Appropriations & Oversight Committee — 2025-05-08
Attendance
Cal Finocchiaro ; Mark Garipay ; Ward Hamilton ; Maya Jamaleddine ; Manjula Karamcheti ; Leila Migliorelli ; John Obremski ; Devin Romanul ; Robb Stewart ; Kimberly Vandiver ; Ryan Williams
Agenda
Minutes
CITY OF MELROSE APPROPRIATIONS & OVERSIGHT COMMITTEE CALENDAR● MAY 8, 2025 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 Vice Chair Present Cal Finocchiaro Absent Ward Hamilton Absent Manjula Karamcheti Remote John Obremski Absent Devin Romanul Present Robb Stewart Present Kimberly Vandiver Present Ryan Williams Late 7:38 PM Leila Migliorelli President, Ex Oficio Present Mark Garipay Chair Present
(ID # 12678) Operating Budgets (City, School, Regional School) Fiscal Year 2026 Operating Budget in the amount of $107,575,802. Hold Appropriations & Oversight Committee
(ID # 12675) Revolving Fund/Reauthorization Reauthorization of the City of Melrose Revolving Fund Table for Fiscal 2026. Hold City of Melrose Page 1 5/12/2025 12:07 PM
Transcript
▶ 0:03 Mark Garipay: Good evening. The time is 7 34 on Thursday, May 8th. This is a meeting, the Appropriation and Oversight Committee. I'm Mark Gar, the chair. Also joining me tonight is Vice Chair Jamine, uh, councilor Romanul and Council Ver and Councilor Stewart and President Elli. This serves as a notice of a quorum for the record in accordance with, um, the Open Meeting law. This meeting is being recorded and broadcast live on MMTV. Also pursuant to, um, current allowances under the Open Meeting Law and Enact under chapter two of the Acts of 2023, signed into law by the governor, by Governor Healy on March 29th, 2023. City Councilor Modular Chedi is gonna be participating in this meeting, uh, tonight remotely via the city's Zoom platform.
▶ 1:01 Mark Garipay: Uh, is there any way we can get her, get, get the screen on? Oh, yeah. We'll grab that, that, As they're working on that, I will, uh, move forward. We'll move on to public comment. I will motion by unanimous consent to open the floor for public comment. This is a portion Point of order. I think we have to do roll call if we have a remote. Um, you are correct. Thank you. You're welcome To stick it No, in the front. Yeah. So, Mr. Chair, I'll make a motion to open the floor for public comment. Second, We have a motion to open the floor for public comment made by Councilor Stewart. Seconded by Counselor Vandiver. On discussion. Madam Clerk. There we go. Okay. Okay. Councilor Jamine here. Oh, yes.
▶ 2:09 Council Councilor Ham. Councilor Cam Chetty. Here. Councilor Rome? Yes. Yes. Councilor Stewart. Yes. Councilor Vandiver. Yes. Councillor Williams. Yes. President Elli. This is here. Is this roll call, is this, is this Help? This is, this is, this is roll call for, Oh, I thought I heard you say public comment. I apologize. No. Public comment. Public comment. This is public Comment, right? Oh, okay. We need To take a step back. Okay. I, I'm both here and, yes. Okay. I'm sorry. I thought I heard you say public comment. Say public comment. Yep. We're in public comment. And chair Oppe. Yes. Yes. Okay. Passes. This is the portion of the meeting, um, where public may speak on any item A on any item on
▶ 3:00 Mark Garipay: tonight's agenda, comments, expressing any viewpoint, any other matters are also welcome. Is there anyone looking to speak, uh, in public comment? Seeing no one looking to speak in public comment? I'll to entertain a motion. Mr. Chair. I'll make a motion to close public comment. Second. Second. Motion to close public comment made by, um, councilor Stewart. Second by Councilor Romanul. Uh, on discussion. Madam Clerk, can you please call the roll? Yes. Counselor Jamal Ledine. Yes. Counselor Karen Chetty? Yes. Yes. Councilor Romanul? Yes. Councilor Stewart? Yes. Councilor Vanderberg. Yes. Councilor Williams? Yes. President Meley? Yes. Chair Garipay? Yes. Motion passes. Okay. Public comments Now closed. Uh, moving on.
▶ 3:51 Mark Garipay: Uh, at this time, I'll motion, um, I will entertain a motion to approve the, without reading the minutes of the May 1st, 2025. Appropriation and oversight Meeting. Mr. Chair. I'll make a motion to approve the minutes without reading. Second Motion to approve the minutes without reading made by Councilor Stewart. Second, and by councilor, I mean President Melli. On discussion. Madam Clerk, can you please call the role Councilor? Jamal Ledine? Yes. Councilor Karen Chetty. Yes. Councilor Romanul? Yes. Councilor Stewart? Yes. Councilor Vandiver. Yes. Councilor Williams? Yes. President Melli? Yes. Chair Carpe? Yes. Motion passes? Yes. For the record. Uh, councilor Williams is now, uh, is with us.
▶ 4:41 Jen Grigoraitis: I forgot. Didn't mention that when we, before we started taking some votes here. Um, next up we have, uh, before we start on department budget presentation, we have the mayor, um, and some of, uh, her administration that would like to, uh, would like to speak. So, Madam Mayor Laura, is yours. Good evening. Thank you. Chair Repe counselors. It's lovely to see you. Um, uh, myself and Ms. Golden wanted to be before you tonight, before you begin the department budgets as a, a new part of the budget process that as a counselor, I had felt I would've appreciated. And I know Ms. Golden, this being her first budget. Also wanted to add, which is to just give a little more of a high level overview of both, um, revenues in and out,
▶ 5:24 Jen Grigoraitis: and some of the constraints around our, how we develop the budget, and then the process we went through to arrive at the reduced budget. That's before you. So, um, we were gonna walk through some things. The documents are in the packet. You also have a hard copy before you councilor Karen Chetty. They're online in the packet for you to follow along. Um, so first, more for the public, then for you. I just wanted to remind folks that per the charter, the council's role in the budget is to approve, reduce, or reject either a budget line or an entire department budget. Um, unlike the school committee, the council does not have the ability to move money across lines or across departments. So if something is eliminated by a majority vote
▶ 6:02 Jen Grigoraitis: of the council, it is simply removed from the bottom line number of the budget. And then that funding would come back certified as free cash by the Department of Division of local services next fall. Um, also in terms of coming attractions, 'cause we are normally working on multiple budget years at a time. Um, we're also beginning the process of closing out FY 25. We're in the final two months of that budget. Also per charter. We are unable to request moving money between lines prior to May 15th, um, which is typically something we need to do each year. Mostly personnel related. When there are departures or leaves, it impacts things like health insurance and salary. So we are working with departments
▶ 6:40 Jen Grigoraitis: to get those necessary transfers prepared and on your next agenda item, so that hopefully they can be added to these. Um, so the documents that have been added to the order and are also being added to the city website is the salary schedule for city employees that are paid from the general fund. There are some other funding sources for some of our city employees, and we will add that obviously the Melrose Public Schools sets its own salary schedule. Um, so that's a document that, um, they would produce. Um, at the suggestion of Councilor Hamilton, which was a really helpful one, um, Ms. Golden has prepared, I guess I'll call it a one pager that lists by department the reductions that we've proposed
▶ 7:17 Jen Grigoraitis: in this budget and the corresponding dollar amount. Um, there are individual department budget memos. I think you're used to. We're gonna talk a little bit more about a revenue chart. And then on the city website, on the city finances section is a chart of the grants that we city departments have applied for and whether or not we've received them just to see the level of work that goes into going after additional funding. And then we are working with our vendor clear gov to have our visual budget up and running, hopefully in the coming weeks. So with that, I'm gonna turn it over to Ms. Golden. Great, thank you. Uh, one of the things we wanted to talk about tonight, um, or is our priorities and revenue sources when we develop the budget annually.
▶ 7:59 So our first priority of the budget every year is to present a balance budget, uh, by June 30th. And backing into that, we have to present it 45 days per city charter. So as we're, um, and this is also required by Mass General Law, um, but as we're developing the budget, there's a lot of information that's still coming in, such as, um, our open enrollment period closes after the budget's already produced. Um, we're still getting, uh, revenue numbers and the cherry sheet numbers from the state budget that won't pass until um, July. So we're relying on the information that we have at that point in time. Um, a obviously a goal of the budget is to always, um, stay away from using one-time revenues, um, such
▶ 8:48 as free cash stabilization funds or ARPA revenues. Um, which we, you know, we tried to focus mostly of our ARPA spending on one time cost and not incorporate that into the budget. Um, and also another component of that, and as we walk through the revenues, is using no more than, uh, 85% of local receipts, having that be our ceiling. Um, so as far as the budget is concerned, we present this budget, but we have up until the tax rate is set to make amendments to the budget, um, if there's any significant changes. So the tax rate is usually, that process starts, um, in November. So we have up until that point to change things. The next priority always is net school spending. Uh, we, we have an obligation to meet net school spending,
▶ 9:40 and this number is presented to us by the state. I think it's at the end of the packet. Um, the revenue packet. You can see a screenshot of what the expectation is for FY 26 spending. And every year we go through the end of year reporting with the school department. And at that point, the city. So when you look at the budget, there's the city appropriation to the schools. And what we refer that to that is really is the teaching and learning budget, because outside of that, there's a whole host of costs that the city covers, um, health insureds for school employees, both active and retired, um, pension, uh, for non MTRS, uh, members, which is paraprofessionals, administrative assistance at the schools.
▶ 10:25 Uh, the facility costs, which are housed in the DPW operating budget, um, school nurses, the vocational schools, all of those things reside on the city side of the ledger. So when we're looking at the appropriation, this is what we have to spend on education outside of the Chapter 70 that's allocated, um, from the state. If we don't comply with net school spending, it could result in non-approval of our tax rate and enforcement by the Attorney general and loss of state aid. So it's really important that we meet that, um, annually. Our net school always is to fulfill contractual obligations. So our debt service, um, you know, we cannot default on our debt service. We have to pay that, that would impact our credit rating.
▶ 11:16 A whole host of things. We do not wanna do that. Um, health insurance where required under Mass general law, chapter 32 B to provide employees who work at least or, or more than 20 hours a week, health insurance. Um, and so as far as health insurance, um, and benefits, we have 787 employees as of today, um, during fiscal 25 that are benefit eligible. That also the health insurance budget covers 770 retirees. And currently there's appro, there's 688 employees that are either taking health insurance or opt out. So there's a hundred employees, whether they're under the age of 26 or there's another unique circumstance that do not take benefits from us at all. Um, if I could interrupt for one second, is there, um,
▶ 12:10 this packet looks amazing. Is there a page I should be on right now to follow? No, this is, I'm just kind of going through my bullet points. I'm sorry. Okay, wonderful. Thank you. Yep. Um, and so then our pension obligation every two years, the retirement system has a pension, uh, actuarial valuation to produce the cost of the system and determine what the city's appropriation is gonna be for two years. So the retirement board is going through that process right now. Uh, as far as retirement, anyone over 20 hours per week, and this is voted on locally and, um, by the retirement board and is different per municipality. Um, anyone overworking 20 hours or more is eligible for the pension system.
▶ 12:57 Uh, currently we have 410 retirees receiving benefits and 476 active members who are also participating in the system. Um, we have collective bargaining agreements. There are 12 agreements between the city and school that cover over 80% of the workforce. Um, and so the 12 agreements is evenly split. There's six at the school and six at the city. Um, and then we have our obligations to the vocational schools. Um, so if we look at the vocational school, we know that we also have the debt associated with that. But since 2019, our enrollment has increased from 42 students at the VOC in Wakefield to 79. Um, there's other restrictions that we have within our budget, um, and we looked at a whole host of these things this year.
