Appropriations & Oversight Committee — 2023-05-18
Attendance
Christopher Cinella ; Jack Eccles ; Mark Garipay ; Jen Grigoraitis ; Maya Jamaleddine ; Manjula Karamcheti ; Shawn M. MacMaster ; Leila Migliorelli ; John Obremski ; Robb Stewart ; Ryan Williams
Agenda
Minutes
CITY OF MELROSE APPROPRIATIONS & OVERSIGHT COMMITTEE CALENDAR● MAY 18, 2023 Council Chamber, First Floor, Melrose City Hall Budget Hearing 7:30 PM 562 Main Street, Melrose, MA 02176 Attendee Name Title Status Arrived Leila Migliorelli Chair Excused Maya Jamaleddine Vice Chair Present Shawn M. MacMaster Absent Christopher Cinella Present Jack Eccles Present Mark Garipay Present Robb Stewart Present Manjula Karamcheti Present John Obremski Present Ryan Williams Absent Jen Grigoraitis President, Ex Oficio Present
APPRO-2023-28 Operating Budgets (City, School, Regional School) Fiscal 2024 Operating Budget in the amount of $101,173,341 (one hundred and one million, one hundred seventy-three thousand, three hundred forty-one dollars and 00/100 cents) Hold Appropriations & Oversight Committee City of Melrose Page 1 5/22/2023 2:07 PM
Transcript
▶ 0:10 Maya Jamaleddine: Good evening. The time is seven 30 on Thursday, May 18th, 2023. This is a meeting of the Appropriation and Oversight Committee. I am Maya Dean, and joining me are Consular sin at Coles. Gar Kara Osky Stewart and President Ex Oficio. Um, Greg, please note for the record, councilor GUI is unable to attend due to work event, and this serves as a notice of a quorum for the record in accordance with the open meeting law. This meeting is being recorded and broadcast live on M T V. And now I will motion by a anonymous consent to open the floor for public comment and seeing no objection, we are now open for public comment. This is a portion of the meeting where anyone can speak on any item of on our agenda tonight.
▶ 1:14 Maya Jamaleddine: Mr. Do we have anyone online? Uh, no one's online at the moment. Okay. Since no one here to speak, uh, in public comment, uh, there is no objection. I would like to close public comment. Seeing none. We are now closed for public comment, and, uh, since we have members on the, uh, of the administration here tonight to speak on the items before us, I would like to motion by anonymous consent to suspend the rules before we proceed. And seeing no objection, the rules are now suspended. 2023 dash 28, fiscal 2024 operating budget in the amount of 1 0 1, 1 73 3 41. And tonight we have, uh, the following departments in front of us. And, um, we have first, uh, city, uh, clerk, Kristin Foot. Hi. Thank you. Welcome. I'm so happy to be back before this side of the, uh,
▶ 2:30 horseshoe. Um, if it's okay with the vice chair, I'd like to take a couple minutes to just do some thank yous and then answer questions or do you wanna go right to Absolutely. I have a couple statements and maybe go right or do you wanna go right to questions? Go ahead. Go ahead. Okay. I wanna thank my staff, the city clerk staff, and the election staff who, uh, honey Rossi, Diane Aone and Joanne Perion, who are in arguably the biggest front facing department in the city hall. Um, they are professional, diligent, efficient. They triage thousands of phone calls and requests and write records in, in person, and as well as helping anyone that walks in the door. So I am forever grateful for this service to the community. I also wanna thank,
▶ 3:13 um, our partners at mtv, pat Doyle, Mike Minor, and the staff. They show up and have these meetings broadcast year round, and they just are willing to work with us and do anything that we ask. And so I'm very happy that we have that great partnership. Um, I have some statements I was gonna go through starting with the clerk budget 1 61, if that's okay. And then however you wanna do the questioning. So I was gonna hit kind of the big ticket items. Looking at 1 61, I'm on page nine and 10 of the budget packet of the operating budget. So the first one I was gonna address would be the overtime under city clerk. It's going up. And in 23 we only had two elections. So salary and wages is almost level funded. That's contractual.
