Appropriations & Oversight Committee — 2020-05-28

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

1. Call to Order (0:00)
2. Public Comment (1:25)
3. Orders (2:48)
4. ORDER-2020-96 : An Appropriation from Free Cash (01-324001) in the amount of $2,500,000 to various Stabilization Funds. (3:34)
5. ORDER-2020-89 : 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). (1:23:13)
6. Adjournment (2:52:10)

Minutes

CITY OF MELROSE APPROPRIATIONS COMMITTEE CALENDAR● MAY 28, 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

ORDER-2020-96 Appropriation An Appropriation from Free Cash (01-324001) in the amount of $2,500,000 to various Stabilization Funds. 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 2:09 PM

Transcript

▶ 0:00 Christopher Cinella: Good evening, this is the Appropriations Committee. I'm Chair Cinella, this is May 28th, I'll be in 7 o'clock. This is Governor Baker's March 12th order, extending certain provisions of the Open Meeting Law. On the Governor's March 15th order, imposing strict limitation on the number of people that may gather in one place. This meeting of the Appropriations Committee will be conducted via remote participation to the greatest extent possible. We will 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 website and mmtv3.org. Madam Clerk, could you please call the roll? Vice Chair Migliorelli.

▶ 0:47 Here. Councilor Tramontozzi. Here. Councilor McMaster. Here. Councilor McNaught. Here. Councilor Eccles. Here. Councilor Garipay. Here. Councilor Stewart. here counselor thomas here council jamala dean yeah president Grigoraitis here chairman sanella here 11 present at this time i'll entertain a motion to open the floor for public comment motion to open the floor for public comment second open the floor for public comment made by counselor stewart seconded by president Grigoraitis adam clerk if you can call the all right jim Migliorelli yes councilor Tramontozzi yes councilor mcmaster yes councilor McNaught yes councilor eccles yes councilor Garipay yes that's our stewart yes sir thomas yes councilor Jamaleddine

▶ 1:52 yes president Grigoraitis yes chairman sanella yes seven yes do we have anybody in queue So, anybody in the attendee list, if you wish to speak, if you could raise your virtual hand. So, there are panelists and only a couple people in, and nobody is indicated they wish to speak. Motion to close public comment. Second. Second. Motion to close public comment made by Councillor Stewart, seconded by Vice Chair Migliorelli, Adam Clerk. Vice Chair Migliorelli? Yes. Councillor Tramontozzi? Yes. Councillor McMaster? Yes. Councillor McNaught? Yes. Not. Yes. Councilor Eccles. Yes. Councilor Garipay. Yes. Councilor Stewart. Yes. Councilor Thomas. No. Councilor Jamaleddine. Yes. That is literally the- Grigoraitis.

▶ 2:48 Christopher Cinella: Yes. Chairman Cinella. Yes. Levin, yes. I would also entertain a motion to suspend the rules. We have some administration here with us tonight. Suspend the rules. second suspend the rules made by councillor Eccles seconded by councillor Thomas vice chair Migliorelli yes councillor Tramontozzi yes councillor McMaster yes councillor McNaught yes councillor Eccles councillor Garipay yes councillor Stewart yes councillor Thomas yes councillor Jamaleddine president Grigoraitis? Yes. Chairman Sinella? Yes. Councilor Jamaleddine? And yes. All right, so our rules are under suspension. Our first order this evening is 2020-96, an appropriation from free cash, count 01-324-001, the amount of 2.5 million to various stabilization funds.

▶ 3:58 We have auditor with us. Yeah, good evening. Can you hear me? Yes, thank you. You can't see me. No video yet. Wait a minute. How about now? Yes, perfect. No, great. Thank you. I appreciate this evening really having the opportunity to talk a little bit about stabilization funds in general I think it's if I have to have an opening state which I want to have this complements the fiscal 2021 operating budget that the mayor had sent down for the council who plays a direct role in the success of the budget program on the operating budget for the city is much more than numbers on a page it's a living document it's one that is used by outside agencies to view us as a community and identify what we consider our priorities

▶ 5:23 and the fact of the matter is that they want to ensure that we're doing things that are prudent and fiscally responsible not just today not just tomorrow but the year after that the year after that and the year after that they want to see us be consistent so if i may um have some leeway here just for a moment i i do want to speak to this order in the the context of my memorandum dated on May 21st 2020 I'm not sure if the council has it in front of them or those at home that might be listening and if I could I like to just read the second paragraph into the record it states in my opinion this is one of those times we must enhance our stabilization fund balances as the negative economic effects of the COVID-19 crisis will be significant.

▶ 6:26 This positive action of enhancing our financial reserves at this time will go a long way to maintain a AA plus bond rating with Standard & Poor's bond rating agency. There is tremendous value here i think it behooves us to take a step back and look at the bigger picture and what we will be facing this october november when we're rated again by standard employees so it's an annual event and in fact i think i sent everyone an official statement that is also an annual event but if you take a look at the mma best practices series which i did send to you uh out to you folks um i just like to read a couple of sentences into the record again i think it brings into context the what we're talking about this

▶ 7:24 evening and what a big big big deal it is and i want to i can that can never be understated it's what you're doing tonight or considering acting upon is the largest investment in the city stabilization funds in the history of the city of Melrose and I've been here a long time since 92 and I took a short hiatus for seven years as you know to be CFO for the town of Plymouth as some don't know but I've been back since 2004. this is the largest contribution if approved ever in the history of the city and it could not happen at a better time the what are reserves in best practice and why in fact are they so important you look at the MMA fiscal policy committee that outline on best practice recommendations and it says it

▶ 8:21 says adopt best practice adopt as a set policy or practice adequate funding of municipal reserve accounts to mitigate budget risk from extraordinary and unforeseen events and maintain fiscal stability over time. It is widely recognized that state and local governments that have established and funded reserve and stabilization accounts at sufficient levels have been well served because reserves allow states and localities to sustain services in times of economic and fiscal distress and it limits the risk from extraordinary and unforeseen occurrences. Sound policies and practices along with adequate levels of reserves can also have a positive impact on credit ratings and can reduce the cost of borrowing and capital project spending.

▶ 9:26 The Division of Local Services advises that a good reserve policy will establish targeted balances for the local stabilization fund and other reserves and develop a schedule of annual appropriations. I want to stop for one second. The appropriations we're going to be talking about later on this evening on department 942 or OPEB in the regular stabilization fund we call the foundation stabilization fund of the city those are annual events that are part of our budget and they're there for a reason which we can talk about shortly and again if you take a look here it also indicates on standard and pours rating on October 17th of 2019 and they state the rating reflects the double a plus stable of the city's stable local economy supported by access to the

▶ 10:30 Boston metropolitan statistical area and continued continued maintenance of strong to very strong reserves to balance financial operations um so what we're looking at here is a continuation of maintaining strong reserves at a time most needed at a time when it's uncertainty in the economy uncertainty of state funding uncertainty of local receipts and as everyone is aware that those communities that um don't follow good practice and they become more risky to investors the outcome is they end up paying more in interest and their bond rating suffers because as an investor they don't have confidence that that community has planned well for such adverse um conditions now we have gone through the economic crisis uh 2010 as we saw where the city ended up losing uh 2.2 million

▶ 11:55 dollars in state aid we never touched the stabilization fund we suffered the next year we lost another 555,000 and another 513,000 so for three consecutive years we suffered losses from state aid so the key again is none of no one can predict duration of this crisis economically or in the impact on state aid but again what we can do and what we need to do is control what we as a community can control and those that follow that practice are always always in a position of financial strength you take a look at our last standard and pause rating it is phenomenal we are one step away from a triple a rating because the highest rating we can achieve a community that has struggled through many years of loss of state aid um and conditions that were not brought upon

▶ 13:11 us ourselves loss of federal aid we lost um over three million dollars in our funds also at the same time we lost the 2.2 million in state aid and never did we do two things never did we draw on our stabilization funds? Never did we draw on our stabilization funds to cover any deficits in those respects. Also, we've always contributed. What Sienden & Poors finds interesting about Melrose, even in the worst of times, the worst of times, every year, what does Melrose do? consistently, consistently funds its stabilization fund. Year after year after year after year. That tells them that we are sincere, that we are diligent, that we are prudent. And that doesn't happen in many communities. We are now on the brink of having seven,

▶ 14:15 seven stabilization funds in one community, created for specific purposes, and what that does, it tells Standard & Poor's, it tells the investment community out there that this community is ready, willing, and able to take on its operating budget for the next fiscal year from a position of strength. They have funded what they needed to fund for stabilization, to protect themselves, to minimize the risk that the operating budget could be impacted because of conditions beyond the city's control. That's what they want to see. That's what this order does. And I appreciate the time and your consideration. I can answer hopefully most questions that you may have on. And if not, I promise I will find out the answer.

▶ 15:10 Robb Stewart: Thank you. So far in queue, I have a Councilor Stewart. Did I miss anybody else? If you could just raise your hands, I'm trying to tell us . Thank you, Mr. Chair. Thank you, Mr. Del Rosso, for providing that introductory statement to help us understand your position. So a couple of things that I would like to point out and ask in reference to this. I'm a little confused about how this aligns with some of the things that the mayor has spoken about. So just as a counselor, I need to represent my constituents and their perspectives. And I need to look at the people of Melrose and the related businesses in Melrose. So when I hear about the stabilization fund, I think it's great that we have a very strong financial position. I think it's an envy of

▶ 16:26 Robb Stewart: many towns in the region. But we are now in extraordinary times. Events are happening that have never happened before. I think it is difficult to compare any recent economic downturn to what we're facing. It's pretty well established that the state is going to have a tremendous economic impact. They're talking about a 12 to 13% revenues, which is gonna significantly affect all the towns across the state. So my question is, is that, you know, as the mayor has spoken about, you know, if things continue and we continue to have added stresses that all bets are off the table, he put in his work and we may need to look at uh certain potential cuts um you know and and who if no one can predict the future um but we need to plan for the future so my question to you is

▶ 17:33 when we have such a strong stabilization fund and financial position when do we use it so at what point uh when we're in a situation where we're looking at you know impacting the school system impacting the ability to do work in the town effectively looking at furloughs when do we use this um use this money that's a great question yeah yeah um a couple things that's a great question there i if we let's talk a little bit about what happened and i think history sometimes could help you get a better view of the tomorrow if you know your history um When we talk about what happened in 2009, 2010, what changes the dynamic is that in some ways, whether or not people will acknowledge it, the fact that we knew about the COVID crisis when we did is better than had we been told about this COVID crisis in January, midyear,

▶ 18:46 when we had already set the budget and we would have found ourselves with a state aid shortage mid-fiscal 21, then what do you do? What has happened in the past in the years I talked about previously, we've lost the state aid in mid-year, they actually came in mid-year and cut our aid because they can do that at any time throughout the year. And I think it's a great point. need to understand the estimate you get for state aid is a 12-month estimate at any time during the year you have the capacity to cut that or to increase it just because they put it out on the cherry sheet doesn't mean it's going to materialize it that by the time the fiscal year is over so what we did by budgeting the way that we do the last two times that

▶ 19:36 we lost the over half a million and maybe we were able to absorb that because we budget conservatively so the local receipts for example that we had excess of than what we had anticipated covered that shortage so this community has never seen that destruction of services now if we because we absorbed it and the public wouldn't doesn't even recognize that it happened because we it was so strong in the way we had budget as we did this year but the second point is we did take extreme measures fiscal 10 we brought in the gic for the first time in the city the group insurance we saved 1.2 million dollars almost 1.3 that first year we had a wage freeze the very next year citywide unheard of teachers firefighters police union non-union the very next year we

▶ 20:31 froze wages across the board that was a dramatic action but guess what we but guess what happened Council Stewart put the notice out that if we were unable to have the wage freeze if everyone didn't buy into it collectively it would be layoffs we have put that out there but we had a remedy for that we didn't have to lay off because we had a rate a wage freeze across the board that was not made up the next year everyone lost that entire year's salary that they had been you know looking forward to it cetera bowlers whatever the case may be elected by again that was foregone for an entire year the very after that and to this day of the non-union sometimes it gets a misunderstanding out there we

▶ 21:25 senator policy where the increases for non-union members are either a step or a cost of living but not both if you look at this year's budget if you see someone that gets a step they're not getting the 2% cost of living not both unions collective bargaining they get both just the non-union that don't participate in both it's either one or the other I'm getting a step this year I'm not getting two percent cola if i wasn't getting a step i get a two percent cola example for five years i got a call about one percent that was it and showed that everyone else that was non-human so we took drastic steps in the public um i think you can see that we will do what we have to do the objective counselor and always has been my objective personally and i'm sure it's the mayors

