Appropriations & Oversight Committee — 2023-05-22

Attendance

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

Agenda

1. Call to Order (3:48)
2. Public Comment (4:18)
3. Appropriation (4:50)
4. APPRO-2023-33 : An Appropriation from Mt. Hood Retained Earnings, account 620000-319000, in the amount of $250,000 (Two Hundred Fifty Thousand Dollars) to Mt. Hood Professional Services, account 620000-529000 to fulfill contract obligations. (5:00)
5. APPRO-2023-28 : 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) (5:48)
6. APPRO-2023-29 : Fiscal 2024 Ambulance Enterprise Operating Budget (1:19:04)
7. ORDNC-2023-1 : Reauthorization of City of Melrose Revolving Fund table as first adopted by City Ordinance June 18th, 2018 and annually thereafter. Revolving Funds are further authorized under Massachusetts General Law Chapter 44 Section 53E 1/2. (46:42)
8. Department Schedule
9. Adjournment (1:32:35)

Minutes

CITY OF MELROSE APPROPRIATIONS & OVERSIGHT COMMITTEE CALENDAR● MAY 22, 2023 Council Chamber, First Floor, Melrose City Hall Budget Hearing 7:31 PM 562 Main Street, Melrose, MA 02176 Attendee Name Title Status Arrived Leila Migliorelli Chair Present Maya Jamaleddine Vice Chair Present Shawn M. MacMaster Absent Christopher Cinella Present Jack Eccles Present Mark Garipay Present Robb Stewart Absent Manjula Karamcheti Present John Obremski Absent Ryan Williams Present Jen Grigoraitis President, Ex Oficio Present

APPRO-2023-33 Appropriation An Appropriation from Mt. Hood Retained Earnings, account 620000-319000, in the amount of $250,000 (Two Hundred Fifty Thousand Dollars) to Mt. Hood Professional Services, account 620000-529000 to fulfill contract obligations. Ought to Pass City Council

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

APPRO-2023-29 Operating Budgets (City, School, Regional School) Fiscal 2024 Ambulance Enterprise Operating Budget Ought to Pass City Council

ORDNC-2023-1 Revolving Fund/Reauthorization City of Melrose Page 1 6/6/2023 1:09 PM Minutes Appropriations & Oversight Committee May 22, 2023 Reauthorization of City of Melrose Revolving Fund table as first adopted by City Ordinance June 18th, 2018 and annually thereafter. Revolving Funds are further authorized under Massachusetts General Law Chapter 44 Section 53E 1/2. City Council City of Melrose Page 2 6/6/2023 1:09 PM

Transcript

▶ 3:57 Leila Migliorelli: I am Counselor MRE chair, and joining me are Vice Chair Jamine and counselor Ella Eckles, GU Carm Shady Williams, and President Greg Re, ex Visio. 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 MMT V. Right now I will motion by unanimous consent to open the floor for public comment. Seeing no objection, we are now open for public comment. This is a portion of the meeting where anyone can speak on any item on our agenda tonight. I believe there's anyone here in the public, anyone online. Uh, there's no one online at this time. Okay. Um, if there's no objection, I'll like to motion to close public comment.

▶ 4:42 Leila Migliorelli: Seeing none. We are now closed for public comment. Since we have members of the administration here tonight to speak on the items before us, I'd like to motion by Y's consent to suspend the rules before we proceed. Seeing no objection, the rules are now suspended. The first order on our agenda tonight is appropriation 2023 dash 33, and appropriation from Mount Hood retained earnings account 6 23 90 in the amount of $250,000 to Mount Hood Professional Services account 62 dash 5 29 0 to fulfill contract obligations. I believe we're supposed to have John. Yep. I don't record is. Okay. Chair, I'll make a motion to hold in, in case the Ms. Bell is able to be here later on tonight. Mm-hmm. Second.

▶ 5:41 Leila Migliorelli: Okay. Motion to hold, um, on the agenda. Seconded. Made by President Grega. Seconded by Council Williams. All in favor? Aye. Aye. Any opposed? Okay. This order will be held. Um, next up is the continuation of our annual budget hearings with appropriation 2023 dash 28, fiscal 2024 operating budget in the amount of $101,173,341 and 0 cents. Tonight we have the police department, fire department in emergency man management with us. So first up is the police department with Chief Faller. Welcome. Good evening. Shall I begin? Yes. Okay. Um, well, thank you for having us. Obviously, it's my first budget hearing, so, um, as you're aware, we sent a memo out from my office, uh, I think about a week ago.

▶ 6:52 So I'm sure you had a chance to read it. And, and we welcome any questions. I would just like to, uh, start the process of, start our presentation just to highlight a few things from, uh, this current fiscal year, the one that's ending. Um, we had three, uh, four sworn offices, including myself, uh, leave during, uh, the year. And one, uh, civilian administrative assistant. All those positions are currently being filled, are, uh, filled. So we're, we're, we're doing well with that. We have two new recruits that, uh, should be starting the academy in July. And we have one that's gonna be starting the street probably in a few weeks in June. Uh, thus sort of filling all those open positions, which is great.

▶ 7:29 And the mayor's office, uh, the auditor's office, human resources have been really good as far as strategic planning, rather than waiting till they, uh, leave to fill because as you may know or may not know, it takes the, uh, police department well over 12 months to actually fill an opening. Um, between background investigations, the academy and field training takes a long time. So I'm, I'm fortunate enough, uh, so far in my short tenor tenure here, uh, that we're moving, I think, in the right direction of filling openings, getting them approved and getting them into academy. So we're doing well with that. And some of the other highlights, I think that we accomplished, uh, moving into this year we're creating,

▶ 8:06 created some new positions with which go hand in hand with the positions that were subsequently filled. Um, professional standard supervisory position, which is responsible strictly for post compliance, internal affairs grant funding, any citizen complaint investigations. So, um, that's, that's, that's a new position. We also created a new mental health substance abuse detective full-time position, um, which is strictly responsible for follow up on our mental health and substance abuse calls, working in conjunction with our on staff clinician that we have through a grant through Elliot. Um, and then lastly, uh, not lastly, but, uh, one of the more important things I think we're able to accomplish was to create

▶ 8:47 a community engagement unit and a social media team to get the police department more visible and, uh, more involved in, in the community. Uh, we sent supervisors to FBI leader, um, training this year. We just started that. And next year, uh, sort of goes hand in hand with our training budget request. Um, my goal is to have every single supervisor sent to FBI leader training, which is Law Enforcement Executive Development Association, uh, which basically teaches the best practices and supervision. Um, and that's pretty much it as far as you know, where we are and, you know, where, where, where we hope we can go in 2024 with, of course, the approval of the budget that's proposed. So we would,

▶ 9:30 Mark Garipay: and and next to me is Kim Upton, which is our office manager. She may be, uh, to, may be able to answer some questions that I may not as, as far as, uh, you know, some of the math and, and, uh, figures that you may ask, but we're certainly open to any questions. Thank you, chief. You're welcome. Questions from the council. Council Gepe. Thank you. Thank you ma'am. Chair. Um, thank you for being here, chief. Uh, just a couple of questions. One is regarding overtime. I see that we're, um, we're over by quite a bit. I don't think it's uncommon. See kind of an annual thing and, and how are we gonna address the funding on that and how will we, uh, if we historically tend to go over it and it's not,

▶ 10:22 we tend to underfund it. Um, what is the goal to fund that this year and in the future, would you say? Sure. So I, I know last year I came in literally halfway through the fiscal year, I believe. So I came in in December and actually at that time, I said to Kim, I said, we're already over the overtime budget and we're, we have six months to go. Um, why I, I can't speak for the previous chief, but I can, I know that, uh, there was a lot, there was staffing issues, so they were, they, we were well understaffed. So huge, huge overtime. Backfills, military backfills, which will, will happen all the time. And then just minimum manning staffing, which is required by the, you know, the, the various unions, which I'm okay with. Cuz you, you need staffing out there.

