Finance Committee — 2024-03-25
Attendance
Manjula Karamcheti ; Leila Migliorelli ; Devin Romanul ; Robb Stewart ; Kimberly Vandiver ; Ryan Williams
Agenda
- Call to Order
- Public Comment
- Transfers
- TRNSF-2024-2 : Intra Departmental Transfer in the amount of two thousand two hundred thirty dollars and fifty-five cents ($2,230.55) from Recodification Account Number 011612-529301 to Equipment Account Number 011612-530400 to purchase moveable shelving units for permanent storage of legislative body files in the basement archival vault.
- TRNSF-2024-3 : Requesting a transfer of funds from the Group Health budget, account number 019142-549201, in the amount of One Hundred and Two Thousand Dollars ($102,000) to various accounts within the HR Department.
- Adjournment
Minutes
CITY OF MELROSE FINANCE COMMITTEE CALENDAR● MARCH 25, 2024 Council Chamber, First Floor, Melrose City Hall Committee Meeting 7:35 PM 562 Main Street, Melrose, MA 02176 The public should take notice that the Melrose City Council may, on certain occasions, have a quorum in attendance due to standing committees of the City Council consisting of both voting and non-voting members. Members attending this duly posted meeting are participating and deliberating only in conjunction with the business of the standing committee. Attendee Name Title Status Arrived Robb Stewart Chair Present Kimberly Vandiver Vice Chair Present Manjula Karamcheti Present Ryan Williams Absent Devin Romanul Present Leila Migliorelli President, Ex Oficio Present Non voting members present include: Councilor Finocchiaro and Councilor Hamilton
TRNSF-2024-2 Transfer Intra Departmental Transfer in the amount of two thousand two hundred thirty dollars and fifty-five cents ($2,230.55) from Recodification Account Number 011612-529301 to Equipment Account Number 011612-530400 to purchase moveable shelving units for permanent storage of legislative body files in the basement archival vault. Ought to pass City Council
TRNSF-2024-3 Transfer Requesting a transfer of funds from the Group Health budget, account number 019142-549201, in the amount of One Hundred and Two Thousand Dollars ($102,000) to various accounts within the HR Department. Ought to pass City Council City of Melrose Page 1 3/28/2024 1:09 PM
Transcript
▶ 15:05 Robb Stewart: We also have non-voting members, councilors, Hamilton, and Fenocchio. Uh, this provides notice of a quorum, um, and in accordance with the open meeting law. This meeting is being recorded and broadcast on our local cable access channel MMTV and live streamed on the MMTV website and available through the city, uh, Melrose Portal. Uh, at this point, um, I will, uh, without objection, open the floor for public comment. This is a portion of the, uh, meeting where anyone from the public can come forward with any of the items on the agenda this evening. Is there anybody online? There are no participants on the line at this time. Okay. Without objection. I'm gonna close public comment. Public comment is not closed.
▶ 16:00 Robb Stewart: Uh, I know we have a, I believe a few people that are speaking this evening. So without objection, I'll suspend Rule 37 B. We have two items on the agenda this evening. Uh, both, uh, transfers. Uh, the first item being transfer 2024 dash two. This is an interdepartmental transfer in the amount of $2,230 and 55 cents from the reification account. Number 0 1 1 6 1 2 dash 5 2 9 3 0 1 to equipment account number 0 1 1 6 1 2 dash 5 3 0 4 0 0 to purchase movable shelling units for permanent storage of legislative body files in the basement, archival vault. It's pretty cool. And do we have anybody that's coming forward for this? Mme. Clark, Good evening. Good evening. My pleasure to be here. If it's with permission of the chair,
▶ 17:02 I'd like to show a little video. I took this on Friday. I always figured the pictures weren't great and it's much better to have video. This is the all CarVal vault in the basement. Whoa. Yeah. So this is the vault, and I wanted to show you what we're talking about. That's the, this is a six foot, six foot, six inch steel door. When you open this up, you can see these are all the archival records. And in the middle of this vault, there are current metal shelving. They're not on wheels, and they obviously don't store all of these banker boxes that we have on the floor. So these are archival records. These are records from eighteen ninety one, eighteen seventy one, and 1871, birth deaths, marriages.
▶ 17:41 There were also the Board of Alderman Motion dating back to 1908. And those metal shelves that we see there, they don't move. Um, I did ask DPW if we could sort of repurpose these. There was a way to put wheels on them. They're from the eighties, they're not repurposable. So I did try, um, I looked at, we looked at WB Mason, I'm sorry, Kim Combines and Amazon Business. They don't have products that were the needs. So we worked with DPW. That is the pricing of them. And if it pleases the council, that is what we are looking at for purchasing. The new shelving would have wheels so they can slide back and forth so we can fit all of the, so they're not on the floor. They're not getting moldy.
▶ 18:19 Devin Romanul: They're not getting deteriorating. Great. Thank you Madam Clerk. Oh, And the current reification, um, existing budget line is at $7,830. Excellent. Any questions from the, the committee? Councilor Ryan? Um, Seems like a good idea to me. Um, thank you for the video. That's really, I would Yeah. Love to look at it in person. Sure. Anytime. But, um, I wanted to ask if, if there's ever been an effort to or consideration of dig, digitize, digitization of those files. It's Like I paid you to ask that question. Oh, so on Thursday, MMA just did a presentation on digitizing records and archiving processes preservation. Um, I, it's in my queue, in my webinars, I did watch it or try to watch the entire thing.
