Appropriations & Oversight Committee — 2021-01-25

Appropriations and Oversight Committee Meeting

This meeting starts at 7:40 in a recording that covers several meetings.

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

Minutes

CITY OF MELROSE APPROPRIATIONS COMMITTEE CALENDAR● JANUARY 25, 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 The public can find online access instructions to view this meeting at www.cityofmelrose.org/remote-meetings

ORDER-2021-60 Informational Request for informational session with independent audit firms Powers and Sullivan, CPA and Clifton/Larsen/Allen Recommend Place on File City Council

ORDER-2021-62 Appropriation An appropriation from free cash, account (01-324001), in the amount of $55,300 to various police department accounts for costs associated with hiring new police officers. Recommend Passage City Council

ORDER-2021-63 Grant Acceptance of a FY21 Police 911 Training Grant in the amount of $82,089.51. Recommend Passage City Council

ORDER-2021-64 Grant City of Melrose Page 1 1/29/2021 3:38 PM Minutes Appropriations Committee January 25, 2021 Acceptance of a Police State 911 EMD Grant in the amount of $18,000 to offset the annual contract cost for Cataldo Ambulance Service. Recommend Passage City Council

ORDER-2021-69 General Authorizing the Creation of a Public Hiring Process for the Melrose City Clerk & A Performance Evaluation Process for Council-Appointed Positions Pursuant to Section 2- 8 of the City Charter Recommend Passage City Council City of Melrose Page 2 1/29/2021 3:38 PM

Transcript

▶ 7:25 Jeff McNaught: Okay, do we have everybody here? Here we go, folks. 24 hours removed from finding out that Tom Brady's going back to the Super Bowl. That's how we're going to start tonight off. Um, good evening. The time is 7 o'clock p.m. The date is January 25th on this fine Monday night this is a meeting of the Appropriations Committee and I am Councilor McNaught the chair of this committee and rule of a in lieu of a roll call attendance joining me this evening our vice chair Eccles, Councilor Tramontozzi, Councilor McMaster, Councilor Migliorelli, Councilor Garipay, Councilor Grigoraitis, Councilor Jamaleddine, Councilor Stewart, Councilor Thomas and President Cinella. This provides a quorum for the record.

▶ 8:28 Jeff McNaught: Pursuant to Governor Baker's March 12th, 2020 order suspending certain provisions of the open meeting law and the Governor's March 15th, 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 mm TV 3.org for the folks at home this is the portion of the meeting where members any member of the public may come before us to speak about any item on the agenda but tailored just two items on the agenda and at this time

▶ 9:22 I'll entertain a motion to open the floor for public comment I make a motion open public on second motion to open the floor for a public comment made by councillor Stewart seconded by president Sinella madam clerk can you please call the roll. Chair McNaught? Yes. Vice Chair Eccles? Yes. Councilor Freeman-Tosey? Yes. Councilor McMaster? Yes. Councilor Garipay? Yes. Councilor Grigoraitis? Yes. Councilor Migliorelli? Yes. Councilor Stewart? Yes. Councilor Thomas? Yes. Councilor Gennady? Yes. President Cinella? yes 11 yes motion passes we are now open the floor is open for public comment do we have anyone in the attendee room wishing to speak no one is raising their digital hand at this time seven people um i don't see any hands up either

▶ 10:43 Jeff McNaught: second thank you uh motion to close public comment made by councillor eccles seconded by councillor Grigoraitis madam clerk will you please call the role yes yes yes yes yes yeah yes motion passes Again, for the folks at home, there are orders before us this evening requiring input from at least one non-council member. That means guests of the council will be coming here to speak on various orders. Therefore, I will entertain a motion to suspend the rules. Thank you motion to spend the roles by council. Seconded by council. Yes. Yes. Yes. Yes. Councilor Garipay? Yes. Councilor Grigoraitis? Yes. Councilor Migliorelli? Yes. Councilor Stewart? Yes. Councilor Thomas? Councilor Zamanuji? Yes. President Sinela?

▶ 12:31 Jeff McNaught: Yes. And yes. Now, before I read off the first order, I just want to make a note for our guests that are here speaking. And that is just to say, please don't pay attention to all of us who may be raising our hands at any time. Counselors may be getting in line to ask questions. You don't need to stop in your statement or your answer. You can continue on. I'll be tracking the hand raisers and you don't need to stop unless I alert you or the clerk alerts you to do so. So that being said, first up on our orders this evening is Order 2021-60. It's a request for an informational session with an independent audit firm, Powers and Sullivan. And I am a co-sponsor of this order, but I'm going to hand

▶ 13:31 Christopher Cinella: it over to President Cinella, who's the maker of the order, to explain what this order means. Thank you, Chair McNaught. You bringing folks into the room? So the thought on this a year ago was that I wanted to bring them in just to simply educate a mostly new council at the time so ahead of our budget season. Of course COVID hit and then everything got kind of put on hold but but nonetheless, I still think it's important to learn about what they do at their firm, what they look for, and then maybe how that may or may not correlate into our credit ratings. But just as a reminder, this is not meant to be a budget hearing, but more about just the process that they conduct. I also understand in the order we have Clifton,

▶ 14:36 Jeff McNaught: and Alan, but they couldn't be with us this evening. So hopefully we'll schedule something with them in the future. So thank you. Thank you, President Cinella. That being said, we have our auditor, Mr. Della Russo in the room, and we have Mr. Powers from Powers and Sullivan. Mr. Della Russo, we'll let you take the floor first to introduce our guest and what we may be hearing a little bit about tonight. good evening um can you hear me yes thank you yes it's uh i appreciate being here this evening and uh it um to the maker of the order i i thank him um i believe that this is actually perfect timing to bring in the outside auditor um jim powers this is his first year as the partner for the city of melrose um the former partner retired who spent years working with us and we're very

▶ 15:38 fortunate to have him we're just as fortunate and i'll argue even more so having mr palo is here who has a relationship with approximately 80 cities and towns or more and he also has relationship with the department of revenue division of local services and it allows us to really be, in our own way, a partner with the outside auditors. This insight that he can bring to the table for the City of Melrose is invaluable. It's not often you get not only a great audit from him, and I consider them exceptional, but you also have the ability to work with someone that interacts with the Department of Revenue on a regular basis and that makes our job um that more uh important and meaningful um he can provide

▶ 16:28 insight that others just simply can't so without further ado welcome jim i appreciate you having yeah come here tonight thank you patrick again my name is jim powers from powers and sullivan Audit partner for Powers & Sullivan. I've been working for a long time, let's put it that way, for well over 30 years. This is what our firm does all the time and it's like Patrick said, we audit communities as small as Gosnold, which is the smallest community in the state, as large as the city of Springfield, and everybody in between. We audit, like Patrick said, approximately 80 cities and towns, and probably another 40 or 50 regional school districts, water and sewer districts, special governments, et cetera.

▶ 17:25 That's the focus of our firm, and it ends up being a very nice niche for us as we go through and service Melrose and all of our municipal communities. patrick asked me here tonight to kind of give an overview of the audit process itself what we audit responsibilities etc um and i know constantly that you said um there might be hands being you know uh put up to ask a question etc i don't mind being interrupted all the way through this to me is a an open forum and works best that way with again we we have just a limited number of attendees from the standpoint of who's participating in that so if we get stuck on something and you want to drill down um here as long as you want me or here's little as you want me as we go through this um i uh sent over to kristen a um a powerpoint

▶ 18:28 presentation i have not used webex before how do i get that up if you want me to put that up i'm going to make you the presenter mr powers yeah you should be able to share your video screen across the powerpoint you should be able to share that all right i can see myself a little bit over here yeah all right all right because can everybody see the powerpoint yes yes okay i'm I'm sorry, I just can't see it on my screen. This is just a general presentation. The first 20 pages or so of this presentation is looking at it from 10,000 feet as opposed to drilling down. The last eight or nine pages, it's into a little bit more detail that I just put that in there for everybody to read. If Kristen wants to send the presentation to everyone,

▶ 19:33 that would certainly be helpful. We can discuss the last pages, but there's required communications with those charged with governance that we have to give either management or councilors, mayors, etc., depending on the environment. It just goes over detail of an example of the type of information that we send over at the end of the audit. To stop the process, we just have to discuss what's audited. Objective, review the audit process, discuss roles and responsibilities of the city and the audit firm. What do we audit as we get through this? We're hired to audit the city's annual financial statements presented in accordance with generally accepted accounting principles. I highlighted cities for a specific reason.

