Appropriations & Oversight Committee — 2022-03-28

Appropriations and Oversight Committee Meeting

This meeting starts at 38:16 in a recording that covers several meetings.

Attendance

Christopher Cinella present · President, ex oficio; Jack Eccles present; Mark Garipay present; Jen Grigoraitis present · Chair; Maya Jamaleddine present; Manjula Karamcheti present; Shawn M. MacMaster present; Leila Migliorelli present · Vice Chair; John Obremski present; Robb Stewart present; Ryan Williams present

Agenda

Minutes

CITY OF MELROSE APPROPRIATIONS & OVERSIGHT COMMITTEE CALENDAR● MARCH 28, 2022 Council Chamber, First Floor, Melrose City Hall Committee Meeting 7:39 PM 562 Main Street, Melrose, MA 02176 Attendee Name Title Status Arrived Jen Grigoraitis Chair Present Leila Migliorelli Vice Chair Present Shawn M. MacMaster Present Jack Eccles Present Mark Garipay Present Maya Jamaleddine Present Robb Stewart Present Manjula Karamcheti Present John Obremski Present Ryan Williams Present Christopher Cinella President, ex oficio Present

ORDER-2022-87 Appropriation An Appropriation from Free Cash (Account 01-324001) in the amount of Thirty Thousand Dollars ($30,000) to Mayor Professional Services (011212-529000) to fund a professional services agreement with Municipal Resources, Inc. (MRI) for Police Chief Recruitment. Ought to Pass City Council

ORDER-2022-81 Grant Acceptance of Seventy-Five Thousand Dollars ($75,000) from a FY2022 State Budget Earmark For Economic Recovery Efforts for Small Business and Nonprofit Sectors Ought to Pass City Council

ORDER-2022-86 Appointment Appointment of Linda Apple, 87 Crescent Ave, to the Melrose Human Rights Commission for a term to expire on the last day of February 2025. Ought to Pass City Council

GRANT-2022-1 Grant City of Melrose Page 1 3/31/2022 11:42 AM Minutes Appropriations & Oversight Committee March 28, 2022 Acceptance of State hazardous Material Emergency Planning Grant in the amount of $3,000.00 Ought to Pass Appropriations & Oversight Committee City of Melrose Page 2 3/31/2022 11:42 AM

Transcript

▶ 38:16 Jen Grigoraitis: good evening everyone the time is 7 39 p.m on monday march 28 2022 this is a meeting of the Appropriations and Oversight Committee. I am Councilor Grigoraitis, the Chair. Joining me tonight are Vice Chair Migliorelli and voting Member McMaster, Eccles, Garipay, Jamaluddin, Stewart, Karamchedi, Obremski, Williams, and President Sinella, ex officio. At this time, I will move by unanimous consent to open the floor for public comment. Seeing no objection, public comment is now open. This is the portion of our meeting where any member of the public may speak to any item on the agenda just take my glasses off to see who's in the distance i don't think anyone's looking to speak in here do we have anyone mr clerk virtually

▶ 39:02 Jen Grigoraitis: we do not have anyone we do not so we have no one looking to speak in public comment so i will move by unanimous consent to close public comment seeing no objection public comment is now closed we have five orders before us tonight and we do have one order that involves a member of the public seeking appointment to a commission so i would entertain a motion to take order 2022-86 out of order so that we can hear from ms apple and mr mayor broder motion to move 2022-86 out of order second so we have a motion made by president senella seconded by councillor eccles to take order 2022-86 out of order all in favor aye any opposed okay the order carries so now before us is order 2022-86 appointment of linda apple 87 crescent ave

▶ 39:50 Jen Grigoraitis: to the melrose human rights commission for a term to expire on the last day of february 2025. mayor broderham is apple if you want to approach and while they're getting settled if i could have a motion to suspend uh the rules motion to suspend the rules so we have a motion to suspend the rules made by councillor williams seconded by councillor Jamaleddine all in favor aye any opposed okay the rules are now suspended mayor broder thank you madam chair Member of the committee um miss apple is someone i have known for gosh almost probably about 19 or 20 years she has been in melrose for around that amount of time she has raised two kids with her husband tom that are both proud graduates of melrose high i've

▶ 40:35 Paul Brodeur: hope i'm not being too redundant here um she has spent 25 years really as a what i would call a community engagement leader and volunteer deeply committed to the idea of diversity equity inclusion and access in her in a recent job she was a leader at the Museum of Fine Arts where she created access and inclusive opportunities for BIPOC community Member who historically had felt unwelcome or marginalized at the museum and also grew and diversified their volunteer opportunities at the museum across a really a range of ages as a Melrose resident I'm you probably can sense I've known I've known Linda and Tom for for a long time so I have a great deal of familiarity with with what animates them what makes them who they are what is important to them as Member

