Appropriations & Oversight Committee — 2020-10-19
Attendance
Christopher Cinella ; Jack Eccles ; Mark Garipay ; Jen Grigoraitis ; Maya Jamaleddine ; Shawn M. MacMaster ; Jeff McNaught ; Leila Migliorelli ; Robb Stewart ; Cory Thomas ; John N. Tramontozzi
Agenda
Minutes
CITY OF MELROSE APPROPRIATIONS COMMITTEE CALENDAR● OCTOBER 19, 2020 Web-based remote meeting Committee Meeting 7:30 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 Late 7:36 PM Jack Eccles Voting Present Mark Garipay Voting Present Robb Stewart Voting Present Cory Thomas Voting Present Maya Jamaleddine Voting Present Jen Grigoraitis President, ex oficio Present
ORDER-2021-26 Grant Acceptance of a grant in the amount of $10,382.50 from the Center for Tech and Civic life for the purpose of supporting the planning and execution of a safe and secure State Election in 2020, said funds to be deposited into fund # 2952 Recommend Passage City Council City of Melrose Page 1 Updated 10/20/2020 10:40 AM
Transcript
▶ 0:00 Christopher Cinella: We are recording. All right, good evening. Welcome to the Appropriations Committee. It's October 19th at 7 30. I'm the chair, Councillor Cinella, and pursuant to Governor Baker's March 12th order, suspending certain provisions of the open meeting law, the Governor's March 15th order, imposing strict limitation on the number of people that may gather in one place. This meeting of Appropriations Committee will be conducted via remote participation to the greatest extent possible. you 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 mmtv.org madam clerk could you please call the role chairman sanella
▶ 0:44 here vice chair Migliorelli here councillor Tramontozzi yeah councillor mcmaster i can see you there we'll come back to you councillor eccles here councillor Garipay here councillor stewart here councillor thomas here councillor malady here president Grigoraitis here and councillor mcmaster there okay we have ten present right and then just for the recorded record uh councillor McNaught may be joining us late he's having some technical difficulties i believe yes um at this time i will entertain a motion for public comment motion to open public comment second motion open public comment made by counselor stewart seconded by president Grigoraitis madam clerk please call the role chair sanella yes vice chair Migliorelli yes counselor Tramontozzi yes counselor mcmaster yes counselor
▶ 1:55 eckles yes councillor Garipay yes councillor stewart yes councillor thomas yes councillor Jamaleddine yes president Grigoraitis yes 10 yes okay and do we have anybody thank you does anyone attending would like to speak please raise your digital hand i do not see anybody wishing to speak at this time motion to close second I should have closed public comment made by Councilor Thomas. Seconded by who? Raise your hand. Councilor Stewart. Madam Clerk, please call the roll. Chair Cinella? Yes. Vice Chair Migliorelli? Yes. Councilor Tramontozzi? Yes. Councilor McMaster? Yes. Councilor Eccles? Yes. Councilor Garipay? Yes. Councilor Stewart? Yes. Councilor Thomas? Yes. Councilor Jamaleddine? Yes. President Grigoraitis?
▶ 2:56 Christopher Cinella: Yes, and yes, we have 1 order this evening before us order 2021 dash 26. Except acceptance of a grant in the amount of 10,382 dollars and 50 cents. From the center for tech and civic life for the purposes of supporting the planning. And execution of safe and secure a state election in 2020. set funds to be deposited into fund number 2952 and i believe we have the city clerk with us this evening to speak on this and i'll entertain a motion to suspend the rules motion to suspend the rules so we can hear from the city clerk second motion to suspend the rules made by president Grigoraitis seconded by vice chair Migliorelli madam clerk please call the role chair sanella yes vice chair Migliorelli yes councillor Tramontozzi yes councillor mcmaster
▶ 3:54 yes councillor eccles yes councillor Garipay yes councillor stewart yes councillor thomas yes councillor maladin yes president Grigoraitis yes and yes all right we have amy with us Hi, sorry, I'm having my own technical difficulties. I moved to my office. Yeah, so this grant is something that was offered to not just the city of Melrose, but across the Commonwealth. And we will use the funds to pay for some of our additional temporary staffing that we needed to hire in order to execute this election. And also, we can use grant for nonpartisan voter education so in this case we'll use it to cover the cost of some of our postcard mailings and we'll be mailing postcards to all registered voters to remind
▶ 4:54 John N. Tramontozzi: them of their polling location at the middle school on November 3rd and also remind them of their warden precinct so that we can expedite where the voters go once they get to the middle school high school gymnasium complex any questions i don't have anybody in queue yes uh thank you uh chairman sanella uh quick question is there any matching uh grants uh matching money from the city required nope all right that's good and um let's see how is um Are we using any of our reimbursement from the federal government or the state for the COVID-19 funds to fund any part of our state of election? Yes, we are. And how is that being used? We'll use it. Sorry, someone's late. So, there are certain things that are allowable and other things that aren't, but a lot of the requirements for COVID-specific changes to the elections, including social distancing, additional changes in location, some of that can be covered by COVID.
