Appropriations & Oversight Committee — 2024-06-06

Attendance

Cal Finocchiaro present; Mark Garipay present; Ward Hamilton present; Maya Jamaleddine present · Chair; Manjula Karamcheti absent; Leila Migliorelli present · President, Ex Oficio; John Obremski absent; Devin Romanul present; Robb Stewart present; Kimberly Vandiver present; Ryan Williams present · Vice Chair

Agenda

1. Call to Order (0:00)
2. Public Comment (0:30)
3. Appointments/Reappointments
4. APPT-2024-31 : Appointment of Thomas Smulligan as IT Director (2:02)
5. APPT-2024-32 : Reappointment of Anne DeSouza-Ward, 69 Florence Street, to the Planning Board for a five-year term; said term to expire on the last day of February 2029. (6:03)
6. Appropriation
7. APPRO-2024-31 : An Appropriation from Free Cash in the amount of $10,000, to the Human Resources Department, for ADA Needs (7:04)
8. APPRO-2024-33 : An Appropriation from Free Cash in the amount of $20,000 to the Planning Department (011752-529026) for FY 25 Messina Grant Funding. (11:08)
9. APPRO-2024-34 : Requesting an Appropriation from Free Cash in the amount of $75,000.00 (Seventy Five Thousand Dollars) to Parks Capital Projects(475) - Conant Playground (14:55)
10. APPRO-2024-36 : Requesting an appropriation from Free Cash in the amount of $40,000 (Forty Thousand Dollars) to Public Works Accounts (#422) as set forth herein and for sidewalk replacements at various locations throughout the City. (22:17)
11. APPRO-2024-37 : Requesting an appropriation from Free Cash in the amount of $39,720 (Thirty Nine Thousand Seven Hundred Twenty Dollars) to Public Works Accounts (#475) as set forth herein and for tree planting throughout the City (31:06)
12. APPRO-2024-38 : Requesting an appropriation from Free Cash in the amount of $75,000 (Seventy Five Thousand Dollars) to Public Works Accounts (#402) as set forth herein and for Asbestos Remediation at Various City Schools (42:37)
13. APPRO-2024-25 : Fiscal 2025 Operating Budget in the amount of $104,140,412 (One Hundred four million, one hundred forty thousand, four hundred and twelve dollars). (51:55)
14. APPRO-2024-29 : Fiscal 2025 Ambulance Enterprise Operating Budget in the amount of $1,021,682 (One Million, Twenty-One thousand, six hundred and eighty-two dollars). (2:08:08)
15. Departments
16. Adjournment (2:19:23)

Minutes

CITY OF MELROSE APPROPRIATIONS & OVERSIGHT COMMITTEE CALENDAR● JUNE 6, 2024 Council Chamber, First Floor, Melrose City Hall Budget Hearing 7:34 PM 562 Main Street, Melrose, MA 02176 Attendee Name Title Status Arrived Maya Jamaleddine Chair Present Ryan Williams Vice Chair Present Mark Garipay Present Robb Stewart Present Manjula Karamcheti Absent John Obremski Absent Ward Hamilton Present Kimberly Vandiver Present Devin Romanul Present Cal Finocchiaro Present Leila Migliorelli President, Ex Oficio Present

APPT-2024-31 Appointment/Reappointment Appointment of Thomas Smulligan as IT Director Ought to Pass City Council

APPT-2024-32 Appointment/Reappointment Reappointment of Anne DeSouza-Ward, 69 Florence Street, to the Planning Board for a five-year term; said term to expire on the last day of February 2029. Ought to Pass City Council

APPRO-2024-31 Appropriation An Appropriation from Free Cash in the amount of $10,000, to the Human Resources Department, for ADA Needs Ought to Pass City Council

APPRO-2024-33 Appropriation An Appropriation from Free Cash in the amount of $20,000 to the Planning Department (011752-529026) for FY 25 Messina Grant Funding. Ought to Pass City Council

APPRO-2024-34 Appropriation City of Melrose Page 1 7/12/2024 1:14 PM Minutes Appropriations & Oversight Committee June 6, 2024 Requesting an Appropriation from Free Cash in the amount of $75,000.00 (Seventy Five Thousand Dollars) to Parks Capital Projects(475) - Conant Playground Ought to Pass City Council

APPRO-2024-36 Appropriation Requesting an appropriation from Free Cash in the amount of $40,000 (Forty Thousand Dollars) to Public Works Accounts (#422) as set forth herein and for sidewalk replacements at various locations throughout the City. Ought to Pass City Council

APPRO-2024-37 Appropriation Requesting an appropriation from Free Cash in the amount of $39,720 (Thirty Nine Thousand Seven Hundred Twenty Dollars) to Public Works Accounts (#475) as set forth herein and for tree planting throughout the City Ought to Pass City Council

APPRO-2024-38 Appropriation Requesting an appropriation from Free Cash in the amount of $75,000 (Seventy Five Thousand Dollars) to Public Works Accounts (#402) as set forth herein and for Asbestos Remediation at Various City Schools Ought to Pass City Council

APPRO-2024-25 Operating Budgets (City, School, Regional School) Fiscal 2025 Operating Budget in the amount of $104,140,412 (One Hundred four million, one hundred forty thousand, four hundred and twelve dollars). Hold Appropriations & Oversight Committee

APPRO-2024-29 Operating Budgets (City, School, Regional School) Fiscal 2025 Ambulance Enterprise Operating Budget in the amount of $1,021,682 (One Million, Twenty-One thousand, six hundred and eighty-two dollars). Ought to Pass City Council City of Melrose Page 2 7/12/2024 1:14 PM

Transcript

▶ 0:02 Maya Jamaleddine: Good evening. The time is 7 34 on Thursday, June 6th, 2024. This is a meeting of the Appropriations and Oversight Committee. I am Maya Jamel, Dean, uh, NUIA and her the, uh, the chair. And joining me tonight are Vice Chair Williams, counselor Stewart, um, ver Ro man, Hamilton Carpe, and President GL Lee Ceio. This serves as notice of a quorum for the record in accordance with the open meeting law. This meeting is being recorded and broadcast live on MMTV in the public comment portion. I will motion by unanimous consent to open the floor for public comment and seeing no objection. We are now open for public comment. This is the portion of the meeting where anyone can speak on any item on our

▶ 1:03 Maya Jamaleddine: agenda for tonight. Seeing no one, uh, in, uh, person. Do we have anyone online? Uh, no one's online at this time. Perfect. Thank you. If there is no objection, I would like to close public comment. Scene none. We are now closed for public comment. Since we have members of, uh, the administration, uh, here tonight to speak on the items, uh, before us. I would like to motion, uh, by unanimous consent to suspend the rules before we proceed. And seeing no objection, the rules are now suspended during our annual budget hearings. Each city department comes before the council to present their annual operating budget for FY 25. These hearings will continue for five weeks, and the schedule of the departments is available online

▶ 2:03 Jen Grigoraitis: for the benefits of the public. This means that you'll see the same agenda items on our budget during our budget hearing season until the council passes the full FY 25 budget. Um, first item on our agenda, uh, appointment 2024 dash 31. Appointment of Thomas, uh, GaN as IT director. Good evening. Good evening everyone. Um, I'm thrilled to be here tonight presenting Tom Mulligan to you for appointment as the city's IT director. I think many of you have had an opportunity to interact with Tom, um, and he has been filling this role since February and doing an outstanding job. Um, just by a little bit of his background, he brings over 15 years of experience in it, both in municipalities and in public schools.

▶ 3:02 Jen Grigoraitis: In his role in Melrose, he's the IT director for both the City of Melrose and the Melrose Public Schools. He's also served our country, um, while serving in the Army for five years. And he brings a lot of tech certifications that I will pretend to know nothing about. And I, why I think that matters is that I think one of the things that Tom excels in and is so critical to this role is his ability to effectively communicate with non-technical people. His department, which is a small staff of four, is working with every department, every board commission, you all the school committee, our partners on the school side, and the ability to troubleshoot, to problem solve, and to help us meet the needs of a very diverse

▶ 3:40 Jen Grigoraitis: and challenging user population with the limited funding that we have, is a real strength and has really helped us tackle some challenges. So I'm so excited that he's willing to step into this role and, um, and really appreciative of your consideration. Thank you very much for welcome. That trail. You welcome. Um, I don't know what the else there is to say now. Uh, Madam Chair Councilor, thank you very much for having me here tonight. Um, as Mayor Agenda said, I've been in it for 15 ish, so years I've run the game at from your entry level help desk at Staples, um, all the way up to now, and everything between, um, also fixed random computers on mountaintops as she pointed out. Um, it had nothing to do with my job,

▶ 4:23 but it just kinda, this is what got me into it, is just having to fix stuff and making it up as I go. Um, so I hope that I can do everyone justice and keep the boat moving forward and adapt to all the changes that are happening daily, um, with everything that's changing out there in the world. And, you know, doing that on the shoestring budget that we have with the small team that we have, and doing as best we can and, and getting all that information out to you all and everyone else in and around the city. Thank you. Thank you. Do we have any question from my colleagues? Vice Chair Williams? I just wanted to say thank you for coming out today. It's great to see you in person. Um, uh, I personally am a tech guy myself.

▶ 5:11 I've been impressed with the progress that the department has made in the last year. Really appreciate how you've been responsive to a whole host of different issues. Um, and with that, I'd like to make a motion to recommend this to the full council. Second, We have a motion to recommend to the full council, made by Vice Chair Williams, seconded by Councilor Romanul. On discussion. Seeing none. Um, Mr. Clerk, Vice Chair Williams? Yes. Councilor Gar. Yes. Councilor Stewart? Yes. Councilor Hamilton? Yes. Councilor Vandiver. Yes. Councilor Romanul? Yes. Councilor Naro. Yes. President Elli? Yes. And Chair Jamal Dean? Yes. Uh, motion passes Unanimously. Congratulations. Thank you all. Thank you. Thank you.

▶ 6:04 Maya Jamaleddine: Next we have appointment 2024 dash 32 reappointment of and the Souse Award, uh, 69 Florence Street to the Planning Board for a five year term, uh, set term to expire on the last day of February, 2029. Um, since this is a, uh, reappointment, what is the will of the committee? Yes. Thank you, Madam Chair. I'll make a rec, um, motion to recommend this to the full council. Second, We have a motion to recommend to the full council made by Councillor Sewer, seconded by Vice Chair Williams on discussion. Seeing none. All all in favor? Aye. Aye. Any opposed? Okay. This motion. Um, Carrie, um, next we have appropriation 2024 dash, um, 31 in appropriation from free cash in the amount of $10,000 to the Human Resources Department for a DA needs. Welcome.

▶ 7:12 Good evening. Good evening. I'm here tonight, um, to request $10,000 in free cash to meet the city obligations under the, uh, Americans with Disabilities Act to ensure that we have equitable access to information services programs to residents with disabilities. Uh, this was a recommended next step in the 2023 a DA self-evaluation and transition plan. And we currently don't have a line item in our budget, uh, to meet the a DA needs. So it'll build that financial capacity to be able to provide essential auxiliary services, um, adaptive technologies such as, uh, a SL translators, card services, assistive listening devices to residents who are deaf and hard of hearing. And the, I'm the a DA coordinator for the city,

▶ 8:07 Robb Stewart: and I will work with the Office of Massachusetts, commission of Death and Heart of Hearing, Massachusetts Office of Disability with the Melrose Commission on Disability for guidance and to procure these services. So, thank you. Thank you. Any question? Uh, councilor Stewart? Uh, thank you, Madam Chair. Thank you Ms. Lada, for being in front of us. Um, which events are you targeting for these? What, what events do you have in mind that would require these services? Um, any events, anything from, um, city council meetings to larger events such as graduations, um, events that require, uh, city events that require, uh, larger participation. And how does that work then? Do, do, are you contacted saying that, uh, I am,

▶ 9:01 Robb Stewart: uh, someone that has a certain need that, uh, would require assistance. Can you please help? And then we go and allocate those resources? Yes. So, um, S-D-A-D-A coordinator, um, my information is on the website and I'm working with departments to publicize these services as well. So, uh, I'll be contacted that there is a need, uh, identify what the need is and how we can best meet that need. And then, uh, I will reach out to, um, the appropriate vendor, Massachusetts, uh, commission of Death and hard of hearing, for example, and, um, get, um, the services. I think this is a good service, and I appreciate, uh, you coming forward to us. Uh, is there a way that you could get the word out, uh, perhaps write an article once this passes?

▶ 9:53 Robb Stewart: If, uh, if it, it does pass so that way the community is more aware of it. My concern is someone that isn't necessarily going to the website and looking at at things may not be fully aware that this service is available. So, Absolutely. Yes. I would encourage that. Um, the administration take that as an action. Yes. Great. Thank you. Thank you, Madam Chair. Thank you. Any other question? What is the will of the committee? Councilor Stewart? Yeah, Madam Chair. I'll make a motion to recommend this to the full counsel. Second, we have a motion to recommend, uh, made by Councillor Stewart, seconded by Councillor Vandiver. Um, on discussion, seeing none, Mr. Clerk, Vice Chair Williams? Yes. Councillor Repe. Yes. Councillor Stewart? Yes.

▶ 10:43 Councilor Hamilton? Yes. Councillor Vandiver. I'm sorry. Yes. Uh, Councillor Romanul? Yes. Councillor Finocchiaro. Yes. President Elli? Yes. And Chair Jamal Dean? Yes. That motion passes unanimously. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Ms. Lara Appropriation 2024 dash 33 and appropriation from free cash in the amount of $20,000 to the planning department. 0 1 1 7 5 2 dash 5 2 9 0 2 6 for FY 25 Messina grant funding. We moved too quickly. I know. Hi. Um, Hi. Hi. Um, so this is a, a request for funding for the Messina grant program, which, um, had previously been in the planning department budget. And, um, the mayor has chosen to, um, take that out of the planning department budget and fund it through, um, free cash this year.

