Appropriations & Oversight Committee — 2020-06-11

Appropriations and Oversight Budget Hearing

This meeting starts at 0:02 in a recording that covers several meetings.

Attendance

Christopher Cinella present · Chair; Jack Eccles present · Voting; Mark Garipay present · Voting; Jen Grigoraitis present · President, ex oficio; Maya Jamaleddine present · Voting; Shawn M. MacMaster present · Voting; Jeff McNaught present · Voting; Leila Migliorelli present · Vice Chair; Robb Stewart late, 6:13 PM · Voting; Cory Thomas present · Voting; John N. Tramontozzi present · Voting

Agenda

Minutes

CITY OF MELROSE APPROPRIATIONS COMMITTEE CALENDAR● JUNE 11, 2020 Web-based remote meeting Budget Hearing 6:00 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 Late 6:13 PM Cory Thomas Voting Present Maya Jamaleddine Voting Present Jen Grigoraitis President, ex oficio Present

ORDER-2020-108 Appropriation An Appropriation from Free Cash, account number 01-324001, in the amount of $309,104.60 to various IT accounts as set forth herein. Recommend Passage City Council

ORDER-2020-104 Appropriation An Appropriation from Free Cash, account number (01-324001) in the amount of $114,200.00 to various Fire Department Accounts as set forth herein. Recommend Passage City Council

ORDER-2020-106 Appropriation An Appropriation from Free Cash, account number 01-324001, in the amount of $195,714.85 to various Police Department Accounts as set forth herein. 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). Recommend Passage City Council City of Melrose Page 1 Updated 6/29/2020 2:48 PM Minutes Appropriations Committee June 11, 2020

ORDER-2020-90 Revolving Fund/Reauthorization Reauthorization of City of Melrose Revolving Funds table as adopted by City Ordinance June 18, 2018 and further authorized by Massachusetts General Laws Chapter 44, §53E ½. Recommend Passage City Council

ORDER-2020-95 Enterprise Fund Mt. Hood Enterprise Operating Budget for Fiscal 2021 in the amount of $1,565,259.92 (One Million, Five Hundred Sixty-Five Thousand, Two Hundred Fifty-Nine Dollars and Ninety-Two Cents). Recommend Passage City Council

ORDER-2020-94 Enterprise Fund Sewer Enterprise Operating Budget for Fiscal 2021 in the amount of $8,130,932.44 (Eight Million, One Hundred-Thirty Thousand, Nine Hundred Thirty-Two Dollars and Forty-Four Cents). Recommend Passage City Council

ORDER-2020-93 Enterprise Fund Water Enterprise Operating Budget for Fiscal 2021 in the amount of $5,422,639.20 (Five Million, Four Hundred Twenty-Two Thousand, Six Hundred Thirty-Nine Dollars and Twenty Cents). Recommend Passage City Council

ORDER-2020-109 Appropriation An Appropriation from Free Cash, account 01-324001, in the amount of $331,676.55 to various Public Works Accounts as set forth herein. Recommend Passage City Council

ORDER-2020-121 Grant Acceptance of School Water Improvement Grant (SWIG) in the amount of $24,000 Recommend Passage City Council

ORDER-2020-122 Acceptance Acceptance of Massachusetts Department of Environmental Protection Recycling IQ Kit Grant in the amount of $30,000 Recommend Passage City Council

ORDER-2020-123 Grant Acceptance of State Revolving Fund Sewer Asset Management Grant in the amount of $60,000 Recommend Passage City Council City of Melrose Page 2 Updated 6/29/2020 2:48 PM

Transcript

▶ 0:02 Christopher Cinella: Good evening. It is June 11th, 6 p.m. This is the Appropriations Committee. I am the Chair, Councillor Cinella. In pursuant to Governor Baker's March 12th order, suspending certain provisions of the Open Meeting Law and the Governor's March 15th order proposing 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, please call the roll. Vice-Chair O'Reilly. Here.

▶ 0:48 Councilor Tramontozzi. Here. Councilor McMaster. Here. Councilor McNaught. Here. Councilor Eccles. Councilor Garipay? Here. Councilor Stewart? Councilor Thomas? Here. Councilor Jamaleddine? Here. President Grigoraitis? Chairman Cinella? Here. Ten present. At this time I'll entertain a motion for public comment. motion for public comment second public comment made by Vice Chair Migliorelli seconded by President Grigoraitis Madam Clerk please call the roll Vice Chair Migliorelli yes Councilor Tramontozzi yes Councilor McMaster yes Councilor McNaught yes Councilor Eccles Councilor Garipay yes Councilor Stewart Councilor Thomas. Councilor Jamaleddine. Yes. Yes. President Grigoraitis. Yes. Chairman Sinella. Yes. And yes. Is there anybody in queue that you can see? Let's see, I'm looking. Is there

▶ 2:13 anybody in the, every single person in the room at this time, 6-02, is a panelist to be someone from a department or other body I'm just checking to make sure they're no other members of the public on the queue right now and they are not in a motion to close public comment we're going to close public comment by President Grigoraitis seconded by Councilor Thomas please call the roll Vice Chair Migliorelli yes Councilor Trayvon Tosey. Yes. Councilor McMaster. Yes. Councilor McNaught. Yes. Councilor Eccles. Councilor Garipay. Yes. Councilor Stewart. Councilor Thomas. Yes. Councilor Jamaleddine. Yes. President Grigoraitis. Yes. Chairman Cinella. Yes. And yes. Public comment closed. We're gonna have a pretty long night,

▶ 3:20 Christopher Cinella: it looks like tonight. anybody needs to recess or whatever just let me know and I guess for those folks that are going to be speaking just know that when the counselors raise their hand that's to indicate to me that I'm they have a question but I put them in a queue first this evening 2020 that's 108 and appropriation of free cash account 0 1 3 2 4 0 0 1 and the amount of three hundred nine thousand four hundred and four dollars and sixty cents to various IT accounts a set for Karen we have motion to suspend the rules to hear from our rules to spend the rules made by by Councilor Eccles, seconded by Vice Chair Migliorelli. Madam Clerk, please call the roll. Vice Chair Migliorelli. Yes. Councilor Tramontozzi.

▶ 4:17 Yes. Councilor McMaster. Yes. Councilor McNaught. Yes. Councilor Eccles. Yes. Councilor Garipay. Yes. Councilor Stewart. Councilor Thomas. Yes. Councilor Jamaleddine. Yes. President Grigoraitis. Yes. Chairman Zanella. Yes. And yes, I will bring in Director Ellis right now. Hello, good evening. Hi, Neil. Hi. So the $309,000 that you're looking at is for, the primary chunk of that is a replacement for a piece of the CIP budget that we have a, i think i talked about this last time we have a capital improvement line for the schools that's 150 000 and one for the city that's 150 000 that comes up every year in the past it's been used to pay off a five-year lease for equipment that was purchased prior to my starting

▶ 5:38 um that account was is going to be uh depleted by 200 and change next year uh and due to the due to the the decrease in revenue uh mr delarusso wanted to give me an appropriation of free cash to backfill the 200 he was taking out of next year's capital improvement um The additional money was is for a projector replacement project at the school. I think I may have talked about that last time the school. Has basically every room has this 1 projector in this projector model. Is failing, it's roughly 12 years old. In every classroom, and we're constantly having to send these out and it takes like a month and a half 2 months to get them repaired and come back. we're spending 400 every time that happens we've got we had before the shutdown we had three out

▶ 6:45 and three that were the light was was starting to flicker and and get dim and they were gonna go so it's like six of the uh i forget how many classrooms are in the building it just just looked at it too because this will replace all the all of the classrooms but um uh we were in severe trouble I Kristen is Megan Lewis on she is she is let me make our panels right now please so Megan is a is a teacher at the Winthrop school she can give you a little bit more insight into the day-to-day with with the projectors and in what's happening and how that diminishes her ability to uh teach during the day megan are you there megan can you hear us okay i think i hit mute at the same time you hit unmute thank you

▶ 7:53 for having me i don't know if you heard my introduction i just introduced you and um hopefully you could give us kind of an update of what's what what the condition is at the winter school yeah absolutely um i remember when they went in it was it was a long time ago Um, so, yeah, our projectors are kind of dropping pretty frequently. We're having to swap them out. Light bulbs are 1 thing. Although those are the projectors are sold. I think they're hard to maintain and repair even though. The city is so responsive and we need help, but the projectors needing to be mailed off. Sometimes we're without projectors for a few months and it's usually pretty sudden and it's a real disruption to teaching and learning for our students.

▶ 8:37 Our, our smart boards are a core focus to a lot of our instructional routines and it's really, really difficult. I've been, I've been in 2 different classrooms that have lost a projector for. A few months or more, and it really does impact my ability to teach effectively with my students. um we use them to model instruction right now i mean this is pretty much our only service for presenting visual instruction so imagine trying to teach students how to solve problems examine text draft their writing um we're really limited and unable to do that without our smart boards also our curriculum we have the pearson mathematics and reading program those are heavily based online so all of the videos text guidance interactive practice

▶ 9:22 we no longer have access to when our smart cards are down additionally i've worked this will be my 16th year teaching i've had a lot of students on ieps and a lot of those ieps are written with certain supports like timers and visual cues and checklists things that are good for all students but things that some students really need in order to develop strong executive functioning skills and without again without that smart board without that projector it really makes difficult to provide those accommodations um i would say the hardest thing for me when i've been without a smart board and speaking to all of the other teachers in my building because unfortunately i think most of us have been touched by this in

▶ 9:58 the past few years as the as the hardware has really hit its end of life um is just the interruption in classroom routine at the elementary level building routines and predictable environments is incredibly important for students see when they come into school one of the things we work really hard to is to to create an environment that is supportive predictable um there's a routine that's very comforting and it And it puts students in a really, really strong place to be successful when they feel safe and comfortable. And it really does throw that kind of whole classroom routine when we are no longer able to access that technology. So, it really does. It really does have a pretty significant impact on our ability to teach our students and for them to really be successful.

▶ 10:41 Mark Garipay: so thank you thank you i didn't i only saw one hand go up is anybody else that i missed council garrick thank you uh chairman sanella thank you mr ellis thank you uh so much for being here my son had you and um he thought the world of you uh he is one year out of winthrop but i can attest that um through his years at winthrop the uh smart boards were typically were broken more than they were actually working, which was a frustration for the teachers and for the kids. But my question, Mr. Ellis, is is this the only school that we have the problem with this particular model or have this across the district and is this something that should be on the plan to replace city-wide? but just if you can give us some direction on that yeah that's a that's a great question uh

▶ 11:45 this particular model and i'm not sure i wasn't around when they were installed i'm not sure exactly why but this particular model seems to be uh just in the winthrop school um it's not as stable or as durable as the other uh projectors even projectors that we have in the rest of the district that are older than this model so there's that but he answered your question yes we have this issue throughout the district in every in every building and to replace them will cost roughly a million dollars is what I I figured out and put in for our see CIP last year well this year and it's just such a large amount it's hard to do it all at once I'm trying to figure out ways to do it in tears one year two year three year we're looking at probably a

▶ 12:47 Mark Garipay: four year replacement cycle that maybe you know 250 a pop if we do it all at once there they're cheaper to do but again you do it all at once you've got projectors all dying at the same rate at the end of that their end of life so So, yeah, there is a problem. Does it have anything to do with the age of the school and the technology? I mean, that is the old school. My grandmother actually went to school there. So is it the age of the school that are we going to have this problem if we go with the new ones too? No, I mean, the equipment doesn't have anything to do with the age of the school. So it's not relative to the, yeah, I think that building was built in the 20s sometime. All right, um, thank you very much. Sure. Thank you.

▶ 13:38 Any other questions is the will of the committee. Motion to recommend for passage. 2nd, we should recommend for passage made by Councilor Eccles, seconded by Vice Chair Migliorelli. Madam Clerk, please call the roll. Vice Chair Migliorelli? Yes. Councilor Tramontozzi? Yes. Councilor McMaster? Yes. Councilor McNaught? Yes. Councilor Eccles? Yes. Councilor Garipay? Yes. Councilor Stewart? I will abstain as I joined late and I didn't hear the full article. Councilor Thomas? Yes. Councilor Jamaleddine? Yes. President Grigoraitis? Chairman Cinella? Yes. 11 yes. Motion passes. Thank you Neil. Thank you Megan. Thank you. Good night. Next order we have order 2020-104 appropriation from free cash account number zero one dash three two four zero zero one

▶ 14:47 in the amount of a hundred and fourteen thousand two hundred dollars to various fire department accounts as set forth here we have brought in chief kalina we should be coming in momentarily chief can you hear us everybody good evening chief screen is all yours okay um so i'm requesting um 100 and total amount was 114 000 um to for free cash to uh off the deficit in my overtime account and vehicle repair, and also to purchase a new rescue sled, which I wasn't able to find the pamphlet, but I did. For those who don't know what a rescue sled is, I'd like to hold it up so you can get a visual of it. The current sled that we have is exactly the same thing except it's 26 years old, A lot of the plastic of the pontoons are rotted and one of them is hard to keep afloat so the sled itself doesn't travel evenly in the water or on the ice surface if it were to break through the ice.

▶ 16:20 so this is 26 years old um it's short money um it's a critical piece of equipment that we use we put it on the truck uh usually in early december and it stays on until the ice uh from the different ponds in the city melt so that that's the uh what i'm questioning if you happen to answer any questions that the uh council may have we got in the uh three orders any questions the will of the committee the will of the committee recommend passage recommend passage made by Councilor Tramontozzi seconded by Councilor Eccles Madam Clerk please call the roll Vice Chair Migliorelli yes Councilor Tramontozzi yes Councilor McMaster yes Councilor mcnaught yes councilor Eccles yes yes councilor stewart yes yes councilor maladin yes president

▶ 17:27 Grigoraitis chairman sanella 11 yes thank you thank you chief thank you chief next up we have order 2020-106 an appropriation from free cash account number zero one dash three two four zero zero one in the amount of one hundred and ninety five thousand seven hundred and fourteen dollars eighty five cents to various police department accounts as set for here we have Thank you for this opportunity. This is a request for free cash for the following line item over time to supplement this year's budget to support a vehicle that was damaged. to replace a 14-year-old fireman to support three vehicles to be available for questions. I couldn't hear you. Mr. Chairman, I think there's feedback maybe from the police chief's radio and a difficult hearing as well.

▶ 19:18 Christopher Cinella: Oh, I hear filing cabinets closing and opening. Were you going to go into detail on this order? I thought I did. I could barely hear you. Okay, I'll try it again. Thank you for your time. This order is for free cash to support the following item. Overtime, $25,000 to support a vehicle that was damaged in a crash and it needs to be replaced of $12,000, $26,000 to replace our 14-year-old firearms, as well as to support three vehicles that are clearly past their lifespan. Thank you. Well, I think I want to just kick this off as the liaison to public safety. I wasn't really sure what I wanted to say tonight in light of this order and with what's going on right now in our country with respect to the heinous murder of George Floyd.

▶ 20:13 Christopher Cinella: And I was watching the news and saw a recent speech made by the New York Police Benevolent Association President Mike O'Meara. What struck me, he said, quote, our legislatures are failing us. Our press is vilifying us. Stop treating us like animals and thugs and start treating us with some respect. We've been vilified and it's disgusting. I agree. Everybody's trying to shame the police right now and calling for defunding. I find it ironic that a few weeks ago May 21st appropriations to be exact we had a resolution that counselors McMaster and Stewart put forward in recognition of National Police Week and I heard a lot of praise that night from several counselors and the administration just to refresh your memory here's a small

▶ 21:03 Christopher Cinella: sample because that was a long time ago we thank you for your service and quote heard that several times quote i want to commend the chief and the department for your commitment for the community policing community policing is what it's all about in a place like melrose and it creates a level of comfort and trust with all the residents that is so important that i don't think it exists in every department or in every community end quote quote sense of community you guys provide is wonderful thing end quote that's just a few later in that meeting we unanimously moved the bottom line what looks like an underfunded budget to begin with after the chief had spoke about upgrades to firearms and the fleet and no one had asked any questions

▶ 21:50 Christopher Cinella: or had any comments now i was initially on board with amending this order swapping out the guns for implicit bias training simulator or using the funds towards body cameras or dash cameras This is an action that I think could have been taken immediately, but it looks like the money now, based on a letter that we received today, will just be pulled from the police department. I think that's just wrong. And the bottom line here, is there work that still needs to be done with regards to training and technology to make the Melrose Police Department better? Absolutely. The last time I checked, the Melrose Police Department had zero civil rights violations. There's nothing but honor and integrity for that badge and to this community to serve

▶ 22:37 Shawn M. MacMaster: and protect all of the residents, 28,193. So perhaps we can be asking them, what are they doing right, just like we celebrated on May 21st, instead of trying to take away their funding. that i'm in favor of this order as is council mcmaster thank you mr chairman uh good evening uh chief lyle uh chief i would just like to um ask some questions of you first regarding uh the uh the firearm uh request for 26 000 just so it's clear to the entire council and to the public watching at home. What is the age of the firearms in question that are looking to be replaced? They're 14 years old. This process started last fall. I had spoke to the auditor's office after we did our annual shoot in the fall. Every year we do an annual shoot re-qualification

▶ 23:36 for the entire department. At that time our sergeant David Akel who was our armorer for the police department came to me and said hey chief these these things are getting tired we're constantly repairing them it's time for them to be upgraded and replaced what did the autos office he said chief he said rather than put a line on me a budget I will deal with this with free cash and here I am in chief we are not adding those to our arsenal on top of the firearms that we currently have the Glock 40s these are replacement firearms is that fair to say The existing ones will be a trade-in. There's a trade-in value for them. Each one's worth approximately $225 for a trade. They will be traded in, and then will be replaced with new ones.