▶ 19:06 Um, there was some interruptions. So it is in my queue to watch again. I know that Tom Mulligan in the IT department, they have a grant. So we're going to look at best practices in digitizing what we can. There are some that we have to retain permanent storage in paper format. It is my goal to try and digitize as much as we can, because then it also is easy to access. We have digitized all of our marriage records all the way back to 1991, and we have them, the, the, the issue is formatting and making them accessible in optical character recognition as well. Mm-Hmm. So trying to figure out what is the best structure, uh, not just in the clerk's world, but citywide. Um, so it is a huge push of mine to
▶ 19:52 Robb Stewart: how much storage do we need? What format can it be in? So I'm with you in terms of what can we do? How can we do it? Where do we put the records that we have to keep? Who's gonna preserve them storage wise in terms of where the space is? So I'm looking into it. Yeah. Sounds good. Well, let us know how we can help. Yeah. This aside, Yes, I think any other questions I'll make a motion to recommend. Second, we have a motion to recommend by Council Chet, seconded by President GL under discussion. Oh, vice Chair vandiver. Have the same voice, uh, under discussion. All in favor? Aye. Opposed? Okay. This will get sent to the full committee with a a, a motion to recommend. Thank You. Okay. We have the second transfer, uh,
▶ 20:53 2024 dash three requesting a transfer of funds from the group health budget. Account number 1 9 1 1 9 0 1 9 1 4 2 dash 5 4 9 2 0 1 in the amount of $102,000 to various accounts within the HR department. Good evening. So, um, I'm here tonight to request transfer of funds from the group health budget to various accounts in the amount of $102,000. And these accounts are, um, the human resources expense account. There's two of them, $2,000 in advertising and $17,000 in physical exams. The reason for this request is to, um, continue advertising and recruiting for existing vacancies that we have. Um, in addition to that, the physical exams line item, uh, we are required to pay for pre-employment exams for police,
▶ 21:54 fire, public works and Memorial Hall. Um, new hires this fiscal year, we had four public safety candidates who went through the pre-employment exam process. However, unfortunately did not result in hires for various different reasons. Um, these exams are pretty expensive, so they depleted half of, uh, the budget, the pre-employment exams budget. So the additional funds are requested to pay for pre-employment exams for current, um, candidates, pending candidates, which includes, um, 11 firefighter candidates. In addition to that, um, I'm requesting $25,000 to go into the workers' comp budget. Um, medical, ex medical, um, expenses and $35,000 for workers' comp, uh, benefits. Our, um, benefits are required.
▶ 22:58 The benefits budget is required to pay the city obligation for, um, any indemnity benefits for current long-term and short-term recipients of workers' comp benefits. And they're required to cover the rest of the fiscal year. The $25,000 workers' comp, um, medical that I'm requesting is needed to pay for any anticipated known medical expenses as well as unknown, um, medical, uh, cost, workers' comp cost. And the final line item that I would like to request a transfer to is our unemployment line item 2020 $3,000. And these funds, again, are necessary to cover for anticipated and unanticipated, um, benefit cost for the, for the remainder of the fiscal year. Uh, we have three more months that we have to pay, um,
▶ 23:54 Kimberly Vandiver: unemployment costs for, and the funds are available in our group health budget due to the number of vacancies throughout the year that have not been, uh, filled. So any questions I can answer? Thank you, Ms. Lata. Any questions from the council? Council, vice chair? Vandiver. Thank you. Uh, I, I was just wondering about the physical exams and, and their expense. Um, so you mentioned there were four, um, candidates who had the physical exams and, and left the system, um, already Mm-Hmm. And the request is to transfer 17,000 for physical exams. So is it about 4,000 per exam or how much does it cost for a physical Exam? No, yeah, no, I'm, I'm happy to explain. Uh, alright, lemme just get my, okay.
▶ 24:43 So for our firefighter, um, exams, it's about, um, a thousand dollars for their pre-employment physical exam, and three 50 for their pre-employment psychological exam. Um, right now we have, um, hired three mts, who will be starting actually in the month of April. And, um, we've paid actually for their exams and we have eight more vacancies that we have to fill. So that's eight vacancies times, um, about almost 10,000, I'm sorry, 1300 per vacancy. Mm-Hmm. We also have, um, a DPW vacancy that we're anticipating. We have a memorial hall, uh, labor operations system that we're anticipating to pay for pre-employment exams. And, um, so these are the known exams. Okay. Thank you. Any other questions? What is the will of the committee
▶ 25:51 Maya Jamaleddine: Motion to recommend? Second. So have a motion to, uh, recommend by Councilor Romanul seconded by Councilor Chetty under discussion. All in favor? Aye. Aye. Opposed? Okay. This is, uh, going to be sent to the full counsel with, uh, recommendation, uh, that concludes our business for this evening. And without objection, I will motion to adjourn. We are adjourned. I didn't do it. Do you want this one? I didn't. Good evening. The time is 7 48 49, uh, on Mon Monday, March 25th, 2024. This is a meeting of the Appropriation and Oversight Committee. I am Maya Jamal, Dean pronouns, she and her the chair. And also joining me tonight are Vice-Chair Williams counselors, fina Chiro, GPE, Hamilton Karadi, Reky, Romano Stewart, and Vandiver,