▶ 11:54 Denise Gaffey: Um, and I think the, um, it does represent, um, a, an funding amount that is, um, supported by the many requests that we get for, for grants. So I think in the planning department will continue to sort of support the, um, the administrative portion of this, which is just making sure that the, um, the, um, invoices that are submitted represent the work that was completed and having all that backup documentation to demonstrate that, then passing them along to the, um, auditor's office for, for payment Vice Chair Williams. Um, so I want to ask, I wanna ask a little bit about the difference between the Machine of Fun and the Mass Cultural Council, because I realize as I'm looking through this that I don't really understand what the difference is.

▶ 12:49 Denise Gaffey: I mean, I understand that Mass Cultural Council funds, Melrose Cultural Council, and I understand the Messina Fund was created like as a fund. Like someone wanted to create a fund in the city, but don't they kinda do the same thing? Right. Well, the Messina grant, um, the Messina program was initially created by, um, mayor, former mayor, um, Rob Dolan Uhhuh, and it was to, um, recognize all of the different arts and cultural groups, um, that exist in Melrose and to provide, to find some, um, additional financial support for them. Yeah. Because the funding that the, um, the Melrose Cultural Council receives is inadequate to support all of the grant requests that they receive. We can't put, we can't put this funding into MCC, so

▶ 13:33 Jen Grigoraitis: That's actually our, not that I jumped up, 'cause I don't know. Good. I know some of these conversations Lauren's had, um, that's actually the where we're hoping to go in the direction. So the Messina Fund does have a board, it's become increasingly challenging to, um, retain volunteers to do that work. Sure, sure. Their current board chair has been in conversation with the Melrose Cultural Council Chair. We have a meeting next week to kind of talk about exactly what you're proposing, which is to have these funds, have the cultural council serve as one pass through for all of the arts funding. That's cool. I appreciate that. I literally just thought of it as we were sitting here, so, mm. Thank you. Appreciate that. Welcome. That's it for me.

▶ 14:08 Maya Jamaleddine: Thank you. Any other question? Seeing none, what is the role of the committee? Make A motion to recommend to full Council. Second, We have a motion to recommend to the full council, made by, uh, councilor Finn Harris, again, by Vice Chair Williams on discussion. Seeing none, Mr. Clerk, Vice Chair Williams? Yes. Councilor Gpe? Yes. Councillor Stewart? Yes. Councillor Hamilton? Yes. Councillor Vandiver. Yes. Councillor Romanul? Yes. Councillor F DeCaro? Yes. President Elli? Yes. And Chair Jamaleddine? Yes. That motion passes unanimously. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Next I have appropriation 2024 dash 34, requesting an appropriation from free cash in the amount of 75,000, uh, dollars to Parks Capital projects.

▶ 15:05 4 75. Conn Playground F is with us tonight. Hello. Hi. Um, so if many of you know, Conant Park is one of our little pocket parks that has a, uh, baseball field, um, in the vicinity. It was vandalized, um, about a year and a half ago. We did some repairs to it, um, but because of the age of the equipment and adding new equipment on, it wasn't, um, the integrity of the structure, uh, couldn't hold the new equipment coming in. Um, so we had taken off some bridges, boarded up some windows, and what happens is once you have vandalism, it's just brings on more vandalism. So the playground really has been beat up pretty bad. Um, and there's not a lot for the kids to, to climb and play on. So, um, that's why we're here to try to get some money

▶ 15:56 to redo that. Playground Questions. Counselor Van Dever, Um, do you have any, um, preliminary ideas about, um, what types of improvements or additions you would, would make with the money? So, um, when the vandalism initially happened, I have a few, um, neighbors that had reached out to me. So we are gonna, once I have know that we have money, I'll be able to sit with them and have conversations. Um, I think it's not a big park. Um, it's not a lot of money, but it's enough to be able to get, um, you know, inclusive pieces so that we're, you know, bringing all our playgrounds one by one as we do 'em to make a more inclusive to everybody. Um, so I think it's just a matter of what type of climbing structure, what type of, you know, is it nets?

▶ 16:48 Is it this, it'll really be based on what some of the people, you know, that we talk to in the neighborhood are interested in having. Right. Yeah. That'll be nice to see. I've been by there and, and I agree. It really needs some work. Yeah. Yeah. Thank you. Councilor Ra. Yeah. Um, you speak about some matching funds. Mm-Hmm. What, where Is that? So, um, sometimes, usually during summertime, a lot of the, uh, companies, um, will have matching funds. They'll match the funds that you're giving us. Mm-Hmm. They're giving us, um, and there's a few right now that are on the state bid list, which those are the ones obviously that we'll be reaching out to. Um, so it'll make, you know, we'll be able

▶ 17:26 to make the money go a little bit longer than, than what we have a little bit more equipment. A lot of it goes into, um, you know, the labor of, of a lot of stuff. DBW helps with the take down, but as far as the installation and all that, that's all part of it. Nice. Well, I know that, uh, playground is really important when my boys are playing baseball there, the younger ones would play, it keeps the kids occupied if that Aren, you know, they're watching the game. Yeah. Keep them busy watching the game, So I appreciate That. Yeah. Yeah. All Right. Thank you. Vice Chair Williams. Similar to Councilor Rio's Point. Mm-Hmm. Man, I'm never gonna get it. Finna, um, I just wanted to say thank you for the work

▶ 18:06 Ryan Williams: that you did at FO Park similar to this and kind of expressed my confidence for the work going forward at Conant, because we had a lot of residents who had a lot of ideas about that, and you were very helpful and very thoughtful about the way that you worked with me and them. And we all kind of like, put ideas together and came up with all kinds of different designs and came to something that I think people really like. Yeah. You know, we still have, before the 14th, they're coming in and doing the pouring place rubber. And that'll be the last, the last piece over there. Nice. It looks great out there. So thank you for that. Good. That's it. Just wanna say thanks. Thank you. Councilor Stewart.

▶ 18:41 Robb Stewart: Thank you, Madam Chair. Thank you, Ms. Bill, uh, for this work and coming forward as, uh, the Ward three City counselor. Uh, Kona Park is in the ward, and it is used quite a bit. Um, even today with kids coming down to, um, I see them all the time. We, we typically pass through there when we walk our dog. Um, so, and we don't go on the field. Yeah. Yeah. Just putting it out there. The dogs Out there, just, Just putting it out there. And thank you for putting that sign up too. Um, uh, I just, I fully support this and appreciate, uh, you taking what's kind of, um, a little pocket of Melrose that not a lot of people know it's actually even there, uh, and making it, uh, more accessible and more useful.

▶ 19:22 Mark Garipay: So, uh, with that I'll make a motion to recommend to the full council. We have a motion to recommend, uh, made by Councilor Stewart, seconded by Second Vice Chair Williams. On discussion, I have Councilor Gpe and then Councilor Ro. Thank you, Madam Chair. Thank you. Spell for me in here. Quick, quick question. Um, do we have any lights there for at night? Is it lit up at all? Uh, what, no. What do we, um, we, we tend to, especially in the summer, we tend to have a lot more vandalism. Yep. Yeah. Uh, is, is that part of this at all to try to No, I, I think that in most of the, the park parks and little field parks, you know, we only have lights. Um, we can go to safety light. I'm sure that there's something that we can work into down

▶ 20:09 Mark Garipay: there for a safety off of the concession building or whatever. Um, but as far as like light lights, field lights, big lights, um, we tend to, parks are open from sunup to sundown. Um, so once you add a little light edge, it makes it a little more attractive to hang out, sit around. So, yeah. But a safety light. Yeah. I think that's, that's doable. Just wanna make sure we have the issues at, um, Lewis Mon over the last couple years and we're spending, spending the money and it's great, fully supported, but, you know, sometimes we just don't have place for kids to go at night and they're gonna congregate. So anything we can do to deter vandalism, I appreciate it. Agree. Thank you. Thank you. I was gonna say isn't enough.

▶ 20:59 Cal Finocchiaro: Thank you. Councilor Panara. This could Possibly just be an emailed question to you, but I've, since we're on the subject of Conant beyond the baseball field Mm-Hmm. I know a lot of residents have said, you know, what do we do with that area that's like overgrown? Like, is that conservation land? Is that part of That? So it used to be a playable field many years ago. Um, something, you know, I can't speak to it, um, exactly, but there was, there's water issues back there when there was an old basketball court back there that was cracked. And when that came out, the water levels seemed to kind of go away and it just, you know, it flooded it. Um, we've done some work to the backfield to try to get the front field more playable,

▶ 21:37 but I think honestly we would have to probably do some sort of, you know, desktop study to find out like where the, where the water is, like where is it coming from, and if there's a way of removing it. But there's a lot of water issues down in that area. Alright. Thank you. Thank you. Any other questions on, uh, discussion? Seeing none, Mr. Clerk, Vice Chair Williams? Yes. Councilor Garipay P? Yes. Councillor Stewart? Yes. Councilor Hamilton? Yes. Councillor Vandiver? Yes. Councilor Romanul? Yes. Councilor for Naro? Yes. President Elli? Yes. And Chair Aldine? Yes. That motion passes unanimously. Alright, Thank you. Thank you. Appropriation 2024 dash 36 requesting an appropriation from free cash in

▶ 22:29 the amount of $40,000 to public work account number 4 22 as set for hearing and for sidewalk replacement at various locations throughout the city. Good evening. Good evening. Uh, thank you for having us again. Um, the, this first request is for $40,000 for sidewalk panels. This is what we use to address our, um, work order list for sidewalk repairs. When someone identifies a tripping hazard or an issue, a cracked sidewalk or whatnot, um, they put in an assessment, we go out and assess them. We then, if we think it requires a repair, we put in a work order for repair. We have a repair list for concrete and a repair list for asphalt. And any stretches that are either too long for us to do in-house or too complex for one reason

▶ 23:23 or another, we have them done by our on-call, uh, paving and sidewalk contractor. And so this annual request is typically what funds that list? We do have a small line item in our budget that also is for sidewalk repairs, and we try to use that for more immediate work that we mainly do in house. Um, and then however much we get each year in a free cash order, that's how much we are able to fix from our work order list. Thank you. Councilor gpe. Uh, just a quick question. Um, how big's, how, how big's the list right now? Um, the work order list for sidewalk repair, Will This cover? Will this catch us up? It will not catch us up. Um, we have 97 open concrete work orders. We have 56 open asphalt work orders,

▶ 24:11 and we have another 26 that are in a category called safety repairs. So, um, we can do, if we're, we tend to focus on the concrete panels with this funding because that tends to be what's more difficult for us to do if it's several panels in a row. And with this money we can do about 95 panels. So we had 97 work orders on the concrete side. But the reality is that most of those are probably not just one concrete block. So we will not get caught up with this money. And on the safety and repair, you said there, there are three categories or the, the asphalt and the cement overlap into the safety repair? They overlap. I mean, th there are three separate categories. So in theory, a work order is only entered once,

▶ 24:54 but in reality there probably one's in concrete and asphalt that could also be characterized as safety repairs. So I wouldn't say necessarily that those 26 are the, the highest priority safety repairs. They were just ones that, for whatever reason, our highway folks decided they belong in the safety category. And we consistently right around the same number of work orders annually. Would you say for sidewalk repairs or is this, Um, Rush Year? You know, it's interesting. We, we played a lot of catch up a few years ago. We got a large, we got over 200,001 year. And so we really caught up on the list and I don't know, that was right as I was coming on as director. So I'm not quite sure how much of a backlog we had had

▶ 25:35 and how much we were getting for free cash in the years previously. Um, but this seems to be a typical amount that we have right now. Um, but they go back, some of them go back two years. What, what do you think the ideal number for free cash if we continue to go this route in order to keep this list at a manageable level? Um, the residents when they call, they're not waiting six or eight months or Yeah, I can see if I can quickly find that information. We had, um, when we did the CIP process, we had entered in, um, what we thought was the appropriate annual request. Um, if I can find that pretty quickly, It's fine. You can, you can email, email that, that's fine. Okay. Um, actually it's right here.

▶ 26:47 There are a lot of rows in this spreadsheet. We had put down a hundred thousand a year that if we consistently got a hundred thousand a year that we thought we could stay caught up. Okay. Thank you. Okay. Any other question? Councilor Stewart? Thank you. Mad chair. Uh, ms. Is, is that list available for us to see? So we know, I believe you all have, does everybody have an e gov login on the council? Yeah, so all you'd have to do is log into e gov and you can look at any of our open work orders. Um, you can search by category and it will pull up every single one. So Search by sidewalk and you can see if, Yeah, you can look at, there's sidewalk assessment and then there's concrete repairs, asphalt repairs, safety repairs.

▶ 27:31 Um, there might even be two different sidewalk assessment categories. One internal and one that the public can enter. So, you know, you'd have to glance through those different categories to see the locations and everything. Okay. So I can see if the, the big tripping thing on Trenton Street is on the list. You Can see if it's on the list. Okay. And if it's not, you should put in an assessment work order for sure. Okay. Thank you. Thank you. Mad, Thank you. Any other question? Okay. What is the will of the committee counselor? Romano. Sorry about That. Um, thank you for, uh, giving the estimation for roughly how much it would take to keep up. But has there ever been any discussion of having this be a regular line item so we don't have

▶ 28:13 to go back for free cash every year, or, I know there's a squeeze everywhere, but Yeah, so we, like I said, we do have a small line item and we would certainly be open to bumping up that line item to meet the needs every year. This falls into a similar category as the trees that we're gonna talk about next, where we certainly support having this in, in the annual budget. And I think knowing that it is an annual expense, it, it does lend itself to being an operating budget expense. Um, but the reality is that when things need to get cut to meet budgets, this is something that can get cut from the operating budget. Um, so that's how it ends up being a free cash request. Thank you. Thank you. Councilor Vandiver.