▶ 13:47 Um, with the library, we have to, there's, um, I'm gonna say the wrong name, but there, it's called a mar and it's the minimum appropriation requirement that the city is obligated. Um, and there's four criteria, and you need to make sure that you're investing enough money in your library, otherwise it can lose certification. And this year is unique because we have almost $8 million worth of grant funds with the library construction project. And so to reduce that budget and risk, that certification would result in paying that money back with interest. Um, and then the last thing we always look for is fiscal stability within our budget. Again, it's not relying on one-time revenues. It's, um, Using 85%
▶ 14:36 of our local receipts and budgeting with an expectation that we will see three to 5% in free cash with DLS recommendations. And that's by having conservative estimates on local receipts as well as turnbacks in departmental budgets. Um, so as far as the packet that you have in front of you, I'm just gonna kind of walk, walk through the revenue sources of, um, page two. Yes. So page two, we'll start with our largest revenue source, and that is our personal property and real estate taxes. So what I demonstrated here is the levy limit. So every year we start with that levy limit, and it's the prior years, um, total real estate taxes. So that include includes the prior year levee limit two and a 5% increase.
▶ 15:32 And then new growth for fiscal 26. We projected $500,000 worth in new growth. And that's typically what we do. Uh, the past two years, as you can see, it's come in around $770,000. Um, so that's the first part, and that's inside the debt limit. Um, and then you can go outside of the debt limit. So currently Melrose has two debt exclusions on the books. One is the middle school debt exclusion, which was voted in May, 2003. And the final payment for that will be in fiscal 2029. And then we have the more recent public safety debt exclusion that was voted in November of 2023. So far for that project, we've only bonded for 5.5 months, 5.5 million for the design study. So page two encompasses just a high level overview
▶ 16:27 of the revenues associated with, uh, property taxes and personal property. I just put some limit, uh, terms in the packet for anyone reading it so they can understand, um, the different terms that we're talking about on page three. So then page four, we get into the state aid. Um, so the state aid comes in annually through the cherry sheet. And when we get the cherry sheet, there's always page one and page two. So page one is our, is the revenues that we're going to be receiving into the city. Um, and as you can see, the largest component of that is chapter 70. All of those monies are directed directly to the school. Um, and then the second largest bucket bucket is aga, which is unrestricted general government aid.
▶ 17:21 So this just shows the growth year over year. These revenues make up 19% of our operating budget on page five, these are the cherry sheet assessments. And so at time of print of the budget, this was the estimated house budget. Um, and so the assessments, so they come in and give the state comes in and gives us money, but then they also come and charge us back for programs at the state level. So what happens with state aid is you might see growth in one bucket, which is what we saw towards the end of April. So we saw growth in chapter 70, but what happens is they come and take it away in the assessments or reduce, um, unrestricted government aid Jump in there. Yeah. And one of the things that we've committed to,
▶ 18:10 Jen Grigoraitis: I've committed to doing this year is that because there is these fluctuations still happening, as the state moves through the budget process, we, I've committed that if there is an increase in chapter 70, even if it results in a net decrease or net neutral overall because this chapter 70 goes up, but so do the assessments that the, to the chapter 70 number will go to the school. So the city will take a bigger hit if there is an increase in chapter 70 and a decrease in aga and or increase in assessment so that the schools will benefit and the city will have a bigger reduction. Yes. So when we got that increase in state aid towards the end of April, I think it was $298,000 more to the schools,
▶ 18:49 but a reduction to the city budget of 145,000 in order to give that money to, um, the school department. Number six is local receipts. So these are all revenues, uh, whether voted, uh, by the city council or just under state law that we collect on a local level. Um, and they're inclusive, inclusive of excise tax relative to motor vehicle meals, room and cannabis. Um, it's penalties on taxes. Um, it this, there's interest income. So typically when we're budgeting, we look at what we have for actuals and we look at a couple years to see if there's an outlier. Every once in a while you might get an enormous building permit, and that's a one-time revenue. So we're not gonna incorporate that into the operating budget
▶ 19:40 or, um, investment income. We've seen substantial growth in there, but we don't necessarily wanna budget that just based on, um, you know, we'll have lower cash because ARPA has been spent down. And, um, and just with the volatility in rates. Um, so what I do typically is I take the local receipts and estimate 85% and allocate that amongst all the different local receipts where it makes sense. Um, you can see in FY 24, we had, sorry, could you clarify, when you say you estimate 85%, um, is that on? Can we wait for questions until, Until the end? Oh yeah, absolutely. Yeah. Thank you. Yeah, so it's FY 24 actuals. It's, it's an 85% estimate based on that and looking to see if there's any one time outliers.
▶ 20:33 Um, what happened in FY 24 solid waste was obviously part of the local receipts as well as the operating budget for solid solid waste last year. During the budget process, we move that to an enterprise fund. So you can see that the revenues are obviously reduced by 1.7, that's factored into the estimate. Um, and then I always back out investment income and kind of look at that as a one-off as to see what's going on there. The last part of revenues is just other funding sources, and those are unique. Um, those are really intergovernmental transfers at the city level. Um, and they're used for a specific purpose. So I outlined, uh, the receipts here and then I kinda, on page eight, described where those funds are going to.
▶ 21:30 And, um, so one of them, like the Mount Hood Debt Payment Mount Hood, um, when we did our fields over, there was special legislation in a special act to allow Mount Hood to pay for debt service to the city. So it's, it's budgeted within the city's budget, but they reimburse the city for that. Um, so those are other funding sources, and it's just a minimal amount of the budget. Page nine just shows the balance budget for the past two years. So when we, um, do the tax recap every year, uh, Sarah McClellan and I, the assessor, uh, we work closely on that. Once that certified, um, we're allowed to go out and produce the actual tax bills for the third and fourth quarter of the fiscal year. Um, so page eight is just showing the different revenue
▶ 22:28 sources and summarizing all of the other pages. And then, um, just showing how the budget is valid. Page nine. Page nine, page nine. Oh, sorry, sorry. Um, there's other things like on the cherry sheet, there's offsets, uh, that's for the public library. So the money that's reflected as revenue for the, on the cherry sheet then has to go directly to the library. So that's carved out. And then there's overlay. Um, so depending on what's going on, we look at the overlay and how much money needs to go into the overlay. And the overlay is where property tax work off is paid out of, and then any cases that are settled with the appellate tax board. And then I referenced page 10, um, earlier, but this is the net school spending requirement
▶ 23:23 and it shows Melrose and then the Northeast Metro, uh, and our total appropriation for both and our required contribution. So when we look at this, the expectation is just under $44.8 million that we will spend. Um, and what I did on page 11, 11 was, as of the data I know today, and we will look at this in September, once, um, all of the school employees are hired, um, if, or, um, you know, if a position becomes vacant and it's replaced with, someone will look and adjust these to actuals based on the benefits that they have and whatever. But based on a snapshot today, this is the projection of the city budget. And I know there's a lot of conversation about how much the city spends on the schools.
▶ 24:14 Is it 37% of the operating budget? Is it more, there's all numbers thrown out, but these are the numbers, um, within these cost centers. So the first one is city solicitor. We carry all of the property casualty insurance in the city solicitor's office. That covers the buildings, the vans that our drivers drive. Those are all paid from the city solicitor's budget as well as the school solicitor. Um, it, there's certain software things and, uh, centralized cost centers that are paid out of there. Some of the larger ones, health insurance, municipal debt, Medicare, those all reside, um, on the city side of the ledger, but we get credit for that towards net school spending. I think that's, yeah. Do you wanna,
▶ 25:10 Jen Grigoraitis: Thank You. So that's it for revenues and um, I just wanted to provide that high level overview just to kinda, And then I just wanted to talk a little bit about the process for developing the budget. Obviously we knew in June of last year after the failure of the override that we were gonna be working toward reductions. And as, um, Ms. Golden highlighted that the number of those reductions continues to evolve as we get these big ticket pieces of information. Like the GIC didn't set health rates until March. The house ways and means budget came out last week. And so all of these things kind of constantly shift our calculus. But what has been standard practice in City Hall since, um, my 10 year began was that any, um,
▶ 25:47 Jen Grigoraitis: shifts in personnel costs, whether that's replacing a lost position, making a request for a compensation adjustment requires, um, prior approval by the city solicitor, the director of hr, the CFO and myself. So the other thing that we also do is we've been scrutinizing grant applications to make sure that when folks are seeking funding, which I think they are really great at doing, but also recognizing that those grants come with some can be hidden costs and particularly our concerns about longevity when we use grant funds. And I think ARPA is a great example of this. We had three positions paid for with federal grant funds. When it became clear that we weren't gonna be able to sustain those positions in the operating budget,
▶ 26:23 Jen Grigoraitis: those positions were eliminated. So we've really been talking with department heads about when we're going for grant funds, what's gonna be done with those grant funds has to be totally supported by the funds that we can't be taking on hitting costs like pension obligations, health insurance, computers, um, because there really is no ability to carry that forward. And I think that had been a little bit of shift from previous practice. Um, we had been letting department heads know, really since the fall that there was gonna be a heightened level of scrutiny around any personnel requests or, um, any type of addition to the operating budget. We had departments that had money to make changes, but
▶ 26:58 Jen Grigoraitis: because we weren't sure that money would be there come July one, they were told to hold off on hiring. Obviously it's not great humanity to be bringing people into a job not knowing if they're gonna be able to stick around. And we also are very aware that when we lay people off, there are actual monetary costs that the city bears, the unemployment costs go with us. So we were trying to make sure that we could remain as net neutral as possible. Um, we, I think I talked about this Monday night, we created, um, a pilot program of offering, uh, health insurance optout for retirees. Most notably, we have about 70 retirees, um, between the ages of 45 and 65. So they're not yet eligible for Medicare.
▶ 27:38 Jen Grigoraitis: I always get Medicare and Medicaid confused Medicaid, um, to see if they would take a financial incentive to go off of city health insurance. There was an estimated savings of up to $800,000 a year if everyone had opted to do that. Unfortunately, no one opted to do that. So, um, that did not help us move the needle on the budget deficit. We then also offered two rounds of a separation incentive. We cannot offer, some people call it an early retirement incentive that actually requires an act of the legislature because that's usually where you're giving people additional years of service toward their, um, retirement pension. We were simply offering people a small financial incentive to, um, you know, um,
▶ 28:16 Jen Grigoraitis: we'll willingly separate from service. We ended up having four employees who took that separation incentive. We did drop it down to, um, we started at 15 years of service to the city and then went down to 10 years. We had a school custodian, which needed to be back filled with another DPW employee 'cause we have to have custodians, a librarian, a firefighter, and a police officer. Um, the other focus of reducing costs was not filling vacancies. And so, as you know, some of you have been made aware, we had, um, our city engineer had resigned for another position, our facilities manager. So those were positions where it's not easy not to fill them because we are without those staff to do that work.