▶ 22:20 as well as as those in the community we don't want to see services cut we don't want to see layoffs with that comes unemployment and a host of other negative consequences um so we did take drastic measures to alleviate that from happening and thank god we hope we're hopeful that that doesn't happen in the future that does not mean that we will not use the stabilization fund should it be some become so um i'll just say over the top that it requires us to use it and there's nothing wrong with that i would argue that if we use a million dollars of stabilization this year for the budget two things we replenish that from the free cash that's getting certified this october for example and restore it the first chance we have whether it's one installment or two installments

▶ 23:15 and that also is okay the end of the poors moody's as long as you can show you have a policy to replenish it that's oh that's fine because those things can happen it's not my hope it's not my expectation i've been doing this my 28th budget i've seen the very good situations and i've seen a lot of bad ones i was in plymouth when it was deregulation we lost uh that was 15 million dollars a year in taxes overnight we have to end up trying to negotiate that down over a longer period of time so in this in this instance we were given notice you're being given notice which you don't always get that things are going to get rocky and hard so what did we do we did the foi 21 budget at the lowest percentage in 10 years the two percent the lowest percentage

▶ 24:06 in 10 years. We cut our expectation of new growth by 50% from 600,000 last year to 300,000. We anticipated 12.5% cut in unrestricted Local A, which is 680,000, and we did not touch Chapter 70. And I'm going to tell you why, because even then, back then, back in 9 and 10 when we lost that 2.2 million, Chapter 70 was pretty much intact. It was reduced, but nothing to the magnitude that local government unrestricted aid was reduced because that's a whole different scenario per student that's involved in that determination for funding. So we held that tight and I'm hearing that that's probably not an unreasonable expectation, but I'm hearing for fiscal 21, that they may just level fund it to fiscal 20

▶ 24:58 the year that we're in. And we also were using only 75% of the receipts from local receipts. from fiscal 19 so there's a 2.2 million dollars less we're anticipating taking in to fund this budget than we did fiscal 19. so we um we're more than conservative that is us in a structured basis that's what we that's how we operate so that if in fact you know god forbid you know more negative comes forward we have already braced ourselves we've already put money aside in this case for these funds should that be necessary we know we can wake up in the morning and have recourse to these funds other communities cannot say that i think if i was a resident in morrow's i'd be extremely pleased that council and the city embraced this as a serious matter which it has

▶ 25:58 and they also took action to ensure that this year's budget was not overstated or overblown in any way every department is ensuring you know council has said they could use extra money and I'm department is no different I raised my hand but I live in the world of reality and I also understand that you can only pay for what you can pay for period and we all have to share that and I respect that that, but in no way would I feel that we're doing a disservice to the citizens of the city. In fact, we're doing them a service because that's going to enable us to do capital improvements and pay the least cost we possibly can for any bonds that we take. And we can continue our capital program every year like we're doing now with that 5% set aside for

▶ 26:46 capital. We don't have to worry about that getting corrupted. And you still are able to function as a community and bring new things into the community make have progressive ideas may have it grow in ways that other people just wanted the chance to do it so in many many ways we're fortunate that we had notice of it the worst case is when you're not notified it hits you mid year and then you've already set your budget you've already hired people now you have to lay off even more people every one person that you know you would have to lay off typically in a fiscal year you have to lay off two in january to get the same cost saving so that's why i mean it's crazy at the sounds more notice we had this was coming the better and it also different than

▶ 27:34 2009 and 10. the commonwealth got 1.7 billion dollars i believe in federal aid we ourselves got just under 2.5 million dollars a federal grant that will pay for all our COVID expenses that are related to COVID. 2.5 million dollars that we haven't from now until December 30th to put in for um but it's a grant it's a federal grant it'll be audited as a federal grant is audited that's in addition to any FEMA reimbursement so that the harm that COVID has done to our community financially in the sense that cost us money to buy protective gear and all and all that um saying you know all the equipment you need to to make things uh safe um that's being covered by a federal grant that we now have possession of just under two point we didn't

▶ 28:30 have that 2009 attempt we didn't have anything like that the state wasn't getting any money from the federal government then that's another plus in our column so i always looked at the larger parameters and the dynamics behind that some have argued this will not be long in duration and that works to our favor if this is they thought if this is one of those short-term negative events that happens on this this pandemic and we're able to see light of the day at FBF to January or thereafter and what we would not expect to see the same negative deep roots as you would for something that was more driven by uh other factors so hopefully you know things will get better over time but in the interim i want to wake up and feel that we did everything we possibly

▶ 29:26 John N. Tramontozzi: could to protect ourselves thank you mr del russo and thank you mr chair counselor tramitosi thank you mr chair hello mr delarusso i have some hello counselor how are you sir all right listen um 2.5 million is a lot of money for the benefit of the council and the public when did we become aware of available free cash in the amount of 2.5 million dollars it was at the end of october of 2019 when the department of revenue certified uh free cash i mean the full amount was just under five million dollars okay and so uh and that that occurs yearly so in october of 2020 there'll be another uh review of and we may get certified free cash then i fully i fully expect it absolutely i believe we're going to get a healthy balance so if if we don't fund these stabilizations

▶ 30:26 John N. Tramontozzi: stabilization uh accounts with this money where does the money go well if it was not if it was not reappropriated for another purpose before the end of june it would close out and go towards next year's free cash determination well that means it would go towards potentially any um in this year's budget or next year's budget to feel like that's in other words i said i'm sorry i didn't see on the question sir can the money be used to fill in any gaps any shortfalls that we might have in this year's budget there is an order going down before you for over a million dollars to do just that to fill in overtime for police and fire to purchase some police vehicles is this another order coming before the council to do just that on all of them i'm sorry council

▶ 31:20 John N. Tramontozzi: of trimitosi so you're absolutely right there is another order going down before you that will address the needs of this fiscal year that can be funded from free cash is that in addition to the to the 2.5 million or is that it there's 2.5 million that's in addition to the 2.5 million so where's that million dollars held it's not health it's um it's the same as with the 2.5 million dollars it's a city cash right so if we fund this these stabilization accounts does that leave us for a balance of free cash it would leave you with one million twenty nine thousand nine ninety six one million two hundred ninety nine thousand one million twenty nine thousand nine ninety six all right you just tell us is the other post employment benefit

▶ 32:29 opeb stabilization fund what the money's in there what can that be used for um great question technically if the need be could be used to pay for retiree health insurance that the that the city pays for is that the all that comes up would come out of that account only that okay if because that is designed to address the um liability of health insurance on the community no different then the pension appropriation is designed to address the normal cost the pension system every year also the liability of the pension system so this opeb addresses the the liability of the health insurance on the city and that that's that's what the fund is designed to do so by the way if once the money goes into these stabilization accounts they have to be used

▶ 33:20 John N. Tramontozzi: for the specific purpose of those stabilization accounts and if it's not used you can't take these the money out and put it back into the general fund is that correct right the only one that can move any money in or out of these funds is the city council right but can we take money out of these stabilization accounts and put it back into the general funds no okay that's the stabilization trust fund what what is that for would you like to go over the one by one sir i i'll tell you which ones i want i know some of them i just want that one what does that one use for that's the we call that the foundation stabilization fund that's the very first one that we established way back in early 90s that is like the um i'll call it the brick and mortar of the building that's the one

▶ 34:09 John N. Tramontozzi: that we um always uh look towards to being able to sustain the fiscal stability of the community that we have the most merit in um because that is the one that uh we count on the most all right so it's sort of a potpourri whatever you need it comes from that account if you need something for the um yeah god forbid should we have to to um utilize that that fund it would principally probably be for operating needs at some point but i can't see it for capital that's why we have a capital stabilization fund okay that that's one of the other ones all right that's for that's for capital investments so the other one by the way this that's a special ed stabilization account I did we did get a memo from the

▶ 35:07 John N. Tramontozzi: superintendent of schools the memo stated May 28 2020 that should be part of the M2 I think it's in there not we'll put it in there yeah I had that So, I think, is it fair to say that this is because of unanticipated that might occur because of the COVID memo, that's what she says in the memo. It's the special ed reserve fund is set up in the event that they incur essentially extraordinary costs in special education as they as we saw this past year if you recall she didn't come to the council for the 450 000 and she indicated on her april 9th letter april 9 2020 she said that um the unanticipated costs associated with the two residential placements is an additional five hundred and fifty three

▶ 36:13 John N. Tramontozzi: thousand excuse me excuse me mr de la rosa i'm aware of that but what i want specifically she says this is unanticipated due to the extended closure the district anticipates additional cost because because of the COVID-19 pandemic the traumatic impact of the shutdown and the stress it's going to have on the kids because of this shutdown so funds will be used for that come out of here for that purpose right if it's special ed related yes only a special letter across the board in this the schools it's whatever the special ed when you set the fund up if you look at the purpose for which the phone was established you can fix those guidelines it could be used for that purpose well i mean we are you said and i know from the cares

▶ 37:02 John N. Tramontozzi: act we're getting we have now in our possession 2.5 million dollars but that money can only be used for covid related expenses it can't be used to replace lost revenues or fill gaps in the budget so why couldn't we use some of that funds to fund the special education account because it relates to covid i wish it was that easy if it if it in fact if the event the way that the um framework is designed if in fact the expenditure is a result of the covid 19 pandemic In other words, if you would not have had that expenditure, had it not been because of the COVID-19 pandemic, what it's done to your department, for example, then that would qualify for it. So every item has to be looked at in the context of, was this expenditure just because we had

▶ 38:00 a COVID-19 pandemic, yes or no? all right thank you that's a good question but because it test it's going to be audited all the expenses that are submitted by every community it's going to have an audit done on it so they can submit it and if it qualifies and they and they said this is okay then obviously they'll cover the cost so in every community John let it said everybody has the different needs they have the COVID-19 has placed them in different dilemmas so I think you're going to see a lot of different requests submitted from different communities for these funds and for different purposes well I guess all I'm just trying to say is that if we fund these stabilization accounts with this free cash expenses

▶ 38:55 that come up during the fiscal year that a COVID specifically related I support any any funds from these stabilization accounts to pay for it because we have this extra money that come is coming in from the cares act to fund it yeah so what happens is that we if we spend what happens technically is you spend in a deficit position okay then you submit it and then you'll get your money let's assume it's 100 qualifies so you say you spend a thousand dollars on cleaning supplies because of COVID and you have the invoice, you submit that regarding the $2.5 million and you said it and if it qualifies then you get the thousand dollars back. That they cover that cost but you do have to keep an audit. You do have to keep, I would consider

▶ 39:49 John N. Tramontozzi: detailed records to clearly demonstrate and articulate that this is COVID-19 related. they have not indicated what would happen for example at the end of the time frame you um you do not you know use all your funds up the probability is that generally it may go back to the state for and be distributed in a different way to others who we're not sure they don't know either it's brand new to them but i mean um it's just up to us to be sure that uh whatever we can identify is over to 19 related as you indicated we can reimburse okay one final question i'll defer it to some counselors the contract stabilization fund right doesn't that send they the wrong message the city administration message if we're trying to keep union contracts at bay doesn't that

▶ 40:44 John N. Tramontozzi: send a a bad message to the unions that hey we got money we can uh fund uh your uh your demands for increase in uh the contractual salaries if we don't have the funds available we just simply tell them we can't do it we negotiate and uh and and stick to prior years contractual obligations right isn't that the message no i don't not at all it's just the opposite in my opinion and i tell you why i first came here in 2004 came back we owe for retro pay retroactive it was approximately nine hundred thousand dollars if i recall that we owed for collective bargaining agreements there was no provision to pay it so from my perspective and for the perspective of a wise strategic move having funds available we can each union knows these are not dedicated to

▶ 41:43 them they could be non-union union fire police whatever case may be it's not no specific union has earmarks on this it does provide the city with the opportunity to say if in fact we do settle a contract because the investment campaign is very aggressive i will say that for collective bargaining we do settle a contract and if it's retroactive which we have and you'll see right now the fire contract is is open what you see in the fire budget is strictly the steps not the cost of the contract as well as the library when those contracts settled it might john they they may not settle for six months a year it could be two years we've had contracts go out literally two and a half years then you have a massive retro obligation how do you fund it good question particularly

▶ 42:35 John N. Tramontozzi: send the unions back to negotiation and you don't fund them you have we can ask them say no you're not going to fund it but i think it just sends a bad bad message to the unions uh in their negotiations if you get the money that you're going to end up paying for it and that's what the the the mediators in my experience will see and they'll accept that oh you've got the city has the funds to pay the union let's give it to them and that's what you're doing but i understand your position and i respect it thank you and likewise thank you council great question mr chairman president Grigoraitis thank you chairman snell and thank you mr delaruso for being here this evening i just had two quick questions and the first is on the contract stabilization fund

▶ 43:20 Jen Grigoraitis: does that fund only cover contracts on the city side or that would that also cover our contracts with mea technically it could be any contractual purpose okay thank you and then just to clarify the um osha stabilization fund which i'm happy to see that we're putting money in there given the intense scrutiny around osha and i believe nationwide there's an expectation of increased claims because of COVID-19. If the city were ever, that fund is really preventative, right? Equipment training to make sure we're in compliance with OSHA. And if we were to be found in violation, a payment would come out of the Suits and Claims Fund. I envision that. One of the things that, I'm so glad you brought that up.