▶ 28:56 Kimberly Vandiver: Just curious. So I think I just looked at it quickly so I could be wrong, but so is the approximate amount for one panel is about 400, including the labor and materials, it's a 40,000 request and gets through about a hundred. Is that Yeah, that's fair. I I, it was not exactly 400, but it was in that range. Okay. Yeah. Um, just curious, uh, if, uh, since we won't get through the entire list with the funding, if there were any areas where, you know, a neighborhood, for example, wanted to pull together money and fix that one anyways, like, could there in the future be any method for a neighborhood to say, Hey, we're gonna fund this one ourselves, can you complete it? Or something like that? Um, we really haven't followed the model

▶ 29:40 where a neighbor funds it and we perform the work. But we certainly have had people who are doing work along their frontage, including like when a new development is put, if a new, you know, if there's a tear down in a new home, oftentimes they will report the sidewalks 'cause they'll do new utilities or whatnot. They might cut through a couple blocks and because it's a brand new home, they want the look of all new sidewalk panels. And that does happen sometimes where private entities pave a whole strip of sidewalks and we're perfectly open to that. Okay. So the city wouldn't mind if it happened. It's just not something people, I mean, and in certain cases people do that. Yeah. It gets a little complicated in terms

▶ 30:14 of our contracts to have the, a private property owner paying our contractor directly. Okay. Unless they're doing it, they, they're welcome to hire our contractor Mm-Hmm. And pay them directly, but through our contract, it's complicated. Okay. Great. Thanks. Okay. Thank you. Any other question? Okay. What is the will of the committee Motion to recommend to the full council? Second, We have a motion to recommend to the full council made by Vice Chair Williams, seconded by Councillor GPE on discussion. Seeing none, Mr. Clerk, Vice Chair Williams? Yes. Councillor Gpe? Yes. Councillor Stewart? Yes. Councillor Hamilton? Yes. Councillor Vandiver. Yes. Councilor Romanul? Yes. Councillor naca? Yes. President Elli?

▶ 31:01 Maya Jamaleddine: Yes. And Chair Jamal Dean? Yes. Motion passes unanimously. Thank you. Next. Um, so would both of you and, uh, it's appropriation 2024 dash 37 requesting an appropriation from free cash in the amount of $39,720, uh, to Public Works account number 4 75 as set forth herein, uh, and for tree planting throughout the city. Yes. Yes. Um, so our annual tree planting request has been a little bit, uh, less than $70,000, but this year with the limited free cash available, we've put in a request for 39,720, um, which was just what was available to us. Uh, it costs us about $550 per tree to plant. And so this amount gives us about 70 trees. Um, we are fairly caught up with trees right now thanks to, um, the council, the prior council, um,

▶ 32:01 approving some higher dollar value, um, tree planting programs. And so, uh, we're pretty well caught up and 70 trees should keep us fairly well caught up. It, it doesn't quite get us to, our goal is always to plant at least as many trees as we're removing. Um, and it doesn't quite get us there, but it does at least, uh, get us through the work orders that we have open right now. Counselor Williams, If you had a full budget line item for your total amount of trees you think the city needs each year, what would it be? Stole your question, It would be roughly 70,000 to keep pace with removals and it would be, you know, maybe we would say 80, 90,000, maybe even a hundred thousand if we wanted to aggressively plant on top of that. Yeah.

▶ 32:56 Okay. Um, and I have, I have two other questions for you. Um, how often do you update the species list of trees? So we've updated it a couple times in the last probably three years in the time that Vonnie's been here. Um, we had a couple of residents approach her with requests to be sure we were planting more native species. We used to have the Cleveland pear on our list, which is now considered a, um, invasive species. So we took that one off. Um, but we are very interested in planting as many native species as we can. We certainly have limitations though in terms of we need smaller species when we're underwire, which tend to be some of the more ornamentals, which aren't necessarily native.

▶ 33:37 But as long as they're not detrimental in any way, they're not, you know, spreading wildly or anything, then those are typically okay. Um, we need salt tolerant species, which can be very difficult. Um, I'm not sure if anyone remembers, but outside Shaws, we planted trees twice and watched them die within two years. And then finally we just took them out and now we've just paved where the trees were, which is kind of sad. Um, and we need trees that can thrive in sometimes a grass strip that's only 18 inches wide, um, and doesn't tend to have a root system that uplifts adjacent sidewalks on the roads. So there's a lot of considerations. Um, and then we have also a lot of opinions by of, um, folks about, you know, I don't want anything

▶ 34:21 Ryan Williams: that drops fruit and I don't want something that blocks this or that. And so it's a balancing act, but, uh, we've, we think we have a pretty good list right now. Hmm. Um, that's very good to hear. Thank you. Um, one thing that I have noticed, I know you, we did a lot of trees like last year, year before, which is fantastic. Um, and up at the Hoover School, I, I talked to Jim about this, some of the trees still have the original ties on them, and so the trunks are starting to grow over the ties and they're cutting into the ties. And I think this is just because we went from a kind of a very passive tree planting program to a very aggressive tree planting program. So I think having, you know,

▶ 35:00 Ryan Williams: an aggressive tree planting program necessitates having an aggressive process for follow up to make sure that, you know, there's somebody identified that will go out and fill the gator bags that will go out and check, um, as part of the spring cleanup at the schools and other public properties that the straps are off, that the, you know, lines are off and the stakes are off and things like that just to care for the trees. Yeah. We are putting more of that on our contractor now. We used to try to save money and do more of it in house, but I will say I don't think we did the greatest job keeping up on it. It was always well intentioned, but it was one of the first things to slip when other things took priority.

▶ 35:36 So we are actually having the contractor handle the maintenance for the first three months watering the gator bags. And then, um, I I agree we need to do a better job taking the stakes off. I think that's great to have a contractor do it. That's ideal. So I appreciate that. That's it for me. Thank you. Thank you counselor. Uh, thank you. Yeah, I was just curious, are these, they're all over the city. They're not just on sidewalks like residential sidewalks. You, they're at schools and where else are you planting them? They're on any city property. Okay. So, and actually even occasionally they're on private property. If we have a street that we've just paved and we wanna do some beautification

▶ 36:10 and there's no grass strip on the street, then we allow what we call a setback tree. The resident will sign a right of entry form that allows us to plant the tree on their property and we plant it and then they assume ownership of the tree and we just do it like, sort of just back from the curb or whatnot. And, um, it's, it's not very frequent that we do that, but it is something we're open to. But These are at schools as well. And any public Property? Any public property, yeah. Parks, all schools. Perfect. Any other question? Um, counselor Stewart and then counselor. Great. Thank you Mayor Chair. So thank you to Const Williams to address one of my concerns that, that I've had about the trees in terms of maintaining.

▶ 37:02 Robb Stewart: When you plant in the middle of the summer and you don't water them, they die. And there's been a couple that, um, within my word at least that didn't make it. So, and that's frustrating to see when we approve money, uh, to do some beautification and you go and do the initial planting, but then the, the money gets wasted. So I appreciate that you're trying to figure that out. Um, the second, and you touched upon this a little bit, is to pick trees that don't grow into the, the, uh, the lines. Mm-Hmm. At the telephone lines, but there are a lot of trees that are growing into the, the telephone lines that I find is there. It was a little bit shortsighted and it wasn't really strategic in thinking

▶ 37:46 Robb Stewart: of what's gonna happen five to 10 years from now that now we have a whole maintenance problem that we have to deal with. So I would encourage, uh, working with the contractor to understand what, if you have a location that is going to be underneath a wire, that a, it's either, you know, one of these or ornamental trees that you talk about that won't severely impact that over time or reconsider, um, the location based on the fact that they're gonna grow right into the tree. Um, so, uh, that, that, that is, uh, because then, uh, you know, I, some people I would assume you'd have to get out there with a cutter and remove the branches and set up and the whole bit. I mean, that's just more cost.

▶ 38:33 So, um, I would ask you to consider that as well. Yeah. There are a lot of older trees that are definitely growing up and through the wires. I would say anything we've planted in the last five years, probably even six years, has been, we have short species and tall species, and we don't plant the tall species under the, under the wires. We refer to 'em as under wire trees. We label them as such in the spreadsheet we give the contractor. And so he's instructed to only plant the short trees in those locations. Um, and we don't plant in the summer, we only do a fall and a spring planting round, but sometimes it's still very hot in the fall or it's still very hot in the late spring. And so, um, but we do, they are under warranty for a year.

▶ 39:14 Robb Stewart: And the contractor we have now and the prior contractor have been very good. When we identify one within the first year, they will come out and swap it out. So certainly if you see something newly planted and then you see it dead, the sooner somebody lets us know the better because we usually can get a free replacement Clocks ticking. Got it. Yeah. Okay. Um, yeah, the, the, I I think about, uh, some of the streets that were recently repaved within the last 10 years, and then they come in and they put trees in, um, you know, they're already significantly impacting the wires right now, so. Okay. Um, and I can give you examples if you want offline. Okay. Yeah. Okay. Thanks. Thank you. Thank you Madam Chair.

▶ 39:52 Kimberly Vandiver: Thank you, counselor Vandiver. Um, thank you. Um, so two questions. The, the first one, similar to the, the sidewalks, I was curious if this is something, you know, if a resident wanted to plant their own tree just to do it on their schedule or to choose their species or something like that. Is something, is that something they could talk to you about? Yes. So we've done that, actually, we just did it a couple weeks ago on Howard Street. Um, if a resident does not wanna wait, you know, if it's a year or two to get a tree, we do recommend if it's a tree that's been removed, we recommend they don't replant in the same location for a year because the roots from the old tree can impact the growth of the new tree.

▶ 40:30 Kimberly Vandiver: So that's part of why it actually is good to wait for a year. But, um, if a resident either has a new location or a location that it's been over a year and they just never put in a work order, but they do want a tree, um, we do allow them to purchase the tree themselves and then we typically plant it in-house. That's what we did on Howard Street a few weeks ago, and they are, they have to pick trees from our list. Okay, great. And, um, for the trees that are, that are in the wires right now, um, in front of residences, is there a recommended course of action for any of those homeowners as far as you know, should they be trying to get those removed or replaced or should they be maintaining in a certain way

▶ 41:11 or letting people know if the trees are in the wires or like what's the preferred course of action? National Grid actually takes care of that. So they go around the whole city and trim every year. Um, the trees that they feel are in the wires in a potentially dangerous way, um, that's where you end up with the trees that look like this. Um, and so if there's a tree of concern, if some, so we, as a policy, we do not trim trees that are really mixed in with the wires. It's dangerous and we're not equipped to do that work. So when we get a report from somebody that something needs to be trimmed that's in the wires, we report it to National Grid. Um, so if a resident has a concern, they've just,

▶ 41:52 they can just put in a tree assessment and note that it's in the wires and we'll come out and take a look. And if we think it needs to be on the National Grid list, we'll put it on there. Okay. Great. Thank you. Okay. Thank you. Any other question? What is the will of the committee? I would like to make a motion to recommend to the full counsel. Second. Second. We have a motion to recommend made by Vice Chair Williams, seconded by, uh, councilor Ro on discussion. Seeing none, Mr. Clerk, Vice Chair Williams? Yes. Councillor Gpe? Yes. Councillor Stewart? Yes. Councillor Hamilton? Yes. Councillor Vandiver? Yes. Councilor Romanul? Yes. Councilor Van Nicaro? Yes. President Elli? Yes. And Chair Jamal Dean? Yes.

▶ 42:36 Maya Jamaleddine: Motion passes unanimously. Thank you. Next we have appropriation 2024 dash 38 requesting an appropriation from pre cash in the amount of 70 th uh, $75,000 to Public Works account number 4 0 2 set forth, uh, herein and for asbestos recommendation, um, at various city schools. I am, it's the floor is yours. I'm worried that we are gonna be out of free cash very soon because of DPW $8 and 21 cents. Um, we only requested what the mayor's office told us we were allowed to request, so we're not making it go in the red. We know that. Um, so this request is $75,000 for asbestos abatement work in schools. We try to do asbestos abatement annually. This is actually another item that's in our capital improvement plan request as an annual

▶ 43:35 allocation similar to the sidewalk, similar to the trees. Um, so ideally we would have money set aside each year for asbestos removal for as long as there still remains asbestos containing materials in our buildings. Um, the issue with schools, obviously, um, we're very sensitive to any hazardous materials that might be in schools, especially where the floor tiles can become fryable if they start to peel up. Um, and we need to fully isolate those spaces in order to do the asbestos removal. So it has to be done when the school is completely unoccupied. We can't just, you know, cordon off a classroom and remove asbestos while school is in session. So this is an annual program in the summers. Um, our most recent asbestos removal is I

▶ 44:23 believe, through arpa. Correct That, so that's why we haven't been before the council the last couple years with this same request. But this is an annual need. Um, the classroom in the Franklin that's below the roof where the roof has been leaking, there's asbestos in the ceiling there, and I believe the floor tiles are still asbestos. So our plan is to fully remediate that room since we're gonna have to, um, renovate that room anyway once the roof is fixed. Um, I think it's the Horseman. Um, yeah, horseman only has two floors left in the entire school that contain asbestos. That doesn't mean there'll be no asbestos left in the school. There's still pipe insulation and um, you know, there might be masick in the,

▶ 45:08 Cal Finocchiaro: in something, you know, the glue of the ceiling tiles or something. But the flooring, which has been probably the biggest issue in the schools because those tiles do sometimes come up over the course of the year just from wear and tear. Um, these will be the last two in horseman and then the Winthrop, um, has a couple of rooms that we're also gonna do the floors. Thank you Councilor Ro. Okay. Um, how many schools, like how much asbestos do we have that we could remediate again, I guess this goes off their questions before, like what would you need to then remove, remediate all asbestos? Um, I know that's probably a big question here, but, Well, let's see. I I, this won't be the answer to the amount we need

▶ 45:56 to remove all asbestos, but this will at least be what we have said. Um, I mean, I know from what I understand, once it's contained and like not loose particles, it's deemed safe. Yeah, absolutely. But Right. Um, so we, we had said a hundred thousand a year in the CIP that would be our request. It's also, you know, you can't, you can't bite off more than you can chew in a summer. Right. So while we could probably do $500,000 worth of asbestos removal, we probably can't realistically do that in one summer. So we put in for a hundred thousand a year. Um, but as you said, the, the floor tiles, if they're not peeling up, they're not considered fryable, they're safe. Um, it's once you start disturbing the material that it,

▶ 46:41 that becomes airborne and then it can Become a hatch. Yeah. Those pipe, the pipe thing, the covers, those are, uh, like I know those kind of deteriorate faster. Yeah, I know the probably kids aren't around those as much because they're probably in like Yeah. So the more recent pipe insulation, we have pipe insulation all over the place in schools, especially coming in and out of radiators and things, that's all newer pipe insulation that's like pipe wrap that you'd get at Home Depot or whatnot. Um, but the, the old asbestos pipe insulation tends to be the stuff in the basements around piping through the basement around old, you know, sometimes they're old hot water heaters or something that has that an asbestos wrap around it.