▶ 20:28 One of the misconceptions a lot of times is that although we assist the team to put together the financial statements, we have the infrastructure to do that. We do 150 of these per year, so we're pretty good at putting that together. But these are the city's financial statements. They're not the auditor's financial statements. Patrick takes responsibility for 100 percent of what's in the financial statements, including the statements, the notes to financial statements, the adjustments that need to be made to convert from the UMIS basis of accounting all the way through. All we own in the financial statements is our audit opinion. Just wanted to make sure everybody understands that. Similar to, if you're not familiar with governmental financial statements,

▶ 21:18 and I apologize if you do, but some of you may not, so I'm just going to go a little bit basic. Here is that if you're familiar with commercial financial statements, regular business, et cetera, there's a group out there called the Financial Accounting Standards Boards, which sets all the rules and regulations on how the accounting and the financial statements and the presentation of such is conducted for all commercial enterprises. The offshoot to that happened 30 years ago or so that created the Governmental Accounting Standards Board. And the reason for that is they, although many things are similar, there are things that are different in governments and how it's treated. You don't have a profit motivation. In Massachusetts, it's illegal for the city or town to, in effect, go bankrupt or close its doors.

▶ 22:15 and so there's different ways to take a look at things where all of a sudden we see we have seen in the past large companies in effect go bankrupt but you won't see the city of Melrose going out of business you may have financial difficulties but you'll still be able to continue and people will still go to school police and fire protection so with that being said there's different rules on some of the items that are contained in the financial statements and that's why you have a governmental accounting standards board and the acronym is GASB that's part of that and what GASB does is it provides a consistent accounting treatment of a government's activity now Melrose is in Massachusetts and in Massachusetts the department of revenue

▶ 23:06 division of local services establishes the rules for the financial activity and that's different than rhode island it's different than every other state in the union everybody gets to decide how they how the municipalities governed by the particular state uh reports their financial activity in massachusetts from your activity you get free cash etc and so what the governmental accounting standards board that says for all intents and purposes what a city of town does is pretty much similar regardless of the state you're in but they have to set up in effect a consistent accounting treatment so that users of the financial statements stakeholders or say moody's or an investor in your bonds etc can compare the city of melrose to the

▶ 23:58 the city of Peoria and every other city or town throughout the nation, if you didn't have that consistent accounting treatment, you wouldn't know how people were treating, in effect, that particular activity and you think you're making a decision based on one thing, but it's actually different. What happens is that as part of this, the Massachusetts Department of Revenue, through law and regulation, established what's called the Uniform Municipal Accounting System, UMass. Different than UMass College, but UMass is the name of that. That creates a consistent budgetary basis of financial reporting for all our communities. As you know, as you go through, you have a general fund which you go through

▶ 24:54 is looking at the finances that go through and say, we've got free cash, we've got to balance our budget every year. We have a recap, we have a water enterprise, we have a sewer enterprise, we have the Mount Hood golf course, etc. There's a lot of funds that are maintained by Patrick on his ledgers in accordance with the UMass accounting system. They're separated by funds for a reason. Not everything's a general fund operation. you get a lot of grants in for school operations, for other things as you go through. And for statutory compliance, the DOI has established reasons for every one of those particular funds and whether or not they're legally able to be established by any city or town. The foundational ledgers, the UNIS ledgers

▶ 25:44 that you go through, the things that you do day to day, the budget that you passed, we audit that. I consider that the foundation for all of these financial statements when we get to the GAAP-based financial statements that contains 95% of what's audited. It's what you do, it's how you live and breathe, and it's how you account for everything. For all intents and purposes, the UMIS basis of accounting is a cash basis system, Meaning that you recognize, and again, with some minor variations, but you recognize revenue when you receive it. So, even though you might have a receivable for taxes, if it's not paid by June 30th, the recognition of revenue is deferred to the following year when you actually collect it.

▶ 26:34 That's not the same thing that happens on a GAAP basis account. You budgeted expenses for the year and what you paid during the year plus any warrants that were processed in the 1st, 15 days of July is accounted as an expenditure for that particular budgetary period. And if there's anything else that may be carried forward, it's incumbent from a budgetary basis of accounting. And so what happens from there is that we have a cash based financial statement. that when we convert over to the GASB reporting model, there's a series of journal entries that is used to convert to the GASB reporting model that's layered on top of it. What is in the GASB conversion process? The UMass reporting model is the foundation and that doesn't change.

▶ 27:31 We audit that. We go through that in detail and I'll talk about some of audit procedures that we use a little later in this presentation. But what happens is that there's a series of journal entries, as I said, to convert UMass to both the modified accrual basis of accounting and the full accrual basis of accounting. Now, these entries that are completed, the conversion entries, are not completed by the audit firm. They're completed by Patrick and his team to give us as part of that and some of these entries are in the umis basis of accounting they don't really recognize any long-term assets long-term liabilities in the financial reporting model so you have fixed assets capital assets reporting and you need to report that in the

▶ 28:19 gatsby reporting model you know say if you built a new school for 100 million dollars In the UMIS basis, it's not part of your reporting model to figure out free cash, etc., but it's obviously an asset, you know, similar to your house, that has value to that and it's depreciated over the next, say, 50 years, and so there's a net value for those fixed assets. In order to create and buy and build that particular school, you would have had to take out long-term debt. Every year, the UMIS basis and what you budget in the general fund is just the debt service principal and interest on the long-term debt but it doesn't record as a liability in your fund-based financial statements that particular liability second vacation time that's

▶ 29:06 earned by your employees through june 30th that's a long-term liability has to be recorded i think everybody uh and correct me if i'm wrong does everybody kind of realize that the there's a huge unfunded liability for your net pension liability that has to be funded by 2040 and that isn't reported right now on your fund-based statements to umass the same thing we can net other post-employment benefits in effect all of your employees when they retire earn a benefit that the city has agreed to pay a portion of their health insurance for the rest of their lies based on specific decisions from a statutory standpoint and what the city decide to do for that particular liability and then there's other things for landfill liabilities and reporting deferred

▶ 30:00 inflows and outflows oops okay and so what we do is when we audit that each one of those adjustments that are given to us by management we audit those independently and layer that on top of the foundation to develop and create the fund-based statements according to GAP and the accrual-based statements also. The actual basic financial statement, what's included in there, if you had a copy of it, basically what we own is our independent auditor's opinion. It basically states that our responsibility is to express an opinion on the financial statements based on our audit in accordance with auditing standards. What you want and what you have received is what's called the unmodified or clean opinion and basically states that the financial statements

▶ 30:55 present failure in all material respects. The financial position changes in financial position and then cash flows in accordance with accounting principles generally accepted in the United States of America and that's in effect promulgated by the GASB. and uh what it also says kind of repeat what i said earlier that you are responsible meeting management is responsible for the content of these financial statements and not the auditor um a couple of things that are important there's part of the independent auditor's opinion if you read that uh middle bullet uh point it says an unmodified opinion states the financial statements are presented fairly in all material respects that doesn't mean that it's perfect okay

▶ 31:40 You spend well over $100 million a year when you add everything up, $90 million general fund plus your enterprise funds and special revenue funds, etc. Therefore, we go through when we audit and there's a materiality standpoint that we don't look at everything. We're not looking at a department that may collect $12,000 per year in cash receipts. Because if you have a $12 million fund balance, and they misrepresented or misreported the $12,000 they collected in the year, it's not going to change any reader's financial opinion on whether or not your financial statements are fairly presented. If it was a million two, that would be something different. But always take a look at that. We're not hired to find every error in the financial statements.