▶ 44:09 One of the issues that you have is sometimes when you enter a new world of regulations and and guidelines there's a lot of uncertainty as to what you as a department or a community required to implement in in time frame so by having this ocean fund this will give us seed money to address programs that the fire department for example has that he wants to implement during the year and then as we lead up to fiscal 22 we may end up um budgeting certain money within department themselves once there's an established training program and not have to access this fund but i think for my position this fund should be liquid it should be there all the time and i don't think a hundred thousand is unreasonable because at any point in time um we may end up mid-year or

▶ 45:00 Jack Eccles: you know at a point in time we don't have the funds in department for example they need to do something or act on something we need your place to go that's a perfect place to go it requires the City Council approval but to move a dime thank you happy move without your approval absolutely I'm gonna yield my time on stabilization thank you thank you mr. Del Rosario for being here I just like to go back to it so we were speaking with with councillor Stewart you'd kind of spoken a little bit about how once you take money out of a stabilization fund it won't hurt your bond rating so long as you have a plan to replenish it so that just kind of had come to the thought in my head of so if we're if we're drawing in the

▶ 46:01 Jack Eccles: stabilization funds isn't it more than likely that we won't have a lot of free cash left over at the end of the year to replenish them like I guess my question is where does the plan to replenish them come if we are continuously drawing down on them and end up having a net decrease these two parts of that question a great question one is what for what purpose are you drawing down the funds if you're drawing down let's talk about the capital fund to buy capital equipment like we used for the pumper um that's standalone um that's not um something that we're using for general operations per se if we were gonna if you were to tell me geez patrick let's use 500 000 of the regular stabilization fund uh to run the

▶ 46:49 sister's department to run it for the rest of the year because there's you know we have a revenue shuffle whatever case may be then at that point i would say well if you're going to use it for operations these that's different that's a whole different scenario then obviously we try to restore that as urgently and as quickly as we can um the extent to which we draw out will be determine the extent to which we can pay it back if it's a short draw then i would anticipate a short time frame to pay it back structurally every year we set ourselves up so that we do have the billable funds in the fall outside of an extraordinary circumstance so i'm less concerned that we wouldn't have funds available that would be the only concern i would have is um how much

▶ 47:34 we grew down and what duration would it take to pay it back that's reasonable is it two or three your payback and i think all that all that the rating agencies are looking at typically that you have a plan if you're not looking just to um you know take the money and run kind of thing and not pay attention to what you need to pay attention to that if you're going to use it you should have certain percent five percent should be your target that you have out there protecting there's a question five percent of your budget if you move away from that and you don't replenish it then you're not being reasonable or prudent in their eyes and then they start to get concerned why what would cause you to do that why is your community not you know being responsible

▶ 48:19 and that is never a good thing because as you know it takes a long time to get your bond rating upgrade it could be five years and in the event that you get downgraded it takes years to restore confidence and these same agencies that thought to a triple a plus you know last week takes years to restore confidence that hey what we've back on track we're doing the right things again they want to see it year after year after year so it's one of those things where it's difficult to get there when you get there you want to stay there and knowing that the opposite is true as well so Thank you. That's a great question. Thank you. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. Good evening, Mr. Del Rosso. Good evening, Council. Thank you for being here. The first question I have is I just want to be clear on what Council Chairman Tozzi asked. We are able, if I understand it correctly, to carry free cash over from year to year. Is that right? No. We can't carry. So we're unable to?

▶ 49:34 no okay if you can't carry foot what will happen is technically um if you don't use it by june 30th it closes out to the to the general fund at the end of the year it closes out until the state comes back and recertifies or certifies let me take the recertify back and certifies your free cash in the fall you start all over again they look at the whole picture again all the funds that are turned back, all the liabilities and charges against the certification, if there's any outstanding POs, whatever the case may be, you start over again. And then they come up with a new figure based on the new numbers as a result of year-end operations. But we don't lose the money, correct? It can be recertified again in the fall. It just goes into limbo for a period

▶ 50:24 of time. Is that right? What happens is you close it out, right? It gets recertified. But the thing is that you're never you're never guaranteed let me use that word but you get dollar for dollar okay because there may be more charges against next year's precast certification than you had this year you may not get dollar for dollar but it does close out the law requires us to close it out it's not something you can like these funds here these stabilization funds they don't close out they carry year to year to year that's the difference these things never close out on June 30th in the air literally year after year after year And again, just so I understand this, we cannot, as a city council lawfully transfer money out of a stabilization account. Once we approve money going in.

▶ 51:10 Shawn M. MacMaster: We cannot transfer it somewhere else. We can only. Allocated for specific purposes within the spirit of the stabilization fund. Is that correct? Yeah, for example, if correct, if we came out and asked you for a 100,000 dollars in the capital fund to buy some equipment for the fight apartment. You would have to approve that from the capital stabilization fund, for example, but it requires your approval. And that's what we would do and he said, no, then it wouldn't happen. I certainly understand the need to put money into our various stabilization funds in light of the current state of the economy and the projected. Revenue loss 1 of the concerns that I do have, though, is just not. potentially having enough money on hand in the future for essential city services especially if

▶ 51:58 Shawn M. MacMaster: we are dealing with the pandemic again in the fall and i do appreciate the establishment of the uh yosha fund because i think that can that can be very helpful um as a word counselor though i i'm also mindful that this is the time of year where uh free cash is usually used for board specific projects um you know in collaboration with the mayor's office so just understand that this is not going to allow any money for those types of projects those ward specific projects because it's bringing the balance of free cash down to zero um if you pass this 2.5 it does not bring it to zero a million twenty nine thousand nine ninety six thank you so i think council i think you will see some um i'll just use for example trees and and traffic calming infrastructure

▶ 52:59 cemetery projects etc those sidewalks i think you'll see them both time initiatives coming down councillor so i i think your question is perfect well grounded but there was after this was done there was over a million dollars left for certain types of project etc that with initiatives that i think you would might be speaking to so if that's all how to make has all of that been earmarked yes so there's it's already been decided where that money is going to be spent The mayor has already allocated the money. What he believes is the good allocation. Based on all the information, he has some public works, et cetera. Okay. Just moving on, I just have a couple more questions. Did we put any money into any of the stabilization funds in 2008 at the time of the recession or in

▶ 53:49 Shawn M. MacMaster: the two subsequent years where we were still feeling the impact of the recession? My understanding is yes. I can double check that for you. That would be helpful because I'd be interested in knowing if we didn't, how, if at all, that affected our bond rating. And I would presume that it hasn't because we've, as you've said, a very good bond rating and in large part due to your management of finances. Thank you. But collectively, it's really, it's the council, it's the aldermen, and all those years of prudent planning and discussion like we're having this evening. that collectively what is the best route for us to take and that all came together the bottom rating was actually increased in fiscal year 2013 from a double a minus to a double a plus

▶ 54:36 Shawn M. MacMaster: so after that recession after those initiatives that we had to take to close the gap um we were able to get an upgrade to double a plus that we've had to this day to this day and with respect to the educational stabilization fund we anticipate uh the circuit breaker um that's not seeing the same um money from the state as we have in prior years that i can't answer that i would have to defer to the superintendent i just don't have that answer counselor okay and um when was the last time mr delarusso that we've had to tap into the contract stabilization fund looks like the balance from your your memo and thank you for that memo by the way is 920 000 when have we ever want to go back into that or when when have we gone into that most recently most recently um most recently

▶ 55:31 Shawn M. MacMaster: i will go back i'm trying to think if it's uh one or two fiscal years ago let me find that up you know send it off to you and my final thank you my final question mr doloruso is how did how did we arrive at the numbers before us um you know we have we have 100 000 going into a few we have i believe a million going into another what was used to to base uh a decision on how much for each stabilization fund i would assume i would assume that the balance is one factor but how did we arrive at those numbers yeah great great question the first one the foundation stabilization fund um typically what we try to do you know objective is that we want that to be five percent of the operating budget every year right now the way we stand we're less than less than

▶ 56:26 that um we also use free cash plus the stabilization fund to meet our five percent and s p is fine with that but ideally you want your foundation stabilization fund to be five percent of your operating budget and grow a little bit every year as your budget goes up so that's what we're trying to reach that goal second one the contract fund um i i do know that we try to keep pace with what we've seen in the past we've had contracts i think i've isolated number two that we've had to pay with this retro alone it's like some 600 650 000 between the retro and the active cost and these contracts that go two or three years counselor you know candidly five six hundred thousand dollars is nothing and when you have active contracts two two are out right now and

▶ 57:18 then you have the police following etc that the larger groups public works you may be as we are now you're you're negotiating with multiple multiple bargaining units and having said that In order to make a commitment that you're going to be able to meet the obligation you agreed to when you sit down and collect the bargaining, you have to be able to identify in your head saying, geez, as the years go by, we have experienced that this is how much it generally costs just for one union. So, we're saying if we have two or three settled within the same year or two, where are we going to get the money? When you predicate past performance and you look at the fact that salaries go up, Costs go up when you get a change in shift cost.

▶ 58:08 That goes up. The salary you're paying today is not the salary you paid three years ago, and so that also increases the cost of the contract for retro purposes. You're always trying to keep pace with it, whether it's 2% or 3% a year, because those costs go up, no different than other departments. The capital fund, it's always been our target to have between $250,000 and $500,000 at any given time and that allows us counselors to pay for what they call pays you go those those items that you can pay um you know let's talk about a pumper that's something you can pay and you don't have to borrow for you have a truck in public works it might cost 200 sweep up for example 230 000 you want to be able to pay for that an item you can't really borrow

▶ 58:58 for but you want to be able to pay for out of the capital fund and generally as we know that equipment is not inexpensive so between 250 000 and 500 is very reasonable at any time of the year particularly god forbid if something happens we always in the past in particular you would hear that sudden such a truck broke down snow plowing whatever the case may be and they need a new law whatever the case may be it's always that uncertainty so that's a very i think comfortable number for this size community suits and claims i think mississippi and campbell can tell you that in the event that we do have claims and i know that he may have a couple of items that he's concerned about um over time we need a resource to go there and actually fund it

▶ 59:44 outside of i know he has a few dollars in his budget i think it's 10 or 15 000 in general but when you have larger claims or you have deductibles at 25 000 plus you may have to go to the council for that you need to have something in there that is reasonable other post-employment benefits opeb i mean candidly that i'd love to put three times as much in there as we're putting in however i know it's not practical at this time but opeb plays an enormous an enormous role in our bond rating so the more that we can strive to show that we're serious about funding this obligation which it is then the better it enhances the confidence in the fundraising agencies that were taking it seriously that's why not only we see the 100 000 here that

▶ 1:00:38 we're requesting but we're also going to keep the we're also requesting the 50 000 for opib in the regular budget because we um indicated to them that we would make it part of a regular recurring item every year in the budget to show that we haven't walked away from our liability or our responsibility number six was the special ed fund because we talked about briefly I think as you heard superintendent those costs are just for a couple of students you know up there four hundred five hundred thousand that's not unreasonable to maintain five hundred thousand I don't know people recall but I believe we set that up we made two distributions back I think it started 2013 or so we put a certain amount in then we add another $155,000 to

▶ 1:01:26 it so that grew over time that but this was the first time she ever had to access it she's been able to manage without having to use it and that's a wonderful thing but again as we all know if it becomes possible we have that obligation to take care of those those students and the last I think we talked about which I think is real good one I like it's the OSHA at least seeded with hundred thousand that's the training programs for public safety etc that's not unreasonable that you might spend fifteen twenty thousand dollars for a year or whatever but we need something there also for clothing and the like that's a good way to start it and god willing we could fund it as part of the budget next year thank you very much mr de la rusa thank you mr

▶ 1:02:10 Maya Jamaleddine: chairman yes sir thank you for your great questions thank you mr chairman thank you mr de la rusa for being with us tonight um thank you for letting me be here tonight of course it's always our pleasure um um my fellow counselors ask most of the questions i only have one uh question left and um you've mentioned that some of the money that we don't use in free cash um it will be um locked And so, did we carry any of the money from last year to this year, to this fiscal year? No. Nothing. Nothing. Technically, you don't have to. You don't have to expend all your free cash. There's no requirement saying that, that you don't have to appropriate it. But we did not. Last year, we appropriated everything. And this year, depending on council's will, we'll appropriate