▶ 28:56 Jen Grigoraitis: But in terms of not having to, um, you know, have a involuntary separation, we were able to save money there. Um, we continue to rely on free cash for capital improvements. As you were all aware from your recent, um, meetings, um, we are now relying on free cash to help pay for some things that had been in the operating budget. Um, some are help for the DPW program, physicals and hiring if we need to fill vacancies in DPW Police and Fire, um, some of our community events so that we can try to at least have somewhat of a bridge between next year's reduced budget and then possibly an even greater reduced budget in FY 27. Um, as Ms. Golden mentioned, both she and Solicitor Phillips actually did a phone call
▶ 29:38 Jen Grigoraitis: with members of the Mass Board of Library commissioners to understand our obligations and risks as it relates to the library, it's certainly not, it's a beautiful new facility and we'd like to see it open, but the reality is it's a, you know, it's a million dollar part of our budget, but there are significant risks, um, financial risks associated with reducing that beyond the few hours that we've cut it back for next year. Um, we had a conversation with the Archdiocese of Boston to let them to talk about there's a lease for about $35,000 a year for parking spaces with St. Mary's. Um, that lease is good for one more year. There is not an opt-out clause in that lease. So, um, the city is obligated to move forward with
▶ 30:14 Jen Grigoraitis: that lease next year. And then we can reassess, you know, again, the financial situation in FY 27. Um, we are gonna be proposing many fee increases, as I talked about on Monday night, and you'll hear more from various departments. And then we have been working with Chief White and the firefighters union and the solicitor's office, um, and the auditor's office on the privatization of the ambulance service, which will hopefully have the effective increasing morale because we're not forcing people to hold over. But also you all, um, appropriated nearly a million dollars in overtime costs, um, which are largely driven, driven by staffing that ambulance. So we're also hoping that we will see a reduction in free
▶ 30:52 Jen Grigoraitis: cash needs to close that department budget. Um, and it did result in the reduction of eight positions in fire. So they will have eight fewer FTEs, though most, there's a combination of retirements and vacancies that there was no one who had to be, um, involuntarily laid off. As we think about FY 27, because we already are, um, we continue to be worried about the costs that are beyond our control, that are increasing well beyond 2.5% health insurance pension obligations, special education and transportation costs for students and our regional school assessment are the biggest ones. Um, we will be settling a significant amount of collective bargaining agreements in FY 27. Um, all but I think two of our union
▶ 31:35 Jen Grigoraitis: contracts will be expiring at the end of FY 26, so we will need to begin negotiations next year. And those contracts are arguably one of the biggest drivers of our budget. I know for folks in the private sector, unions can seem a little like something they don't deal with, but it is the vast majority of our workforce. Um, there's usually a combination of mandatory cost of living increases as well as some term, um, some type of longevity increase. And again, those costs are typically in excess of two point a half percent. Um, we are gonna need to be looking at Memorial Hall. That building is, you know, open to the public it has and continues to operate at a loss. Um, our calculations are that keeping Memorial Hall opened
▶ 32:18 Jen Grigoraitis: for rentals costs us $933 a day and closing it costs us $720 a day because we continue to need to pay the, um, debt service on the work that was done to the envelope. We would have to make sure that it pipes don't freeze, um, it needs to be insured if we're not selling it. So, um, and obviously it is used by a variety of community groups and by the city and schools as well. So I think there will be a question about if what kind of off ramp there needs to be for that building if we're not able to sustain the funding for that. Um, and then, you know, as we look toward FY 27 and likely needing to engage, you know, not having to dig deeper into staff reductions, laying off union employees is, um, complicated.
▶ 33:02 Jen Grigoraitis: It requires us to impact bargain with those unions. Um, and it also, there's set timetables for when that has to happen. So those are decisions we'll have to start making probably at the, you know, early part of 2026 so that we can ensure we have sufficient time to engage in those conversations. We will also be, um, renegotiating our peck agreement. I won't pretend to know what that stands for. Public Employee Commission. That is our, um, split percentage split in benefits. You know, if you pay 80, your employer pays 80%, you pay 20%. 50 50. Melrose has a very generous, um, split. We cover over 80% of benefits for current employees and retirees. That is something that has to be approved by every single union.
▶ 33:44 Jen Grigoraitis: And then a p uh, um, act of special legislation has to go before the legislature. So that will be a process that begins and will also be a significant driver of the FY 27 budget. We will have the opportunity to assess the marketplace for employee health insurance. We're currently in a contract with the Group Insurance Commission, which is the state agency that provides public employee health insurance, and we'll have that will be up for renewal and FY 27. So we can see if there are better rates in the market though, from what we're hearing anecdotally from other communities so far, the GIC continues to be a better deal. Obviously, we're aware of the potential federal policy changes that could impact funding.
▶ 34:20 Jen Grigoraitis: And then last, but certainly not least, you know, as part of reducing last year's budget, we moved our rec department off budget to solely rely on their user fees. And they're based on projected revenues that will likely not be sustainable in FY 27. So we'll also have to make a determination about the balance of programming if they're not able to cover all their costs. That's my ray of sunshine for you tonight, but we wanted to provide you with that context and also recognize that you have department heads coming before you with budgets that they understand and know are happening, but they're not necessarily proud of or happy about, and that there may be questions that are really more appropriate for myself or Ms. Golden.
▶ 35:00 Jen Grigoraitis: Um, you know, we did meet with every department. They put forward a level services budget. We talked through potential reductions, and then when we were making reductions, we met with every department. Again, some departments like DPW who saw a significant amount of reductions. We met with over six times to try to work through what that was gonna look like. But obviously these reductions involve both their ability to deliver service or recognition that the people that are still here are gonna be working harder with less, and that some of them are losing long time colleagues and staff. So, um, that was our hope to just sort of table set for you all tonight. Thank you, chair. Thank you both. Anyone have any questions?
▶ 35:38 Maya Jamaleddine: I have Council Jamal Ledine. Council ver Go ahead. Council. Jamal Ledine. Um, thank you Mayor. Thank you, um, both for, um, sharing such a, you know, very helpful information. Um, we hear you about, no one is happy with the budget, uh, that is before us. Um, and I do feel that, um, I share your feeling about, um, not being happy to have to review a budget, um, uh, for our community. And that does not provide, um, uh, the basic needs of, um, our constituents. Um, unfortunately we are faced in such, um, uh, bad situation and we will have to make, uh, difficult decisions as we discussed before. Um, I do have a couple of questions more than a couple actually. Um, you mentioned about losing, uh, personnels in, uh,
▶ 36:38 Maya Jamaleddine: across the city departments and, um, um, I do understand as we are, you know, having any kind of projects, um, we will need as cost of losing those personnels like engineer or any other, uh, stuff, we will need to include the cost of the contractors. Um, so this is something for us to keep in mind mm-hmm. As we are reviewing any project before us, this will be higher than the usual projects because it will be including, uh, the cost of, uh, other contractors. Correct? Yes. We will likely be seeking when we are able to bring projects to you, some additional consultant costs to manage some of the work that we've previously done in health in house through our engineering department that we won't have the staff to do.
▶ 37:26 Maya Jamaleddine: Awesome. And, um, do we, um, you mentioned about St. St. Mary's, uh, parking. Uh, do we know, uh, if, um, constituents and residents were aware of that parking, um, agreements? Like have we been using it? Have constituents been using it in Melrose? I know it's part of the, it's been in place for quite some time. It's part of the, the city's downtown parking program and I believe this council, I was on it, we reupped it, it was either 2020, it was like 23, 20 23. Um, so it is, it's parking that's available for use by, um, merchants and folks going to, to the business district, um, during the week and the weekend. Right. But, but we don't, we don't have any communication with St. Mary. And I'm just making assumption here,
▶ 38:18 Jen Grigoraitis: if it actually has been like it, has it been useful for others? I don't know that they would have that. I mean, we could certainly ask, um, you know, anecdotally about the usage and see if there's, how often it's In use. Do we have any ways if we decide not to continue prior to 2026? Or is that That's it. We have to wait till 2026. There's no, um, there is no opt out clause in the lease, so if there was no appropriation, we would obviously have to figure that out. But there is no ability to, um, exit the lease early. That was the conversation that we had with the lease holder. Awesome. And, um, so this will be deducted from next Ffy 26, Correct? It's in, I believe it's in the parking budget.
▶ 39:01 Jen Grigoraitis: Yeah, it's in Department 2 9 6, the lease. Awesome. And you mentioned about chapter 70 that, uh, we had increase when there is an increase it would go directly to school. Can you explain to us about the impact that, um, uh, it's expected like, you know, projected to have on the school? If we have any increase? Um, I think that would be a question for the superintendent and the school committee, and we won't definitively know if what that final dollar amount is until the governor signs the budget. So while they're certainly both Mr. Kelly and Superintendent de lady are aware and we're keeping them up to date as the budget moves through the house and the Senate, um, we wouldn't wanna make any formal public plans for
▶ 39:45 Maya Jamaleddine: that money until we actually know that there's a signed budget, which typically is not till after July one, unfortunately. Yeah. But as of now, we can, there is no way that we would know, and I'm just saying yeah, just so that for public they would know that we cannot base our budget based on something that is unpredictable. Correct. Yes. Um, awesome. My, uh, next question I do see in page six, uh, in fiscal year 2025, tax recap, uh, estimated and fiscal year 2026 ex uh, also estimated, um, amounts, um, in payment in your, uh, of taxes and charges for services solved waste. Um, there is, uh, it was, there is no estimated, um, uh, number is that, can you explain to Me? Yes. So last year during the budget process in fiscal 2025,
▶ 40:38 we set up an enterprise fund for solid waste. So those funds are segregated from the general fund, and we moved that budget, um, the, I think it's department 4, 3 3, it was significantly reduced to go into the enterprise fund. So that was part of the budget process last year. And, um, the enterprise fund was approved by council. Awesome. And, um, in, and also I do remember, um, the cannabis, uh, impact free that because of the state, um, rules in terms of the cannabis. Correct. There used to be, um, and I know you're, you have an info order on cannabis, I think next week, so I'll preview some of the information there. Yes. There had been, when, um, cannabis was first enacted, municipalities negotiated
▶ 41:28 Jen Grigoraitis: what was called a community host agreement, which usually came with some sort of local, um, tax, I'm not quite sure what the right word is, payment of usually one to 3%. Um, and then the legislature had, um, determined that those were no longer automatically allowed, and now you have to negotiate with the, um, cannabis Control Commission and they are requiring a lot of, um, you have to be able to prove that the, the charges you're, um, putting on the cannabis company are only, they've only been born because it's cannabis. So you can't say we had to have a police detail because of traffic. You have traffic because of other things. Mm-hmm. So our city solicitor did, um, we were able to not be one
▶ 42:09 of the communities that is currently in litigation around the pay, um, return payment of those, um, agreements, which is happening in other parts, but it is no longer a source of revenue for us. Awesome. My last question is, uh, about the indirect costs ambulance. Um, is that, uh, because on page seven Yes. So with Oh, sorry, Go ahead. Go ahead. Yeah, so with, um, the ambulance going away and being privatized, all of those receipts, um, there's an order before you to rescind the ambulance enterprise fund. And so by rescinding that all of the cost, um, and revenues that come in after July one will go to the general fund as there's runoff with, um, the service. The Enterprise fund used to cover eight employees, so
▶ 42:58 Maya Jamaleddine: that indirect cost was all the cost associated to those eight employees. And because it will no longer exist, um, we will not see revenues for that, but we will also not see the expenses associated with it. Right. Um, uh, if, if I am, um, uh, recalling exactly what, you know, uh, we discussed, um, is it going to be, um, in contract with other, um, ambulance, uh, like private ambulance, Right? Correct. The city's gonna have a contract with, um, Armstrong Ambulance And that would come at a cost as well, or No, no, no. There's no cost. So there is no cost for it. No. Okay. Okay. Thank you. You're welcome. All set? Yes. Thank Council Vanderberg. Thank you Chair Repe. Um, first this is, uh, a really solid,
▶ 43:52 Kimberly Vandiver: uh, really clear, um, detailed presentation. I appreciate it so much. Um, I, I, I hope that we're able to as counselors and, and that the administration is able to find a way to get this in front of the public as well. I wish that all these seats were filled because this is the information that I think people are asking for all the time. Um, I have a few specific questions about, um, the information that came through. Um, one pretty early in your comments, Ms. Golden. Um, you mentioned something that was able to be changed until November, um, based on these kind of moving pieces in the budget, but I I, I didn't catch exactly what is, you know, we go through and we approve this budget. What, what is it that is able to be changed until November?