▶ 11:05 We, quite frankly, we could use more out there. So, you know, the number is, is, is, is probably not enough, again, to be quite honest with you, to get us through what we're gonna need to do because they were so, so short staffed Right before I came on, they put, we put five in the academy, but then we just lost three in the last, uh, five months. So that net five is now down to net two. You take the special mental health, uh, uh, detective position, which is a, you know, a patrolman taking off the street serves a great purpose. I'm not giving that up, but now you're really sort of net one on, on the, the patrol staffing levels. And then you have vacations, you have, you know, your injuries, you're gonna have your sick time. Um, so you,

▶ 11:51 you compile that all together and, and you know, that number is, is, is, is probably gonna be low again in fiscal year 24. So right now we're about, what, 200, 201,000 over what the revised budget, um, is the goal to use free cash this year? Have you had a, been able to talk to the CFO about that? Yes. Uh, Kim might be able to answer that a little more, but that, but that's correct. Yes. Yes. We, I just, uh, submitted a projection to, to, uh, the auditor's office that, you know, after using everything in the sales, uh, salary and wages line, we're still gonna be negative 60, about 63 to $65,000 that we're gonna need from free cash in order to, to, uh, zero out the, you know, our, our deficit under the salary and wages category. Okay.

▶ 12:47 If I could just add to counselors, so the, the overtime is not just that I, I forgot the training. So we, we might be able to discuss that a little bit, but the, the, we're all required, including myself, to do 40 hours of men mandatory training to keep our certification to through m ptc. So if you break that down, that's 40 extra hours and it's usually you have to take the person off the shift. So there's usually backfill that might go with that. And or if that office is on a, on a day off and has to go to that training, there's, there's more overtime there. We broke it down, I think it was roughly, and don't quote me if it's exact, but it was around $186,000 just for mandatory training, which includes academic training, legal updates,

▶ 13:28 c p and then we also do 16 hours of, of firearms training, and then we do an additional six or so hours on active shooter training. See that's 40 plus 16 plus six. Add that all up. You take the average overtime rate of patrol officer, you're already talking at $200,000 that comes out of our overtime budget. That's really just training that doesn't account for your vacations, your sick, your back fill your minimum manning. So you put all that together. That's why you're looking at six, $700,000 there. And Plus, at the first part of the, of the fiscal year, we were also coming out of the, of our, uh, military backfill time where we had one supervisor, uh, who was still in active duty. So all of those backfills, and that, of course,

▶ 14:17 Mark Garipay: is at a higher overtime rate. Okay. Um, do you know if the CFO currently has a placeholder for police overtime in, in free cash in his formula he uses every year? Is he expecting the, the reason why I'm asking is we're, we are promising free cash across the board for next year, and I want to make sure that all, all the community, all the services are taken care of within the community. So, Well, I can tell you that, um, all I can tell you is that every year we always ask for free cash, uh, at the end of the year to cover overtime deficits. And we've always received it. Okay. At the end of the day. All right. Thank you. Um, thank you for that. And then, um, regarding the hospital, um, do we,

▶ 15:08 Mark Garipay: there's a lot of the overtime or a lot of the calls, um, we've heard that in the past that it, it does cost us a lot of money. Right. Um, and I know at least that being in my ward, it's been a lot of struggle with the neighborhood. We've dealt with a lot of complaints. Uh, we, um, that they've been engaged with us at all and trying to resolve some of the issues in around, um, you know, we we're up there a lot. It's costing us money. It's a great service, it's great having 'em there, but we do have an ordinance in town that we do bill for nuisance properties. And I know we've looked at that when we're up there, a lot handling issues, um, in the neighborhood. But we been able to look into that anymore.

▶ 15:49 You know, it's, it's, it's sometimes it's tough to tell what we should, should be going there for. And, you know, certainly we, uh, you know, that's what we get paid to do, is to be partners with the community and they're one of our partners and we we're here to help them. But, um, I think it was two or three months into the, my position here. I I, I met with, I had, I had a meeting with them because I thought we were going up there too much. Mm-hmm. Um, you know, where I came from, we had the Lawrence Memorial Hospital forever in Metford, and we set pretty strict rules on what police officers should be going to and what staffing and security and their own professionals should be handling. And, you know, I,

▶ 16:28 I just felt that maybe they were calling us too soon, but I don't wanna, I don't wanna, uh, make a final judgment yet because we did have a meeting with staff security, but I feel like I should be meeting with, um, maybe more administrative staff and, and find out what their training is because they may not be trained to handle certain calls where they think it's a police response, when really it isn't. And I worry about two things. I worry about my office's safety and I worry about the liability to the city, the liability to the offices, especially now with post and use of force and mental health. We shouldn't be going hands on with mental health po patients inside hospitals in inpatient areas, which they were calling us a few times for us.

▶ 17:12 So I, it's just sort of like anything in life and anything else, you have to sit down with the people in charge and make sure that they're trained and know when to call us and when not to they call us, we're going to go. I mean, that's the bottom line, but it's just a matter of when we get there to sort of educate them on, Hey, listen, this isn't a police response. We've had to put hands on people. Um, actually strike that. I've, I, I read a report and I was very proud of the officer he wrote, I, it was he, he or she, I believe it was one of our male offices, wrote that he actually had to, to tell one of their staff to take their hands off of the person because where their sort of hands on were going to the neck or whatever.

▶ 17:51 And that's not what anyone should be doing. That's certainly not what's, you know, we would be doing. So you have that whole duty to intervene now with po the post commission, and to see one of our office proactively intervene and say, do not do that and move their hands away to a more safer area. A more safe area was, uh, was, was quite impressive. But again, it just goes down to training internally there and, and externally to them, to us. And I, I don't want just make it clear, I don't wanna be passing judgment because I don't know exactly what their training is, but we have to have these conversations for sure, because we are there all the time and it takes up a lot of manpower. Um, thank you, um, for that. And then I know Chief Lyle in the past has,

▶ 18:34 um, mentioned, uh, details, um, and money owed to us by utility companies and actually some other city departments. Um, how are we doing on, on getting paid on those? Sure, sure. Yep. Um, one of our one, one, we worked really hard this past year working with D P W to come up with a, a way to kind of pay, pay down their, their deficit. And, um, they've done, they've done really well and there are, there are some very old details that are still sitting out there from 20 16 20 17 that haven't been paid. And at this point, we, we can chase 'em all we want, and I think we just have to write them off. And so I'm working with the auditor's office to say, you know, I, I can't send out any more notices, but we've, we've done really well,

▶ 19:31 but we're also really high on, on our details right now. So, um, we need to get ourselves into a, we need to do another whole sweep. So we kind of do it on a quarterly basis. We bill, we bill, we bill, and then we, you know, we're doing really well. And then we have to do a whole collections thing and go through a good month of that. But I gotta get through June right now. I just got, So all the collections goes through your department, not the, not the treasurer's Department. No, they don't. No, they have to. There used to be someone I heard before I was here, there used to be someone that was in charge of, of, we could pass collections onto them. That position no longer exists, I believe.

▶ 20:14 When you get that revenue in, does that go into your department or does it go to the general, general fund or It, it goes back to the general ledger. Yeah, back to the general. Back to the general fund. So Doing all the work, but you don't see the, see the results? Nope. Okay. Alright. In, in a consult, there's, there's one of the new programs that's in this memo, um, for dhq, it's a short for digital headquarters. One of the new programs that we bought is one of the major, um, benefits of it is invoicing and detailing and billing and overtime management. And it's built in that if they're delinquent it, it'll send a, uh, like a don't hire, don't, they can't work type thing where, you know, working just through paper and pen. And if Kim's off,

▶ 20:59 the officer might know who's taking the thing that they're delinquent, they're not paying our bills. At least this might help us. I think that like if someone's calling for a detail and we try to enter them, if they haven't paid after so and so, it'll just be like, like a equivalent to like, it'll block them, it'll block 'em. Like, and then, you know, then that's when they call me and they say, what are we gonna do? We gotta let them work. Are we gonna not let them work? But it's a good, it's an extra sort of financial oversight like to make, to keep track of who's, who's paying us and who's not The utility com, is it mostly the utility companies or some of the smaller contractors that are doing

▶ 21:32 Manjula Karamcheti: The utility companies do do really well. They, for on, on the whole, um, on the whole, sometimes net grid can get a little bit behind, but, um, for the most part it, it's the smaller, it's the smaller independent companies that sometimes are a little delayed. So we have to send them love notes. Okay. Thank you. Thanks a lot. Um, counselor Caram Cheaty. Hi. Thank you so much for being here. First through the chair, I wanted to say thank you to Counselor Gepe for asking about the hospital because that is definitely one of the questions that I had as well. Um, have a lot of concerns about the police resources that are being used up there. Um, given you've mentioned a lot about the need for training and the variety of

▶ 22:20 training needing, I just have a question regarding the training line item, because it's a place where there's been a reduction in funds pretty significantly, so I just wanted to ask about that. Sure. Um, so we, we, we used to have just, uh, the training line item and it was $75,000 and that would theoretically pay for out-of-pocket training. So if we went to private vendors, uh, outside of Mptc, which is generally free minus the backfill of overtime. But if we had to see, so I have a few guys go into crime scene photography school in July, that's a, it's a private vendor we have to pay, say's, I think it's $400 in office. So historically that $75,000 line item would pay for that, but also pay for all the overtime created because of training,

▶ 23:09 which I'll reference back to the, uh, 40 hours, um, firearms, um, C P i all that would also get paid out of that one line item. And as you can see, $75,000 isn't gonna cover $200,000. Right. Minimum mandatory training. So I thought it would be a little bit easier to understand to now move some of that, that line up to the salary and wages item to, so it would be a specific line item for overtime that's a result of training, whether it's back filling a position or the offices on a day off. So at least we can keep track of what is, what are we spending actually on, on training over for overtime. And then the reduction that you see there from 75 to 25, that 25 for next fiscal year, that's just strictly used for out-of-pocket training fees.