▶ 1:03:12 all the free cash again okay and can you if we're gonna go back one more year did we have we carried any money from the year before okay so it's been we've been using utilizing all the free cash on a yearly basis every single year yes the and the caveat to that is um and just as a footnote free cash is number one and when it does get certified in the fall, first thing I think of, like I did this year, was setting aside $1,250,000 for snow and ice. That is such an extraordinary item that you just don't know where you're gonna land. And so I think this council has witnessed the fact that we did not come to the council for any significant appropriations till we knew that that liability of snow and ice

▶ 1:04:11 behind us and after we got through the the winter we were positioned to do something with the funds that you wouldn't attempt to do before then um because you always have to cover your snow and ice cost otherwise otherwise what happens is your bill for the next year but fiscal 21 whatever you didn't cover you'd have to come right off the top of the money for fiscal 21. you lose that because you have to raise that the next year the first item if you don't raise that money in the year it happens you get that liability next year so it hurts you the year after that's why you want to get rid of snow and ice same year it happens you don't want to carry it into the next year it's bad practice and unless you really have to it's um devastating to your budget for next year

▶ 1:05:00 you're taking away services because of what happened the year before that it snowed i mean that's it's illogical in its own way but that's the truth so can you remind us how much did we have last year and free cash yes can't be cold let me see i should have it let me let me check my mini office here see if i have last year yes 3 million 591 881 and this year we have 2.5 is it true this year you have just under 5 million dollars you have over 49 you have 4,961,081. Okay. Okay. Thank you so much. I'm done. Thank you. Thank you. Great questions. Thank you. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. Thank you, Mr. De La Rosa, for being here. I have a question regarding the stabilization trust fund that we're looking to put a million dollars in. What is,

▶ 1:06:16 Mark Garipay: to give me I don't have the description of the funds in front of me can that be used at the will of the council if we voted can that go to any and they can transfer it out for any users the restrictions on that no no I mean typically the stabilization if I could be with any lawful purpose lawful purpose which is you know it's wide open and that's why you have it because as we're sitting here tonight god only knows it could be dpw that has an issue public safety you know uh school any lawful purpose and we'll have uh three million in there if this goes through yeah yeah you'll have correct um over three million dollars which is wonderful okay and to follow up on councilman mcmaster's question regarding 2008 uh and what what funds uh were

▶ 1:07:13 invested I know we created one of these this year how many of these funds are actually were established in 2008 guys attest to my memory huh yes I know well I know we had the foundation stabilization fund I'm sure we had the contract stabilization time capital stabilization plan I have to check on out but Susan claims it was probably newer other post benefits stabilization fund what we didn't have then we have now special ed stabilization fund I believe was 2013 OSHA is new right now so it's a little bit of a mix but the objective is always risk aversion and I think that's the word of the day is the more you can protect yourself as a community between the risk of contract settling the risk of suits and claims the risk of special education the risk

▶ 1:08:21 of capital on and on you're telling the outside world which is what matters to us that we have it we have provisions and for multiple events that can occur we have resources to address it and we're not a back is not against the wall we don't have to cut services in order to make to make this payment we don't have to go out and do anything exotic we protected ourselves and I think that's more than over even again this is honestly for me it's it's emotional because this is store I've never encountered such a large deposit on my entire career when I look at the process I look at the looking at this budget process has it's kind of really a two-year budget i i think 22 personally is going to be a lot

▶ 1:09:09 Mark Garipay: worse than we are at 21 and we do have time in 21 to manage the budget properly unfortunately if things get worse we're not going to want to go that way but there there will be tough decisions and we can manage that budget we left time to where in 2022 we won't won't have that so um I'm going to support this free cash appropriation. Thank you, sir. Anybody else for the first time? Councilor Stewart for the second time. Thank you, Mr. Chair. Mr. Deller, thank you for all of your clear explanation of this is well received and appreciated. I just, I have one clarifying question for you. Yeah, so the calculation of 5%, what is being used in the numerator? what's the top line number you say in this case it would be the eight say the fiscal 21 budget

▶ 1:10:08 would be five percent of the 88 million right right and what's so what's being used so the foundation stabilization fund plus the free cash that that right to come up with i think our number now is approximately 8.05 percent because we're using the fiscal 20 budget plus the free cash that's always a year behind but so we have met that five percent threshold because we're combined with funds ideally ideally you'd like to do it just based on your stabilization fund itself because you're not assured of free cash every year you have certainty with your stabilization fund because you as a council and as a community you you actually dictate how much you put in there and how much you'll retain there you don't have you don't have the same control as to what free

▶ 1:10:55 Robb Stewart: cash will be certified at it free cash can come in zero it can come in negative i've been there both times you don't control that you only control your stabilization fund department of revenue controls the cash so the way you can't control you want to control you want to make that the five percent target you don't have to count on some something else that may happen to make you reach that five percent and that's why it's telling all right and and so we use the the pre-distribution free cash number so that 4.9 million in combination with what's currently in the stabilization which is the 2 million so it's the the 6.9 over 88 is how you get to the 8 okay and then you distribute and then uh we get free cash the following year and we're going to rely

▶ 1:11:41 on the foundation stabilization fund plus whatever is in free cash the following year which to re-certify it's always a year behind okay all right that's my life all right i just want to make sure i just haven't looked a year behind counselor it's just the way it is all right thank you mr delver so thank you anytime great questions i like your questions they're great thank you i wish you could divide i'm sorry for the second time i'm mute i'm sorry i'm you sorry i'll defer to council mcmaster i think he had a question council mcmaster thank you mr chairman thank you council chairman tozy mr chairman i was just going to make a motion at this time to divide the questions so we can vote on each one of the funds separately i'll second

▶ 1:12:30 Shawn M. MacMaster: that motion i think that's uh that's appropriate a motion to divide you just repeat that state the motion to provide the question so we could vote on each one of the the stabilization funds individually and if that uh is uh approved by the council just ask is that each number in the actual corresponding fund would be read into the record so we're clear exactly uh on each one that would be voting on thank you mr chairman seconded by council trying to chose me clark great actually jim Migliorelli we have a question through through the chair um could i have some clarity on why we're separating the orders just for the benefit of the council yes through the chair we have we have seven stabilization funds in front of us it shouldn't be up or down some counselors may

▶ 1:13:28 be inclined to vote all the way you know for the seven some may vote the seven down some counselors may vote on some uh not others so i don't think it's an up or down vote thank you mr chairman on discussion actually i don't know if anybody else has anything that none Adam Clark vice-chair Migliorelli yes councilor Tramontozzi yes councilor McMaster Yes. Councilor McNaught. Yes. Councilor Esselstyn. Yes. Councilor Garipay. Yes. Councilor Stewart. No. Councilor Thomas. Yes. Councilor Jamaleddine. Yes. President Grigoraitis. Yes. Chairman Cinella. Yes. 1, no, 10, yes. Motion passes to divide the question. Do you want to vote? Yes. Okay. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you.

▶ 1:14:27 Shawn M. MacMaster: the question you want to break that down yeah that in front of you I have numbered one through seven but councillor McMaster if you could confirm you want the dollar amounts and the account numbers I just want to make sure that when we read the number for I'm sorry through the chair that when we read the I'm not sure how you were planning to read it but I think the actual number for each one of the stabilization funds should also include the corresponding fund so it's not just clear to counselors but it's also clear to the public exactly which one we're voting on at a certain time i'm going to bet the indulgence because my screen is this big i have not the council on here and a bunch of people in the attendee list i don't

▶ 1:15:18 Shawn M. MacMaster: even have the agenda up i have a paper copy of it i want to hold this in committee until we can break it down that way and then or do you have this something that you have i have i have them them in front of me Mr. Chairman want me to read off each one as we as we go or however you however you Mr. Chairman yes if you want to motion make those motions so at this time Mr. Chairman I would we're moving to vote on each one individually I just want some clarity on that is that so I would move at this time mr. chairman to vote on eight four zero one four which is the fund I think it's listed as the foundation stabilization fund the amount of one million well vice-chair Migliorelli yes chairman councilor Tremont easy yes

▶ 1:16:23 McMaster yes McNaught yes that's our Eccles yes that's our Gara pay that's our Stewart yes sir Thomas yes Jamala Dean yes Grigoraitis chairman Cinella so foundation stabilization 84014 passes mr. chairman at this time I I would move to, uh, vote on eight four zero eight four special education stabilization fund. And if, uh, for you, Mr. Chairman of council chairman toes, he could help me with the amount. I don't have the amount in front of me for, for these subsequent ones. 500,000 vice-chair. Migliorelli. Yes. The treatment Josie. No. Counselor McMaster. Yes. Counselor McNaught. Yes. Counselor Eccles. Yes. Councilor Garipay? Yes. Councilor Stewart? Yes. Councilor Thomas? Yes. Councilor Jamaleddine?

▶ 1:17:34 Yes. President Grigoraitis? Yes. Chairman Cinella? Yes. 10 yes, 1 no, 84084, special in the amount of 500,000 passes. Can I just make a point of order? Can I ask my fellow Councilors, if you're not speaking, to mute your mic. There's some feedback that's coming through. you mr chairman at this time i would make a motion that we move to vote on eight four zero five capital stabilization five hundred thousand counselor i'm sorry vice chair Migliorelli yes council Tramontozzi no councilman mcnaught sorry council mcmaster yes councillor mcnaught yes councillor Councilor Eccles? Yes. Councilor Garipay? Yes. Councilor Stewart? Yes. Councilor Thomas? Yes. Councilor Jamaleddine? Yes. President Grigoraitis? Yes. Chairman Sonella? Yes. 10 Yes, 1 No, 84054, Capital Stabilization, 500,000 passes.

▶ 1:18:52 At this time, Mr. Chairman, I would make a motion that we move to vote on 84044, Contract Stabilization. 200,000. Vice Chair Migliorelli? Yes. Councilor Tramontozzi? No. Councilor McMaster? No. Councilor McNaught? Yes. Councilor Eccles? Yes. Councilor Garipay? No. Councilor Kate? No. Councilor Kate? No. Councilor Kate? No. Councilor Kate? No. Okay. Yes. Councilor Stewart. No. Councilor Thomas. Yes. Councilor Jamaleddine. Yes. President Grigoraitis. Yes. Chairman Cinella. Yes. Reno, rest yes, 84044, contract stabilization, 200,000 passes. Mr. Chairman, at this time I would make a motion we vote on eight four zero six four suits in claims stabilization 100,000 vice-chair Migliorelli yes councilor Tramontozzi yes

▶ 1:20:06 Councilor McMaster yes Councilor McNaught yes Councilor Eccles yes Councilor Garipay yes Yes. Councilor Stewart? Yes. Councilor Thomas? Yes. Councilor Jamaleddine? Yes. President Grigoraitis? Yes. Chairman Cinella? Yes. 11 yes. 84064, suits and claims, 100,000 passes. Mr. Chairman, at this time I would make a motion that we vote on 84074, OPEB stabilization. 100,000. Vice Chair Migliorelli? Yes. Councillor Tramontozzi? No. Councillor McMaster? No. Councillor McNaught? Yes. Councillor Eccles? Yes. Councillor Garipay? Yes. Councillor Stewart? Yes. Councillor Thomas? Yes. Councillor Jamaleddine? Yes. Yes. Chairman Sonella? Yes. 2-0-10-yes. 8-4-0-7-4. Goal peb, 100,000 passes. Chairman, at this time, I would make a motion that we vote on, and I'm sure I have

▶ 1:21:30 the number correct in front of me. I might need some assistance from Council Chairman Tozzi, 8-4-0-9-4. This is the OSHA stabilization. 100,000. I'm sorry, I thought it would be important to mention just as a before voting. This doesn't currently has a balance of $0 is my understanding. So that a no vote, a no vote would essentially keep this fund any of the things that were by Bruce earlier. So I'll be voting in favor of this. thank you councillor vice Jim Migliorelli yes councillor Tramontozzi yes councillor McMaster yes councillor McNaught yes councillor Eccles yes councillor Garipay yes councillor Stewart yes councillor Thomas yes councillor Jamaleddine yes yes president Grigoraitis yes chairman sanella yes 11 yes 84094 osha and 100 000 stabilization fund