▶ 32:44 We're taking a look at it with a materiality function as part of the audit. Inside the basic financial statements after that of what you own, there's a statement of net position and statement of activity that present the full accrual basis of accounting. Again, UMass foundation alleges the stock, and then add those full accrual adjustments to these. One of the things you'll notice when you take a look at these financial statements, it's usually going to show a large negative balance in net position due to the pension and OPEB unfunded liabilities. You'll eventually have to fund that. That's one of the differences between what I talked about earlier, Commercial enterprise funds, enterprise activity through the FASB would not allow this. They would go bankrupt because you're not allowed legally to carry these particular unfunded liabilities.

▶ 33:44 But you are in the governments, you have over 200M dollars worth of unfunded liabilities just for these 2 items. And therefore that drives that negative. Financial position 1 of the things I heard someone talk about earlier. How does that affect your rating, your bond rating, et cetera? This is something that pretty much every city and town across the nation has a considerable liability and all the states do too. They take that into account when they're evaluating your credit worthiness and your bond rating. And depending on what you're doing for these particular items, they'll just take that into effect. There's another set of by financial statements, they're called the governmental funds balance sheet.

▶ 34:35 And a statement of revenues, expenses and changes in fund balance. And they use the modified accrual basis of accounting. Inside of government, it may not make any sense to you, but. There's different statements that present 1, a full cruel basis of accounting, which I just discussed. which includes all long-term assets, long-term liabilities, all short-term assets, all short-term liabilities, and obviously the changes in financial position. But that's not how you really operate. You operate through that funds. You go through and you set your tax rate for your general fund based on what you have to pay for say debt service, and you're not raising depreciation. And so they realized, the GASB is that,

▶ 35:20 These statements are very meaningful and sometimes are more important than the other statements we just mentioned to see how well you're doing from a year-to-year financial flexibility and how well your fund balance is being maintained, what type of balances your stabilization funds have. And that uses the modified approval basis of accounting, the flow of financial resources as opposed to the flow of economic resources. Same type of things that happen, but it includes things in your general fund that doesn't, as part of your UMIS fund-based, it's like stabilization funds. If you add up all your stabilization funds, they are included as part of your general fund, even though UMIS doesn't, separates that.

▶ 36:06 But they had to do this to make sure there's consistent application for all communities throughout the nation, and that's evaluated and go through that process. Also, another fund-based is the proprietary fund-based statements. Again, they're full accrual, and these are your enterprise funds. They use the full accrual basis of accounting, and then Melrose is the water, sewer, mountain hood, and the ambulance enterprise funds. Again, these are prepared in the same manner as the entity-wide statements. The UMIS conversion entries are added to make the full accrual financial statements. These are different and you don't see a budget to actual on these. A GAAP doesn't allow it because they are enterprise funds.

▶ 36:56 Jeff McNaught: Enterprise funds, basically, from the GAAP standpoint, the GASB standpoint, they expect that the enterprise fund runs similar to a business where you recover all of your expenses, whether direct or indirect, through rates, that you charge the users, the water users, the sewer users, a fee sufficient to make sure that your budget's balanced and you have a certified retained earnings at the end of the year. . Mr. Powers. Yeah. I'm sorry to interrupt you. We actually have some meetings following this, so we're just going to have to recess and gavel out of this one and then come back. I'm sorry to interrupt you. We will come back to you shortly. But for the moment, I have to entertain a motion for a recess.

▶ 37:51 Okay. Whatever you need. Don't everyone jump at once? I'm going to take the present to fall away for a second. Okay. I have a motion to recess from Councilor Grigoraitis. Do I have a second? Second. Seconded by Councilor Garipay. Madam Clerk, can you please call the roll? Yes. Can you hear me? Yes. Councilor Tramontozzi? Yes. Councilor McMaster? Yes. Councilor Garipay? Yes. Councilor Grigoraitis? Yes. Councilor Migliorelli? Yes. Councilor Stewart? Yes. Councilor Thomas? Yes. Councilor Zimbalo-Dean? Yes. Councilor McAvoy? Yes. yes yes motion passes we are in recess finance committee all right good evening the time is 7 32 on monday january 25th and this is a meeting the finance committee i'm chairwoman Leila Migliorelli

▶ 43:08 Jeff McNaught: I believe you have a 30-minute window for public comment in that particular meeting. Okay. All right. Madam Clerk, do you have some? I don't believe it's 30 minutes for public comment, 30 minutes to start the meeting. All right, so we have the 30-minute clock for finance. Okay. All right, so we'll bring Mr. Powers back in. Mr. Powers, sorry for the interruption. As you can see, we have four meetings going on tonight. We don't want to chop up your presentation too many times. If you feel as though you may be giving us too much detail, don't feel bad going a little bit faster and allowing us to read and then reach out with questions if need be. No problem. Does everybody see the presentation again?

▶ 44:08 They did that? We do now. Okay. There we go. I will be quick and hit the key points without going into detail. If after everything is done, you get to read the presentation and you want me to come back for questions, that's certainly acceptable. I can do that anytime. It's part of what we do from a service standpoint. The rest of the financial statements, we just finished the enterprise funds. There's notes to the financial statements. Inside the notes to the financial statements, actual required detail and explanation of the key elements of the amounts in the financial statements. Our audit opinion extends to all the disclosures reported in the notes. When we give our opinions on the financial statements,

▶ 44:56 that includes all of the notes as part of the basic financial statements. In addition to that, the GASB requires what's called required supplementary information. That's part of the financial statements, includes management discussion and analysis, which in effect tells the reader in plain English what the numbers mean, why things went up and down. It's something that Patrick is very involved in doing to make sure that you understand, and the reader understands, again, in plain English, why the general funds balance increase. or what happened to the OPEB liability or the pension liability. Also required supplementary information for various OPEB and pension schedules, and then there's a budget to actual for the general fund that's also part of that as we go through.

▶ 45:43 In addition to that, there's a thing called the single audit. This is a federal requirement that if you spend over $750,000 in any one fiscal year, you need to have it affect the compliance audit, which we conduct as and the reason it's called a single audit, the federal government rolled this into a compliance audit for the federal government, along with the financial statements audit, so you're not audited twice when it affect the same activity. The city has historically always spent more than the $750,000 and it's required every year. The federal government puts out a compliance supplement inside that compliance supplement. It gives us an audit program that tells us what they expect us to audit for them and how we're supposed to test that.

▶ 46:34 Most times it's a lot of school activity as we go through this year and for 2020 and 2021. You have the coven related expenses that Patrick and I have talked about as we went through this for all the kids act and all the female money that you've gotten in in order to deal with. Your responsibility to protect your citizens from the pandemic is part of that. That will be audited some in 2020 and some in 2021. All right, how do we audit we audit in accordance with both generally accepted auditing standards in the United States of America and we have to say the United States of America because. Uh, as an international financial community out there that may be purchasing your bonds. Uh, et cetera, and then, as I said about the single on the 2nd, uh, ago, we also have to audit in, in, um.

▶ 47:31 In compliance with the standards in the government, like auditing standards issued by the controller generally United States. These processes are extensive and trust me, I'm not going to go into detail in there. I'm just going to highlight. Kind of the process as we go through 1 of the most important processes that you go through for printing as any project you do. It's planning. If you don't plan, it's a helter-skelter operation and you're not going to get a meaningful, efficient audit as we go through this. Before we begin the audit, our audit team, me as the partner, one of our supervisors, the audit team get together and we discuss not only all the cities and towns, because you do pretty much the same thing because you're all governed by the same humanist rules and

▶ 48:23 and governed by the department of revenue for that foundational budget uh and then we use what we know about uh you plus anything that's unique to melrose uh some places have things that other ones don't and we come up with an effective audit plan when uh when we're going to come out and do the audit what phases of the audit we're going to do and how we're going to design those tests one of 1 of the things about planning planning never stops planning continues throughout the engagement because what you thought may be the issues this year may turn out to be different. Once you start getting into the numbers deep and so that continues and we can change our audit procedures as we see fit as we go through another key part that we have is before we go out to start the audit.