▶ 24:02 Manjula Karamcheti: So if I fees paying, the instructors paying, uh, if they have to go to seminars, um, that won't be used for like overtime. So the 75 was sort of moved over there. It's a little bit of shifting, but I think to me, and it's just better accounting. Great. Thank you so much. That explains it. Okay. Um, and then, you know, just given the issues with mental health and, you know, policing and just that it's getting I think difficult and more complicated, could you just share a little bit about the types of trainings and how Melrose Police are being supported with that, given the type of calls that you have to answer and Yeah, sure. I mean, obviously the, the, again, I'll go back to the mandated training that e every single year when we do

▶ 24:47 mandated training, it always, always will involve mental health, um, responses, critical incident training, all that stuff that's mandated training. But we are, you know, moving forward I wanna send more offices to extra training to learn how to deal with the mentally ill, uh, dementia. I know myself, um, the union president went, um, at some dementia training down at the Milano Center, uh, my first month or two on. And, which is great because then we can sort of bring that back. Uh, how does the frontline officer deal with that? Because we have offices that have personal connections to dementia, as does probably people in this room. So it not only helps professionally, but it helps, you know, in your personal life. But training,

▶ 25:26 training is huge to me. And as far as mental health goes, it's, the majority of it is the majority of the calls that we deal with every day. So I'm always looking for training. I'm on a billion chief emails that come out on what's kind of out there to send people to. So again, it goes back to funding, you know, so if we have that $25,000 a start, we'll probably blow through it. But it's, it's how you get there. Because if it's not free, I can't, it's hard to send them to it. Right, right. They're not gonna, they're not gonna go just for free. I mean, that'd be nice, but, uh, it's a real world and, and a cost to certain training. I'd love to do more in service training on our own, like teach our own,

▶ 26:10 cuz we have people, I'm a certified instructor and, and certain topics, other offices are. Um, but it's difficult, and I won't go off in a tangent, but we don't have a training room. We don't have a, we don't have the facilities to do it, but there's always ways to think out of the box. We could use City Hall as we could use a couple different areas, but, um, I don't know if that answers your question, but Yeah, it does. You know, it sort of lumps it all in with the training on the mental health and the training for everything else is all, is all very important. Great. Thank you so much. Sure. All set, um, counts. Vice chair, Jamal Ladine. Thank you. Thank you for being with us today and thank you for all the great work that you

▶ 26:47 Maya Jamaleddine: are doing for the community. Um, based on my experience working at the hospital and still working for the organization, I can tell you that we don't get any, you know, actually we do get training to call the police when we find ourselves in an unsafe situation, but that unsafe situation is left for individual to decide and to measure. So it would be great to get some kind of training from your department, uh, for the hospital, of course staff. Um, my question on the mental health issues as well, and thank you for both counselors for, um, asking, um, what kind of, um, you said you mentioned that you're gonna post, uh, a new in the process of hiring new officer for mental health. Um, so what is the description in a way? Or what,

▶ 27:46 what's the qualification? Sure. So the, this particular, um, office is Detective Dan ridden, he's already in the position. Okay. I believe he started probably two months ago. It, uh, so, so, um, put it out for bid, not bid, but put it out for anyone who's interested in it. They had to send me a, you know, a resume ish, well basically was a athletic listing, all their qualifications, why they want to be, uh, why they want to get the position. Uh, it's a specialty position, wasn't, um, you know, automatically seniority. So the officer had to have the will, a good clean record, um, the ability to handle these type of calls. And, uh, we ended up choosing, you know, after consult him with the command staff, detective Ri, and, and,

▶ 28:27 and he's been great at it, but he's new at it. Right. So we, we've already sent him with to a few in-service trainings. He's got a lot of help from, uh, our clinician, Ms. Faun that we share, um, through Stoneham. So they've been now fortunate enough to work together on a lot of follow up, but they do, they've done some co responses now, which is great. Which is actually sort of the mantra that they want us to do is not only just sit and do follow-ups, but actually if we have a call that comes in for someone that's mentally ill to actually go out together and respond and, and handling handle it at that level. Mm-hmm. Um, and whether or not it results in a section or just sort of you're okay and we'll

▶ 29:06 follow up with you. Um, we've seen sort of both. I, I know, um, there's gonna be a story that we're working on to share a little bit more of that and you might hopefully see that in, you know, either on social media or in the local paper that will describe more what Detective Riddens job is, what, uh, clinician's job is, and how we are going to handle that moving forward. Because she's, she's on a grant and we share her with, uh, Stoneham, she's housed in Stoneham for probably four fifths of the, of the week. Mm-hmm. And she'll come to us, uh, one day of the week, but she's always available for us if we need her. We just don't have the physical space in our building to sort of her to set up

▶ 29:43 Maya Jamaleddine: an office. That's great. And how many, do you know, like how many calls do we receive? I would say a week. We, we do know, but, um, I, and I can get you, I can get you how many calls for service we have, uh, that are under the category of, um, it's a mental health call. Mm-hmm. It's, it's high and I'll be happy to, to send it as a follow up and give you that number. Okay. So I'm, I I, the reason for my question is I just wanna make sure that, you know, um, residents in MES are aware that they can reach out. We do have that resource and that support, uh, from your department. And if there is any way that we can support in the outreach or, you know, advertise about this resource, we'll be more than happy to help with that.

▶ 30:32 Um, my last question is, um, you mentioned about the deficit that it's been every year, The overtime. Yeah. Right. Um, is there, is this something that we should consider including in the budget? Or is it something that we cannot It's, it's, it's really hard to, um, project, uh, and, and to put a number to it. I, I, I try to take, you know, past year's history and, and come up with a number. But, um, again, you know how many people get sick and then you have to backfill them h then military, you never know if someone's gonna get called for, you know, a military active duty. You don't get, it's such an unknown, unpredictable area of overtime. However, um, yeah, I, you know, yeah. I always feel like we're underfunded un overtime.

▶ 31:30 Yeah. In, in short, I didn't mean to interrupt you, Kim, but in, in short, short of having someone approaching mandatory retirement age where you know you're gonna be losing them in that fiscal year, uh, next year, I don't think we have any, but, you know, in my first six months we had two offices retire, uh, one retired and one left to go to another agency. But those were unpredicted openings that bam, right away those openings cause overtime. So to Kim's point, it's sometimes hard to predict unless someone's reaching a time and age that you could lose a few officers mm-hmm. In between. And then their openings generally because of the staffing levels we have now sort of almost automatically create an overtime in that shift.

▶ 32:11 How do you solve that? More police officers will help. Mm-hmm. Um, you know, if I had four, five more officers, I, I'm just kind of throwing that number out there. I can spread them out into different shifts and equally sort of balance it. Where now you have that cushion of, well that vacation that we granted isn't gonna cause an overtime and you still have minimum staffing. And it also creates the ability for me to maybe create more specialty positions somewhere out of patrol, um, records division. We need, we, I'd love to have a sworn officer on the records, on public records request, um, walk-in reports, all that stuff. Um, and they, it's great for someone that's qualified or, but it's great for an older officer or someone that's worked the street for

▶ 32:54 Maya Jamaleddine: 25, 30 years and has something to like maybe, you know, come off the street and do something different. Um, and that, that does affect overtime. And I'm not here to say I'm an overtime killer because, you know, the, the guys in the, the people that work for me, I gonna want to hear that. But you, you, you have to sort of balance where you put your people and if I don't have enough, it's gonna create all the time. Yeah. Well, thank you so much. I mean, with the work that you are providing and the service that you're providing, not only as a policing, but also as support for mental health and for all the other, you know, different services that you're providing for our community. I, I totally appreciate your work and I thank you. I joined my voice two years.

