Appropriations & Oversight Committee — 2021-01-11

Attendance

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

Agenda

1. Call to Order (0:01)
2. Public Comment (1:10)
3. Orders (8:55)
4. ORDER-2021-55 : Appointment of Megan Carriere, 36 Larrabee St., as an Associate Member of the Board of Appeals for a two-year term; said term to expire on the last day of February 2022. (10:05)
5. ORDER-2021-48 : An Appropriation from the Peg Access Cable Fund (#2922) in the amount of $344,572.23 to MMTV and Melrose Public Schools. (19:23)
6. ORDER-2021-43 : An Appropriation from free cash, account 01-324001, in the amount of $50,000 to HR Professional Services, account 011522-529000, to fund a compensation and classification study. (52:13)
7. ORDER-2021-52 : An appropriation from Free Cash account number 01-324001 in the amount of $93,257 to various accounts as set forth here in. (1:38:44)
8. Adjournment (2:17:39)

Minutes

CITY OF MELROSE APPROPRIATIONS COMMITTEE CALENDAR● JANUARY 11, 2021 Web-based remote meeting Committee Meeting 7:00 PM , Melrose, MA 02176 The public should take notice that the Melrose City Council may, on certain occasions, have a quorum in attendance due to standing committees of the City Council consisting of both voting and non-voting members. Members attending this duly posted meeting are participating and deliberating only in conjunction with the business of the standing committee. Attendee Name Title Status Arrived Jeff McNaught Chair Present Jack Eccles Vice Chair Present John N. Tramontozzi Present Shawn M. MacMaster Present Mark Garipay Present Jen Grigoraitis Present Leila Migliorelli Present Robb Stewart Present Cory Thomas Present Maya Jamaleddine Present Christopher Cinella President, ex oficio Present

ORDER-2021-55 Appointment Appointment of Megan Carriere, 36 Larrabee St., as an Associate Member of the Board of Appeals for a two-year term; said term to expire on the last day of February 2022. Recommend Passage City Council

ORDER-2021-48 Appropriation An Appropriation from the Peg Access Cable Fund (#2922) in the amount of $344,572.23 to MMTV and Melrose Public Schools. Recommend Passage City Council

ORDER-2021-43 Appropriation An Appropriation from free cash, account 01-324001, in the amount of $50,000 to HR Professional Services, account 011522-529000, to fund a compensation and classification study. Hold

ORDER-2021-52 Appropriation City of Melrose Page 1 1/19/2021 3:30 PM Minutes Appropriations Committee January 11, 2021 An appropriation from Free Cash account number 01-324001 in the amount of $93,257 to various accounts as set forth here in. Recommend Passage City Council City of Melrose Page 2 1/19/2021 3:30 PM

Transcript

▶ 0:01 Jeff McNaught: We are recording. Okay. Good evening. The time is 7.01 p.m. and this is the meeting on, by the way, on January 11th, 2021. This is a meeting of the Appropriations Committee. I am the, I am Councilor McNaught, the Chair of the Appropriations Committee. Joining me this evening are other voting Councilor, Councilor Member, Vice Chair Eccles, Councilor Tramontozzi, Councilor McMaster, Councilor Migliorelli, Councilor Garipay, Councilor Grigoraitis, Councilor Jamaleddine, Councilor Stewart, Councilor Thomas, and President Cinella, our ex-officio voting member. This provides a notice of a quorum for the record. Pursuant to Governor Baker's March 12th, 2020 orders suspending certain provisions of the open meeting law and under the governor's March 15th,

▶ 1:03 Jeff McNaught: 2020 order imposing strict limitations 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 Morrow's website and on mmtv3.org. We're now at the point of the meeting where we will vote to open the floor for public comment. Motion to open public comment. Second. Motion to open public comment by Councilor Stewart, seconded by Councilor Eccles. This is, Madam Clerk, I'm just going to say before you take the role, This is a portion of the meeting where in any member of the public may come forward to speak to any item on the agenda. That's all we ask is that you speak any item on the agenda. Madam clerk. Can you please call the role?

▶ 2:12 I'm not yes. Yes, yes. Yes. Yes. Yes. Yes. Yes. Yes. Yes, Councilor Migliorelli. Yes, Councilor Stewart. Yes. Councilor Thomas. Yes. Councilor Jamaleddine. Yes, President Sinella. Yes. 11 yes. Motion passes we are now open for public comment. And Adam Clark, if we could look in the attendee list to see if anyone has their. digital hand raised sure so if anyone would like to speak if you could just on the bottom right of your device raise your digital hand just give it a minute a bunch of people in the room tonight oh we have one person mr mcsweeney i will make you unmute you now thanks everybody um happy new year i just was calling because um i saw the mmtv appropriation tonight on the agenda. And last time MMTV made an appropriation, I think it was last

▶ 3:31 summer, and Ms. McAteer-Margolis specifically called out, you know, access during COVID as why it was so important to do the appropriation at that time. There was a letter from her attached to that meeting, but I didn't see anything tonight from MMTV or the administration about, you know, specifically what the funds were going to be used for. And as, you know, folks probably already know, I've been trying to really highlight the great job that the city has done on remote access during COVID and the fact that it's my really strident hope that the city can make some sort of investment in continuing to do that going forward. So I was hoping that the council tonight could try to get some information

▶ 4:26 if anyone from MMTV or the administration is here to speak to the appropriations about whether or not part of that is going to make an investment in making what's happening right now more sustainable going forward in terms of live access to the meetings And just as critically, all the archived recordings, it's, you know, like I said, everyone's just, it's been so great to have access to this during COVID. I was really worried that it was going to be less access, but it's actually more. And I think that going forward, I really hope that the city develops a plan. I really think the city needs to develop a plan. And I'm hopeful that the council can try to get some answers on whether or not, you know, this appropriation is going towards making an investment and what that investment is.

▶ 5:22 Or if it's not this one, you know, when is it going to be? Because this is hopefully the year, right, where things start to open up a little bit. And I don't, speaking for myself and I think probably a lot of others, I don't want to go back to the old way of doing things. I want the city to embrace this current format and work on expanding access to as many people as possible. You know, anyone can go back to any meeting basically all year last year and see exactly what happened. And you contrast that with the sort of really sporadic nature of how minutes used to be posted. You know, go look at a traffic commission meeting during COVID. You can watch them. Now go try to find a traffic commission set of minutes from 2019 before COVID.

▶ 6:12 They're not there. Where are they? Who knows what was discussed? No idea. It's great for transparency to have these meetings recorded, and it's great for equity and for access to have people be able to call in. So I just, you know, I really want to continue to advocate for that, and I hope that someone can try to come up with a plan sooner rather than later. Thanks everybody. Happy New Year. Thank you, Mr. McSweeney. Can you just state your name and address for the record? Sorry, Fin McSweeney, 160 West Wyoming. Thanks so much. Do we have anyone else in the queue for public comment, Madam Clerk? Checking the list at this time. Anyone else would like to speak? We don't have the time to do so.

▶ 7:03 Jeff McNaught: I do not see anyone else. Motion to close public comment. 2nd, I should close public comment made by councilor Stewart, seconded by councilor Thomas. Madam clerk, may please will you please call the role. Chairman not yes. Yes. Counselor yes. Counselor McMaster. Yes. Yes. Councilor Grigoraitis yes. Yes. Counselor Stewart yes. Councilor Thomas? Yes. Councilor Jamaleddine? Yes. President Sinella? Yes. Levin, yes. Thank you, Madam Clerk. And at this time, before we move on to suspending the rules or any other business on our agenda, I would like to give the floor to President Sinella for a moment, who has asked for a moment of personal privilege. Thank you, Chair McNaught. I just want to take a moment to say to the community that as a city council, we stand united in denouncing the acts witnessed on Wednesday, January 6th at our nation's capital.

▶ 8:21 Christopher Cinella: We echo the statement provided by Mayor Broder and Superintendent Kuchenberger and state plainly that these acts of violence, whether against individuals or a governing body, are criminal events which will not be tolerated at any level. We as a Council stay committed to the core values as elected officials and as our civic duty uphold the principles of democracy, equality, and justice. Thank you, Mr. Chair. Thank you, President Cinella. Moving on, I will entertain a motion to suspend the rules as I believe we have several people from the administration and otherwise here this evening. Motion to suspend the rules? Second. to spend the roles by Councilor Stewart seconded by Councilor Migliorelli madam

▶ 9:19 Jeff McNaught: clerk will you please call the roll chair McNaught yes yes yes yes yes yes Councilor Grigoraitis yes Councilor Migliorelli yes Councilor Stewart yes counselor Thomas yes yes okay the rules are now suspended and I will first before I read the first order on a trick learned from my predecessor president Sinella is to remind everyone that if you see counselors raising their hands on the screen you don't have to stop and try and answer their questions they're just getting in queue so I'll be tracking them so that they can have a discussion with you that said we have first order 2021 dash 55 the appointment of a Megan Carreri 36 Larrabee Street as an associate member of the Board of Appeals for a two-year term said to expire said term to expire on the last

▶ 10:36 Paul Brodeur: day of february 2022. do we have miss carreri with us this evening and i i believe the mayor is coming in as well i'm making them both panelists right now thank you can everyone hear me yes outstanding um thank you very much for the opportunity to present an outstanding candidate for the board of appeals and i also want would be remiss if i didn't thank I want to thank President Cinella and the entire board, the entire council, for that important statement at the beginning of the meeting. I certainly share your convictions and appreciate taking the time to recognize what went on, to recognize what we stand for. I think we would be remiss if we didn't remember the two Capitol Police officers that lost their lives as part of that really horrific display.