▶ 1:22:52 passes that's the final one final one thank you very much thank you divided order of 20 times maybe there's a motion to move the bottom line in that is that in order Nope. So number two, 2020-89, we'll get to the budget on the auditor and the stabilization fund. So no, we just voted that in. So next order, again, 2020-89, continuation of the budget. First up is the auditor, 135, and the 943 stabilization fund slash OPEC fund. Hi. Good evening. I did send down some material dated May 20th of 2020 as an overview. I'm not sure if there's any questions. I'm here to address them. I do want to speak to a couple of items, if I can, up front to help clarify a couple of items within my budget. And if I could respectfully look at professional services where you see the 61.6% increase,

▶ 1:24:19 stands out noticeably and I can qualify that as the cost for fiscal year 21 of a full valuation for GASB 74 and GASB 75 which is required and the cost of that will actually go down in fiscal 22 seven thousand eight hundred dollars as it's not going to be required for full valuation this year 21 required by law by contract as well with our actuary stone consulting to perform this full valuation it's part of our annual audit it's not optional and it must be performed that's why you see that increase and you're going to see that forever more because we talked about opeb and other other post employment benefits which is really health insurance liability just like you have pensions and you have pension

▶ 1:25:20 liability opeb is health insurance liability and that is now within our financial statements and um this is a requirement that the auditors will not will not produce a final audit until they have this opeb report from our actuary annually and that oprah report goes to the auditors and it also goes directly to the department of revenue with the audit each and every year and again it's it's the new uh i think that respectfully donald connor used to call it another mandate um however we're committed to it and the other increase above it which i believe is 500 for auditing services that pertains to the annual audit and specifically for work done for schedule a balance sheet and to our submission um so that's the 500

▶ 1:26:11 increased there so the big items are those by contract for auditing and for opeb which is uh now become part of our framework and i'd be happy to speak to selling wages whatever the council wish if any questions i'm here if i can answer them i'll be happy to help answer them counselor thomas thank you mr chairman uh mr de la rusa thank you for being here um you're very at uh your position you answered my question before i could even ask it i had a question about professionals services so thank you very much thank you sir the good news counts it's going down next year on that we'll look at it's going to get on four thousand dollars next year so one year we're going to do a full one and next year is partial

▶ 1:27:04 John N. Tramontozzi: uh thank you mr chairman uh thank you mr delarusso i do have questions uh consistent with my questioning and other departments as well in the salary and way line the original 2020 budget was in the amount of three hundred and forty three thousand one hundred fifty dollars and twenty cents to revise was in forty four three thirty point thirty what it's one thousand eighty but in ten cents can you explain that for us so again that was a we have one union member in my department we have four staff members including myself we have one that's union it was a settlement or a union contract we talked about earlier actually about settling contracts and it was a retroactive payment required and I believe was 18.8

▶ 1:27:59 John N. Tramontozzi: weeks and then it was 33.2 weeks at one rate and 18.8 weeks at a second rate but it was a union position was collective bargaining it was required that we find it and we find it and that's why you'll see that look but that 1800 some odd dollars whatever the number you have 180 yeah thank you and so mr. Delarosa you have a staff or besides yourself one two three other employees yes sir and of the three employees only one of them is a union employee yes sir which one is that um it's jill irvin she does accounts payable is that it's listed as the financial manager is that the one or is it the assistant payable clerk accounts payable clerk the accounts payable clerk okay uh there is according to the the budget the accounts

▶ 1:28:56 John N. Tramontozzi: payable clerk uh has an increase in salary of three thousand three hundred and seventy dollars and thirty four cents from fiscal to fiscal 21 is that contractually are we obligated to pay that the in fiscal 20 um we're talking about the financial manager or the accounts payable i'm sorry the accounts payable clerk you said that she was the union uh employee is that correct Yes, she is. What happens is that she was at a level nine, step 11 in fiscal 20. And then what happened is in fiscal 21, she's got her COLA because she's union. She got a cost of living increase of 2.5%. And she got a step increase. So she went from a 911 to a 9-11, partial 9-12. That's why you'll see the salary in there at 50,577.86.

▶ 1:29:58 John N. Tramontozzi: She got a COLA plus a step because she's union. The other two, the other two staff are at their top step. They all, and they received a 2% COLA and a 2% COLA. They did not get a step increase because as non-union, you either get a step increase you get your two percent you do not get both okay so but uh so we're we're under our obligation to uh fund uh that uh union uh increase union increase is that correct yes collective bargain because it's collectively i get it i understand however there's nothing in the there's nothing in that we um that um requires us to fund the cost of living increase right for non-union employees it's it's been submitted by the mayor to be funded it's not for me to say i i appreciate that right no i take that mr mr

▶ 1:31:00 John N. Tramontozzi: delarus i appreciate that and it's it believe me it's not i'm trying to be consistent with the departments and it's not don't take it personal but i think that we're going to okay thank you i think we're going to have a a revenue shortfall and we're going to be either facing the position we're going to have to make some difficult decisions about layoffs as necessary i'm just trying to try to be consistent with with my thinking and that is i think i would like to the levels fund these salary levels to the 2020 budgeted um budgeted uh amounts um and again it's not your yes it's not a lot for each department but it adds up overall so uh with that in mind that I intend to make a motion to reduce line 011351-511000 in the amount of $9,687.43.

▶ 1:31:59 John N. Tramontozzi: I'll make that motion at this time, but I'll, you know, certainly defer it to our comments. Do you have a second? Before I second, just a point of information through you, Chairman Sala. does that amount account for the actual contractual obligation? So that amount, that cut, does not include the salary from the employee who were obligated to pay a certain amount? Is that right? To the Chair, I calculated it and that is correct. I did not include accounts payable clerk the union uh that would have increased it by another three thousand three hundred seventy dollars so i didn't add that one and it's just three categories uh and that is the auditor assistant city auditor and the financial manager and i come up with that number i'll second the

▶ 1:32:59 motion mr chairman a motion on the floor to cut nine thousand six eighty seven forty three second by Councilor McMaster. Vice Chair Migliorelli? No. Councilor Tramontozzi? Yes. Councilor McMaster? Yes. Councilor McNaught? No. Councilor Eccles? No. Councilor Garipay? No. Councilor Stewart? No. No. Councilor Thomas? No. Councilor Jamaleddine? Councilor, I'm sorry, President Grigoraitis? No. Chairman Cinella? And no to yes, motion fails. Mr. McNaught? Thank you, Mr. Chairman. Thank you, Mr. Delarue, thank you for being here. Thank you, sir. Thank you, sir. I just have some questions and before I ask them, I just wanna say that I, can everyone hear me okay? Yeah. I just want to say that I don't begrudge anyone getting a pay raise, but I am looking for information that I've been asking for and can't seem to get information on.

▶ 1:34:30 Jeff McNaught: But to start this out and to try and lay it out in terms so that the public understands, you helped the mayor prepare the budget. Is that correct? Absolutely correct. because you oversee all appropriations for all departments all expenditures throughout the year and you manage the money so to speak for all the way throughout the year and balance the book so to speak correct correct i'm the chief finance officer as well as the city auditor i play both roles and i'm responsible to set the tax rate of the city every year right never failed in 27 years Right. And believe me, I respect your expertise and your experience. Again, I'm new at this. A lot of us are. And I'm just trying to get information both for us and for all of us,

▶ 1:35:19 Jeff McNaught: really, for transparency's sake and to help the rest of these meetings hopefully a lot quicker. So I would assume your office manages the MUNIS system for budgeting? We use MUNIS, and as you know, and we use that for our general ledger system, and those payable, the whole nine yards payroll, we do use it. We're a user. Technically, it's we're end user. Obviously, IT is responsible to support it technically. And we have Donna cardillo she's um a financial analyst she's really the expert on munis so we're fortunate to have her in house so you feed the content into whoever is okay and with this would the same go for the um operating budget software that we use not just the salaries yeah all this we use for

▶ 1:36:20 Jeff McNaught: mean it's our host application absolutely okay okay I guess my question is I notice in the operating budget side we can see multiple years lining up what was what was expended in multiple years but we can't see that for salaries when I requested information just from the last fiscal year to the next fiscal year I was told that it would take weeks to compile the information knowing that it's all the same system and that I requested this information ten days ago I guess my question is are we ten days underway in trying to gain that information I am I can't speak specifically to it the position that it's sad but I will say this and this is no discredit to the system when if you look at the salary information and you're trying to do apples to apples for

▶ 1:37:29 example then there are things that can happen and as we saw this evening for example if you looked at someone's salary for fiscal 20 and 21 in my office but there was a retroactive payment of over a thousand dollars that wouldn't show up that retroactive payment per se if you just see a total number you wouldn't know unless you inquired would you research wow that person get a thousand dollar retro I wouldn't know that so I think the concern that there you they're trying to work through a look at is for every single person it may be retro applied no retro there may be steps that they got media or maybe some that increased or changed and maybe differentials came into place for public safety guys detail work whatever the case may be overtime so I think it's a

▶ 1:38:20 component of if we if you have the staff and you can analyze that the number I that the city gives you is valid in other words it's apples to apples and I think everyone's fine I think everyone wants to be sure that whatever you you do get as a council is real that it's been audited and looked at so that it's those questions that come up and someone say geez you forgot to tell them that i was you know upgraded that's you know a mid-year that's why my salary changed all those kind of incidents that i think are causing stress so we're not looking for um okay we are looking for steps we're not looking for retros and changes throughout the year we know what the number was last year we know what

▶ 1:39:06 Jeff McNaught: the end number was last year if we go and we pull up last year's budget we know what the projected number is this year what my question is is so that we don't have to pull both those things up every meeting isn't it very simple to just put those in the same spreadsheet maybe we can use crystal reports which is like a special feature and I can check with Donna Cardillo on that to creates a report that may do that and in an easier way again I understand we're underway this year I think we're all figuring a way through this but this is certainly something that I think would be all of us you have going forward happy I'd be happy to take that initiative sir and work with that I appreciate that and and mr. de la Rosa it's obviously you need to be familiar

▶ 1:39:57 Jeff McNaught: with the CBA's so that you know everyone in the city who is contractually obligated to get a raise is that fair to say all right that's correct okay i'm negotiating team and you need to be familiar with everybody who's on the city at city salary administration plan i believe that's the name of it and i'm assuming that that is what you're referring to when you say steps or are those two different things no they're not two different things the city has a salary administration plan i think they actually called it the only study years ago when it first came to be it was known as the only study and we haven't really had one since then that so that sort of has let's just say it's um grown on its own way and whether or not it's the most efficient

▶ 1:40:46 Jeff McNaught: system i'm gonna i'm gonna say it's not but i think the system that we have and that at some point i think we were looking to make some changes there to bring it up to date um prudence job descriptions and the whole nine yards but that hasn't happened yet i think the confusion for myself anyway i'm only going to speak for myself is i don't know who's on that um i don't know who may be getting increases this year that we're not contractually obligated to give them to and keep keep in mind as i said i'm not looking to stop increases for anyone uh i i'm looking for this information for transparency purposes only um i know i've received a lot of questions about it myself but we have no information on who's getting increases that doesn't

▶ 1:41:33 Jeff McNaught: necessarily need them in a year where we're saying we really have to we have to tighten up so is there a list of people getting increases in pay that we're not contractually obligated to give to them can we have it does that exist? I will find out for you, sir. And I would imagine that wouldn't take very long to pull together? I would hope not. Again, I don't want to promise many people on that list, right? But I also don't know other people's schedules, and I'm trying to do the best I can to get you what you want as timely as I can I can promise you that and again it this is something I'll look at first thing in the morning sir I appreciate that very much and please understand I'm asking these questions because I haven't gotten

▶ 1:42:30 Jeff McNaught: responses to completely understood completely understood and and I asked this question I know we referred to one one union employee in your office that where obviously by cba where they're getting a raise that's obvious is everyone else in your office contractually obligated to get an increase no one else is in the union so nobody's obligated no we're not obligated to give anyone else in your office an increase i'm not sure what obligated means candidly because contractually yeah i don't have a contract and i don't believe any other non-unions have an actual contract um at least yeah if you make it in that way then then i don't have a contract correct right but nobody's on this step the step plan which i'm not an expert on uh

▶ 1:43:24 don't know that much about her if at all anything um nobody in your office is on a step type plan to get an increase for 20 fy 2021 i am i'm on a step and the other two staff members are at their final step and in the in their level so they get the two percent cola there's no more steps for them at this time um that's why they get you get one or the other if you get a step increase you don't get the cost of living with that if you're at typically if you're at the end of your step you have nowhere to go there's no more growth then if there's a if there's a cost of living granted whether it's one percent or two you would only get the cost of living and that's it so two people in my office are only getting the two percent and two percent cost of living the