▶ 33:40 Ryan Williams: Thank you. Thank you. Uh, counselor Williams. Thank you. Um, so Counselor Chetty asked a part of one of my questions, which was to notice that you had created the overtime training line and moved about $75,000 up there, which seems like an overall increase, right? In the training funds, because you had asked, excuse me, you had budgeted, um, 25 75, you budgeted 75 and you wound up moving that 75 up into the new line, but then you got another 25, so you kind of got a hundred, but you asked for 200 in the training line item, which now just includes like fees. Is that correct? Yes. So what was in those, I mean, that's a big number. What was Was the 200? The, the 200 that we asked for original was before we came up with that sort of

▶ 34:29 decision to split. Ah, I see. So the 200,000 really wasn't even gonna cut it either way. So the 200,000 was based on the 40 hours minimum mandatory overtime, the 16 hours of firearms and another six or so hours of active shooter. If you took that say 80 to 90% of the offices would all be on overtime for that, that was about $186,000. So that was all salary Yes. Request. It was all set. All, yes. Correct. Okay. All right. That makes sense. Um, and, And don't forget the, because the two contracts settled this year, all of those overtime rates just bumped up. So when I recalculated what everybody did for, I think I averaged out at 48 hours per person across the board. That also bumped that number up as well.

▶ 35:13 Ryan Williams: Okay. Um, and then I just feel like I'm, I'm gonna just ask you about a couple of line items that piqued my interest. Um, leaps What's leaps. There's a, there's a system that, um, covers all of the, all of the radar trailers and all of the other systems that we have that we have to do up upgrades every year. We just pay an annual fee mm-hmm. To, to get all those upgrades. Um, I mean, it's not much, it's just Yeah. It's an annual fee. Yeah. So if, so that's the radar trailers. What's the radar line? Um, the, the, the LEAPS is like the software and then the radar trailer itself has to have up upgrades and improvements. So it's almost like equipment versus the Sure. The software itself. Contract. Yeah. I get it. Yeah. Um, do you use film supplies?

▶ 36:13 Do I use what? Film supplies? Yeah. You know, we used to, we used to use it a lot more. Um, um, camera, camera films and all that kind of stuff. Now it's kind of, um, I use it as when they need new SD drives for their new cameras and all of the fancy things that they have to have for the detective cameras. Yeah. Yeah. I use that line to pay for that kind of stuff. It probably should be renamed because we really don't have film anymore. Makes Sense. Um, for community engagement, are you, are you paying some of the social media team out of community engagement or is this just hard costs for events or what's in there? The goal with that is hard costs. Mm-hmm. Um, uh, equipment merchandising, um, Uh, you know, like canopies, tents,

▶ 37:01 all that sort of banner stuff that you bring. And then addition to, um, it could be anything, t-shirts, water bottles, uh, pens, little things. We go to these events. We went to the D P W the other day, which was a great job that they did. Uh, we had, we had a table with nothing like, you know, so I, I told the guys, I said, you know, we have a line item that I think is hopefully gonna get approved. So when we do these events and we're invited to to go, we have stuff to give out to the kids and just whoever Have you thought about, have you thought about incentives, gift cards, things like this? We used to have a program. It was kinda like a cot being good thing for kids on their bikes. If they were wearing their helmet Sure.

▶ 37:39 Officers would spot 'em and give them like a $5 gift card. We Do, we do have that coming up. Um, uh, I don't wanna speak out of term, but I know the Patrolman's Union or the Merrills Police Foundation, one of them, uh, actually no, there's been superior officer involved too. They, they're doing that with, uh, ice cream. Ice cream cut, like free ice creams and stuff. And I think that might be part of the Junior Police Academy. But, uh, they had, they got cooperation from a few of the, the businesses in town. Nice. Uh, to, to do that. If you see a kid doing like, I think it's exactly that, wearing his helmet or you pull parrot over and the kid's, you know, here's a free ice cream. Nice. Nice. Cool. Yeah. Yeah, that's a big, it's a big good. I actually got,

▶ 38:16 Jen Grigoraitis: somebody asked me about that. Is it coming back? It's coming back. Um, awesome. All right. Thank you very much for being here. Appreciate your time. That's it. Thank you President Greg Reis. Thank you Madame Chair. Thank you both for being here tonight. Um, I did just wanna take a moment to thank you Chief and Officer Mann for staying here a few months ago with us until about 9:30 PM to train us, um, in the school committee. We really appreciated you all taking the time and just highlights how important training is both for your officers and then also that you bring it back to the community. Um, I just wanted to pick up on Counselor Gee's, questions around free cash, which we use to fund a lot of things. Um,

▶ 38:52 I noticed in historically in the police budget, there's never a line for vehicle maintenance. Um, and so I just wanted to confirm that that's something that we solely rely on. Free cash for N uh, no, actually fleet maintenance is the, it should be a line is a line not item. I don't know if it's specifically stated that way. Under D P W D, they are totally, it's merged Into D P W. Yes. Okay. Completely responsible for fleet maintenance. However, uh, that's one of the things that we do use our revolving fund for. And that is, um, before, uh, officer Brown left, I mean we did, he did a, we purchased a lot of things that he wanted to standardize across all the, uh, all the cruisers. And so we, you know, made sure we got everybody, um,

▶ 39:47 a snow, snow Joe to clean off all their individual cars cuz they were all using their jackets or, you know, we got, um, standardized key rings with numbers on 'em so that all the, all the officers, when they went to go pick up the, the, the keys in the morning for whatever cruised it, they knew which one. It wasn't like a oh you got mine, I got your, you know, so it was little things like that that we, that we will use for the fleet. And sometimes he went to Napa Auto Parts to buy something and then I would pay for it out of, out of that revolving fund as well. Okay. The, uh, council DPW has been really good with us. And one of the things that we implemented, um, when I came on was every Friday the offices have to go to the D PW for fluid

▶ 40:33 checks and weekly maintenance, which wasn't being done cuz preventative maintenance will save catastrophic failures. And, and, and I give credit to the D B W director and Jim and Jim Troupe and all the, the, the crew down there, the mechanic to say, yeah, you can do that because I, you know, they could have said, no, we don't have the time for that. So every Friday around one around one o'clock, every officer that's working has to bring their cruiser down and check all the major stuff Okay. To avoid, you know, problems. Okay. And that's the plan. Great. Um, my last question was just around public records. It was up and I saw your face. Um, I, I just, if you can approximate what percentage of of your time is spent responding

▶ 41:15 Jen Grigoraitis: to those? I know, you know, we've seen a huge uptick in departments across the city. I, in my role at the state in criminal justice, we've seen massive upticks and records requests to those agencies. Yeah. Never even if you just ballpark it never ending. Um, we're probably averaging on any given week, it can be from 30 to 45 records requests. Okay. And, um, that, and that is another reason why, uh, the overtime, um, I mean, it's not a big hit, but we just get so inundated. I, I literally can't hit that 10 day mark. And so I've asked the chief if I can get an overtime, a supervisor overtime to help with the records request. Cuz sometimes they just build and they build and they build and then I'm just

▶ 42:06 like, oh my goodness. So yeah, it's a lot. And we, we do need, we need help. Uh, I mean, just two weeks ago we were, we were at that point again and we needed to, to ask for a supervisor to come in and help with the records request. Okay. Thank you. I know it's a lot to manage. It's really helpful to know how much time it's taking. Thank you for that. Yeah. Thank you. Thank you. Anyone else? Council Gepe? Yeah. And just one quick question. Um, president Grigoraitis iis mentioned the fleet. How is the fleet and do you anticipate needing any new equipment in the next year or so? Um, is it agent pretty good fleet aging or? Well, we, right before I came on, well, that's another thing, sort of similar to, um, hiring a personnel.