▶ 44:40 Kimberly Vandiver: You're able to change the operating budget until the tax rate is set, and that happens in November. So change the operating budget, meaning we could look at things and say something is significantly different, some assumption didn't play out and, and we as a council or want to take something back up. And what I don't think we do typically do that. Could you explain what that would? Yes. Uh, I think it's only happened once since I've been here and it was when I first started in 2016, um, I think it was relative to Pine Banks. And so at time of print, we hadn't received Pine Bank's final budget, um, this year as well. And so something changed and so we went back for a supplemental appropriation
▶ 45:21 Kimberly Vandiver: to change that budget line, so it would be initiated by the administration. Okay. Um, it's only happened once in the 10 years that I've been here. It's not something that occurs, um, very frequently. Great. I just wanted to understand what the parameters of, 'cause that was surprising. Um, and you mentioned about the 85% in local receipts. Um, I thought I remembered that we've changed that to now be 90% or would budgeting, um, a little more aggressively. Is that the case or not the case? It is The case. So historically, uh, we had gotten down to as low as 70% of local receipts. Okay. Um, and so last year when we gave, um, when we increased the school's appropriation, we went up to 85% of local receipts
▶ 46:04 Kimberly Vandiver: and we're remaining there this year as well. Okay. Got it. That was the change up to 85. Okay. Um, and you mentioned that grant applications, um, applied for and received are online. Is there anything else, um, that's not in this packet that you were referencing? Is that the one thing I should go look for separately is the grant applications? Yes. That's on, in the City Finances section of the website. We're just trying to be mindful that at this as we move through the budget process, this order starts to have about 75 attachments to it. So we felt since it wasn't directly related to the budget, it's on the City Finances website. Okay. Great. Um, and, uh, I just wanted to, um, say through the chair,
▶ 46:43 Kimberly Vandiver: I think there the previous question about the charges for solid waste, I just wanted to to say, so the, the local receipts are not coming in because of that change, the enterprise fund, and similarly, the expenses will not be in the budget because of the enterprise fund. So both those halves are taken out, right? Yes. Both of those happened in fiscal 25. Um, and, uh, could you, uh, briefly describe the pilot, the payment in lieu of taxes and what that line was? The Pilot comes in from the Melrose Housing Authority. Um, so it, it's incidental. Um, they are the only ones that we currently, um, receive a pilot payment from. Okay, Great. And, uh, in my quick Googling, so that's basically an offset that comes in to us
▶ 47:28 because we lost some property, some revenue that would've been because of tax exempt property. Mm-hmm. Um, okay. And, uh, you mentioned about, um, on page nine that, um, the overlay. Could you briefly describe that please? Yes, so the overlay is an allowance, um, for, so we assess the property tax, but then there's people who come in and seek abatements. Um, and so those are paid out of that account, so we have to hold back a certain amount so that those abatements and exemptions can be paid out of the overlay. It also accounts for cases that are at the, uh, appellate tax board as well. Okay. So we need to have a reserve for those things when they happen. Okay. And is that, um, is that number, uh,
▶ 48:23 Kimberly Vandiver: do you estimate how much will be used or is it, is it, um, you know, defined it's always such and such percent, or it It should be about one to 3% of the tax levy. Okay. So we kind of look at the balance in the fund and I work with, um, the assessor on that. Okay, Great. Um, and in that same section about the public library, you mentioned there's a, there's a certain amount from the cherry sheet that has to be held back because it has to be directed towards the library. Yes. So it goes into a separate fund, uh, for state aid for the library. Okay. Um, thank you. Um, those are all of my questions now. Thank you very much. Thank you Council Williams. Thank you. Um, thank you guys for putting together the, thank you
▶ 49:12 Ryan Williams: for putting together the revenue, the revenue piece as something we talked about last year. And, um, I know you guys, I knew you'd come through on it, I knew you would come through. It's, it's, it's actually extremely helpful. It's probably the most helpful piece of the budget. Um, and to see it laid out like this is fantastic because it really helps us as a council and the public understand all of these pieces of revenue and have conversations about like, well, you know, are they covering the costs and all these things that we're, that we're talking about right now. Um, so, um, I wanted to ask a couple specific questions, and I wanted to make kind of an overall, just kind of pose a thought, right?
▶ 49:47 Ryan Williams: Like in the work that I do fundraising work, we often refer to our money as restricted and unrestricted. And it's really helpful to understand how a big sum of money can be actually quite limited in its ability to cover costs because, you know, you may have a huge budget, but if it's highly restricted, it's very inflexible. Um, and it can be highly committed into certain future costs. And I think we have a number of those kinds of, um, fee, uh, uh, types of, of money in here. And you got, you've already done a really fantastic job. The, the revenue budget is sort of our unrestricted piece, you know, and so I don't, I don't know how you do that, but I think my guess is it would be helpful for the public
▶ 50:29 Ryan Williams: to see some indication of, you know, this is, we can do anything with this. This, on the other hand is something that we only do this with, uh, and you've already done that to a great degree in here. And so I think like even just highlighting things to say, you know, this is restricted or even a, a pie chart at the end or something that says like what's restricted and what's unrestricted to the extent that that's feasible and possible would be really helpful because then, you know, you can point to folks and say, this is the, this is the money we have that's flexible. This is the, what we're working with to cover all these overages and costs. And then this money, even though it's a big number,
▶ 51:03 Ryan Williams: it goes right out the door in something else. And that's when I talk about the city's budget and the override and all these things. I get into that kind of conversation. Um, okay. I wanted to ask a couple of specific questions. I know Massachusetts towns municipalities cannot legally require pilots payments in lieu of taxes from non-profit partners. I know there's been a couple attempts in the legislature to make this happen, which I would love to see pass. Have we ever asked Mel Rose Wakefield about a voluntary pilot? So there was one. Okay. Um, that was $50,000 a year. Mm-hmm. Um, and that, that the agreement expired in 2020, which was probably a, a tough time to be a hospital. Um, and so obviously that predates Yeah, my tenure and Ms.
▶ 51:46 Jen Grigoraitis: Golden's tenure and this role. And so it was not, um, reentered into, it's certainly something we can approach. I don't, it's certainly not every dollar matters, but it was about 50,000 a year, and I do know you have no ability to require them or to be able to collect the, um, monies associated with it. So it's, it's a hard, it's hard to plan based on that. If I could just add to that, at one time, they, they did, I believe pay for a number of school nurses, correct? Yes, yes. Top To that for the nurses, and Then it, then I think it decreased down to 50,000 and now it's, so we used to be quite a, quite a bit at one time. Yeah. Okay. Well, And there was recently an article about Boston, which is not a comparable community to us,
▶ 52:23 Ryan Williams: but just the millions of dollars in pilot money that is not actually going into the city that it's been agreed to, but Yeah, yeah, yeah. They're not actually seeing that. Understood. Yep. No, it's a great question. Understood. But yeah, I, I have the same question as Councillor Van, which is what's in the pilot number. She asked and answered that, so I kind of went, moved on to something else. Um, with the, with the parking tickets, receipts I saw that we're projecting an extra $25,000 in parking ticket receipt for 2026. Is that sort of like wishful thinking or is that It went up from 50,000 in, um, in Oh yes. So that, um, yeah, Page Seven, that's based on revenues. Um, that's for the parking lots, the MBTA lots, um,
▶ 53:04 Jen Grigoraitis: or the parking at the train stations. Yes. That money goes into that fund. And I think we've started to see those revenues kind of creep back up. Um, right. People are parking. Yeah. They diminished during COVID makes and, um, yeah. Are those just parking tickets? What about moving violations, speeding tickets and such? Does that hit our budget as revenue or does it live in the police department's budget, or where does it go? I think it lives in the state and then it's in the state trans, it's got, comes back through some sort of formula grant. Um, and I think parking receipts is the paying to park at the Train station. Train Station, not a parking ticket. And parking permits, like, um, if you have to pay
▶ 53:43 Ryan Williams: for a parking permit, parking tickets comes in as a local receipt. Got it. Um, okay. Similar question. What's in the Reynolds revenue line, which is on page, I should really be like front loading these questions with a page number. Um, I'm sorry, I don't have, Oh, it's on six. Thank you very much. About halfway down, it's like 381,000, 3 25 and three 50 in 2026. What is, What is that? Yeah, so that is Memorial Hall and then our lease agreement on Route 99 with, um, Transfer station, Uh, wa Waste Management. Yeah. Yeah. Waste management. Okay. Cool. Thank you. Um, speaking of Memorial Hall, how would one dispose of Memorial Hall if we had to do this because we can't afford it because we can't get enough money into the city budget?
▶ 54:33 Jen Grigoraitis: You mean like, no longer have it be a city owned property? Yeah, I mean, what if you, if you couldn't afford to run it and you decided it was a better, um, use of revenue, would, would we sell it? We, I'd have to. I mean, it would definitely involve you all that much. I know. Sure. Yeah. I, we honestly, I don't know off the top of my head and we can ask the city solicitor for information. You know, there, there is a board of trustees that has a fair amount of oversight over that building in terms, I mean it, um, so I don't know exactly how that would work, but it's something we can certainly get more information about. It's a, like long term, uh, thinking here, but I just, it piqued my interest when you were talking
▶ 55:08 Ryan Williams: about the building being sort of a high cost to keep in a high cost to close and, you know, where does it leave us? Um, and then my, my last question is I wanted to confirm what you said about not no involuntary layoffs in the fire department, Correct? Correct. Okay, good. Because I, you know, the, the stuff lying around and, um, the, the, the reduction is like the cumulative, the FTE over time as well as unfilled positions. Mm-hmm. Got it. Just confirming. Thank you very much. That's it. Councilor Romanul. Uh, thank you Mr. Chair. Um, chief Mayor, thank you for the presentation. Um, a number of my colleagues answered my first subset of questions. The, the one that I have remaining though is throughout this
▶ 55:54 Devin Romanul: process, the state has been considering a supplemental budget as it pertains particularly to, um, circuit breaker funding. And I wanted to ask if that has shown up in this document, and I know that we'd had a conversation where you said that it could function as a bit of a, an advance on, you know, uh, money that we see next year. And I wanted to ask about the interplay of the, um, of that supplemental funding and, and how that factors in here. So there is, um, supplemental budget currently moving through the legislature. Um, and there we thank you. Thanks to both rep Li Garabedian and Senator Lewis. We've also had an opportunity to put some earmarks in there that are specifically related to education and transportation.
▶ 56:34 Devin Romanul: That is not recurring money. Um, but it would certainly help. Um, but my latest understanding of that s as people call it, is that it is likely not, is likely to be on the same timeline as the budget, let me say phrase it that way. Gotcha. Um, so I don't know that we will definitively know about those numbers before we're legally obligated to wrap up our process on June 30th. Gotcha. Yeah. And will that, uh, thank you so much. Um, I know it's a, a fluid situation, but, um, and would that factor into, at, at what point will we know, and would that help to supplement some of the, um, you know, buttress some of the positions we're looking to keep in the school department? Or is that just function as,
▶ 57:13 Devin Romanul: like you said, transportation funding? So I would defer that to Mr. Kelly, um, because I am not enough of an expert on circuit breaker to know how that works. I do know that there have been subs in the past where there is an increase in circuit breaker in a fiscal year that then can result in a corresponding decrease in the subsequent fiscal year. I, I'm not saying that that's the case with this one, but I just don't know enough about what's in the language of that. But we can definitely find out. Thank You very much. I appreciate it. No further questions. Thank you Councilor Stewart. Thank you, Mr. Chair and thank you both for being here this evening. I appreciate it. Um, so I want to just go back
▶ 57:47 Robb Stewart: to the, the, the local, local receipts and how you go to, how do you get to 85% because, because, and the reason why I ask this Yeah. Is as I understand it, it directly impacts free cash for the following year. Right. It's basically the higher you go on that percentage, the more risk you introduce for lowering your free cash. Right. The subsequent year. And so, uh, and, and I get it, we're basically tapping into free cash to be able to better fund what we need to do from an operating standpoint. And I think that's the right thing to do. Um, but I'm just curious how you come to that number and how you evaluate risk versus the, the trade off that we're, we're getting here. Yes. So, um, we have been as high as 85% before.