▶ 47:19 Um, and then like I said, there's all sorts of little things you wouldn't think of window caulking or, or tile glue or, um, you know, glue that holds down shingles on a roof, all sorts of little things that can have asbestos. So every time we renovate we have everything tested and then we know if we need to isolate and uh, and remove. And obviously you're sub-contracting out. It's this company that comes in does, does all This. Yeah. Very specialized. Not something we do in that. Okay. Thanks. Thank you. I have Councilor Stewart next, uh, vice Chair Williams. Thank you Madam Chair. Are there any reported health issues, um, from either student or faculty in any of the schools that have asbestos?

▶ 48:04 Ryan Williams: Not that I'm aware of. Not in the time I've been here, no. Okay. Um, so, so far so good and we'll just continue the path. Okay. Thank you Mr. Chair Williams. Do we contract with somebody to do the asbestos removal? Yes. Who do we contract with? We either, uh, look for somebody on a state bid list or we, last year we went out to bid for competitive bids from certified asbestos removal. And these, because there's tons of regulations around asbestos removal, these folks are always very well trained. They know how to Dispose trained. Yeah. They get DEP permits, all of that. They Come in in the suits, everything whole night. Yeah. And last year and um, I'm not sure if we're gonna use the same contractor this

▶ 48:45 year, but typically we also have a consultant who last year they were the ones who put the bid documents together. They were on site inspecting the isolation, the way things are taped off Mm-Hmm. In the rooms and all that, the, the air pressure, you know, all of it. Um, they come and inspect before the work starts. Yeah. That's awesome. Thank you. Thank you. Any other question? Councilor Vandiver? Um, are there any non-school buildings that DPW maintains where this is an issue as well? Or is this concentrated? The schools, Certainly City Hall has asbestos. Um, trying to think. I mean, milano guessing likely The basic, the basic assumption is just assume the age of the building. Right. And the building components that

▶ 49:30 they were constructed with, it was a common, it was a common, uh, part of the, the building construction. So it's a safe assumption that the majority of the older buildings are gonna have some form of asbestos in there. And I had just typed out to Elena, one thing that we are very proactive with is we have annual asbestos awareness training for our custodial facility staff. So they're able to identify potential hazards and be able to react very quickly. I think that's an important thing to say to a few of the points that have been made to make sure that our students, our teachers, our faculty, are all safe in the buildings and it's not an imminent threat. Mm-Hmm Mm-Hmm. And Jay McNeil is also asbestos certified too, so.

▶ 50:16 Kimberly Vandiver: Oh, great. Yeah. And, and so, um, I guess my other question then is with future funding or additional funding, is that something where you would expand the scope? I mean, it seems like schools are priority because of the number of People. People and because it's children. And Certainly if, um, if we had more money we would do more. Especially when we're already in school and we're already isolating areas. It's easy if, you know, if there are six classrooms off a hallway that all have asbestos tiles, if we're able to do all of them at once and then we can isolate just once, that saves money in the long run. Okay. Great. Thank you councilor Ro I just have one more question. So after the remediation is done, do they,

▶ 50:54 do you guys have like the, an agency that comes in and like tests and make sure that it's gone? Do they do that or That's the final part of the process is a hygienist will come in, perform swipes, and then test to make sure everything has been remediated properly and up to scope. Okay. Alright. Thanks. Any other question? Okay. What is the will of the committee, Madam Chair, make a motion to recommend to the full council. Second, have a motion to recommend, uh, made by Councilor Stewart. Um, seconded. Second By Councilor Pen Chiro on discussion. Seeing none, Mr. Kirk, Vice Chair Williams? Yes. Councillor gpe. Yes. Councillor Stewart? Yes. Councillor Hamilton? Yes. Councillor Vandiver. Yes. Councilor Romanul? Yes. Councillor Naro. Yes. President? Yes.

▶ 51:48 And Chair Jamal Dean? Yes. A motion passes unanimously. Thank you. Thank you. When will be the next, next we have, um, appropriation 2024 dash 25 fiscal 2025 operating budget in the amount of, uh, $104,140,412. Um, on, um, um, we have tonight Department 1 55 infotech. Mr. GaN, thank you for being with us tonight. It's Good to see you all again. It's been a long time. Um, so if it's okay with the council, I'd like to just say a few words. Um, I typed up the whole thing, but I think I'm just gonna wing it now instead. 'cause where's the fun in that? Um, so I figured I'm new to this, uh, of several of you are new on the council. Um, so I just kind of quickly go over what we do to an extent. Um, we have, so obviously we run the city

▶ 53:04 and the school's it staffing and department. Um, we have full four full-time staff members here for the city. Um, myself, our new deputy IT director, Joe who you guys have met I think several weeks ago. Um, Jared is our systems analyst upstairs and we, I'm happy to say we have a new, finally we have a full-time dedicated help desk technician for the city, which up until a month ago, two months ago, we'd never had one. Um, so that's fantastic Strides going forward. Um, on the school side, we have another four, uh, folks over there. Um, we have a systems administrator who kind of more or less runs and oversees the day-to-Day stuff, um, kicks everything back up to me to keep me in the loop. Um, we have should have two help desk technicians.

▶ 53:51 We unfortunately just, uh, had one leave us this past Friday for a fantastic opportunity for the town of Concord. Um, I asked him what I could do to get him to stay and then he told me what he was gonna make and I said, well, it's been great working with you bud. Wish you the best. Um, and we have, uh, Leslie, our SIS coordinator is doing a fantastic job with all the student information stuff and keeping all the state reporting and all that kind of fun stuff up to date. Um, I could sit here for several hours and tell you about all the ins and outs and things that we do and handle day in and day out. Uh, nobody wants that except for me. Um, you know, our day to day stuff can vary greatly. Some days we have lighter loads

▶ 54:35 and we kind of catch up on the housekeeping and documentation and all the boring stuff. Other times we are all running in 18 different directions and just counting the hours till the day ends. Um, but one thing I would like to say, and I kind of wanna say the same little spiel to all of you that I say to any new employee or intern that we have. Um, you know, I say to 'em, what do you want to do in it? What's your career path? What's your progression? What are you interested in? What do you want to do? Most time they're younger people and they don't really know and they just stare at me all silly, like, and wondering what I'm getting at. What I'm getting at is we have everything here and we do everything here

▶ 55:17 that you would get if you went into a Fortune 500 company, if you went up the road into Boston, if you, you know, had an IT department with 35 people and several million dollars to it. We do all the same stuff, all the same equipment, we have all these same challenges to overcome. Um, we just do it on a far tighter budget and with far fewer people. So it makes it interesting. Um, so especially with us, like I said, we just had our first dedicated help desk technician. So up until actually still now I'm still running around plugging in computers and restarting stuff and mounting TVs. You know, we all do everything. So regardless of what your position is, you have the opportunity to get your hands into everything

▶ 56:02 and see everything and experience everything. Um, so it's great in that sense, but it makes life challenging because if we're always behind the eight ball and trying to catch up to the latest and greatest trends that are going on in the world and not good trends, always bad trends. Um, so it can be difficult to do with the staffing and the equipment and the budgets that we have, but that's just the reality of it. And sometimes it makes life fun. Other times not so much. Um, but with that, that's the end of my spiel. I'll bore you no longer, um, whatever questions you have for the budget, I'm happy to try to do my best to clear up for you. Questions from my colleague, counselor gpe. Thank you. Uh, Madam Chair. Thank you Mr. S Mulligan.

▶ 56:50 Mark Garipay: Quick, two quick questions. On your budget you have uh, com, uh, under contractual computer. Miscellaneous mm-Hmm. Is that the third party, um, support vendor? Is that what that is? No, that is purely just, um, miscellaneous supplies for keeping daily operations up and running. Is um, is that one up considerably? Is that come from another line item or what for that increase Computer miscellaneous or the professional services line Computer? Miscellaneous, it looks like, am I looking at a 32,000, 1500% increase of a prior budget? Am I looking at the right? I think we're looking at Different things. Hmm. Okay. Maybe there was another, uh, uni report that got updated Perhaps. Sorry. Then um, what do you have, uh, for that line item?

▶ 57:45 It was used to be $2,000, is that right? Yes, that's where I have it at. Alright. Yeah, I show 32, but that's, that's fine. That's fine. He just not 32, we're in good shape. Um, uh, and then on the expanded citywide fiber optic for new public safety radios and better redundancy for better redundancy, is that completed that project? Uh, so as of the end of last week, they were finalizing clo, what they call closing the loop, making all the connections, um, to tie it all together. The public safety radios are up and running now. Mostly they're being recorded, so that's good. Okay. Um, that's, uh, that's all I have for questions. Thank you. Thank you. Next I have Counselor Vanderberg, vice Chair Williams, councilor ra,

▶ 58:38 and thank counselor Stewart Councilor. Sorry, I didn't, I don't think I had my hands. Okay. Um, vice Chair Williams. Hello. Um, what's in the professional services line? What's, what, what's In the professional services line? So that one, that professional services, uh, that is now absorbed, what we're going to use for our third party MSP that we're bringing online. Your third party, say it again. MSP. Okay. Um, so they're going to help us out a lot, which is why there's that massive increase. Um, they're going to be taking on a lot of the, um, more security side aspects. So we'll be doing a lot, lot of 24 7 monitoring, um, managing some more critical updates and patching for us in real time.

▶ 59:26 Ryan Williams: So there are things that we don't have, you know, we don't have the staff to sit there and respond to this and monitor it, nor do we have the systems to monitor all that stuff as they should be. So they'll be handing a lot of that as well as, um, some offsite cloud backups and, uh, yeah. And they're monitoring all of our antivirus stuff. So are these folks monitoring inbound traffic for threats? Both And outbound. Mm-Hmm. Um, I, so As well as status, so if a piece of equipment goes offline in that loop somewhere, they'll, Um, because one thing that has always kind of picked at me is the issue of, of VPNs at the middle school and high school. And, um, I know that you can't like out Fox every VPN try, You just can't.

▶ 1:00:11 Ryan Williams: But it has to be, I mean, in terms of keeping kids safe in school with safe technology uses, it has to be a really substantial job. Mm-Hmm. In order to, um, staff that and the ongoing nature of, of the, of the like arms race that is teenagers with, you know, technology. So I wonder if you could just speak to how you feel we are making progress on that front, doing better now than before, prepared to handle, you know, the cat and mouse game, um, to try and keep kids from getting access to things they're not supposed to be accessing when they're in school. Yeah. Um, so like you said, it, it is a pure 100% whack-a-mole. Right. Um, I am not a 15-year-old child, and I don't live in that world, luckily.

▶ 1:00:54 So it's hard, like you said, for us to know exactly what's going on all the time. Um, we have in our firewall currently, there's a lot of ways to block a lot of that stuff. Uh, one of the biggest challenges right now is, uh, encrypted DNS, which hides the main way that you would be able to kind of predict that stuff and find it and unblock it. Um, so we're taking some strides to deal with that. There's a hint a couple different ways you can deal with it. Um, some are very intrusive and we try not to do that. Um, and others are a little less intrusive, but there's drawbacks to that as well. Um, one of the biggest problems honestly, is all these kids have their own devices. Mm-Hmm. And so they all have nicer cell phones than I do

▶ 1:01:40 with unlimited data plans, and they just hop on that. So it doesn't matter as much what we put in their way for roadblocks. They're always one flip away to getting on their cell phone and then putting a hotspot on, and then they can connect their laptop or whatever to that directly and bypass everything. You can just put 'em in a Faraday Cage. I have joked about that and also not joked about that. Uh, but they, they are very craft. I remember, uh, probably like 10, 15 years ago, the big thing kids were doing was going to, um, Google Translate and you'd put in Google Translate the website you wanted to go to, and it would render it all on Google's cloud services in the background, and it would just show up in a pain.

▶ 1:02:20 So there'd be nothing on the network to block. And it's like, what do, what do you do? You can't block Google. So it's, it's a cat and mouse game for sure. It, it does sound like you have got, you're thinking about it, you've got ideas, and it is an ongoing effort that you For sure Are working on. So I appreciate that. Thank you. Mm-Hmm. Thank you. Councilor Chiro. Actually, my question was gonna be the same thing, um, about the professional services. Um, and I'm just assuming that that contracted vendor is gonna stay like annually, that'll be part of the budget going forward. Yes. Yeah. Mm-Hmm. Just wanted to check on. Thanks Councilor Stewart. Thank you, Madam Chair. Um, you touched upon some things, so thank you.

▶ 1:03:06 Robb Stewart: So the, uh, third party support, who, who's doing it? Uh, hub Technical, I'm sorry, hub Technical. Hub Technical. Are they local? Uh, they're down closer to their main headquarters, down closer to around Foxborough area. Well, but they're, they're, they're within the state? Oh, yes, for sure. Okay. Yes. And do they, are they known? I don't, I'm not familiar with them. Are they known for municipalities? Like Mm-Hmm. Oh, Uh, municipalities on a lot of state work as well. A Lot state work. Okay, good. Good. And we've had a relationship with them in varying degrees, um, for the past seven years here and prior, uh, or 10 years in my previous job. Okay. So, um, I know you just hired somebody for the support tickets.