▶ 42:55 So before I came on in December of 2022, chief Lyle ordered four new cruises in May of 2022. And we haven't gone up them all yet. So I mean, that's 14. Where are we? May, so it's a year and, and it, it takes a long time to get them. So we may be okay now, but I've, I've been asking because even if I ask now, I might not get those three or four cruises for a whole nother year, which could be fiscal year 25 at that point. So yeah, it, it goes down to strategic planning. The, the fleet is getting by, and again, I'll give the D p w credit, they're doing a great job. Um, we have a bunch of 2017 cars in the fleet front line cruises. And that might not seem old for people like us, like general people,

▶ 43:45 but that's old for a cruiser, that's six years of 24 7 being run all the time. So, you know, I cross my fingers and hope that we don't, we don't go down because when they go down, we lose 'em. And we, we have some relatively new hybrids and I'll take the moment to say that those are giving us problems. Uh, you know, I'm all for sort of the environment and helping. But, you know, the, the, we have one cruiser that's been down for six or seven months and it's got, what, 200 miles on it needed a brand new transmission. So the fleet is, is getting by. Uh, I'll say that. Uh, but we can, you know, I'm not an expert in this, but you know, my theory is that cruiser purchases or cruisers should be sort of a

▶ 44:30 Mark Garipay: budgetary item, not a, probably not a free cash or probably not an opera funding type thing where if you have it, yeah, you can get it. I feel it. We should be getting one or two cruises every year and just kind of rolling them, rolling them around. And then when you don't use 'em anymore, you either auction 'em off or you put 'em in detectives. You know, there's other ways you can use mocked cruises when they hit or sort sort of hit their life, if that makes sense. Those four cruises that are on, on order now, I'm assuming that the price hasn't been knowing what's going on in the industry. There's surcharges every year, so I'm assuming we're gonna see a another increase Or Maybe even a return for funding to finalize payment on those four.

▶ 45:09 Yeah, I think, I think we're good. Is that I think we've, we've, we, those are, those are paid for and accounted for. We have three out of the four had come in. Okay. We just got two this month, last month, and then the, the last one came, but it was, it was wrong. They didn't have the specs. Right. So we didn't take it. We sent it back. But, um, what I was looking into putting in a request for, you know, on the capital improvement or free cash, I forget which one it was. Those same exact cars from last year are $10,000 more this year. Same exact everything I said, just gimme a quote. Exactly what the chief ordered last time. I wanna see what, and it was $10,000 more. So you're right. They, they just keep going up.

▶ 45:47 Leila Migliorelli: Thank You. You're welcome. Anyone else? President gr Reyes. Motion to move the bottom line on. Oh, I lost my face. Sorry. Two 11. Two 11 mm-hmm. Second motion to move the bottom line made by President Greg Reyes. Seconded by, um, counselor Eckles. Anyone on discussion? Mr. Clerk, will you please call the roll Vice chair Jamine? Yes. Councilor Sin? Yes. Counselor Eckles? Yes. Council Garrette? Yes. Council Che? Yes. Council Williams? Yes. President Greg? Yes. And chair? Yes. That's eight. Yes. Unanimous. Thank you both. Um, thank you also for the memo was incredibly helpful. I didn't get a moment to say that before, but it was nice to see it broken down with exactly the descriptions on all of

▶ 46:41 Leila Migliorelli: the increases and changes. So really appreciate that clarity of welcome our presentation. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you all. Um, next, uh, we have, um, um, ordinance 2023 dash one false alarm revolving account. Um, this just needs a, just lost somebody. Um, it's okay. Um, it's a static account revolving account, so I'll entertain a motion that's related to the police budget. No, I Couldn't hear What you were asking. Hmm. I couldn't hear you. Oh, the, um, ordinance 2023 dash one, the false alarm revolving account number 2 6 65. Motion To move the bottom line. Thank you. Second Motion to move the bottom line made by Counselor Eckles on the false alarm revolving count. Seconded by counselor sin. All in favor?

▶ 48:01 No. Roll call Vice Chair Modine. Yes. Councilor Son? Yes. Councilor Eccles Les? Yes. Counselor Gepe? Yes. Counselor Che. Yes. Councilor Williams? Yes. And Chair Elli? Yes. That's seven. Yes. That motion carries. We'll go back up to, um, the fire department and tonight we have, um, fire Department Chief Kalina here with us. Good evening. Good evening everyone. Thank you, uh, for having me as I present my fiscal year 24 fire and ambulance budgets. I'd like to start off by giving everyone an overview of the fire department currently and currently we're staffed with 52 employees, normally 59. Uh, this includes chief of department, superintendent of fire alarm finance administrator, seven line captains, nine, um, fire lieutenants,

▶ 49:23 33 firefighters. The department provides fire and emergency services 24 7 365 days a year to the city of Melrose. And we respond to surrounding cities, uh, and towns as needed. These services may include structure fires, medical aids, call for service, uh, for example, lift assist lockouts, uh, gas orders, things of that nature. We perform, uh, permitting and, uh, fire, uh, prevention inspections. We perform fire details, uh, fire drills. Um, our department operates on a very lean budget, which funds a variety of, uh, life safety needs, such as, uh, our EMS supplies, uh, life safety equipment. Another example would be the S scba, uh, turnout gear hoses and the thermal imaging cameras. Uh, our apparatus and motor vehicle repairs. Uh, training, um,

▶ 50:30 new training this year. Uh, we did, uh, Nero's Law Training, which was new to, to our department, our paramedic, uh, recertification training. Our EMT recertification training, uh, hazards is, uh, hazardous materials response training on behalf of our entire department. And despite the fiscal challenges that we face, we continue to strive to safely and promptly provide high level of, uh, life fire and life safety protections to our citizen and our visitors. I'd like to, um, to review, have you review my fire budget and, uh, and the highlighted increases in a, a PowerPoint presentation that my finance administration, Rachel Jacobs Mayer put together for, uh, you might have it in your packets there, but if not, it's up on the screen. And

▶ 51:27 Let's see if that works. Okay. So I'm gonna fall along in my, uh, page here. So the, the, uh, as you can see, uh, uh, we're trying to do similar to what the police did and, and break out a, uh, training, overtime training line. And we'd like to start off with $10,000. Um, these funds would be used to cover overtime the send members to, um, outside training professional development at the discretion of myself. Some examples of this training would be Mass Fire Academy, uh, classes, um, national Fire Academy Infectious Control training, um, train the trainer type program so they can bring it back and train the members in in-house. So that's an, uh, increase there of $10,000. New, new to the budget line.

▶ 52:27 Then, uh, next, uh, page is contractual line line 52. Uh, we're looking for an increase of, um, just under $1,800 in our professional services line, uh, which represents about a 4.9% increase in that line. And that's due to price increases in, uh, in our annual house. Um, price increase, annual in-house hazmat training. We bring a private vendor in and he went up in his prices. And the software that we use to do our scheduling, um, and track some of our training, uh, went up also. So that's what that represents. That increase All the graphics on that screen aren't that good. Uh, sorry. Um, the next increase that we're requesting is, um, it's, it's just a minimal increase of a thousand dollars into our cleaning supplies.

▶ 53:33 Uh, you may not know that the, the fire stations are cleaned by the on-duty personnel on a daily basis. Um, and we, every year we over over expend, uh, spend this account. So we're looking to, because everything's gone up in prices, we think this will, uh, be able to, uh, do what far is for this, uh, fiscal year 24. Um, and then, uh, next, uh, page here. Uh, it just shows what the, the, the line items are and things like that, but there's no, no increases here. Again, everything's pretty much level funded. Uh, and then this is just a graph. Uh, I thought it was kind of nice. So we threw it in. Um, the administrative fees. You can see there's a, a slight up uptick there. And that's, that's really based on, um, that's the fees,

▶ 54:35 the administration fees that for our fire details. Obviously the police would be way, way, way more. But, um, that's what that one, the child on the left, the master box fees collected, that's an annual fee, uh, for the maintenance and service of the municipal service, uh, firearm service that's draw out the whole city. And, um, you can see, um, that's still ongoing, but that's the amount, uh, that we've collected to date for fiscal year 23. Uh, and it's really, uh, due to the hard work of Rachel, she, um, she's tenacious with just stand on these people to make sure that they, um, pay what they're supposed to do, uh, pay for the, for the service that we provide. Uh, the next one is our fire prevention inspections and permits.