▶ 58:38 We've never gone higher than that. Um, and you know, last year when I worked with the former CFO, um, that was the number that we were comfortable with after analyzing the revenues and stuff. Um, what does happen? So these are our estimated revenues at this point in time. So if anything changes, if new growth came in higher than local receipts, we'd be able to reduce our reliance on that, um, prior to setting the tax rate. Um, but DLS recommends no more than 90%, so 85% is still under that DLS recommendation, um, and gives us a little bit of a buffer. Great. Um, do you know what other cities and towns are doing around what their number? Well, For local receipts, I know a lot of them don't have to tax to the levee limit.
▶ 59:26 Jen Grigoraitis: Um, yeah, I don't know. We can definitely find out. I do think, um, and I know we have a lot of, you know, residents engaged, which is great in this conversation. Looking, comparing one municipal budget to another is less clean than I think people can think it is. You know, for example, we house school DPW costs in the DPW budget, I believe. Um, I think maybe it's Chelsea that's housed in the school side of the budget. So it can be really challenging to compare, but we can definitely see, and I think there might even be a table on DLS you can pull up to see how local recce No. Yep. Yes. Doesn't it make the realize nodding her head? Yeah. Yeah. Um, yeah, I mean, DLS is a great resource for comparisons of things like that.
▶ 1:00:04 Robb Stewart: Okay. Okay, great. Thanks. Um, so just in St. Mary's parking, um, I park there when I go pick up the pizza or, or go to Mexico, Linda. So it, it is, it is useful. Um, but, uh, i, I appreciate you looking at options for that. Um, so the only other question I have is, um, I, I knew you, you mentioned that, uh, there's some questions that may be more appropriately answered by you when the departments are in front of us. And while I don't expect that you're gonna be in front of us every single hearing, um, thanks. Um, so how would you like that, um, to be manifested in me? Because if we're here, we're questioning and there's something that is either they can't answer, um, what would you recommend?
▶ 1:00:55 Jen Grigoraitis: So either myself, Ms. Golden or Chief of Staff, Lauren, M**k, or some combination of us will be here at every one of the hearings. Um, so if there is something, and you know, also for department heads, just recognizing that there's some decisions that have been made that really were not, um, solely theirs. Um, and also we are happy to come back and do something like this again after you've heard from departments and are able to vote the final budget. Um, again, I'm just taking what I, you know, my own experience sitting where you're all sitting and knowing that there can be things as you're in this iterative, iterative process that can come up that feels like it would be helpful to have that, um, that opportunity.
▶ 1:01:31 Robb Stewart: So we're happy to do both, you know, we'll have both of those things available to you all. Okay. So we'll pull up a chair, right? Yep. Okay, great. Um, and Ms. Goland, do you have like office hours or how you, because I don't wanna go through, because I have a lot of questions and I also need to digest this a little bit more. Mm-hmm. Yeah. Um, just, uh, reach out and, and, okay. Yes, I Will. I'm happy to. Great. Thank you. Thank you, Mr. Chair. Thank you. Um, I think councilor Kevin Shady has a, uh, has a question. I do. Thank you so much. First, I just wanna, uh, again, uh, reiterate how grateful I am for you both taking the time and sharing this in this way. So proactively, I feel like you have,
▶ 1:02:13 Manjula Karamcheti: you have been like very transparent in your thinking and where the money is and where the money is not. Um, this might be one of those things where Councilor Carrum Chaney just needs to meet with you separately. Uh, 'cause you may have explained this a couple times and it could be 'cause I'm just not hearing as well because, um, uh, participating virtually. But my questions just are sort of bigger picture around local receipts. I think I'm always a little surprised when I see the numbers and even though I know the 95% residential in terms of like where our base is coming from, I'm just always a little surprised, uh, when I see it in paper like this. But I think, I'm just wondering in terms of the actual,
▶ 1:03:05 Manjula Karamcheti: for fiscal year 2024, the fiscal year 2025 tax recap, which is estimated, and then the fiscal year 2026 estimated. There are some like items and I will use licenses and permits as my example where there's a significant decrease in the estimated. And I guess I'm just wondering how you forecast that. Um, are we like giving out fewer licenses and permits in 2025 and 2026? Just try, just trying to understand that a little better. And it might go back to the percentages you've been talking about. So if just I'm not understanding, um, Yes, Feel free to let me know that too. Yes. So there's a couple things. We do estimate a percentage of local receipts, but with licenses and permits, one of the largest line items within
▶ 1:04:02 that is building permits and just with tariffs. And, um, one time significant building permits, it's, they always come in higher than actual. Um, because, you know, you can get a building permit as big as $300,000 and that's one time in nature. Um, so we kind of monitor, um, what's going on the trends for multiple years. 2024 is shown, but usually I look at, um, at least three years back to kind of see what's going on in that line item. Okay. So you sort of have a formula and data that you review to, to make that educated estimate, and then depending on the actuality, that those numbers can change. Yes. Okay. Thank you. That's really the only question I had at this time. Okay, Thank you. Uh, any other questions? Uh, I'm sorry.
▶ 1:05:00 Leila Migliorelli: Thank you President Re Yes, thank you. Um, just to echo what everyone else has said, this is so super helpful. Um, being on the council for the last, this is what my sixth budget cycle and never seeing this laid out like this, like really, really, um, outstanding work. Um, on page nine, I feel like that's maybe the most helpful thing I've seen. Not only just seeing the revenue budget, but seeing expense budgets by category. And I think, um, some of this gets at what Councilor Williams was saying, and I, you know, coming also from nonprofit fundraising, I, I understand what he's talking about, but just looking at the differences maybe between, in each of the expense budget categories and seeing the increases.
▶ 1:05:46 Leila Migliorelli: Um, and I, I think I know the answer to this, but the increases in some of these lines are increases that are out of our control, right? Because we're looking at, you know, public safety, education, debt service pension, employee benefits, like these are all things that are not stuff that we are saying, oh, let's spend more money on, right? Like, and this, so when people in the public are saying, you know, live within your means or this, the other thing, like these, these categories, these increases are something that we are, you know, negotiating. Either it's unions, um, either it's just the cost of benefits going up, you know, debt service. These are things that are out of our control. Mm-hmm.
▶ 1:06:24 Leila Migliorelli: And what you tried to, um, the levers you could pull, am I seeing that correctly in the decreases in, you know, general government, public works, human services, those are areas that you did, you looked at and were able to, you know, make cuts. And I just, I feel like this document is just incredibly helpful in seeing that there, I mean, it's, it's just completely black and white. These are the cost increases we don't have control over. And these are what you, you all try to look through through your process, your budget process. Um, I guess my only like little question which I, maybe I missed to the, in the offsets part, the public library overlay, I thank you for the explanation of the overlay again.
▶ 1:07:11 Leila Migliorelli: So the, the difference between the million to the 272, can you just say that again, what that was for? Yes, so we budgeted more in the overlay last year. Got it. Okay. It significantly more. Okay. And this year we looked at the balance in what we needed. Alright, Thank you. That's helpful. And then I think I had just like one other minor question. Sorry. Um, what was, what counselor car treaty was just talking about with the local receipts, which is on page six? Oh, the, um, investment income. Did I miss the difference between that and FY 24 to FY 25 and 26 that, Yes. So I, I looked at historic, um, ES revenues within that. Okay. And they varied beyond, beyond that. Yeah. Yes. And just based on interest rates, cash flow, what we'll have
▶ 1:08:06 Kimberly Vandiver: for cash on hand. So we did have $8.3 million worth of ARPA over the past couple years. And that spent down, um, just other money that comes through the city and that's able to earn interest and our treasurer's excellent at, um, you know, making sure we're getting the most possible within the constraints of Mass general law. Yes. Great. Thank you. That's it. Thank you counsel. Vanover, Thank you time. Um, it just, um, it occurred to me as, as we were talking about, um, what would be helpful for the public. The one other question I hear a lot is, um, you know, why are we budgeting year to year? Why aren't we looking and having a five year plan or a multi-year plan? Um, and I, I wonder, and, and,
▶ 1:08:52 Kimberly Vandiver: and I know that you are, I know that you said that as soon as the override field last year, you were already working on this and you're already anticipating not just this budget, but the next budget. Um, I wonder if we could do something like this at the end of this budget cycle, but before the, um, like override vote, um, where you add one or more columns to a lot of this and, and look at FY 27 or even more, um, to tell that story and the fact to talk about how we are anticipating some of those things moving the big, big areas. Yes. Thank you. Yes. We are working on that. Wonderful. Thank you. Thank you. Uh, I just had one quick, quick thing that you had pointed on regard, uh, under other funding sources.
▶ 1:09:37 Mark Garipay: You mentioned moan hood debt payment. And I think that's something that, um, really is important that people need to realize. Uh, residents really need to realize what a, what a gem moan hood is. If we didn't have that golf course, we'd be trying to figure out how we're gonna cut another 330, 370,000 in order to, uh, pay the debt on the field. So, and I think if you look back over the last 20 years, I don't think we've, I don't think the city has absorbed other than some free cash, small stuff, any, um, any, any money in the, in the budget for any, any major renovations to any fields. So, and I know that was part of the middle school, middle school project right after it when we did that. But, um, that's it. That's all I have. Anyone else?
▶ 1:10:26 Mark Garipay: Thank you very much. Thank you. Thank you. Moving on to the budget, uh, department. I'm gonna, um, we've had, uh, Mr. Nevin patiently waiting as a volunteer. I'm gonna have the liquor commission come up first. I don't think we need to take anything out of order 'cause it's all under the same, same grouping. So Mr. Nevin is the chairman of the Liquor Commission, the floor's yours, Mr. Nevin. Thank you as always. Thank you. Good to see you all. Thank you for having me To see you. Um, let's see. Uh, our budget is, well, nothing's minimal this year, but our budget is relatively minimal. It's $2,000, 50% goes, uh, is held for compliance checks and 50% is for operational, um, uh, nece needs. Uh, so whether that's training, whether it's, uh, uh,
▶ 1:11:24 Attending some classes with the state, A-A-B-C-C or, uh, that or whatever. So we haven't used much of it, but, uh, it's beneficial if it's there. Um, we have, uh, you know, just in the past year we have monthly meetings. Meetings, uh, are primarily dealing with, uh, one day permits. Uh, mostly what we deal with. Uh, we did issue two new liquor licenses last year, which are still being processed by the state with the, uh, recipients. One is, uh, uh, Bangkok, uh, Bari, uh, opening on Main Street eventually. And, uh, uh, big Finn Pope, which got a beer of mine license. Uh, we awarded a beer and mine license, but they're still, again, working with the state. Uh, and then the notable opening of, uh,
▶ 1:12:17 Kimberly Vandiver: another establishment last year was Hannah's Brewing Company, which opened on St. Patrick's Day last year. Um, and that's All I have. Thank you. Any, uh, any questions for Mr. Nevin? Mr. Mr. Van Council of Vanover? Thank you. Um, thank you for being here. I was just curious, um, when it comes to the, the liquor licenses, what the parameters are around, are there limitations on those or, you know, within the city? I, I've, I've heard questions once or twice about, about the quantity of them. And I, while, while you're here, I was curious about that. I, I'll have to be honest, I don't know the exact, uh, what we have in our, whether it's the charter or what, what we're allowed to have, but it, it's more than we can absorb right now.
▶ 1:13:04 Ryan Williams: I mean, we have plenty of those kinds of licenses. We have one available, uh, retail license, which is being considered on the 21st. Okay. Wonderful. Thank you. Thanks. Council Williams. I want to say thank you. Thank you for, for coming in and talking to us about the work of the Liquor Commission because the counselors, we don't always make all of the meetings and commissions, but we do hear sometimes questions and updates, and so it's good to put a face to the name and hear what's been going on. Um, and appreciate you coming down and sitting through the meeting to, to make your presentation to us. So thank you. Uh, can I make a motion to move the bottom line? You could. Yeah, that'd be great. I'd like to do that second
▶ 1:13:49 Manjula Karamcheti: Motion to move the bottom line by, uh, council Williams, seconded by, uh, council remodel on discussion. All in favor? Aye. I just have, I have a question. Sorry. Sorry, It's a roll call Mark. It's okay. Hi there. Thank you so much for being here. Um, this question is really more for the public, and certainly I would love to follow up with you later, but what is the best way to get in touch with the Liquor Commission? Um, I know that I have a lot of constituents, um, that are interested in talking about one potential, um, license that is coming up. And I know there's a public hearing you just mentioned that date, I think June 1st. But just in terms of communicating with like emails and whatnot, what is the best way to get in touch?