▶ 3:59 Overtime is for staff that is eligible for overtime. There I have three. Um, I am not eligible for overtime. In 23 year 20 fiscal year 23, we had two elections and nine months of the year we had an unfilled position. So all of those tasks that were getting done were by me and other staff that were not overtime eligible. So in 24 we have three elections. One will be the presidential primary, which will be very heavily attended. So we budgeted an increase to that line moving down. Um, advertising is significantly increased because I didn't realize we, um, had a zoning public hearing notice that we had to put in the paper that was $700 alone. So that is to cover things like, I know there's some pipeline zoning coming down in 24. Um,
▶ 4:47 there any ordinance, public hearings, licensed public hearings. So that budget rebudgeted up for that line item. The next one that is significant is dog programing program maintenance up till 2023. The li the vendor has not charged us for the dog program. That is to all of the online, uh, transactions and refunds. When people get their dog license online in 2024, it's a thousand dollars fee for the year. So that's that increase. Um, let's go down to the next kind of highest one. Dues and memberships. Uh, down under city clerk. Other charges, we have three, um, organizations. We belong to Mass Town Clerks Association, newly reinvigorated, mass City Clerks Association, and New England Association of City and Town Clerks.
▶ 5:40 They've just gone up in their membership, um, education seminars since 2020. They have increased the opportunities throughout the state for increased training. We budgeted a thousand dollars per person for the year for my three staff members. And then surety bond, it's a three year term, so it was not used. It was 21, 22 and 23 covered. It will be re-upped in 24. So that's why that has been added. If we flip over now to elections 1 62, the wondrous, um, biggest increase under the salary and wages line is for part-time salary and wages. So we anticipated the three elections in 24, and this is for anyone that comes in the office and helps us process all the ballots. Um, all of the D P W costs to set up all elections,
▶ 6:34 all of the police costs to set up those elections. Um, all of the poll workers, so just to kind of give you a frame of reference for the poll workers for the election day, an inspector of the election day, the person that check you in, they make $150 for 15 hours. The dens and clerks that are at the Tabulator and are watching the proceedings, they make 180 for a 15 hours day. So it's all of them times three elections. And then any of the part-time staff that I pull in. So that's that increase. Uh, let's go down to printing. Um, that's, so, as you know, local elections, the cost of those are born by the municipality. All costs printing the ballots and the different types. So early absentee that includes vote by mail or coming in person.
▶ 7:24 We have to have enough ballots on hand. We have, um, twenty nine, eight hundred and seventy three registered voters, uh, thousand registered voters. They look today and, I'm sorry, 29,813 individuals. No, that's right. Registered voters, sorry. And in 2020 was the last presidential we had, let's see, people who voted in 2020. We had 87% of those people, or 18,338 people voted. So that was, we are anticipating that for 24, which is March. That is included in this budget. Um, so we have to print enough ballots. There's a requirement by the state that you have a certain amount of ballots per person, cuz people can spoil them. They incorrectly, um, add a dot or they don't sign it. And we have to spoil one and return it back to them in the mail and send it back
▶ 8:21 again. But we have ballots, the instructions for the ballot packets. Um, envelopes we have ordered in 2023 to date 17,500 envelopes to, um, automatic voter registration happens when you go to the registry of motor vehicles. They send something to us, we have to send a notice back to you automatically. So we have seen a significant increase in envelopes. We did a second census mailing. So the original mailing went out in January by our vendor. And then internally we did a mailing in end of February, we mailed up 5,000 censuses to people who didn't return them. So we're trying to capture as many people as we can. Get them on the rolls, get them cleaned up. It all comes at a cost. Uh, let's go down to next biggest one.
▶ 9:08 Equipment maintenance and programming. That's a significant increase. That is for 14 pole pads over those little at the other poles, if you've ever seen, they look like, um, iPads. They have an annual maintenance, uh, fee to them. The 16 tabulators, they have an annual maintenance to them. The high speed tab that we just purchased this year will be free. But in fiscal year 24 has a cost. And then all of the programming cards, the individual SD cards that go in, each one of the tabulators, they get programmed by the vendor to match the ballots that we've sent them. So that's the increase to the equipment programming. Um, next one down professional services. A little bit of a hiccup, uh, increase.