▶ 55:26 The chart on the left just breaks it down by the type of, um, inspections that we do. And this is all performed by one person in fire prevention, captain Jamie Gibson. He does a great job. Uh, but you could see that most of the, uh, inspections are, uh, smoke detector, uh, kaba monoxide inspections on the sale of a home or refinance of a home. And that, that takes up a lot of his time. But, um, he does other things and it, it breaks it down by category, uh, to a total of, uh, 657 inspections. And then the chart on the right kind of shows the type of permits that he's issuing. And the big one there is, uh, the fire alarm ITM permits and the i t m stands for, uh, inspection, testing and maintenance. So kind of just encompasses all,

▶ 56:18 all the different things you can do with a permit in one permit. Um, and he does, uh, issued 568, um, in, in calendar year 22. Um, and then this next shot is the ambulance, uh, salary and overtime graphics. As you can see, the, uh, ambulance salaries went down all 3%, and that was just more of a, uh, budgetary maneuver. We, we attached eight of our salaries, personnel salaries to the ambulance budget, and we moved for some reason. Uh, last year, the, a couple of the younger guys, uh, were on, on the fire budget. So we cleaned it up this year and we moved them over into the, um, into the ambulance budget. And they just, their salaries a little less than, than the people that we moved off. So that's shows a,

▶ 57:22 basically it shows a 3% drop, but it all balances it out. All balances out. And then you can see that we, we asked for, uh, an increase in our overtime. And again, it's to handle the, some of our shortfalls in personnel, uh, training, uh, things like that. Um, So it looks like it's, uh, about a 4.2% increase is what we're gonna get. Um, and then the next line, line 52, we, it's professional services and, um, we're looking, uh, for a six, uh, thousand dollars increase in that line, uh, due to the price increases due to, uh, pro ems, not price increases. Let me, uh, rephrase that. Um, pro EMS does our billing on the ambulance, and they charge, um, 4% on the collected revenues that they, they collect. And, um,

▶ 58:30 quite frankly, the ambulance is very busy. The busier they are, the more they're gonna collect and that line there. So, um, we're gonna come close to spending all of that, and then some. So, uh, and also the handtevy, it, it's a mobile application that the paramedics use in the ambulance. Um, provides the members, uh, the ability to rapidly dose and document the care critically ill, um, patients in particular children, infants, um, proper dosing, uh, and the documentation that goes that all in a pre-hospital setting. Um, it's, it's a, it's a great tool. And, um, but that one, that service fee went up. And so $6,000 will cover those two professional services. I don't know how you read this. Oh, good thing I brought my chart here. Uh,

▶ 59:35 the next increase we're looking for represents a 24% increase in the EMS supplies, um, line. Um, we have, uh, everything's gone up in prices, but also in our last, uh, state inspection, we were deficient in some of our, um, Supplies that were had expired. So we had a clean house and, and we, we need to get more, um, supplies. And when I say it wasn't expired medications, it was, you know, um, a a piece of plastic. Everything has an expiration date on it. And even though there may not be anything wrong with it, it's expired. So, um, we're, you know, we, we spend a lot of money in our EMS supplies, but it's all driven towards the, uh, operations of the ambulance. And then, um, again, the ambulance ambulances, uh,

▶ 1:00:36 motor vehicle parts and repair, we're looking for an increase there of $10,000. Um, represents a hundred percent increase. Uh, last year, one of our ambulances blew an engine motor, and it, it was 20 grand. Just fixed that. So, um, we do have a, uh, ambulance on order. It's, it's, it's two years I've been told. Uh, they're still waiting for, uh, the chassis to go with it. It's, it's, it's mind blowing. Um, so Chief Fler, uh, was talking about waiting a year for a cruiser. Uh, we're, we're at two years for an ambulance. Um, and then We took just some of these chats in there. Kind of just gives you an overview picture of what the fire department does. This is the EMS calls. Um, it's how it breaks it down. As you can see, the,

▶ 1:01:30 the big, uh, one is it's just medical aids and this two, 2,740 medical aids. Uh, the next big one would be the motor vehicle accidents. Um, just broken down with injuries and without injuries. Uh, but a couple hundred calls there between those two 16 pedestrian accidents. And that could be from people, um, you know, walking into cars, being struck by a car, bicycle accidents, all things, anything involving a pedestrian all the way down to, uh, someone stuck in an elevator. Next shot. Uh, again, it's just all stats driven. It shows the, the shot on the left is the, the incidents and what days they happen. And you can see that it's pretty much even across the board. But if, if I look at it last year, the big, uh, busy day was Wednesday.

▶ 1:02:25 Go figure. And then, um, on the other chart is the incidents by month. And August appears to be the big winner there. That's our busy, busy month over the last three years. And then this one here, um, is response times. Um, and this is from dispatch out the door and to the, um, the incident location, and then the PA 1710 standard. You know, they want you hitting, um, a six minute response or less, 90% of the time in Melrose, uh, we do that. Uh, we haven't fallen below. Um, uh, last year for the fire apparatus, uh, we hit that 90.4% of the time, uh, the year before we did it, 91.2. So we were a little slower getting out the door. And there could be many different factors that, uh, relate to these numbers.

▶ 1:03:28 But, uh, we're hitting that standard. And then on the right chart, it's the same thing except for the ambulance. And the ambulance, um, does a better job, uh, getting there faster. So it may be because the engine, you really can't be speeding around the city. Uh, the ambulance can probably pick up a little bit quicker and get there faster, but they're hitting their market 92.2% of the time. And, uh, you know, I attribute it to, um, you know, dedicated, uh, response crews. Uh, they know their streets, they're in their districts, you know, um, you know, some of the new newer kids don't know the district as much as the older, older people, but, uh, again, they, they respond in, they're hitting that mark. That's pretty impressive. Um,

▶ 1:04:19 and then the accomplishments for this, uh, fiscal year, you know, uh, we put the, the new ladder truck in service. It took a while to get all the, uh, equipment that that went onto it in, but, um, we took possession of it in May, and it got in service, uh, in a, uh, in September. And similar to what we did, uh, on a annual report when we got engine two there, the first response was a house fire. Um, the ladder, this ladder, its first response was a medical aid call down at the Elmhurst Nursing Home. And, um, it's, it's kind of just cool to n uh, document the, the first response. The, um, fire department is also we're anticipating back to the ambulance, a new ambulance coming sometime this year. And, uh,

▶ 1:05:12 but there's no guarantees. And then the grant funds, again, the fire department, uh, you know, received, uh, the self-contained breathing apparatus equipment. We received that last, uh, well, this month actually first of, first of this month. And this equipment was purchased through the fiscal year 23 fire safety, uh, equipment grant. And, uh, also, uh, fiscal year 23 state Airmark grant. And the purchase order through free cash from a few years back that we were holding. This equipment includes s sc b a, the air packs, the cylinders, the air bottles that we wear, face pieces, um, which will all be, uh, now is all in service and has replaced the aged out unserviceable equipment. And I appreciate the, um, the vote of this board to, uh,

▶ 1:06:03 make that happen for us. Uh, I know my members, uh, truly appreciate it. And then, uh, last will be the fiscal year 24 goals. We're looking, uh, to increase the department's training, um, to stay in line with national standards, um, as well as, uh, document and said training implementing, uh, Lexipol Rescue Academy, um, which is an online training program we use in, um, the rescue academies. Uh, side of the module contains training videos, which allows our members of department to upload and, and also put their own, um, stuff in there if they want. Um, another goal, obviously is filling the seven vacant positions that we currently have right now. And we have scheduled interviews, uh, this Thursday,

▶ 1:06:58 Mark Garipay: the 24th. So, uh, let's keep our fingers crossed that we get those positions filled. And then obviously, uh, the big goal would continue to respond safely and effectively to, uh, all emergencies within the city of Melrose. Thank you for, uh, allowing me to present this, and I'll, uh, be more than happy to answer if I can, any questions that the board might have. Thank you. Chief Questions Councilor, Gary? Okay, thank you. Uh, thanks Chief. Thanks for being here. Uh, just a couple quick questions. Um, motor vehicle maintenance repair, we get, uh, the new pumper truck and the new ladder truck online in the last two years. Uh, we just lucky this year, or is that a, is the a reduction in the expense this year as a

▶ 1:07:50 result of the new equipments, would you say? Um, we have a, a, a good, um, preventive maintenance program that's keeping the cost down, but, um, uh, the ladder truck just came back. We had a preventive maintenance that bill's probably not been paid yet. Um, we're doing the best we can. Um, engine three is our oldest piece. It's has some, some problems. Um, but again, we we're jumping on it early, like, uh, the police chief said, you know, it's better to get a stay ahead of it than to, um, have something major happen, because then not only is the cost of the repair, but it's also, you don't get the apparatus to use. So it's, it's, you know, um, did, did I answer your question? I'm not sure. Well,

▶ 1:08:49 I was just wondering if we're doing less maintenance on the, the newer equipment, I'm assuming? Well, it, it, I mean, you're gonna have preventive maintenance, but y y Yeah, we're doing the preventive maintenance. Um, also that we're doing, that comes out of that line is the, the testing, the annual testing that we have to do. So the, the trucks, the, the, the ladders have to be tested. All ground ladders have to be tested. And up until a couple years ago we weren't doing that. Um, all our nozzles have to be tested, um, and, uh, so that it all comes out of that line there. But, um, again, preventative maintenance, uh, we, we do it by engine hours. That's the best way to handle that. So, um, the more the truck runs,