▶ 1:14:40 The be There is an email for the Liquor Commission, uh, the Liquor Commission and, uh, or Patty, uh, who is our clerk, uh, is, uh, can Field, will field any and all of those. I'm sorry, I had a hard time hearing that, but I will follow up later. Thank you. Um, Mr. Nevin said that on the, on the website, there is an email and Patty is their clerk. Um, and her name I believe is under the Liquor Commission on the website, so you can access it through there. Okay, great. I will pass that along. Okay. Um, and you said June 1st for the public hearing? No, it's the 21st. May 21st. 21st. All right. Perfect. May, May 21st. May 21st. Okay. Thanks. Okay. Uh, so we have a motion on the floor. We have to do a roll call. Vote. Mm-hmm.
▶ 1:15:36 Councilor Jamal Ledine. Yes. Councilor Karen Chetty. Uh, yes. Councilor Romanul? Yes. Councilor Stewart? Yes. Councilor Vanderberg. Yes. William? Yes. Mr. Williams. President Elli? Yes. Council Gar? I chair Gar? Yes. Motion passes. Okay. Thank you very much. Thank, enjoy your night. You Too. Next up we have department 1, 2, 1, uh, the mayor's office. I can take the lead. I will, I'll talk for a change so you can rest your voice. Um, so the Mayor's office, um, is, I believe it's page two in the operating budget. Um, the following, uh, items have been either reduced or eliminated altogether. The first being community outreach. Traditionally this had been about $10,000 starting under Mayor Dolan and then Mayor Broder.
▶ 1:16:43 Um, mayor Greg reduced it last year. And this year we've eliminated it completely, um, that funds things like the annual kindergarten welcome for the 300 or so kindergartners on Fred Greenfield. Additional kind of supplemental event support for the senior resource fair, we just did, um, I think 800 flyers for the Veterans event. So sometimes other departments would come to us asking for supplemental support. Um, so that's been eliminated altogether. Education and seminars has been reduced a little over 50%. Um, that's not only professional development for the mayor's office staff, um, but right now we were able to, um, allow someone from HR to take a training through the MMA. So a lot of times departments would rely on us, um,
▶ 1:17:27 if they don't have that line item, and there's an opportunity for them to have some professional development. Professional services also reduced. This has been traditionally used for one time sort of administrative properties. Um, most recently the mayor asked for an audit of the employee handbook, which hadn't been updated in a while. Um, and we did a, um, a harassment training for all managers and department heads. So sort of these things that, um, can tend to be overlooked over time. Um, we've also just wanna mention, we have a, a part-time non-union non benefit eligible executive assistant slash constituent services person, Diane McDonald, who some of you have interacted with, will be reducing her from 18 hours to 12 hours a week.
▶ 1:18:13 Um, just means less desk coverage, um, or more walk-ins for, for myself and Tom Dalton to take. Um, do you want me to keep going or talk about, keep going. What remains? Um, and so sort of what remains, um, one thing I wanna point out that's new is just a shift of the city website, which previously lived. Um, the clerk of committees, um, Andrew Gobrial was previously the webmaster, um, when he left, and we didn't have anybody to take that on. Thomas Dalton stepped in, we started and started managing the entire website. Um, so we've moved the website cost to, um, our department since he's managing the website, um, for the entire city, and also doing a, an overhaul, um, of the website, um, right now as well.
▶ 1:18:58 Um, we've, um, some things have remained, I think the same, um, dues and memberships pays for two important memberships, one to the MMA, um, and to the MAPC. And that's for the entire city. So that's just not just for our office, but it lives there. That allows us to access a lot of different grants and technical assistance as well as a lot of advocacy for state legislation that happens, um, for cities and towns. And then, um, two small line items, printing, um, and the expense account, those have been level funded. Those have been the same amount for, um, about a decade when I looked back at it, maybe longer. That's as far back as I went. Um, so overall, you know, not a significant, um, budget in terms of a department, um,
▶ 1:19:45 but we did, um, work to make the cuts where we could. So. Thank you. Any questions? Council's? Thank You. Um, with the community outreach budget that's been eliminated, do you anticipate, um, any of those things carrying forward in another manner? Or what, what do you see happening there? You know, we've, we have, what's great about Melrose, I think I'm gonna quote you. I think you said one time that Melrose runs on volunteers. So we've been talking to folks who those are priority are really important to, to see how they might be able to stand up some of these events. Um, we've talked to a couple groups, I won't name them here to put them on the spot about things like the kindergarten welcome in particular, knowing that a lot
▶ 1:20:28 of people look forward to it, um, in hopes that between volunteers through our, just sort of like, guidance on how to run those things. And then maybe, um, another thing I think is great about mowers, we have a lot of sponsors of things that we could move those things forward. We're trying. Yeah, that's all, that's My only question. Thank you Councilor. Uh, Ramal, Thanks so much. I had, I had a similar, I had a couple of constituents ask me about marketing an event versus putting on an event and how the, the mayor's budget was, uh, going to impact that. So thank you for answering that. I did also have a question about the communities of practice with, uh, with whom we partner. And I was wondering if you might give a couple of examples
▶ 1:21:05 of type of grants that, uh, those opportunities have, um, brought to the city of Melrose. I'm sure there are many over the years, but I think for some folks they say we're a member of the, you know, um, uh, um, you know, Massachusetts, uh, uh, sorry, I'm now blanking on the name of the city. MMAM. Yeah, MMA. Thank you. I, I knew it was wrestling related. Um, but, uh, yes, if, if, Sure. So if you could expound on that, that would be great. MMA Massachusetts Municipal Association. I know some of you may be involved and they have, um, several different subgroups including one for counselors. I think the membership for that is probably housed within the mayor, the fee that we pay. Um, so that is for all 351 cities
▶ 1:21:41 and towns in Massachusetts. I think there are maybe one or two town communities across the state that are not members. Um, they're the largest advocacy organization in the state for, um, the needs of cities and towns. They typically, they have a substantial policy portion. They do provide many, many, many trainings. Um, some of which, many of which are free for HR professionals, DPW, um, they do legal trainings for city legal staff. Um, they have recently stood up a training on some of the climate resiliency. They're also doing a lot of advocacy and information sharing as is MAPC, as we sort of navigate some of the executive orders that have come down and what that's going to mean for both the state
▶ 1:22:21 and, um, for municipalities. So there, those are sort of the non-monetary things. Um, MAPC, the Massachusetts area plan, metropolitan Area Planning Council, excuse me, is the Metro Boston Regional Planning Council, that regional planning councils all across the state. Um, through that I'm able to be a member of Metro Mayors, which is Boston in the 17 surrounding communities. Um, and so we often work as a block around advocacy and legislation at the state level. Um, and for example, we recently were approved for a technical assistance grant through MAPC, that's going to provide us with a consultant to work on a strategic plan for Memorial Hall. Um, I think it's valued at 90,000, $90,000. So we would not be eligible to apply for
▶ 1:23:02 Ryan Williams: that grant without, um, our Membership in MAPC. Great. So good bank for your buck is what you're saying? Yes, definitely. Good, good, good. And for the anyone watching, there are, uh, numerous, um, numerous opportunities for city counselors to get training on budgeting on, you know, um, various evolutions in municipal law. So I know I've found all those enormously educational. Um, thank you very much. Thank you. Thank you. Council Williams. I just wanted to, um, test my thinking on the memberships line. The, sorry, these little mat flying around, um, the MAPC membership in the dues and membership line in the mayor's office. Is that the same? Is that the, is that also the MAPC cherry sheet assessment?
▶ 1:23:48 Ryan Williams: Do we hold that assessment cost in the mayor's office budget? This is kind of a nerdy question. No, hold please. I might have to go Back. We might have to get back to you on that. Yeah. I'm just curious because like mapping these these things into the budget is something that I'm interested in, in thinking through. And it would make sense to me that if we're charged for an MAPC budget and the expense for that budget is in the mayor's, uh, fund, that the, the cost, the 17 3 28 for the MAPC assessment would be in that space. So that's it. If we don't know the answer, that's fine. We can move on. Thanks. Council Stewart, Mr. Chair, I'll make a motion to move this to the bottom line. I second We have a motion
▶ 1:24:34 to move the bottom line. Um, seconded by Councilor Williams on discussion. Roll call please. Councilor Jamine? Yes. Councilor Karen Chetty? Yes. Councilor Romanul? Yes. Councilor Stewart? Yes. Council Vandiver? Yes. Council Williams? Yes. President Moore? Yes. Chair Garipay? Yes. Motion passes. Um, next up. Thank you. We have, why don't we, uh, mrm why don't you just, uh, stay there, we'll jump to vet veterans. I believe you're here for 5 43 Veteran Services. Yeah, I'm gonna have, um, Ms. Golden, um, step in just in case. Um, this is my first time presenting this department budget and, um, although I oversee the budget, I'm not, um, in charge of this department directly. Um, but we are here to do it this evening.
▶ 1:25:35 Um, because as you all know, um, after you recently agreed, um, this body agreed to continue the inter municipal agreement with Melrose Wakefield and Saugus, um, to run a regional veteran services. We then had you all vote to withdraw from it, um, after Wakefield decided to withdraw, um, following, um, their budget, uh, their budget hearing for that department in March. Um, and so I think when you look at everything, um, you'll see that overall the budget has gone down, um, by about 35%. And that's mainly due to what we're doing to restructure the department. Um, and so, you know, the first, I think and foremost is that structurally instead of having a regional director of the department who will oversee three towns,
▶ 1:26:23 a part-time veteran services officer and an admin, we will have one full-time person dedicated just to the department and just to Melrose. Um, and that'll be effective July 1st when the agreement, um, with the other communities, um, ceases with that. Again, going down by one person. We've got things like mileage education and seminars, rental of quarters, um, which we won't need anymore. So that is all just a result of, um, of this. Um, but I will say, you know, it seems like it's a reduction in savings, but we will probably see a reduction in service because instead of having three people sitting in the office in the Milano Center, we will have one. And although that person will be dedicated just to Melrose,
▶ 1:27:05 they'll be expected to be doing all of the things that Melrose has continued to do. Um, and then lastly, the outreach program that's been eliminated just due to under utilization. Um, the last two fiscal years, it's been utilized at zero. And so in trying to work with, um, Ms. Golden and obviously with the mayor to kind of move those things off the budget that just haven't been there, um, in order to move that money into, you know, other places where the money's being utilized, we tried to do that. Um, and so really what remains are the things that have, um, kept the department going, software licenses, um, war memorials, maintenance, wanted to make a note that that's actually just for, um, flags to purchase
▶ 1:27:48 for the graves for the veterans every year. So it does not upkeep our memorials. If you remember, I was here, um, a week ago. Thank you for approv that free cash request, um, and dues and memberships. And, um, I think the, um, other just biggest line item, which I think you all get interested in is Veterans benefits, which is the state's Chapter one 15 program, which provides, um, benefits to those veterans and their families that are eligible. Yes. So there's a reduction in that line item just to be in line with the number of members, uh, number of veterans that we're servicing. Unfortunately, they pass away or, um, in some circumstances move on to federal level programs. Um, so this reduction is reflective of the current.