▶ 1:44:13 Jeff McNaught: two that are non-union you're not getting a step you're not getting i say this so the public knows and we again i'll speak for myself i can say i ask these questions and we're required to give these increases we're required to give the two percent or the cost of living that's accurate right yeah mine is that's my understanding is that that when the mayor when the mayor directed us to to give a two percent cost of living to the non-union we put that in the budget that's why it's before you could have said one percent you could have said zero he said two percent that's why it's there. That's it. It's out of his budget. Is everybody who's exempt in a step type pay scale? Yeah, they should have like a step, but they should have a level

▶ 1:45:08 and a step. All those like myself should have a level and a step. The non-union. Okay, so. They're not in a union, so they have to be in that plan. right right so we're again i'll just i'm not clear on this we we are required to give all of the exempt employees in your office pay increases for fy 2021 you only ones that my understanding is that have been bargained collectively which is one person the other three that including myself that got us i got a step i didn't get a cola but i got but the other two got colas that was from the mayor he directed the cola and that's the if there was no cola neither one would get an increase all i would get was a step and they would get no cost of living at all but okay so every year we're required to give you either a

▶ 1:46:04 step increase or a cola increase is that what you're saying no you don't have to give a cola there was a year that there were years where we had a wage freeze there was a years five years where the mayor gave only one percent cost of living period you don't have to give a call it's the mayor it's a discretion of the mayor whether or not he'll give a cost of living and that's why i said in the past they we had the wages freeze at fiscal 11 and then five years after that it only a one percent caller and those that got the one percent um would only get it one percent or the step they wouldn't even get both even then it was you they had a step if you're up on a step grade you don't get the one percent caller but you don't get both you get one or the other right okay

▶ 1:46:53 Jeff McNaught: so that's i guess that's the heart of what i was getting at is we could be in a situation where we're in a wage freeze these are elective pay increases is that correct that's a discretion of the mayor correct right okay uh can you provide us a list of everybody that is getting uh a discretionary increase in pay or cost yes i can yes i can okay thank you um and also um mr doloroso one of the things i asked for and i'm not asking for a detailed listing but a tallied summation just of where the increases are throughout the whole budget a quick quick reference guide if you will i think would also help us move along a lot more quickly okay i mean i know we're only going into our third week here but i'd imagine if if we had

▶ 1:47:45 Jeff McNaught: some more of this information we could hum along and finish in advance of five weeks okay so you excuse me so you're asking for where the like a reference guide or where the biggest increases are within the budgets yeah what makes up the two million i mean in a year when we're only raising it two million um i mean let hey i'm all for celebrating increases and celebrating where we spent that two million i want to be very clear about that i'm not i'm not looking to cut anything i just think we need to be able to show where it's going okay like i i could not agree more i think i just have a couple more mrs dollar so bear with me no i'll take it down here oh my last question was i noticed that i look back at past year's budgets and i noticed that

▶ 1:48:49 Jeff McNaught: just last year in in may of 2019 um names associated with positions were deleted for the first time that that i that i came across can you tell me why that happened or my understanding was just because the position the name you didn't know what uh the position was that the person held so my office for example is by position because the person can change but the position doesn't accounts payable it's accounts payable finance managers finance manager unless then i'm missing misunderstanding the question sir no one moment the the prior year showed both mr delaro so it showed the name and the position um is that is that a preference of the council moving forward you want to see names with the title uh you know what um i'm not necessarily saying that it is

▶ 1:49:54 Jeff McNaught: it just it seems any any suggestions we'll take any suggestions so to make it better for next that's what it's all about how can we improve it you know in fact when I made my request I actually said names aren't necessary okay and then we could do to try to make it better I'm all in I don't know how the rest of the council feels about that I know I believe I saw another request that said the same thing that I did that names weren't necessary I'm not I'm not looking to shame anyone and put anyone in public light. I was just wondering why the change was made. If anything, I think the only positive would be we could see consistency in the role and why certain increases may occur. That's all. All right.

▶ 1:50:43 I understood. Well, I have no further questions. Thanks so much for your time. Anytime. Through the chair, I just would like to continue on councilor and I would like to ask if we can keep the title added. I'm sorry, may I ask, do you want the title in the name or just the title? I prefer the title with the name. Thank you. Anybody else have a question? I didn't see any hands go up. Is the will on 135? motion to recommend move the bottom line this department second councilor Eccles in a motion to move the bottom line 135 auditor 942 stabilization fund slash opeb seconded by councillor thomas madam clerk please call the roll vice chair Migliorelli yes councilor Tramontozzi yes councilor mcmaster yes councillor mcnaught yes councillor eccles yes councillor Garipay

▶ 1:52:01 yes counselor stewart yes counselor thomas yes councilor maladin yes president Grigoraitis yes chairman sanella 11 yes thank you uh mr dillard's uh with us mr chair i'd like to make a motion to take a five-minute recess that's a second not debatable yes thank you Thomas yes Jamala Dean yes yes chairman Sinella yes yes I'll pause for five minutes you guys ready to get back in session point of order do we need to make a motion to start again or we do not we are now back in session next up is a part of 171 conservation Susan Murphy I'm bringing her in the chair can you see me can you hear me hi Susan hi thank you for having me patience and screen is all yours if you have some prepared remarks all right I always learn a lot when I come to these

▶ 1:53:55 I just want a brief introduction to the Conservation Commission we are a a seven-person appointed commission with two basic responsibilities. We are the administer and enforcer of the State Wetlands Protection Act and Rivers Protection Act as well as the city's wetlands ordinance in which we are a permitting body for development and construction activities that occur in proximity to wetland and water resources. The second responsibility is care and custody of the city's conservation land which is our passive open space our budget has two major components the salary item we have a part-time about 10 hours a week conservation agent who primarily works on permitting activities but also is a point person for issues that come up with conservation land and

▶ 1:54:55 he runs our trail steward program also and then our other main item is our conservation maintenance budget which is primarily expended on doing treatments for nuisance vegetation in three of the city's ponds El Pons Wayne's pond and towners pond all of those ponds are typical urban ponds and highly developed areas that get a lot of loading and he'll have excess vegetation and potentially algae growth and so we have a contract with an herbicide applicator who will go in and do treatments in those ponds to keep them aesthetically pleasing as well as healthy some of the algae blooms can be toxic it's important to keep all of that under control so those are the main items of our budget We have a couple of smaller pieces,

▶ 1:55:49 Mark Garipay: but I'm happy to answer any questions that you may have. Showing hands, go up. How's the gap? You're on mute. Sorry, that five minutes messed me up. Sorry, I had two questions and they were answered, but I do, brought me to another question running El Pond and the treatment of El Pond. I'm assuming that goes on to the conservation maintenance line item? Yes, it does. And how often do we treat that? Is that either annually or annual? There's sort of a schedule on which these things happen. Usually the major treatments happen between May and early July, depending on what you're treating for. But you do some treatments early in the season to try and get ahead of some of the growth. There are also some treatments that will occur later in

▶ 1:56:54 the year. El Pond in particular has a relatively recent problem with invasive water chestnut and that treatment occurs later in the year. So it depends on sort of the best application for the particular type of growth you're doing. We're treating for algae in El Pond. We do treatments for submersed vegetation um and we're treating for the water chestnut um and we also do a part of the treatment is we um put alum in the pond to try and bind some of the phosphorus that's contributing to the plant growth so that usually happens early in the season so now is there is a big time for um for doing the treatments we've had had some occur already and some are scheduled thank you thank you for that that was uh brought up by some of my constituents that live in the

▶ 1:57:45 Cory Thomas: that's your handle point thank you also thomas thank you mr chairman ms murphy thank you so much for being here um looking at your you know this is a pretty uh balanced budget throughout here um your advertising and printing costs are very low uh is that enough money for you to get your message out into the people of melrose mind um we maybe there's more outreach we could be doing i'll tell you what we use those for the advertising budget is actually primarily for when we need to advertise in connection with a project so with anything that comes under the wetlands protection act of union order of conditions um if there's a statutory requirement that it be advertised so we have to do that periodically and so we have that line item in

▶ 1:58:38 there just for those kind of statutory required advertisements the printing budget we primarily used for our trail maps so and that has been enough distributing them in past years obviously you know healthy Melrose the Victorian Fair we provide them on request that's been enough that we have enough of those make it through the year that's pretty what we've been using the printing for does the DCR get involved with any advertising for your own you know for Melrose and Conservation Commission get anything from DCR we don't really have any relationship with DCR yeah there isn't any connection there okay all right thank you very much any other questions McMaster thank you mr. chairman good evening mr. Murphy thank you for being here I just had a

▶ 1:59:44 Shawn M. MacMaster: very quick question about the invasive species over there I appreciate all the work that the conservation Commission has done to address algae and water treatment wondering if there any plans relative to the invasive species for the upcoming fiscal year okay so um a lot of the vegetation growth is non-invasive it's native species it's just an overwhelming amount because of the nutrient loads in the pond but l pond's invasive water chestnut is an invasive species that's really important to try and get under control because it will grow rapidly um there are two ways to approach invasive water chestnut there is an algaecide i mean a herbicide treatment for that and you also and there's also the possibility to do

▶ 2:00:34 um hand pulling of the water chestnut hand pulling is very expensive so um we have we had had our our contractor do but we can't really afford to have them spend enough time to make a dent in it so we've started working on a volunteer approach to it we had um two of our members uh last year went out and and did hand pulling and the plan and hopefully this will be able to happen with you know hope covid you know conditions um to do that again this year um and get more people and try and make it an annual volunteer effort to do the water chestnut pulling it's something that uh mystic river watershed the mystic river has a big uh water chest invasive water chestnut problem they have a big volunteer program so it means going out there in a boat and and pulling it

▶ 2:01:29 Shawn M. MacMaster: out by hand um so we're hoping to do more of that but we are also doing the herbicide treatment as well and the reason i asked miss murphy is because a resident had brought it to my attention uh beyond the the water chestnut um is there the bobbery and i believe the burning bush are those two species that are there and if they are are they scheduled to be addressed So, I'm talking about the actual plants in the water, burning bushes would be something on the shore. Yeah. Correct. Yes. So, we do not have, right now, a program for shoreline invasive species, but certainly there are issues with some invasive species in some of the conservation lands as well as on the edge of Elk Pond. And certainly be happy to follow up with the resident that the property actually belongs

▶ 2:02:22 to the parks department so i think they should be involved as well and probably have better resources to um to provide the labor to do that uh but i think we'd be happy to work with with all of them to to address that excellent thank you any other hands and hands go up what is the will of the committee everyone jump at once motion to move the bottom line Move the bottom line made by Councilor Tramontozzi, seconded by President Grigoraitis. Madam Clerk, if you could call the roll. Vice Chair 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?

▶ 2:03:19 Yes. Councilor Garipay? Yes. yes president Grigoraitis yes chairman sanella yes 11 yes thank you miss murray thank you very much have a good night next up uh 155 info tech and bringing in neil ellis department equipment and 931 capital outlay neil can you hear us yes can you hear me yes just can't see you oh yep okay welcome back thank you yeah uh under better circumstances thankfully i uh we have uh uh rectified the issue with the webex i actually purchased got the uh quote and purchased uh a year's worth of Webex for the city going forward, which will have more storage online. So hopefully we'll run into that again. Do you have any prepared remarks in regards to- Yes, I didn't know if I should get going on that

▶ 2:04:41 or Mr. Tremontazzi, do you have a question before I get started? I'm going to keep a queue so you'll see people raising hands so you can just go in and out. Okay, great. All right, I'm going to switch over to my presentation. um actually uh ms foote can i get the ability to share a screen oh that's interesting question let's find out any other hands that needed to go up please do it now okay hold on one second neil villages shared documents looks like you're able to try that now I have Councilor Tramontozzi, Councilor Eccles, and Councilor Stewart just to make sure uh I only see share file I don't see share let me try file let's see what I can do nope that is not it um well you know what Mr. Director if you could explain how to

▶ 2:05:50 share screen for a panelist I'd be happy to do that Let me see. I think you have to give me the host rights in order for me to share a screen. Fabulous. Doing that now. You're driving, Neil. Okay. Let's see. Is it working? Still can't share. the presentation that I sent to the council and added tag them to yeah I so I'm on as a I'm on as the presenter has anyone other budget presentations done a present done a like a PowerPoint or anything like that not sharing screen you're the first last is there any other rights you can give to me under the I'll just go like this you're the host you have the most rights possible okay hold on I think I might be able to get it now there we go Neil do you have a button on the block the shit share tent content right there

▶ 2:07:26 we go okay yay so so I hope you notice the background this is a City Hall the way it looked in 1900 before the fire that burned it down and it was reconstructed well didn't burn it down but burned off the roof there was a third floor in there so so let me just walk through I'm kind of gonna loosely follow my uh budget questionnaire i don't want to get too caught up on too many things or we'll be here all night um but uh uh just to start um so staffing my city staff is uh myself uh tom smulligan uh assistant i.t director jared cameralango systems administrator donna cardello works independently she's still under the i.t on the school and i have uh frank sorrenti um dave remington jimmy ho they all do desktop support and i have a shared systems analyst