▶ 1:03:53 Robb Stewart: Uh, do they handle support? Um, can they, can they work on shift left? Try to, to Oh yeah. To push some of the, the, the tickets. 'cause when I see a 45% increase, that to me is a degradation of performance. Um, And what in the, In just IT support, because even though you're getting more complicated, uh, you're not, you're not pushing the self-service out to the employees that should be handling a lot of these things themselves. Yes. So we have, um, the past two years we had a new ticketing system. Um, and we've been really, it has a far more robust, say, knowledge base in there where we've been trying to, over time, as you know, it is a little hard for us to just think, Hey, off the top of my head,

▶ 1:04:35 what are the things I need to document that you as the end user want to know? Um, 'cause I work in a totally different aspect from what the end user is. So, um, you know, we do our best to fill that up. And then as new tickets come in and we help people out, we re document that stuff, push it back up there, up to the knowledge base so that everyone can hopefully go back and check it. Um, in there there's also some cool stuff where as you're entering in a ticket, it'll over cursively search that database and match or attempt to match articles that we have in there. Whole being that it'll pop up and someone will see it and be able to help themselves. Um, the reality is, uh, I can't get people to put tickets in.

▶ 1:05:15 They love to call me and email me. So it kind of, again, circumvents that whole thing. So we are actively trying to push much more of that information out there. Um, but again, getting people to fully adopt it and buy into it different story. But yes, as we're adding more and more of these services, we're not adding more people to keep up with those services to, you know, get all that knowledge out there. The one-on-one training, you know, in real time kind of stuff. Um, so there is a trade off. The more we do, we're not getting more people to cover all of that effectively the way it should be. Sure. Sure. Okay. Thank you. Um, and then are you, are you getting any demand or, uh, requests or thinking about copilot?

▶ 1:06:00 Robb Stewart: Uh, there hasn't been any mention of it to me. Um, I am not super fan of a lot of that stuff. Um, Can I give you a perspective? No, I, I'm not saying there's nothing wrong with it, but I think if, if anybody's gonna be using any kind of chat GPT within your organization, you can't control the information that's then getting put out in the public domain. Whereas if you use a product like, um, co-pilot Mm-Hmm. You have full control over over the information because it now is contained within your Microsoft domain. Sure. So that's something I would consider as a strategy. Mm-Hmm. Uh, just thinking about it, um, sure, totally. There's, like I said, there's been no mention of that to me, but it's definitely something that, I mean,

▶ 1:06:48 Robb Stewart: I'm not against that stuff. So this is the line of work that I'm in and, and it is a big issue, um, across all enterprises right now in terms of how you control people using a lot of these intelligent engines. Sure. And the security risk, it gets magnified. Uh, and I think, you know, the, the number one, uh, concern that I I see that you're addressing, which is good, is cybersecurity and threat detection and being able to make sure that everything's locked down as best as you can. Um, so, and I do see that you have multi authentication, uh, identified, um, multi-factor authentication. Uh, when's that gonna get rolled out? Oh, it's out now Is okay. Yeah. So it's, um, we have that rolled out in our 365 tenant.

▶ 1:07:40 Um, and we tie in as many third party services when we get them into it. Uh, so that everything is authenticating against a single SSO, um, with two factor on. So we can, you know, single throat to choke as they say. You know, we have one place to go to manage all that, to enforce policies. Um, and that's definitely a large part of when we're looking at new softwares and departments come asking for various things, that's one of the very top of the list. Like, what do they offer that, how do we tie that into our existing platforms? Great. Great. And does the M-S-C-M-S-P provider, um, are they also controlling your whole DR strategy? No. Well, they have a hand in it, I'll put it that they're not controlling it, but they have a hand in it.

▶ 1:08:27 Robb Stewart: Okay. So We're working with them to, to kind of tighten all that up and build a roadmap for it and everything. Okay. Okay. And I'm not, I, I'm not familiar with the environment, are you, um, are you in private data center? Are you colo or are you, uh, fully cloud right now? It hybrid. Hybrid. Yeah. Okay. So you have a hybrid model? Mm-Hmm. Okay. So, and, and are you looking to push a DM model over to the, the cloud side, or how, Um, right now there hasn't been that much discussion about it. Mm-Hmm. Uh, just because we've got a lot of other eggs in the air at one time. Right. Um, but again, as we're kinda, as those things come up, that's an option for all of 'em. The bigger issue becomes the funding.

▶ 1:09:11 Um, it's one thing if you have something here, you buy it. Once you sit on it for X amount of years, you're good to go. You know, you build it into your refresh cycle for your budgeting. Sure. But now everything is now some sort of subscription as a service, storage, as a service, all that kind of stuff. So it's suddenly that year over year, as you do new things, the budget just goes bananas and, and it's hard to contain. Okay. Okay. Um, sounds like you got things pretty well in control. Some work to do For sure. There's always work to do. Alright. Yes. Alright, Tom, thank you. Thank you. Honor chair. Thank you. Um, councilor, no, sorry. You're all set. Yeah. Um, councilor Romanul. Thank you Madam Chair. Uh, this may be an,

▶ 1:09:59 Devin Romanul: an outlier might be a couple of standard deviations away, but, um, I'm curious if there have been a bunch of cities around the country that have struggled with ransom, uh, ransoming, um, and I know it's, uh, yeah, maybe not, but I'm just wondering if this is something that we're factoring in however remote it may seem. It's, it's in the, the war stream in some way, shape, or form. It is a daily thing for me. Um, so I don't want to go too, too much into it. Sure, of course. I know there's certainly, but there's, we're doing a large scale shift all at once. So with bringing in the MSP, um, there's gonna be a lot of shift and lift of services and products that will allow us to, um, build out new aspects of our environment that we're lacking

▶ 1:10:41 before, uh, to include a couple immutable stores on site, um, as well as having another level of it out in the cloud that's also immutable. Um, just meaning simply that it's right once and that's it. It can't, you can look at it, but you can't do anything with it. Um, so, so some of that I'm designing and building in house, um, others, like I said, with the MSP that's gone to the cloud. So we'll have various layers of long term and longer term storage locally here in the building offsite within the district out in the cloud. Um, and we also have, with that, uh, our main server cluster has a redundant node offsite, which when it was initially designed by the manufacturer, it wasn't designed to be a ransomware esque proof design,

▶ 1:11:32 but afterwards, it kind of, the thought process is like, oh, it actually is. So we have that, like, if we have issues with our cluster here, whatever it may be, it can kick over to another building, which is also still segmented and segregated out from what the potential issue might be. So it's all a living theory because when it goes sideways, you just never know at what point of the whack-a-mole game you're in. Right. So, no, I am glad, glad we're working on it. I know it's a, perhaps low, low frequency, but extraordinary. Oh, no, it's, yeah. It's a everyday thing. Especially, you know, when in lows, stones throw away and Yeah. And I, I know even with some of the, the, the most advanced cities in the country get hit with it.

▶ 1:12:15 It's, you know, you can only do so much. Right. Thank you. I'm, I'm so glad. And let us know you can, we can support you in that, in that effort. Appreciate It. Thank you. Thank you very much. Thank You. Any other question? But, uh, president, Thank you Madam Chair. No question. I just wanted to say great job on your first presentation as it director. This is really helpful and very detail oriented. And, um, I'll just make a motion to move the bottom line. Second, We have a motion to move to bottom line made by President Elli, seconded by Councillor Repe. On discussion. Seeing none, Mr. Clerk, Vice Chair Williams? Yes. Councilor Repe. Yes. Councillor Stewart? Yes. Councillor Hamilton. Yes. Councillor Vandiver. Yes.

▶ 1:13:02 Maya Jamaleddine: Councillor Romanul. Yes. Councillor naca. Yes. President GL Yes. And Chair Jamal? Yes. Our motion passes unanimously. Thank you. And so, uh, in the IT department number nine 30 capital outlay it. Hello again. Hi. Uh, do you just want to get to it? 'cause it's the same speech. Any question? Okay. Seeing none, what is the will of the committee Make a motion to move the bottom line? We have a motion to move the bottom line to move The bottom line of the capital out by it. Budget nine 30. We have a motion to move to bottom line made by Councillor gpe. Seconded. Second by Councillor Stewart. On discussion. Seeing none, Mr. Clerk, Vice Chair Williams? Yes. Councillor gpe. Yes. Councillor Stewart? Yes.

▶ 1:13:55 Denise Gaffey: Councillor Hamilton? Yes. Councillor Vandiver? Yes. Councilor Romanul? Yes. Councilor for naca? Yes. President Elli? Yes. And Chair Jamal Dean? Yes. Motion passes unanimously. Thank you. Thank you. Next we have, uh, department 1 75 and, uh, in the planning department, uh, with Ms. Gaffey. Hi again. Hey, good evening. Um, so I'm here to discuss the, um, budget for the Department of Planning and Community Development. Um, probably the most significant change in our budget, which is mostly salary, um, relates to, um, some restructuring that we have done with the conservation agent position. And, uh, just a little bit of background. I think a lot of people assume the conservation agent worked under the planning office, but, um,

▶ 1:14:58 Denise Gaffey: because there was a desk in our, in our office, but, um, historically that position, which probably started out many years ago with just very few hours, um, and um, has, uh, progressed over, over time. Um, that position had until recently reported directly to the Volunteer Conservation Commission members. So, um, when, um, we've recently had, um, um, we lost our conservation agent and thought it was a good time to, to think about that, um, the structure, and I think it makes a lot of sense. And the mayor supported the idea of, um, of having the, uh, conservation agent position report directly, uh, up to the planning director in the planning office. So that is a major change. There is no longer a separate budget, uh,

▶ 1:15:49 Denise Gaffey: line item for conservation. And the salary for this position is now in the, the planning department. Mm-Hmm. Um, it is still very much a, uh, part-time position. Um, we would, um, love to, um, provide full-time hours because there's really full-time work for this, for this position. But, um, given the city's current budget situation that is not, um, that's not currently realistic, um, we were able to increase the number of hours, um, I think maybe from 14 to 18. And in order to recruit somebody for this position, we, we had to create this, uh, increase the salary. It was woefully low. I hadn't been adjusted in eight, seven years. Seven, eight years. So, um, it is, um, now reflects a little bit closer to market conditions.

▶ 1:16:35 Denise Gaffey: It's not actually club quite at market, but we were lucky to be able to recruit somebody who lives locally and who is interested in getting back into the job market and had enough of a background to really to make this position, um, um, you know, challenging and also, um, feasible for her. And she's working out great. Um, so that's one of the, um, most significant changes. The other thing, of course, is we are not currently carrying the salary of the sustainability manager. Um, that position unfortunately is falling victim to the, um, current budget, um, challenges. And so it, um, it was vacated back, uh, sort of halfway through this current fiscal year. And we were in the process of recruiting for it, um,

▶ 1:17:20 Denise Gaffey: when we learned, um, that we couldn't support the position with the current funding. So, so we do not, we are not, um, this budget does not include the sustainability manager. Um, it also doesn't include a, um, an economic development planner. And that is a position that we have not supported in the past. But it is something that, um, the mayor's very interested in funding. Um, should, um, should the funding be the over I be successful that, um, in recent years, that position was in the mayor's office. And with the most recent change, um, with, um, the, um, economic development director becoming the chief of staff, that position has been vacant. So, um, there's a lot of, um, great work that somebody in that role can accomplish.

▶ 1:18:07 Denise Gaffey: And so it's definitely a void, um, um, that we, you know, that we can't fill currently. So we'd love to see that happen in the future. Um, if, if the override, again, is successful. Um, let's see. Primarily, those are primarily the changes. There have been some adjustments to, um, the, um, dues memberships and education seminar piece. Some of that is we are now consolidating the conservation, um, items for that used to, used to be within the conservation budget. And they do have a, um, uh, an allocation that they make to the Mass Association of Conservation Commissions that supports all the work of the volunteer members and the agent. Um, and also we have some extra funding in there for training because we do have somebody,

▶ 1:18:55 Denise Gaffey: um, new in the position. So we are trying to reflect, um, accurately reflect what the needs are going to be in the department, both for the conservation agent and also for, for the planning staff. Um, we spoke already earlier tonight about the Messina grant that is not in, that is no longer in the, in the budget. And I think those are the primary, primary things. Happy to answer any questions. Great. Thank you. Um, vice Chair Williams. Thank you. Um, so we talked a lot about what's not in the budget. Mm-Hmm. Right. I get that. Mm-Hmm. Um, some of those positions are like, from my perspective, they're some of the most, um, kind of broadly outward facing like jobs that we have in the city. Right. And I understand that we need an override in order

▶ 1:19:46 Ryan Williams: to re restore them, but, um, you know, I think too about the work the planning office does, you guys do so many things, you know, every, every deck that gets built, you know, all the two big developments, all of the stuff in some way touches the planning office. And you do all these reviews for every planning board meeting for all these projects. And you guys are just like inundated with all of this work. And I wonder, what do you think the appetite is to, um, or what do you think the need is to increase staffing in the planning department to the point where you could have, um, more of a focus on the community engagement, the community planning, the urban planning side of the planning responsibilities, right.

▶ 1:20:30 Ryan Williams: Because right now you're very responsive to, um, to development. Honestly, we, we have a lot of development and, um, I think that you guys do a good job of meeting some of these needs, but I think there's also opportunity to do more like brainstorming and, you know, ideation around what planning could look like in the city of Melrose. So what, what do you think you would need in order to free up a little bit of time to have somebody available to do something like that? Um, yeah, we certainly can't do it with our current staffing. Yeah, that is true. I mean, we do, um, we are somewhat victims of our own success, I guess in the sense that we've been very proactive in recent years with the zoning work that we've done

▶ 1:21:11 Denise Gaffey: and to try to promote the kind of like, uh, responsible development we think that, um, melrose's needs and benefits from. So we are incredibly busy reviewing projects and also, pardon me, um, There's one right now. And also, um, um, so yeah, we're incredibly busy reviewing projects and, and also trying to, to work on special initiatives when we can like, um, zoning work, um, or, um, planning the longer range planning. I mean, we do, we do try to keep up with the long range planning work. Like our master plan is pretty up to date. Um, we recently completed a, um, a housing production plan. You know, the office was involved in the net zero plan, of course. Um, we just recently completed an open space plan.