▶ 49:08 have a discussion especially with Patrick and his team to find out if there was any significant changes in either key employees operations you know change the accounting system did whatever or major events that occurred I mentioned a second ago all the major money that happened this year because of the pandemic at the end of fiscal year 20 and into 21 with all the money that's available now to the city and we have to audit that as we move and one of the things that Patrick and I have been doing as the expenditures have been coming up. We're pre-auditing these. He'd give me a call and send me some information and say, all right, what do you think about this? Is this allowable? What information, what documentation should we have to make sure that we're in compliance with

▶ 49:55 the rules as they were in effect developing them as they moved on? That's something that occurred as we went through then we go through what's called a risk assessment meaning that we design a procedure based on uh control risk inherent risk there's all kinds of risk in any transaction in any operation and different things have different levels of risk even though one city might have a specific transaction that's high risk it may be low risk at melrose because of the way Things flow through things that would be an easy way to take a look at. Would be a lot of money that's spent, but an extremely low risk for our audit standpoint would be a pension assessment. You get a 5, 6, 7Million dollar assessment from the retirement system.

▶ 50:43 It's 1 or 2 payments that's made. It's an assessment. You don't get to change it. That's an incredibly easy thing to audit. And absolutely no audit risk, even though it's a significant amount. When we take a look at our risk assessment, we also set materiality levels. You've heard me talk about that before to say, if we come up with any potential audit change, what's the materiality level as we go through the testing phases of our audit? We understand the internal control over financial reporting. Financial reporting itself, and excuse me if I'm going too fast, but I'm trying to get there as quickly as possible. The financial reporting isn't just your financial statements, it's your general ledger, it's how you operate,

▶ 51:33 it's how you're in compliance with laws and regulations set by the Department of Revenue and do that UMass accounting system. We have to understand how you maintain your books and records. We have to understand how you process payrolls. We have to understand how you process vendor wants. We have to understand purchasing and how you make journal entries. So we gain that understanding and then using various techniques, we test transactions and we pull samples statistically of and sometimes selectively specific transfers that may pose high risk to review that particular transactions to make sure that you're complying with your own internal controls and that you can rely on that to go to provide substantive audit evidence.

▶ 52:21 Subsidies test, meaning that we're taking a look at a balance at a particular point in time at the end of fiscal year 20. for example, you have cash and investments. That is probably the biggest risk associated with any governmental. Financial statement, as we go through that evaluation. we perform a lot of testing on cash and investments with confirmations, taking a look at everything, making sure that there's no journal entries that are posted inside the ledger to cover something that went wrong, making all kinds of tests both in interim standpoint and at ERA. But we do the same thing for capital assets, all those other liabilities, and anything else that's on the balance sheet as we go through.

▶ 53:06 Analytical tests. Analytical tests are very important. we go through in that planning and risk evaluation process, we come up with, based on our knowledge of both Melrose, our experience and everything, we have expectations of the results. You have a legally adopted budget that everybody goes through meticulously with a lot of due diligence to come up with your voted budget. We audit the heck out of that to make sure that from the recap, from the votes, from all the approvals, they tie into the ledges and so our analytical expectation is that we would not expect anybody to spend over their particular budget and for the most part i wouldn't expect a substantial amount that was under budget that's not my expectation going into that so if i took a

▶ 53:57 look at your budget to actual statement and i saw that education had a you know 50 million dollar budget however only spent 42 million dollars for the year i'm saying something's wrong here we need to extend our audit procedures it's usually not that bad uh but we'll take a look at that we'll compare it to prior years we'll compare it to your capital budget we'll take a look at the capital project funds if you have a capital budget that becomes our expectations for the year it's not a consistent amount that's spent annually because you're only building that school once and and so that's kind of where you go through as we take a look at that Then it gets down to, after all our testing's done, is we perform a multi-layer review of all components of the financial statements.

▶ 54:40 That means that the senior in the job prepares the financial statements, the supervisor slash manager in the job reviews everything as part of that particular process. I review it as the engagement partner in detail, and I approve not only the audit plan, the audit programs as we go through, and then what we call, have what's called an engagement quality control review by another partner. Who's responsible for going in and questioning everything and every decision we made to make sure that they came up with that is that same decision. It's part of the audited standings that that we talked about earlier, but it's something that we do also as part of audit. We discuss get a legal letter from the city attorneys or.

▶ 55:24 To tell us whether or not there's any significant pending or threatening threatened litigation. that's outstanding that the reader of the financial statements needs to know about. Then finally, we get a representation letter from management taking responsibility for the financial statements and disclosing to us any known errors or fraud. If there was fraud and they knew about it, Patrick signing a letter saying if he knew about it, he's required to tell us about that. At the conclusion of the audit, we're required to provide management in those chats with governments, certain information. This is where I said the last 10 pages, Jeff, it's something you want to read. It's all kinds of things and this is what we're required to do.

▶ 56:14 That is a snapshot of what an audit entails. Again, it's a risk-based approach, especially based on a knowledge of the city. Some things that we do in addition to that, Maybe below that risk threshold that Patrick may ask us to go visit a department. Because he doesn't like the way things are being turned over, say, from a receipt standpoint. And now we build that as part of the audit and we'll do that and do what we call a site visit. To take a look at the internal controls at a department, even those not significant. Or material to make sure that everybody is following the same compliance rules, et cetera. It would not alter my audit opinion if we found everything was wrong because it wouldn't be significant and material enough to do that. But it will be part of the management letter. And I think it's an overall good control as we go through.

▶ 57:11 Jeff McNaught: That kind of gets me to the end without going over the last 10 pages or so. So, if you want to ask any questions or put me off to the next after the next meeting, I'm fine with that. So, hopefully that was kind of the information you were looking for. Based on the request I got from Patrick, thank you Mr. powers. I think I speak for all of us when I say, I know we, we picked up some, some things there and for others like me where this isn't my world. I was confused at times, but that's good. That's that's why we asked you to be here with us and we're very grateful that you came and spent some time with us educating us on this. I know that you said that the last 10 pages was something that we could look over on our own.

▶ 58:08 Jeff McNaught: We're happy to do that and then touch base again if we think – I know you offered to come back. If we think it's best to have you come back or to email you with questions, we can cross that bridge when we come to it. You know what works well that we do with like a lot of audit committees just as a suggestion is when this year's financial statements are finalized, delayed by COVID and a few other things, because we put in a lot of things, because the rules actually didn't finalize until almost Christmas by the federal government to tell us what to do and how to test these things. Unfortunately, it works so much better in person to actually flip pages on the financial statements to go through that.

▶ 58:57 Jeff McNaught: If we ever get to that point again, I would suggest we may want to do that, but maybe, you know, provide an exit conference after we finish this where we can look at the actual financial statements, give you a couple of weeks to review them, where you could take this presentation, ask specific questions on that, and, you know, would probably need more than a half an hour. but that may be beneficial. Up to you what you want to do and I'm game for anything that you need. Thank you so much again. Thank you, Mr. DellaRusso. It's very helpful. I love having a PowerPoint for after the meeting just to look at, and then things click even more then. Again, thank you. We'll review everything and then we'll be in touch through Mr. DellaRusso.

▶ 59:51 Jeff McNaught: Okay. Thanks for having me. Take care, everybody. Thank you. Now I'm going to entertain another motion to recess, and I'm going to suggest before we go to recess that we next open with public service. We have some folks waiting in that meeting, and then we go back to finance, close out finance, and then come back to appropriations. Having said that, I'll entertain a motion for recess. We have a motion to recess from Councilor Garapet, seconded by Councilor Tramontozzi. If you could just move the microphone, Councilor Tramontozzi. Thank you, sir. Madam Clerk, can you please call the roll? Chair McNaught? Yes. Vice-Chair Eccles? Yes. Councilor Tran? Yes. Councilor McMaster? Yes. Councilor Garipay? Yes. Councilor Grigoraitis? Yes. Councilor Migliorelli? Yes. Councilor Stewart? Yes. Councilor Thomas? Yes. Councilor Maladine? Yes. Councilor Cinella? Yes.