▶ 41:36 Paul Brodeur: of the community and I can tell you with great confidence that Linda has been involved in many things I think the first thing I saw Linda involved in was fundraising for new playground at the daycare that our kids attended many years ago that playground is still is still going strong and Linda from you it really kind of took off from there she is active um in her temples she is active with melrose together and she is committed to standing up for injustice and i think that is what makes her uh an outstanding candidate for the human rights commission and i offer her for your consideration thank you mayor broder ms apple is there anything you wanted to add i just want to thank um mayor broder for nominating me and um you know i'm honored to be here um as as paul said

▶ 42:29 i've been very involved in the community for we've lived here for almost 22 years and right out of the gate i started to get involved i'm the kind of person who who raises my hand and i volunteer for almost anything but i do love melrose and i do want to make it a more inclusive community and and I really want to help the Melrose Human Rights Commission to flourish and to grow and to expand and think about maybe different kinds of things that we can do in the community, new events or new ways to partner with other organizations in the city and perhaps the schools. I wish Charlie Herrick was still here because he really inspired me. He was one of the founders of the Melrose Human Rights Commission

▶ 43:17 Robb Stewart: and um he's very um inspirational to to me and to Member of our uh temple of bathshalom community um and so i you know i just really admire what he's done and what the commission has done i would like to continue that work and help to expand thank you thank you counselor stewart thank you madam chair madam chair i just wanted to share a couple of words i've known ms apple for many years now and she's just i think a wonderful candidate for this position uh and look forward to supporting her on this um and uh and hope that everyone else will too as well thank you any other counselors uh counselor migliarelli vice chairman thank you madam chair thank you miss apple for being here tonight and for putting your name forward to volunteer for this position um having

▶ 44:04 Leila Migliorelli: served on the human rights commission as to my other former two other counselors who also did as well um we know it's such a great group and such a big part of the fabric of melrose and i know that right now they're you know down a few commission Member so it'll be great to have some more people people such as you with your background as part of the commission i just wondered if you could talk a little bit about some of the you mentioned some of the strategies that you use to engage diverse communities bipoc communities in your work at the mfa are you are there any particular strategies or activities or programs that you think might be applicable to your work here in the human rights commission yeah um thanks for the question i think one of the things that

▶ 44:48 made us so successful at the mfa was the the partnerships the relationships that we built over time with community organizations throughout the city of boston and beyond and i think you know thinking about that here in melrose we have so many amazing organizations non-profits arts organizations educational organizations that i think we could probably do a better job of partnering with and really leveraging those the strengths that all those people and volunteers bring to think about sort of new ways to kind of expand and develop some new programming for the city so i hope that answers your question thank you i think it's about relationships and um that is i think a real strength of mine that i would bring to the position thank you any other

▶ 45:42 Jen Grigoraitis: counselors wishing to speak counselor eccles i'd like him to make a motion to recommend this order for passage second so we have a motion to recommend made by counselor eccles seconded by counselor stewart all in favor aye any opposed the motion carries congratulations ms apple this will go before the full council at our next meeting thank you thank you all very much thank you mayor broder okay moving back mayor broder i think you can stay seated going back in order to our next order is order 2022-87 an appropriation from free cash account 01-324-001 in the amount of thirty thousand dollars to mayor professional services 011212-529000 to fund a professional services agreement with municipal resources inc for police chief recruitment still under suspension

▶ 46:41 Paul Brodeur: still under suspension the floor is yours uh uh madam chair if there's no exception no um objection i'd like to bring up um sean kelly sean is the director of police services and senior consultant at municipal resources inc certainly please join us mr kelly so i will do a brief introduction and then happy to answer any of your questions first i want to thank the council for offering their uh their time as we've had opportunities to discuss this matter in general terms in small meetings i want to be clear not in violation of the open meeting law and i appreciate that input to be sure um the hiring of a new police chief quite frankly is one of my most important responsibilities as mayor by engaging an executive search firm MRI it is my intention to provide the most

▶ 47:44 Paul Brodeur: community with a robust and thoughtful process to guide this critical selection as you know chief Lyle regrettably because of the laws of the Commonwealth we'll be retiring on most likely the last day of November there is a mandatory retirement age for police chiefs here in the commonwealth and that is 65 years of age the chief has done a tremendous job creating and maintaining in particular good community relations and i think our focus should be on building on that foundation as we move forward um with with the next chief and uh just kind of put a fine point on how how important the job is uh chief Lyle served as chief for approximately 15 years so you know we may come and go but more than likely the next chief of police will be a part of the community