▶ 9:50 Um, Camelot is our vendor. We ordered the tables and chairs for the poll. They're going to be increased chairs because in the primary we're gonna do and tables, we're gonna do a checkout to make sure we capture the correct party that the person has requested at, at the primary, the presidential primary. And then we've also, I'm going to have the vendor who is going to give us the new high speed tabulator on site that day cuz gets new equipment. And I want them there to help troubleshoot and make sure that they can handle any hiccups. That's an increase for that line. Um, moving down election supplies, security chain of custody security tabs. So last year we learned that we need to increase our chain of custody.
▶ 10:33 So anything leaving this office in the morning of the election day has a, uh, numbered lock on it. The police office sign off, it goes to the poll workers, they sign off, it comes in the, everything gets opened, new tabs go on, it comes back. So there's a lot of security we've put in place. They're expensive. Uh, let's see. We are looking for some more secure bins because election materials for state and federal elections need to be retained for 22 months. So that's almost two years. Within that 22 months you're having other elections. So you need more than one type of secure trans, uh, secure system in play to house. All the cast ballots. Every envelope that gets returned to us, all the manila envelopes from the vote by mail that's signed,
▶ 11:21 those have to be retained as well. So we are looking, we have to, storage is an issue, but we need to have secure bin systems and transportation systems. Uh, what else? I think that's about it. And I've done a lot of talking, so please feel free to ask me any questions and I will take notes. Thank you. Sure. Anyone, um, would like to ask question? Um, councilor Stewart. Thank you Madam Chair. Thank you Ms. Foot for that, uh, great deal detail. I appreciate that. Um, so just trying to, I, I don't want to ask questions that you already answered. So let me just give me, uh, a minute. Um, looking mostly at the election register one, this, this is where I have a little bit of concern. Big picture.
▶ 12:26 Robb Stewart: I look at the revised 2020 budget, that was $155,000, right? 155,400 1612. Can you just tell me which one? I'm sorry you're on. So, election register off page 10. No, I'm, I'm actually, I went back and, and pulled the 2020 revised budget, which had the three elections. It had the primary, it had the full election. Yep. And it had the following, uh, presidential primaries the next year. And we are at, it was the re the revised budget was at $155,416 and 12 cents. Okay. And so, and now, and I understand a lot of the, the extra cost because of the mail-in voting and so forth. But what I, what I get confused about is I thought that by consolidating, getting rid of all the satellite places mm-hmm.
▶ 13:18 That was gonna help reduce cost. Yet we've gone up by 40,000, so I'm trying to understand why. Sure. So through the chair, I was not here in 2020 in this role. So I can't speak to that budget. I can tell you the consolidation did initially was able to save on, um, costs for public works and for police because we didn't have all those satellite locations. So it wasn't taking as much time to go set up all those locations. So, you know, as dpw, they're contractually, hourly, they're union employees and we didn't have as many police officers in once we consolidated and we still don't have as much, we are still significantly saving in those roles. Um, most of this is the amount of processing time it has now
▶ 14:08 taken the unfunded mandates. I like to call them their accessibility wide open, which is fantastic, but they come at a cost. So we have the ability to vote by mail. We went from three steps to 13. Um, I was recently at a municipal round table with some state representatives and a couple of other clerks, and we kind of talked to them about that. There's a lot of these unfunded mandates that have been pushed back onto the municipality without any relief in sight. And we really advocated for more funding for us di locally. Um, and we talked about public records request. That's a whole separate issue. Yeah. And I think this makes sense because, um, on the contractual level for printing postage equipment and professional
▶ 14:51 Robb Stewart: services, that went up by 35 k from 2020 to, uh, this fiscal year, um, the, the original total cost was, um, 44,500. So as you can see, it's 75,000. So it's actually about 30 K. So that is 30 K of the 40 k. And the rest I think are incidental. So it seems to me that the vote by mail is costing us $30,000 more to, for to support the election. Per election Per, yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Okay. Yep. All right. Well that's interesting to know. Um, well, I'm hoping to get some relief from the state would be great. Okay. And, and it looks, it looks like the numbers for the, um, the difference between what we did in 2020 and 2024, uh, on the salaries is nominal. We came in at 107,000 in 2020 and now we're at 109 in