▶ 1:09:35 you're gonna get to those 250, 300 engine hours quicker than if it's just sitting in the station and not responding. So, you know, we're pretty busy fire department, you know, for a small area. We're pretty busy, Um, in uniforms. Uh, are we gonna have enough money in that category? You said we're hiring seven, seven new employees. Um, is that, is that gonna be enough money for you, I guess would be my question? Kind of level time, do you think? Or a little? I, i, I would say, uh, yes. It all depends when they, um, when they get on. Um, yeah, because that bud deadline there is, um, is budgeted for the 57. So we're in fact, um, less than that by seven positions. So, um, if they come on board,

▶ 1:10:28 they'd be entitled to that uniform stipend and, um, it, it will be budgeted, hopefully. And it's safe to assume that the overtime budget is quite a bit over this year, cuz we've been understaffed in, in your department due to those seven. That's correct. Yeah. Um, it's been challenging, uh, year. Um, we lost one firefighter to another department in July, uh, three left in, um, two left in September, October for, uh, to go into the nursing career. They were already nurses, but they went to the nurse nursing, uh, firefighter Driscoll retired, um, in, in I think October, possibly November, another member retired due to a, a medical issue. He just never healed from an off the job injury properly.

▶ 1:11:28 And he left in January, another person left for nursing, and then Firefighter McLeod, uh, retired in the end of February. And that's of the seven positions, uh, it's putting a tremendous strain on on the, the working firefighters across the alleyway over there, um, you know, with vacations, sickness injuries, um, that's why the overtime's up. It's, if you're out, we gotta, we have to put a, we have to put a force on the street that can do the job. Um, I, I will be coming asking for free cash and in my five years as chief, that'll, that'll only be the second time. So That seems to be the word of the year, free cash, Nothing's free. Thank You. Sure. Uh, vice Chair Modine. Thank you, Madam Chair. Um,

▶ 1:12:30 hi Chief. Um, so from what you explained that all the seven positions were open this year, uh, became open this year. So how can you talk to us about the hiring process? Sure. So the hiring process is, is, is challenging, uh, pretty much nationwide, but specifically here, um, which is what I know about, we, we tried to hire, I met with HR director in late September, early October. Um, when I, I started seeing people leave and we requisitioned, I think at that time for five jobs. Cuz we, we anticipated the person that left in December would leave. And, uh, we were unsuccessful to get anybody that would, uh, want to take the job here in Melrose. And the list was pretty much exhausted, the civil service list.

▶ 1:13:27 And they came out with the test and the new one was certified April 1st. And right away we jumped on it. We requisitioned for the seven jobs, now we're vacant. And, um, they're going through the, uh, well, they've probably completed the background checks by now. So I have a, a committee of three members within the fire department cap, and it's run by Captain Nobel. Mm-hmm. Uh, Lieutenant Alan Johnson and, uh, firefighter Jeremy Dunker. They do the background checks and they also do the interviews with the candidates. Uh, there's, uh, multitude of questions and scenario based, and then they'll, they'll rank those candidates. Um, based on that, uh, we have seven vacancies, but, and we only have seven candidates. So, um,

▶ 1:14:23 we'll, we'll see how that shakes out. But, uh, there's not a lot of interest in this line of work anymore. So you, you mentioned that there is now a lot of interest in, in working for marrows. Is it, did you mean marrows or did you I didn't say that. Well, yeah. Um, I, I don't know. What's the driving factor, uh, why people may choose not to work in Melrose? So Melrose, because we run a paramedic ambulance, we're specifically looking for paramedics. And statewide, I think there's only about 250 on the civil service list. And that's for all the communities that are looking for paramedics. Um, and then, you know, I mean, you could guess why people don't want, maybe don't want to come here when you,

▶ 1:15:16 Maya Jamaleddine: if you're being offered four jobs, you know, you, you may look at pay, you may look at, uh, station conditions, you may look at the busyness of, of a program. You know, we're pretty busy. Maybe someone doesn't want to be busy. You could look at maybe someone wants more fires. Okay. You know, to go to more fires. So I guess just to clarify the, what you mean is they don't wanna work here and here is mes That's, well yeah, that's the way it looked the last hiring round and we'll see what happens this, this time. Okay. So, um, are we doing the same, um, outreach or is there any way to make some changes in terms of, Um, we're really can't do too many types of changes cuz we're, we're, we're kind of governed under chapter 31, which is the civil service laws. Uh,

▶ 1:16:11 and there's a tight frame of how, and so there's a formula. It's, uh, for simplicity it's two n plus one. So if you're hiring one person, you double it and you add one. So you can interview up to three people for that one job. So now come out to seven openings. Mm-hmm. You double it, it's 14. So we can interview up to 15 people for our seven jobs. And those applications went out, but only seven were returned. Mm-hmm. So that's, that's where we're at. Okay. My last question, did we put any offer for any of the applicant applicants and didn't get accepted? Or is It on the last, uh, hiring round? We offered the job to two people. Mm-hmm. And, uh, cuz there was only two viable candidates. Mm-hmm.

▶ 1:17:08 And then one went two, I think took a job in Burlington and the other one originally had accepted, and then in January withdrew from the process. Could, did we find out the reason? I, I don't know. Okay. I don't know the reason. I don't know if, uh, the HR director was notified just for two from the process. Okay. Oh, thank you so much. Sure. Anyone else? Council Garbe, if We have questions on the ambulance, should we do that now? Or is that a separate Yeah, Let's do that now. All right. Uh, how are we doing on collecting, um, invoicing? We got a, we got third party invoicing. And how are they doing collecting Money? Um, you know, it's a great question. I don't have that answer, uh, in per se, into percentages. Um,

▶ 1:18:02 other than I would say that they're doing good because we're looking for an increase in that line that pays them. Um, but I don't have that exact, uh, you know, are they collecting that 84% or versus 80%? I don't, I don't know. Okay. Thank You. Or higher. Any other questions? Um, what is the will of the committee on the fire department's line 2 21. Motion to move the bottom line. Second. Motion to move the bottom line made by counselor Les. Seconded by Counselor Ella. Anyone on discussion? Mr. Clerk, will you please call the roll Vice chair Jamine? Yes. Counselor Sin? Yes. Counselor Les? Yes. Counselor Gepe? Yes. Counselor Che? Yes. Counselor Williams? Yes. President Gregs? Yes. And Chair M Yes. That's eight. Yes. Unanim.

▶ 1:19:04 Leila Migliorelli: Thank you. And while we're here while, while we, we are here, let's take a vote on appropriation 2023 dash 29 fiscal 2024. Ambulance, enterprise Operating Budget. What is the will of the committee? The motion to move bottom line. Second. Second. Okay. The motion would be to recommend for passage, Motion to recommend passage. Second. Motion to recommend for passage made by Vice Chair Jamal Dean, seconded by Counselor Son. Um, anyone on discussion? Mr. Clerk, Vice Chair Jamine? Yes. Counselor Ella? Yes. Counselor Eccles? Yes. Counselor Gepe? Yes. Councilor Che? Yes. Counselor Williams? Yes. President Greg Regards? Yes. And Chair Elli? Yes. That's a yes. Great. This order will be brought to the final full council budget meeting in June with

▶ 1:19:59 recommendation for passage. Thank you, chief Cleaner. Thank you everyone. Have your present. Have a good evening. Hey, uh, our final budget, um, presentation of the night is from Emergency Management Director. Albert, thank you so much for being here tonight. Director Albert. Thank you. Good evening. Uh, I'll be brief because I know I'm standing between you and the exit door, so I'll be as very brief. Uh, I did submit my goals along with the memorandum to the, uh, to the city council, which lists everything. But I just wanted to just briefly go over just a couple of items because, uh, as I've said before, emergency management is not the most well known, uh, department in, in any community, although it is one of the only, uh,

▶ 1:20:46 departments that is required by Massachusetts General Law. So, Massachusetts Gen General Law Chapter 6 39, states that every municipality in the in the Commonwealth must have an emergency management department. So here I am. Uh, and in the emergency management field, uh, as I may have explained before, that we have four phases. It's it's planning, uh, training and exercising response and recovery. Uh, we don't have an awful lot of response here in Melrose, thank goodness, because it means if we're responding to something, uh, it's, it's some sort of an emergency, uh, a building fire or, uh, some other type of event. Uh, the two events that, uh, we did have, uh, one of which I responded to, and I received a call from Chief Colina, uh, one evening. Uh,