▶ 6:12 COVID. So you know, PPE supplies, the pull pads that we purchased, because that expedites the the election in a more streamlined way. And it makes it so we're not using so much pen and paper that is a COVID related expense. But I think the auditor has a better understanding of what specifically can be applied to COVID. I don't want to give too many too many specifics. one example would be because we have to have the poll the voting booths six feet apart we can't use what we usually would use which is that run of like four or five booths so we've had to rent tables and buy privacy screens to meet that six foot requirement so that the rental of those tables is is kovat allowable great thank you so i imagine you don't have what that cost estimate is to is at this point in time not
▶ 7:16 Jen Grigoraitis: yet uh we still have some expenses that we need to uh add into the queue but um you know obviously this is a much more uh significant uh election cost than what would be typically expected but i don't have an uh until we finish off with november i won't have exact numbers Okay. Thank you. No further questions. Thank you. And then just for the, let the record reflect that Councilor McNaught is now gracing us with his presence. President Grigoraitis. Thank you, Chairman Sinella, and thank you, Clerk Camosa, for being here. I'm thrilled that we were able to get this grant. I know this body has been in conversation since back in the spring about the additional cost and complexity of safe voting under COVID,
▶ 8:02 and i was hoping you could just take a second to update us on how both early voting and mail-in voting is going and just remind the public of what their options are for voting right now sure um so uh we have through a really great team of um workers uh covered um a bit by this uh grant uh we were able to mail out over 10 000 mail-in ballots to registered voters in melrose it's actually 10 252 ballots we've mailed so far um we've gotten more than 50 just over 50 back already which we think is great so um we've received over 5 500 ballots back uh and we've also now uh as of the end of today had over a thousand voters vote in person early um 1072 over three days so i'm really happy with how engaged the voting population in melrose has been
▶ 9:02 and as a reminder to the public we have early voting every day through october 30th during the week it's regular city hall business hours which would be 8 30 to 4 monday through thursday 8 30 to 12 30 on fridays um this coming saturday october 24th we have a kind of a later evening early voting from two o'clock to seven o'clock p.m and then on sunday the 25th it would be from 9 a.m to 2 p.m so hopefully that gives everyone who would like to early vote in person um enough opportunities that would fit their schedule so they can come and i will say that it's been kind of a steady stream for the most part we had a few lines uh kind of interspersed throughout the last three days but i think um i think most people um have been pretty happily um
▶ 9:52 Cory Thomas: surprised at how quickly they can get through and uh so i think you know anytime you come is a good time to come thank you and thank you to you and your team and all the poll workers who have made this happen i know it's a lot of work behind the scenes we appreciate it everyone's doing a great great job thank you council thomas thank you mr chairman uh madam clerk thank you for so much for being here um i voted in person on primary day at the middle school high school complex i thought it ran very well um did you get any you know positive feedback or negative feedback anything on primary day for the one polling location um we received overwhelmingly positive feedback. Most of the most of the details I think were stuff that you
▶ 10:46 know, like the feedback we received that we can improve upon, we're already kind of working on it was just kind of helping a little bit with signage for the people who don't know where that back parking lot is stuff like that we'll take care of. You know, I think the the officers you're working detail understand that this particular coming election we're gonna have an increased amount of traffic. So we have some more plans in terms of expediting parking, making sure that moves a little bit more smoothly and when we'll have a plan for overflow parking, that kind of stuff. But in terms of overall, we've received pretty positive feedback. So I think we're pretty comfortable with executing a similar plan in a couple of weeks.
▶ 11:32 That's great. Thank you. And just out of curiosity, how many poll workers were hired this year in comparison to previous years when we've had poll workers throughout the various polling places around the city? So we have the state allowed us to eliminate the checkout table. So that eliminates 28 poll workers from the requirement. So, but we've increased, we've added some of those poll workers back to help facilitate lines and to help get people where they need to go quickly so that everyone is moving along just so we kind of eliminate those lines. so we really only have maybe like eight fewer than we would have normally but it gives us the flexibility where we don't need to assign them to the specific role of checkout because we always
▶ 12:27 would need two for that role and now we can use those wherever we need to and we can float them around so we can again expedite the lines as um wherever they kind of hit uh within the the gym complex you know if everyone for some reason all of a sudden chooses to vote in Ward 7-2 at once, we can move people along and shift them where we need to go. That's what's great about the single location. Madam Clerk, thank you so much. Thank you for all your hard work and the hard work of everyone in the elections office, Ms. Preparian, Mr. Hunt, Mr. Wildman, and everyone else involved. Thank you so much. Thanks. Anybody else? Did I miss anybody? Seeing none, what is the will of the committee? Motion to recommend.
▶ 13:13 2nd, motion to recommend for passage, maybe a console seconded by President Grigoraitis any discussion around that. Being none Madam chair. Yes, I see. Yes, yes. Yes, yes. Counselor Eccles yes. Counselor, yes, Stuart. Yes, that's what Thomas. Yes. Yes, President Grigoraitis. Yes, yes, we got 1 minute quick motion to adjourn. You can return 2nd. I'll show you a Jeremy by console, Stuart, seconded by President bigger right? I spent a clerk, please call the roll. Yes, I should make me really. yes chair counselor taramatozi yes counselor mcmaster yes consular mcnaught yes counselor eccles yes counselor garrapay yes counselor stewart yes counselor thomas yes counselor maladin yes president greg righteous yes yes