▶ 11:40 Paul Brodeur: And I'm proud to say that we continue to do our business. And with that, again, I offer Megan Carrier. And you tell me, Megan, apologies for saying your name incorrectly. As you can see from the materials in the packet, Ms. Carrier has an outstanding resume. She is an accomplished architect, a fairly new to her career, I suppose, in some respects, has really uh distinguished herself during that time with a number of uh projects and accolades uh achievements both professionally and academically uh that make her a terrific terrific fit she'll be starting out should you choose to approve the nomination as an associate member uh replacing krista liliths who we very much appreciate uh her service she also comes

▶ 12:34 Paul Brodeur: recommended by the chair of the zba reed mccardell and other former board Member who know her personally and professionally and i would also direct your attention to uh the cover letter that she submitted seeking uh to be applied because it really does get at her character and motivations as you've seen from a recent experience particularly interestingly in the world of architecture we have a lot of folks um willing and eager to lend their personal professional expertise to the city and again i commend that to you because it talks about how miss carrier and her family came to melrose the um the atmosphere that they enjoyed and um her desire to give back to the community so with that uh i enthusiastically offer her nomination to you

▶ 13:26 and i know that she is prepared to speak and welcomes your questions as well thank you thank you mr mayor thank you mayor broder and also thank you to the committee for my consideration uh to the zoning board um as the mayor stated i've been working around boston for about 10 years of many different our experiences many different project types from public to private sector um and then all of those projects really witnessed the importance of and also engaging with the community um and almost four years ago my family moved here uh we were in medford previously but we moved here to melrose we were drawn by the community and glowing recommendations from many different architects i was joking with the mayor that half of my previous firm i think lives in

▶ 14:10 melrose uh which was fantastic um and so i just really value the melrose community it was what drew me here um and i'm just really excited the opportunity to serve to serve our city on the zoning board thank you thank you um and do we have any questions from any Member of the council council mcmaster thank you mr chairman good evening uh miss carrier did i say your name correctly yes i i often joke it's like the air conditioning company just with an entity on the end for flair okay well thank you for your uh willingness to step up and serve the city of Melrose. Can you just talk a little bit about some of their personal skills and attributes that you think you'd bring to this position? I love doing research personally. It's a thing I

▶ 15:03 carry on in my work. It's something I do in daily life at home, just really, really researching topics that are of interest, things that are going on. I mean, projects within my house, I like to research everything and make sure I have all the information I need before acting upon it um i think that would be really helpful in terms of approaching different um items that come up to the zoning board and just really knowing the information beforehand before you know actively participating in discussion um extremely detail oriented i'm one of those people that really likes to know how things all work and how they go together again i'll do my research on this um Um, and yeah, that's I think I love research really just enthusiastic. I'm usually looking out for what's best for a client in my work. Also, you know, at home, the home front.

▶ 15:57 Shawn M. MacMaster: What's best for what works best for my family in certain situations. And so I hope to bring that to the board as well. What works best for the city. And 1 final question, Miss carrier, 1 of the things that you probably know, and that you're anticipating as a potential member of the board is that there are various needs sometimes needs of stakeholders that have tension. And I'm wondering how you would look to balance the needs of various stakeholders. uh most notably the stakeholders of uh you know those being developers and um uh the neighbors uh where a project may be proposed i think i don't want to use the word compromise because it sometimes gets it's misused but at the same time um you know approaching a topic understanding

▶ 16:45 what what those what those real needs are of developers of the community Member and really kind of understanding and and i've read a lot of books on on kind of how to get to how to get to yes i think that is one of the books that i'm getting to yes uh and understanding really kind of what what the important parts are so they're coming to solutions that will somewhat kind of appease the concerns of the community but also satisfy the needs of the developer at the same time it sounds like there's some happy medium but usually there is a way that if you're you're talking to both full sides of an issue that if you're addressing their really really big concerns there's a way to find something that will work for work for the majority of the people and the

▶ 17:25 Jeff McNaught: best way possible excellent thank you ms carrier and i look forward to um supporting uh your nomination tonight thanks thank you council mcmaster is there any other council that has any questions for ms carrier seeing none oh councilor eccles i was just going to make a motion to recommend for passage second motion to recommend for passage by Councilor eccles seconded by Councilor Migliorelli madam clerk will you please call the roll chair mcnaught yes vice chair eccles Councilor Tramontozzi yes Councilor mcmaster yes Councilor Garipay yes council of Grigoraitis yes council of Migliorelli yes Councilor stewart yes Councilor thomas yes Councilor Jamaleddine? Yes. President Cinella? Yes. Levin? Yes. The motion passes and Ms. Carrier,

▶ 18:30 Jeff McNaught: your vote on your what looks to be a successful appointment will be taken up at the next City Council meeting. Thank you so much for coming tonight and thank you Mayor Broder for nominating another fine candidate okay next up we have order 2021-48 an appropriation from the peg access cable fund number two nine two two in the amount of three hundred and forty four thousand five hundred and seventy two dollars and twenty three cents to mmtv and the melrose public schools Madam Clerk, I believe we have the Executive Director of MMTV and a few folks here it looks like from MMTV here tonight. I'm not sure who's coming in the room if more than one's coming in at one time. Sure, so I'm going to bring in the Executive

▶ 19:27 Director and I'm also going to bring in the Business Manager, Ms. Secor, from the schools He can let us know if he needs additional folks. And I also have this, um, I could hear my goal is simply she was on snap as well. Okay. Okay. I don't know if they can hear us. Can you all hear us? I can hear you, but, uh, I don't it doesn't appear that my camera is turned on. Okay, um, that's something on your end. I wouldn't know, but we can hear you Mr. Doyle. Okay. We worked earlier during the test. I can see Ms. Margolis and I can see Ms. LaCroix as well. So Mr. Doyle, did you want to take a moment to try and fix that? Or do you want to just Continue on how that was Kristen. How would I fix that? I've never used WebEx before.

▶ 20:39 Jeff McNaught: What do you answer from the meeting on as what device? Laptop phone. Yeah, I'm on a MacBook at the bottom. Oh, MacBooks might have. Oh, I see it. I see it. I see it. Yeah, it's a video. It's a video button and then you. There we go. Thank you for joining us tonight. Mr. Doyle, Ms. McAteer-Margolis, and Ms. Sikor. I know that we have three of you in the room to discuss one order at this time. I think it would be best if we just started off with maybe a quick overview from Mr. Doyle on the order if that's something you'd like to do. Yeah, it's a standard. We get funding from the cable companies, for those of you out there who don't know that. And every quarter, we come before the city council for an appropriative.

▶ 21:36 Robb Stewart: About two years ago, the state mandated that it has to go through the municipality to come to us to be appropriated. But for 27 years, it came directly from the cable companies to MMTV. So, that's basically the gist of it, and we're here to answer any questions that you may have. Councilor Stewart. Thank you, Mr. Chair, and thank you, Ms. McGeeter and Mr. Doyle. A constituent of my ward came on during public comment, and I thought he had a pretty interesting question which i wanted to share with you yeah and i wondered if you could uh if you had a chance to hear uh mr mcsweening's comments you could uh just to respond to those that would be great i think that it's a fantastic idea i mean as crazy as cope it is it has opened up more meetings

▶ 22:44 through webex and whatnot and we have been taking the meetings that not just the city council the school committee but other meetings that you have and broadcasting them on our website and we've gotten a lot of people that were saying you know thank you for doing that you know i never knew that committee existed or i really always wanted to see it and hopefully down the line you know maybe this will continue maybe this will be the the new norm you know the city council and the school committee meet back in the in the chamber and the other committees continue to do it virtually and we would love to broadcast them i mean i think it's great thank you mr joel and um i i appreciate your your interest in um saying that it's a good idea are there any plans beyond

▶ 23:30 Mary Beth McAteer-Margolis: uh uh acknowledgement that it's a good idea i believe we could look into down the line i'm all for it i would have to go you know before my board of directors and other staff Member at mmtv but i think it's anything to get information out to the community whether through television or the internet is what we're we're here to do pretty much may i just jump in for a moment uh to help out with that answer mr stewart go ahead miss mcintyre michaelis thank you chairman um so yeah mr mcsweeney has um been a big supporter of of cable access and of our our endeavors in in our development so as mr. as Patrick said you know we're we would really love to continue this we would need to be working hand-in-hand

▶ 24:27 Mary Beth McAteer-Margolis: with the city because it's not really just our our own idea or our own goal to do this you know we we have to be able to cover meetings that take place in the chamber so if there's you know once once we get back to being in person so um as mr doyle said if we're going to continue with some of the committee's meeting remotely then definitely we should be able to do it otherwise you know it's a matter of scheduling if there's a traffic commission that needs to meet in the chamber in order for us to cover it live with the cameras then we would need to you know work hand in hand with um with uh ms foote or the committees that are thinking of doing that great thank you and and thank you mr chair Councilor thomas

▶ 25:25 Cory Thomas: thank you mr chairman uh welcome to all the staff from mntv the wonderful job you guys do uh bringing programming and news uh to the community i I did want to take this moment to thank Mr. Doyle. Mr. Doyle has been working for MMTV for a number of years, a number of decades. And, you know, I just want to thank Pat for all your dedication to the community and all the programming and entertainment you've brought to the community of Melrose over the years. So thank you, and it's great to see you in here. That being said, the Melrose High School TV production class under Mr. DiBenedetto, They've been doing a great job recently broadcasting live sporting events. I think there's a need in the community to have these meetings and other city meetings broadcast live.

▶ 26:17 Mary Beth McAteer-Margolis: Is there a capability of bringing our meetings live to the community and Melrose TV and this Webex format? Oh, we have our 1 of our other staff Member here with us today. Mike minor. And if it, if it pleases the chair, we could bring Mike up to. Tell you what he's been up to the past a few days with the director. Is that a possibility? Madam clerk, is it possible to bring Mr minor in. As well, or do we need to remove someone? No, no, absolutely. Hold on 1. 2nd. I'll grab him and make him a panelist. Thank you very much. We've been working on this for a while, so let's have some of the people in city hall. So. I mean, you because of echoing so that's why you're being muted. Sure. Well, good evening everyone. Thank you very much for the question counselor and thanks for the great discussion tonight.

▶ 27:24 So, as we all know, last year through everyone for a loop and. We've been trying to adapt and evolve with the technology as many of the big firms have done. and i'm excited that our server which not to get too technical but the computer that spits the video out to comcast and verizon out into the world we had a great um upgrade to the the um the operating system towards the end of the year and we're able now to take more live streams and videos and push it right to the air so i had a chance to test that with neil the i.t director of the City of Melrose. We tested it today. It was a success and we're very hopeful that sometime next week we'll be able to start doing this on a regular basis. There's a few sort of

▶ 28:11 Cory Thomas: steps that have to occur to make sure everyone's on the same page, but it's going to happen. And the plan is next week. So this will be live. Yeah. That's great to hear, Michael. And I really think it'll really make these meetings more accessible and people in the community that Don't normally watch these meetings might be drawn to the more if they see that they're alive and especially during cobit time when there's a lack of programming on who doesn't want to see all of us on a nightly basis. So that couldn't agree more. Thank you all for being here. Thank you for you continue great work, the community, Melrose to all of you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Councilor Thomas next. We have council Grigoraitis.