▶ 48:40 Paul Brodeur: for quite some time and the open props the most obvious question is why hire a search firm because we have never done it before at least as far as I know and I've been around I suppose a little bit of time well it's become quite frankly in in this era it has become common for municipalities to engage with firms that have the experience to recruit assess that you know qualified candidates there've been many or numerous searches like this across the Commonwealth more a little bit more recently as as police chiefs have retired and while we have talked about in the in the RFP a very very broad candidate pool there is certainly the possibility that folks from other parts of the country might step forward and appear to be great candidates we also understand that

▶ 49:35 Paul Brodeur: there's a great pool of candidates or a strong pool you know here in Massachusetts and very locally in New England and I want to be very clear there's something I've been made clear since my beginning discussions of this process internal candidates from the most police department are welcomed and encouraged to apply there is this does not meant and will not be a statement of any kind of deficiency within the most police department it is an opportunity to build on their success and again to have a level of community involvement in the selection that has never existed before within the community this process will involve very multiple opportunities for community engagement stakeholders large and small and open process where there will be opportunities for everyone

▶ 50:29 Paul Brodeur: to weigh in there will be opportunity that's it for community Member to share their perspectives and what they want to see in our next chief and I expect that we'll have some very interesting answers we know some things that are very important to the community around substance abuse around domestic violence around traffic but there are a lot of other things that this community is interested in as the community evolves the process needs to evolve so that we can so we can make sure everyone has an opportunity to weigh in regarding MRI they have proven to be an experienced partner for many municipalities that they have guided through this process and I'm very much looking forward to getting the process started with Sean and his team and with that I so turn it

▶ 51:18 over to Sean for some brief remarks and then we're happy to answer any questions you may have about how we arrived at MRI or questions you have for Sean about the process moving forward again thank you for having me this evening MRI has been delivering services to municipalities throughout New England for more than three decades over the last several years we have done 30 to 50 municipality executive searches in New England every year this year is unusually busy we are at present doing about 20 active executive recruitments around New England so what you are experiencing here in Melrose is also being experienced throughout the Commonwealth and the other states in the region we are very experienced with police chief recruitments we've had you

▶ 52:18 know it's it's it's tough to reach over and pat my shoulder 100% success with police executive recruitments over the last 30 years we've not missed so I i would encourage you to at least consider having us come and serve your community the way we know that we can the mayor's comments about reaching out into a into the community to help find the chief of police we can't advocate enough for our response to the rfp included a recommendation for what we call a hybrid selection process which at a point during the selection exercises we would bring together all the candidates for an assessment and while the candidates were working with us they would also be working with representatives of the community that

▶ 53:16 would be up to you to find those people from the community a broad base representative of your community in as many ways as you excuse me as you decide and that way at the end of at the end of the day the engagement of the community the buy-in for your new police chief whether it's an internal candidate or somebody from Colorado who knows the trick is at the end of the day that the person is the best fit for this community not for a different community not for you know Malden but for Melrose and we are able to work with you to make sure that the process that's used is unique and will result in the police chief that is the best fit for you if you know I will outline a little bit because I know the the there's a memo from the human resources director about

▶ 54:18 Paul Brodeur: rfp process and there is a copy of the contract we're seeking funding for here tonight uh within your packet but to sort of sort of break it down the this process will it will cost 23 500 plus expenses that is a little bit more than um what we did for our last superintendent search and that's probably on a basic level a good um a good model to think about if you're trying to imagine how this will go not exactly uh the same by any stretch but this idea of of community involvement particularly to build that candidate profile and then moving on through a a vetting process that's described you know in the in the in the contract and the memo i think it's an exciting opportunity uh for the city and for for its residents but you know young and old to

▶ 55:19 Maya Jamaleddine: weigh in on again what i think we can all agree is one of the most important and quite frankly most challenging jobs uh one one seeks to fill in a community thank you mayor broder thank you mr kelly are there any counselors wishing to ask questions counselor Jamaleddine thank you thank Thank you for being with us tonight. You mentioned that your goal is to find the right candidate who will be good for Monroe's and not for any other community. We all know that Monroe's community, like demographic has changed since when Chief Lyle was first hired till now. What is it that you feel that we will, Meadows would require as the new candidate or as a new chief? Start off. Thank you. You tell me. It would be inappropriate for me to tell you what you want in your police chief.