▶ 24:19 Shawn M. MacMaster: Okay. And, Chief, so these are handguns, otherwise referred to as sidearms, correct? Correct. And this appropriation is not for any type of a long gun or military-style gun. Is that right? No, it is not. Okay, and Chief, these are semi-automatic guns, correct? Meaning semi-automatic, which sometimes is confusing to the public or misunderstood, simply means that upon discharging around, an officer doesn't have to reload the firearm for his safety and the safety of the public. Is that correct? You know, counsel, you have to go back to the history. Many years ago, law enforcement was outgunned, and we had six shooters when I came on. Yes, that was that long ago. And the FBI and many, many law enforcement agencies, and that's when we went

▶ 25:09 to the semi-automatic handgun or our service weapon. They carry between 15 and 18 rounds per weapon. It's a sidearm. It's what we work with. It's a tool of our trade. the last time we replaced them was 14 years ago those prior ones were 15 years old this is our second round with an automatic sidearm and chief the the firearm that we currently have is a 40 caliber and you're looking to reduce it to a 9 caliber correct yes we've had a study from the fbi it's a smaller round it's a more accurate firearm um more cost effective most of the the military uses the 40 caliber this is a nine millimeter it's a smaller round so it's this is this is a firearm that police departments are getting away from

▶ 26:00 Shawn M. MacMaster: based on an FBI study conducted in 2014 because it's a it's a lower caliber firearm than a 40 which is high correct okay chief how many firearms are we looking to replace approximately 50 do you have any idea what our neighboring police departments use? Are they using higher caliber or lower caliber if you know? It's a combination of I know that the Stoner Police Department just went to 9 millimeters and they were very pleased with the response that they got from the department. Chief how long have you been employed with the Melrose Police Department? Approximately 34 years. And of those 34 years how many have you been chief? Approximately 14. Chief my understanding from reading the mayor's

▶ 26:50 Shawn M. MacMaster: memo is that there is a request to take the money that was initially earmarked for replacing these firearms to in replacing them with smaller caliber firearms to use that for implicit bias training that according to the mayor's memo would be vetted and it seems perhaps coordinated by the HR director. In your time as a police officer in Melrose, has the HR director, the human resources director, ever been involved in making decisions relative to police officer training? Chief, have you ever been given any indication by anyone as to why the human resources director might be in a better position than you as chief to determine the training needs of our police officers? You know, it's tough to digest. I just got notified of that this afternoon.

▶ 27:54 Shawn M. MacMaster: Okay, so as far as you know, she's never had any law enforcement experience. She's never worked in a law enforcement agency. Not to my knowledge. Do you know if she has any experience customizing training curriculum on any particular topic to a law enforcement audience? Not to my knowledge. Okay, Chief, and you referenced an FBI report. And that report, which I'm familiar with, was released in 2014. It did a scientific comparison between high-caliber handguns and lower-caliber ones. So, it probably wouldn't surprise you that according to the FBI, higher caliber handguns, like the ones we currently have, that we are looking to replace, missed their intended target 70 to 80% of the time. That doesn't surprise you, right? Because you're familiar.

▶ 28:43 Shawn M. MacMaster: No, it does not. So, the firearms we're looking to purchase are more accurate, considering that if a firearm that is a higher caliber, particularly the type that we have, is ever discharged 70 to 80 percent of the time, regardless of training, because there were training requirements, that that is likely to miss the target. Yes. Okay. And, Chief, from a public safety standpoint, does that statistic raise any red flags for you? Oh, yes. And what are those red flags? Every time we go to the range, every year we qualify. It's very apparent. And I have to defer to my counterpart in Stoneham. There was remarkable change when they went from the 40 to the 9 millimeter. Their scores went up considerably.

▶ 29:27 Shawn M. MacMaster: And based on scores going up considerably, the red flag, is it fair to say, or one red flag might be the fact that if 70 to 80% of the time rounds are not hitting their target, going somewhere else which is a public safety issue. Absolutely. Chief, it probably wouldn't surprise you then that that same FBI report that you referenced also indicated that police departments that decide to switch from a 40 millimeter firearm to a nine millimeter firearm are quote providing their armed personnel the best chance of surviving a deadly force encounter. that's not a surprise to you is it nope not at all and it probably wouldn't surprise you chief if i told you that the fbi report said that nine millimeter firearms like the ones that were initially

▶ 30:22 Shawn M. MacMaster: approved for purchase by the mayor have less recoil are cheaper in terms of ammunition costs are cheaper in terms of repair costs and have a higher functionality in overall reliability that would let's talk about ammunition costs for why would it be at low cost if we approve this purchase because the public at home is wondering you know our police department like most police departments are typically not discharging their firearms can you talk about the reasons we do discharge firearms of which the public is most likely unaware and the associated costs of that if you're having a higher caliber firearm the cost comes down to training when we train it's cost effective to use a nine millimeter versus the 40 caliber the 40 caliber is a military

▶ 31:14 Shawn M. MacMaster: round and obviously with the military being the world's policeman um that ammunition is not readily available it's like anything the cost goes up with a nine millimeter is more readily available and with the more rounds chief the more rounds that are are discharged the higher cost it's going to be so the point i'm making is that if if you're if you're trying to qualify which is a requirement that our offices have to have so many hours a year is that correct yes they have to qualify in that if they are missing 70 to 80 percent of the time we are using more ammunition that is a higher cost to the police department correct yes okay with respect to repairs in terms of volume how would you categorize the uh the volume of repairs over the last five years with

▶ 32:07 Shawn M. MacMaster: our 14 year old firearms it's constant a big thing is there's there's uh illuminated sites on the front and they blow off constantly as they go on it's like years of anything years of a vehicle they hit a lifespan the warranty in these is 10 years they're 14 years old they start to fail like anything and aren't there significant costs associated with trying to repair older firearms because you're either going to have to send it to a gunsmith or you're going to have to if it can be fixed internally our armor will attempt to fix it so whether you are paying an hourly rate to a gunsmith or to an armorer or you're paying for internal parts that are costly need to be tracked down for a 14 year old firearm that's going to have costs associated with it

▶ 32:52 Shawn M. MacMaster: correct it's more cost effective to replace the firearm than to repair it chief in your professional experience as a police officer for 34 years and as a chief here in Melrose for 14 years, would purchasing these new firearms better position the Melrose Police Department to fulfill its responsibility to serve and protect the public? Yes. In your professional experience as a police officer for 34 years and as a chief for 14 years here in Melrose, would the city save money in both the short term and in the long term considering ammunition repair costs if we purchase these firearms yes it's approximately 180 foot dollars per weapon mr chairman just a few few uh remarks if you can indulge me for a moment i think it would

▶ 33:44 Shawn M. MacMaster: be important to uh focus on a timeline as we consider the order that's before us uh this evening. On May 25th, Mr. Floyd was killed in a despicable and disgusting act of violence at the hands of a police officer. Seven days later, a full week after he was killed, after mass protests erupted across the country, the mayor sent the City Council a request for an appropriation of free cash in the amount of $195,714.85, 26,000 of which was earmarked for police department firearms. Now 10 days later, the administration has changed its mind as to the necessity of purchasing the very firearms that just a few weeks ago it deemed a priority. The mayor's memo that was sent to us today does not adequately explain what changed between june 1st the date that the administration filed this

▶ 34:49 Shawn M. MacMaster: order and today mr floyd had already been dead for a week mass protests had already lifted across the country when the mayor earmarked this money for new firearms so what has changed over the last few days that wasn't already known on may 25th when mr floyd was killed Now, let me be clear. I am 100% in support of implicit bias training across city departments. But I find it preposterous that to get there, the Melrose Police Department, who right now as Councilor Sinello referenced, is failing unsupported and underappreciated that they're the targets for losing funding because of a despicable, disgusting act in Minneapolis other despicable acts that have occurred across this country by bad apples that money has already

▶ 35:43 Shawn M. MacMaster: been targeted as being a priority and now that's changed and i find that disingenuous i find it concerning and it is something that i can't believe we are even considering tonight i think it's unfair i think it defies common sense because if we transfer this money that has already been identified as a priority you heard the chief say that it will compromise public safety in his mind he conceded to that he said that we're going to save money as a community we're in the middle of a pandemic right now that is hitting this community in all communities extremely hard from an economic standpoint so beyond being unfair the common sense attached to this order doesn't exist to me. And I say that with respect. And let's be honest with ourselves. Does anyone

▶ 36:39 Shawn M. MacMaster: really believe that the administration can't find $26,000 anywhere else within the $950,000 of free cash appropriations before this very council this evening? We can't find $26,000 else elsewhere we're gonna target the police department the administration couldn't find it in three hundred and nine thousand earmarked IT department tonight the administration couldn't find it in three hundred and thirty one thousand dollars earmarked for the Department of Public Works but we're gonna go after twenty six thousand dollars in a in a police department appropriation that just a few days ago was determined to be a priority now the The mayor's memo also says that money will be encumbered and used in the FY21 budget for implicit bias training.

▶ 37:32 Shawn M. MacMaster: Are you telling me that Mr. DelaRusso, who can take a rabbit out of a hat, can't find $26,000 in an $80 million budget that this council is poised to pass on Monday? I find that hard to believe and I would imagine that all of you do too. If we approve this request tonight, the only thing that we'll be doing is undermining public safety. When I'm speaking to the request, I'm not talking about the request to pass this order. I'm talking about what I expect to be an amendment based on the mayor's memo that we received today. And at what cost? At what cost is this council willing to be branded as reactionary over responsible? At the cost of outdated, inaccurate, 14-year-old firearms missing their target and landing on a playground.

▶ 38:29 Shawn M. MacMaster: At the cost of those firearms missing their target, God forbid, if there is ever a school shooting. At the cost of those firearms missing their target on Main Street in the middle of the day if an officer is fired upon after a bank robbery. At the cost of responding to a domestic violence call only to be met by a batterer wielding a better functioning firearm? Those are costs that I am not willing to bear, regardless of how fashionable it might be these days to call for defunding the police department. Thank you, Chief, for being here. Thank you for all that you do. Please let your officers know that we support them. We care for them. We are here for them. And we willing to work with you in all department ads to find solutions to the very difficult challenges that we face to ensuring that we community operate as equitably as possible. Thank you. Mr. Chairman.

▶ 39:28 Cory Thomas: Thank you. Mr. Chairman chief file. Thank you for being here and thank you for your continued leadership and service to the community. This council has been very vocal unified in our unified stance. the terrible actions of police officers in minnesota led to the murder of george floyd people from throughout america need to come together learn from our mistakes continuously educate ourselves and move forward for the greater good of all americans regardless of race gender sexuality or religious beliefs the budget this council has been reviewing was handed to us about three weeks ago in it the melrose police department had a line item in the 2021 budget for 26 000 to purchase new service weapons and ammunition for the department for the

▶ 40:11 Cory Thomas: department melrose is very fortunate to have an exemplary exemplary police department chief mike lyle testified before the council in may to laud our police department and let us know that they receive annual diversity training as part of their yearly continuing education trainings our police force is made up of men and women that are part of our community many officers grew up in melrose and choose to raise their families here now many of these officers are neighbors and friends they coach our youth basketball youth hockey and our youth baseball and their kids are classmates with our own children i feel our officers should not have to use the equipment that was last replaced when this year's graduates of the

▶ 40:50 Jeff McNaught: melrose high school were four years old i'll be supporting this budget for the melrose police department as originally presented thank you council mcnaught mr chairman thank you chief lyle for being here tonight. Can you hear me okay or are you hearing an echo? I have a lot of thoughts. First I want to say talking about current events for all of us I think is a bit nerve-wracking. We're all colleagues. We're mostly friends. We're not going to agree on everything we may say things in ways that we wish we said differently thereafter but I do have thoughts on on the memorandum that we did receive today which I didn't get to read until a very short time ago so my my my words may not be as eloquent as chairman Sinella or counselor McMaster

▶ 41:59 Jeff McNaught: or counsel Thomas or anyone that goes after me and some of it may be a little bit repetitive but I do want to say that on May 25th George Floyd was brutally murdered in Minneapolis Minnesota and I would say by police officers one I won't go off on my own tangent about why I think the charges should be higher than and they are for those four officers. I don't think Chief Lyle disagrees that Mr. Floyd was murdered. I think Chief Lyle put out a statement immediately that I was both relieved by and respected very much about what happened to Mr. Floyd. I'd also like to say that Mr. Floyd is not the first black male or female has been brutally murdered inappropriately by police officers there is systemic need that needs to change that needs to take place in law

▶ 43:08 Jeff McNaught: enforcement I don't that just means within police departments I'm an attorney I think I think systemic change needs to take place in our court systems across the United States I think it needs to take place in almost every institution in america i am a believer and a huge supporter of the black lives matter movement i'd like to think that i understand what it means i truly do i don't know what it's like to be a black person but i'm doing my damn best to to understand and learn and for a while i've been a believer in that movement but i've also been a believer that not all police are bad and um I'm in agreement that I'm a little bit puzzled as to how we went from May 25th to a June 1st order request, requesting $26,000 for new firearms, what the change was from then to today.

▶ 44:15 Jeff McNaught: I know that these are emotional times day by day I know all of our emotions are swinging probably back and forth on thoughts that we're having about things that were in the news and things that continue to happen in society the memo cites that the the service weapons most police officers rely on their service weapons as critical tools in securing the community and its residents. It cites that they're 14 years old. It cites that the prior set they had were 15 years old. The memo cites that the Mars Police Department has been underfunded for many years. I view trying to take away this extremely nominal amount of twenty six thousand dollars as a form of defunding i don't want to go overboard and say we're

▶ 45:15 Jeff McNaught: defunding the morrow's police department uh but we are underfunding them and that's before this twenty six thousand dollars and um i don't agree with with going after this twenty six thousand dollars i think it it gives off the complete wrong impression of what we should be trying to do with our police department which is join forces with them as our number one ally in the fight against racism and a fight for to be as inclusive as we can be and one community open to all and i don't think we have a chief before us tonight who disagrees with that i don't think it was george floyd's murder that are that irrevocably i'm an attorney you think i should be able to say that word better change the context and the meaning of of the conversation that we're having

▶ 46:10 Jeff McNaught: today that has this has been going on for a long time we could read off along with the names that have been brutally murdered by racist police i'll say that right here and stand by it that does not mean that all police are racist or bad there there's a big distinction there do we have a problem yeah we do we do um our budgeting should should reflect our local values i i agree with the mayor on that point um i don't think that taking this 26 000 away does that i know that there's ideas to have the human rights commission um vet vendors and um look into who we can use to pay this twenty six thousand dollars with to provide implicit bias training i assume that's the training we're talking about for essentially every uh employee in the city of melrose

▶ 47:14 Jeff McNaught: twenty six thousand dollars aren't gonna last a half a day for 50 people if you want rail experts is it is that just my echo or is someone else not muted i'm gonna mute you um that money is not enough money to make any difference whatsoever in in ensuring that we get the training that we need master is right we had a lot of free cash we could have used for this this problem is not new and we should have been thinking about this a while ago that is not at all to put blame on anyone including mayor broder and saying you should have known this three weeks ago um so if i appear as if i'm doing a little bit of monday morning quarterbacking i don't intend to do that but I do want to say that I work at a school every year where we do implicit

▶ 48:16 Jeff McNaught: bias training diversity training however you want to phrase it the name changes almost every year for all of our incoming students at a law school and I can tell you $26,000 would not cover half a session for a couple hundred students. Half a day. So we really need to look into a lot more free cash or develop a line item that shows that we're serious about investing in this. And this is for everyone. This isn't just for the police department. And I don't think that the mayor was saying that either. I want to be as fair as I can. This is the message that I read today and the request that we have before us. So I don't wanna read this in any way as attacking the mayor in any way. I understand he's under the same pressure we all are.

▶ 49:04 Jeff McNaught: But I do read, when I see that this is not and must not be interpreted as a criticism of our police officers, how else can we take it? I mean, if we're saying we don't wanna get you new guns, which is counterintuitive to being safe by using old guns, it is it I read it as a statement of mistrust and again I don't think that's where we want to start off with with the current state that we're in and how we want to communicate with the morrow's police department I don't think that we want to start off by saying hey listen we're gonna hit the pause button on getting you the tools that you need to protect everybody because essentially This, I don't want to say that this is the mayor's view, but it's saying cops nationwide are not bad.

▶ 50:07 Jeff McNaught: And by the way, respectfully, Chairman Shawn, I don't agree with everything that the New York police, I think it was their union president said. I thought he was out of line in a lot of the things that he said. So I'm trying to be as fair and balanced as I can in my statement here. I'm not done and I apologize, but I do have a few more notes written down. I know nobody wants to hear that we need added positions in the city of Melrose, but we desperately need, instead of asking any commission to take their time to vet vendors and come up with solutions for us, we need to hire professionals. And those people may be within that commission. I'm truly not sure. I don't know of anyone personally that is on the payroll in the city of Melrose who's qualified to say this is how much money we need and this is the training we need.

▶ 51:13 Jeff McNaught: And I do understand that that is the reason likely that Mayor Brodeur is trying to put together committees and groups to look at this stuff. But this is way too serious of an issue to just send off to a commission, an unpaid commission, that may not be trained. They may be, I could be wrong, may not be trained enough as a director of community engagement and equity would be, for example, that could work with everyone. And when I say that, I don't just mean hiring one person. I think you have to hire support staff for that person. And I think it's important that the city of Mars has this. So for everybody who's screaming at me now in their heads or out loud at their TVs about more tax dollars, I apologize.

▶ 51:59 Jeff McNaught: but I think we need it trying to wrap up shortly I think I said this at the beginning but systemic change must happen it's not just in police departments it goes far beyond police departments it's in almost every institution in America it starts with people every one of us every single person at home if we have training done for every employee including us in the city of Melrose that may accomplish something but there's 27,000 people who live in Melrose and there's 324 million or so that live in the United States of America and I'm not saying everyone's right or everyone's wrong but everybody's got to be part of this this discussion we can't just put it on the police And I realize that it's easy to do that right now, and I won't go into why, but it's what we see on the news, and it is real.