▶ 28:54 Jen Grigoraitis: Thank you, Mr. Chairman, and thank you all for being here. My questions are similar to Councilor Thomas, and I know Mr. Miner was very helpful to myself, and then School Committee Chairman Mr. O'Connell in the summer when numbers were low and we thought there was a greater likelihood of being able to safely return to some sort of hybrid meeting format, which I fear is probably still some months off. um but to echo what mr doyle said i believe this is the new normal and i sincerely hope that we as a community never go back to Member of the public only being able to speak before the planning board or the city council by trotting down to city hall at 7 8 9 10 p.m at night i don't think that's accessible so i would like to never lose

▶ 29:38 Jen Grigoraitis: the ability for folks to participate um via remote participation and i do know that in many communities including stoneman and Wakefield have been live streaming meetings. So I'm happy to hear that's happening. Is that gonna be both live streamed on the web and live broadcast or is it just, yes, okay. Yep, yep, that's right. So the idea is it'll be on both Verizon and Comcast on classical television as we think of it. And also if you go to mmtv3.org on the live menu, you can be able to see this with a 30 second delay or so, but that's just how technology is. Okay, great. Thank you very much. Thank you for your work on this. I have no further questions. Thank you, Council Grigoraitis. Councilor McMaster.

▶ 30:22 Shawn M. MacMaster: Thank you, Mr. Chairman. Thank you all for for joining us this evening. I just had 2 questions. The 1st, 1 is for Mr. Meyer. So, it sounds like WebEx is, in fact, compatible with streaming the meetings. I'm wondering from your experience, anything that you've heard from other communities. If there is a better virtual platform for this purpose that aligns more closely with the computer, you mentioned that spits out the images on our computers. Yeah, so I think, you know, WebEx is, it's an okay platform, personally speaking. I'm more familiar with Zoom. Zoom is a platform that I use in some of my other endeavors. So it's been very reliable and works very well. I am also of the opinion that once you get something working well enough and

▶ 31:16 Shawn M. MacMaster: everyone's familiar with it it's not a bad idea to think about sticking with it that said I would say zoom is another platform we're thinking about if this is a question that we can revisit at some point but it would be something I think worth talking about with Neil and certainly the operators and the hosts who do these meetings too okay thank you mr. minor and I think this is for mr. Doyle or even Ms. Makatera Margolis with both her current hat and the hat that she wore as a consular, if she can shed any light on this. As I'm wondering, and I think this would not just be helpful to me, but some of the newer consulars, what changed after 27 years that prompted the revenue stream from the cable company to go directly from cable companies to MMTV that now,

▶ 32:07 Mary Beth McAteer-Margolis: I guess for lack of a better word has the council as a as a channel or a pass-through what is the history there what was the impetus for that legislative change you're muted in 2019 we were advised by Patrick tell Rousseau the CFO that the state was instituting a new regulation. I'm just looking for it now. I think it was chapter 44, section 53 F, requiring that all cable access funds be routed through the city that you set up. It offered a variety of options, but the choice that the department had made at the time was to establish a special fund. So the funds that we, for 27 years, as Patrick said, received directly as a result of the contracts that we negotiated with the mayors and MMTV boards

▶ 33:26 Mary Beth McAteer-Margolis: and city solicitors and outside solicitors became funds that went from the Comcast and Verizon to the city for the city to hold and disperse. Now, there was an option to disperse them quarterly. We felt that we were in a position that we could only that we could do it twice a year instead of four times a year. So in the meantime, they are held in a special fund, which I believe you have the number of on your order tonight thank you and do we know what the the reason for that was what the legislative intent was if you know i don't know really i think it was um maybe consistency because some cable access stations are actually part of the municipality and run by the municipalities or the towns we however are a separate 501c3 nonprofit incorporated with the board of directors

▶ 34:28 Mary Beth McAteer-Margolis: so some communities you know run it that way some run it as i say through through their municipal government so i believe that they that they were looking for consistency um interestingly enough Mr. McMaster's the fund has to exist for three years after which should the council or selectmen choose it can in fact be dissolved and it can go back to the former process of going directly so I don't know okay and just so the public at home understands is it fair to say that we are merely as the council the vehicle to bring the money uh to you that we don't have any ability to earmark the funds that are before us this evening for particular projects that is correct basically um this discussion should really be about appropriating 275 000 for us and whatever

▶ 35:30 Mary Beth McAteer-Margolis: it is for the schools so um yeah but i mean obviously we're happy to to try to answer questions on behalf you know from the community mr mcsweeney is welcome to come down anytime and talk with us as as any of you are as well to um meet and give us your ideas as to how you'd like to see things proceed because i do think as as mr doyle has said and um miss Grigoraitis that this is um really the future and it and it is a great vehicle for um us to get your information and government information out um to the citizens so that's part of our mission that's a big part of our mission great thank you again for being here and for all of your good work thank you you too thank you council mcmaster Councilor Garipay thank you mr chairman uh thank you mr doyle

▶ 36:24 Mark Garipay: thank you mr minor and thank you uh miss mcintyre margolis especially for taking the time over the weekend i think i kept uh talk to your air off for about an hour on saturday and the conversation was uh was very informative and i learned a lot about what uh what mmtv does and how it operates so um with that being said most of my questions were asked i do have one question and it's regarding the um the um order uh the pixel lock cameras that came before the school committee and we We know we had a conversation, which was tabled, and the reason for that was to try to have access to events that were going on during COVID, but, of course, after. And it was my understanding that there was going to be some, hopefully, this was going to move forward with MMTV and I believe the city and the school committee.

▶ 37:16 Mary Beth McAteer-Margolis: And I was hoping we could just get a little update on where potentially that stands as we continue to move forward. sure and we're we're um in addition to i just want to practice it by saying in addition to the monies that you're going to be appropriating this evening for the school department mmtv out of the monies that we receive um support the educational program uh throughout the school district um but particularly at the at the high school level with um additional equipment we built out the the learning commons the middle school we've done all the video equipment for for all of um the buildings that um have received it and probably to the tune of a couple hundred thousand dollars over the past maybe four years um so we do hope to continue those discussions

▶ 38:10 Mary Beth McAteer-Margolis: on um the pixel lot um our board president dave roe has been um continuing in negotiations and on top of that he is here this evening i believe as a um you know he can participate if anybody wants to really ask him questions about this but it it is an ongoing effort we are about to install within the next probably two or three weeks we hope um a direct line uh from the verizon poll to um the broadcast booth i i believe but maybe we should if i if i may yeah mike you can talk today if i may very much yes um thank you um so right so it's uh thank you very much for the question uh councilman and um our president dave roe is here as well if he wants to make any additional comments but uh essentially um what has happened is uh there was an initial round of negotiations

▶ 39:09 um last i want to say towards the end of last summer early fall um as we all know covet canceled a lot of things so uh we started to look at when would we actually do this uh here we are in january um we think we have an improved agreement with pixalot at this point It's something that we're going to pursue in the meantime, no matter what happens if we want to get football broadcast live. There needs to be a direct line into the press box on Fred Greenfield. And instead of having the school department fund that, or the city fund that directly, we believe that we. Can and will fund that so we're going to be supporting the direct hard line to the. And in the meantime, the education program, that's been doing dynamite work.

▶ 39:55 Mark Garipay: At the high school with Mr D Benedetto and his team. Live streaming and broadcasting on our channels. All sports this winter, they're doing a great job and I'm confident they'll continue to do a great job, but we're building out the infrastructures to accommodate the pixel cameras. So I'm hopeful that if not this season, we will be ready to rock for 2021, but maybe sooner. Thank you. I look forward to seeing it in all the facilities, not just that, but for drama and the auditorium. And I will say kudos to the last two Saturdays at 11 a.m. I've watched the Moro's High School basketball team live stream and the announcers are awesome. They do a great job and it's fun to sit there and it's not like being there,

▶ 40:50 Mark Garipay: but it's definitely, they're doing a great job, Morris High School TV. It's the next best thing, Mark, of being there. Yeah, and I'm particularly proud, this past weekend we actually did two games simultaneously on two channels, the freshmen and the JV, at 9 a.m. So if you want to get up even earlier, you can check it out. I haven't watched the JV. I haven't watched the Freshman, but the announcers make it, so. They do. They do. And if you miss it, you can watch the replays on the Educational Channel's YouTube channel, and, of course, the Educational Television Channel, which is Comcast Channel 15 and Verizon Channel 37. All right. Thank you all for being here. Thanks for educating me on the process.

▶ 41:37 Jack Eccles: And, once again, thank you, Ms. McIntyre-Maibolas, for your time. Thank you, Councilor Garipay. Do we have any other councilors for the first time? Councilor Eccles. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. This is for anyone who feels comfortable answering this. I just, with an eye to the future, I'm also kind of, I've been loving being able to attend planning boards and DBA meetings remotely. And so just to kind of go back to the constraints here, just so it's clear for anyone who might want to see a concrete plan about being able to access these meetings without any additional infrastructure right now you were only able to live broadcast from the chamber right so any is that correct and then so any anyone who meets and say the Cassidy conference room or

▶ 42:29 downstairs there's no way to really bring that to you live you're on your mute pet you're muted as of right now the only place we can broadcast from city hall is from the chain but there has always been talk even way before covert about doing you know other meetings live from you either you know whatever room they wanted to do from the only thing is that most some of these meetings are coexisting at the same time so we can only air one meeting on the television channel at that one time but if we do it virtually we can always do replays down the line or whatnot so there's plenty of opportunity to think about the future and i think this is a great platform you know like i said earlier that if covet has taught us anything

▶ 43:14 Christopher Cinella: that virtual is the way to go for the future uh whether in broadcasting it on our our television platforms thanks that was helpful thank you all for being here thank you thank you counselor eccles do i have any other counselors for the first time counselor senella president that's okay um echoing everyone's sentiments thank you for being here tonight with on this topic of the future what is the future i guess of mmtv with the web-based platforms like youtube tv hulu where a lot of people have migrated away from cable like i have and we don't i don't have access to public tv now obviously i can go online and watch the meetings but i don't have that channel at all and i think a large percentage of the population is kind of going in that direction