▶ 56:22 That's the whole design of this process is to engage the community at the very beginning of the process so that we're hearing from the community, from you, from these other committees that I've seen here this evening, interested parties in the community that may come to the public session and speak to this to this body you tell us what it is that you're looking for in your next police chief you tell us the characteristics and trait that you have that are interested in having for the next that's going to impact your policing here for possibly the next 25 years and i'll explain that in a moment if you'd like um and then we will craft the remainder of the selection process to fulfill that call okay

▶ 57:08 Mark Garipay: okay thank you uh counselor Garipay followed by counselors williams and then obramsky thank you thank you mr broder or mayor broder sorry mr kelly for being here um just one quick question you mentioned that you have a 100 success rate in in hiring um hiring police chiefs what are are some of the other communities that you've worked with in and around massachusetts has it all been massachusetts or has it been new england or throughout new england the executive level when i say that i mean anything from town managers and administrators to police chiefs fire chiefs finance directors and so forth anywhere from south carolina to prescott Maine in New England rather in the Commonwealth here just in the last 18 to

▶ 57:55 24 months we've done I'm sorry I'm drawing a blank for we've also in in New Hampshire Bo Tilton Northwood in Maine we just filled the south the city of South Portland position we've done Bedford and those were all police chiefs overall police chief yes thank you thank you we just we just just finished Haverhill you can continue to add them back in as we go counselor Williams thanks very much and thanks for coming here and speaking with us about this tonight can you describe a little bit of the public engagement process that you typically use for this I heard you talk about the hybrid selection committee and read that in the contract as well are there is it is it a vision of this of your firm of the mayor

▶ 59:12 Ryan Williams: to do any kind of in-person public gatherings email solicitations surveys social media outreach to gain community input what is what does that look like okay so great question so it's it's multi-phasic at the beginning as i said what we would do is we would reach out through the mayor's office to find some key people here in town that would contribute in response to your question to those first steps the the hybrid piece that we were talking about once as the process is building along again working with the mayor's office we we that's the royal we really you would find the people that you want to have represented on the the board that would do that hybrid assessment piece for the public typically we see depending on the size

▶ 1:00:07 Ryan Williams: of the community anywhere from 15 to 20 people so who you want to have sitting in the room is entirely up to you and then we work with them to make sure that they will fulfill their their duties lawfully and then it's game on each candidate gets to sit there and answer the questions of however many people you put in the room and you know better than I that you know that this is the person that you want to have deal with your most intimate family problems or the things that are most irksome to the community so there it is it's it's that group of people that come in and they work all day long it's a long day for that community committee committee to work are in in the communities you've worked in are the

▶ 1:00:57 Paul Brodeur: committee meetings open meetings are they public meetings are they closed door meetings it depends there there are in some instances the legalities are such that they must be open in in other uh communities they're um they're certainly not closed because it's it's a a public group so the representation being public but that's again if if you want to have it televised we've done that too there is a i know it's from superintendent searches that there is a balance to be struck where they tend to as you know as the public as the process moves forward it also becomes more public because there are folks that might um quite frankly be interested in a position but night might not to be be too excited about their current employer um knowing that they are they are

▶ 1:01:49 Ryan Williams: interested in said positions so we try to um i suspect we'll try to navigate that as part of the as part of the process that that's what the mayor is just talking about is the early part of the process it is our strongest recommendation that the uh the identities of those that have applied are not revealed in any way publicly simply because they as the mayor pointed out They may not have told sir mom and pop it at their current employers that they're looking So until they get down to those last few Yeah, and and to be clear I'm thinking more about the community profile portion of the search not really the Yeah, I think I think you the the The superintendent model we used I think is fairly indicative of of the way things will go

▶ 1:02:45 Paul Brodeur: the some of the nuts and bolts of it still to be determined because we've got to get a contract signed quite frankly as the first step in in moving this along but yeah i think you'll see it as a obviously a dramatic difference from from past practice yeah and thank you again for coming out and it's great to to have that public process wrapped around this really important hire counselor brumski um so during the with the process typically do you uh or does the committee come up with say three or four candidates to recommend to the mayor or is it one candidate or how would that work typically if you picture a funnel obviously the the largest group is at the top right and we narrow it down to um whatever uh the mayor and uh the selection committee

▶ 1:03:39 We decide. For instance, we have done as many as five. We don't recommend that. The soup gets to be a little thin. Typically it's three or less candidates go in front of the hiring authority for a final interview. Right. And then have you ever had a situation where the process has had to start over? if the um the person doing the hiring decides oh i'm not happy with these candidates have you ever had that happen yes um we certainly have and the words that you'll hear from me spoken after tonight will be to the various people that are engaged in this process including our own team which i remind every time of this that just because the people are in front of you don't doesn't mean that you need to make a pick if the person's not appropriate or if the if the room is

▶ 1:04:38 full of people that are not appropriate then we don't make a selection and we would recommend to the mayor that a second round be conducted right and then um so typically at the end of the process how often would you say an internal candidate is picked versus an external candidate not just police chief but any right that that's that's not necessarily uh a hard and fast number um in some communities there's uh really fabulous internal candidates and when they're put into a a mix with candidates from either around the region or around the nation um and a community like melrose quite frankly is going to be attractive to a lot of people around the nation my my bet is And they shine, and they demonstrate that the knowledge, skills, and abilities they have as a police officer or at the command or executive level is one thing, but when they add on the flavor of the local community and their knowledge of long-term service in the community, they become the obvious choice.