▶ 53:10 Jeff McNaught: What we're seeing is real. I'm not denying it at all, and it has to stop. But I don't think that this is the way to do it. Um, and I would like to take us back to the night of May 21st. When when we honored tomorrow's police department, and I'd like to thank them again. And I'd like to hope that we can all ask and I'm asking, I know. I believe with all of us and saying, we want to be, we want you to be a number 1 allies in this fight. And we appreciate all you do, and I'm sorry for. Going on longer than probably my allotted time. but thank you thank you so much chairman and thank you chief file for being with us today i'm not going uh to go through details about and discussion about whether uh we should take

▶ 54:08 Maya Jamaleddine: the 26 000 or no from the free cash or whether from the police department i just want to clarify after I heard my fellow councillors. I don't think anyone ever questioned or doubting our police department. I think every single occasion we have, we share our respect, utmost respect and appreciation for our police department. I think we always felt felt welcomed by them, and we always felt able to work with them. I don't think this is a discussion at all. I think when the mayor asked for the training, he didn't target one department, he asked for all the departments. So, please don't take it personal, Chief, and don't feel that it's only the police department who are asked to take this training, because

▶ 55:11 Maya Jamaleddine: at this point we are starting with with every single house every single department to to be aware of what's going on around the nation and not inside our city only um regardless if i'm gonna be sub uh uh voting in in favor or opposing i think uh we should realize that we never doubted the um the devotion and uh the the highest um quality of service that you provided to our city so thank you so much for your service and for the whole police department thank you mr chairman um and thank you chief lyle for being here tonight uh if you can all bear with me through my own stream of consciousness talking. I think, you know, for me, reflecting back on when we passed the bottom line on the police department's budget at the time,

▶ 56:21 Leila Migliorelli: Chief Lyle had a slide up talking about future considerations. And there I saw the implicit bias training on the list of future considerations. And at that time, I thought, well, you know, we are in a budget crunch we we were have to be bare bones and it's not something that we can invest in now and that's okay and we'll put it off um the events uh that happened over the last you know two weeks um it changed my mind and i think that's you know to the other point my counselors are making about what's changed since may 21st to now i mean shame on all of us really for for not investing earlier shame on myself for not speaking up at that point and saying can we allocate money for this future consideration for the police chief um i i don't i'm not surprised

▶ 57:10 Leila Migliorelli: at all frankly that you know two weeks ago three weeks ago we didn't have this on our agenda we have it on now i mean this is how society works things happen you know murders happen we become reactive and all of a sudden it becomes you know a huge issue that we have to take action and then three weeks from now it's going to go away and i and i just i'm not i'm not up for that and that's not my role here as a city councillor is to ignore those things and let them pass i know that we're all struggling with the fact that we have a fantastic police force um we've got great city officials departments school department we we want to support them and the money has to come from somewhere now for me the i've been asking the mayor and all of you know this um for money

▶ 57:56 Leila Migliorelli: for implicit bias training i i want more than 26 000 i've asked that i've made that perfectly clear that we need a greater investment i've i've said that we need more money find it somewhere and and we need to set it aside i i know that if this year we don't have enough money i don't care i want at least some foot in the sand to some some marker for us to get started on this this was the proposal that was sort of put in front of me um the 26 000 for guns we have received near over or 20 emails from residents um my concern is hearing from them and wanting implicit bias training and then also funding um new guns i i admittedly had trusted in a conversation that they're having a conversation about whether these guns are necessary or not and this is something we could take off the table i

▶ 58:46 Leila Migliorelli: I am listening to constituents who want to see change. It doesn't mean I'm very comfortable with both supporting and questioning at the same time. That's not a hard spot for me to be in. And I think that's a spot that we all have to be in. We can both be supportive and also want change. change. I think that we need to put our money where our mouths are in this. And I don't see this as taking money away from the police. I know that the chief may feel differently. If someone, if the mayor had presented, I can't take money away from another department. don't have that responsibility or that ability um I just need to to stand true to both what our constituents are asking for and the need to fund this implicit

▶ 59:44 bias training and agree with you know councillor McNaught if we could have a person that would be fine I would love to see councillors joining in that call um with the same enthusiasm they have here tonight thank you anybody else the the will of the committee. Motion to recommend this for passage. Second. Motion to recommend for passage made by Councilor Tramontozzi, seconded by Councilor McNaught. Madam Clerk, please call the roll. Vice Chair Migliorelli. No. Councilor Tramontozzi. Yes. Councilor McMaster. Yes. Councilor McNaught. Yes. Councilor Eccles. Yes. Councillor Garipay. Yes. Councillor Stewart. Yes. Councillor Thomas. Yes. Councillor Jamala Dean. No. Grigoraitis. Chairman Sinella. Yes.

▶ 1:01:03 Christopher Cinella: That is eight yes, three no motion passes. Thank you, Chief. Have a good night. 2020-89 the continuation of our operating budget budget for fiscal year 2021 and the amount of 88 million 397 thousand nine hundred and sixty one dollars and eight cents first up we have our 542 veterans services and the revolving account account 206 which also falls under order 2020-90 the reauthorization of the knowledge of all funds table is adopted by the city. Karen, can you hear us? Sorry. Can you hear us? Yes, I'm not able to make you a panelist. I don't understand why. Okay. Do you have Bob Driscoll with you? I do. Can you guys hear Karen? Yep. Okay. We have some prepared remarks. Hi, thank you for inviting us here today. It's myself and Colonel Bob Driscoll. He is the chairman of the Veterans Advisory Board. And the Veterans Services Office works

▶ 1:02:16 Closely with the veterans advisory board for taking care of the veterans in the city of Melrose You're not only the ceremonies and different offerings that we have such as our operation trip, but just some day-to-day operations I'm just gonna I talk frequently Well, we use the veteran relief fund and about how we can could you just speak up a bit time to hear you? Sorry Proudly, I talk frequently about taking care of the veterans and Melrose of the office work very closely with the veterans advisory board to take care of the citizens of the veterans of Melrose and their families yeah we do many different things in the office which our budget the primary line item for our budget our veteran benefits which are administered through a program

▶ 1:02:59 called chapter 115 which is financial assistance for low-income veterans or their surviving spouses and families so that's the main part of the budget items We also do a very large amount of VA claims. We assist veterans with disability claims, pension claims, accessing health care. We assist with getting discharge records and many other types of VA federal type of programs. So I submitted my budget questionnaire. I'm not sure if any of you had a chance to review that or had any questions for me regarding that. Councilor Tramontozzi is first in queue. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. Thank you, Karen, and Mr. Driscoll for being with us this evening for these hearings. And I want to say thank you so much for the work you do with the veterans.

▶ 1:03:57 John N. Tramontozzi: It's really wonderful what you do for the veterans. I do have a couple questions on the budget, but before I get into that, I just wanted to, just to let the council know that we do have a lot to get through tonight and out of courtesy to the council and to the department heads and to the public, I will not be moving to make any adjustments to the individual department line items. However, being that said, when the entire budget is before the full council, we should be prepared to discuss the bottom line In the aggregate, and I can assure you that. I'll be making suggestions and I hope other counselors will do the same. With that said, Karen, I just have a quick question. Can is it the line item that the veterans benefit?

▶ 1:04:55 Line is that the item maybe you can explain that in regarding our reimbursement from the state or the benefits that we pay to the veterans? Oh, yes, sir. Thank you. Good question. So the veteran benefit line, which is our largest line, is the Chapter 115 program that I mentioned, and that is paid locally within Melrose, but it's reimbursed from the state of Massachusetts at 75% or up to 75% of what we pay out. And that is a large part of the job that I do is we follow the guidelines and the laws of Chapter 115 and the 108 CMR to make sure we're meeting all of the requirements of the law. And then the state authorizes what we've paid out. So we're reimbursed 75% of what we're paying out of that budget line item.

▶ 1:05:39 John N. Tramontozzi: It's wonderful that we get that reimbursement. I know sometimes it comes in a little bit later than when we request, but it's significant. but i noticed that it's dropping by about thirty thousand dollars um is there a reason a rationale uh for that yeah we thought it was safe to drop but we haven't met our we haven't met our projected budgets that we've had in the past two years could be for many different reasons currently we have 24 veterans or family members who are on chapter 115 at this time last year we had 28 so it does tend to increase and decrease depending on what's going on um unfortunately this year we've lost a few veterans so that has brought our numbers down we are constantly doing community

▶ 1:06:23 outreach to make sure people know that this is a benefit that's available to them even if we were to bring on some more veterans we would still have enough money in the budget they think to carry through this year with our proposed budget amount and if we bring in more veterans then we could trying to bring it up next year but for this year i believe this is an accurate picture of what we would need to be able to execute the program that's great thank you so much again thank you for your um your work and hard work that you do in your office for the veterans of this community thank you mr chairman thank you thank you mr chairman thank you karen thank you mr driscoll for being there i just i have no questions i just want to uh want to acknowledge all the hard work

▶ 1:07:06 Shawn M. MacMaster: that your department and the advisory advisory board does for uh all the veterans and their families and it uh it is very much appreciated by uh by uh by the city as a whole and i i just wanted to acknowledge that and thank you thank you thank you council mcmaster thank you mr chairman good evening lieutenant colonel burke uh good evening um colonel driscoll and i i say colonel driscoll with great pride because what our counselors may not know what the public may not know is that as of june 1st you are now a colonel in the united states air force and you were notified of that by general joseph langyell and that is a promotion that was recognized by the secretary of the air force and the president of the united states

▶ 1:07:57 Shawn M. MacMaster: so i just wanted to publicly congratulate you uh colonel driscoll for that uh tremendous uh honor i want to thank you uh for your service to our country uh and uh for lieutenant colonel burke uh um thank you for all that you do as our veteran services officer uh i am very proud to serve as the advisory um member uh from council to the veterans advisory board i know how hard all of you and all of our veterans who volunteer work throughout the course of the year so i am thankful for that and i just wanted to recognize you both publicly this evening thank you mr chairman anybody else thank you make a motion to move the bottom line motion to move the bottom line made by councillor Garipay seconded by

▶ 1:08:48 councillor eccles adam clark please follow the road vice chair Migliorelli yes council Councilor Tramontozzi? Yes. Councilor McMaster? Yes. Councilor McNaught? Yes. Councilor Eccles? Yes. Councilor Garipay? Yes. Councilor Stewart? Yes. Councilor Thomas? Yes. Councilor Jamaleddine? Yes. President Grigoraitis? Yes. Chairman Tanalla? Yes. Bottom line moved. And revolving account 2607. Motion to move the bottom line. Second. Councilor McNaught, seconded by Councilor Stewart. Madam Clerk, please 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.

▶ 1:09:53 Yes. Councilor Jamaleddine. Yes. President Greg Rydas. yes chairman sanella yes yes thank you have a good night thank you thank you karen thank you thank you next time 652 pine banks all right i'm gonna mr walsh a couple people mr kieser and mr welch gentlemen can you hear us i can hear you now i can hear you yep at the bottom this should be a second button at the bottom that says start my video. Here we go, sorry. Good evening, do you have some prepared remarks in regards to Pine Banks? Mr. Walsh or Mr. Kieser? Well, I can't see my picture but my name is Henry Kieser and I'm here as president of Pine Banks Park. Can you hear me? Yes. Very good. We forwarded a digital copy of our annual report. I think it's

▶ 1:11:21 It's been sent on to all of you. It's in the same format that we presented in prior years. This year, it's dedicated to Elijah Converse, who will be 200 years old next July. Some of this report has got further information on him and how the part he played in the two communities. But the financial side of the report really starts on page four and five, which leads to the funding of the formula that's built into the statute governing Pine Banks with a statutory financing mandate as determined by the assessed value of the two cities. Page seven and eight are the budget summaries showing our prior year in the budget request for 2021 and then it breaks it out for increases by dollar amount percentage amount and then the amounts from each city in this case we have a reduction

▶ 1:12:33 in the total amount requested and that's because of the elimination of the retirement benefits for superintendent Bob Burgess who died last September. Otherwise everything is fairly well flat throughout the all the categories and line items and the total amount of the request is eight hundred and fourteen thousand dollars of which four hundred and seven thousand dollars uh is a request from the city of Melrose there's further detail there but the balance of the report has got a report by Andrew Walsh our superintendent which is on page nine and on page 11 there's a list of all the users of the pine banks park field and then there are some trustees notes which are on page 12 and that goes with some detail on the

▶ 1:13:42 line items in the budget but at the top of the page on 12 i'd like to note that the New England Parks Association honored Pine Banks Park and Andrew at its annual convention in September with the centerpiece presentation of the Renaissance of Pine Banks Park. So Andrew got to show off a little bit there and everybody was very much impressed. page 14 shows the satellite picture of the park. We've got some new members here. I'm not sure that everyone has seen a copy of that. So that's a useful thing because it shows that the park is much bigger than the field indicate. And then finally, there's a passage here on Elijah Converse with some of the things that he contributed to the two cities. And on page 16 there is a video link there to a YouTube presentation that local

▶ 1:14:45 high school students put together last fall. It's about six minutes. They did a pretty good job in telling us what Elijah Converse did. And then finally on page 17 is a picture of Bob Burgess there with Richie to say Chris Fallon and Mike Festa a field dedication in 2007 if you didn't know Bob Burgess personally his picture is there and he was really a fine gentleman and a good face for Pine Banks Park but with that I would hand it over to Andrew if you'd like to say something and then take questions I I don't have much to add I'll field any questions that you guys have mr. chairman thank you mr. Walsh and thank you mr. he's are both for being here having grown up in Melrose they really hit their nail on

▶ 1:15:47 Cory Thomas: the head when I said the Renaissance of Pine Banks Pine Banks is has changed leaps and bounds from the from the years of green wooden baseball fencing separating Melrose and Malden Little Leagues to what it is today. Kieser Field, Mr. Kieser, obviously, you know, it must be a source of pride for you and your family, but it's a source of pride for so many other people, not only from Melrose and Malden, but teams from all over the area that get to play there. Your list of people that use this field from Malden, Melrose, private organizations like Mystic River Rugby Club and all the other events you have running out of Pine Banks, it really is wonderful. um the amount of green space that is available to people in Melrose and Malden and from the

▶ 1:16:29 Cory Thomas: surrounding communities is truly wonderful um it doesn't look like I have friends that grew up in Melrose that have since moved away when they come back to Melrose they're they're amazed at how wonderful and beautiful Pine Banks Park is uh it really is a jewel for both for both Melrose and Malden um I thank you both for all your hard work I was sorry to hear of Mr. Burgess's passing um mr purchase was always a a figure that was always around um pine banks throughout the past in multiple decades um you know i i thank and appreciate everything he's done and then everything you guys do uh continue to do for pine banks so thank you keep up the great work thank you thank you how's the guy back thank you uh mr chairman thank you mr walsh and mr keys of

▶ 1:17:16 Mark Garipay: being here um mr walsh i mean kudos to you that pine banks looks absolutely unbelievable Mr. Councilor Thomas, McNaughton, and Sinello, when we were growing up in Melrose Pine Banks, totally, totally different condition than it is now. Appreciate all you do. I get a quick question. What is your next – what's the vision for Pine Banks? What's your next project that you have down the road? We've done so much down there over the last probably 10 years, 12 years. Where do you see it going in the next five? I think the next capital project would be a replacement of the shed down on the field. It's a metal building that's been there since 1963 and it's beginning to show some rust around the edges. So we do have that in a design

▶ 1:18:11 Mark Garipay: phase there that would give us a working facility with some stalls for working on vehicles and an office for Andrew to be able to meet with some people as well. Thank you. One other question, and it has to do with along the property line of Wyoming Cemetery, which is very near and dear to my heart. When we put in the dog park, I know we ripped down a lot of the buffer between the cemetery and Pine Banks, and now that we have put in a new section over there, It's kind of wide open. Is there any plans? I know you did put a few trees around the dog park for shade. Is there any plans to maybe put some of that, some bushes or anything back to give some privacy for people that want to put their morning, their relatives?

▶ 1:19:13 Well, did you ask, are we going to put bushes? Is that what you said? Yeah, bushes or any type of trees back over along the property line. Those, the trees we selected, I sort of carefully selected them all. They're all very fast growing species and varieties so that, I know trees don't grow very fast, but as far as trees go, these things do grow pretty fast. There's a bunch of different varieties, birches, maples, tulip trees, et cetera. Our hope is that in a short amount of time, say, maybe 10 years from when they're planted, that there'll be substantial growth from those. But as far as more, we don't have anything in the works quite yet. Yeah, because I know they're probably 15, 20 feet probably off the property line around the dog park.

▶ 1:20:02 Mark Garipay: And we just created a new section over along that property line. So just curious to see if there was any possibility that Pine Banks could put some more trees back along the property line that were taken down. You just think about that I don't need it need an answer tonight, sir. Thank you Anybody else The will of the committee move the bottom line Bottom line made by council Thomas seconded by councillor Garibay That's typically really yes Tramon Tosi. Yes McMaster Councilor McNaught. Yes. Councilor Eccles. Yes. Councilor Garipay. Yes. Councilor Stewart. Yes. Councilor Thomas. Yes. Councilor Jamaleddine. Yes. President Grigoraitis. Yes. Chairman Sinella. Yes. 11 yes. Bottom line move. Thank you gentlemen. Thank you. Thank you.

▶ 1:21:11 Next on our list, 931, Mount Hood and Revolving Account 2669, Capital Outlay for Mount Hood Parks and Revolving Account 2659, as that pertains to Order 2020-95, Mount Hood Enterprise Operating Budget for Fiscal 2021, in the amount of 1.56525992. We have, is that all with us? Mr. Gardner and Joan Bell. Superintendent Bell. Can you hear us? I can hear you. Can you hear me? Yes. Joan, can you hear us? Yes, I can. Bill, we can't see you. I don't know if you have video capability. I do, but where do I click? I do understand that you folks are very busy tonight, so Joan and I will try to make this brief. The Mount Hood Enterprise Fund budget request is for $1,565,259.92. Well, all of you are probably well familiar with the Mount Hood Park.