▶ 2:37:06 Jeff McNaught: and Sullivan, who was doing a review of auditing. We don't need to go into detail on that. I only raise this because we have to make some sort of a disposition with that order. So that being said, I will go to the maker of the order, President Cinella, and see what your wishes are. Motion to place on file. Second. Motion to place on file by President Cinella, seconded by Councilor Grigoraitis. Madam Clerk, can you please call the roll? Chair McNaught? Yes. Vice Chair Eccles? Yes. Councilor Tramontozzi? Yes. Councilor McMaster? Yes. Councilor Garipay? Yes. Councilor Grigoraitis? Yes. Councilor Mcinerelli? Yes. Councilor Stewart? Yes. Councilor Thomas? Yes. Councilor DeMoliti? Yes. President Cinella? Yes.

▶ 2:38:14 Jeff McNaught: yes motion passes next up we have order 2021-62 an appropriation from free cash account 01-324-001 in the amount of fifty five thousand three hundred dollars to various police department accounts for costs associated with hiring new police officers i believe we have chief lyle with us tonight he's coming into the room here's chief i can hear you but i can't see you well you can't see me right can't see you now there we go good evening everyone good evening chief thanks for your patience sorry for the delay i've learned to have a lot of patience it's all good um this order is a transfer of funds requested for new hires we hired three officers they were originally supposed to get the academy last may and due to covet it was pushed out and eventually they dig

▶ 2:39:18 it into the academy in july it was the low police academy um they had two delays believe it or not a cold that episodes in the academy so they didn't graduate until december 4th and they're about two weeks out from graduating the field training program that is three officers we are hiring additional three officers right now we have pending separations forthcoming and one later in the spring and the reason i say that is it takes approximately 10 to 11 months to put an officer on the road from the first day we get the list for a new hire from civil service interviews physical mental evaluations academy field training and then they're on the road so it is a long lengthy process i will point out that i've looked this as a couple times

▶ 2:40:04 Christopher Cinella: there's a 30 discrepancy here how a few folks have seen it on the order i've added my numbers up multiple times it comes out to 55 330 but on the order it says 55 300 anyone picked up on that and i'm available for questions um at this time we're going to take a motion to amend it to to uh are we going to do that and get to 55 330. uh no we cannot yeah yeah it's not right so i'm going to go to uh president sanella you had your hand up i'm going to go to you first Thank you, Chair McNaught. Thank you, Chief, for being here. Just wanted to address a constituent email that we all received last Friday, and basically he breaks down what was budgeted for the school year 21 and uniforms, radio system upgrade, training, ammunition,

▶ 2:41:09 Christopher Cinella: and relative to what was budgeted for each one of those seems to be very high percentage-wise for these three officers. So his question is, has there perhaps been more turnover of officers than anticipated, or are there COVID-related costs wrapped into the above that may be reimbursed? That's his question. Well, first, as far as the budget, we're budgeted approximately seventy thousand dollars a year it's actually sixty seven thousand dollars a year but we had offices go to motorcycle school this this past this um this past summer late spring um and there was equipment they had to be added into it helmets um bridges motorcycle boots um they're quite expensive so it went from sixty seven to seventy thousand dollars

▶ 2:42:01 and that's a contract in 70,000 or 67,000 for an annual clothing allowance that is distributed in in july and january excuse me december so those are the numbers but as far as any additional this is the academy across i can run through the numbers if you would like um the the academy for lowell was three thousand dollars for for student behind three that was nine additional books, papers, there's another 550 per officer for a total of 10,650. Then there's uniforms, you have to buy academy gear, duty belts, boots, uniforms, running gear, equipment, hats, badges, and that all adds up to 6,587.70. Then there's additional supplies that we have to buy from AAA Police Supply, which is a ballistic vest for approximately $800 an officer.

▶ 2:43:05 That total comes out with holsters, a range of qualification equipment, 6,687.50. And it all comes up to $32,986.38, and then the additional $22,340.18 is for the three new hires that were in the process now. One is going to the MBTA Academy. The other two were fortunate. They're both going to a police academy. They'll be sworn in in the coming days. Their costs are, you know, about $10,000 less. so on that note with three new hires um what are your current staffing levels now and what should they be well i should and what we have are two different things the city ordinance says 61 we have 47 we do have some turnover every year you know officers come and go they transfer last year we had one transfer to retire there's two pending retirements right now there's another

▶ 2:44:13 one in the spring um and we try to balance it um the best we can do thank you council thomas thank you mr chair uh chief welcome um the 47 active uh police officers does that that includes the three that were just yes so it will increase the 50 when the three additional no no that's including the three that just got out of the academy in december we were they're an additional three with one going to the UTA Academy? That's pending to retirement. So by March 1st, we'll be down to 47. Okay. Yeah. So it won't increase to 50. All right. Thank you. Pretty much the status quo is 46 to 47. All right. Thank you for clarifying that. I didn't see any other hands up unless I missed anyone. Is there any other questions for Chief Lyle on this order?

▶ 2:45:12 What is? Oh, Councilor Grigoraitis. I'm just going to make a motion to recommend passage. We have a motion to recommend for passage by Councilor Grigoraitis, seconded by Vice Chair Eccles. Madam Clerk, can you please call the roll? Chairman, that's all? Yes. Councilor Eccles? Yes. Councilor Sandoval-Fluency? Yes. Councilor McMaster? Yes. Councilor Garipay? Yes, yes. Yes, yes. Yes. Yes, yes. Motion passes next up we have order 2021 dash 63. Acceptance of a 21 police 9, 1, 1 training grant in the amount of 82,000. $89 and 51 cents chief. Is there anything you. Oh, sorry, this is a reoccurring had for many, many years. It's a 16 hour annual recertification for each officer in the building. And we're unique Melrose. We have 3 dispatch positions. 1's unfilled. The other 2 are filled in the event. We have an emergency and they get overloaded. The supervisor steps in and assist.

▶ 2:46:51 Everybody in the building has to be trained in 911 dispatch. In the 16 hours, this year's curriculum, I don't know if you folks have it in front of you, are the four writers that we selected, ICAT de-escalation training, implicit bias training, procedural justice, verbal judo for telecommunication professionals. If anybody would like a copy of the syllabus, I'd be happy to send it along to Worker committees, and she can forward it to you all. I think that'd be great. Thank you. Chief 1st, we have counselor Thomas. Thank you Mr. chair you just listed a number of trainings. Is this the 1st time in the most common is going to be receiving. What's advice training or diversity training or escalation training? And I apologize for the audio. It's been difficult.

▶ 2:47:50 That's okay. No, this is just, you know, it's more enhanced than what they get at their annual in-service. Everybody goes to in-service 32 hours per year. And then you may get defensive tactics, and part of the defensive tactics will have a component of de-escalation training. Implicit bias training is a new training they have gotten to some extent in the police academy now. But I think as time rolls on, the next academies, you'll see it heavily emphasized in there as far as implicit bias training. E-escalation is going to be, uh-oh, sorry, paper at the keyboard. You'll see that certainly expanded. There is going to be considerable training for law enforcement in the coming months, and I'll certainly share that with you folks.

▶ 2:48:48 John N. Tramontozzi: Chief, thank you so much, and thank you for always being so readily available. and thank you for all that you and the police department not only during the pandemic thank you council thomas councilor Tramontozzi yeah and thank you uh chief um i know this is a great uh i'm assuming there's there's no uh state uh i mean no uh city matching funds required for this grant no it's not it's a non-man it's a considerable cost for this for for the entire police department. The entire police department to go to a training, an eight-hour training is $22,000. This is a real for the city. Excellent. Thank you for your hard work on getting these grants. Thank you to you and your department for all you do.