▶ 1:05:43 In other instances, the community who has a belief that their internal candidate, great, great police officer, they enjoy seeing them walking around on Main Street, coming to their homes, having meals in the local restaurants and stuff like that. But then it turns out when they're among their peers of similar years of experience that great person, but not necessarily the best available for the city of Melrose. thank you but that's your choice councillor carm chady followed by councillor eccles and then councillor stewart all right i have two questions and i'm not sure if they really go to mayor broder or mr kelly so i will just ask give it a go first one and you can decide um so my first question is

▶ 1:06:38 Manjula Karamcheti: just who in the city will be the main contact to work directly with uh mri working like who will work directly with the consultant and executing the city side of things like the outreach to recruit community Member to participate communication in terms of when meetings will happen where open forums where people get to give their feedback because generally speaking there needs to be someone on the inside to support the work of the consultant on the outside and and sometimes that goes really smoothly and sometimes it doesn't. So I'm just, I'm interested in who will be managing. It depends on the nature of the question. Quite frankly, it would be either the chief of staff or the HR director, depending on, you know,

▶ 1:07:26 Manjula Karamcheti: the nature of the issue that confronts us, if you will. Gotcha. But is there sort of a team working together closely to oversee all of it, or? That is the team, and me, of course. Okay. And then my second question is, you know, hiring a police chief is complex. It's obviously a hard job. Someone is signing off to protect and serve our community, you know, just in this day and age, you know, there's safety to worry about in terms of our community crime, there's racial tension, there's mental health issues. So my question is like, I'm wondering about the salary for the police chief. I'm wondering about the current facilities that we have available for the police department. Just in terms of actually getting the best candidate

▶ 1:08:20 Paul Brodeur: to commit to us, like are we competitive? Because it is a hard job and it requires so much. How do we make sure that the ideal candidate wants to actually seal the deal with us? Okay, it's probably a two-part question, because in terms of the recruitment outreach, the advocating, the advertising, the known networks that might respond, that's what Sean is here for, right? Which doesn't mean it's hard and fast thing. Obviously, it'll be an ongoing conversation and effort. In terms of the salary, we will be competitive, a part of that we will see from the marketplace and more than likely with individual negotiations with candidates as we move through the process in terms of the the building the building needs to be replaced and that is something

▶ 1:09:21 Paul Brodeur: that is going to confront it is confronting the the current chief it is confronting the Public Safety Building Committee and that is not something that that will be resolved before the new chief is hired. And so that person will have to come in with eyes wide open and more than likely will have some input. That would be a little bit of an interesting thing to try to navigate in that we have started the process already because it is a long, arduous process. But obviously, we're going to want to hear from any new candidate. And I would defer a little bit to Sean about whether or not to be part of the formal interview process if I were a candidate for chief and I was interested in the position I would certainly ask about things like

▶ 1:10:09 Paul Brodeur: you know what what's your capital plan what's your training plan how well do you support these things and you know the converse question that we want here from candidates about is so tell us what you think about whatever the case may be be a shared facility versus a standalone you know do you need training areas do you think you know that it's a smaller place is okay because you want your people out in the street that'll be part of what I would hope that they would pitch to us it is not uncommon during these processes particularly over the last five years I think we've seen more communities wanting to have their new police chief at least well briefed if not have direct experience in the design

▶ 1:11:04 and build of a new police station so we're prepared to ask those questions that's that's something we do if you are if you are anticipating and it sounds you are that a public safety facility whether it's standalone police station or not that's up to you guys is on the radar for the near future then i would recommend that you at least touch that base with your candidates and just so it's clear some of the reasons i'm asking if we invest in a firm i want to make sure that on the other end we're prepared to be able to to get who we decide is the best fit for us sure counselor eccles thank you madam chair um so i have two questions and one just kind of point of clarity i'll start with that we've said you a few times

▶ 1:12:00 Jack Eccles: and i want to just kind of clarify what the city council's role in this is for anyone watching at home which is that we're likely going to receive one finalist right mayor bro you can correct so ultimately it's me by you generally caring Member of the melrose community right and so we can we can provide input in that public process and so one question i have you mentioned that you're going to release finalists is there any public input available after any finalists are released is there opportunity for people to submit public comment on that kind of a to be determined yeah and i'm not frankly i'm not sure i understand your question before i before i say yes or no okay so so at some point in the process there will be public finalists right everyone's