▶ 1:21:58 Ryan Williams: So we are trying to think always to think long term and big picture. Um, but I think we would need, we would certainly need to have more capacity in the office to do more than what we do right now. And I wanna put in, they told me I have to sit closer to the mic. I wanna put in a plug as I always do for transportation planning, that I know that we have great folks in public works and no disrespect to them and all that, the good work that they've done, but planning and engineering, as you know, are separate disciplines and planners cannot do what engineers do and engineers cannot do what planners do. I firmly believe this and I believe that it is, um, hurting us to not have a person in the city who can bring

▶ 1:22:39 Ryan Williams: that vision, that kind of values-based planning experience to the transportation context in the city. We've done a lot without that from the engineering perspective. We've done a lot of work and I appreciate everything that they do in public works and engineering. But I do think that as we think about staffing in the works, I'm sorry in the planning department, that we should be thinking about ways to introduce professional transportation planning expertise onto the staff in some way. Whether it's sharing a position with some other city, whether it's contracting, you know, whether it's hiring a person who's kind of fresh outta college and has that degree, but maybe can be more of a generalist and do other things too.

▶ 1:23:18 Denise Gaffey: I don't know. But that's my, my bid. I appreciate that and I do not disagree. I think that would add a lot of value. Thank you. Thank you Councilor Ro Thanks for being here tonight. I just, I was wondering if you could talk a little bit about, um, you have the goals for FY 25. Um, it says meeting the compliance requirements and deadline for the MBT communities zoning. Mm-Hmm. So we we plan to do that. Yeah. Is that, so what is, can you talk a little bit about that? I like, Um, sure. Yeah. So, so, um, probably most people are aware of the MBTA community, um, um, uh, zoning, uh, law that was passed, um, a couple years back. And, um, we are, um, an MBTA community. We are served by the commuter rail,

▶ 1:24:04 Denise Gaffey: so we're considered a commuter rail community. So we have that extra year to comply, which, um, the, the, um, rapid transit communities, of course had to comply by December of last year. And commuter rail communities have to comply by the, by December of this year. So we are, um, in the process of, um, and what that means is we, we, we have to have certain, we have to have a certain, um, amount of zoning districts that, um, that allow for a certain, that are zoned for a certain product number, a certain production of housing. So it's, it's an order, it's an initiative to try to enable, um, um, greater housing production because there's such a shortage. And we are currently, you know, we, we have submitted a pre-application to the state

▶ 1:24:53 Denise Gaffey: with using the, their zoning tool and putting in our, the information about our zoning, um, districts and our, um, initial, um, input into this tool indicates that we comply with the current zoning that we have in place. So, um, we are just, um, we are, we have to, we've recently got some initial feedback from the state on, on this, um, preliminary, um, submission that we've made. So now we have to just complete the final submission. We are also in the process of working with a consultant to do an economic feasibility study because that is required if you are in a community that, um, requires anything above 10% affordable housing. So we have a, um, uh, affordable housing requirement in our zoning ordinance

▶ 1:25:40 Denise Gaffey: that requires developers to kick in 15%. So the commonwealth through this initiative wants to make sure that the affordable housing requirements in communities are not working against housing production or not limiting developers from building housing. So that is the purpose of the economic develop, uh, economic feasibility analysis, which we're currently, um, working with MAPC on. And so once we have the results of that, um, which we think are not gonna show any limitations because we see it in the field, we see it happening. So we expect that to not be, um, um, a liability and to support our application to the state. Okay. I, for some reason, when I read it, I was like, is there a deadline to build all these buildings or No,

▶ 1:26:24 Denise Gaffey: No, no. It's only about zoning. And I think that is a mis attached misconception. Um, I don't have it off the top of my head. Um, Like how many pieces of land to be zoned. Yeah. Is there like a, do they tell you ahead of Time? Well, yes, I mean, it is, we have a certain, um, number of housing units that are zoning. The zoning districts that we I, that we identify that meet their criteria have to, you know, have to be able to produce. But it is not about producing housing, it's just about having a zoning in place. And that has to be done by the end of this year. Yes. Thank you. Oh, you're welcome. Councilor Vanger. Thank you. Um, I was curious about, um, you know, as we're doing this work, um, especially related to density

▶ 1:27:07 Kimberly Vandiver: around transit and things like that, if we've seen any, um, data about successes or, or good trends as far as do we, do we have anything around usage of the commuter rail and our people? Are we seeing, you know, an increase in usage there that means people are less likely to be commuting in via car to, and, you know, and causing traffic? Or have we seen anything around, um, availability of housing and affordability that's trending in a good direction that, you know, that we've seen already? So I think the data around transit use is a little tricky right now and would be skewed based on the pandemic. And, um, frankly, a lot of the work that's occurring on the, on the, on the MBTA right now. Um, so I haven't seen anything really recent on that.

▶ 1:27:53 Denise Gaffey: Um, I mean, we have, we've been involved in studies around, um, around parking and parking utilization. I think that's kind of interesting data 'cause it does illustrate that, um, that we can support a lot less parking than what our typical, what a, you know, typical housing development would be required to provide. So that was, um, and that has sort of been an impetus for us to look at some at, um, allowing for a little more discretion when it comes to parking, because parking is a, is a driver for housing costs. Parking is very expensive. It's, it's a, it's not an optimal way of using land and it is a factor in increasing the cost of housing. So, um, so that is some interesting data that's out there.

▶ 1:28:37 Denise Gaffey: Mm-Hmm. Great. Thank you. Thank you. Uh, Councilor gpe. Thank you, Madam Chair. Uh, just, uh, cons, conservation, conservation maintenance, um, that came over from the conservation budget, I'm assuming, is that, is that for treatment or the ponds? What, what's that money used For? Yes, that is the, the funds that are in, um, for, um, pond treatment. And are we still treating annually all the, All the ponds? We are still, we're in the third year of, um, the, um, chestnut removal, um, operation at L Pond. And that will be kicking up, kicking in again in, um, in July. Is that paid through this line? I thought we did a free cash That is a separate, it has a separate funding source. So this is, so there's that plus this is, is,

▶ 1:29:22 Denise Gaffey: is used towards treatment at, um, the other ponds, Swains and Thomas. Okay. Um, and then quick question on salary and wages. Um, are, are your, within your department, are they non-union or union? So we have two union, um, employees. Okay. So who are not affected by the, the, the, um, the cola, you know, who are getting the COLA adjustment. So I was, I thought we would've made a seen a little decrease 'cause we didn't fund the full-time position, but we moved in a part-time position, and it still went up three, 3.2%. That's why I was Right. It's a good, it's a good point. And, um, that is because, um, the sustainability manager in the past had not, um, been fully funded through the department budget.

▶ 1:30:12 Denise Gaffey: So, um, we had some other funding sources for that position, which unfortunately just or coincidentally are not, are not, um, no longer available, but sort of for the entire length of time that our previous sustainability manager was here. She, of course, was very aggressive about getting, um, grants and incentive funds and was able to support, um, a significant proportion over her salary, but it did decline over the years. So does that make sense? So that's not, yeah. Okay. I just thought it would've, if, if it was getting paid from another source, um, would have, okay. I got it. Thank you. I'll close it up. Councilor Stewart. Thank you, Madam Chair. Uh, just coming back to the MT MBTA community

▶ 1:30:59 Robb Stewart: zoning, uh, discussion. Thank you for clarifying that. Those was actually very helpful. Um, do you anticipate any, uh, third party, uh, participation in the final submission? Do we need to go contract anything out or are we gonna handle all this in house? No. Yes. Yes. Okay. I mean, the, the, the state has used had put together, um, a tool that was not, that is, you know, relatively easy for us to use to plug in our data. And we have some pretty, um, technically savvy people in the office, including our, our, our mapping support, our GS analyst, who's been able to really help us with that Effort. Okay. So no additional cost then anticipated on, on putting that together? Correct. Okay. Great.

▶ 1:31:46 Robb Stewart: Um, and I feel like all I'm doing is complaining tonight. Uh, I just have a little bit of feedback on the way finding signs. Oh. Uh, they're, um, some of them have not been very stable, if you will. Uh, one got knocked down by wind, uh, and that We're aware. Right. And, and I've also heard That wasn't, that one was not reinforced, um, was clearly not reinforced well or when it was installed. Um, so has since been repaired and has actually been, um, moved to a different location also. Right, Right. And the other feedback that I have is some of the way finding signs are sort of a bit captain obvious, right. You know, when they're stating something that's pretty much right in front of you, uh,

▶ 1:32:37 Robb Stewart: and I question if there's better use of that funding to provide something that may be a little less obvious, like, for example, where Kona Park is versus you know, where the high school is when it's right in front of you. Uh, so to me that that is, um, you know, if we're gonna get money to do these, I I'd I'd ask that the de the department consider, you know, where we can get good benefit out of that. Um, and where that can be most useful. Um, and I've gotten this, this is feedback that's come to Sure. Yeah. Yeah. I mean, we did work, um, very closely with a committee of people of, of residents and, um, city staff and a consultant actually. And I mean, the goal was to try to, um, promote walking

▶ 1:33:24 Ryan Williams: and, um, and bicycling. So we were trying to point out some, um, areas of interest that people could, could walk to and bicycle to. Um, in addition to trying to promote our business districts, that was another goal. Right, Right. Okay. Okay. Thank you. You're welcome. Welcome. Thank you. Co uh, vice Chair Williams Through the chair. I just wanted to, um, comment on Councilor Stewart suggestion. I actually did have my own sign complaint, which is the one on the corner of the tennis courts that's overhanging the sidewalk. And it's too low, so you can actually hit your head on it if you're tall enough when you walk by it. But I think the, um, the goal of the way finding science was necessarily to find your way

▶ 1:34:05 Ryan Williams: for people who aren't familiar with Melrose. So a person who's standing in front of the high school that doesn't know it's the high school and just kind of looks over there and goes, what's that? And then they look at the sign, which is right in front of them, and it says, high school. I laughed at the same thing because the Cedar Park sign is like right in front of Cedar Park and it's like Cedar Park right here. Um, but the truth is, as someone pointed out to me, the goal of that is for people who are unfamiliar with Melrose, who may have taken the train in or something, or who are exploring a new part of the city that they haven't seen. So some of them are extremely obvious to people who have lived in the city for a while

▶ 1:34:37 Denise Gaffey: or who are familiar with the neighborhood, but that's kind of part of the, um, the design to my understanding. I do think there's some room for improvement with them, but it's a good first start. Yeah, it was, absolutely. It's a pilot program and I think, um, we have learned a lot through it. I mean, definitely some of the, the fabrication of some of the signage was not ideal. So we've been working with the fabricated to try to make sure these are gonna hold up over time. Um, so, but I appreciate the feedback. Second, happy if you, if you hear more feedback like that, we would love to hear it. Okay. Um, counselor gpe and then Counselor Van. I was just gonna make a motion to move the bottom line.

▶ 1:35:18 Kimberly Vandiver: We have a motion, uh, made by counselor Gary paid to move to bottom line. Second, seconded by counselor, um, Seward on discussion, counselor Vandiver. Um, since we're giving feedback about way finding signs, I just wanted to add in the one thing that I've heard a little bit about is the font size and how, you know, we have walking and biking and driving directions. And if you're on a bicycle, you know, you're not, you're going too fast to read the smaller font size. And if you're, you know, if you're walking a, that might be fine. And, you know, just kind of considering the, the intended audience and what is gonna be the right size to be visible to them as they're viewing the sign. Um, it's the one thing I've heard. Okay.

▶ 1:36:01 Devin Romanul: But I agree, they're a great, great start, and I agree with the goal Of those signs. Thank you. Thank you. Any other, uh, councilor Romanul? Just one very quick narrow, uh, question on the MBTA communities conversation. Um, in the event, I know you said it's not like liquid, but in the event that the, uh, consultant or if you're working through MAPC, the study indicates that the 15% affordable housing threshold is having a deleterious effect on, um, housing production, however unlikely. Is there kind of a next step that we would, would we have enough time to alter course before the December deadline? Um, I, I, you know, it would take a little bit of time to change zoning. I'm just, I'm just putting it out there

▶ 1:36:45 that I think it's really, really, really unlikely. I'm, I'm out here asking you like really far out questions tonight, So. Sure. No, no, no. But I appreciate it. No, thank you. I appreciate. Thank you. Any other question and discussion? Okay. Seeing none, Mr. Clerk, Vice Chair Williams? Yes. Councillor Garrette. Yes. Councillor Stewart? Yes. Councillor Hamilton? Yes. Councillor Vandiver. Yes. Councillor Romanul? Yes. Councillor Finocchiaro. Yes. President Elli? Yes. And Chair Jamal Dean? Yes. That motion passes unanimously. Thank you. Thank you. Um, next we have, um, the last two items on our agenda. Uh, department number 2021, fire Department. Good evening. On the screen, we have a, just a presentation of our budget.

▶ 1:37:59 Um, I'm sorry if you folks have to turn around and get back to it, but, um, the fire budget really is divided to two fire and the ambulance. Um, we see our trucks outside there, outside of headquarters. And as we look at the first, this is in the fire side with the fire salaries, overtime, mutual aid, um, this is all only for the fire, not the ambulance side. See fire salaries. Um, we requested what we proposed. It's minus 1.7% overtime, overtime's down 5%. And mutual aid, um, that is for, if mutual aid is in, in Melrose for fire, whatever we need money, we have to feed them and, um, take care of it. And in that case, we just have a line item for that. And it's been the same fund for I don't know how long.

▶ 1:38:53 Um, the next one is, again, a lot of our stuff we have printing, life safety, it's all level funded. Um, we have any questions about any of those items? It's, it's pretty self-explanatory printing materials. There's stuff for, um, handouts for when, um, for visitors when we go to schools, we go to, um, some of the elder elderly apartment buildings and we do our presentations. Um, anything there, professional services are really, um, a lot of our, um, our programs, we had to run our dispatch, our, um, data collection and things like that. Um, those contracts we have for those. And still, this one's kind of hard to even gray, I'm sorry. Um, but pretty much first fire prevention supplies. Those we, we went up 20%.