▶ 15:58 change. Um, I would've expected that it would've gone up more than that. Um, is, was there either a reduction in headcount or, Well, a lot of the tasks were being done internally and a lot of ex, I guess you part of the job by staff that were already in place. We'd not hiring as many part-time workers at the time. Think, you know, it was a lot of, it's been a lot of processing internally with not hiring people. But it's not sustainable. And now we're looking at how do we make sure that people are reconciling correctly, being paying more attention to security processes, making sure that everyone's taking their time, hiring maybe needs, getting additional part-time staff. It's just seasonal part-time coming in,
▶ 16:49 Mark Garipay: relieving some of the burden on. So when I'm doing all that, I'm kind of not neglecting, but I'm torn from the city clerks side. It's just the nature of the beast. And then we balance it back out again. Sure. Yes. That's probably the best answer to that. Great. Thank you very much. Sure. Very helpful. Thank you Madam Chair. Thank You. Um, counselor Gepe. Thank you. Um, have a, I've been asking, uh, for a breakdown of salary by position percentage increases, but I will not, uh, ask that for these departments cuz there's a very, very modest 1.5%. Um, um, but I do have a question on the website on you. See, you, you budgeted no money for a website and we had 9,000. Curious why Sure. Through the chair. So the website line is going to the webmaster,
▶ 17:40 Mark Garipay: it's going to be absorbed into the Clerk of Committee's role. Mm-hmm. Um, we weren't, we are not the webmaster. We, it's just a pass through for, um, quarterly bills. Okay. Um, and then quick question on the, um, registrar, um, the elections. Are they, is this salary in the C clerk city clerk or there's an in, in, uh, 1 62. It's 1 62 51. Uh, 5 1 1 0 0 0 salary and wages. See that 0% increase? Yeah, that's for the red water registrar as stipend. Okay. Um, For the three of them. But How about Ms. Rossi? Is she under, under? No, she's under mine. She's under, um, city clerk. Thank you. Yep. That's it. I have one other thing I would like to mention. Um, it, it has to do with, um, working with the audit team who've been fantastic.
▶ 18:29 Carrie Golden is amazing and she and I kind of talked about for budget forecasting obviously is not an exact science. We don't know what's gonna, we can't predict. We do the best we can with information. We have now kind of forecast, you know, certain contractual costs are gonna go up a little bit. But we talked about, you know, three quarters through, way through the year, if it turns out that this was way off a high estimate that we can, um, turn back some of the funding. So say someone came to me in May and said, oh look, you've got a significant amount here. Should we turn it back? So there is still that upward, like we do at the end of the year anyway, everything goes back that hasn't been spun spent to the general fund.
▶ 19:05 Maya Jamaleddine: So I just kind of, I always keep that in the back of my mind. So if is needed, we do return it back. Thank you so much. Anyone else would like to ask question from my colleagues? Councilor? Um, sin. Just make A motion to move the bottom line. Okay. We have a motion made by Councilor Sin to move to bottom line and, uh, seconded by President Pro. Uh, on discussion. I just wanted to take a moment to thank you and thank all, uh, the election office for such a great, uh, outstanding job. Uh, we know we are coming to a, um, busy season and to coming, um, big election. Uh, so I wanted to take that moment to thank you and wish you best of luck. Thank you. Counselor? Yes. Um, Madam Chair, point of order. Uh,
▶ 20:06 I think we need to make two motions since we have two items here. I'm not sure which one we are. Uh, we are making a motion for 1 61 City clerk office. Okay. So this is for 1 61, okay. Yes. Okay. Thank you. 1 62 because we have, we have two of them in front of us, right? We have 1 61 and 1 62. So we are doing now one 60 number 1 61. We just did 1 61 city clerk. Yes. And 1 62 elections. I'm covering both. Okay. I can amend my motion if you'd like. Yes. Go ahead to Both 1 61 and 1 62. Okay. So we have a motion made by Counselor San for, um, item 1 61 and 1 62 to move to bottom line. Seconded by president, um, Greg Rees on discussion. Okay. Um, Mr. Clerk, you please call the room. Councilor Sin? Yes. Counselor Les? Yes. Councilor Gar Pay? Yes.