▶ 44:14 um what we're planning on doing down the line is we can do a live stream of our channels on our websites down the line so for those there are a lot of people who do like you said do not have cable television who want to stay up to date on what's going on on local politics sports or entertaining shows they want to watch on mmtv that is something that we could probably do sometime in the very near future is live stream our channels on our website and just to echo to echo that um thank you um you know just from a technology standpoint and access standpoint we view the way we think of our mission is access is about access and how can you get that information to people where they are because it's all very important um so we look at multiple platforms

▶ 45:03 Mary Beth McAteer-Margolis: um as a lot of you know um you can find some of our content on our website the archives of the meetings of course uh youtube facebook live for those of you who would like to tune in tuesday nights at 8 30. uh let's talk melrose melrose is a live news show every single week um that's all about melrose news um so i would say just briefly it's a hybrid the future is uh different platforms for different people but we aim to meet those needs as best we can i might i might just jump in to um to let you know and to let the public know that the only revenue we receive from the cable companies is from cable television so initially um we did receive internet funding a percentage of the internet providers as well but that is that went away a long time ago and there has been a

▶ 46:02 Mary Beth McAteer-Margolis: conversation at the federal level about bringing some of that revenue back but it's nothing that is moving in any direction that looks positive so hopefully you know we have enough to sustain us for a good long time but it's why it is important for these appropriations to be made in a timely fashion because we are seeing a decrease in our revenue year year to year so and it's you know um the more people that that cut the cord so to speak the uh the less money we'll be receiving from the cable companies do i have any other counselors for the first time seeing none counselor thomas thank you mr chairman uh just quickly uh i just wanted to touch on something that counselor Garipay uh brought up uh while he was speaking um this is not all sports related uh

▶ 47:09 Cory Thomas: the pixel like cameras um it's the national honor society induction it's the senior awards it's it's It's a number of freshmen and sub varsity sports and all kinds of drama productions, band coverage of their competitions that are on the Fred Green field. It's a lot beyond sports. So I just wanted to state that for the record and people watching at home and later on video. All right, so thanks again for being here. Have a good night everyone. Do I have any other counselors that wish to ask any questions? Motion to recommend passage by Councilor Sinella seconded by, sorry, President Sinella. It's my first time too, guys. $10 fine. President Sinella seconded by Councilor Grigoraitis. Of course, they both swapped spots,

▶ 48:07 Jeff McNaught: so they've got me really confused. Before we take the role on that, I just had a couple of comments and a quick question. One is, in looking at the MMTV webpage, I didn't notice if there was a staff page or any way to get in touch with anyone about how do I obtain membership or who can I contact if I have certain types of questions. learned a lot here tonight which makes me think of this question even more um i think it's been an excellent discussion and you all mean so much to the community it's just a question that that came to mind so i do believe there's a contact tab on the web page and there's an email address and a contact form um but by all means um give us a call 781-665-mmtv and 360 main street is

▶ 49:09 Mary Beth McAteer-Margolis: is where we are, but there should be a contact page. Ms. McAteer-Margolis, you're muted. I don't know if you're... It is on the website. It says connect, it's under connect or visit. And additionally, we have a Facebook page, as Mike was telling you that we use for a variety of things. So, but right, yep. And you can email us, our emails are on there as well. anybody that's interested in membership that's one of the things that I do so we have very low rates if any for we haven't changed 30 years I would love to see an alderman talk show that would be great excuse me City Council talk so That's another recent change. You get a free pass. I just had one other question. It was about WebEx and going live next week. I don't believe we're closed captioning again here tonight.

▶ 50:19 Jeff McNaught: Is WebEx going to be able to provide that for us going forward, especially in a live format? That is something we're working on with Neil to try to problem solve for the closed captioning, but there's a couple different ways we're trying to solve that particular question, but we are looking into it thank you very much again i i echo everyone else's sentiments and how much you all mean to this community um and what mmtv means to this community and i think this has been an excellent discussion um and um i i hope uh to have discussions like this going forward it's been excellent having you all here um you've all jumped in at different times and it's been really really helpful to understand how things work so thank you very much

▶ 51:07 all that said madam clerk will you please call the role chair mcnaught yes vice chair eccles yes counselor trama chozy yes counselor mcmaster yes council agarapay yes Councilor Grigoraitis yes yes yes yes yes yes yes yes yes yes the motion passes and one more thing before we go I like to publicly thank Kristen for sending us all the meeting files during the court period why we weren't broadcasting live so hats off to Kristen. Thank you very much. She's a member of our team now. Thank you all. Thank you very much. Thank you for being here. Thank you. Call us anytime. Bye-bye. Okay. Next up is an appropriation from free cash, number 20, Order 2021-43, an appropriation from free cash amount or account.

▶ 52:24 Jeff McNaught: I'm sorry, my eyes are failing me. It's getting late in the evening. Account 01-324-001, and the amount of $50,000 in HR professional services. Account 011-522-529000 to fund a compensation and classification study. I believe we have our HR director, Ms. Lada here with us. Coming in now. Good evening. Happy new year. Likewise the floor is yours. Okay, thank you. So, the purpose of the request tonight is for funds for the city of Melrose to hire consultants in order to conduct a. Comprehensive compensation classification study. For 65 positions, including department heads and staff. With this funding order, we're looking to invest in the city of Melo as an employer and modernize our pay system.

▶ 53:44 Just like we invest in our physical structures in the city, it is time that we invest in our compensation structure. The last non-union classification study was done in 1988, which was over 30 years ago. So a lot has changed since then. So our goals are to be able to conduct a comprehensive review of our current compensation and classification system, to review and potentially rewrite job descriptions if necessary, if they are identified as needing attention, so that every job description would uniformly reflect the the essential functions of the job, the minimum qualifications, education, knowledge, skills. It will define the working conditions and any required licenses, certifications. And, of course, lastly, to establish a new standardized and equitable system,

▶ 54:54 compensation classification system that will allow us for more effective and efficient pay processes that will provide for more meaningful progression between the steps, a system that will be in line compliant with the Fair Labor Standards Act and the Mass Pay Equity Act, a system that will be able to offer fair and competitive wages and also ensure that the compensation is aligned with the assigned duties a system that will allow us to retain and to attract and to retain talented qualified managers and staff these are individual contributors often with very specific areas of expertise with advanced degrees and this system would hopefully will also ensure that jobs that are performing the same level of responsibility the same complexity are defined and grouped

▶ 56:05 Jen Grigoraitis: together lastly our goal is to also have an implementation plan that will guide us as to how we can correct the discrepancies that will result from the present compensation system and the proposed compensation system so we're looking for an implementation plan which will not necessarily result in immediate compensation increase for our employees thank you ms lata for that uh overview um first we have counselor Grigoraitis thank you mr chairman and thank you ms lata for being here um and i apologize in advance i know you and i have talked that i i do hr in my day job so sorry um but i i honestly have to say i have mixed feelings about this order um partly because i i very much believe in the need to professionalize our workforce and i do believe

▶ 57:09 Jen Grigoraitis: that that includes competitive compensation but i'm a little i'm surprised at the timing of this both as the first order to come before us for free cash this year is about um salaries for city employees but also given where we are um as a nation and a state with funding i feel like looking at municipal salaries over the past six months to a year which i'm assuming would be what you would be pulling is not really an accurate reflection given furloughs given delays given the fact that the state budget process was delayed six months um so i'm i'm a little I'm a little wary of the timeline both in terms of the data that you would be pulling and then also if you could talk a little bit about how this consultant

▶ 57:55 in the work of this consultant ties into the performance evaluation process but I know you've put in place because I feel like those are kind of those things need to work together thank you for the question thank you and very very much so um the timing this order was supposed to come in front of the city council earlier um last last year last calendar year Of course, the pandemic happened, so it has been delayed. This is part of the compensation and classification study. We are going to be looking to align the new classification system with performance management. And not only with that, but also with the goals of the administration, the values of the city, which is what I had addressed earlier.

▶ 58:56 Jen Grigoraitis: So we are looking to change it. It's an antiquated classification system. We have over 100 different salary tables. We have 60 job descriptions, each tied to a salary table. And we want to ensure there's a meaningful progression. As I said, this will have to be based on performance management and aligned with our goals of the administration. So your thinking is that, and this is something I read in the RFP, is that you would do this study and then kind of hold the results of it while you continue performance management. and then i mean i'm assuming part of what this is going to reveal for us is that we have many positions that are underpaid market rate um so with the i guess my part of my question is what

▶ 59:57 Jen Grigoraitis: is the timeline for trying to address the results of this study so as soon as the study is completed we're going to have a group of us which will include the mayor the deputy mayor the cfo and the hr director and then we're going to review what our priorities are and come up with a strategic plan of action is is that something you would be looking for additional outside help too i mean i just i know anecdotally strategic planning is usually something that so involves a consultant which is not to diminish the value of any of these asks i just it's helpful to kind of know what the broader plan is because we tend to just get one little slice of information sure we're not planning on getting additional um consultants in order to decide on our priorities

▶ 1:00:53 Shawn M. MacMaster: no thank you i appreciate that information thank you council Grigoraitis counselor mcmaster thank you mr chairman good evening uh thank you for being here my question my first question relates to page 11 of the rfp do you have that in front of you Ms. Lata? I apologize. I don't know if I have page 11 in front of me right now. It's in reference to the deliverable section. Under the deliverable section of page 11, it talks about once a firm is retained to conduct the audit, that that audit would commence within four weeks. What I didn't see in there is any mention of an end date or anticipated end date. Now, I understand that this is not a contract. It's just an RFP. It's not a MOU or an MOA. And I do understand from the memo that from this RFP, there was a select group of individuals

▶ 1:02:22 Shawn M. MacMaster: who are firms that responded. I think 12, I might have that number wrong. But without an end date, I'm just wondering how we can expect that a firm might have the capacity based on the timing of what the city is looking for. And if we were to have an actual end date in the RFP, might we have gotten more than than 12 responses um so i guess that's my i guess my question is is there a reason why we didn't include an anticipated end date in the rfp um you know there's there's no particular reason other than we left these days open since as i said we were planning on presenting this earlier last year and we did not include an end date um as to and i'm sorry can you just repeat the previous question i just um so under uh the deliverable

▶ 1:03:25 Shawn M. MacMaster: section of page 11 it gives a time frame for when the project will commence once the firm is retained which is four weeks but there's at least nothing in the deliverable section and i didn't see it anywhere else unless I missed it saying what the anticipated length of this study would be because I just think it's challenging for a firm to commit or to or seek to be retained for this service if it doesn't know how long we'll be potentially under under contract for and did we you know do ourselves a disservice by not putting that out there if maybe the the time frame is less than what it might otherwise be if it's not interested if it's excuse me if it's not listed you could have a prospective firm thinking you know is this project