▶ 1:39:51 Um, those supplies naturally, like everything inflation has gone up that provides also more supplies when he, um, goes out and gives, uh, fire safety talks and that type of stuff. I hate to say call it swag, but sometimes we just kind of put bags together for whatever audience he's going to and, um, and give a safety talk to. Um, but price of all that stuff keeps going up. Um, any further. Yeah. Um, tools and hardware is, um, even though DPW is great in answering a lot of our bigger repairs, we do do a lot of minor repairs in the stations ourselves. Um, and we just have our, um, accounts to, uh, take care of that at Home Depot and Lowe's. Mm-Hmm. Um, you, the changes there, dues and memberships going up 12%.

▶ 1:40:48 Um, there's a lot of professional, um, groups. We belong to the Fire Chief Association of Massachusetts, the Fire Prevention Association of Massachusetts, the Metro Fire District, um, and so on. And those dues go up. Um, education seminars, no increase level funded. Um, any questions there? Uh, It's, This is just to show revenues. We collect the first graph on the left shows in 21. Those administrative fees we collect when we do fire details. Um, there were a lot of details then coming out of the pandemic. Um, that means when there's work like, um, firearm shutdowns for work to be done or firearm sprinkler shutdowns, we require a fire watch on detail for that. Um, and that's pretty much, um, contractors pay for that.

▶ 1:41:43 And the city collects administrative fee of about, I think it's 15%, um, Sorry, I don't know if it's just a collect, that's an administrative fee that we collect. And you see it went down 22 and it's coming back up as construction starts getting back up. And the master box fees we collect on the right graph, our fees we collect, um, the municipal fire alarm system are those boxes you see on the, um, the telephone poles throughout the city on top of the, the, um, we charge a fee for having those on buildings. That's $250 each year. And, um, in 21 we waived the fee because of the pandemic. That's why that's a zero. Um, and this is just really the fire prevention inspections he performs, um, I'm sorry,

▶ 1:42:33 but our station spots goes by calendar year, not by fiscal year, but within the year period there. 23 it performed 538 inspections and the graft, the right is a permit. How many permits issued? 612 and each line and all the, it's also difficult, but you can see, um, fire alarm inspection, maintenance, um, is a big one. Sprinkler permits and so on. Those are all the permits we issue throughout the city. Um, the significant amount. And here we are. This, we now hop to the ambulance side and the ambulance, um, al the ambulance fees pays for eight firefighters in the, on the, um, on the department. And we can see as we have requested, uh, 5 25, but I proposed is now minus 1.3. And the ambulance overtime is again, level funded there.

▶ 1:43:28 Um, And these are the rest of our contractual lines for the ambulance services. Um, see special equipment's maintenance, you see the 150%, that's really taking care of a lot of the EMS equipment such as our AEDs, the life packs, the Lucas devices, the stretchers that are battery operated. Um, our stair chairs equipment all has to be maintained. Um, and actually the price of that stuff, that's always going up. Um, the other one, the defibrillator made defibrillator maintenance. Um, there's two different aspects of the AEDs. You see them in the buildings, they're about this big. And then the defibrillators, the ones that paramedics use, they can actually monitor people's heart and also def, um, shock them if they have the right rhythm.

▶ 1:44:19 Um, maintenance on those. Also, as you can imagine, a very important tool is also increased. We have to increase our budgets 'cause we have to maintain those. Um, Not much change the professional services is for, that's in the, um, thing over the past year. So we drop, we have a QA QI and that is quality assurance, quality improvement program that monitors all our run reports to make sure that we are providing, staying with the protocol set by the state as we provide the REMS services. And we used to do that in-house, but unfortunately the folks that did that for us have moved on to other departments to, we've decided to, uh, contract out to McNally's EMS as a third party to review all of our cases

▶ 1:45:09 and give us feedback to make sure we are, um, having the quality we're supposed to and notify what improvements we can make. So that's why you see that almost 10%, um, increase on that bottom professional services. And again, this is very similar to the, the fire department side. Those are all our contract supplies and materials all level funded other than the very bottom when our insurance actually is going up. And again, we have EMS related calls 20 20 22 with 2009 77 EMS related calls and 23 of 2008 75. Um, so it's, it's roughly about that fluctuates, um, year to year. But it's rough that the calls we go to each year. And also we threw this in, in case you want to know, our busiest days are either Thursdays or Fridays.

▶ 1:46:08 Um, it's a little bit of fluctuation, but that's how it goes. And December is typically our highest volume. Um, some fun facts if we want to. And then we, this is another thing we have to do is we have to have these graphs. A little hard to read, but we're required to respond to what to get on scene within six minutes. And you see we have to have a target of around 90%. And fire apparatus, you can see the trucks are a little bit slower. They're right around 90%. And then on the right side is the EMS apparatus and they always go up, get above the mark of, um, getting there most of the time. Um, and that's, that's one of the requirements by OEMS on the EMS side. And the NFPA also is a recommendation

▶ 1:46:57 of 90% within six minutes. Okay. So we're, we're making those marks and we're pretty proud of those. And these, uh, accomplishments for last year, we got a grant, we bought hose testing machine that we had to always, uh, rent out was required by NFPA to test our hoses annually. And the PPV fan that's battery operated, um, clear smoke and especially on co cars venting co out of the building with a co incident. Uh, they're very helpful for that. And we did our renovation. We got a grant from the state Airmark to do our kitchen at headquarters, do the Windows HVAC system, um, performed by DPW and students from the, uh, Wakefield Vocational High School. And we do have some new hires that came in in April.

▶ 1:47:45 We hired three new firefighters and as mentioned earlier, the public safety radios. Um, we got that grant along with police to upgrade our whole radio system. 'cause our system is frankly has gotten it aged out. You know, they're not replacing these parts anymore. So it's something we had to do. Um, and that's it. Our goals we're trying to fill, we we're down around eight firefighters. Um, it's very difficult to, um, hire paramedic, firefighter paramedics. Um, there's just not a lot of people out there to pull from. Um, but we're doing our best to stay and, um, keep providing our service that, um, we're accustomed to providing. Um, also completion of the radio upgrade. We want to replace our spear engine four, which is 2007.

▶ 1:48:35 Ryan Williams: Um, we've placed that with another one, dropping our engine three. That's our engine two is our second oldest would become our, our spare piece and they'll plan to take delivery of a new rescue ambulance hopefully in September, October. So that's what's coming up this year for us. Alright. Any questions? Thank you. Um, vice Chair Williams, You're gonna replace the pumper. You want to? Yes. Yeah, we want to. Yes. Um, something that I would love to talk to you about sometime is the relationship between vehicle size format and response times. The correlation between them. Mm-Hmm. Um, I think it would be interesting to explore for a city like Melrose, smaller apparatus with newer pumps that can produce the same volume of water.

▶ 1:49:26 Ryan Williams: Um, and maybe have almost the same carrying capacity and, you know, not something that we have to believe or in the discussion tonight, but Right. Something that I know of, particularly in European cities, they do a lot with these smaller apparatus and I think that Melrose would be a good fit for it. Yeah, that's, uh, that's a very hot topic in the fire service. Um, they see the European models and a lot of European manufacturers are now entering the American market. Um, so it is, it's something to think about. Um, naturally we've only ever bought custom trucks, you know, made typically in Wisconsin. Yeah. Um, but however, that's where we are. But we're always open to look for new ways. 'cause this pump we're trying to get

▶ 1:50:08 Kimberly Vandiver: this year won't be delivered for almost three years. Right. Um, so that's why and lifespan, we're trying to get rid, not get rid of 'em, but age 'em out in about 15 years. So a lot of that time is planning is just getting, getting the order in and then waiting for it to get through the production line. Great. Thank you very much. You're welcome. Thank you. Any other question? Councilor Vandiver? Um, thank you. Um, I, I just wanna follow up on, uh, around the ambulance usage and the shortage of firefighter paramedics. Um, you know, obviously the ambulance is in a lot of ways is, is a really critical part of what the fire department's doing right now in terms of, you know, you, there are a lot more medical emergencies that

▶ 1:50:52 Kimberly Vandiver: on a daily basis compared to big fires. Exactly. Yes, exactly. Most of our runs are MS related. Yes. Right. And, uh, and, and that's also, as you said, you know, covering eight salaries right now, the work of that department and the fees for doing those transports and, and things like that. So, um, is there, you know, is there anything creative we can do to, you know, help train people up to be firefighter paramedics or, you know, something given that there's this shortage of, of people that are out there that have this qualification right now? So what I what our plan is going forward, um, is we, the recent three hires, we just had a, a not paramedics, they're just EMT basics. And so OEMS is allowed, um, it, it's,

▶ 1:51:37 this is going on throughout the nation allowed. Instead of having two paramedics on the truck, they'll have one paramedic and a basic called the PB model yet still provide a LS service. So not probably 60% of our department, I'd say maybe 67, are all a paramedics now, but they're on the trucks. They, they're senior people, but so usually we respond with a truck will go, the nearest truck goes to medical aid along with the ambulance. So more than likely there's a paramedic on that, that fire truck and a paramedic that's on the ambulance. So we'll have two paramedics still there providing a LS service. So it's a way for us to keep the staff and keep the ambulance in service at the a LS level, um,

▶ 1:52:23 Mark Garipay: and still be able to, to bill that money to provide those positions. Okay. Thank you. You're welcome. Thank you. Councilor gpe. Thank you Madam Chair. Thank you Chief White, thanks for your time earlier today. Uh, welcome to your first budget hearing. Thank you. Um, couple questions, uh, start to finish. Uh, when we hire a a firefighter, um, how long from the time that we hire 'em until they're actually in rotation, um, is it two months, three months? It depends. Um, it depends on their previous experience before we hire them. Um, if we have, if we hire, uh, someone who was on the firefighter list that's already a paramedic, then what we really have to do is then send them to the fire academy, which takes three months, um,

▶ 1:53:21 once they get a, get a class in their fire academy. So we're we beholden with new firefighters to openings at the fire academy. Luckily they've opened a couple of more, um, academies throughout the state to um, free up the bottlenecks. So the wait times aren't as long. They were previous up to six, seven months. Um, now looking more like two or three months, um, that's what I'm being told now. So if we hire a paramedic, but as I just said, we just hire three basics, but we have, um, they're gonna be required to become paramedics, so we'll have to send them to paramedic school, which takes about nine months to complete and, and another month to get their license. So altogether to get them up to being paramedics

▶ 1:54:07 is roughly a little over a year. Um, so that's one of our challenges. Meanwhile, these, while these guys, while they're at the fire academy, they can't be working, but when they're going to paramedic school, they will still go to work part of their shift and have time off to go to class when they're scheduled to work. So if we, um, hire a firefighter, um, and they don't, and they had a class doesn't start for three, four months, are we, did we start paying when they go to class or are we paying them? So, so how we do it, uh, we are paying them. So we have a position of fire, the fire dispatcher. So typically when we get a new hire, regardless of what training they've had, that's the first place they go.

▶ 1:54:53 Mark Garipay: They learn how to work the dispatch, the desk, they take the calls and dispatch the pieces. So that's basically a two week in-service training. Um, on days till they, they get up to speed on how to dispatch and then we usually put them in the fire alarm office until they're ready to go to the fire academy. Okay. Um, and where I'm going with this is, I mean, I, I have a real concern over and we've, and it, and we're not that off. We only cut the overtime budget by five 5%. Right. But Right. We spent over a million dollars. So I was just curious to see if there would be extra money that in the salary line items we could roll over. Because I'm very concerned with free cash next year that, that, that would be about a half a million dollars, um,

▶ 1:55:41 we would need from free cash in order to, to pay that overtime. So I was just, um, just curious to see if we thought that line item might be a little less than, um, a little less than what we have budgeted based on how we hire employees. No, I share your concern. Yeah. Um, however, our, our plan is, is we're staggering to make up these eight positions to, we hired three, hoping to get two within the next month or two, and staggering them as they come in, in the training position, getting them into fire alarm and, and working it through like that is, they go the more senior ones, we'll go off the fire academy. Others might go to paramedic school and hopefully would be able to juggle these guys to

▶ 1:56:26 where we can still keep the ambulance in service. And the more we get in naturally it's less overtime. Um, 'cause without eight positions, we are currently not only have a lot of overtime, but there's a lot of holdovers. So these folks are very tired. Um, and it's been going on for over a year. And so this is our, the PB system is sort of our stop gap. Hopefully give these folks some relief until we can get paramedics online and back to true a LS service. Okay. Thank you. It sounds like you have a, have a plan for that. Um, on the, on the tuition, um, on your summary that you gave us, there's, um, tuition of $16,000 for EMTB paramedic schools. Is that 16,000 already included in this current budget

▶ 1:57:16 or is that something that you think you may be coming back to us For? That is, um, it de it depends. It, it sort of include, I'm sorry, I'm just gonna look through this really quickly. Um, there was a line in the EMS budget, I mean the ambulance by, um, Sorry, Vacation. That'd be the training budget That, I'm trying to put my finger on it now. I'm sorry. That's fine. You can get back to me. That's what get to, that's what's good. That's what we're hoping to use that money for that. Um, and again, as we're trying to spread this, this, um, orientation or these guys in trying to spread that out as best we can and just slowly integrate these guys into the department. Okay. Um, As best cost effectively

▶ 1:58:39 Mark Garipay: as we can and still operate. Okay. And I just have two other questions. The replacement of engine four, if as we stand today, if we went with the Sea grave roughly, what, what would that cost? It's probably gonna be near a million dollars. A million dollars? Yeah. Okay. Um, and then the last, in your, um, in your highlight form on the last thing you talked about, it was EMS devices that weren't funded. And you talk about the Lucas device and Life Pack. Yes. Um, do We, do we have multiple devices like this or is this something that we need A-A-S-A-S-A-P? Um, We have, we have, we have, since we have, uh, rescue one and Rescue Two, so each ambulance has its own life path. And so if one goes out for service,