▶ 1:12:48 Jack Eccles: identities are protected and then there's public a public list of candidates and that's that's your question there because you get to decide who gets released and when yep okay i didn't do you anticipate any public input after that fact i would assume so yeah and then my other question presumably there was some cost benefit analysis that went into this and internally handling this process would city staff is not free do you have any kind of number on what that's going to cost with what that would run the city should we not go with MRI no because it would really be a a softer cost in that sense it would be a more displacement of people's time FTEs whatever the case may be and you know part of what we are paying for is you know to to offload that a little

▶ 1:13:41 Paul Brodeur: but also to get a little bit more independence if you will and uh really uh you know we again i don't mean to keep reflecting back on the school committee process for hiring the superintendent but it is not unlike that and if we're going to have a you know a large candidate pool that we then sift through we want a a deliberative process and there's just a lot that goes into that and again these folks have done it before so they can help us with recruitment but they can also help us with screening based on their professional knowledge and background that will help us move the process forward but i want to be clear it is my process our process and these are folks that can just facilitate it and make it go a lot more smoothly thank you

▶ 1:14:32 Robb Stewart: Councillor Stewart. Thank you Madam Chair. Thank you Mr. Kelly and Mr. Mayor for being here tonight. Just a couple of quick questions on the contract. You state that it's between 90 and 120 days to perform the search effectively which and the completion date that as you stated in the contract is September 1 so That means we should start by May 1. Is that feasible? Absolutely. Great. Within days of signing of the contract, we're already engaged. Great, great. And it is a fixed fee cost of $30,000. If we go over September 1, would there be additional cost? Our fee's not $30,000. So we're asking for $30,000. The contract is $23,500. Right, it's $23,500. $250, my apologies. Yeah, and the variability is the case for things

▶ 1:15:34 Robb Stewart: like advertising expenses. There's need to pay for travel for a qualified candidate to bring them into the process. Sure, sure. So let me restate my question. So it's a fixed lump sum of $23,250. If we go over September 1, would there be additional cost? Why would there be? I hate to sound glib, sir, but it spells out precisely what we're going to do, and frankly, we've not gone over that time. No, but it does state that if any anticipated to extend this timeline for completion past September 1, you will notify us, but you don't say anything about any additional costs. So I just want to be sure that this is what it is. It is what it is. Okay. Okay. That's what I was asking. Yeah. Okay. Great.

▶ 1:16:26 Thank you, Madam Chair. Welcome, Vice Chair Migliorelli. Thank you, Madam Chair. Thank you, Mr. Kelly, for being here. A lot of my questions have been answered, but I was just curious, when we're talking about community engagement, what have you seen or what do you recommend in terms of community stakeholders, people that the city should have around the table and involved in this process? What have you kind of seen in your own experience about who gets involved? It's a good question. So leave it to the federal government. Many years ago, they had a model that they used for some of the DOJ grants in terms of what they wanted to see around the table. And it's a basic foundation. They're asking for the schools, the judiciary, churches, the local government, prosecutors, and then civic groups.

▶ 1:17:28 So then if you use that as your most basic foundation, build from there. you know who do you want to have I would look at the demographic makeup of the community if you have you know I'm wearing shoes so breaking out my fingers and toes is not possible I can only use my fingers if you had 50% female population and a 50% male population you probably want to have the room reflect that and that should be also reflective across your demographics in the city at at the very least then then you're getting the input and flavor from the community it's not just it's not just you know a select few thank you so my question is for Mayor Broder given the timeline that's sort of been set out here do you have in mind or a process for by which you're choosing people to

▶ 1:18:24 Paul Brodeur: be in this committee you know group analyzing these candidates I do and again think not to parrot exactly what Sean said but I think there are some some obvious characters right some obvious groups that that we would want to be have involved certainly the schools the Chamber of Commerce I would be interested in hearing from Norris Wakefield Hospital we have sometimes have a complicated relationship with them DEI representation I think it's important certainly parents perhaps to the extent we have organized around some of the some crime issues or some some of those themes I would expect that no science against violence might be appropriate this course this is subject to their willingness to do it of course such as to be folks that are active in substance

▶ 1:19:22 Leila Migliorelli: abuse um prevention efforts would would certainly be appropriate we see department heads that's not uncommon we don't see all of the department heads but a representative sampling so we'd have to be if i understood correctly may 1st is when you would be able to get started i'm assuming then this would have the process by which to pick people on the committee would have to follow how soon after or like because obviously there's a lot of steps to happen before you get to that spot let me may 1st is somewhat artificial and simply because once you sign this as i said within days we've started the process of of gathering information needed to do that community profile to start crafting an advertisement that is effective for this community that type of thing