▶ 2:49:41 Maya Jamaleddine: Appreciate it. Thank you, Mr. Chair. Thank you, Councilor. Councilor Gimaldi. Thank you, Chairman. Thank you, to file for continuing providing us with all the information being so transparent um are these trainings mandatory to all the staff to understand they're required to take it everybody in the building is part of dispatch duties okay and is and as you mentioned is this the first time they take these kind of trainings or there's a there's a variety of topics and i selected these topics but specifically for our department okay so this grant is you are free to select the topic that you want it's not like they would limit you with turn topics right no there's quite a catalog of different uh training components and these are the ones i selected for the department okay thank

▶ 2:50:40 Robb Stewart: you so much thank you counselor and next we have counselor stewart thank you mr chair and thank you Chief Lyle. Just one question on the contract grant approval form. I noticed that the number 90,387 was crossed out and then written in with 82,089. What's the discrepancy between those two numbers? We originally put one for everybody in the police department and State 911 recognized every grant and they deducted the three new hires from this training uh we will be able to send them once they graduate the field training program later in the spring and i'll probably be before the council for additional uh grant money okay thank you for that clarification uh thank you mr chair did i miss anyone else i didn't see any other hands okay uh counselor eccles vice chair

▶ 2:51:47 Jeff McNaught: I was just going to make a motion to recommend passage. Second. Motion to recommend passage by Vice Chair Eccles, seconded by Councilor Thomas. Madam Clerk, can you please call the roll? Chairman McMaster? Yes. Vice Chair Eccles? Yes. Councilor Tammion Cozy? Yes. Councilor McMaster? Yes. Councilor Garibaldi? Yes. Councilor Zingaritis? Yes. Councilor McGuirelli? Yes. Councilor Stewart? Yes, Thomas. Yes. Yeah, yes 11. yeah. The motion passes next we have order 2021 dash 64 acceptance of a police state. 911 grant, and the amount of 18,000 dollars to offset the annual contract cost for ambulance service. Thank you. This is another reoccurring medical grant or 9-1-1 grant we get for medical EMS dispatch resource.

▶ 2:52:58 When a 9-1-1 call comes into the Maryland Police Department, it's a medical call. Automatically the dispatcher transfers it to Cataldo Ambulance. Their center is located in Malden and it's tiered. So if someone calls 9-1-1 saying I'm having chest pain, automatically goes to Cataldo Ambulance. They decipher it here. It's either ALS or BLS. I imagine if somebody has chest pains or elderly, whatever it may be, automatically, that would dispatch an ALS unit. Obviously, if it was something minor, somebody had a sore hand or something, it would be a BLS. Cataldo has been doing this for a number of years for the city, and we've had great service from them. As far as training, it's been excellent with them as well.

▶ 2:53:44 Jeff McNaught: Thank you. Chief. Does anyone have any questions on this order? Seeing none. What is the will of the committee? 2nd, we have a motion to recommend for passage by the president seconded by council. Adam Clark. Can you please call it? Yes, yes. Yes, yes. Yes, yes. Yes, yes. Yeah, yes. Thank you madam clerk chief. I believe we're. We're gonna let you go for the evening. Great. Thank you. Thank you for being here. Thank you for all you do and the whole department. Thank you. I'll pass that on. Okay. Next we have order 2021 dash 69. An order authorizing the creation of a public hearing hiring process for the city clerk and a performance evaluation process for council Appointment positions pursuant to section 2 dash 8 of the city charter.

▶ 2:55:27 Mark Garipay: counselors uh president senella sorry yeah um i just want to say i think uh this this order pretty much speaks for itself um should it pass uh tonight's committee and then subsequently full council and i'll be sending out an email as to serving on the higher committee thank you um anyone else have their hand up seeing none uh council Garipay um yeah through through the chair to the uh for the makers of the order i'm just curious is this um what what is the intent i know we have i know it says in the charter we have to do this uh every um appointment every three years but is the intent to open it up um every three years uh the position um to open it up for new hires or is it uh for reappointment what's what's going to be the intent going forward

▶ 2:56:38 Christopher Cinella: just to be clear especially if we're going to be putting this out and um having people apply i think it should be pretty much clear cut on that president sanella yeah i think that uh the intent is to establish a process you know going forward as it stated in the um order itself most of us on this council we're not a part of the process to begin with so this gives us an opportunity and plus the stated section 2a it's pretty clearly spelled out that the City Council shall elect a city clerk to to serve her a term of three years. It doesn't say may, could, it's shall, meaning must. That answers your question. Council Gaffney, does that answer your question? Yes. I guess just some clarification on shall a point,

▶ 2:57:46 but is that opening it up for application for a whole new hiring process, or is it um shall shall kind of renew i guess i mean it's just just to be clear it's a shell elect and and it's for an appointment of three years that's what the section says so it's must elect just for everyone's clarification okay thanks counselor thomas Thank you, Mr. Chair. To the makers of the order, is this – I apologize. I'm going to forget my time for a second. Thank you. Councilor Grigoraitis? Thank you, Attorney McNaught. I just wanted to respond to the chair. Councilor Garipay earlier question is one of the makers of the order. I think the future intent of the council Council is in the hands of future Council. I don't, I wouldn't ever want to say how a

▶ 2:59:01 Jen Grigoraitis: future body should go about its obligations under the Charter. So I think this is my interpretation and Councilor Snell's interpretation of how this body, given who constitutes it, our history as newly, mostly newly elected Councilors, and in all honesty, inheriting staff for whom there's been no formal performance evaluation process and i'm happy to know that the city is moving forward with that how we proceed with what is currently before us from a timeline perspective so i hope that helps council mcmaster thank you mr chairman in in looking at the uh charter uh it says that the city council shall elect a city clerk to serve for a term of three years period I think 1 of the challenges here is that that seems to have been interpreted a certain way by prior councils, which creates some precedent for us. Right? Or wrong.

▶ 3:00:03 Shawn M. MacMaster: I do think what also concerns me is that it's also clear that under the charter, there are 2 positions in city government that fall under the purview of the city council that being the city clerk. And that being the clerk of committees, it's clear in the charter that the clerk of committee serves at the pleasure of the council that speaks for itself. The clerk does not speak, or excuse me, the clerk does not serve at the pleasure of the council. And I think the charter says there shall be an election. i think what's critical is it doesn't say the city council shall elect a city clerk to serve for a term of three years comma subject to reappointment every three years it says shall elect elections by nature of what they are meant to be periodic whether it's a public office whether

▶ 3:00:57 Shawn M. MacMaster: it's a corporate board of directors whether it's a non-profit board of directors a professional association elections occur periodically and the charter is is very clear like it or not we didn't offer the charter it's the the constitution of melrose that's how we need to look at it it is uh law and we're bound by it um and again regardless of how it's been interpreted i do think it's incumbent upon us to have some processes in place there are no processes for the two employees who fall under the purview of the city council uh when i say employees i don't mean individuals i mean the positions um and i do think it's our responsibility i think it'd be a dereliction of duty if we don't establish some processes to

▶ 3:01:41 Shawn M. MacMaster: ensure that an election every three years means something whatever that is uh but without um processes that are defined without parameters um we are left in this difficult position that we're in uh right now so i do think with nine new members and i you know myself and council of chairman toesy were involved uh in um the uh the election uh of the clerk a few years ago speaking for myself i was relatively new i was only on for a couple of years so i understand what um the position that everyone else finds himself in right now and i do commend the makers of the order for trying to establish a process by which uh we'll be you know better off in future councils will be better off uh with some concrete definitions in place

▶ 3:02:30 Robb Stewart: moving forward thank you mr chairman thank you council mcmaster i believe councillor stewart had his hand up next is that correct i did mr chair thank you very much um in reading the language of uh this order um when i read about the job posting broadly disseminated I'd like to understand who controls that and what the anticipated costs of that are going to be. That's a fairly loose interpretation of trying to go and find individuals across, I think, justifiably a diverse range of candidates. So, that's that's 1 area that I did not feel comfortable with, and I would look for a little bit of clarification. To echo counselor. McMaster's point Mr chair. I also do believe that. It would make a little bit more clear from my perspective as well.

