Finance Committee — 2024-04-16
Attendance
Manjula Karamcheti ; Leila Migliorelli ; Devin Romanul ; Robb Stewart ; Kimberly Vandiver ; Ryan Williams
Agenda
Minutes
CITY OF MELROSE FINANCE COMMITTEE CALENDAR● APRIL 16, 2024 Council Chamber, First Floor, Melrose City Hall Committee Meeting 7:05 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 Present Devin Romanul Present Leila Migliorelli President, Ex Oficio Present Non voting members present include: Councilor Finocchiaro & Councilor Hamilton
TRNSF-2024-4 Transfer Election department transfer of funds $6,728 (Six Thousand, Seven Hundred Twenty-Eight Dollars) from salary and wages 011611-511000 to printing 011622-521000 for the payment of election day expenses. Ought to pass City Council City of Melrose Page 1 4/17/2024 10:49 AM
Transcript
▶ 3:54 Robb Stewart: and broadcast on our local cable access channel. MMTV as was live streamed on the MMT Web, uh, website, and available for future viewing through the City of Melrose's, uh, portal. Uh, so at this point, um, without any objection, I will open the floor for public comment. This is the portion of the meeting where anybody can come forward, uh, and express their thoughts on any item on the agenda. Seeing there's no one in, uh, the room, is there anybody online? Not At this time. Thank you, Mr. Clark. Without objection, then I'll close public comment. Public comment is now closed. We have one item on the agenda this evening. We have transfer 2024 dash four, the election department transfer of funds of $6,728
▶ 4:48 Robb Stewart: from salary and wages 0 1 1 6 1 1 dash five to printing 0 1 1 6 2 2 dash five 20 for the payment of election day expenses. And I believe that we have, uh, Madam Clerk to come forward. Uh, and without objection, I'll suspend rule, uh, 37 B, uh, since, since there is no objection, 37 B is suspended. Madam Clerk, please come forward. Good evening. Thank you. Thank You. If it please the council, I have some additional details I thought may be helpful to share in some visuals, if that's helpful. Great. So the election day expenses specifically are coding the 35 ballots ovals on each of the party, uh, democratic and, um, Republican party selections on the presidential primary. It happens every four years.
▶ 5:48 It's atypical just because it happens every four years. So I went back and pulled the 2020 election day expense just to see where we were. 'cause we thought it was a little high. And in 2020 we spent pulled the actual warrant, $4,588. So we did go back and kind of said to the vendor, what's kind of going on here? It's this year, it's 6,728. And he said, we haven't gone up in coding expenses in a really long time in four years. So what they mean by coding is the little SD cards, just as a little primer, the little SD cards that go into the ballot tabulate or the machinery that then this gets fed in. And it codes all of these. They're called tick marks, it codes them, and appropriately accounts
▶ 6:27 for the balloting is what they call coding. So it's one of these for each ballot for each type of ballot, absentee, early in person day of, and then it's by wooden precinct. So there's 21 of those, and that's what they consider coding expenses. So I was, the money was already appropriated in 24. It's, uh, salary, wages, money from an, uh, employee that transferred out. And so I had some left over money 'cause of that. So I'm not able looking for any kind of free cash money. It's already been appropriated by council in 24. Alright, thank you Madam Clerk. Um, any questions from the council? Council Ramal? Um, thanks so much for that super useful information. I just wanted to ask if as we think about appropriating money
▶ 7:11 for future budget cycles, does this cost increase something you'd like us to incorporate, um, moving forward where you might not have that, you know, um, unused FTE line items available? Wonderful Question. So we did ask him what we should be looking at. He said, looking at this is the vendor, he looking at similar elections. He said, adding 10% ish should get you close to the ballpark for budgeting. So we are taking that in consideration and kind of looking at maybe 10% might be a little high for us. Maybe we might look seven or eight. So we're working with him on that and reducing expenses. Excellent. Thank you very much. Sure. Any other questions? What is the will of the committee Motion to recommend? Second,
▶ 7:50 Robb Stewart: We have a motion to recommend by Council Ramal seconded by Council Williams under discussion. All in favor? Aye. Opposed? Okay. This will be sent to the full committee. Um, you, you will be there. So you'll get to listen to it. Thank you very much. Okay. That, that is, uh, the one and only item that we have. Um, for the record, uh, we also have non-voting members councils, Hamilton and Occhio. Um, what is the will committee? Motion to adjourn? Second. So we have a motion to adjourn by Council Williams, seconded by Council Chetty under discussion. All in favor? Aye. Aye. Opposed? We are adjourned. Good evening. Um, the time is seven 14 on Tuesday, April 16th, 2024. This is a meeting of the Appropriations