▶ 1:04:16 Shawn M. MacMaster: how in depth is this project is this project something that might be you know a year uh and if so um you know they may not be in the business of getting involved in a contract that is lengthy if they're looking to turn around um you know audits like this uh in a more rapid fashion yeah okay so just to clarify so we haven't sent these rfp out obviously we haven't reached out to the consultants we have identified several consultants that came recommended from other communities who have uh undergone through this process but uh so we haven't defined the end date it's something that we can um certainly discuss and we should discuss as a group but we have not sent anything out to consultants my apologies i might have misread it so the when when you say identified there are potential firms

▶ 1:05:21 Shawn M. MacMaster: that have been identified and those are the ones that are listed in the something that i read listed i believe 12. i could have that wrong oh okay i know i understand where that's coming from you're referring to a few pages before that they will survey 12 comparable communities it wasn't that but i do we can move on i do have a question i do have a question about the 12 comparable communities um is that that's on that's on page two under compensation and i'm wondering how will those 12 communities be identified uh the one part of the rfp which just gave me some pause was the language saying it would be done in conjunction with the city and when you're doing i think an audit like this for scientific you know reliability purposes you want to leave it to

▶ 1:06:19 Shawn M. MacMaster: leave the methodology to uh the firm that is designing this so i'm wondering what does in conjunction mean and with 12 communities that's just three percent of the communities in massachusetts so were there communities in mind that we had where did those particular communities come from and what is the basis for making that that type of suggestion to uh to an independent for yeah this is um again when we requested um proposals for other rf when we requested um rfps from other municipalities who have gone through the process this is something that was identified um the number of comparable communities and we will certainly um as you said we want to make sure that the process that we're using is um very sound so we're living into the consultant

▶ 1:07:16 Shawn M. MacMaster: to identify these communities thank you yeah the first thing that came to my mind was this comparison that we seem to do you know at the municipal level of uh looking um at uh other communities in the middlesex league which although may be similar in size it's really not the way to go about doing um you know any type of an assessment so i would i would just hope that we would uh leave that to the uh the firm uh to decide uh if and when um this passes and and we do end up retaining someone thank you for all your work on this evening thank you thank you Councilor mcmaster Councilor stewart thank you mr chair thank you ms lata for coming here tonight and explaining what this request is for. Can you – I just need a little help understanding this.

▶ 1:08:20 So you're not necessarily changing a technology. You're just changing more the nomenclature. Is that accurate? Yes, we're not changing the technology. We are changing the way that physicians can be classified. and compensated. Okay, and can you give me an example of these discrepancies that you're speaking to? Well, the discrepancies will be identified at the end of the process, but for example, in the past, decisions related to upgrades in salaries have been made not necessarily based on defined criteria for every position they have been made in on individual basis so at the end once we receive that you know the the end result of the study we're looking to see what the discrepancies between our car systems system are and the new

▶ 1:09:31 um more equitable and standardized system so then what i'm hearing that is you are assuming there's discrepancies but you don't actually have identified discrepancies we have sure we have um let me give you an example we have positions uh two tiers of non-union positions these tiers were defined in 2011, Tier 1 and Tier 2 positions. Tier 1 positions are employees who were hired by 2011. The steps, the increase between the steps for Tier 1 positions are 3.5%. The increase between the steps for Tier 2 positions are 1.25%. So there's somewhat of an internal inequity between the two tiers. So this is a discrepancy that will be identified. We're looking, as part of the RFP, we're looking to, of this study, we're looking to have physicians who perform the same type of job,

▶ 1:10:52 Robb Stewart: with the same complexity, with the same knowledge, with the same required skills, classified under one group, so we don't have a position that performs certain set of responsibilities if this person was hired prior to 2011, be on a different salary schedule, and the same person hired after 2011, you have a different salary schedule. So these are discrepancies that will come up. Thank you for clarifying that. And let me understand what the end objective of having this new classification system. Is it employee retention? Is it employee satisfaction? I'm trying to understand what's motivating this need because we've had a system in place you have you let us know that you haven't done a review in 32 years uh what's what is broken that is that is evident that that would uh cause

▶ 1:12:00 a betterment of the system outside of we're paying ourselves better because that's all i'm hearing right now it's not right it's not uh this is so much more more than just what we're paying the is how positions are classified during the years, non-union positions, let's say, especially over the past three years, job descriptions have changed, responsibilities have been added, And these job descriptions have not been reviewed to see how it fits the big picture and whether it is aligned with the goals of the city. So we are looking, yes, we are looking to be able to be competitive and fair in our wages. but in addition to that ensure that our job descriptions actually reflect what the responsibilities that the employee is performing and that's something that has not

▶ 1:13:11 necessarily been done on a comprehensive level standardized where take for example department heads would have the same type of qualifications standard qualifications and responsibilities every department had positions position so overall we're looking to modernize our pay system to be more competitive but also to include this is changing the changes have happened throughout the years and how it fits in the big picture with the city's goals and values. Okay, thank you, Ms. Lata. I appreciate the clarification. Thank you, Mr. Chair. Thank you, Councilor Stewart. Councilor Migliorelli. Thank you, Chairman McNaught. Thank you, Ms. Lata for being here. I would say that I in concept agree with a compensation study.

▶ 1:14:16 Leila Migliorelli: I do believe that our city hall employees should be compensated adequately and should have there should be a clear path for promotion. But I do have some some questions for you. One that just came up while you were answering one of the other counselors questions. So in 2011, you developed this tier one. So I guess it's been 10 years that the city has been operating under two different tiered strategies for, that seems like an awful long time. I know this is not directed to you, but it's an awful long time to have a discrepancy. and see I think then also then going back to the RFP itself my question is are you so you haven't issued the RFP yet and what is your deadline for receiving proposals so we haven't

▶ 1:15:16 Leila Migliorelli: sent the proposals out so we'll have to determine exactly what our deadline will be as soon as and I again that's something that we have I don't think that I have in front of me but we are looking to start the project immediately within four weeks of awarding the contract okay so you have to you're issuing RFP it will get issued you then have a deadline when it will stay open and And then at that point, then the consultant will get started. So you are you feel you still feel pretty confident that this whole process will take place by the end of FY21 or early FY22? That's our goal. Yes. OK. OK. Some of my other questions were answered. I guess I share Councilor Grigoraitis concerns about the timing of this.

▶ 1:16:14 Leila Migliorelli: So this is probably less to do with with you right now. But given that this is one of our first free cash requests of the year, we are midway through an unprecedented year in the middle of a pandemic. There's been references to having concerns about making sure that we meet the needs of the pandemic going forward and to have a request in front of us to look at a compensation study. While there's so many other people who are losing their jobs and, you know, facing hardships, it just seems a little bit out of step. mean that all being said i i do think in in concept we should be compensating um city hall staff appropriately but just the timing of this request um this year of all years is is a little

▶ 1:17:01 Maya Jamaleddine: bit um difficult uh to sort of ram it around so that's it for now thank you thank you thank you councilman really up next we have Councilor Jamaleddine thank you chairman and thank you Ms. Lara for being with us today and for being so patient and answering all our questions. I wanted to ask, I have a few questions. So we don't have any, of course, we don't have any application, but you said that there is some talks about different consultants and from other from you know other individuals do we know or do we have any ideas about the fees is it same fees for all of them is it set fee we have an idea of what other municipalities have paid of course the the cost is tied to the number of job descriptions that they're reviewing into the other deliverables so we

▶ 1:18:23 have based on what we have seen um the cfo determined about fifty thousand dollars now it could be more uh we don't have a set fee of what these consultants would charge okay So, for instance, if we approve tonight, or I'm just talking in case, the order of $50,000, and then the consultant comes in, we hire them, and it was $70,000, you're going to come back and ask for more? Well, we are going to let them know that this is what we're looking for. And based on what we're seeing that other municipalities have paid, we think that we are fairly close. Yes, of course, I can't tell you with certainty, but that's where we're fairly close. Okay. And so this order consists of hiring consultant to reassess our existing positions

▶ 1:19:30 Maya Jamaleddine: and city hall, right? Correct. Correct. So what about the positions that we've been, it's been put on hold and it's still not approved because of budgeting, because of our budget does not allow us to create these positions such as social workers that our community is in dire need of this position how can we include this in this um assessment so the position that we have we have 65 positions uh current positions and I apologize I don't have the actually let me see I don't have their positions so we do have social worker as part of the non-union positions that we're going to be looking to evaluate so would you be able to send us I'm sorry I didn't see the list of these positions and the document that you sent but would

▶ 1:20:51 Maya Jamaleddine: you be able to send us a list of all the positions that's gonna be evaluated yes I can do that thank you and the other one is you mentioned that the second phase after the consultant report would be released you will be meeting with the bodies of the city hall and administration and discuss the next phase can you elaborate a little bit about what is it what's the ninth title of uh can i elaborate i'm sorry i couldn't hear you i'm i'm sorry i said can you elaborate of what is it that you envision the next phase gonna be so the next phase is once we receive the implementation plan and once we look at the positions that will ask the consultant to prioritize them based on the need for change whether it's the job description or the compensation then we're going to have to

▶ 1:21:58 get together with the mayor with the deputy mayor with the CFO and review these positions and ensure that they are aligned with the goals of the administration so there are some positions that will be a priority and that's a discussion that will have to take place okay so and that would come back to us to decide on the increase of course of if there is any changes and and salaries. Correct. Okay. Thank you. I'm done with my questions. Thank you so much. Thank you. Thank you, Councilor Jamaleddine. Councilor Garipay. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. Thank you, Ms. Lata, for being here. I have a question. You mentioned there were 65 non-union positions. Yes. If, you know, I'm not debating whether we're for it

▶ 1:23:05 or against it, but if we're spending the money for this study, are we including the position of mayor in this study? Ms. Lodzina, you're on mute. No, we're not including the position of a mayor. We are focusing on non-union positions, non-elected positions. As I said, non-union positions. historically um if there's any type of uh job responsibilities change work conditions change requests for salaries these non-union roles they don't they don't have the like the union position they don't have the representatives of the attorneys to uh to advocate on their behalf so throughout the years these non-union positions have been on their own so we're trying to achieve more equitable and fair classification for them but we have not included