▶ 1:22:45 It's a vehicle which allows us to collect the revenues generated from the golf course and pay the operating expenses through the Enterprise Fund. It is treated separately from an accounting point of view by the DOR, and is audited on an annual basis. The actual golf course operations are maintained by Golf Management of Massachusetts, pursuant to a publicly bid contract that runs from 2018 through 2022. Joan, of course, is the outstanding steward of the entire operation. Her and her administrative assistant, Cindy Brickley, whose salaries are included in our budget, maintain uh maintain the operation of the course the um the revenues from last year uh for 2019 the calendar year generated by mount hoodwell one million five hundred eighty six thousand seventeen

▶ 1:23:49 dollars approximately 42 percent of that is retained by the city uh the balance paid uh is paid to the golf management company in our budget you'll see that the The largest line item we have is for $978,000 for professional services. In essence, those are the contractual payments that we have to make the golf management to operate the golf course pursuant to the publicly bid contract. We have to pay them $600,000 as a minimum at the rate of $50,000 per month. And anything, the difference between the 600,000 and up to the 975 is based upon the percentages contained in the contract of the excess revenues over and above that. So that you can see that it generates quite a bit of funds in the budget, but it's quite

▶ 1:24:41 a bit of those funds are generated by the golf fees that are collected each year. those and included in our operating costs and our line items is one of the biggest items is bond payments, principal and interest payments for the bonds that the City of Melrose has procured and funded, used to fund the improvements to the athletic fields down at Fred Green as well as the track and other improvements at Pine Banks. In 2019, Mount Hood paid about $363,000 in principal and interest payments on those bonds. It's important and it's a big asset to the city because if Mount Hood did not generate those funds, the city as the obligor on those bonds would have to make the payments. We've been lucky and fortunate the last few years that the course has been operated so

▶ 1:25:35 well that the revenues have been generated to cover those. The bond payments themselves are not taken from the general fund, which is a huge benefit to the city, and we're fortunate through some special legislation that passed in 2010 to be able to expend those funds on the athletic fields. We also are required to make payments of about $50,000 by contract to make capital improvements to the Mount Hood facility, which we do on an annual basis. The majority of the other costs, the line items in our budget, I think are self-explanatory. The salaries, I know in the past, when we were here last week with the Recreation Department, there were questions about salaries and the breakdown. Joan wears several hats rather well in this city,

▶ 1:26:27 and the Park Department falls within the DPW purview, so that her salary is covered 50 percent by Mount Hood Enterprise Fund, 50 percent by DPW and Mrs. Brickley, the administrative assistant, her breakdown is 80 percent, Mount Hood, 20 percent to the DPW. Those figures, so that the figures on salaries that are contained in our budget are only the percentages that we're obligated to pay. Beyond that, if there's any specifics on day-to-day operations or any further questions regarding that, I guess Joan can address those. I don't have any questions at this time thank you Joan how you doing thanks mr. Gardner for being here all right quick question regarding the golf revenue last year how'd we do last year for golf revenue was it was helpful the Friday

▶ 1:27:33 Mark Garipay: last year was one of our better years we were 120 000 over the previous year and that's uh i think the trend is the public courses are kind of going the other way correct that's that's yeah public and a lot of private yeah that's great um do you foresee with the um the slow start this season that will affect uh affect these accounts next year so it's a tough call right now um the way that the guidelines that were set for golf we're working at about 50 of operation um we're only allowed to put out t times you know a foursome every 15 minutes which is exactly half of what we normally do um i just looked i was a little nervous about it but i just looked at our may figures and we are exactly 50 so it actually made me feel good

▶ 1:28:27 we weren't below that. I think, you know, we reworked the numbers right up till today to see where we were and I think that we went from 15 minute tea times to 12 minutes this week. They allowed us a little bit more. We're, you know, starting to get some food and beverage back out, you know, on the patio. We're starting to plan for summer programs, you know, with kids. looking at looking ending fiscal this fiscal year if everything goes according to a plan working at 50 i think we're going to do a little bit better but if we say it's only 50 i think we'll still come out of it in the black we won't have the revenue that we've had you know the last couple years but we'll be able to pay all our bills everything will be accounted for

▶ 1:29:19 Cory Thomas: and we'll still have a minimal amount great thank you thank you thank you for all you do thank you mr godner anybody else on discussion council thomas thank you mr chairman uh welcome mr godner and welcome mr bell um do you guys have an estimate of what you what monhood golf course has lost in revenue this spring to date um we're guesstimating right now we're probably down around the three to four hundred thousand mark wow really um how you think are you thinking of ideas of how to recoup any of that that lost uh money um and you know are there still um people considering adding um resources up at the club uh for uh coverage uh possibly you know uh cart service um or service um that will be coming up in the future i don't i has it's been

▶ 1:30:25 taken off the table right now because of what's going on but i know that the power commission is highly in favor so it will be will be a topic of conversation in the future okay and uh are all the leagues returning are you losing any leagues to other courses because of this shutdown Or all the quarterbacks in the area? It's been a hard sell on a lot of groups. I think starting next week, you know, leagues, we're trying to get leagues back up to some sort of normalcy. Everything was cut 50 percent, so it's kind of hard when you have a league that has, you know, make it even 40, you know, tee times and you're cutting them down to 20 and then they have to figure out what 20 t times a plan and it doesn't make for you know fun for them trying to figure it all out

▶ 1:31:18 so little by little we're trying to get them back in as much as we can and when i talk to management today um he believes that next week he's going to be able to start getting out the majority of the leagues well that's great to hear uh mr goddard miss bell thank you so much for all you do with mount hood uh it's a great source of community pride uh and i wish you all you know a dry uh non-green spring and summer uh this year i hope for great weather through the fall so we can keep some of that lost money thank you very much thanks anybody else saying none uh what is the will motion to move the bottom line second move the bottom line made by council thomas seconded by president Grigoraitis Yes, yes, yes.

▶ 1:32:12 Yes. Yes. Yes. Yes. councilor maladin yes gregory chairman sanella yes yes okay and the revolving account two six six nine we have to vote now madame clark with the vote on both evolving accounts plus the order so we the the bottom one we moved on nine three one that way you have a revolving count two six six nine and the actual operating budget twenty twenty ninety five you've done one Okay, so the reballing account 2669, with the will of the committee. Make a motion to move. Second. A reballing account made by Councillor Garipay, seconded by Councillor McNaught. Vice-Chairman Lirali? Yes. Councillor Tramontozzi? Yes. Councillor McMaster? Yes. Councillor McNaught? Yes. Councillor Eccles? Yes.

▶ 1:33:30 Councillor Garipay? Yes. Yes, sir. Stuart. Yes, sir. Thomas. Yes. I'm so dramatic. Yes. Grigoraitis 11. yes. Capital outlay from out in parts from all the account 2659 that you did the 1st 1. sorry. You're on out at border 3, 2095, the Mount hood enterprise operating budget. The 1.5Million, that's a full enterprise budget. Not a 1. of the committee on that 2020-95 don't everybody jump take a motion to move the bottom line that's a motion to recommend made by councillor Garipay on order 2020-95 seconded by councillor Eccles madam clerk please call the roll legally yes that's the tram including yes Yes. Councilor McMaster? Yes. Councilor McNaught? Yes. Councilor Eccles? Yes. Councilor Garipay? Yes.

▶ 1:34:44 Councilor Stewart? Yes. Councilor Thomas? Yes. Councilor Jamaleddine? Yes. President Greger-Wright? Yes. Chairman Cinella? 11 yes. Thank you, Joan and Bill. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. motion to recess motion to recess 90 first time vice chair McFarland yes councilor Tramontozzi yes councilor McMaster yes councilor Mcnaught yes councilor Eccles yes councilor Garipay yes councilor Stewart yes councilor Thomas yes councilor Jamaleddine yes president Grigoraitis yes chairman sanella yes see you at 7 41. thank you sorry ruth you're now uh out of recess um except 511 health and the revolving account 2659 do we have um to play with us just made her a panelist thank you for your patience

▶ 1:42:40 ruth can you hear us yep i'm here do you have any prepared remarks well um i had sent a powerpoint presentation that you all should have received and a um table with all of our staff and their funding sources which is something that the previous board had requested. I thought since a number of you are new to the board, I would take this opportunity to just do a brief introduction of the health department, which is basically the first seven slides that you have. The rest of it is more detailed information. So, Kristen. Yes. here we go okay so health department now this is actually a presentation i had put together many months ago hoping to give you guys a a brief intro not a brief a more introduction

▶ 1:43:46 of the health department as i said most people aren't aware of everything that we do i think most people think of us with flu clinics and restaurant inspections so um wanted to talk about basically our mission statement and how we achieve it and the kinds of things that we do. Next slide. Next slide. So we've had, over time, we have recreated and redeveloped our mission statement a few times so that we try to, we keep it general enough to be applicable over time, but sometimes we like to define it. So our mission is to promote both personal and environmental health for the entire community through education, policy development, enforceable regulations, and we do a lot of collaboration. Moving on. So how do we get to achieve that mission and achieve

▶ 1:45:01 our goals? Basically, I feel like there's three main ways that we do that. We have a very strong board of health we have a very professional staff that is the envy of many of the other health departments and we're very flexible we're always looking for other resources whether it be financial or other kinds of resources moving right so for those of you who are lawyers the board of health has extensive recognition in the state laws. State laws establish how a board is set up. Actually, the very first Board of Health was led by Paul Revere, public health fun fact. We have a three-member appointed board, Dr. Frank Branchero, who's a family practitioner, Maureen Garipay, who's been a nurse more years

▶ 1:46:11 than she likes to admit and our newest member who you just recently appointed Carol Ann so and they serve for three year terms and basically they they have three main roles one is setting policy which helps direct staff in what we do they promulgate regulations which actually basically means they can make their own laws. The courts have given over time very broad interpretation of what a reasonable regulation is. So boards of health, you'll see, have regulations on all sorts of things. And then, of course, enforcing the regulations is done on a day-to-day basis by the staff, but ultimately, and especially if we can't get compliance or somebody wants to appeal, it would go to the Board of Health for enforcement. Next. So we have fantastic staff,

▶ 1:47:25 Fantastic. They come not only with professional degrees and great experience, they are considered, some of them are considered statewide, statewide recognized experts. It's, for example, Maureen Fusby in tobacco, who I think you probably all know. Liz Parsons, who's our substance abuse prevention coordinator, a regional one, is on a national alcohol advisory board. So they're very customer service, both customer and community service oriented. So it's not surprising to see them at other departments' events, other community events. We go out of our way to help people as much as we can, and that goes for all of our staff who may not specifically have that in their job description. But if they make a connection with somebody, then we let them go for it.

▶ 1:48:38 so so next so continuing our search for resources so you know we traditionally public health is is um always looking for more resources so one of them is shared services and i believe most of you are familiar with our joint health department with wakefield which has been very successful And that's a formal shared service. We have a lot of informal shared services. For example, if somebody needs a TB test, that's done at the Stoneham Health Department. If we need a lead inspection, we'll do that through the Malden Health Department. So things that are low-volume, high-tech, we try to spread around so that people who do them a lot, do them a lot. And those of us that don't aren't out there trying to do them once a year or once every other year.

▶ 1:49:49 Collaborating with other resources, that includes the Rotary. It includes the hospital, other health districts. We have a number of grants, as you can see on the sheet that I gave you that has all the funding sources. We have federal grants, state grants. And we also have interns, usually in the summer, but not always, sometimes year-round. The state health department has an intern program, and our Mass in Motion and Substance Abuse prevention program take very good advantage of this and we're able to do a lot more work and really stretch our resources. I want to end with our org chart that is color-coded. The blue means that that position is shared with Wakefield. And I forgot to put under other emergency preparedness

▶ 1:50:54 and that's right now that's kind of a Freudian thing of not putting that under other obviously we do a lot of work emergency preparedness work so um I'm appointed by the mayor work obviously closely and get a lot of direction from the board of health the mass in motion animal control are both part-time employees we have two full-time well, we have three full-time inspectors that we share with, well, two full-time inspectors that we share with Wakefield, part-time public health nurse who's working more than full-time right now, school nurses, one in every school and hopefully two in the middle and two in the high school, and the other positions besides the youth coordinator who's part-time, the other three are full-time. So that's, you know, I don't want to spend a lot of time

▶ 1:51:55 for everybody's time in the Publix. You do, I did get a lot of details after this if you have questions. As far as the budget goes, there's really, it's the same budget with two exceptions. One is there was a significant increase in our interface program that you'll see went from 12, 5, up to 16,000. The interface program, hopefully you all know, is a mental health referral service that's available to all Melrose residents. They can call Monday through Friday, 9 to 5, explain what their situation is, their insurance, whether they need transportation, whatever. And they're given a couple of mental health professionals for them to call and make an appointment. So we've just finished our first two-year contract and the initial contract of

▶ 1:52:53 course they didn't know what our usage was going to be and they just guesstimated and turns out that they guessed low. So based on our current usage and I think they said it was about $225 dollars per person that it costs them, they've come up with $16,000. So that is a significant increase. And then the other increase is the addition of another school nurse. For those of you who are not aware, we're not in compliance with the state guidelines of nurses to students. Our medication delegation approval is tied to that. We told them two years ago that we would work on it we couldn't we couldn't fund two full-time school nurses all in one year so we funded one last year and we're funding the second one this year

▶ 1:53:49 Shawn M. MacMaster: so both the middle and the high school with approximately a thousand students will have two nurses and we will keep our medication delegation and I'm open questions see any hands go up is there any questions Councilor McMaster so just a reminder to that we do have to start a public hearing thank you mr. chairman good evening director clay I just had one question about the interface line item and as you know from prior years I very much appreciate that being something that's budgeted for I think it's it's critical I think it's especially critical during these difficult times where families are facing stress and anxiety and various mental health issues relative to the pandemic. But my question is, are we provided the city any type of data in aggregate or anything in a non identifiable way to demonstrate the usage of the fund?

▶ 1:54:51 So, what if, what, if anything does William provide us about call volume services provided in aggregate or broken down categorically without identifying usage of any particular individuals. So, we do get if you look at slide fifteen in your and your packet and maybe Kristen, you can put up slide 14 because it does have the phone number on it. That way the public, if they don't already have that phone number, can have it. The slide after that, we get a report every six months and it has a lot of data in it. I picked basically the three data points to show you in the presentation. We've had 215 people use the service since we've started. I'd really like to get that number higher. Our last six months, I mean, obviously I don't have

▶ 1:55:57 this six months and that might've gone up with the, with the pandemic and everybody's stress and anxiety. I don't know, but it is something that our numbers had started to decrease and was on my radar to really pay attention to and try to increase. And I think that's something we really do as a community want to get the word out so as far as gender goes interestingly in Melrose and you want to do the next slide Kristen we're a little bit of an anomaly where we have more men than women who have taken advantage and and and then a small number of trans you see that one Christian slide 15 yeah you see it let's try that again in a moment ha there we go oh I don't know why the number of people in my yellow circle didn't show up but should say 215 in

▶ 1:57:20 there so you can see in the pie chart that we actually have more men which are blue than female not by a lot but that is unusual and of couple who identified as trans as far as ages go surprisingly school-age is the highest and most of the referrals we that we that they get are from the school department or parents of school-aged children thought it was interesting that i guess we'll call that middle age 25 to 59 i don't know what to call that is our second highest really like to uh get the numbers from the 18 to 60 plus to rise, especially the 60 plus. We had done some outreach with the elder public, but I really wasn't going to work with Stacey about really getting the word out even more. And then presenting

▶ 1:58:27 Shawn M. MacMaster: concerns, which were consistent, pretty consistent, each of the reports. Anxiety, behavioral health, and depression were always one two and three anxiety always one family relations and anger management also significant but we do get other information such as source of referral like themselves or somebody else um there's some other i just wanted to kind of give you the highlights great and that's the um That's the number. That's great. Thank you. And my last question is related to that is there is there any type of a survey that Williams James does to clients or the parents in this case? Let's say of the highest user group in terms of satisfaction. And the reason I ask that is presumably there may be an opportunity to help us market the program into all of us.

▶ 1:59:36 Shawn M. MacMaster: The eleven of us help cast a wide net in terms of reaching our constituents through that qualitative data that may demonstrate satisfaction with the program, which I assume is probably the case. So, I guess the question is, do we, is there any type of a survey given of clients? If not, is there an opportunity through our contract with them to request that? Could you just pause right there? We do have to just quickly go to our eight PM hearing. Sorry. I hate to do that to you, but we have to go to our ambulance raid public hearing and I'll entertain a motion for a public comment on that. Motion to open public comment. Motion to open public comment made by Councilor Stewart, seconded by Vice Chair

▶ 2:01:37 councillor stewart yes councillor thomas yes councillor Jamaleddine yes president Grigoraitis yes chairman sanella yes thank you yes so the next one is at 8 10. go ahead you may continue this question um so the answer is yes they do evaluations it's not what i get in my six month report they do a follow-up call actually with every client but i can certainly um request that information and we can use that to help do some more marketing i think that would be great to have perhaps some testimonials that fact sheets testimonials from clients or parents that we can use thank you director clay thank you you've answered my questions and i just wanted to thank you for all of your work these past months and what is a situation none of us could

▶ 2:02:35 Robb Stewart: ever have imagined us being in and i really appreciate your leadership through it all thank Thank you. Thank you, Mr. Chair. And thank you Dr. Clay for being here tonight. I had one question that pertains to your budget and I was hoping you could speak to the public as well as to us about the pest control and how those funds are used. I know there could be some interest at least certain people in my community about how that's being distributed and used appropriately sure so pest control is actually mosquito control that was funded very level funded for many many years finally we got an increase as you can see in this year or this current year based on the Tripoli threat and the West Nile virus threat from last year where because

▶ 2:03:45 we had been level funded for so long, we were actually decreasing the amount of services we were able to provide, specifically larviciding of the catch basins, and we were down to only larviciding half of them. So Board, City, well, Board of Aldermen at the time, appropriated additional funds so that we are back to doing larviciding of of the entire city so basically our mosquito control is threefold one is we do aerial spraying usually in april this year was the very beginning of may due to weather and we do aerial spraying by helicopter over large wetlands and that is to treat for the early mosquitoes we do uh well we also do let's say we do we treat the catch basins in usually in july they are done by the mosquito control program and

▶ 2:04:51 they're marked you'll see uh every year a different color on a catch basin we coordinate with dpw So we do it after they clean the catch basins, not before. And those are the main two treatment things that we do. The Melrose Board of Health several years ago decided to discontinue the truck spraying. Some of you may remember that, where trucks would drive up and down the streets with a pesticide, a very innocuous pesticide. and that treats flying adult mosquitoes and it was done based on trapping which is another part we do when the mosquitoes populations were high or mammal biting mosquitoes were high that's when we did it so we don't do that here in Melrose anymore it's something we could consider

▶ 2:05:48 again we would obviously more money if we decided to do that right now we don't have that option so we also have a number of traps set up throughout the city in high mosquito areas and those traps are monitored and tested for the number of mosquitoes the type of mosquitoes some bite people some don't bite people some carry disease some don't carry disease and certain traps are sent into the state lab and they're tested specifically for West Nile virus and Tripoli we for the last several years always have positive West Nile virus in the mosquitoes we've also had a few human cases of West Nile virus we have been fortunate with not finding any Tripoli nor have our abutting communities. However, last year 12 people and six horses did contract Tripoli,

▶ 2:06:51 which has a actually had a 50% mortality rate and an 80% rate of severe neurological issues even for those who recovered. We also have the option of doing ditch maintenance the mosquito control project has a special machine that can go out onto soft areas and wetlands and near Brooks and doesn't sink and can do ditch maintenance which we have taken advantage of at certain times to keep the water flowing in particular areas particular ditches which is very effective. And of course, education. Right. Well, thank you. That's very helpful and comprehensive. I appreciate your input. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. Anybody else? We do have another public hearing at 8.10, so I don't know if you can hear me.