▶ 3:03:44 Cory Thomas: To understand what that process is, if it's at the pleasure of the council, or if it's not, and who's involved in this decision making process. And how does that happen? It's not quite clear. So it would help for me as well. In terms of clarity. Thank you. Mr. chair. Thank you Councilor Stewart, Councilor Thomas. Thank you Mr. Chair. I apologize for my train of thought earlier. It's been a long meeting and I've been failing on the web in the last couple of days. Councilor Stewart just asked the same question I had. Who will make up the hiring process? There'll be a subcommittee and if we can get some more information for the people at home, what the process will look like and who will be part of the subcommittee

▶ 3:04:40 Christopher Cinella: that will be reviewing applications. President Cinella. Yes, so again, should this pass committee and pass full council, I will be putting together that committee. The President can put this forward unilaterally. I decided that, you know, as a group we should deliberate on it. but in the past which you know going back i believe to when mary rita had left president khan i believe sent out a memo um stipulating this process so that helps um through the chair uh i mean there there's no guarantee though i mean we've referenced um you know none of us to go apart other than councilors mcmaster and tramitose we're part of the hiring process for our current clerk um with city elections now um facing us in 2021 you know there's no guarantee

▶ 3:05:48 Shawn M. MacMaster: that always will be back um to hire the next clerk um so i i don't know i i i'm weighing options on this order as we speak thank you uh counselor mcmaster uh just a point of information to offer some clarity on the former process. The President at that time, I believe, was, correct me if I'm wrong, Councilor Tramontozzi, I believe it was Councilor Zwirko, and there was a committee established under Rule 25 in which the President Appointment a subcommittee of uh counselors uh who um essentially um looked at candidates and made a recommendation to uh the full council uh if i'm wrong consulate chairman josie feel free to jump in but that was my memories there was a subcommittee established under rule 25. can i can

▶ 3:07:03 John N. Tramontozzi: Can I catch up? Yes, through the maker of the motion. Yeah, that is correct. Counselor McMaster is correct. When we were on the search committee for the replacement for the city councilor, as well as the clicker committees, the president did appoint a subcommittee. A matter of fact, I was 1 of the counselors Appointment on the subcommittee for reviewing the candidates for the clerk of committees and what the process entailed was. We would interview, let me let me stop by saying that the HR director. would post the uh the position uh that the hr uh director would accumulate the resumes um and then submit them to the subcommittee that was Appointment by the president of the counselor we would then have an interview process and we then after interviewing the candidates would

▶ 3:08:12 John N. Tramontozzi: bring the recommendation to the full council for a vote the full council would have the we would have the recommendation but the full council would be advised as to who was applying so they mean they could you know go go beyond the recommendation or against the recommendation of the subcommittee but but yeah that's the process was done that way now granted probably informal in the sense it's uh there's nothing in the charter that uh specifically spells it out but we took it i think the president took it upon himself to uh to make that subcommittee so that we could review the candidates since we're going to be hiring that candidate uh but we did recognize the fact that you we need the support of the administration specifically the hr department

▶ 3:09:06 John N. Tramontozzi: to coordinate the interview the hiring process by submitting and collecting resumes and so forth so I think this order is intended to kind of put in formal writing if you will the what has been historically the intent of the council we haven't had the need to go through a hiring process because our fort prop the city clerk prior to the current clerk was there for many many years and it was a situation where the city clerk was still active in that position and maintained uh the desire to stay in that position so we sort of uh just uh granted or renewed the position but there's nothing prohibiting us from opening up the process to eligible candidates for future election so i think again this this intent is an attempt to be transparent about our

▶ 3:10:17 John N. Tramontozzi: selection process is to go through this process um allow the current clerk to submit the resume to be rehired if you will but open it up to other candidates if you know if we wanted to review other candidates resumes and so forth so I hope that helps that that's what we did in the past and again it was it may have been informal but it worked it worked and we were able to review candidates for the positions of clerk and clerk of committees but I'm happy to answer any questions about the process that we uh encountered in the past does anyone have any other questions for council chairman tozy any other questions comments anything at all council Grigoraitis thank you chairman mcnaught just through the chair i wanted to respond to councillor Stewart’s

▶ 3:11:24 Jen Grigoraitis: question regarding the language about broadly disseminate um i think as it's come up in this body with other orders related to hiring and job postings for the city there's certainly been conversations with hr who does oversee that process we would be relying on them about doing a more expansive approach to hiring i think what has typically happened is my understanding is that we would post to mma maintains a hiring database into the city website and that would be the extent of our dissemination and i know some of the conversation around the hiring the hr director position was about expanding where we're posting job positions to broaden the candidate pool and i know that's something this lata has been very

▶ 3:12:09 Robb Stewart: um open to and committed to so that was the intent was to sort of state our commitment to ensuring that as we go forward and try to have an open and transparent process that we're disseminating the opportunity to be the clerk of the city of melrose as broadly as possible i hope that helps thank you thank you council Grigoraitis counselor stewart thank you mr chair the other part that is a little confusing to me is it sounds like a traditional hiring process when you involve the hr department but then there's this whole elected component which seems contrary to a traditional hiring process a higher hiring is based on merit uh it's based on experience but then are you suggesting through this order that then once someone is selected then there's a committee that gets to vote and then

▶ 3:13:23 Jen Grigoraitis: it comes to the full council and then we vote again for that that's that's where i'm trying to understand what this process is and to me it's it's a little bit contrary to this kind of a position, I would think. Thank you, Mr. Chair. Thank you, Councilor Grigoraitis. Thank you, Chairman McDowell, through the Chair. So, by charter, these two positions are Appointment by the City Council. So, there is this coming April, which is, to Councilor Thomas earlier question, question which is when the term of city clerk is up for the three-year um appointment this body will have to go through an election of the counselors for whomever is the city clerk and i certainly invite counselors tram and tozy or mcmaster to correct me from their um experience

▶ 3:14:19 Jen Grigoraitis: but that is the the election piece is the fact that this is an Appointment position that reports to the council and this body the way we hire someone for lack of a better term is to hold an election um amongst ourselves so that is why there i mean that language comes from the charter as kind of awkward as it feels and as awkward as it is to probably have 11 people be your boss um that is how it is written in the charter thank you counselor tramantosi Yes, just thank you that just to follow up on that point by counselor. Yeah, it's, it's, it's interesting that the chat talks about election as opposed to appointment. The administration may may appoint department heads and appoint employees, but because there's a recognition in the chatter that the clerk and the clerk of committee serve.

▶ 3:15:21 John N. Tramontozzi: The city council, then it's the city council as a body. Has to make that appointment if you will, the way to do that is the election process. So it's the term may be awkward, but we are pointing that that person into that position. But the proper way of the appointment by the city council is to have an election. So the, the, the. Um, subcommittee, the purpose of the subcommittee is to review the candidates for the benefit of the council as a whole. When it comes up when they comes up for the election. Can you imagine how us as a body having to interview the collection of 1015? Um, you know, resumes, it just makes sense in the hiring process, streamlined for the subcommittee Appointment by the president.

▶ 3:16:28 John N. Tramontozzi: Of the council to make the recommendations to the full board. And then the full board can then vote and we don't necessarily bring back just 1 candidate. We might have. Uh, 2 or 3 or 4 candidates for which the city council will review and then have a final vote on that. Makes sense. So, thank you. Counselor. Yeah, through the, through the chair, the council, just a quick question. When you talked about the process in the past. um and you people ask or candidates have been brought forward has that been on open open open seats or re-appointments if i'm a good point um the only reason that the the only time uh since i've been on the board that there was need for a subcommittee if you you will, was for an open seat.