▶ 21:12 Counselor Stewart? Yes. Counselor Che? Yes. Counselor Beski? Yes. President Greg Regards? Yes. And Vice Chair Jamal Ladine? Yes. That's eight. Yes. Unanimous. Okay. The motion carries. Thank you. Thanks. Thank You. Thanks. So next up we have a city council. Um, and Mr. Clerk, our, I I'll be our dump them. Apologize, I'd, I'd make a motion to move the bottom line on, on the city council. I don't think there's been any major changes, um, on That. Is there a second? Second on discussion. Motion. Okay. We have a motion made by Councilor Gepe to move. Um, I don't want, uh, to move up, uh, CI City Council. Um, uh, line one 12, uh, to bottom line. And seconded by Pres, by councilor sin On, on discussion. I think the clerk had prepared something for us to,
▶ 22:27 Mr. Clerk, would you still like to speak? Um, We would love to hear you. All right. Alright. Thank you. Sorry. F*****g my God. Should I, yeah, Push right here. You can do it. All right. Um, so I thank you for allowing me to come before you today. Um, I, my budget is pretty much level funded, uh, as, uh, council Gar, um, alluded. Um, however, there have been, uh, there's been two slight changes, um, to the budget. Um, one of these entails the, um, the cost of, um, the website that's been transferred to my budget. Um, so I put together a brief presentation here about like, the daily things that I do as a, as a clerk committees, um, highlights of the, of the fiscal past fiscal year, that sort of thing. Um,
▶ 23:32 so I broke down the meetings from last July to this year to 9 95 total meetings thus far. Um, with, uh, the committee breakdown, uh, probations is next with 32 meetings, and the list goes on and on. I will post this to the, um, to IQ M two, uh, so that you can review it at your leisure if you wish. Um, and, uh, basically the things that I do most on day-to-day function is help other city departments, uh, with web, uh, issues, whether it be updating their webpage, um, whether it be, uh, posting an event for the Human Rights Commission, um, or providing support for a new, um, uh, board commission member, uh, getting them, granting them access in IQ M two. Um, so that's, that's what I typically do day to day. Um,
▶ 24:22 and I field a lot of requests from, uh, the constituency here. Uh, they often call my number, um, asking me to be transferred to a different office or to a different, um, or ask me for about different services that the city provides. Um, also a big thing that has, uh, taken, taken up a significant amount of time as notaries. Uh, we've been getting a lot of notaries, both the city clerk and, and myself. Uh, we try to balance 'em out without turning anyone away. Um, and thus far, this fiscal year, not 100 and, and five of those have been performed with one tomorrow afternoon. Um, and, uh, I administered the oath of Office for All Board and Commissions. So I make sure that they have met all their, um, all their required,
▶ 25:06 um, requirements. Basically, they have completed the open, uh, meeting law certification, signed that and submitted to both myself and the chair, uh, completed the, uh, state ethics, uh, online, uh, training portal, which all municipal employees have, uh, have to take. Um, and, uh, I give them the oath, oath of office at the end and let the chairperson of the board commission know that that has actually happened, uh, so that they can come a voting member of the Border Commission. So that's what I do day to day. Uh, it's a lot, uh, hands on. Sometimes I come in to work with a few things in mind, and I get sidetracked by all the, uh, all the, uh, different calls for service. Uh, happy to help always. Um, and so going to the budget, um,