▶ 2:07:52 Cory Thomas: Sorry? Close. Dr. Thomas. I might go on, so if you have to cut me off, please do. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. Ms. Clay, thank you so much for being here, and thank you for this wonderful slideshow PowerPoint you put together, it's very helpful. And thank you for all your efforts and your team's efforts during the public health emergency. You guys did a great job and brought a lot of good to a lot of people throughout the community. Also thank you all for the great programming you guys sponsor during the year, like Healthy Melrose, Complete Streets, the Ped Bike Commission, so you know you guys are doing a great job. Speaking of people under the health department that do a great job, Kathy Guevara, Mr. Severino,

▶ 2:08:36 Cory Thomas: Maureen Busby, they do a wonderful job with substance abuse prevention. I just want to talk a little bit about community outreach, especially into our schools. How are we going to improve awareness for substance abuse in the schools? The SPAC doesn't have that big of a footprint in the schools it seems. I know Melrose Alliance Against Violence is very involved in almost day-to-day activities at the Melrose High School but the substance abuse prevention coalition doesn't really have a huge footprint. I know Mr. Severino is there on a part-time basis but I think a lot of people in the community realize you know that there's a need for for greater programming in our schools. Do you have any future plans to improve the

▶ 2:09:22 footprint at Melrose Public Schools and the middle school and high school levels specifically? Well, the short answer is that we're actually losing our funding for Mr. Savarino's position at the end of September. So it will be difficult to expand our footprint with if we don't find funding for his position. We had actually planned in March for a public coalition meeting to get new ideas and new people involved that obviously didn't happen so once things open up again that is um that's that's our number one priority gotta stop you right there we have to switch over to our 810 operating budget public sorry we still have to vote um motion to open the floor for public comment for the 810 hearing motion for public comment second

▶ 2:21:43 Councilor McMaster. I'm sorry Mr. Chairman, just clarity. The bottom line, we moving for what what order i just we're going back to 5 11 to help thank you mr chairman jimmy glee really yes councillor mcmaster yes councillor mcnaught yes councillor eccles yes councillor Garipay Councilor Stewart? Yes. Councilor Thomas? Yes. Councilor Jamaleddine? Yes. President Grigoraitis? Yes. Chairman Cinella? Yes. Councilor Garipay going once. Any discussion around the revolving account 2659 motion at this time? Motion to move the bottom line yes so Tramon Tosi yes McMaster yes McNaught yes counselor Eccles yeah I'm so garipay counselor Stewart yes Councilor Thomas. Yes. Councilor Jamaleddine. Yes. President Grigoraitis. Yes. Chairman

▶ 2:23:13 Cinella. Yes. And yes. All right, well, it's like Ms. Clay left, so. Next up, 401 Public Works and the Revolving Account 2657. All right, let me find her. I'm going to find Elena Paracas-Illis. she is Elena can you hear us I can yep hold on getting my video up yep is there anyone else you want me to bring in at this point if you could bring in Jim troop Jake McNeil and Peter Petran Tonio All right. And do you have my PowerPoint there? I do. Can you hear us? I can hear you. Okay. Peter, can you hear us? Can you hear me now? Yep. Thank you. Peter, we can't see you. I don't know if you can turn your camera on. It's the start video button at the bottom. Peter, can you hear us? I can hear you. Okay, your cameras should be at the very bottom. It looks like a little camera. It says start my

▶ 2:24:55 video. You want to make your video accessible. Elena, I have your DPW budget. Do you want the presentation? Yes, please. Okay. All right, we can. Yeah, we can see you now. Okay, this one, this one, Elena. Do you have the PowerPoint one though? This is the PDF. Okay. The one I just emailed it again, in case you didn't have it handy. let's do it here it is this one uh i just see a gray box but if i think you might need to switch your airing to powerpoint yep okay let's start again oh i take it's putting the kids to bed chris funny this is elena yeah that's it okay so if you just do slideshow Whenever we're done with it. Okay. All right. Thank you. Kristin, can you just clarify, are the remainder of the orders that are on tonight's agenda all the ones that I'm presenting?

▶ 2:26:26 Correct. Okay. I just wanted to be sure that there was no one who was waiting to go next. So, we didn't have to sit through all of this. Okay. All right, thank you all. So I put together this presentation Um, with a little bit of background on because I know we have a lot of new city counselors and. A lot of people know some of what does, but doesn't necessarily know the full scope of of what our department does. Um, so the beginning here is just a little introduction to who we are. We have 68 full time employees broken up into 4 main divisions. Administration, Engineering, Water and Sewer Billing, which they sit at City Hall, Facilities and Operations. Next. So the administration division,

▶ 2:27:24 and this is broken up a little bit differently than the budgets and we'll get into that when we talk about the budgets. Administration includes our public relations personnel at the city yard, accounts payable and receivable payroll. We have a solid waste and recycling coordinator who's also an executive assistant and our rentals coordinator. Next. Engineering and Water and Sewer Billing handles all of the capital projects for the design, construction, planning of all the water, sewer, drainage, roadways, a lot of the building projects, a lot of our on-call contracts for facilities. We do permits, right-of-way permits inspections of right-of-way and utility work we review development projects we are the keeper of

▶ 2:28:16 all the records and plans for the city utilities and roadways and and such uh we do a lot with geographic information systems and then we have our water and sewer billing administrator who sits as part of that that group in city hall and then under facilities we run all the custodial services for all of the school and municipal buildings um we run the building maintenance and also a lot of the capital projects there are some some of the really large capital projects tend to be run by the planning department but all of the smaller projects um are going through our facilities division and then also building security as well and then on the operations side is a lot of what you see out in the community day to day highway department snow and ice

▶ 2:29:08 sanitation parks and forestry fleet cemetery and water and sewer which um is it's noted there they're enterprise funded and we'll get into that a little bit later so i just wanted to acknowledge um some of the staff who have left because this has been a big year with a lot of transition for the dpw um john shena worked for the city for 23 years coming in as an intern and staying all the way through to being the director for the last seven or eight years um so a big thank you to him for his many years of service to the department um he left things in in very good shape so it was not a difficult transition uh we also lost ann waite who had been with the city for over a decade and she was most recently in the role of assistant director of administration and facilities um

▶ 2:30:01 Then Rick Stinson stepped in from September through the end of March and really kept things rolling. Rick was the director in Wakefield for over 15 years, so he came in with a ton of experience and brought a lot of knowledge to the city. We just want to thank all of them for their service to the city. And I also want to recognize real quick that Rick did the first pass through this budget. So the budgets were initially due in the period of time when Rick was the interim director. And so he put forth the initial numbers for this budget, and then I had modified it a bit in the weeks that followed. but it was really helpful having a fresh set of eyes from another department who's done this for

▶ 2:30:54 many many years and his background is actually finance he used to be in danvers as well doing finance for their dpw so it was really great having his input on the budgets that you'll see tonight so our new managerial staff and they're on the call here um jim troop is our assistant director of administration and finance jay mcneil is our new facilities manager and then we also have two other new employees i just want to make note of jason coy is our new deputy city engineer and uh sam flanagan is our new solid waste and recycling coordinator um slash executive assistant so we just want to welcome them to the city so this shows the new organization and i just want to point out that um so ann was previously serving two roles in the

▶ 2:31:50 most recent years we used to have a facilities manager and uh someone running like a business manager which was ann's original role um she took on the role that both jim and jay are providing now it was one person doing two jobs she was working well over 40 hours a week and um we were just never able to she did a fantastic job but we were never able to really fully do the work that was required for those two positions so i'm really happy that we now have both of those positions filled and then peter peter antonio has been our operations manager for a number of years um does a fantastic job too and so i'm not sure if you can see all three of them now because their their uh boxes are tiny up at the top

▶ 2:32:39 of the screen um but i just want each one of them to give a quick hello so you can see who everybody is let me stop sharing uh sure yeah just for a minute okay hi everybody uh my name is jay mcnail um nice to meet you all and i'm glad to be with the city um bring over a decade of facilities management and uh probably close to 20 years of construction experience i really look forward to working with the city thanks jay who wants to go next i'll go next uh peter peter antonio the operations manager nice to meet all the new counselors um can't wait to work with everybody and it happy that Elena is in charge and we got to get the show rolling all right thanks Peter you're muted Jim I'm Jim troop director of

▶ 2:33:54 admin and administration and finance come from Lowell where I was the similar director of admin and finance for the past four years and you know really looking forward to coming in and working for the city so thank you very much all right thanks jim and you're going to hear more from jim uh once we get back into the presentation here uh and actually go go back one second so i just want to mention um the city engineer position is presently vacant and so um when we wanted to reinstate that facilities manager position the initial budget that was submitted by Rick Stinson had the facilities manager and had everybody fully funded for the department. When things started getting going with COVID and we were looking at

▶ 2:34:48 the potential for budget shortfalls for the coming year, the mayor had asked me to cut some things from our budget. And in order to maintain the facilities manager position, we needed to find something else to cut so we cut the city engineer position for half of the year half of the fiscal year um which means that from the beginning of april or end of march when i started as director through january 1st i'm assuming both roles um just to keep things moving in in engineering and and take on the new role and so that did result in a significant cut to the budget At that same time, we also cut our initial cuts totaled 165,000. And then we cut an additional 75,000 after that. So, so that's how we made the numbers work.

▶ 2:35:44 And speaking of so as a bunch of you might have been aware, we've had. We cut back our staffing initially, we had everybody on call at home. and rotating employees through to perform essential services um that started the first week in april and then as uh as issues came up during the day we would call in people there were i have a running list of things people were called in for every day you know if we had eight or nine staff who were working at the city yard or in the community we had another probably five or six who were called in um to deal with sewer backups or uh water leaks or um storm damage or other issues out in the community so we did have a lot of activity through that period but we were trying to keep people home as much as we could to keep them safe

▶ 2:36:46 and as of june 1st we slowly were bringing everybody back on because with the spring weather we were starting to get more and more busy and then we were also helping out with Melrose helps with the mass distribution with the all of the reopening tasks stepping up cleaning at municipal buildings and so as of June 1st we have everybody back in full-time we're staggering shifts we're social distancing we're wearing masks and that applies to the operations and facilities personnel the the office staff are still working from home as much as possible following the governor's order and even when we do come back we'll have to maintain that 25 threshold for non-essential office staff um prescribed by the governor's office okay and

▶ 2:37:36 with that i'm going to turn it over to jim to talk a little bit about the numbers and then we'll get into some of our other projects for the year okay thank you thank you elena and uh thank you members of the council uh we're going to follow along on the um slideshow uh the first thing that i want to say is uh i want to echo elena's thanks and gratitude to the previous uh interim director director and business manager because the amount of information that they left for us including that first uh bones of this budget uh have been very helpful especially when we're trying to ramp up this learning curve and in dealing with these uh pandemic situations so i want to echo the the gratitude towards towards them uh as you can see on the next slide uh the dp uh dpw general

▶ 2:38:25 fund refund request uh nine million five hundred and seventy one thousand six hundred and seventy six dollars and six cents this represents a three four point four percent increase going down to the water enterprise fund five million four hundred and twenty two thousand six hundred and thirty nine dollars and twenty cents this represents only a point two percent increase and the sewer enterprise fund requests eight million one hundred and thirty thousand nine hundred and thirty two dollars and forty four cents this represents a point eight decrease uh year over year so i think that again that uh shows uh all the hard work that we've looked at in a real holistic approach to this budget uh one of the things you'll probably hear is a little bit

▶ 2:39:08 of rebalancing and that's how we've been able to make this work and take advantage of some savings uh and some of the different line items the majority of the salary increases that you'll see and and that's the biggest contributor to any increases year over year on the budgets uh they're due to labor union and clerical union uh and these are negotiated increases uh that we are obligated to pay to our to our employees uh with the new positions uh jay and myself uh it only represents really a 4.2 percent change in admin and engineering uh despite the additional Managerial level employee, and we were able to accomplish this with the reduction of the city engineer. For 6 months of the next year, so I know that Jay and I, we pledge all of our support to to help Atlanta and the engineering staff accomplish all the things.

▶ 2:40:00 That they want to do absence that vacant position. The next slide is going to be accompanied by a handout that I believe you've been given. And that is the group of people that. are funded by multiple accounts in the dpw water and sewer operating budget um you can go one more slide forward this one yes those those are the totals uh of the uh of the staff uh and the and the breakdown the handout will actually break this down a little bit further uh we can skip right down to the total and show you that the 54 fully funded uh in one dpw division 14 of them are spread between the dpw divisions and four actually sit in other departments uh and uh the dpw pays only a portion of their salaries so um that being said

▶ 2:41:00 uh the next uh is really the handout and it shows you the breakdown of uh the the salaries for each of the positions the 14 positions that sit into the dpw water and sewer operating budgets uh we've uh shown you the uh the the job title the position of each and then the actual breakdown coming up with the totals yeah yeah that's the pdf that i just sent yeah one thing the one thing uh we did catch a quick typo in there and that was just a matter of a quick uh error on on our part uh the The superintendent of parks, as you heard earlier, 50% from the enterprise and 50% DPW that total is actually a 46,250 and then the parks executive assistant is 12,970 dollars. That's the breakdown. Those positions do not necessarily sit in the DPW operating fund, but we do contribute to their salaries. Let me find it. Here we go.

▶ 2:41:59 Is he talking about that? Yes. So that's what we that's what we. Provided as a separate PDF, and you'll see that. This was my error, I just read across the wrong lines on the budget on the salary report. So that the red boxes just show the correction to those 2 numbers. We go back I know you, you can stay there actually. This is the breakdown. I believe that the, the members all have this as part of the handout. It's it's fairly self explanatory of the 4. 4 positions that sit outside of and the 14 that actually are paid for out of the operating budgets. So, moving forward before we get into the water and sewer is, you know, this, this increases is very minimal. And again, we tried to look at a.

▶ 2:42:53 A whole a whole approach of the entire budget and tried to rebalance it appropriately so that we can accomplish some of the things. So, so our priorities for fiscal 21, and that happens to be the next slide. There is going to have to be a focus on professional development with with different. Requirements with this, I guess. Requirements for each of the members of our staff. To train themselves, certify themselves to make sure that they're, they're protecting themselves properly and providing. uh the services that are required under under these conditions uh elena has made it one of her priorities in the safety uh we want to make sure that our crew is safe uh trying to minimize accidents uh there are new regulatory compliances uh the mpdes stormwater permit there are

▶ 2:43:46 requirements that come along with that those those end up costing money um we looked at uh all of the line items together and we've seen that there have been some historically low budgets frequently exceeded uh where where changes were needed to meet actual expenditures and this is going to hopefully reduce the need for transfers uh and we were able to do this by reductions in energy and fuel costs this has been a historic year with low fuel costs there are a lot of initiatives and i i know that jay is working very very hard towards uh some more energy initiatives with Martha Grover and hopefully we can achieve a lot more savings that way and it's good to have people that have those as priorities. The last bullet before I turn it back over to Elena is that trash

▶ 2:44:29 and recycling and hazardous waste. This is an industry problem. It's nationwide and it's not incumbent just on Lowell. There are significant cost increases as well as contamination fines. Samantha Flanagan has worked very hard to come up with some grant funding but there are still costs that the city will have to bear for contamination as well as increased costs for hauling and disposal and those are negotiated and those are reflected in our line items in the budget so with that I want to thank you I'm going to turn it back over to Elena to talk about the water in the sewer all right thanks Jim Kristen we're seeing the gray square now so I think have to switch from sharing pdf to sharing powerpoint so we can see the oh okay i think

▶ 2:45:22 so you're not saying vpw priorities would want fiscal year 21. we're seeing it now okay sorry about that no that's okay it was it was just the one slide um okay okay so getting into water and sewer rates um this with everything that's going on right now with covid and with people out of work and a lot of people struggling financially the water and sewer rate committee worked extremely hard to ensure that we could have zero rate increases from fiscal 20 to fiscal 21. that was a challenge and our initial allocations of what we were going to owe the mwra we're going to have some increases as they do every year. And the MWRA Advisory Board, which is a group comprised of all of representatives from all the different communities, I sit on their executive committee and we were able to

▶ 2:46:24 convince the MWRA Board of Directors to severely limit their increases to the communities this year so that we could drop our assessments down and limit what we were going to owe them the percent change from fiscal 20. They did that by cutting things like they're almost fully funded in their pension and their OPEB contributions are not fully funded nearly, but ahead of the game compared to a lot of other agencies. And so things like that, where they were able to just drop a few things out of their budget and they had some prepayment of debt, I believe that they decided not to do and to put that back toward the community rates for the year so they made a number of adjustments that allowed us to have our our assessment come down and then on top of that they gave us the

▶ 2:47:18 option of deferring our loan payments so every year when we do these bonds for the water and the sewer projects that we do and we get these grant and loan funds through the mwra they're usually on the water end they're a zero interest 10-year payback and on the sewer end they're a 75% grant and 25% loan. So on the sewer end we didn't have to take advantage of any of that loan deferral because we were able to achieve no change to volumetric sewer rates and no change to base fees and basically level funding or even decreasing um our operating costs and so we didn't have any trouble there approving or recommending a sewer rate with zero increase on the water side we had to take advantage of deferring our most recent two loans so we have a

▶ 2:48:16 uh 1.44 million dollar uh bond that we took out last year and a 1.2 million dollar bond that we We took out the previous year and so each of those, the, the payments now will just extend out an extra year. And since there's 0 interest. We don't pay anything extra over the long term to to push those loans out a year. And by doing just those 2 loans, we have a lot more loans, but we were paying those on time. Um, by changing just those 2, we were able to have again, no volumetric. Rate increases on the water fund and no base fee increases to the water. Rates so, and we also have. A number of years ago, we, we came up with the goal with the help of a consultant that we had of having 10% of our operating fund as reserves.