▶ 1:20:16 Paul Brodeur: so though May 1st is that that that line in the sand so to speak we're already working before then okay a different there's different pieces of input I guess I'd say where there is the the what I'll call the vetting committee that Sean mentioned but in terms of that initial public input process as we're trying to build that profile based on community input that is essentially going to be you correct me if i'm wrong come on come on there's not going to be a you know no no we already heard from um you know someone in law enforcement so we're not we're not talking to anyone else or we're not going to hear from any other victim group because we've heard from maeve everyone will get to to weigh in be that through a a survey process or

▶ 1:21:12 Shawn M. MacMaster: um whatever you know obviously we'll also kind of vet it as we go meaning if we build a survey tool and 40 people respond to it we probably have a problem with the way we're doing something so we may have to correct on the fly and that's fine we're prepared to do that all right thank you what is the will counselor mcmaster thank you uh madam chair thank you for being here uh this evening i just had a question about the hybrid assessment center because i've never never heard of a hybrid assessment center so can you talk a little bit about the the genesis of that idea and i'm just not quite sure what we're looking to do with that i understand involving the public i think sometimes that's you know best done through more of an interview

▶ 1:22:04 process an oral board so why the why the hybrid assessment center and how did that come about because we're combining there's there's a there's an expense involved in bringing candidates from afar for instance okay so if after some of that boiling down that you asked about and we funnel it down to the X number of people that we're going to do an assessment center with if there are people part and I'm using this as as a you know a fingers and toes example again if they are coming from afar even if it's just one from afar there's an expense that's involved that if you were to have a separate community engagement over here and then a week later or two weeks before to do your assessment center then you've got that person coming back twice it doesn't seem to

▶ 1:23:00 make sense so what we have done very successfully is we've combined these two events that they could they may occur concurrently while if you had a space like this available during the assessment center the community would be interviewing each candidate over the course of the day and some of those interviews depending again on on how many are invited to the to the assessment may be an hour hour and a half long and so by the end of the day not only is the committee well rung out but so are the candidates and when they're not in here with it with the community group they're they're either working on other projects that we've assigned them to do in there's no such thing as downtime on assessment day or they're in actively engaged in an

▶ 1:24:01 exercise with the MRI team so again by the end of the day they know they've been through an assessment and the BS meter so to speak is very finely tuned MRI they may be able to get away with a candidate might be able to get away with some surface experience but we get to the in-depth stuff and by the end of the day we know and and by the end of the day your community group will have had an opportunity to give input and say we know too it's it's uncanny it's uncanny how often the community group and the MRI team picked the same two or three people almost invariably but there's different tracks so correct completely different tracks so the skills based on the same day the role playing the testing that's done by

▶ 1:24:56 Shawn M. MacMaster: professionals and law enforcement that's correct with laws departmental policy best practices and policing that's correct okay and so that the other side of the assessment will be an opportunity for the public to engage the candidate and ask questions about our core values as a community and what the what the mayor's you know vision may be or the community's vision may be that's right okay yeah so what we how we would do that um in terms of the machinations of the whole thing is uh my team would come in and my team is made up of uh professionals that have you know 30 40 uh in one guy's case 50 years old we have to kind of wheel him in on a on a cart um great guy he and they do these exercises that are they're taken from the national playbook

▶ 1:25:51 there's there's there isn't a an exercise that we do that you haven't seen on the front page above the fold of some newspaper somewhere and we ask them to react effectively and while those things are happening another candidate be in with your community group and the notice kind of goes like this excuse me mr jones why don't you come with me please and they don't know where they're going they might be coming in with the mri team or they might be going in the community just like a police chief has to face a city council or a question you know during public session suddenly they have to be responsive and appropriately responsive thank you and i appreciate the robust process that the mayor is putting forth the one piece that i think we may want to look at also is oral boards considering

▶ 1:26:42 Shawn M. MacMaster: input from other police professionals in middlesex county in in other you know other parts of the state just to give other police chiefs other Member of command staff an opportunity to ask questions i think we always we always do a structured interview and the people that are on that that interview are all police chiefs whether or not you decide to go out to Middlesex County for a professional board of more local people that's up to you that would be outside the terms of our contract but know that we do those very rigorous structured interviews during the assessment that's great thank you very much thank you mr. mayor thank you what is vice chair I'd like to recommend for passage so we have a motion to recommend for passage made by

▶ 1:27:38 Jen Grigoraitis: Vice Chair Migliorelli seconded by Councillor Eccles Mr. Clerk can you please call the roll Vice Chair Migliorelli yes Councillor McMaster yes Councillor Eccles yes Councillor Garipay yes councillor jamala dean yes councillor stewart yes councillor carm shady yes councillor obremski yes councillor williams yes president sanella yes and chair Grigoraitis yes 11 yes 11 yes so the motion carries thank you both for being here this will come before the full council next week thank you mr kelly thank you very much all right next up we have order 2022-81 acceptance acceptance of 75 000 from a fy 22 state budget earmark for economic recovery efforts for small business and non-profit sectors and i believe joining us for the first time is director of economic recovery