▶ 1:24:16 Mark Garipay: elected officials we're specifically focusing on the non-union staff okay i would just assume that if we're if this gets approved and we're spending the sum of money for a comprehensive study. The position of mayor and on a lesser degree, even maybe councilor or back then alderman, that has always been a topic in our community that it's gotten very . I personally think the position is under-compensated, but uh that's just my opinion but um i also believe that um you i mean you just said that the last survey we did was in 1988 or 89 so it's not like we've invested in these surveys and we've always had um discussions about the mayor's salary with no real data so if we're spending the amount of money for a compensation survey um i think you know for the a little potentially

▶ 1:25:23 Mark Garipay: additional costs that this may may be to include these positions we should include it at this time if we're looking to attract the the best and the brightest to not only work for our community but run for the ceo office we need to really take a step back and see if it's compensated appropriately um so i really think that that should should be included in this study um you know I mean, actually, I'd like to make a motion now to amend the order 2020-43 to have this study include all compensated employees and compensated elected officials just to include this. i mean if we're spending the money i think we really should should take a um take a hard look at the the pay and what everyone needs to remember it's just a study the last one we did this 30

▶ 1:26:25 Mark Garipay: years ago there's no action moving forward i think in in our charter it also states that there's certain parameters in order to change the position but i think it's good to see what the position should be paid appropriately and see what uh see what the study would show so i would like to uh present that as a motion mr chairman can you can you just clarify that motion i would like i would like to make a motion to amend order 2020-43 to have the study include all compensated city employees and elected officials make it easy like that i think when you say compensated that's That's where I'm unclear. I'm sorry. I'll just go off compensated. Exempt? The 65 non-union positions that were identified by Ms. Latta that she was talking about.

▶ 1:27:31 Jeff McNaught: I see Councilor Thomas raising his hand. Is that a second or a request to speak? I request to speak through the Chair. I will, I will 2nd, comes with motion. It makes sense to me that if we're spending money to bring in the consulting firm to look at these positions, it makes sense to do it all at 1 time and include elected officials. So, that's the 2nd, for me for council, Gary's amendment. Number 2021 dash 43, could you hear me that whole time? No. Okay. You can hear me now. We have a motion by Councilor Garipay to amend order 2021-43 to include elected officials along with the 65 positions that are named in the order. The motion is seconded by Councilor Thomas. on discussion i see hands raised from council Migliorelli we'll go with you first and council

▶ 1:28:48 Leila Migliorelli: thomas saving uh stewart i have you next thank you mr chairman um i just have a question about whether we're allowed to amend the body of the rfp i i believe that what's in front of us is appropriating free cash in the amount in a certain amount whether i i don't know that we can we have the authority to amend the rfp can can you answer that question chairman uh i actually cannot um i i don't know the answer to that question council mcmaster thank you mr chairman i think if i understand council the gary pay's motion it's not to amend the nature of the rfp but the the order and the the nature for which funds would be allocated so it would i i think if i understand what he's asking is that um the order would say an appropriation from free cash account

▶ 1:29:48 Shawn M. MacMaster: zero one dash three two four zero zero one in the amount of fifty thousand dollars to hr professional services account zero one one five two two dash five two nine zero zero to fund a compensation and classification uh study of however however the counselor wants to put it compensated uh Salaries and that have elected officials or something of that. So, I think what he's saying is he's looking to. Um, amended the order to allow an allocation above and beyond the, the nature of the RFP. I didn't hear a console that he was looking to. You know, change the any of the, I guess details of the, um, the, the proposal looking to, you know, the concerns i raised about three percent of communities in um you know 12 communities

▶ 1:30:45 Leila Migliorelli: identified being three percent of all communities in middlesex county is a very small sample size i think that would be um beyond uh the purview of the council to me i think this seems within um our ability to do but um council captain my apologies if uh if i'm misinterpreting what it it is that you're requesting through your motion. Correct, I'm not looking to change the RFP. Chairman McNaught, if I still have the floor here, but if the order says to fund a compensation classification study, period, I just don't know if we're allowed to then specify. I could see that if it said to, you know, the type of employees that the study is for, I'm not clear legally whether we have the ability add on that addendum to to include ourselves in that mix but i'll just leave it there thank you

▶ 1:31:41 Jeff McNaught: thank you council Migliorelli um i'm in the midst of uh sending the city solicitor and out uh asking this question um but in the meantime um i'd like to go back to counselor eccles who was in queue i have counselor stewart next counselor echoes is sorry before you and counselor your itis uh vice chair eccles i got it i got it right for the first time it's your floor got mr chairman since since we're on discussion for the for the motion i'll i'll defer back um because i believe counselor stewart has discussed has discussion on the motion i had um questions about the compensation study in general so i'll thank you counselor echoes counselor stewart thank you mr chair uh regarding um the the motion to amend while i

▶ 1:32:32 Robb Stewart: respect uh counselor Garipay's intentions and i think they are um true to uh i think they're um a good position to take i don't think it's appropriate in that you're you're mixing apples with oranges and what i mean by that is um the study uh that ms lata is presenting is really um not only the the compensation but the the level of achievement the different titles the progression of those titles and that has nothing to do with elected officials you know elected official has a role and responsibility that's well defined um i think that if there's There's gonna be an examination of a compensation system for all of our elected officials. That needs to be a separate and distinct study. I don't believe it belongs in here

▶ 1:33:28 Jen Grigoraitis: and I would not support that motion. Thank you, Mr. Chair. Thank you, Councilor Stewart. Next on, I believe on the motion, we have Councilor Grigoraitis. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. Just, I appreciate Councilor Garipay additions and also those of Councilor McMaster's. I also agree with Councilor Migliorelli that I fear we're getting a little bit beyond the scope of what we can do with this order. And honestly, I'm still not totally sure that if the committee feels comfortable moving forward with this order at all. So I would actually, if there was a willingness on Councilor Garipay part to rescind his motion, I would make a motion to hold this order, given that there clearly seems to be more information

▶ 1:34:13 Jeff McNaught: that this body wants from Ms. Bata. Thank you. If I may second, Councilor Gergaray, I will second her motion. Well, we need to go back to Councilor Garipay first and see if you would like to first remove your motion. If not, we need to vote on it before that motion, any other motion related to this can be made. I'll remove the motion and 2nd, um, 2nd, uh. That's a very good right? This is motion to hold it in committee. Okay, can we actually get an official motion at this point? Council Grigoraitis? It was a suggestion before point of information. Mr. chair. Council of Thomas doesn't need to remove his 2nd. That's correct. Yes. Thank you. Council McMaster. Council Thomas your turn. Chairman McNaught, I will remove my second for Councilor Garipay amendment.

▶ 1:35:20 Robb Stewart: Thank you. Councilor Grigoraitis, do you have a second? Yes. Thank you. I motion to hold this order in committee. Second. Okay. Now we have a motion to hold Order 2021-43 in committee, seconded by Councilor Thomas. Is there any discussion? Councilor Stewart. Thank you, Mr. Chair. From the outset, I was not planning on supporting this at all at this time. I think it's a good idea to do this study, but to echo Councilor Grigoraitis comments at the outset, I think the timing of this, the relative priorities of what we need to be thinking about as a city and what we should be supporting i don't see this falling above the line at this point i think we should be more concerned about uh how we're going to be uh handling uh the situation with the pandemic

▶ 1:36:32 Robb Stewart: uh how we're going to be there's a lot of issues um that have surfaced that are related on the hr front but not necessarily compensation wise that i think we also need to address so um respectfully miss lata i think this is a great idea to look at uh comprehensively i just don't think this is the time right now uh and so i will be supporting to hold this in committee for the time being thank you mr chair thank you Councilor stewart and um I believe I have everyone, but I don't know if Vice Chair Eccles had any questions before we moved on? MR. I think most of them will be answerable when it comes back before us. MR. Okay. So what I can tell you in very, very short verbiage is the ultimate authority for the

▶ 1:37:32 Jeff McNaught: positions that go into the RFP belongs to the administration. so we can't change it. So that being said, is there any other discussion before we move to a vote on the motion to hold this in committee? Seeing none, Madam Clerk, can you please call the roll? Chair McNaught? Yes. Vice Chair Eccles? Yes. Councilor Tramontozzi? Yes. Councilor master yes council agarapay yes council of Grigoraitis yes council of Migliorelli yes Councilor stewart yes Councilor thomas yes Councilor maladin yes president sanella yes 11 yes unanimous motion passes thank you miss lata for your time um i know it's been rather long evening. We appreciate your efforts every day and tonight. Thank you. Moving on to the next and final order, we have Order 2021-52, an appropriation from Free Cash,

▶ 1:38:52 Jeff McNaught: account number 01-324-001, and the amount of $93,257 to various accounts is set forth herein. and I'm just going to read what here in means and I'll read the account numbers as well for the record zero one three zero one two dash five four seven one zero zero is the Essex agricultural cost that we pay for students to from Melrose to attend that school. Essex Agricultural accepted three incoming freshmen for school year 2021. 2020-2021, in addition to one returning senior, the fiscal 2021 budget estimated one returning student and one new acceptance based on information provided to the city's budget at preparation. This appropriation will make the budget whole for fiscal 21 for four students the I'm

▶ 1:40:03 Jeff McNaught: just going to read these all off and then we'll bring in the appropriate people for each item 0 1 2 1 1 2 5 3 5 7 0 0 appropriation request that is to fund replacement of the current police department guns and ammunition 0 1 2 4 012412-529000, appropriation requested to accommodate the volume of inspections. 012411-513000, appropriation requested to account for unanticipated overtime costs. Now, one thing I realized I did in reading those was I didn't give you the amounts. So let me just give you the amounts really quickly that add up to the 93257. The Essex Agricultural to fund the four students is $39,757. The upgrades for the current department guns and ammunition is $26,000. The inspection professional services appropriation is $25,000.

▶ 1:41:17 The inspectional salary, which is the unanticipated overtime cost, is $2,500. That brings us to the $93,257. All that being said, first, we will start off with the Essex Agricultural Appropriation. I believe we have Mr. DellaRusso with us this evening, the city's auditor. You should be in the room now whenever you're ready. Mr. Can you hear me? Hello? Can you hear me? Yes. So we can. Yes. Yes. Good evening. Good evening and happy new year and I hope things go. Well, much better for us this year and. For the whole, the whole city as a whole, hopefully have been exciting and a progressive year and I'm looking forward to that. Yes, if I may, we typically on this particular. Count here, we seek to identify the number of students that would be from Melrose that would be attending the Essex North regional agricultural and technical school district.