▶ 2:49:09 And we were able to still achieve we have those 10%. In both the water and the sewer enterprise fund, and we're not having to dip into those at all. So we maintain our reserves. We don't have any shortfalls and we can. Sustain our rates into fiscal 21. Okay, so then on to some of our larger initiatives, and I won't spend a lot of time on this. This is. A little less related to the budget, because this is a lot of the items that are paid for through the capital. Uh, the loans and bonds and chapter 90. Um, but I think it's important for the council to understand these programs, because they are such a major part of. What the community sees, and they tend to generate a lot of interest a lot of questions.

▶ 2:49:57 Um, so I think it's important for the counselors to understand. These programs, so we have what we call our multi year roadway and utility program. And we started this about 3 years ago where we holistically try to. um make all the improvements below ground that are needed and then finish the project with above ground paving trees complete streets type improvements pedestrian and bike improvements everything on the surface go to the next so i know this is not really able to be read but um this is available on the website and i know this was sent to all of you recently um this is what our capital program looks like for this coming year all the gray lines are um things that we're paving the yellow are gas

▶ 2:50:49 national grid gas main replacement projects the blue is water and the green down at the bottom is sewer so we have a lot of work in the coming months um and a lot concentrated over the summer because we did normally there would be a lot more work shown in the spring but because of covid we pushed some things out and we're going to really get going in earnest uh later this month and this just zooms in on some of the projects that we're completing this year um there's been a lot of ongoing work on ashmont street ashmont park garfield road east emerson larchmont sherman road um and then botolph summit and poplar um you can see from this chart that as i mentioned we try to do everything holistically so the ashmont park ashmont street neighborhood other than drainage

▶ 2:51:42 improvements which weren't needed we touched every utility on that street um and now we're almost done with the sidewalks and then we'll be doing the final paving this year so the red check marks are the ones that are still outstanding um but those are the roads that will be finished up in the next couple months and then the other roads on that on that prior chart are the ones where we're just getting going with the utility work and a lot of them will be paved next year or some of them were private projects um where the uh the developer paved for instance forest street um near blueberry hill lane and some of them national grid ends up paving after their work and then this is another map that was recently sent out to you every three years we've been uh redoing our roadway

▶ 2:52:33 rankings the condition assessment of every street segment in the entire city um we're able to do this in-house we have a really terrific high-tech process that involves driving around the whole city with a tablet and entering all these different rankings um 13 different parameters and then they all get aggregated into a final ranking and so the blue is the streets that are in good or excellent condition and it's it's very gratifying to see over the years that we've done this the blue keeps growing and our our overall condition keeps improving and so we just sent this out recently when um now we're planning our projects on the next set of the red and orange streets and we just asked for counselors especially the ward counselors to let us know if

▶ 2:53:21 you look at this map and see particular streets that you feel are really the highest priority in your ward especially from those orange and red streets um we'd love to hear that feedback as we're planning the next place to ask national grid to go and the next place to do our water main program in the coming years and then on the water end uh i have a note here we need to continually invest in our utility systems to prevent critical failures um just got a gray square on the map there oh it's gone okay um the the pipe in the middle and the pipe at the lower right those are um i think middle one is maybe altamont ave and the one on the lower right is definitely day street that is that shows you the volume of water that was actually getting through

▶ 2:54:13 that pipe on day street this is the reality of old water systems of cast iron unlined pipes they get what we call tuberculation and it just reduces the effective size of the pipes and we need to be investing over a million dollars a year to be keeping pace with replacement so that we're replacing our system at the same rate that it's deteriorating so this just shows again projects that we've completed so it's nice to see the city starting to fill in these are projects that we did in the last 20 years and these are the streets where we'll be working we actually are just signing the contract for this work and we issued a notice of award last week to a company out of millis mass that won the bid uh for a 1.16 million dollar job um it's listed as 1.1 there

▶ 2:55:11 uh because we've we added a couple little street segments but um so we'll be on damon glendale first echo brown wyoming heights and a quick bit on west wyoming starting next week and then moving on to sewers so i'm going to give a quick introduction to what infiltration and inflow is because you're going to hear this over and over and over again in the coming year that is water that shouldn't be in our sewer system that is groundwater rain water sump pump discharges all the things that get into the sewers that are not wastewater and melrose has over 50 of the water in our sewers is ini so we pay mwra meters our pipes as it leave as they leave the city and that's how we pay for sewer and so when we have more than 50 percent of the water in our

▶ 2:56:13 sewers is clean water it shouldn't be there we're paying the mwra for that year after year after year so these i and i projects that we do they tend to when you when you attack the low-hanging fruit they tend to pay for themselves um and just a quick plug for pr we just sent out a brochure in everybody's water bills um everyone will be getting it in may june and july water bills um it is illegal to have your sump pump discharged to your sewer and that includes discharging to the drain that comes out of your washing machine and the slop sink in your basement and a whole host of other places where people put their sump pump discharges to just make the water go away and that contributes to this and we pay all the all the rate payers of Melrose pay for

▶ 2:56:57 that water as it leaves the city in the MWRA pipes and goes off to Deer Island to get unnecessarily treated so our ini plan in 2016 we metered all the sewers in the city um with 29 different flow meters and we developed a five-phase program that targeted the the areas that we can tell when the groundwater comes up if the flows come up that's groundwater infiltration if it rains and we see spikes in the flow meters that's that's rain water induced inflow and so if you go to the next slide you can see our phases so we've actually finished the bulk of the work in phase one we've done the investigations in phase two and we're about to bid the construction to line a lot of those pipes and then in phase three we're doing the investigations right now so we're about 60% through the system

▶ 2:57:57 in terms of doing TV inspections of the entire sewer system okay and moving back on to budget and the orders at hand so i just threw this in there to remind the council of the recent approvals that you've seen me for in the last few weeks um so the city hall generator design we got i think seven um design firms who proposed on that they were due yesterday and so we have those in hand we're going to start reviewing those to select a design consultant um the school door improvements project jay mcneil is working on bringing vendors in starting to look at which doors are the most needy for replacement the lebanon and sylvan drainage design project we have been working non-stop with fema to try to answer their many many many questions on our grant application

▶ 2:58:52 i'm starting to think that sometimes fema money is not worth the effort but but hopefully in the end we'll get the 400 or so thousand to supplement the design money that's already been appropriated and then the salt shed we similarly put out the design request for qualifications we had three firms submit on that i did let counselor stewart know that one of the design firms was the one who designed the salt shed in fitchburg that he had called our attention to um so we'll be evaluating those three proposals um and selecting a design engineer shortly for that project as well so we're moving right along with all four of those projects and so on tonight's uh agenda is an order order number 2020 109 which is for retained earnings um

▶ 2:59:46 we're requesting 55 000 for tree planting we currently have a backlog of tree requests that go back to September 2017 and this funding will allow us to plant 100 trees which unfortunately with our 368 tree backlog it only brings us up to 2018 but maybe we can do another free cash appropriation in the fall and get some more money to plant in the spring and maybe get us at least only a year behind instead of two years behind but for now our capacity to select locations within these within the properties where we have the requests and mark them out check for utilities dig safe them notify the residents wait for their feedback and then plant a hundred is about what we can get done in a season um so i think this is a good appropriation for right

▶ 3:00:39 now but definitely doesn't um close that gap entirely and then traffic calming we're requesting seventy five thousand dollars um two projects that i mentioned earlier under the capital projects one is poplar street and one is forest street on poplar the intersection with prospect we've gotten some complaints from the neighborhood on that and we may want to do some reconfiguration for um for safety and on forest street we would like to um sorry We'd like to install at a minimum some traffic calming, probably a solar speed feedback sign, and maybe some other advisory signage. We have the Ripley School right there with special needs individuals getting on and off vans and the traffic does tend to go too fast through that corridor and we'd like to slow

▶ 3:01:35 them down. And also with the newly paved surface, people will tend to drive even faster. So we're doing some line striping now, but we want to maybe increase what's there and provide a little bit more traffic calming. And then the remainder of that funding would go towards the rapid flashing beacon push button crosswalk signals and other solar speed feedback signs. So as many of the counselors are aware, if you've gotten in touch with me with a resident request for one of these devices i add them to a list and the list is just a running list um where they've been requested it doesn't necessarily mean that that's the location that's the top priority but we tend to select from that list working with the police department and

▶ 3:02:22 uh with the operations um staff at dpw to pick out the locations where they're most needed um and so we would be looking to those lists we certainly have more on the list than what we can fund um but we would pick the top priority locations i can throw out there just for my personal um opinion that the speed feedback sign that's been requested on swain's pond pond ave is a likely one for the um for the solar speed feedback signs as well as grove street and the push button crosswalk signals um we have one that's supposed to go in on west wyoming at berwick that's already funded um but i think one that we've heard frequently is um main street at highland and so that might be a good location um that's an area where you

▶ 3:03:13 know there's especially when you're coming from wakefield until you reach the traffic signal at franklin there's just a long straight away um and so people do tend to pick up speed and it can be hard to see uh pedestrians in that crosswalk sometimes um so that's that one on the cemetery projects um we are looking to pave some of the deteriorated roads we've had a cip for the cemetery it's identified which roads are in the worst condition and so we would just work our way through overlaying the next set of roads and then we have an ongoing digitization project um working with a consultant who has been naming thousands of files and attaching them to the gis polygon parcels that they've created for every lot in the cemetery and that work is ongoing

▶ 3:04:06 it's going well but there's more work to do so we just want to keep funding that project um so it might be potentially about a 50 50 split with the 50 000 um if the consultant has the capacity to keep going with 25 000 and then we put the other 25 or so toward the um paving which should get us a handful of streets and then lastly sidewalk repairs um we have about 125 repair requests in our work order system plus 22 more assessments to be performed um and then we've had woodland avenue was supposed to get some national grid work and we were going to follow on with some curbing and sidewalk improvements because there's a real safety issue there people use it as a cut through between greenwood and franklin and there is no break between the back of the sidewalk and

▶ 3:04:57 the center of the road there's no curb there's no change in elevation it's just pavement there's no indication where the street ends and the sidewalk starts and so um this gives us we had set aside a little bit of money in a road bond a couple years ago but it really wasn't sufficient to do the whole job so this will give us a little bit more buffer there and then on dexter road where we're paving as soon as the um the private development project is done there we'll be paving and we want to add a sidewalk on one side of the road just a four foot asphalt sidewalk that's all we can fit but it and it's keeping with the neighborhood character um with just a berm to the street and we need a little extra money to contribute to that so this 151 676 55 would accomplish what we need

▶ 3:05:48 to complete all of those projects and then three more grant orders um these are the easy ones because it's just accepting money um we recently found out we got three different mass dep grants which was great news they came in all in a row dep must have been just on a roll of deciding to give away money um so we had applied for a school water improvement grant for water bottle filling stations in some of the schools that met the criteria i will note we don't have any school fixtures that have lead exceedances drinking water fixtures that have lead exceedances we've addressed all of those issues in the past so in order to qualify for this grant you just need needed to have detectable lead somewhere in the school so these locations are not replacing non-compliant

▶ 3:06:42 fixtures they're just replacing old bubblers in schools that have the potential to have a little bit of lead with water bottle filling stations that will allow they'll have a bubbler and a bottle filling station they're just more modern um and they should be delivering high quality water so that's twenty four thousand dollars grant no cash component no match component they just give us the twenty four thousand um the recycling iq kit grant is up to thirty thousand it depends how much we spend and it funds outreach efforts to cut down on recycling contamination which is a real issue right now and is part of the reason why we had to bump up our trash and recycling numbers for fiscal 21. So educating the public on what can and can't be recycled is going

▶ 3:07:30 to be huge and it's going to save us more than just this 30,000. And again, no cash or match components. And then lastly, the sewer asset management grant. This we had applied for in the wake of the Brazil Street issues. Mayor Broder had called our attention this grant opportunity uh we applied for a hundred thousand dollar project with a sixty thousand dollar grant component since we applied for it in fiscal 20 and um we were hoping to get it we have 20 000 in an existing purchase order um in fiscal in a fiscal 20 purchase order that can go directly to this project so we do not have to allocate any fiscal 21 money toward it and then we have to spend twenty thousand dollars in in-kind services which based on the training and other

▶ 3:08:21 components of our grant application we will easily be able to put that level of effort spread over a number of different employees toward that project so we're requesting acceptance from the council on all three of those grants because we want to get going on all three signed contracts with the state and get moving so with that thank you and i'm sorry if that was a little long i wanted to cram a lot of information into a into one night thank you so we'll open up for questions and i have i have counselor thomas first and then followed by counselor matosi Garipay council thomas thank you chairman uh director ellis thank you so much for being here um welcome mr troop um Mr. McNeil and other members of the newly hired DPW management staff. Thank you for this

▶ 3:09:20 Cory Thomas: PowerPoint. It's incredibly informative. It's very helpful to review. You guys did a great job of balancing this budget where you made increases in some line items and then significant over 20 or 25 percent cuts to other line items. The question I had was specifically about the salt shed um you said you had received three bids or proposals um is there any way of knowing or letting us know now that um if the prices on these bids have come in under the allocated money of a million plus for the salt shed so these are these are design uh proposals so they're just for the design component and the way we review them when we do a statement of qualifications for request for qualifications we rank all the firms by their qualifications first and then we open the fee

▶ 3:10:09 Cory Thomas: proposals so that we're not swayed on our judgment of the quality of the the uh the design firms based on what their fees are so we have actually not yet opened the fee proposals for the design but all that would tell us was whether the design effort was close to the hundred thousand okay uh i appreciate that and then personally i just i just want to uh thank you elena uh for for all the help that you've uh provided to me over the past few months uh i know i've bombarded you with a lot of questions um you're always quick with informative answers so i do appreciate that um you guys are doing a great job um you've done a lot of work especially in ward seven um the last few months uh you've paid the number of roads um you filled a number of potholes um

▶ 3:10:55 Cory Thomas: you know you've been very responsive to the the ticket system i'm getting a lot of requests from uh constituents and you and the dpw is is answering these requests um i don't want to say say in record time because you know i i don't have anything to compare it to but it seems like within a week um these things are are completed uh and then lastly um i know peter antonio is on um the green team has done a wonderful job for years uh i have a long time um history with melrose little league and working with the park department and the dpw um we play in in in area tournaments we play in regional tournaments we play in statewide tournaments and and the parks in melrose the green space in melrose they're so highly regarded from other communities we're

▶ 3:11:38 John N. Tramontozzi: really fortunate to have the parks and playgrounds we have and a lot of that is due to the hard work and efforts of the dpw so thank you very much for such a prepared uh statement for tonight and i wish you all the best um the rest of this year and so thank you thank you thank you mr chairman and And thank you, Ms. Proekes-Ellis and your team for being here with us on this late evening night and presenting your budget. If I could just have a few moments of your time, I want to go over how your budgets on your operating account and how it balances with the water and sewer enterprise accounts and trying to explain the difference between, you know, the enterprise fund and the operating account.

▶ 3:12:30 John N. Tramontozzi: Now, we know that the Department of Public Works operating accounts are split into a number of different operating accounts. The Public Works Facility Maintenance, Public Works Administration, Public Works Facility Maintenance, so forth and so on, right? Yes. And that's all, those budgets are part of the city operating budget of $88,397,000 and change, correct? Yes. So the water and sewer enterprise funds are not part of the operating account? No. Right. And so you fund the water and sewer enterprise accounts, and that's what you use to set what the water rate and the sewer rate is going to be. yes and it's the rate payers when i say rate payers we talk about those who actually get bills from the city for water and sewer use right whether it's a residential homeowner

▶ 3:13:27 John N. Tramontozzi: commercial uh apartments or commercial businesses who use water and they get they they pay for it correct correct all right so on the um on the uh the water and sewer enterprise funds there's built-in expenses that you've got into those accounts and some are direct costs and some are indirect costs yes and let's look at the uh the salary and wage items for example uh for example uh regarding the department of public works for example your salary the director of public works is split 50 of the salary is part of the operating account for the public works administration and engineering and the and the other 50 is split between the water and sewer enterprise fund yes correct and that is and there's a number of department of public works employees it's at least 15

▶ 3:14:23 John N. Tramontozzi: that has a similar split so so when it comes to salaries you ask for example 50 is paid from the city's operating account and you get the the monies comes from the operating account and then the other 50 percent comes from the water and sewer enterprise funds and that's how and the same thing with department of public works yes now it's it's really subjective as to how you divvy that up isn't it i mean i know we've done this for a number of years and it's certainly allowed and lawful to do so so when you say it's for you 50 percent and and and 50 50 split 25 water and 25 sewer that's kind of like subjective i mean there's no set formula or is there there's that formula you use no so i i did do a staffing analysis at one point to try to just get a

▶ 3:15:18 handle on on what we were all doing and um this was in my role this was within the engineering division but the the time that I spend on water and sewer I would say is is definitely 50% of my time and you know that's just for me in particular and I will note that we did make a shift when when we made the decision to not fund the city engineer's position for half of fiscal 21 and shifting from rick stinson to me and prior john chenna um where my background is water and sewer and my involvement in the water and sewer projects tends to be very heavy um we did shift john had previously been um 70 percent general fund and then 1515 i believe that's what it was um and and just with the knowledge of the amount

▶ 3:16:25 of time that i spend on water and sewer projects um and just water and sewer operations too um we shifted that to 50 25 25 especially in this year where i'm going to be filling both roles um for half of the year so that that was a very deliberate um change in terms of my salary and And then on other on other folks on the list, you know, it really goes back to that table that that Jim had put together that shows how people are split between the general fund and the water and sewer funds. So, the operations personnel are assigned to a division. So, if you're paid out of the sewer fund, you're 100% paid out of the sewer fund, because you are the sewer foreman or a sewer division labor or whatnot.

▶ 3:17:14 But on the office staff, it is subjective, but, you know, for somebody like, well, for instance, for payroll, accounts payable, accounts receivable, we have one employee paid through the enterprise funds split between the two and the other employee paid entirely out of the general fund. And that's for simplicity, but it really reflects that between accounts payable, accounts receivable, and payroll for DPW, both of those employees are doing a lot of work that pertains to the water enterprise fund, to water invoices, to water payroll, sewer payroll, as well as general fund. So, we just try to, we just try to go through and split them up accordingly. You'll find, like, on the facility staff, both Jay McNeil, the facilities manager, and the facilities technician, Mark Thompson, they have just a small piece of their salaries paid out of the water and sewer funds.