▶ 1:28:44 lauren grimmick welcome to the city council i don't think mine will be as uh informative as the last one but um just wanted to since this is my first chance to be in front of all of you on official business i guess just to say thank you for all that you do for the community i know that this is uh not your full-time job this is my full-time job but um and i get to be here so so I just wanted to see if you had any questions about this earmark. Councilor Williams. Sure, what does it pay for? So it's specifically for small business and non-profit recovery. Generally we can kind of do that however we see fit to support our small businesses and non-profits as we continue to help them recover. So we're trying to determine what that is now

▶ 1:29:39 by talking with the business community and with the non-profits to see exactly what they need. but some of the money I anticipate will be used to continue the pop-up program, which has been really successful on Essex Street. As many of you know, one of the tenants right now is actually moving into their own permanent space, Mothership of All Design. So that space will become available, and we've got interested applicants from the last round who would like to move forward into that space, and we wanna make that happen and program what would otherwise be a vacant commercial space. won't be the full amount the rest will go towards other like programmatic or grant opportunities again based on what we feel the business community really needs is it um is it primarily or in part

▶ 1:30:29 the reimbursement program if people say they've suffered a loss of financial loss if it is how do you validate the reimbursement needs i don't i don't foresee it being a reimbursement based on like financial losses but more of something they would invest in in their businesses so one example that i've seen that was really successful is down in taunton where the grant program for small businesses was specifically to invest in technology and point of sale you know investments to kind of upgrade their businesses so the idea would be that a grant of that sort would go to something that would be long term that would then get that business to make their business better and make them stay so it could be kind

▶ 1:31:12 of open-ended they come to you and say I need this they make your the case if you have the money left you can get right they could I mean I think we're still trying to figure that out on my listening tour you know that I'm doing to try and understand what those needs are that's great I'll ask two quick questions do you is there a time limit on when the money needs to be used by we have like three to four years to spend it but I anticipate that we'll spend it by the end of this fiscal year, considering that it's not a huge amount. I just wanted to acknowledge the efforts of our state rep, Rep. Libra Garabedian and Senator Lewis. Obviously, this money comes from their advocacy within the State House to Melrose.

▶ 1:31:54 Jen Grigoraitis: What is the will of this committee? A motion to recommend to the full board. We have a motion to recommend made by President Sinella, seconded by Councilor Garipay. All in favor? Aye. Any opposed? motion carries thank you director grimmick welcome thank you last but certainly not least we have grant 2022-1 acceptance of state hazardous material emergency planning grant in the amount of three thousand dollars and we have director alpert here to join us thank you for your patience the floor is yours uh this this grant will uh is the money that i applied for to finish off the room that we started upstairs in the in the training area to complete the training area this is for the rest of the furniture we already have purchased

▶ 1:32:52 computers tables and furniture before and also radio equipment for the first time we will be having a backup communication center for both police and fire that during an emergency hopefully we don't have any but but this room will once again be restored to an emergency operating center which was something that was written into the advertisement for the position to create it and it was an emergency operating center up until about eight years ago when the former director Ed Kelly retired subsequently passed away and once there wasn't a dedicated director the room just pretty much late late vacant as far as an emergency operating center when so we did get additional radios and not only will it be used as a backup for fire of police and used during an emergency but

▶ 1:33:50 it will also be a training center for fire and police currently when new police officers are hired or firefighters are hired those that we going into dispatch have to go into an active dispatch center to receive training this way they will have a dedicated training room that will not interfere with the with the day-to-day operations in either department but but it will closely reflect the the operations of it and you know in today's environment if something were to happen either in the fire station or the police station if there was a smoke condition or for some reason they had to evacuate the building they will now have a place to go to where they will still be able to operate and dispatch their companies respectively Thank You director Alpert

▶ 1:34:39 Jen Grigoraitis: any questions from the council councilor Garipay just like to thank mr. Albert for all he all he's done especially over the last couple of years and at this time I'd make a motion to recommend for passage we have a motion to recommend for passage made by councillor Garipay seconded by president Sinella all in favor aye any opposed motion carries thank you for being here tonight thank you that concludes our business for this evening I will entertain a motion to adjourn we have a motion to adjourn made by President Sonala seconded by Vice Chair Migliorelli all in favor aye any opposed thank you we are adjourned

Appropriations & Oversight Committee — 2022-03-28

Attendance

Agenda

Minutes

Transcript

Original documents