▶ 1:28:33 Um, I think we're spending about $13,000 a month on, um, the veterans that we have. Uh, we do get reimbursed 75% of this line item by the state. It comes in, there's like a year lag, and we see that on, um, the cherry sheet as well. Thank you. Any questions, council? Jamal? Thank you. Um, can you explain to me about, um, how, I'm not sure if you have the numbers, but how many total do we serve in Melrose currently? Oh, I do not have that number off the top of my head, but we can certainly get that for you. Okay. And do we have already someone that will fill that position? Um, at this time we do not. So we'll be re because we're restructuring all of those positions into one, it's creating a new position.
▶ 1:29:28 Um, and so depending on how that goes, our current staff may apply for it or, um, may not, but we're trying to figure out what that job looks like. Um, the regional director, it's my understanding, was in place for at least, you know, 12 years, even going back further when we, um, looked at the agreement. So it's been a while, but other, uh, there are other communities that just have one person. Um, I know Stoneham is a good example, so we're looking at that as well to see how those, um, cities and towns best stand up that that position. And who would be, who would that person be managed under? So, um, veteran Services, myself, um, veteran Services is part of a six departments that, um, form
▶ 1:30:10 Maya Jamaleddine: what we call the Community Services Division. Um, and so, um, I would manage that person directly. Okay. So You will be conducting all kind of interviews and, um, doing Oh, yes. The job description and stuff. Okay, fine. Good luck. Get this A good person. Yeah, absolutely. Yep. Okay. And, um, uh, and that's not necessarily, um, directly related, but we would, are we going to get any kind of updates or just information about how, uh, you know, if there is any impact in comparison to what we were on before? Uh, Yeah. And well, one thing that we're doing is looking closely at the job description to understand, you know, are there things, there's obviously the things that are mandated for the position, such as, um,
▶ 1:30:56 what Ms. Golden just explained around the chapter, doing the chapter one 15 benefits, helping veterans apply for federal, um, benefits, helping connect them with resources that they need. This person may not be able to do staff events that the Veterans Advisory Board stands up. You know, like we might have to rely on the board to do more events, um, do sort of like the nice to haves, not the need to haves. Um, and so we're looking at that to make sure that we're also setting this person up for success so that they can deliver the things that veterans need the most. Um, versus the things, you know, the food drive, the monthly food mart. We're hoping to keep those in but rely more on the Veterans Advisory Board to help, um,
▶ 1:31:37 Maya Jamaleddine: fill in some of that volunteer gap. Got it. My last question, you said that we will get 75% reimbursement, um, and, and that goes towards, uh, that's after, you know, like proof of, um, uh, payment or stuff, then we would get reimbursed. Is that how it Yes. Looks? Yes. So benefits are administered and then they go, um, they're certified monthly here on a local level, and then it goes to the state. And so the state can approve or reject, uh, benefits, but if they're approved, we get 75% reimbursement in the subsequent year. Right. And who would follow, uh, that process? Is that the new person or is it on the They work closely with your office? Yes. Yeah. Yep. Okay. Okay. Thank you. Any, uh, anyone else? Council Vanover make a
▶ 1:32:36 Manjula Karamcheti: Motion to move the bottom line, Second motion, motion to move the bottom on the line second by Council Vandiver or Councilor Romanul will, uh, beat you to that. So, uh, he's a second. Sorry, I didn't hear you. Um, on discussion. Uh, I just have one quick question. I'm sorry. Sorry about that. I can't see if we keep on freezing, so I can't see when you're Ask to Go ahead. That's okay. Go ahead. Um, so I was just noticing in one of the line items around Veterans Outreach, um, there originally there was like a line item for I think like $2,000 and, uh, year to date it hasn't been spent. And then, so it makes sense that then for the next budget of 2026, there wouldn't be anything in there. I guess I'm just wondering in the past,
▶ 1:33:32 Manjula Karamcheti: what has Veterans outreach, um, consisted of and just more of a learning in terms of like, what is like the best type of outreach to be done? And if it's not a line item, just thinking about other ways to do that kind of outreach to make sure we're connected to our veterans. And if this isn't the right time for this kind of question, it's totally fine. I can find out later. Well, um, I can't speak directly, I haven't done the Veterans Outreach program myself, but it was also unspent in fiscal year 24. And so I think in looking what we did, I mean, looking at it, it went underutilized. Um, but as I mentioned, you know, there's other ways that we, you know, have supported our veterans. You know, our office just did 800 flyers
▶ 1:34:21 that are getting mailed to them about their Memorial Day events. Um, but we could certainly get some more specifics about, um, what it might have been utilized, you know, if it was utilized in fiscal year 2023 and before that. Okay. No, I appreciate it. Thank you. And I do know that the city does so much to support veterans. I was just curious about that one piece of the puzzle. Thank you. Yeah. Okay. Thank you. Um, we have, uh, a motion on the floor. Can we take a roll call? Yes. Councilor Jamal, do? Yes. Councilor Chetty? Yes. Mr. Romano? Yes. Council Stewart? Yes. Council Vandiver? Yes. Council Williams? Yes. President? Me? Yes. Gar? Yes. Motion Passes. Thank you. Uh, next up, um, we have 26 0 7 Veteran Services revolving
▶ 1:35:14 account. Yeah. Thank You. Welcome back. Welcome. Thank you. It's good to be here again. This Cadra. You might be here until 11. Um, this order is just reauthorization, um, of the Veterans Revolving Fund. Um, we put forth the table every year to show what the spending purpose is, what the, uh, revenues are collected from, and we have a cap. Um, so it's just reauthorization of the expenditure, uh, purposes and the revenue cap or expense cap. I'm sorry. Any questions on the revolving account? Council, Jamal and then council make motion to move to the bottom line. Move. Motion to move the bottom line by Council Jamal, seconded by Council Stewart on discussion. Council Ka, you're all set. Uh, roll call vote.
▶ 1:36:13 Councilor Jamal Ledine? Yes. Council. Karen Chetty? Yes. Councilor Romanul? Yes. Councilor Stewart? Yes. Councilor Vandiver? Yes. Council Williams? Yes. President Elli? Yes. Chair Gar? Yes. Motion passes. Okay. Thank you. Moving on, we're gonna take the assessors. Next. Is, uh, the city clerk's with us till the end Here. I am. Have to step out. Okay. Um, do you want to No, you can, Well, she's had to Do you want She's we're here. She probably wants to go with before me. Thank you, Ms. Mcc. Mr. McClellan. Sorry about that. Should have told you I was gonna take you out. Order. Thank you. So we have 1 41, uh, assessors in front of us with Ms. McClellan. Okay. Good evening chair and members of the committee.
▶ 1:37:30 Thank you for having me here this evening. Uh, the assessor's department is responsible for annually, annually ensuring accurate, fair, and equitable assessments for the roughly 9,800 parcels of real and personal property in the city. These assessments form the foundation of the city's largest source of revenue, about 80% through property taxes, which, as you know, support most everything in the city. From schools and public safety to infrastructure and community services. Assessors also administer motor vehicle excise tax, all abatements of real personal and motor vehicle excise tax, and all statutory tax exemptions as allowed by law. In addition, the department is responsible for preparing cases for hearings
▶ 1:38:15 and defending property values before the Massachusetts Appellate Tax Board. The assessor's office works daily with the inquiries of taxpayers, planners, developers, builders, real estate professionals, and others. The assessors coordinate the revaluation process to comply with the laws of the commonwealth and to achieve a sound base for fiscal fiscal planning within the city. So just to touch on some of the activities in the department over the past fiscal year, the assessors have maintained a hundred percent compliance with the Department of Revenue Standards to complete the annual certification of values and set a timely tax rate for the city. We have onboarded and trained a new head clerk,
▶ 1:38:54 and during this process we have streamlined department operations to reduce the average, um, response time for public inquiries and excise abatement requests. Um, and as I'll always like to thank my, uh, the assessor staff for their diligent work in the department and their constant commitment to delivering great customer service to Melrose residents. So for fiscal 2025, we increased the tax base through discovery of new growth in the city of 770,000 $138. So this number includes the highest residential value growth increase for Melrose in the DL DLS records database, uh, we conducted a personal property account audit to capture additional new growth for the city. And in conjunction with the Council on Aging,
▶ 1:39:43 we conducted a well-attended workshop at the Milano Center on Melrose's tax relief options available to older adults. Um, the proposed budget before you shows a 50% decrease in the assessor's training and education budget line. Historically, the department has used this entire budget line each year to attain training and education offered by our state and county assessing organizations. The training we receive helps assessors, um, sorry, uh, keep the assessor set updated on changes in guidelines and requirements set by the DOR. Um, we're informed of any new laws and regulations related to property assessment and how they impact our community, and we're kept abreast of appellate tax board decisions and outcomes.
▶ 1:40:31 Uh, the chief assessor myself uses the education budget line to receive the required continuing education credits to maintain licensure as a Massachusetts accredit assessor. Um, and the budget line is also used to provide training for the assistant assessor and head clerk to enable them to assist the assessor in capturing new growth for the city to submit the required forms and documentation correctly to Department of Revenue and to understand the complexities and property assessment and in turn, be able to educate and provide assistance to the public accordingly. So remaining in the assessor's budget are the line items that support the department in achieving its primary function, administering the laws
▶ 1:41:15 Ryan Williams: and regulations relative to property tax assessment so that we can fairly and equitably value all property in the city at full and fair cash value. As of January 1st, the greatest portion of this budget is made up of revaluation and professional services, um, those lines with smaller amounts of funds going toward mileage, printing fees and supplies. And that's all I have this evening, but I'm happy to answer any questions that you have. Thank you. Council Williams. Um, hello. So I, I to remind myself and others, the role of the council is not to move money around, right? We can reduce things, we can't grow things. So with that being said, if I had one of the things that, if I had the power, one of the things
▶ 1:42:02 Ryan Williams: that confuses me about this, and I would, I would like to hear a little bit more about this is why we would cut education, which is a line that we're using and seems to be important to keeping abreast of things that keep us smart about how to collect our tax base, but not cutting revaluation, which looks like it only achieves about 65% of its, um, target spend each year through 2024 and 2025 looks a little bit higher as well as the professional services line, which in, um, 2024 had like nothing in it. And in 2025 has not had anything spent in it. Like, is there anticipated costs coming? Is there, why would, why do we balance it in that direction? So I can definitely answer at least part of that.
▶ 1:42:47 Um, the situation with the revaluation line is that our work is really cyclical. So, um, each year we're collecting, we have to collect property data because we have chapter 6 53, which means we can collect growth until June 30th. So the work being done to collect that growth for fiscal, say for fiscal 26th is in June 30th, which is really fiscal 25. So it's really contractual, um, uh, payments basically that, that the work is done then. And the way that the billing happens and the encumbering and everything, it just, it, the way that the, um, payments happen are kind of different or the budgeted, um, payments, like the invoicing and everything. So that's why that it takes a little while to catch up
▶ 1:43:38 after it's posted. Um, that's for that line, um, for reval. Um, the other thing is, every five years we have a, um, a revaluation by the state. We keep our values current every year. Like we have to do certification of values to the state every year. Um, but we do the revaluation with the state, um, every five years. So that next one is coming up in 2027. That has a lot of, um, there's a lot more, um, you know, reporting statistical analysis. It's, it's like a lot more, it, it basically takes a month longer to do, um, your values for the year. Um, so because of that, there's a lot more, um, you know, there's higher requirements on, um, property inspections and things like that. So, because the cost for that can be higher in
▶ 1:44:37 that one year, it's usually spread contractually over three different years. Um, three to five different years. So, um, that's kind of what, why the, it's not like, um, balanced each year. Like it's not, the spend is not like the same every year, but it's kind of like over, um, different years. Yeah. For the professional services line, are you Talking about professional services? So the, we work with a lot of the professional services that we use in our department are the, um, some of it is to do our inspections and um, that kind of thing. Another big piece of it is working with the appellate tax board. So, uh, attorney, so who represents us? Um, who I work with, um, I see for the, to represent us
▶ 1:45:30 with the, so because those cases that we have are literally from like 23, 22. You know, they're from fiscal years in the past. Mm-hmm. They don't bill them until they, um, have the hearing for them. And you don't know necessarily when that Is gonna happen. So we cumber the funds and then we kind of wait until, you know, we're working with the Okay. With the attorney to use them. I got it. Well, I'm sorry to see the cut to education, but if you think that the department can manage it, 'cause you've been doing excellent work, I wouldn't wanna see it. Thank you. Diminish. Thank you. That's good for me. Thank you. Councilor Stewart. Thank you Mr. Chair. Thank you Ms. McClellan for being here this evening.
