any type of purchases for the department at all. I'm looking to purchase some computer equipment. We have a training room that used

▶ 3:40:12 Maya Jamaleddine: to be the EOC, and the equipment in there is old. I do have a grant pending from FEMA – I'm sorry, from MEMA that we're going to purchase some new computers for that room. So we're trying to build out an EOC because we have absolutely nothing in the city for emergency operating center okay so that's that's how you can describe those other charges and expenditures is uh to institute an emergency operating center that has yet to be developed correct well thank you michelle but i appreciate it you're welcome your help thank you mr chair thank you mr chairman thank you um mr albert for uh being with us today i um i wasn't among the counselors um last year when you were um hired but i was um sitting between the guests uh in the room and i uh listened to your uh presentation on that day

▶ 3:41:17 Maya Jamaleddine: and your answers um one of your answers um pointed out uh you plan to have a emergency shelter that we don't have in my rose currently what do you envision in terms of especially now we're going through a pandemic and that would become handy knowing that we do have some of the residents that lost their homes and some of the homeless that are in my roads no conversation ever came up with the city owning a shelter what communication did come up I believe was when they were when we were talking about short-term if we had something such as a multiple alarm fire and to stage people uh while we were waiting for the red cross to come in and to assist us uh with relocation but the conversation about the city

▶ 3:42:25 Maya Jamaleddine: having a full-time or setting up a shelter never came into play because to have a shelter first of First of all, a shelter has to be totally ADA compliant and to have a location just sitting there waiting for something that may or may not happen, it is a lot easier if we have to, excuse me, put some people up, to put people up in a hotel for a short period of time rather than having a shelter. you my other question knowing that you know you just mentioned that due to the pandemic you haven't been able to do a lot of things that you had in mind do you and you you're hide for 18 hours part-time right that's correct do you feel that you have been the 18 hours are enough are you using all the 18 hours or

▶ 3:43:22 you feel that it's it's been not productive in a way since COVID-19 or since I started COVID-19 of course I I work in excess of the 18 hours although that's all that's all I submit for I don't have the traditional office hours that I had when I was in City Hall because I'm working from home however However, due to the COVID and all the communications and all of the interactivity with all of our partners out there, it's basically working seven days a week because nothing stops coming in from the state, the federal, and other agencies. So a communication that comes in on a Saturday does not sit on my computer until Monday. It's addressed on Saturday. So can you just name one thing that we were able to really focus on and work on as, you

▶ 3:44:29 know, as Mr. Alpert, what were you able to focus on and really work on during this pandemic? Well, again, a lot of the communications that come in, there must be anywhere from eight or nine emails that come in a day from these various agencies, which all encompass, you reports of what's happening and since this is something that is totally new that has never happened to us before when something is discovered and is discussed and a protocol comes out for it it may have to change the entire protocol within four or five days depending upon the results of the response to it so every time these communications come in i have to read them through thoroughly and then uh depending upon which local departments that a lot of these

▶ 3:45:24 reflect to uh disseminate them to whether it's the fire department the police department or the health department thank you so much you're welcome Councilor McNaught yes i'd like to make a motion to move the bottom line of 291 forward move the bottom line of 291 emergency management forward do we have a second second by council thomas seconding that on discussion another discussion none madam clerk please call the roll really yes that's the tram and tozy yes that's the mcmaster yes that's the mcnaught yes that's our eckles yes council Garipay yes councilor stewart yes that's our thomas yes councilor maladin yes president great chairman sanella yes yes thank you thank you alan mr thank you very much thank you very much

▶ 3:46:37 counselors and i look forward to seeing you in person someday likewise thank you entertain a motion to adjourn at this time yes councilor Tramontozzi yes councilor mcmaster council mcnaught yes councilor eccles yes councilor Garipay yes councilor stewart yes councilor thomas yes jamael yes president Grigoraitis yes chairman eccles i mean chairman sanella sorry you keep doing that so sorry it's the time of night it's 10 30 i apologize keeping you on your toes that committee was weeks ago i think you look like brothers thank you i said yes this meeting is now adjourned 11. thank you good night have a good long weekend everybody all right all happy Memorial Day sorry Chris

Appropriations & Oversight Committee — 2020-05-21

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