▶ 25:49 it's pretty much level funded. Uh, so the only thing that has gone up a little bit is the, uh, is my salary, um, 3.2 increase, 3.2% increase. Uh, that is out of the, um, uh, I would like to think I deserve it. But also it, it comes down from the, uh, hrs, uh, wage and compensation study, uh, which was, uh, administered through the HR department late, late last year. Um, and so that's the biggest, uh, change that you'll see there. The IQ M two contract that has dipped a little bit, uh, by 8.5%. Uh, but it actually has to do with what we did last year. Last, uh, beginning of last fiscal year, we launched the Boards of commission software, which has been a, a tremendous hit for the city. Um, and that came with an implementation fee of $2,200 initially. Uh,
▶ 26:40 so that was a one-time setup fee. We don't have to pay that again this year. Uh, so you'll see that, uh, the, the, there's a dip in the IQ M two contract there. Um, now the website, uh, that's a nine k, um, addition to my budget that I will pay, uh, on a quarterly basis. Uh, and that has been under the city clerk, like, uh, chair, like Council Garrett Perry pointed it out. Um, and then everything else is pretty much level funded. So that's my budget. And, uh, so I'm looking ahead to some of the goals that, uh, we'll try to accomplish. Um, one of them is, uh, is improving or finding a software, perhaps even sticking with the Granite IQ M two portal. Uh, but we want to try to find out what issues, um,
▶ 27:25 counselors as well as school committee members and other city departments may have with existing software, and see if we can either modify that, fix it, or switch altogether. Uh, that has been in talks in the talk. Uh, we've talked about it for a few times, for a few months now. Uh, but once budget season's over, that's gonna be my, my summer project to kind of, uh, vet, uh, the software and, and talk to all, um, all stakeholders about it and see what we can do. Um, so that's one of the big goals coming up. And, uh, that's, that pretty much sums it up. I, I, if you have any questions, I'm happy to answer them. Thank you, Mr. Clerk. Uh, counselor Gepe. I Ju I just wanna apologize to the clerk. I didn't, uh,
▶ 28:09 Maya Jamaleddine: didn't see I had my back turned. I didn't see that you had a presentation. Not at all. Don't worry about, I do apologize for that. Not No worries at all. Thank you. Well, thank you so much for putting this presentation together. It's very helpful, I think, for us and for, uh, the public. Uh, we appreciate your help and, but with that, we still have a motion, um, before us, if you may call the rule. Certainly. Thank you for your time. No. Councilor Sin? Yes. Counselor Les? Yes. Councilor Gepe? Yes. Counselor Stewart? Yes. Councilor Kche? Yes. Cremsky? Yes. President Gregs? Yes. And Vice Chair Jamine? Yes. That's eight. Yes. Unanimous. Okay. And that motion carries. Uh, finally we have pension retirement number nine 11,
▶ 29:02 Maya Jamaleddine: and no one is attending. But, um, there is a memo. Uh, that is correct. Yes. The, Uh, so for the record and, uh, for my colleagues, uh, colleagues and for the public, we do have a, a memo attached. Um, councilor Sin. I May make a motion at this time to move the bottom line on, uh, nine 11, attention and retirement. Second, We have a motion made by Councilor Sin to move to bottom line. Seconded by counselor Les on discussion. Okay. Seeing none. Counselor sin? Yes. Counselor Les? Yes. Councilor Gepe? Yes. Counselor Stewart? Yes. Counselor Che. Yes. President Greg? Yes. And Vice Chair Jamine? Yes. That's seven. Yes. Unanimous. Perfect. Thank you. And that motion carries as well. And now, um, we'd like to entertain a motion to hold appropriation 2023 dash
▶ 30:04 Maya Jamaleddine: 28 in committee. So moved. Second, We have a motion made by, uh, councilor Ella, seconded by Councilor Hale, um, to hold appropriation 20 20 23 dash 28. And committee, um, all in favor? Aye. Aye. And any opposed? Okay, that motion carries. Motion. Do we, we have a motion to adjourn made by Councilor Gepe. Second. Seconded by Councilor Stewart. All in favor? Aye. Aye. Aye. Any opposed? Okay, we're adjourned. Good job. Thank you.