▶ 1:59:28 Robb Stewart: they have that one to use. And the same is with the stretches. That's, and the Lucas Lucas devices, we actually have 'em on all our trucks. Um, so we have spears of those, um, in case something go in and outta service or they get broken, they need to go off for repair. So we do have spears of those. Um, So we're not putting any, anything at risk right now with those? No. Okay. Alright. Thank you. Thanks for being here. Thank you. Any question from my colleagues? Councilor Stewart? Thank you, Madam Chair. Thank you Chief White for, for being in front of us. Um, I'm just trying, I'm trying to get my arms around. Uh, when you talk about the fire school training for the three months and then the paramedic training for the nine months

▶ 2:00:19 and where that is in the actual budget. So what, what line item do, does that get covered under The, The, the Fire academy is just, they're just paid as firefighter that comes out of the salary. And do we have is, but is there a tuition involved at the Fire Academy? No. Not for the fire Academy, no. Oh, really? It's free. No, it's, um, Okay. Great. And how about the, um, the paramedic training for the nine months? That, that will, uh, we do have to pay tuition for that, which is roughly 16, $17,000. 16, 17,000. And is that a line item in here? It's not a line item, but there is a, um, a training in the ambulance side. I'm trying to find where that is. Or you, I'm sorry. We are hoping, as we hire these guys,

▶ 2:01:33 we're gonna have a reduction in our overtime and we're hoping that we will be able to have a lot less overtime than we've been having and use that 16,000 instead of paying a paramedic salary, paying an EMT salary. Okay. And hopefully those costs will, uh, un offset each Other. And you said you had what, three or five that would need to go through the training? We Have three. We're looking at two right now. Two more. Okay. So five, so 80,000 that would need to come off the overtime. Right, right. Um, and that, that being said, I don't think I can feasibly put five through in one year. Okay. Um, That, that would be difficult. But I'm gonna see if, especially if some of them have put in five through now I have to plan

▶ 2:02:23 that one might not make it, you know, um, then the part of the contract will be they'll have to repay the tuition, um, but they then get a second chance to try again. So we, we gotta, um, keep our fingers crossed. Really. Hopefully this just works out. People we're hiring are motivated. They do want to become paramedics and it will be ultimately a big benefit to continue the true a LS service that the city's come accustomed to. Sure. Um, actually am also, not only, we don't just serve the city. We spend, um, a number of runs in Malden sga, our ambulance does go out of town to help those cities and towns also. And, and, and interesting you mentioned that it's, that was one question that I had was, um,

▶ 2:03:12 because you talk about how it really is a national issue, it's a state issue for just having enough fire. Is, is there any thought or any discussion, uh, within the fire community of regionalizing? Um, I wouldn't say there's any organized talk about regionalization. It, it's always been around, um, talk about it naturally. It is a thing to spread out. Unfortunately, This is just my opinion. There's so few e emt e em paramedics around even trying it would have to go to more of a system is like the old emergency show where there are two guys in a, not an ambulance, but a truck. And they would respond to the true a LS calls and there would be a bunch of em, EMTs and ambulances that they would go and assist.

▶ 2:04:07 And if it was required, their level of skills, they would then hop in the ambulance. Um, sort of a plan like that. It's been tried before. Some of the hospitals, I know Little General had one, Leahy had one for a while. Um, I'm not sure exactly why that went out of favor 20 something years ago, but, um, the system we have is not regionalized. Uh, Yeah. Okay. We can jump in that. Okay. We can get into our discussion, but it's late. And the, uh, The, a lot of the hospitals actually went out of that providing that service. What, it became unsustainable in the EMS model for the hospitals to sustain that service. So many of the hospitals actually exited providing that service with the cheapest, saying exactly right.

▶ 2:04:53 Back years ago, these regionalized systems, paramedic intercept systems, the ambulance, you see the ambulance on the road with a expedition chasing behind it. Um, a lot of those systems have, have gone away where the hospitals have been unable to sustain sustainable. Um, and they certainly wouldn't come back into doing it. Now, given the state of paramedic staffing, not just in Massachusetts, but across the country, it is a, it is an actual crisis. So the, but the, the way that EMS is reimbursed and the way that those models operate, all the hospitals get out of that, providing that service. Metro West Leahy, uh, uh, is South Shore, you name it, they, they all went out slowly, but showing Metro West over the years, um,

▶ 2:05:54 requiring and having, uh, systems step back in and provide local paramedic coverage and the most often in the PB model. Yeah. Which is what the chief is talking about now. Um, the PV model is, is something that's gonna become more of a necessity as the staffing problem is, is really not improving. And, uh, you know, and then relying on backup from other places that come in for the more critically ill patients. Got it. Thank you for that clear explanation. I appreciate that. Um, that's all I have to now. Thank you Madam Chair. Thank you. Thank you. Um, councilor, vice Chair Williams. Let's make a motion to move the bottom line on second. Second, however, this is, uh, 2, 2, 1, Please. We have a

▶ 2:06:50 Maya Jamaleddine: motion to move to bottom line on number item 2021, uh, 2 21, uh, for the fire department seconded by, uh, I think it was me, Uh, counselor Ro on discussion. Seeing none, sir. Clerk, Vice Chair Williams? Yes. Councillor gpe. Yes. Councilor Stewart? Yes. Councillor Hamilton. Yes. Councillor Vandiver. Yes. Councilor Romanul? Yes. Council for Na Carro? Yes. President GL Yes. And Chair Jamal Dean? Yes. Motion Passes unanimously. Thank you. Appropriation 2024 dash 29, fiscal 2025. Ambulance Enterprise operating budget in the amount of 1,000,021, uh, thousand six hundreds and $82. Um, Number, Uh, 6 5 0 0. Yes. Do you, does any one of you have anything to, To sure. So, um, back years ago when now quite a few years ago,

▶ 2:08:11 Just a point of information if you don't mind just introducing Oh, sorry. I'm sorry, me, sorry. Through the chair. Uh, I'm Bill Mergal. I'm from, uh, pro EMS solutions. Um, we were kind of here at the, at the start when the Melrose Ambulance was reinstated helping with Chief O'Brien and Patrick LaRusso. And, um, boy, that's going back a little ways now. Um, also, um, so we provide, uh, billing and, uh, some, uh, technology services, uh, to, uh, Melrose Fire and roughly 50 other departments in Massachusetts and somewhere around 80 departments in New York. Uh, as well, I also, uh, am the president of Pro EMS, the ambulance services 9 1 1 in Cambridge. Uh, so I, I actually am able to change hats

▶ 2:09:05 and put my clinical and paramedic hat on and operational hat on at the same time as, uh, flip flopping to, uh, more on the ambulance and reimbursement. And also one of the other things that we have built out in Cambridge is the paramedic training program. Um, we have three cohorts of, uh, paramedics go through the nine month program, uh, predominantly in our place in Cambridge, at our training center Center for medics. And they spend split their time there in-house in the didactic portion of the program, and then go to local hospitals for the other half of the program. Uh, we've been able to get the program condensed down into nine months using different strategies, and we were able to add a third cohort We ran for years

▶ 2:09:58 with only two cohorts, but now we actually have three cohorts of, of 40. And, and, you know, we're actually one of the few paramedic programs that are still successfully getting paramedics on the, on out there, uh, including paramedics for our own service. So, um, what the chief is talking about in terms of the training, the staffing shortages, these are all extreme problems that everyone is facing, not just Melrose. Kind of a long answer to who I am. Sorry. Thank you. Questions from my colleagues. I just have one question. Uh, you, you handle all the billing and collections for the ambulances? We do. What, what percentage, um, are we collecting or what, what do, how much are we writing off? And

▶ 2:10:47 Historically you've collected about 80% net. Net, right. We, when you talk about collection percentages, you can talk about the gross billing and then, which is often inflated just the same as hospitals, doctors', offices. It's really, it's, frankly, it's the American healthcare system and the way it's developed and the way that everyone bills, including EMS, the paradigm of the $30 aspirin as it were. Um, so then there's the net amount and net amount that what you could expect to collect against what you actually collect is usually around 80%. And, you know, the, the, a lot of that delta, that difference between 80 and a hundred goes to patients who have no insurance at all. If a patient has no insurance at all, chances are

▶ 2:11:44 that transport is gonna be for free. Um, the city has always, uh, followed the model hardship policy that we developed many years ago. Um, that is absolutely, I would think, potentially even a more humane collection policy than even many of the hospitals follow, um, and has always had that in place. So there's not a lot of, of, of hoops that folks have to jump through to establish a financial hardship. And, um, and we've got it down to kind of a one page form and an attestation that they don't have insurance and, um, there're unable to pay. We use 500% of the federal poverty line to as a, as a benchmark. Um, and also other things, if they're already on, uh, been established on free care by the state

▶ 2:12:37 or any other thing, uh, subsidized housing, there's any number of boxes that someone could check that would actually automatically qualify them for an abatement reduction, which is all done by policy. So that, that also the copayments for, uh, Melrose residents are, are waived. Uh, non-residents are billed their copay. Um, residents are, the copay is waived, which is allowed by, uh, Medicare, where the ambulance is actually funded by city tax dollars. So you're allowed to do that. Um, and Merose has always done that. Uh, so that's, that's a lot of where that other 20% lies. Um, but the Melrose is fortunate to have a remarkably low bill patient, two or 3%. It's really, it's really something, Albeit a little bit

▶ 2:13:36 of a higher Medicare population. Right. Which, which certainly makes, um, collecting the revenue more challenging. Right. Because everything in healthcare, everything about EMS is unfortunately the way the system is set up, predicated on the cost shift, government payers and people with no insurance paying far less than what it costs to provide the service, which is made up by the commercially insured patients paying much more to cover that difference. EMS is the same healthcare paradigm problem that exists for all of healthcare in the, in the country. Just one other question. Um, how much revenue do you have? Did you collect in the past year on that, that you, Uh, if You had that number, If we look at it, so looking at calendar year 2023

▶ 2:14:35 because fiscal year 24 would not be baked yet. Uh, was 1.109 million. Okay. Thank you. Um, vice Chair Williams. Thanks. And as a point of order, what we are approving here is appropriation 20 24 29, right? Because it doesn't Mm-Hmm. The ambulance doesn't appear in the budget. Okay. Uh, I would like to make a motion to send appropriation 20 24 29 to the full board. Second council, We have a motion made by Vice Chair Williams to, um, recommend to the full council appropriation 2024 dash 29. Uh, seconded by Councilor Ro on discussion. Councilor Stewart, Just point of clarification, was that a recommendation or was it, you just wanted to bring it without recommendation? What, say again. Sorry. I'm

▶ 2:15:28 Robb Stewart: Sorry, what? I threw the chair. I thought, um, I heard that you want to bring it to the full board, but I didn't hear the recommendation. Yeah, recommend, recommend to the full board. Okay. Thank you. Well, you think there's a, is there an ambulance line in the budget? I have A question. Councilor Smith? I I do not. No. I just wanted to have that Clarification. Um, any other, uh, question on discussion? Seeing none, counselors, um, um, Mr. Clerk, We can, Can we just, um, yeah. Two minute recess for a second because I think there is, uh, there was an attachment at the bottom. Okay, well, hold on. Lemme just, oh, that's, Yeah. Uh, IQM two, uh, there's a fiscal 2025 ambulance, uh, operating budget in there.

▶ 2:16:13 Ryan Williams: That is an enterprise fund. It says on the top, I don't know if everyone sees it in there. Mm-Hmm. What number? What number? Letter on the agenda. Letter. 2 31 last thing. Last thing. Last one. Right above departments. Oh. So it's line 2 31. Motion. So, so I'll, I'll back the motion out because we need to motion to move the bottom line on 2 31. I was mistaken. I thought it because it was under an appropriation that it was an order of like a cash appropriation order. But if it's a, if it's an item that's maintained in the city's budget, then we would have to move to the bottom lineup. However, I will say that in the full Munis budget, um, the fiscal 2025 operating budget under agenda item seven A,

▶ 2:16:56 Maya Jamaleddine: this does not appear in muni, in the munis budget. Mm-Hmm. Correct. So I'm unclear as to whether this is a, a budget. I would like to make a motion to recess for two minutes. Um, So moved. Second. Second. Thank you. We have a motion to recess for two minutes and we'll be back. Thank you About the getting transfer. We are back from recess. Uh, we still have a, uh, motion, um, to recommend appropriation 2024 dash 29, uh, to the full council. Um, the, um, recommendation was made by, uh, vice Chair Williams and seconded, uh, by Councilor Ro on discussion. Seeing none, Mr. Clerk. Go ahead. Vice Chair Williams? Yes. Um, council gpe? Yes. Councillor Stewart? Yes. Councillor Hamilton? Yes. Councillor Vandiver. Yes.

▶ 2:18:11 Maya Jamaleddine: Councillor Romanul. Yes. Mr. naca? Yes. Chair Jamaleddine? Yes. That motion passes unanimously. Thank you. I appreciate both of you, uh, for your patience. Um, that motion, uh, passes. Thank you for both of you. Thank you, ma'am. Thank you. I'll make a motion to hold or, uh, appropriation 2024 dash 29th. No, 2020. 2024. 20. In committee. Um, so we have a motion to, uh, made by, uh, counselor Gar, pay to hold, uh, appropriation 2024 dash 25 in committee second. Seconded by Councillor Stewart. On discussion. Seeing none, Mr. Clerk? Um, vice Chair Williams? Yes. Councillor Repe. Yes. Councilor Stewart? Yes. Councillor Hamilton? Yes. Councillor Vandiver. Yes. Counselor Romano. Yes. Counselor Finacaro. Yes. And Chair Jamal? Yes.

▶ 2:19:23 Maya Jamaleddine: That motion passes. Passes. Unanimously. Unanimously. Thank you. Um, do we have motion adjourn? Aurn. We have a motion to adjourn made by Vice Chair Williams. Seconded by Councilor Ro on discussion. Seeing none. All in favor? Aye. Aye. Any opposed? We adjourn. 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