▶ 3:18:22 John N. Tramontozzi: And that would be reflective of the fact that we have seven water and sewer pump stations that have facilities needs. We have employees at the city yard who are water and sewer employees. So some component of that building and the outbuildings at the yard are, you know, store water and sewer equipment. And so, you know, we just have to try to. no i get it no i i get it thank you and i and thank you miss for uh for the spread this um itemization because i think it's very helpful this and i can understand the split between for the department of public works i mean you guys are directly involved with um with water and sewer on sometimes on a daily basis so it makes sense to me uh in terms of those direct costs that might

▶ 3:19:11 John N. Tramontozzi: be attributed to water and sewer but then i'm looking at here on the uh on the operating budget side and there's there's i count 15 employees uh of the uh of the city uh foreign the auditor's department the treasurer collector uh the communication services director at the mayor's office where the i.t department h.i the legal department city solicitor part of his salary is being paid out of the water and sewer enterprise fund so for example mr uh delarusso the auditor 145 000 salary 15 of that is being paid by the water department water enterprise fund and 15 at the sewer department 21 750 water 21 750. i can go on and and go through each one of those is the assistant city audit the accounts clerk finance manager the treasury collector uh

▶ 3:20:12 John N. Tramontozzi: the chief information officer i.t administration city solicitor his hundred and thirty three thousand dollar being a thousand salary being split ten ten between water and sewer this is what the public needs to know yes because because reality is that the operating account operating budget for the city is paid for by the taxpayers the citizens taxpayers but the but the but you're paying the salaries of some of these uh city employees and funding their salaries on the backs of the rate payers who are paying the water and sewer bills you understand what i'm saying and absolutely and i i i oh go on if you're not done and so this is what the public is concerned about these and i refer to as indirect costs and thank and i appreciate the fact that our water rates and

▶ 3:21:07 John N. Tramontozzi: that sewer rates are not going up this year and it was very fine uh tuning to you for your budget but we've we've shifted out some of those bond payments uh into the 2021-22 fiscal years so i can see where what next year or the fiscal year thereafter we're going to have an increase in rates uh that's going to happen but is it really fair and i know we've done it so i think it's time maybe we can take a look a look at these indirect costs because i think in fairness the full salary of the employees of the city should be on the operating accounts funded fully by the taxpayers and not by the um the rate payers the department of public works direct cost i can understand that appreciate that so i think what's important is that we've got to take a look at this because

▶ 3:22:01 going forward i'm not comfortable with these indirect costs continuing to be built to water and sewer that's so my comment okay thank you and i and i fully understand that concern and i do want for the benefit of the whole council to run through just a few of those departments and how they are involved with water and sewer just so there's an understanding of you know it's not that we're just taking random salaries here and there and throwing them into the water and sewer enterprise funds to keep them out of the general fund um so the collector's office for instance is a is a simple one we send out 8 000 plus bills every quarter and the collector's office processes those bills so the the treasurer collector's office does an enormous

▶ 3:22:49 amount of work that pertains to water and sewer um you know we're now doing monthly billing for those who want to opt in so we have bills that go out um at a minimum every quarter we send out about 8 500 bills and now we're sending out hundreds i want to say upwards of a thousand monthly billing customers um as well so that's that explains the uh the collector's office piece of it and in addition they're processing the um any checks for any expenses and payroll and everything else for the water and sewer employees and the water and sewer expenditures and then similarly on the auditor's office and the auditor's office is i'm in constant communication with them about our mwra loans the the cfo auditor sits on the water and sewer rate committee

▶ 3:23:45 um we have many many discussions about rates about bond accounts um they process the payroll uh katie in the in the auditor's office prices of the payroll for the water and sewer division employees similarly the human resources department here's the water and sewer division employees city solicitor's office when you consider the claims that go through the city solicitor's office and the number of those claims that relate to either a sewer backup or a water leak um that certainly adds up to to a decent chunk of time um i.t department supports all of our equipment um the the gis manager in um planning department we actually pay a piece of her salary because all of the utility all the maps that i was showing you all that data is stored in the gis and she manages

▶ 3:24:44 all of that for us so there's a lot of interaction between the water and sewer um uh operations and capital projects and needs with all these various different uh departments in the city so um i will say that the indirect costs have come down over the years they've been either level or decreasing year after year um i know kristen is patrick on deliver so on he is um i don't know if he has anything he wants to add to this discussion hold on one second can you hear me yes thank you so much hey thank you so much thanks very very much um yes yes good evening um just to follow up an excellent questions mr tramitose thank you and your explanations um i did send out a memorandum dated june 8th of 2020 because the council had an opportunity to review this in painstaking detail

▶ 3:26:01 that identifies where we are why we're here and what brought us together um also what i think is of keen interest is that we actually if you take a look in this packet um if you take a look on the packet there's two worksheets i don't know if you can see it on the screen maybe not did you guys see it take it hang on i'm sorry like that is it can you see it at all but what it is it's the worksheets that i gave you um for water and soil that discuss the indirect costs we are required under mass general law chapter 44 section 53 f and a half to report these indirect costs exactly how we do it this is the actual format if you go on the department of revenue website so if there's any misunderstandings where this comes from it's their worksheet

▶ 3:27:00 we comply each year we complete this worksheet for the department of revenue the division of local services we've also had this worksheet developed as you can see in my memorandum it was back to fiscal year 2013 on the department of revenue which i think particularly for those that may may not be aware that uh they actually came to the city of melrose because the water and sewer funds had a deficit of over 158 thousand dollars and they strategized with up for a multi-year plan and how we were going to rectify it develop new policies new procedures we actually brought in two different firms and i know um a number of uh you folks probably uh john particular is that we're the outside consultants that with the experts in the industry we brought in um dick

▶ 3:27:54 sullivan and powers and sullivan our cpa firm we have the department of revenue work with us to develop the structure for the indirect cost and indirect it sounds like it's um jumping in the background it's absolutely not the largest expenses for indirect really could be direct Health insurance of all the employees. That's part of indirect. You would think that's a direct cost. It is a direct cost purposes of mass general law. Chapter 44. we have to report it on this worksheet as an indirect cost insurance for the employees. The all the costs related to the employees pension that all has to be reported in these documents on top of that, as has been pointed out by Elaine a minute ago. we I provided last this fiscal year after fiscal 20 a workbook and I think

▶ 3:28:49 it's you also should have that that was sent to you a painstaking detail it goes into every single departments that's on the indirect cost worksheet including my own and it explains in detail what we do and why we why we're in the water and or enterprise fund is actively active participants each year i would ask if you take a moment and look at that i think we'll answer many many many questions but um i just want to make it clear to yourself to the council to the um community we brought the best of the best people that are experts in the industry we brought in the public accountants that are they do 50 to 60 cities and towns that we have we also brought the department of revenue and since fiscal year 13 the department of revenue has certified

▶ 3:29:42 our tax rate because we're consistent and we're reliable and we meet the guidelines as they promulgated so we follow the policy to the letter of the law in addition if you take a look in the last thing i'll say i know it's getting late uh in the back of the workbook that i gave this one here dated on june 8th i did i did pick out a few communities just around us to give a comparison because there's some misconception that our indirect costs are somehow you know higher than they need to be and if you take a look in the back um these are directly from the a2 sheets that was submitted by these communities which is how you report your water and soil revenues and expenses. Arlington percentage is 21.52% of their budget. Malden is 10.55%. Melrose

▶ 3:30:40 is 10.42%. Saugus 10.37%. Manchester 24.43%. Just in that handful of communities around us, we're right in in the lower of these five but we're in the mix with saugus obviously in malden so we are and always consistent we are thorough in fact the department of revenue had asked me they could use that protocol because it's so detailed and so efficient so i take pride in what we do i take exception to comments that the indirect cost is somehow additional costs that don't need to be in there this is exactly what the department of revenue mandates the city of melrose do look at the a2 form which i also included in this package it identifies the indirect cost by section that's how they want the city of melrose to return that's

▶ 3:31:38 exactly what we do year after year after year we're consistent and again i take pride in what i I do. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Good to see you. I know exactly how this is done. This is for the benefit of the council and the public, but there's no, why we can't revisit it. I mean, there's not not not a requirement that we have to be that same percentage every year year after year visit. I'm glad you said that because that's exactly correct. This year, I kept the percentages flat. I did not because there was no material change to the activity. What is a material change? Well, as Mr. Tramontozzi mentioned, we had originally done water meters. Okay. And it was the big project to install water meters. That took one of the staff time, extra time to do that.

▶ 3:32:33 so you'll see in that year or two that it took to do water meters that their percentage of that person's time went up because they were spending more time doing installation when that finished their percentage went down because that project with their involvement was no longer necessary so the city council you're absolutely right when those events happen we have to be aware of it we have to be sure that we address it and then reflect it properly so you're absolutely correct Thank you. Thank you. As you know, we, we have the discussion every year when it comes, but, you know, I feel good because we're so consistent and if you look at the average, I think we're like, uh, 10. 9 or something over the last 5 years, and it has been escalating down from percentage.

▶ 3:33:16 And that's a good thing, but again, we, in no manner, shape or form is this done without thought. and it's completely transparent to the Department of Revenue and anyone internally. You're welcome to have a comment about it, obviously, but I take pride in what I do. Thank you. Thank you, Wal. Thank you, John. Thank you, Elena. Thank you, Ms. Croacus-Ellis. Thank you, Mr. McNeil and Mr. Troop. Welcome. Welcome to Melrose. Quick question, Mr. Chairman. Do we vote on each division individually, are we asking questions across the board uh three questions you can ask questions across the board but once we're done with uh q a i was going to entertain a motion to actually combine all of those individual uh line items into one so that we don't vote 50 times for this one okay

▶ 3:34:10 Mark Garipay: all right thank you um i have a quick question regarding the information you had sent out on the salaries i appreciate you getting that to me over the week or over the weekend um i did notice In FY20, we had four positions, engineering, the city engineer, one project engineer, staff engineer, and then we had a project engineer in FY20, and it says position was not funded. This year, we have four engineering positions, it looks like, in the budget. Did we add a position to the engineering department? so when i started which was 2015 uh or actually 2000 i started in 2015 at the end of the year but in 2016 once we were fully staffed we had city engineer two project engineers a staff engineer and the um and then eventually the administrative assistant who was split between water and sewer

▶ 3:35:10 and uh and actually she's paid out of water but she's she does billing but she sits in engineering um 2017 due to budget constraints this was before the override passed um the one of the project engineer positions was cut and so he was laid off actually in fairly short order because the we were actually having trouble balancing the salary line items for the remainder of that fiscal year and so he was laid off to make that year's final budget work and that position remained unfilled for the entire fiscal 19 year so that's why that shows as unfunded uh in fiscal 20 um once we had a little bit more flexibility john chena had had put in place that there could be that we could rehire that position and that's

▶ 3:36:17 what we're now calling deputy city engineer if you go back through the many years of the engineering division the title of deputy city engineer comes and goes and so i just felt that was the most appropriate uh title for the job that we need to fill so um so yeah we went a year and three months with that vacancy and now we're back to full staff so on this sheet you sent out regarding fy 20 salary uh distribution there was no funding there so they must have came back to board and and added funding for that position in fy20 um the way he did it was we split that position four ways it's only 25 in the general fund it's 25 in the water enterprise fund and then the other half of that sat that position is carried through the bond accounts so for instance

▶ 3:37:17 when we start the water project that we're starting the million dollar water project I went by that slide really fast, but it shows $65,000 of what we call force account, which is available money for us to have personnel on that job that the MWRA loan pays for. So he's going to be the resident engineer on site with that construction crew for the next three months. That pays a quarter of his salary. So that's how he's funded. So John knew that he was only going to fund that 25% out of the general fund. And I think he figured that we would have enough wiggle room in the salary line items from people leaving people coming going that he would make that work because he put that he put that position that force account number into the bond request last summer.

▶ 3:38:06 Mark Garipay: so he was well aware that that was the direction he was headed so fiscal year 2020 2020 um in fiscal year 2021 how many increased budgeted positions are there in the dpw budget and we know is it just the one or the one because we in in weights um job was divided right so we know it's being divided so it's those two it's this it's the deputy city engineer but like i said that was a previous uh position that just hadn't been funded for a year and a half and then it was the facilities manager which was also a previously funded position that just hadn't been filled for about four years um and to make those numbers work that's where we're not funding the half year of the city engineer position okay uh thank you um and then just going to facilities and maintenance

▶ 3:38:58 Mark Garipay: um do you foresee any any changes um in uh in overtime um as as we as things evolve uh as we've kind of went through the covid um last three months uh limited work schedules um do we have a good plan to handle overtime as we come into fy 21 because i would think that would with people Being on limited schedules, they may have accumulated some vacation and how we going to manage the vacation. So we, so we keep the overtime budget within. Within the budget, so I. With the summer projects, I think we're going to be fine. We did find out yesterday from the mayor that we will be able to hire summer help. The high school and college typically, I mean, we will take any age applicants, but tends tends to be high school and college kids.

▶ 3:39:58 Um, so they end up working in the schools, they fill a lot of the gaps in the facilities. If someone's on vacation, you know, we'll have coverage with some of that staff and then there's going to be a little bit of repurposing that will happen. Like, we're shifting around the library is not going to be open to the public right now. We have 1, full time and 2, part time custodians there who we can, we can shift 1 of the part time to different duties. Um, so there's going to be some shifting around then the other. Item is that the, um, the money that we have through the cares act from the state from the federal government. Um, is available for related expenses and so if we have additional cleaning needs.

▶ 3:40:47 Mark Garipay: That are really over the top compared to what we do now, like, when school gets back in session in September. If we need something that's very different than what our model has been in the past, then we can potentially look to those funds to make up that gap, presuming that it is cobit driven. And with regards to 1 in the facility school cleaning contract, do you I mean, it's all an unknown, but with what they're predicting, or what they're suggesting regarding. uh what's going to happen when school goes back hopefully is is 275 000 you think that's going to be an it's a 22 increase but you think that's going to be enough again i think we would be looking to supplement that through the fema through the cares act and the fema money so the

▶ 3:41:37 Mark Garipay: cleaning itself is actually it qualifies for the fema grant money which is i i don't want to say an unlimited supply but it's a 75 percent um covered of those types of expenses as long as they're eligible and then the other 25 can be put towards that cares act money that is a limited supply but um that's our our hope is that we will continue to charge those sorts of expenses as we have been doing to those other line items is is someone uh you know we keep on hearing regarding the kids act and getting money refunded and i believe the dollar amounts two and a half million dollars and this is just throughout all the departments within the city is there someone um keeping track of what we think we may be using it for because if we go back and we have to use

▶ 3:42:23 Mark Garipay: 500 per person for uh for a student for for school supplies or clear ppe uh that's what the uh superintendent mentioned that's going to be two two million dollars i just want to make sure that that would be in proactive and not just, everyone keeps on saying the CARES Act, the CARES Act, but I wanna make sure someone's managing and or watching over what that dollar amount is as it creeps up there. Yeah, we have a small committee that we've been meeting virtually with the mayor's office and Jay and I and IT department, Alan Alpert, the emergency management director and a couple of other folks. And we've been tracking, Alan's been tracking all the expenses to date that we're putting towards the CARES Act.

▶ 3:43:10 Mark Garipay: And then our plan was to, we were all listing potential expenses and putting some dollar figures to those and then prioritizing what we think we're gonna need to make sure that we spread that money around to all the necessary programs. Thank you. And a couple other questions too. We have an order in front of us for 50 for trees, and I don't have it right in front of me, but I think it was, was it 50, 50,000? 55,000. I don't see a line item in the budget. Do we not have a line item for trees every year? If we have a three-year wait, why aren't we adding a line item for trees? If we keep on using free cash, I don't, that always baffled me that we cleaned it up about seven or eight years ago. Now we're three years out and I know this was,

▶ 3:44:01 Mark Garipay: This was not under your, you weren't in charge of the department, but why aren't we budgeting money for trees every year? I think that's a great question, because we definitely have an ongoing request for trees, and we automatically put in a work order to put in a new tree every time we take down a tree. So, as long as we need to remove dead trees, we're going to keep building that list, even without anybody outside requesting a tree, that list grows and grows. And I think that that's an excellent thing to put as a routine line item. Historically, it just hasn't been. And so we stuck with history, but I would entirely support in future years having a line item for tree planting. And also sidewalk repair, 35,100 level funded, but it seems like every year we come back for an additional funding for that.

▶ 3:44:57 Mark Garipay: And you had mentioned in that, just my own knowledge, that there was a list of, were there 20, 22 sidewalks? I figured I didn't get in front of you, but 12 still have, 22 have to be assessed, but there's a list. So, how much will that money take care of all those sidewalks that need to be repaired? It should, yeah. And will that take care of the whole list or do we still have a list? No, that should take care of the whole list. Okay. Yeah, that should bring us up to date. We have a little bit of leftover money in that sidewalk line item that we just haven't spent largely just due to everything else that's going on and how busy we've been. But we have our, our on call paving and sidewalk contractor coming in in the next couple of weeks to start sidewalk work.

▶ 3:45:42 Mark Garipay: And between the, the retained earnings allocation, and what we have left in the fiscal 20 budget. We should be able to knock everything off that list. Okay. Sorry. I have a bunch of questions. There's a, what all them and affects all of our residents a lot on it on the public works annotation. we have um trash disposal that's those are the tipping fees correct yes so we have a set tipping fee my question is we have a slight increase of 1.6 percent do you think that that is enough enough money um to cover with everyone um working from home i'm sure our uh our tonnage leaving the the community is a lot more than what we had budgeted in 20. Do you feel that that's going to be enough? I know we have a set amount, but how much has the tonnage gone up over the last

▶ 3:46:37 two, three months as everyone's been working from home? We have been tracking that and the tonnage has certainly gone up. And Jim, do you have numbers on that? No, I don't. But if I could maybe make an assumption, that's going to be a not to exceed amount in the contract. So there's probably a little bit of room that handles for increased tonnage that would be pretty much how we would handle it any increases you're muted you just muted yourself by mistake yeah so it's a it's a bold assumption but usually that number on the budget is going to be the not to exceed amount in the contract and we would definitely fit in the tonnage underneath that not to exceed amount so Oh, last year, yeah, we were way into last year.