▶ 1:21:39 there was an incident at Haws where, uh, a delivery truck ruptured their, uh, fuel tank on the, uh, on the trailer. And they had a release of 45 gallons of diesel fuel. And one of the programs that I initiated when I came to Melrose that I had used in my previous employee, was sending requests for reimbursement to those that are responsible for a hazardous materials incident. So when Chief Colina called and he responded, and I responded, uh, the chief is the incident commander by Massachusetts General la a hazardous incident. And, uh, I do the coordination between the responsible party, the cleanup contractor, uh, D P D E P, et cetera. And, uh, when it was, uh, concluded, uh, I did send a request for reimbursement, uh,

▶ 1:22:31 in behalf of the Fire Department of Police Department and Public Works to the Responsible Party, which was a trucking company. In, uh, within three weeks, the city received the check of over $5,000, which was, uh, exactly what we requested. And, uh, most recently there was, uh, motor vehicle accident up in 1 28 in Wakefield. It involved an electric car. And when the tow truck was starting to pull the electric car off of the, uh, guardrail, uh, it punctured the battery and a explosion in fire ensued. And, uh, after about 20,000 gallons of water, uh, the fire finally went out. I don't think it had much to do with the water, it just that it at that, at that level burnt itself out. But, uh, the city of Melrose was called on Mutual aid. And, uh,

▶ 1:23:27 upon hearing that and noting that it was a hazardous materials incident because of the, uh, carcinogens that came from the, uh, burning of the battery, uh, a request for reimbursement was submitted to that insurance company. And within two weeks, uh, we were reimbursed. So those are about the two parts on the, on the, uh, response side. Uh, I, I've been doing a lot of planning, uh, when, when Mayor Broder, uh, was first elected to office, uh, I had recommended to him that we, uh, adopt the National Incident Management System and the Incident Command System, uh, for all of our events, whether they're planned or, uh, demand response, emergency type of events. Uh, and it's been very, very successful because it gives us the opportunity to use a

▶ 1:24:21 uniform, uh, national accepted policy, uh, for doing all of our events. Uh, the Christmas parade, Halloween, uh, Victorian Parade, uh, Victorian, uh, summer stroll. And what we've been doing is by using the system, uh, all the departments that are involved fill out what is known as these incident command systems and forms. And it documents, they're step by step operation for these events. And then after the events, we then hold the meeting, speak about what went well, what areas needed, uh, changes. We adopted those into the forms. So when the following year came and we were doing the event all over again, it wasn't as it was previously done that everybody came to the table. And it was like the first time everybody got there, uh, everybody would come.

▶ 1:25:16 And we had all of the reports, uh, all generated from the previous event. And instead of spending an hour trying to build something, uh, we spent 15 minutes and just made any tweaks and, and off we went. Uh, currently I'm working with the, a film company that's doing a, uh, a major film right now. The production company is in, uh, in England. Uh, they're gonna be coming here in July, uh, to film on, uh, Oakwood. Oakwood, is it? Oakland Street? Oakland Street. On On Oakland Street. Uh, they haven't released the name of it yet. Uh, they're trying to keep it under wraps, so they're calling it Allison Wonderland. Mm-hmm. But, uh, they, they're va they're basically taking over a, uh, a house that's currently vacant and in their backyard. Uh,

▶ 1:26:06 they're going to do, uh, do a lot of leveling in the backyard. Uh, they're gonna put in a slab and, and put a tree there because they need a tree and there isn't a tree. Uh, today we had a meeting with the production company and all the department heads up in the training room and the, uh, production company went through everything, uh, working with them. Uh, this is the second time I'm working with this production company here in Melrose. Uh, I have them adopted into the, uh, incident management system as well. And they came with their, uh, report, uh, read everything that they were going to be doing from the time the first person and vehicle got here until the last one. And then all the departments, uh,

▶ 1:26:50 had the opportunity to, uh, tell the company what was responsible to their department from them. So on the police department, it was, it was details, uh, the fire department, uh, they're gonna be doing some welding up there, so there's gonna be some hard work permit, uh, public works. Uh, they're gonna need some type of barriers up there. Uh, uh, inspection service, uh, had had quite a few requirements, so this worked out well because everybody was in the same room at the same time. So everybody, uh, knows what's, uh, be being required with everybody else. Uh, Melrose is one of 23 communities that belongs to the Mystic Region Emergency Planning Committee. Uh, we're having one of our big training sessions tomorrow. And, uh,

▶ 1:27:41 I, I, I'm happy to announce that two years ago I was, uh, promoted. Promoted because nobody else showed up at that particular meeting. So they promoted me, uh, to the assistant, uh, uh, director of it. So, uh, I've been working a lot with that. Uh, through that, uh, organization, we did hire a consultant that came in that did a, what was called a com, a commodity flow study. We got a $30,000 grant, uh, for the MR Region. And with that, uh, the grant, through the grant, uh, the report tells us what hazardous materials that any one of our 23 communities have traveling through it, uh, which makes it a lot easier for us locally to do our, uh, hazardous materials planning. And it gives us the opportunity along with the police and fire department to,

▶ 1:28:35 uh, to do some exercises. So that's pretty much what we do in emergency management. And again, as I said before, the door is always open and I'm always willing to, uh, invite you in and answer any questions. And the good news is there's no increase in the budget. Thank you. Any questions from the council counselor? Ella, Congratulations on your promotion. Are you gonna be in the movie? Uh, probably not. Uh, no. Especially now with all the, actually one of the questions that came up was, uh, is there gonna be any picketing here because of what's going on out in California? Oh, yeah. So nice. Congrats. I'd make a motion to move the bottom Line. Second. Motion to move the bottom line made by Counselor Ella. Second to my counselor.

▶ 1:29:20 Leila Migliorelli: Les, on discussion. Scene none. Mr. Clark, Vice chair Jamal? Yes. Councilor Sin? Yes. Counselor Eckles? Yep. Yes. Counselor Gepe? Yes. Counselor Che? Yes. Counselor Williams? Yes. President Gues? Yes. And chair? Yes. That's eight. Yes. That motion carries. Thank you very much for being with, with us tonight. All right. Now we will go back up to, um, appropriation 2023 dash 33 appropriation from, actually, hold on one second. Let's, um, motion to hold that, that budget order appropriation 2023 dash 28 committee. So I'll accept a motion to hold. Second. Motion to hold. Um, 2023 dash 28 committee made by President Gregory Rees, seconded by Counselor Eckles. All in favor? Aye. Any opposed? That motion carries. Okay.

▶ 1:30:18 Leila Migliorelli: So now we will go back up to appropriation 2023 dash 33 appropriation from Mount Hood Retain earnings account 62 0 0 0 0 dash 3 1 9 0 0 0 in the amount of $250,000 to Mount Hood Professional Services account 62 5 2900 to fulfill contract obligations. And tonight we have, um, Joan Bell with us from the Parks Department to speak on this order. Okay. All right. So I come before you tonight to ask for money to fulfill contractually our obligation to the management company. The management company received 65% of gross revenues Mount Hood. The good news is they have done very well. Um, the bad news, but not the bad news is we have to pay them based on that contract. Um, we had a really good spring season with the previous management company gmc,

▶ 1:31:14 um, where they met and beyond what our expectations were. The fall season with the new management company. Um, they are already roughly a hundred thousand ahead of last year. So between the two, the way our fiscal year is split, um, the obligation that we have to pay them, we, um, also including our split to the management company, went up, um, from 60 to 65. So that was an additional money. So the good news is it's all money that we have. It's been revenue that has come in. Um, it's sits in a certified retain earnings light item. Um, so it's coming nothing from the city, it's coming from the Mount Ho, Mount Hood Enterprise Fund. Um, and so that's what I'm asking for $250,000 to meet the she's obligation.

▶ 1:32:04 Leila Migliorelli: Thank you. Any questions from the council? What is the will of the committee motion should recommend? Second Motion to recommend made by President Greg. Seconded by Counselor Gepe. Anyone on discussion? None. Mr. Clerk By Chair Jamine? Yes. Counselor Ella? Yes. Counselor Les? Yes. Counselor Gepe? Yes. Counselor Kche? Yes. Counselor Williams? Yes. President Greg? Yes. And Chair Elli? Yes. That's a yes. Unanimous Motion passage passes and will be heard at our next POU full Council meeting. Thank you. Thank you. Motion to Adjourn. Second. Motion Adjourned made by Councilor Ella. Second. Seconded my counselor Eckles. All in favor? Aye. Any opposed? Now adjourned. Thank you.

Original documents

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