▶ 1:42:34 And in the past, the superintendent. Is able to work with us and try to come up with a determination. She did that actually. Last April, and she actually said to have in front of me right here. April 24th that she anticipated 1 student. But she suggested we make it for 2 students just in the event of a. You know, a change, which we often see, sometimes we see the number of students go from 4 to 2, it goes just the opposite. And we've had years that that's happened. We've had available funds in that line because less students attended than we anticipated. So, we did budget accordingly with the 1 that she was sure of and 1 buffer. if we get a notice back in august 25th um 2020 that the student enrollment um it will be four

▶ 1:43:27 Jeff McNaught: not two um so that change and again unfortunately um like the municipal world itself sometimes the change doesn't play to our time frame it didn't hear again but um it's simply a matter of uh funding the additional two students that are attending from melrose that we require to fund to make it whole that's all it is thank you mr doloroso do we have any questions from counselors on this appropriation seeing seeing no hands raised what is the will of the committee i'm sorry this is all one order that's why this is confusing okay um mr doloroso are you also are you speaking on all of these um appropriation requests in this order I'm speaking specifically to the regional school and overall free cash in general.

▶ 1:44:30 Jack Eccles: Question surface, but I do believe that the representatives are here from the inspection services department as well as the police department. To address a specific request, but any questions on free cash overall or a program. Obviously, the city council graciously can ask me any question they'd like. Right. I think it might make sense to leave you in the room, and I believe we might have one question from Vice-Chair Eccles. Go ahead, Mr. Vice-Chair. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. Thanks for being here, Mr. Taylor. So yeah, thanks for giving us the opportunity to ask questions about free cash. This is probably one of the first of many orders we're going to see. So just for everyone's clarity, either before or after um approving this kind of what is our free cash situation from

▶ 1:45:22 next year and what would we be left with after we approve this this 93 000 before us yes um again good evening well in the event that um the initial balance in free cash is 5 million 20,783, so had the council approved the entire request, you would have had a balance of 4,877,526, that did not happen, you took off 50,000, so you can add that back in. so um that works to the favor of the balance and free cash itself we do have the purposes of conversation we do have some placeholders that i think the council should be made aware of overall and the scope um and the largest thing um through the chair the 1.5 million dollars as a placeholder for snow and ice um if people recall back in 2015 we had

▶ 1:46:38 probably one of the worst um winters and cost-wise was over two million dollars almost 2.2 so with the current budget that we have of 675 we're having a placeholder 1.5 million which will bring it just under 2.2 million in snow and ice anticipated expenses however again we will not know that number until time moves forward and we can see how the winter treats us so there that's a large placeholder we also um obviously to the council's information we have a placeholder of a hundred thousand dollars for the racial diversity um training that we talked about prior to that we also have placeholders for trees radar speed lights etc and again one of the things i'd like to just um bring up if i may at the outset because i think it might be good timing um this

▶ 1:47:35 is really a a a free cash program it's not how do you use money that you have available to spend just for the sake of spending it we always try to outline it in the in the scope of an actual program what is what does that mean that means there has to be balance so that at the end of the day we can say as a community we did the right thing fruitfully with the available funds that we had and a part of that would be to put funds again into different stabilization funds different savings how does he we have to be considerate of how the outside world looks at us how do the rating agencies look at us how does the department of revenue look at us how does the community look at us are they prudent are they fiscally responsible so i'm so pleased that the council's

▶ 1:48:25 taken time and given the administration a lot of insight as to what the they believe that they'd like to see in the community that has phenomenal merit and phenomenal benefit it helps guide the program and at the end of the day you can i really sincerely hope we all can say this is a balanced approach this is the best you can get and and i take every dollar very sincerely as is this the best use of that money see the yes or no and does it benefit the community and the objectives of the communities so it's just part of a larger program um and again we have uh we intentionally hold off as much as we can to even come into the council until after we get more um a sense of uh where we're going to end up with the snow and ice deficit because obviously that can alter what's

▶ 1:49:21 available for other programs and other initiatives and that's that's practice that's the right way to do it um and and so this is i think the very first step in that process and i'm hoping that overall we can put together a phenomenal program this year that's going to please everyone and touch on things for each person and each um what perhaps that'll be a benefit thank you mr delarusso um is there any other questions at this time if not we're going to bring in uh chief lyle i believe in now chief can you hear us i can hear you thank you for being here tonight chief um i don't know if your video is not on i don't know if you want to turn it on um either way we can hear you you see me now there we go thank you thank you and then first off i'd

▶ 1:50:32 like to thank the mayor and i'd like to thank president sanella for their comments at the the beginning of the meeting, they were well stated. Thank you. Excuse me, the City Council as well as United Front. Thank you. This order is an order that was put forward last spring. It's carried concurrent. It's our weapons are 12-14 years old. The big thing for me is the warranties expired on them about five years ago, and it's more cost-effective to replace versus refurbish. I'm available for comments, questions. Thank you, Chief. Is there anyone? Counselor, regardless. Thank you, Chairman McNaught. Thank you, Chief Lyle, for being here tonight. I'm very much in support of moving forward with this.

▶ 1:51:26 Jen Grigoraitis: I did just want to highlight for the public and for my fellow counselors that i had requested some information from the administration regarding the dei needs assessment that had become linked to this order back in the spring and we did receive a concise yet informative and very digestible memo from chief of staff prendergast informing us that the city has received seven proposals from um various consultants to conduct that needs assessment and is anticipating moving into the contracting period very shortly. And I also appreciate Mr. Calaruso highlighting the $100,000. That was also a part of a memo that the council received in June. So I just wanted to make sure we all had that information and that we brought that

▶ 1:52:11 Christopher Cinella: into the public realm as well. So thank you again, Chief. That's all. Thank you, Councilor Grigoraitis. President Sinella. Thank you, Chairman Knott. I would be in support of this order as is. And I think that we should have investments in both the tools of the trade of a police officer as well as invest in DDI. And we can do both and we should do both. And I want to thank Councilor Ritter-Wright as well as Councilor Migliorelli who both have been seeking updates where the administration is at on the appropriation for the DEI and I know many of our residents have been seeking that update as well. So I would be in support of this as is. Thank you. Thank you, President Cinella. Do we have any other questions for the Chief Counselor Jomala Jean? Thank you,

▶ 1:53:18 Maya Jamaleddine: Chairman. Thank you, Chief, for being with us tonight. Again, also thank you for your patience and answering all our questions um you mentioned that these firearms were warranty was expired five years ago um can you remind us if uh this was because we couldn't renew the warranty or is it non-renewable um it's it's a it's a one-time one-time warranty the initial warranty is 10 years and then it's six years on the sites which is a different part of the weapon These are handguns, by the way, for everybody's information. They're Glock Model 23. They're a .40 caliber. The new ones would be a 9-millimeter. They're more cost-effective to purchase, as well as the ammunition that is supplied for them.

▶ 1:54:10 Maya Jamaleddine: I see. So, to say that we move forward with this order, are these the new firearms that we're going to be getting, purchasing, think would come with a warranty and for how long? Yes, it would be a 10-year warranty on the frame of the thing, as well as the sites is a six-year warranty. They seem to fill most sites. Can you remind the public of what is the features of these new firearms? Is it similar to the ones that we have? What's the differences? It's the same similar type of firearm. It's a smaller caliber is the easiest way to describe it. The smaller caliber. And I appreciate that. Can you explain a little bit more about it? Certainly, certainly. When you say smaller caliber, for those that who not very familiar with that,

▶ 1:55:14 would you be able to explain more? The main point behind this is the military uses a 40 caliber and the ammunition for our firearms is difficult to obtain, and the costs have gone up considerably over the years because of the military's operations around the world. So the FBI did a study several years ago, and they said that the 9-millimeter, which is a smaller version of a similar type automatic firearm, is more cost-effective and easier to obtain ammunition. Does that help? Perfect. Thank you so much. You're welcome. Any other questions for the chief? Council McMaster. Thank you. Mr. chairman. Good evening. Chief just for the public at home. So they understand going from the Glock model to a 9 millimeter.

▶ 1:56:14 Shawn M. MacMaster: Is it fair to say that that move is consistent with the larger steps that we're seeing in policing both at the local and state level to demilitarize? It's a term that has been used a lot in the public with respect to equipment provided to police departments that that changing from a clock to a 9 millimeter is 1 step at what has been called demilitarizing police departments. It's here to say that this, this is don't forget the federal level as well. This FBI did a lengthy study on this. And that's available and if anybody wants it, I'll certainly see to it that you have it. You're spot on that. You speak that council. And then my only other question chief, as you talked about the cost effectiveness of going to the 9 millimeters, do we have an armor that we employ at the police department?

▶ 1:57:07 Shawn M. MacMaster: So, Sergeant David is the armor for the police department with. His assistants, Robert man, for the middle school as well as Levi, the friends are a gentleman for patrol. So, if there was a problem, a malfunction, some operability issue with 1 of the current firearms that are 15 years old with the armor, take the 1st step at trying to fix that in house. And then if so, and if that was unsuccessful, would we then be forced to hire a gunsmith to try to fix it? If this allocation was not passive, yes, it's 1st, the 1st step is to repair it in house. If not, we have to ship it out. 1 of our vendors to have it repaired and is it expensive to have a vendor try to fix a 15 year old gun? The approximate cost to rebuild 1 is 250 dollars plus shipping and I don't want to say how we ship it.