▶ 2:08:29 and data coordinator if that's one position that analyst and data coordinator that's the position title so that's not two different two different staff um so our responsibility is not going to go through the whole list but we're basically responsible for everything in the world and we also have I do a lot of project management building so we constantly are adding and improving our systems and basically for the last you know 20 years there's always a technical solution for every problem so everyone else's problems become our problems so unfortunately we're we've become uh overwhelmed i mean we did about 1100 tickets in our system some of those are project related uh this year and like we have an open queue right now about 130 tickets and that's pretty common

▶ 2:09:31 so so these are projects we completed last well this during this fiscal year um we are in the middle of the city phone system upgrade which uh included running cables in eight different buildings uh to connect the new phones um we designed and built it in-house which saved us a lot of money um and we were kind of got shut down on that with the with the with the shutdown but we're we're still going ahead with what we can uh we renewed the uh copiers this year um some things we've converted we've been working with uh covet 19 trying to keep people moving which meant uh rolling out a lot of laptops uh webex a lot of other just things here and there with people who've never used uh laptops before or done meeting principles it's been extremely busy

▶ 2:10:34 We also rolled out Evergreen, which is our – it's an emergency system, but you can also use it for other purposes. The mayor's been using it quite often to get information out to city residents. So I won't really get into that, but we've done a lot of training for it, and we're going to expand our use of it. We've got the Chromebook cart rollouts. We did a bunch of those this year. We also instituted a one-to-one in our schools where kids would have one Chromebook to one student, is what that means. So students brought in their own Chromebooks to school, and we're trying to alleviate the costs of purchasing Chromebooks in-house, um and trying to get it so that kids are using it as a as a personal learning device that they

▶ 2:11:33 have with them all the time and have during the summer um uh we also replaced the telephone system at the lincoln elementary we did that in-house as well it was a voice over ip project as well uh we to access for ells we have a lot of state required testing um besides but we also have you know which is an english language learner so we have to install a server and we have to do it all on chromebooks um and uh it can be uh pretty rigorous it takes up a lot of time um so we also installed a new exchange server this year is our email server again we did that in-house very talented team of people who can do a lot of this work and save us a ton on a lot faster we have that included the Tyler content manager

▶ 2:12:32 which means we're that's our document management in relation to our munis So we're going to be trying to get rid of paper and digitize all of those documents and have them in a system for easy retrieval. And right now we're trucking paper around all over the place. So as soon as we get back, that that whole project is going to kick up again. That would have been something we were doing already right now had the pandemic not started. We also installed an employee self-service. It's actually unit self-service. The employee piece of that is to allow, right now we print out our advices or checks, which is, you know, something that, you know, private government hasn't, I mean, private sector hasn't done for a long time.

▶ 2:13:26 They do it in email or they have a website for the employee to visit to see their accruals, to see their to get their check advices, all of that. We are we spun up a server to do that. We're going to need to implement that over the next year. We also spun up an infrastructure server, which ties all those those different munis products together. We did a bunch of server upgrades this year. I don't want to bore you with all the details. We also did a new cloud server. We consolidated the backup servers and trying to improve that system due to ransomware. We're in the middle of rolling out an antivirus software to protect us from ransomware, which is, again, something that's, since the beginning of 2018, we've

▶ 2:14:13 really gone after municipal, local government. So we're trying to do what we can with the that we have protect ourselves uh we also installed a new hvac server which runs all the city and school buildings um uh mr thomas you'd be happy to know that we we installed new ups's uh all over the place we just i just installed uh two more yesterday in relation to the new phone system uh clever is our single sign-on for the school to really ramp that up this year uh i mean i don't I don't want to really get bored if I start talking about it. But basically, it ties our student information system and Google logins so that the kids can have one password to get into the several software applications that we have in the schools.

▶ 2:15:11 It makes security a lot more stringent, where the kids will remember the password because they only have one. and it's complex enough that they can use it for all the different software and no one can get into those. Well, kids can get into them. People we don't want can't get into them. The Massachusetts Student Privacy Alliance is something that we're working on. That's our initiative to get a data privacy agreement with all of our vendors for student software. that's I could go on for that forever new where there's a new antivirus and cybersecurity and security upgraded at the middle school this summer we are planning to replace all of the I think we talked about this once before replace

▶ 2:16:10 all of the bobs in the whole system so that it matches the rest of the city so it's a little bit safer in that way so that that's be going on also I'm also going to be working on a project for the Lincoln upgrading cameras there this summer we have a ton of stuff going on this summer so any changes from my budget for this next coming year unit support is is up to well 103 is just the standard. That's what we got to pay for what we have. We're adding modules to go to 123, which is a 35.9% increase in the MUNIS line overall. And I anticipate a 47.2% reduction in my phone line uh which to the tune of 62 630 dollars and 56 cents um this is an initiative that i started when i uh began working for the city and saw that the telephone line was

▶ 2:17:18 far higher than i uh thought that it should be um the new phone system that we're installing right now we designed it in such a way that we uh could get a phone agreement with a carrier that would basically it digitizes all the lines no more lines would be coming into the city so we can um go direct to digital um which drastically reduces the amount of money that we have to pay we we did go out to um several vendors uh all the state contract vendors uh trying to figure out who could who could supply us with with that um for our design um and uh we significantly reduced it unfortunately due to the shutdown we might not be able to implement that um we're not able to implement it as quickly as possible or as anticipated when i had done this

▶ 2:18:16 budget so hopefully we can we we stay in budget this year i i i we should but um um it might be it might be tight but but significant savings there um events in the next year just a few things covet 19 planning we're doing that now we're i'm anticipating this happening again in the fall so we're preparing for that as we have been actually since this started we have new mutus modules that we're going to be working on and implementing hopefully we will get city hall generator this year which is just just long overdue long overdue in an absolute necessity for emergency management I won't go on about that again, but we also have a Chromebook one-to-one we're going to roll out again this spring.

▶ 2:19:19 So that will include grades six and seven, because six will have matriculated to seven, and nine and ten, ten again moves up to ten, nine moves up to ten, so we'll have nine and ten. So we'll have four years in that one-to-one program. also I anticipate replacing all the the phone system at the Roosevelt which is again to another voice over IP phone system that concludes my presentation I tried to get through fast enough so that we wouldn't be wouldn't be bored and I can I can go eat the enchiladas my wife made for dinner first in queue we have counselor tram the toes yeah if you want to switch off the yeah let me see council mcnaughty and cookies these are totally legit are we back online looks like it's Karen counselor thank you mr. chairman and

▶ 2:20:24 John N. Tramontozzi: thank you mr. Ellis for coming in and presenting your presentation your department does yeoman's work and keeping these cities IT the technology up to speed and all I do have do we have a quite again being consistent with my desire to having all the departments give a little because we're all in this together as you know in this these fiscal difficult times I want to review the salary lines I have to commend councillor McNaught you asked the appropriate questions and you're absolutely we did not and do not have from the administration a spreadsheet of the salaries and it's not part of the public agenda however I have information because I dug it out and from prior years budgets which I and I would manage to review so I could tell you that you

▶ 2:21:34 John N. Tramontozzi: have one two three four employees including yourself correct yes you did mention in your presentation that you had some school staff but that paid out the school budget is that correct so of the four one two three four employees in your department or are there are they non-union or union employees uh none of them are union okay great thank you so i could tell you that again i'm gonna i'm gonna be making a motion and again don't take it personal because i'm doing it for i'm trying to be consistent here um i see that uh and i'm trying to level fund salary lines to the 2020 budget all right I don't anticipated passing so you can breathe easy but the difference in the director of IT from and I have the figures if anybody's wants but it's two thousand

▶ 2:22:35 John N. Tramontozzi: one hundred and ten dollars and seven cents increase in salary from the 2020 to 2021 budget. The IT analyst, $2,294.27. Assistant IT director, $3,069.73. System analyst, $2,026.32. And then there was a $600 difference increase to the sick leave line. And that's a total of $10,100.39. So with that in mind, I'm gonna make a motion to reduce line 011-551-511000 salary and wages by $10,100 and 39 cents. Second. If I may, just for a second. So this year I was anticipating an additional uh employee so and you know that wasn't set in stone obviously and then we had this downturn um because we are so overwhelmed so you've already uh i've already given up basically i mean for all intents and purposes a position um uh i don't know if that i know i i appreciate

▶ 2:24:09 John N. Tramontozzi: that and and thank you I'm still gonna make that motion for what it's worth and again it's it's it's I'm trying to be consistent because I anticipate a revenue shortfall and I think we owe the taxpayers and the citizens of this great city to try to do something that would be fiscally responsible so we have a a motion to cut out about $10,100, 39 cents in by Councilor Tramontozzi, seconded by Councilor McMaster on discussion. And we do have a Councilor Eccles actually next. I'd prefer to speak now on discussion, but after the motion, if that's all right. Councilor Stewart. Thank you, Mr. Chair. And I'd like to speak through the chair, recognizing Mr. Ellis' pose. As someone who has been working in the IT industry

▶ 2:25:20 Robb Stewart: for over 30 years, I think it's real important to recognize the retention strategy as IT people in general can move around quite a bit more. I don't think there's any exception to Mr. Ellis's department. My concern, if we level fund this, is we have attrition and when there's attrition in IT departments, it can be a much larger cost than the salary increase from the standpoint of having someone that's knowledgeable with the systems, with the people, with the infrastructure. So for these reasons, Mr. Chair, I will not be supporting this motion. Thank you. Councilor McNaught. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. Thank you, Mr. Ellis. just had one question on page six sorry i'm looking at two screens so it's i'm not looking

▶ 2:26:23 Jeff McNaught: away from you um but on page six of your questionnaire that you filled out um it asked the and every department gets asked the same question one moment uh it's it's the question of do all your department salaries come from the same budget or are they split amongst multiple budgets and your answer was my department salaries are split between my school budget and my city budget and i found that i found that interesting because and i'm not seeing that i would have been a little puzzled as to why you would make less than your assistant director um so can you shed some light on um what other uh income there is for everyone in the department where it is and what the total amount sure so uh we so i mean in a general sense or because i

▶ 2:27:13 have numbers digging way way down um because i mean in a general sense uh 40 of my salaries come from the i'm the only person in the department in my city department that is actually split the salary split between the cdn schools so my budget is paid for out of um the schools uh that's good that's good enough for me thank you Thank you, Chairman. Thank you, Mr. Ellis, for being with us tonight and for answering all our questions. Just a couple of questions. Can you explain to us and provide more information about what is the munis support consist of? Sure. So there's a, the department would like, the auditor's finance department would like to expand general billing. I mean, I'm not too, we've just been, we've talked about this

▶ 2:28:16 just recently. It makes, it does, it automates a lot of the processes. I think we've learned a lot during this COVID-19 pandemic about some of the things that we could automate generally with billing. We've had people coming in, you know, for a week and then another person comes in for the office for a week uh my understanding is the general billing will automate a lot of that billing where people can pay directly through online uh through the unit through munis um also there's a fixed asset management module that we'd like to look at uh we've just brought on a new facilities manager um i'm sure that's tying in uh with some of that and and one of the big things that we'd like to do is uh expand our uh transparency of the budget process

▶ 2:29:12 um so in keeping with that munis oh sorry tyler uh technologies who the makers of munis actually offer a product uh which they they purchase which is a nice product uh called socrata that uh dynamically updates those numbers that you see and we would set it up so that the stuff the stuff the numbers would come straight out of mute us on a daily basis some of those numbers would change and those would be reflected online for people to see who really wanted to get into the nuts and bolts of what the spending is so yes so you mentioned transparency which is a key for us. And this is something that I think, and if I may speak for majority of my fellow councillors, this is something that's very important for us

▶ 2:30:11 to increase the transparency in our city government. How is it going to show in this new system? well uh we got i had a well you know i have well uh it's hard to explain uh this system has a combination of um graphs and charts uh but the the the nuts and bolts of this system are are more um what you'd want to see um kind of in the lines the budget lines you can set it up so that you can just click through and see all of the expenditures uh with the lines each budget line is for and and how much was spent um you know i would i could give you maybe some more information once we get into the product we purchase the product once we get into it more or i could get you more information from uh tyler on how it displays the information but

▶ 2:31:22 Maya Jamaleddine: basically you would you would you would get to it from our website um and there would be a section where you could click through the budget so um mero's residents will be able to go on the website and be able to pull all these records and the numbers correct perfect my second question you mentioned that you anticipate increase of 35% and if this happened would you come before us and request that or is it something that is already going on the third that that part is is part of my operating budget for FY 21 so essentially that would be this right now I think you wouldn't come and you're not anticipating coming back and requesting another increase or another no thank you I'm done thank you mr. chairman thank you mr. Ellis for being here tonight um