▶ 3:17:38 John N. Tramontozzi: In the past, the position was a reappointment, and we just had to change the vote on the reappointment. It was handled. I'm not saying that that's necessarily the proper way of doing it. Put it up to candidates every three years or when the vote needs to be taking place. But I think at the time, the city council was happy, if you will, with the appointments and felt that re-appointment was all that was required. There was standing in the council that the reappointment of the persons in that position would be done without the need to look at other candidates. So, you know, that that's just the way it was handled in the past. And again, they were the individuals in those positions in the past for a long term.

▶ 3:18:48 John N. Tramontozzi: Then the retirement retirements resulted in the position, the positions being open, and now we needed to figure out a way of filling the position. and it was the what we're talking about through this order this process so so just a quick question when when we move this or maybe to the makers of the order when we leave this floor with uh and we we um advertise a potentially advertised job if this was to pass is it going to say it's a three-year appointment or three-year contract is that going to be spelled out in the uh in the job description or um in the uh in the application if i may i think i think that's a given i mean the charter spells out the terms of the of the position so the uh the person who

▶ 3:19:52 Leila Migliorelli: um is hired for that position uh i think it's presumed that there may be limitations on um on their employment and that there may and there would there may be the opportunity for a reassessment uh and that's that's left with the uh the city council i i i understand that i just not sure if everyone before they apply for a position is going to read the city charter um so councilman Migliorelli i believe you had a hand up yes thank you chairman i i think the issue for me here is just the the lack of clarity with the charter um there's just one sentence in there that just talks about you know shall elect a city clerk to a term of three years with the zero context of how that works um to the makers of the order can you maybe just for explain for the

▶ 3:20:48 Leila Migliorelli: public how changing the charter how problematic that would be and then i know that someone had alluded to earlier on is this going to be the method to be used to for reappointments or re-elections moving forward and is there a way to codify that um to council gary pay's point like so that every time someone's um elected Appointment to this position that they understand what the process is going forward every three three years council gregor Grigoraitis since you had your hand up next i'll give you the opportunity to try and respond if you don't want to we can go to president sanella she she asked for the makers of the order um through the chair i was going to respond to councilor carapay about the job description i think a couple of things the the

▶ 3:21:40 Jen Grigoraitis: supervision of these two positions falls to the president of the city council um so any edits to those job descriptions i believe would be within the purview of the president of the council um from an employment law perspective in massachusetts you're either an at-will employee whether you're Appointment or not or you're a union employee so there's no nobody's under a contract that's um so even if you're there's an appointment this is very common in government i know i've had to reapply for my job my boss reapplies for his job every three years in a public reappointment process um i think it's in the world of government this is what often happens um but i think i agree with you i think it's something that needs to be better clarified we can't assume that

▶ 3:22:29 Jen Grigoraitis: people are going to read the city charter i don't know if it's clear now that this is an Appointment position that's responsive that responds to an elected body of 11 people which to counselor Thomas point can change every two years who the makeup of that body is which is certainly complex and i think any candidate should understand that that's the structure that they're walking into um so i'll and then i'll defer to counselor senella for counselor Migliorelli's question if that's okay president yeah as far as the uh charter change goes i mean i would defer to counselor tramitosi who's probably been around for that process i think it's every 10 years correct me if i'm wrong so as far as that goes yes

▶ 3:23:20 Shawn M. MacMaster: the next council in three years could very well be back in this the same position unless the charter has changed and i believe we had councilor mcmaster next thank you mr chairman uh into consular rigoritis's uh point and she's she's right i've been through um uh working as a public employee my entire career the same type of process uh where i've had to reapply for my job when there's been a new administration been through multiple administrations over my 20 plus career in government and as public employees um that is one of the risks um we assume is that a job is not uh forever uh short of being a supreme court justice this is no forever jobs uh in government whether it's uh local government state government

▶ 3:24:13 Shawn M. MacMaster: or uh the federal government so i think there through this um whatever process uh we may put in place if this does pass uh we can um establish that and you know uh make it clear through some sort of a disclaimer just in the interest of public disclosure but i do think that most people who apply for a public job uh do so without that understanding and risk uh in mind um and i i i think it's important too we've also talked about you know we've gone back and forth and we've said election and reappointment and i think some of us are using the terms interchangeably um i think we really have to think about what the intent of um the authors of the uh the charter were and um the you know short of there being a record the best way to do that is to actually

▶ 3:25:04 Shawn M. MacMaster: look at the language and see what's there and see what's not there and again this says the city council shall elect a city clerk to serve for a term of three years elections as i said earlier are periodic. If the purpose of this or the intent was for it to be a reappointment it would say comma subject to reappointment every three years. So I think we have to define what does an election mean and let's just play this out practically. If we didn't have an election and let's assume this was meant to be a reappointment and uh the clerk came before us and the clerk didn't get the requisite six votes well what happens then we don't have a city clerk because there's no process in place the so what we i think need to do is ensure that there's a process attached to the

▶ 3:26:03 Shawn M. MacMaster: word election in order for there to uh be an election there needs to be some sort of solicitation of candidates and the only way you have a solicitation of candidates is if there's a process that process doesn't exist now um and again there's some precedent here which i would would argue is not uh right in that this has been viewed as a reappointment uh every three years again like it or not we are the current council we have to think about what's in the best interests of this council in the city moving forward and if we have two positions that fall into the purview of the council and there's no process in place i think we're doing a disservice to ourselves and a disservice to the public and frankly a disservice to the two employees who deserve to have a

▶ 3:26:48 Shawn M. MacMaster: performance review process and who deserve to know what it means when they fall into the purview of the of the council so again i would i would just argue that this is never meant to be a reappointment a reappointment then would either mean at some point in time we run the risk of not having a clerk if the clerk doesn't get the requisite six votes uh or uh it means it's a lifetime appointment and that would be rather extraordinary for there to be a lifetime appointment in city government it would be you know there's no other position in city government that would be a lifetime position uh the the two chiefs the police chief and the fire chief fall under the the mayor uh there's a contractual every other department head uh is nominated by the mayor comes before us

▶ 3:27:30 Shawn M. MacMaster: uh we appoint but they serve with the pleasure of the of the mayor so um again i think uh we are left to interpret this like it or not and i think the responsible thing to do is is to um come up with some uh guidelines uh that will govern this council in future councils going forward and it's for that reason that i plan to support the order thank you mr chair thank you council mcmaster uh anyone else i believe we've gotten almost everyone for the first time but maybe not two people that i'm counting is there anyone else for the first time even though we've been on three and four for for others but certainly a topic worth discussion so is there any other discussion on this matter so we have a

▶ 3:28:33 Robb Stewart: motion for motion to recommend passage by President Sinella seconded by Councillor Grigoraitis no discussion Councillor Stewart yeah Mr. chair I I just wanted to make the one point for that I I guess I just get a little hung up on the language when they talk about the hiring process and then we talk about appointment and election and maybe it's semantics and I just need to get through it but uh that's where it's confusing to me and if it's confusing to me it might be confusing um so i'll leave it at that um with that i'm going to pursue the discussion any further discussion seeing none madam clerk will you please call the role Chair Mcnaught? Yes. Vice Chair Eccles? Yes. Councilor Tannen-Tilson? Yes. Councilor McMaster? Yes. Councilor Garipay? Nay. Councilor

▶ 3:29:45 Yes. Yes. No, I'm sorry. I'm sorry. No. Melody. Yeah, no, yes. No, yes. motion passes um seeing that there is no further business on our agenda this evening i'll entertain a motion to adjourn motion to adjourn second motion adjourned by councillor stewart seconded by councillor Garipay madam clerk can you please call the roll yes yes yes yes Yes, yes. Yes, yes. Yeah, yes, yes, we are adjourned. Everybody go get some sleep. It's been a long night.

Appropriations & Oversight Committee — 2021-01-25

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