▶ 1:58:04 Okay, thank you. Thank you. Council McMaster anyone else for the 1st time with the chief. Okay, President Sinella. One quick question, Chief. You have to certify a couple times a year, so, and I know getting new firearms, you'd have to certify again. Is that, have you already done that? We qualify three times a year. We'll start in the fall, which is our annual qualification, then we do one in the spring, and then we try to do a scenario-based set up at one of our vacant buildings in the community so it's actually hands-on set up as a classroom an office setting so we do scenario based so this will be an additional one to qualify everybody with these new firearms so I'll reach out to the sheriff's department we've been very

▶ 1:59:03 Jeff McNaught: very accommodating they have a trailer we'll be able to bring this right to the police department Bobbin instead of an eight-hour drill it would be a four-hour drill okay I have no further questions but with that I make a motion recommend passage check it we have a motion by president this is five or four different chunks of free cash that are all part of one order so we'll be waiting till the end to vote on everything so next up uh thank you chief i don't believe anyone else has any questions for you thank you for being with us tonight next we'll be bringing in uh the building inspector paul johnson i believe thank you coming in now good evening thank you for having me good evening mr johnson thank you for being here let's see if we get the video going for me

▶ 2:00:28 there we go all right thank you thank you floor is yours all right tonight's uh with respects to professional services um this is an account that we have for an as needed inspector he's paid per diem per inspection typically we we've done this in the past probably the last since I think 2008 approximately and the last couple of years we've had to come earlier than before typically we're usually in around February asking for money to finish out the year because of the volume inspections so this year we're here as the volumes have increased and we've exhausted the the account and as to the overtime account that is for our electrical or plumbing and gas inspector or building inspector when they're called out on an

▶ 2:01:33 emergency basis during typically during a weather event windstorm or something or heavy rain event where we have a lot of damage trees down and whatnot that affect electrical services, leave people without power, or trees through houses, that type of thing. So we're called out after hours, sometimes one, two, three o'clock in the morning. And we've exhausted that due to past weather events. So to get us through to the end of the year, we've anticipated a number of events. So hopefully we'll be spot on and won't have to come back. And I'm open for any questions. Thank you, Mr. Johnson for that summation. First up we have Vice Chair Eccles. Mr. Johnson actually answered my question. I raised my hand and then he answered my question

▶ 2:02:35 Robb Stewart: right after, thank you. You're welcome. Thank you, Mr. Vice Chair. Next up we have Councilor Stewart. Thank you, Mr. Chair. And thank you, Mr. Johnson for joining us at a rather late hour tonight. I appreciate your patience. Mr. Johnson, over the past fall, I received several questions slash complaints from my constituents in my ward, I'm in ward three, I represent ward three, as to the delays that were associated with their inspections. So I'm curious to hear if this is going to help With any remaining backlog that you may have, and if so, could you elaborate on what the backlog is? So we can set expectations accordingly for anybody else that are waiting for inspection services. I mean, some of these were indicating that there was several months in a backlog and I understand how busy work because everyone was taking on their projects, but it's something I think would be helpful to address with the community.

▶ 2:03:44 Okay, just to help me understand your question when you say backlog with reference to what inspections inspections. That's correct. To my knowledge inspections, day to day inspections. Are not backlog. They have never been. If right now, presently. Contractor either. All in the election, I mean, we do them same day inspections. You call in the morning. We're doing the same day. With typically, that's the way sometimes there are. Days where they have to push it to another day. So, my plumbing and electrical inspectors are part time, they work Monday through. Thursday, they're 24 hours a week. In my as a per diem inspector was Monday through Thursday. and you would contact him directly via email to schedule an inspection. Because of the COVID

▶ 2:04:50 situation, we've gone to the method of email. So when you need an email, you request an inspection, you would email him directly and he would schedule it with you. Typically, it's either the same day or the next day. To my knowledge, there has not been a backlog of inspections with that said i'm sure and it's happened to me that if a contractor may have sent an email either they sent to the wrong place or when they received a response from my inspector it went to their junk mail and they never looked in the junk mail i've had that happen with myself sending out permits or sending out letters and i follow up but typically i'm not aware of any backlog of inspections okay this um this is contrary to uh what i was hearing from uh three specific examples where uh

▶ 2:05:52 Robb Stewart: inspections were delayed uh one was more than six weeks one was more than eight weeks and they had contacted the office several times so um you know they sent me a fairly detailed description so i just wanted to uh ask if um if there are problems like this because there's obviously uh a bit of misrepresentation from what i'm hearing and uh from my constituents and from what you're saying to me if i get uh contact again should i reach out directly to you to see if we can get those push through well if there's an issue absolutely contact me and i'll go one step further they'd like to contact me about those three specific issues and if we have an address i can find out what happened if that's if something's authentic to happen okay great great thank you mr johnson

▶ 2:06:48 Cory Thomas: thank you mr check thank you thank you Councilor stewart next up we have Councilor tops Thank you, Mr. Chairman. Mr. Johnson, thank you for being here and thank you for your service to the community and the service of the Inspectional Services Office to the community. Over the last calendar year, could you say how much the requests for inspections are up compared to 2019? Well, I could tell you that we've been busy and the need for this inspector has been in place since 2009. Yeah, 2009. I came in on 2007, I came in. And over time, the complexity of projects have gone up. The size of projects have gone up. The complexity of codes have gone up. So if every little bit of something adds to time,

▶ 2:07:50 adds to processing time, adds to inspection time. So with, in comparison this year, calendar year, to last year, there may be a little skew because we had the glitch with COVID back in April. You know, we suspended inspections, we did a few things initially. But for this calendar year 2020. For inspections total total department inspections were a little over 3300 approximately, which. About 1130, we're building inspections out of the 3300. This calendar year 2020. I did go back in retrospect to 2019. where we had how did i get that one i didn't grab 2019 for that i only grabbed it for permits issued the permits issued in 2020 we issued around 2 800 total prone permits which i'm sorry 11 27 of that were building on the inspections we were 30 little over 3 300

▶ 2:09:23 inspections and approximately 1200 of those were building inspections for 2020. I misspoke earlier. I was looking at the permits themselves. In that time period for 2020, we took in approximately $688,000 in fees. In 2019, we had a total permits of 3,382. Out of those were 1,400 permits, a little over 1,400 permits issued for building. We took in 847,000. I ran the FY21 from July 1st to December 31st of 20. and we've the department itself has 1662 inspections with 700 little over 700 of those being building inspections and i ran the same numbers for the fy 20 the same six month period from 7 1 19 to 7 to 12 31 19 which would be last year and we issued a total of 1700 permits with seven little over 700 being building permits so the the two fys are comparable comparable

▶ 2:11:06 pretty close okay um were you how long were you shut down for doing inspections uh during covid um was an extended period of time and and have you ever seen that shutdown we we shut down probably I'm just approximately maybe two to three weeks tops before we got in a virtual system up and running. During that time we, you know, we stopped taking inspections, we stopped taking applications because we weren't doing inspections and it might have been two weeks total. During that time we developed a way to accept inspect uh accept applications via email i think in the if i call it was the month of may remotely we issued over 300 permits building permits in may so a total of the permits through the department excuse me from home you know remotely so there was no one

▶ 2:12:15 Shawn M. MacMaster: the office but we have a have a really good system going now for applications the volume is up well it's not up i think it's it's up a little in the complexity of the projects have changed all right sir thank you very much uh and again i just want to thank you for the help that you've given uh constituents towards seven over the past few months i really appreciate it thank you thank you thank you Councilor thomas does anyone else have any questions for mr johnson council mcmaster thank you mr chair good evening mr johnson i might have missed this so my my apologies if i did uh for the professional services request of twenty five thousand dollars um i just wasn't clear exactly on the the purpose of that and just to go to Councilor Stewart’s

▶ 2:13:11 question if there if there isn't a backlog what exactly is the 25 000 uh being spent for the the 25 there's not a backlog that 25 000 is for our as needed inspection inspector the per dam plus that it's used also forgive me to cover um replacement inspectors when my normal staff is on vacation well i have a few weeks to cover for my a couple of weeks for my electrical inspector my plumbing inspector that it's paid out of this account i've paid for my as an inspector at this time i have that person working four days a week monday through thursday doing the inspections and and is that that per diem inspector is it one person is it a building inspector or somebody would it constitute different inspectors for different things

▶ 2:14:07 depending on the issue for instance plumbing or electrical so the one person that's working for the building he's a local certified local building inspector through the state and the persons that would cover the electrical plumbing would need to be a licensed person meaning have a construction i mean an electrical license or a plumbing license and that would fill in for the plumbing inspector And the electrical inspector understood. Thank you. Mr. Johnson. Anyone else for the 1st time with Mr. Johnson. Seeing none, I think we're good to let you go. Mr. Johnson. And we can now discuss the. Order in full, thank you for being here tonight. Thank you. Good evening. And just while we're on the order, does anyone have any other questions for Mr. Dela?

▶ 2:15:11 Jeff McNaught: Russo. We appreciate your patience and sitting through all of these different presentations. Does anyone have any questions for Mr. De La Russo before we let him go? Seeing none, thank you, Mr. De La Russo, for being here. We appreciate your services very much. Okay. That was a lot. If I can do a very quick summary of what this order is, because it's a lot, I'm not going to read everything that I read in the beginning again, but what's on the table is $93,257. This money is chunked out into four line amounts. The first is so that four students can attend Essex Agricultural High School. That's $39,757. The second is the upgrade of police ammunition, that's $26,000. The third is inspectional professional services, and the fourth is overtime for inspectional

▶ 2:16:30 Jeff McNaught: services salary overtime, all due to high volume of inspectional services, those being $25,000 and $2,500 consecutively. That totals your 93,257. All that being said, I don't know if there's more discussion, I would ask what is the will of the committee? Chair McNaught, my motion is still on the floor, even though we still had to hear. I don't know that you fully got your motion out before I cut you off. So I apologize for that. President Sinella, can you restate your motion? Just motion to move recommendation passage full 2021. Dash 52 second. Okay, so we have a motion for passage from President seconded by counselor Thomas. On discussion, seeing no discussion, Madam clerk, can you please call the role?

▶ 2:17:34 chair mcnaught yes vice chair eccles yes Councilor Freeman yes Councilor mcmaster yes Councilor Garipay yes Councilor Grigoraitis yes Councilor Migliorelli yes Councilor stewart yes Councilor thomas yes Councilor Jamaleddine yes president sanella yes 11 yes the motion passes And that concludes our business for this evening. So I will entertain a motion to adjourn. Motion to adjourn motion adjourned by Council Stewart, seconded by Councilor Thomas. Madam clerk, can you please call the role? Chair McNaught? Yes. Vice Chair Eccles? Yes. Councilor Tramontozzi? Yes. Councilor McMaster? yes that's all the gara pay yes councilor Grigoraitis itis yes I'm still a mickley really yes counselor Stewart yes counselor Thomas yes

▶ 2:18:43 Jeff McNaught: counselor Jamala Dean yes the president Sunilla yes 11 yes the motion passes thank you all for your hard work tonight good evening see everyone soon nice job Thanks, buddy.

Original documents

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