▶ 2:32:26 Leila Migliorelli: I had a question for you but councillor Jamala Dean already asked regarding the transparency on the website I think that'll be a great asset and offering for our residents I'm in terms of the motion that's on the table right now to to cut. As I mentioned last night and previous nights, I will not be supporting this. I am in favor of looking at a more holistic strategy and hoping that the mayor's office will provide that soon. And I will not be supporting minor cuts to budgets. Thank you. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. Thank you, Mr. Ellis, for being here. Just one, the first, I'll start off with a quick question um who's responsible for generally like the day-to-day maintenance of the content on the website is that under the i.t department to the department is it

▶ 2:33:13 Jack Eccles: kind of decentralized through the department heads it's a combination of uh decentralization uh and amy camosa is our webmaster the city clerk so she's responsible for the general upkeep of that of that as well as you know departments have access to their section of the of their for their pages which for the most part stay fairly static but yeah awesome thanks and then and looking at you know the phone project which which was appropriated last spring is there anything you see kind of long term that would be it's you know kind of a one-time expense that would trigger an annual cost savings a recurring cost savings like the phone um upgrade are there are there some things that are kind of on the back burner or could be added to the capital

▶ 2:34:04 improvement plan um well i will say that um there are not not a drastic thing like that i will say that um indirect costs um things like uh like we negotiated a new print contract at the schools this year and we're being charged a lot more for upkeep of our printer fleet which in is we have our average printer uh is the printer age is um i believe it's 14 years now so when you have printers that are 14 years um and they're slow and old and need a lot of care um then we pay more for those so um yeah it's there are some indirect costs that are like that awesome thanks and then i i had asked when we were talking about security not too long ago um transitioning to more software as a service in in less you know locally stored things kind of

▶ 2:35:15 Jack Eccles: i see about a new exchange server is there anything that you sort of see on the horizon of transitioning to more cloud-based stuff and in less less local storage i know the generator is important but but it would kind of as far as you know it would make it so that it wasn't completely centralized and when things down go down as well the issue the issue with the um to answer your question and sort of i don't want to be too long-winded but um it comes down to funds so uh uh 365 which is the microsoft um office product that's online um that includes collaboration uh is is a great product it is roughly half the cost of buying um say office new i mean that would include online exchange and all those things um the exchange portion is a

▶ 2:36:09 whole other added cost if you look at that cost over say a 10-year period which is what i usually if i'm looking at things that you can look at a five to ten year period the cost of going to oh 365 for for a mail or exchange product um is going to be i think the price is out it was like like eight times the cost over 10 years um so really what that comes down to is is our ability to fund um things so yeah i would love i would love to put us in o365 um with office and exchange but um the cost is just too too high um we also take into consideration how much use it would have over you know gaining traction over a certain amount of time i think i think local office with exchange is is going to do what we need it to do in the probably in the

▶ 2:37:06 Mark Garipay: next five years at which time we will probably then go to a cloud-based system thank you thank you mr. chairman thank you mr. chairman thank you mr. Ellis for being here I just want to follow up on you had mentioned kovat planning and I know your department had to shift on the fly to get everyone set up to work remotely and in doing so you kind of mentioned and I hope I hope it doesn't happen but I think it's it's out there that we may have another surge in the fall and if that if that does happen are we are we set up to work remotely with enough with enough hardware enough um you know laptops um do we we see any investment coming forward in order to uh to help us um help the workers um make sure we get uh full uh full

▶ 2:38:07 Mark Garipay: production at home i know i know it's a shift and it's different for everyone and not everyone has their home pc so i wasn't sure if we've looked into that at all to make sure that everyone is is set up and to Councilor Tramontozzi conversation earlier regarding the CARES Act, would that be a possibility if we were to go that route to upgrade some of our hardware, could we use that money from the CARES Act? Yeah, yeah, good question. So to answer the first part, right now, I mean, all of our staff is operational, at home. We worked like dogs to get laptops out. We had ordered some just before the shutdown in anticipation. We ordered more after that and rolled those out. We upgraded probably

▶ 2:39:05 seven laptops that we had that we were going to take out of service and upgraded those and rolled those out and then we stole a laptop cart from the high school after it was announced that we no longer were going to have school to the end of the year we took a laptop cart that was actually in rough shape and we fixed all the laptops and then re-image those and then roll those out to any remaining employees and then there are the employees who are coming in and working in-house we're still in the process of rolling out um some of the new laptops to replace some of the older ones that we had given out um and we uh to answer your question i just ordered um this last week another 22 laptops in anticipation of um

▶ 2:39:56 well to get those laptops back to the schools and to replace the laptops that are you know not that great um and uh we want to be able to pick up and go home on a moment's notice um and that's what i'm preparing for uh the rest of the systems the server wise uh we're pretty much already there uh but to answer your question on the cares act uh yes all of those uh laptops that we had ordered uh prior um we were about 22 before we were at another 22. uh those will uh some of those i think were charged to the fema uh money that was first uh first came in and then the remainder will go toward uh the cares act so yes so i would not be coming to you to ask for more funds for for that for that purpose now and and would that be the same if uh come september

▶ 2:40:54 we see uh the schools doing uh virtual virtual learning um would that be the same with um um um investment into in the school department in in virtual learning um would that be covered by the kids act too uh i wouldn't even cause we would occur i would expect yes uh absolutely we i'm not exactly sure we're planning out you know what what we're we're looking at um and uh so we're it's still up in the air but yeah we would we would try we would get that under cares thank you very much thomas thank you mr chairman mr ellis thank you for being here thank you for providing that slideshow earlier um your line item for the munis software it's a significant bump um well thirty three thousand dollars uh will that be the line item moving forward you know the

▶ 2:41:54 123 000 plus it should be it should be an additional 20 000 and um that's a one-time well that's that might i'd have to look at what that that quote was for um but there be there would be an additional annual cost i don't know that it would be that much that much more that's probably a one-time cost the renewal would be less than that i'm sure okay thank you and then on um software licenses it looks like there was about a you know 15 000 uh dollar bump uh this year as well uh was there some new software that you guys installed or needed yeah so uh with that uh upgrade to those servers that we had uh purchased and moved um data over uh again we had to you know re-up our licensing and Most of the companies have gone from charging for the hardware to purchasing software companies.

▶ 2:43:06 I mean, if I buy a $20,000 server, it's going to cost $100,000 because I have $80,000 of licensing fees. So those are pretty significant now, and we can't really dodge it, and those costs go up every year we it's yeah so if if see what software licenses so say that you know department of public works needs a cad license or the assessors needs the gis license does that come out of your budget or their budget uh so so sometimes those costs depending on what it's for and how it's handled uh will come out of those budgets their budgets or sometimes we'll take it over as just a matter of um maintenance and making sure that it gets renewed a lot of times when stuff gets renewed out of departments you're trying to chase it down to get stuff renewed

▶ 2:43:59 Jen Grigoraitis: and it's a horror show and you just take it on in your department instead of that department we're going to try to do that with the copiers for next year too because they're disparate copiers and we want to roll it you know take control of those costs and make sure we're getting the best cost thanks so much mr. Ellis thanks for being here thank you chairman Snell and thank you mr. Ellis I just had two quick follow-up questions to mr. Garibay councillor Garipay questions regarding kovat and I think it's clear that your department in particular has played a key role in making sure that we can continue to safely operate city services and I don't think that remote work or certainly remote participation in meetings is going to be ending anytime

▶ 2:44:47 soon um so my first question you mentioned at the start about um extending the webex license is that something that will continue into fy21 or does that need to be factored into this budget uh so that's a really really good question and i i i wondered about that myself because the initial year which will you know we'll be able to get to next june um june of 21 with the purchase that we made this year um so going into fy 22 we will probably need to put that in the budget if we want to continue with it um generally speaking um you know they'll they'll let you hold over a software they know you're gonna pay for the software they'll let you continue to use it for another month or we can just pay a month and then

▶ 2:45:46 Jen Grigoraitis: get it onto the fy 22 budget but this the amount that i spent today was i think it was nine two eight eight and that is gonna be on the uh cares act from the cares act so um really shouldn't impact us in fy 21. okay and we're covered license wise we're covered as beyond june 30th of this year correct and then my follow-up question in in your um memo you provided a hyperlink to infinite visions employee self-service which i'm assuming is some sort of online time and attendance platform for city employees correct yeah that's by tyler yep okay and is that going to be um operational because i i was you happen to be a part of a conversation at the start of the covid pandemic when things were shutting down about the fact that most city employees are

▶ 2:46:36 still doing paper timesheets which does seem like something we would want to transition out of in this era of social distancing so um yeah yeah the timesheet thing um makes me shake my head uh well well we i don't know the question for marianne long i just um i'm surprised the city's not already doing it yeah what we're we're there are two things to that there's um there's the employee self-service which will kind of take care of employees requesting their their accruals and data and constantly asking the hr department for that um the time in attendance type tracking um you're right it's done on a paper basis right now that will i think there is a time and attendance chunk that you can get from units i'm not sure that this will handle it

▶ 2:47:34 we also need to factor in the um the punch card system that we use right now which sorely needs an upgrade uh which is mostly used at the um public works for all of the the guys to punch in um guys and gals um so yeah that might be a separate thing okay so it's just something that may come online for employees to be able to check their own balances yeah there's a whole bunch there's a whole bunch of things that we can roll out that's part of that but um it's going to take a lot of training for employees and going down the road so that's the first thing that we intend to implement thank you no one else in queue we do have a motion on the floor to reduce the budget by ten thousand one hundred dollars thirty nine cents uh madam clerk please call the roll

▶ 2:48:29 counselor i should make legally counselor tram and tozy yes counselor mcmaster yes counselor mcnaught no counselor eccles no No. Councilor Garipay? No. Councilor Stewart? No. Councilor Thomas? No. Councilor Jamaleddine? No. President Grigoraitis? No. Chairman Cinella? No. Two yes, 10 no, motion fails. And what is the will on 155 IT? Make a motion to move the bottom line forward. second motion to move the bottom line forward made by councillor mcnaught second by councillor Garipay in discussion for discussion and then seeing none spice jim Migliorelli yes councillor traymond tozy yes councillor mcmaster yes councillor mcnaught yes counselor Eccles yeah that's the garipay yes sir Stewart yes sir Thomas yes I'm so Jamala Dean yes Grigoraitis yes Karen Sunilla yes yes

▶ 2:49:57 Jen Grigoraitis: well my move they'll enjoy your cold enchiladas and at this time I'll to obtain a motion to adjourn do we have 9 30 do we have 9 30 9 31 or do we act on those did we move uh 9 30 and 9 31 that's all part of the 155. well okay you want to do that's fine i don't have a problem with it similar to the previous nights they've done very brief explanations that's the world committee just a point of personal privilege not that we don't all enjoy spending time together but if you miss some of our faces you can see four of us on Saturday night participating in the bridge virtual trivia be it will be myself counselor Stewart counselor make me really and counselor McNaught so I'm happy that such a worthy organization is able to continue with their um event and that we're able

▶ 2:51:04 to participate so i know there aren't a lot of live sports to watch these days so if you're desperate you can watch us try to win trivia thank you good luck counselor mcmaster good luck thank you mr chairman i'd just like to make a motion to attach the powerpoint presentation and memo provided by mr ellis to the record leave it on okay i'm clear i'm sorry the presentation is attached the presentation is an iqm2 memo i'll check and make sure but you have the motion it's been seconded vice chair Migliorelli yes councilor Tramontozzi yes councilor mcmaster Yes. Councilor McNaught? Yes. Councilor Eccles? Yes. Councilor Garriger? Yes. Councilor Stewart? Yes. Councilor Thomas? Yes. Councilor Jamaleddine?

▶ 2:52:01 Yes. Councilor, I'm sorry, President Grigoraitis? Yes. Chairman Cinella? Yes. 11 yes. Did somebody make a motion to adjourn, or was I just dreaming? I did. Motion to adjourn. Councilor McLaughlin? Second. Second by President Grigoraitis. President Grigoraitis, I'll roll for the final time this week. Vice Chair 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. Councilor Mancinella. Yes, and. Wonderful evening everyone now.

Original documents

• Minutes (CivicClerk PDF)
• Agenda (IQM2 PDF)
• Bulletin (IQM2 PDF)
• Minutes packet (IQM2 PDF)
• Agenda packet (CivicClerk PDF)
• Agenda packet (IQM2 PDF)
• Other (CivicClerk PDF)
• This meeting on the city portal