▶ 3:47:26 Mark Garipay: Okay, 421, okay. All right, thank you on that. And then, what's that? I got a few more, but if you want to, if someone else has questions, I can come back. A few other in the queue. I don't know if you want to. Thank you. All right. Regarding the cemetery. We had a couple projects there from my time on the board. One was the wall that was a state funded grant that we had to have completed by the end of June to be able to receive all that dollar amount of money. I think it was 150,000. Is that on pace to be completed? Yes, we've been working with BuildMax, our on-call masonry contractor, and they are aware that they should be completing it By the end of the month, it might be a little tight, but we're, we're determined to get it done. Is that going to complete the whole project that we still have a little bit more left?

▶ 3:48:30 Mark Garipay: That's a good question. That would be a question for Peter and I don't think he's still on. So, we can follow up on that and 1 other. I don't know if you'll have this, but if you could also follow up with Peter, we had Farrell. Barrel and associates was supposed to do the pinning spring on that. So we can start burying in that section. Curious to see if that that has been completed that project's been a long time waiting. Yeah, I believe that that hasn't been completed and I think that's been I think we just need to get on Ed to to get out and do the work because I think we have. Had communication with him, and he just hasn't gotten to it. So maybe we just need to make it a little bit more priority on his list.

▶ 3:49:14 Okay. And then hitting up the automotive division, how many pieces of equipment do we repair out of that with the three mechanics or the mechanic and two mechanics and foreman? How many pieces are they responsible for? Let's see if I can answer that quickly because I have that. I have a spreadsheet that shows all the fleet. Let's see how quickly I can get it here. I found it so it just needs to open up in Excel okay this spreadsheet has 145 lines so in the first four are headers so 141 pieces of equipment it's you know everything for the DPW divisions and then there is rec department vans and building Commissioner vehicle fire not the fire apparatus but the fire chief's vehicle captain some of the smaller trucks police cruisers and school

▶ 3:50:52 Mark Garipay: transportation vehicles okay i was just trying to figure out how many per and is the foreman is the foreman uh a full-time uh uh technician or is he does he have 50 uh percent working on the equipment and 50 percent um maybe managing ordering your parts uh all three of them order parts i know that for a fact they're all um they're all computer savvy and they're all online getting what they need so i would say i i see the foreman hands-on working almost every time i see him so um yeah i would say that he's uh more often than not working on equipment how do we base the maintenance on is that based on miles or is it based on hours of the equipment the preventative maintenance preventative yeah so uh we have a fleet maintenance software program

▶ 3:51:50 that we had started using and i'm not sure if we're really using as much as we should to its fullest potential but that's one of my priorities to get that really up and running um and with that you put in all of the recommended preventative maintenance for each piece of equipment and it you know pops up the work orders when when they're due which i would imagine would be on a time and mileage basis in terms of how they're doing it right now i'm not certain i mean with With that many pieces of equipment, it's possible that they are spending more time fixing things in a reactive manner than proactive, but I'm sure they're cycling through with the more routine oil changes and things like that.

▶ 3:52:35 Mark Garipay: Okay, and just on the parks and forestry, I was looking at the supplies and materials on the budget as of the 2020 spend at the time that we received this, which I think is probably for nine months. Um, everything was everything was pretty low. Do you, um, what's that? Is that parks hired equipment? Supplies and materials. I was just looking at all the, all the line items. Okay, is that was that, um, those are pretty low. I know we hadn't started the, uh. season and then COVID hit, are all the supplies ordered for this year would you say or will some of those fall over to 21 and will we kind of have a double expense in 21 on supplies and material? We're trying to get everything that we need on the materials and across the board not just in

▶ 3:53:28 parks but also certainly in water and sewer we have stock line items that we haven't spent. um we're trying to get as much ordered right now as we can to make sure that we can you know have things in stock when we need them and maybe take a little bit of the burden off the fiscal 21 budget um so i know any line items that have a balance that are equipment line items or stock line items we're trying to stock up we have on most of those line items we have vendors um either state contract vendors or on-call contracts that we can go right to we don't have to worry about procuring the um the purchases okay so you don't think they'll you think we'll be able to work within the 2021 budget yes okay and then uh just

▶ 3:54:18 Mark Garipay: my uh last question i know i mentioned it earlier was regarding uh my biggest concern is with everything we have going on with overtime and the uncertainty in the budget next year and um you know potential uh vacations that may not have been taken uh during the last three or four months is is managing and staying within the overtime budget because um and maybe making sure we continue to continue the services as best we can um i just think that uh that is one line item uh next year that um could would go get out of whack and we just need to make sure that that that that is managed uh managed right uh right tight um that's just one of my concerns as we move forward into these uh uncertain times financially so thank you very much thanks for

▶ 3:55:06 Leila Migliorelli: answering all my questions okay thank you mr chairman thank you ms pareikas alice and mr troop um and mr mcneil um thank you for being here tonight and i counselor gare pay asked most of my questions regarding overtime you know in the regards to covid um cleaning the schools and things like that so i think you guys covered that um well my other question was just about some of the buildings around the city that might have been closed or closed longer have you i've been seeing some articles about concerns about water quality in these these closed buildings during this time um whether they need you know extra flushing of pipes and things like that have you heard anything about that and what are your

▶ 3:55:53 plans to address that yeah they absolutely do need extra flushing of water pipes before students re-enter these buildings um that's something that we would do anyway after water has sat stagnant for the summer but it's going to be even more important now it's just a matter of it's pretty simple it's a matter of just flushing the volume of water that is sitting in the pipes through the entire system making sure that every fixture is is turned on and flushed through so that the water that's in those pipes is is turned over to the point where it's water coming from the water mains out in the street um so that does involve running the water quite a bit but it's it's not something that's um that's that unusual for us to do anyway thank you i figured your expertise in um water

▶ 3:56:40 Jeff McNaught: supply issues would would set you up for this so thanks so much that's it all right thanks thank you mr chairman um councillor Garipay asked most of my questions about the schools and coveted and if he didn't councillor mcleary would have for me anyway um but i'd like to thank you so much for being here thank you for all the new members and i look forward to submitting your for our budget thanks mr chairman council mcnaught thank you mr chairman thank you miss proy casales mr troop and mr mcneil i just wanted to thank you for all you do welcome you to to the city staff and also uh echo a lot of what council thomas said earlier about my experience working with you specifically elena it's been a joy it's been a short term so far but

▶ 3:57:33 Jeff McNaught: I appreciate your transparency, your speedy replies, how you're always prepared, tonight being a perfect example, to go the distance and answer every question put before you. I really respect the job that you do. I'm thrilled that you were hired into the role, and I didn't get to say all this on the first night because we were going late into the night, but I figured, what the heck, we're late enough tonight anyway. but I really just wanted to say thank you and welcome to your new team thank you I appreciate it McMaster Thank You mr. chairman good evening everyone thank you for joining us thank you for your presentation this evening I agree it was very well put together and I appreciate this fracas Ellis how prepared you

▶ 3:58:22 Shawn M. MacMaster: always are when you come before this council council determine chose he asked most of my uh questions relative to indirect costs and some of what he said and even some of what mr morose said during uh public comment um i very much agree with there are certain uh things that were said that i i'm not quite there on i'm not sure that i will ever agree with uh but as it relates to indirect costs um there are some concerns that i have and i know miss paracas You are new to this role, and in fairness to the mayor, he is new himself. And I know this administration is dealing with a lot of issues right now, and perhaps this is an issue that the administration wanted to take a look at. Perhaps it's an issue that there's still an opportunity to take a look at down the road. And I'm hoping tonight's conversation and some of the concerns that were raised gets us to that point.

▶ 3:59:20 Shawn M. MacMaster: What Councilor Tramontozzi will remember is when Mr. Schenna was before us last year, when we were talking about the water and sewer enterprise funds, I did, and at that time was relatively new, raised some concerns. I was a bit reticent based on my uneasiness with what isn't known about the indirect costs. And I signaled at that time that I would probably be in a better or a different position this year if things hadn't changed. Again, I understand why we are where we are right now, but that I'd be in a different position and maybe less likely to to support moving those forward with those questions that are still outstanding. And my, and let me just say, I completely think it is appropriate to use indirect funds,

▶ 4:00:15 Shawn M. MacMaster: these indirect costs to charge them to the Water Sewer Enterprise Fund. I acknowledge the work that DPW does related to water and sewer, obviously. I don't contest that probably 50%, I think, as you said, Ms. Paracas-Ellis, of your salary, which comes from those funds, relates to that work. Where I have some discomfort is when we get into the other departments, the tax collector, the auditor the city solicitor i even think um i recall miss alverson in the past received some funding from the water and sewer enterprise fund who is the mayor's assistant i seem to recall that the recycling coordinator gets some some of her salary from from that so my uneasiness is that there doesn't seem to be a metrics by which we determine what percentage of a person's salary

▶ 4:01:09 Shawn M. MacMaster: comes from water and sewer. To me, it just seems like it's very arbitrary and I do think it's a good faith estimate. I'm not questioning that. I don't think there's anything nefarious going on, but I think the public does deserve and maybe something that we can look towards moving forward is a better way to figure out how we are arriving at a certain percentage because I don't really think that guesswork is, I don't really think that's the best for the public. I think rate payers, taxpayers should know exactly how we're figuring out, for instance, that 25% of somebody's salary in a different department outside of DPW has been identified for work related to water and sewer. And I think there could be a way that we can figure out

▶ 4:02:01 Shawn M. MacMaster: how to have an interdepartmental billing system we do that or a work log or something if there's not a metrics to figure that out um so i just that's it's not a question it's just something i'd like us to get at and and i'm saying this because i'm expounding upon the signal i put out last year uh when these these issues uh came before us um so it you know it does give me some pause um and i don't take that lightly i'm you I'm very aware that the optics of being a very vocal supporter of sewer infrastructure work and having the Brazil Street sewer disaster impact my ward, my neighborhood, the street on which I live at a very intimate level. I understand the importance of the fund, but again, that uneasiness is in, you know, supporting this, not knowing that a considerable amount of money from the fund is being used for indirect costs.

▶ 4:03:02 Shawn M. MacMaster: And let me say, and I completely agree with Mr. Mr DelaRusso that I have no doubt that that everything we're doing is by the books and that the way that Mr DelaRusso manages everything and communicates information to the Department of revenue is above reproach and as a model for other communities. I'm not questioning that. I just think there's a difference between following the letter of the law and going above what is required of the law in the interest of full transparency and public accountability. And I hope next year we can get to that point. So thank you all for being here tonight and for your service to the City of Millard. Thank you. Anybody else? Thank you, Mr. Chairman. First, I want to apologize for my video

▶ 4:03:56 Jeff McNaught: during my whole, a couple of minutes ago, I wasn't aware of that. My kids ran in here and I had to deal with them. But, Mr. Chairman, I would like to make a motion to combine all of the orders that we have to, to move this forward. I can read the numbers off or if someone else has them directly in front of them, I have to switch it with the screen. Councilor McNaught is making a motion to move the bottom lines on 401, 402, 423, 433, 475, 485 and 491 for public works. a second second by councillor eccles on discussion can you please call the role to combine this vice chair Migliorelli yes councilor Tramontozzi yes councilor mcmaster yes councillor mcnaught yes councillor eccles councilor Garipay

▶ 4:04:59 yes councillor stewart yes councillor thomas yes councilor maladin yes president Grigoraitis Yes. Chairman Sinella? Yes. 11 yes. They are joined. They're joined. I'll entertain a motion to move the bottom line on this joint. Motion to move the bottom line. Second. Motion to move the bottom line by Councilor McNaught, seconded by Councilor Eccles, Madam Clerk. Please call the roll. Vice Chair Migliorelli? Yes. Councilor Tramontozzi? Yes. Councilor McMaster? Yes. Councilor McNaught? Yes. Councilor Eccles? Yes. Councilor Garrett? Yes. Yes. Councilor Stewart? Yes. Councilor Thomas? Yes. Councilor Jamaleddine? Yes. President Grigoraitis? Yes. Chairman Cinella? Yes. 11 yes. And I'll entertain a motion for the revolving account 2657.

▶ 4:05:55 Christopher Cinella: Motion to move the bottom line. Second. Second. Motion to move the bottom line of the revolving account made by Councilor McNaught, seconded by Vice Chair Migliorelli. I'm clear. Vice Chair Migliorelli. Second. Second. Second. Second. Second. Second. Second. Second. Second. 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. 11 yes let's do that in your sleep please god we got 90 more things to go uh order 2020-94 enterprise operating budget for the fiscal year 2021 in the amount of eight million one hundred

▶ 4:06:55 and thirty thousand nine hundred thirty two dollars forty four discussion on this motion on this recommend second recommend made by Councilor Eccles seconded by Vice Chair Meg Liarelli yes Councilor Tramontozzi I sustain from this vote Councilor McMaster no Councilor McNaught yes Councilor Eccles yes Councilor Garipay? Yes. Councillor Stewart? Yes. Councillor Thomas? Yes. Councillor Jamaleddine? Yes. Grigoraitis? Chairman Cinella? Yes. One abstain, one no. That is nine yes that passes. Voter number 2020-93, Water Enterprise Operating Budget for Fiscal Year 2021. In the amount of five million four hundred and twenty two thousand six hundred and thirty nine dollars and twenty cents is the will of the committee on this is a discussion

▶ 4:08:23 Christopher Cinella: motion recommend second recommend made by councillor McNaught seconded by councillor Garibay Vice Chair Migliorelli yes councillor Tramontozzi I abstain from this vote councillor McMaster no councillor mcnaught yes councillor eccles yes councillor Garipay yes councillor stewart yes councillor thomas yes councillor maladin yes president Grigoraitis yes chairman sanella yes one abstention one known nine yes motion passes order number 2020-109 appropriation complete cash account zero one dash three two four zero zero one in the amount of three hundred and thirty one thousand six hundred and seventy six dollars and fifty five cents to various public works accounts as said before in the discussion second recommended by councillor mcnaught second

▶ 4:09:38 Christopher Cinella: election councillor Garipay adam clerk please call the roll vice chair Migliorelli yes councillor Traymond Tozzi yes Councillor McMaster yes Councillor McNaught yes Councillor Eccles yes Councillor Garipay yes Councillor Stewart yes Councillor Thomas yes Councillor Maladine yes President Grigoraitis yes Chairman Cinella yes 11 yes okay order number 2020-121 acceptance of of the School Water Improvement Grant, also with the SWIG and the amount of 24,000. Motion to recommend. Everyone came alive. Motion to recommend by Councilor Stewart, seconded by Councilor McNaught. Madam Clerk, please call the roll. Vice Chair Migliorelli. Yes. Vice Chair Cozzi. Yes. Councilor McMaster. Yes. Councilor McNaught.

▶ 4:10:36 Yes. Councilor Eccles. Yes. Councilor Garipay. Yes. Councilor Stewart. Yes. Councilor Thomas? Yes. Councilor Jamaleddine? Yes. President Grigoraitis? Yes. Chair Sonnella? Yes. Levin, yes. Order number 2020-122, acceptance of the Massachusetts Department of Environmental Protection Cycling IQ Kit Grant in the amount of 30,000. Motion to recommend. Second. Second. Motion to recommend by Councilor Stewart, seconded by President Grigoraitis. Madam Clerk? I'm Kim 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.

▶ 4:11:39 Yes. Chair Cinella. Yes. Levin, yes. 2020 dash 123, the acceptance of state revolving fund, sewer asset management grant, the amount of $60,000. What's your recommend? Second. I recommend the passage made by Councilor McNaught, seconded by Councilor Stewart. Any discussion? Seeing none, Madam Clerk, please call the roll. Vice Chair Migliorelli. Yes. Councilor Tramontozzi. Yes. Councilor McMaster. Yes. mcnaught yes councillor eccles yes councillor Garipay yes councillor stewart yes councillor thomas yes councillor maladin yes president Grigoraitis yes chairman sanella yes 11 yes thank you elena gentlemen thank you elena thank you all very much entertain a motion Mr. Chairman, before we adjourn, can I have a moment for a personal privilege?

▶ 4:12:49 Jeff McNaught: You certainly can. Thank you. Earlier on in our meeting, I started out a statement when we were speaking with Chief Lyle, and I made it a point to start out by saying how difficult it was for us to discuss certain current events we're colleagues we're friends and these things aren't easy i'll go to bed restless tonight knowing that i've probably disappointed some of my fellow counselors but i know i spoke from the heart and i know i meant what i said and we're put on public display to say the things we say for a reason and And there's also, the public has a right to know what's happening in the chamber. And that's why we have these open meetings. And I have been with texts and messages from my own personal family about an article that's

▶ 4:13:48 Jeff McNaught: already been posted by the only reporter who covers our meetings, and I should say partially covers our meetings. And that is Mike Karagi from the Morales Patch, who was not here in the beginning of our meeting and is not here now and has not been here for most of our meetings. I find Mr. Karadjic's reporting to be irresponsible, and tonight's article is just another example of that. I hope he takes the time to watch the entire meeting, including over the 10 minutes in which I spoke, where people were looking at their watches, and I again apologize for going so long, but I was trying to choose my words wisely. I apologize for going so long, but he has twice in one week taken me out of contact you know he's done it to

▶ 4:14:32 Jeff McNaught: others I'm calling on him to the job of being a journalist and I would really ask that the Murrow's Weekly News and the Murrow's Free Press start sending out people to cover these meetings as well you know even though virtually because tonight's article is not representative of everything that happened in our meeting tonight and his salacious title of how we wrestled um and we're in a fiery debate about what went on i don't think is really representative of what happened either um wrestling does not describe an eight to three vote and that's not to rub it in on the result of the vote but i do call on mr karaji to be a more responsible reporter of what's going on in our virtual and hopefully soon to be our physical chamber thank you thank you

▶ 4:15:26 i'd like to motion to add the memo um from the mayor uh dated june 11 2020 um to order 2020-106 second second question to add the memo made by vice chair Migliorelli seconded by president 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. Chairman Cinella. Yes. Eleven yes. is there a motion to adjourn motion to adjourn second adjournment by councillor stewart seconded by council if not please call the roll vice chair Migliorelli yes councillor Tramontozzi yes councillor mcmaster yes councillor mcnaught yes councillor eccles yes councillor Garipay yes

▶ 4:16:35 Yes. Councilor Stewart? Yes. Councilor Thomas? Yes. Councilor Jamaleddine? Yes. President Grigoraitis? Yes. Chairman Cinella? Yes. We are adjourned. Good evening, everyone. Have a good night.

Appropriations & Oversight Committee — 2020-06-11

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