▶ 1:46:13 Robb Stewart: Uh, just to, um, kind of continue on Councilor Williams' question. It says 50% of the training budget goes away, yet you use a hundred percent historically of the training budget. Mm-hmm. And when I read and listened to you, you talk about what that training was used for, but you didn't talk about the impact. So what, because some of it is for licensing mm-hmm. Some of it is to stay abreast of the, um, either the new or the current, just to be sure that we're getting the maximum value out of your role as assessor. Mm-hmm. What's gonna be missing? So I, it's, it's kind of hard to comment on exactly what will be, you know, in terms of service delivery, that's a, a kind of difficult, so maintaining the, um,
▶ 1:47:09 mass accredited assessor, um, has a certain number of hours, credit hours that have to be done, um, annually, bi-annually, um, that we have to do. So that's one portion of it and it's hard to, um, you know, know exactly what will be offered in what years. Part of it is like we have a, um, uap it's a, it's a kind of ethics course that we all have, all assessors have to take it, um, and, you know, keep it current. Basically I took it this week, They don't steal money. Right. Yeah. Got it. Okay. So, um, but that kind of a thing is required, but then the other things, we don't know what exactly will be offered. For example, one time there's like a mock trial of the appellate tax board with all the, you know,
▶ 1:47:54 it'll be tax reps going and different kind of, you know, so that we can be better prepared to, you know, defend our values here and, and how it, how it works, that kind of thing. Okay. So it, it, it's almost kind of ad hoc and informational that supports the role that you play. Right. And we may miss out on some of that because we don't have the full budget. Right. For example, we had before us, um, the, um, we just had the order before us on the veterans, um, sorry, the exemption. So that's a local option that, you know, we all were informed of and how, what are the different options for our communities and how we can, um, you know, all of that whole thing is kind of presented. Um, the timeline presented, how it works in with the rest
▶ 1:48:46 Robb Stewart: of our fiscal year and um, then how we can better present that information to you. Okay. And so what I'm gathering from this is, it's not like you have the full year schedule of what courses you want to take mm-hmm. What training you need. It more is as it's presented, you make a decision on whether you'll gain benefit of it and if it's gonna help you and so forth. And so we just immediate need to be a little bit more selective going forward. Yeah. While also ensuring that you're gonna keep up your licensing current. Mm-hmm. Those are, those are kind of the required Ones, right? Prioritize, like I have to Yeah. Okay. Keep maintain my Got it. MAA. Yeah. Got it. Okay. Alright. Thank you. Thank you Mr. Chair.
▶ 1:49:28 Maya Jamaleddine: Thank you. Council Jamal. Thank you Mr. Chair. Um, thank you for all this, um, thorough explanation. Uh, do you know, um, you talked about the educational part that we are missing on, unfortunately. Is there any impact, like direct impact in terms of constituents, uh, direct impact, um, any services or anything that you used to provide and due to the budget, it's going to be impacted by that or? I don't think that there's anything direct I can think of to A direct, anything that the constituents will actually feel that this budget is impacting your department. Um, I just feel like it's kind of subjective in that like, I just don't, I, um, thank you. We educate, sorry. Like I said, we educate our,
▶ 1:50:25 um, staff too. It's not just myself. So, you know, we have people who are, um, been here a year, you know, and they work with the residents and as you know, property tax is very difficult to understand and there's all different co you know, we, we deal with all different people coming from different places, backgrounds and everything. So we try to do our best to educate ourselves. 'cause there's so many different nuances and it's just one, excise tax is one whole issue, like in subject and then, you know, our property tax, like our regular real estate tax and abatements and exemptions and all kinds of things. So we have to just make sure we're on, on track with, you know, the laws, the guidelines, the
▶ 1:51:12 Maya Jamaleddine: Absolutely. Um, and there, I just wanna clarify the reason why I'm asking this is because it's really important for, um, the constituents to understand what would be the impact of these, uh, like the direct impact on them for all these cuts, uh, on a variety of departments across, uh, our city. And for your department. It's something that unfortunately they're not gonna feel it directly on, but on the long run, they will see that difference in the service and, and because the education is important for your department as well. Mm-hmm. Um, so I do appreciate all the efforts that you're putting to balance that. Mm-hmm. Um, and hopefully will be able to get through this. Yeah. Thank you. Thank
▶ 1:51:58 You. What's the will? The committee? I'll, uh, I'll make a motion to move to the bottom line. Second motion to, uh, move the bottom line by Council Aldi. And seconded by Council Stewart. Uh, any questions? Um, council Councilor Chetty. You okay? Um, on discussion? I think I said that. Roll call please. Councilor Jamine. Yes. Councilor Council. Karen Chetty. Yes. Councilor Romanul. Yes. Councilor Stewart? Yes. Council Vanderberg? Yes. Council Williams? Yes. President Elli? Yes. Chair Gar Pay? Yes. Motion has it. I mean the Yes. Has it. My gosh, I gotta get up And talk. I'm so tired. Thank you, Ms. McClellan. Thank you. Enjoy your night. You, uh, next up we have department, um, 1 61 city clerk.
▶ 1:53:01 We have Sini. Sini. I know. Forget it. I'll get it by the end of the year. Tomato. Tomato. All right. Good evening. Um, I have to say, I was excited to be able to finally do my, um, first budgets. Um, so I'm gonna give you just a quick little overview of, um, what we do there. Um, the makeup of our, of our department, some things that we got accomplished, and then just highlight some of the line items that are either going up or down. Um, I kind of merged the elections office into the city clerk just because everything kind of falls under me. And so, but I did divide up the figures. So there's two different charts on my memo, on my memo that you can follow, um, just for the public to hear, for quick little overview.
▶ 1:53:55 Um, the city clerk is the official keeper of the history and records of Melrose. Our mission remains dedicated to maintaining and protect, protecting historical records as safety, as safety, as safely as possible, while also servicing the public by providing information in an efficient way. Um, we are located, um, right at the main door, so I'm also like a question and answer booth for everybody who comes walking in, but that's okay. We don't mind doing it. Um, we are made up of, I have four people, but then we also have one individual who comes in basically seasonal, eight hours a week, once a week. Um, city clerk, tan Uni. Um, I have a three year contract. Um, the assistant city clerk, Linda Reed,
▶ 1:54:37 who was a senior clerk, she was promoted to assistant city clerk. She's in a one year contract. We have an election clerk, um, James Harris. He's also union. He's 30 hours a week. Um, that position was 35 hours a week. We switched it down to 30 hours a week. Um, and we have a senior clerk, Kathy Mohawk. She's also union. And like I mentioned, um, we have one part-time seasonal. Um, her name is Diane and she's working eight hours a week for us in elections or anything else that we need. Um, currently, you know, we, we manage all of the vitals, vital statistics for, um, the city of Melrose births, deaths, marriages, affidavits, and corrections of vitals. Um, we also have all the election and census records, business certificate
▶ 1:55:23 filings all come through our office. Original filings of all the zoning, board of appeals planning, site plan, and slope protection decisions, all notifications of meetings for municipal government bodies. There's, um, like roughly around 253 meetings, common vigilant licenses, secondhand dealer licenses, class one and two, motor vehicle licenses and gasoline storage certificates. Those all come through us Dog licenses, claim filings for all insurance claims, raffle permits, and all of the conflict of interest. Um, completion records for everyone, both in the schools and, um, on the city side. Um, I manage all of that, all city council documents, orders, ordinances, resolutions and motions, minutes, agenda for all the meetings.
▶ 1:56:11 Um, council related, um, mayoral communications and all the city of Melrose board and commission appointments. Um, all of that stuff also goes through us in the year, fiscal year 25. Some accomplishments. I I came on in October. Um, it's been a wild ride, but a really fun ride. And we've, we've actually accomplished a lot in the seven months that we, that I've been there. Um, we conducted a state federal primary and a state federal election. Dis disposition distribution of annual online conflict of interest training, annual training for the board's, commissions, and committee appointees, annual training of election workers. Uh, continued organization inspection and preservation of our municipal records.
▶ 1:56:53 Um, electronic distribution of campaign finance refresh and updated our department departmental webpages. We're still doing that. Reorganized the election in city clerk offices. Physically, we just switched some things around, so it worked, um, logistically a little better. Rebuilt the department. Um, we, you know, promoted, like I said, the senior clerk to assistant clerk hired a new senior clerk. I had a new elections administrator. We also work with the state. And, um, and it was with, with a, with a grant. And they came in and they did a whole audit of our actual building of the city hall and where I'm located and where elections is located, as well as the, um, the school just to see how we run our elections,
▶ 1:57:37 where we keep all of our, um, our ballots, um, our entire process. So they came in for a day. I had it involved. I had, um, our emergency management involved myself, um, and our elections administrator. And I just basically took 'em for like a four hour tour of everything. And then we were able to, then we waited, we waited like three months to get our report, but we just got the report. And, um, there's some things that they just recommend that we do. We don't have any slaps on the wrist or anything. Everything is just like a recommendation and if we are interested in changing anything. Then they also gave us some links to some grants that we could apply for. Um, so we just completed that and we revamp,
▶ 1:58:20 we re revamped the nomination packages for our local election. Just to highlight, um, the city clerk budget, um, I'll start with that one with salaries. Um, we did go up slightly on fiscal year 25 to 26. The way I did the chart, I just kind of wanted you to look at a snapshot of what we actually get approved, what we currently are at as of today, and, um, what we were looking for for fiscal year 26. Um, I do wanna point out that the number did go up, but I do have two. Um, I do have two members of our team that are union. So you know, we're gonna have, we're gonna have the obligation to have to give them the increase. And then I do have that one, um, individual who comes in eight hours for, um, one day a week.
▶ 1:59:12 Our overtime is, is level funded. That's staying adv advertising, printing is staying the same. Our dog program is staying the same. There is an increase, um, to the agenda software. That agenda software was always coming out of the city council's budget. And so, um, after speaking with the mayor and, um, and the CFO, uh, our department will now be absorbing that. So moving forward, that will be something that we'll be paying for. Um, the reification, that is our E 360. So when we make any sort of, um, changes to our, to our codes or ordinances, it all comes to me and I work with a third party and they update it all. And then we have to upload it onto our website. So I know that we spent 12,385
▶ 2:00:02 and, well, I should say we had 12,385. And I know that, um, currently we have a balance of nine thou 9,280, but that's gonna come down around $6,000 because I just submitted to them a bunch of, um, um, re codifications from the planning department. So that number is gonna come down significantly. Um, so, but then again, I didn't, we put in for $10,000 just because we know that last year they went and they went through all of their zoning and they did like a, a big cleanup of it all. And we don't expect to be doing that again this year. So it just came down slightly with that number level funded the miscellaneous supplies as well as training our bond company. Uh, I think we changed it. It actually went down to like, I know it was 2 55.
▶ 2:00:45 I think we're at a balance of 2 35. We didn't spend much and I think we're using like a new company or something now, I think, um, with our insurance company is much more affordable with a new insurance company. So that number came down. Dropping down to elections. Our salary was 4,569 regular salary. Um, currently it's 1,439. We're asking for another 45, 69 part-time salary. We had in fiscal year 25 was 88,920. We're at a negative 3,246 right now. Uh, for fiscal year 26. We're looking to ask for 55,000 because we only have one election. Last year we had multiple elections. So all of the poll workers and everybody is getting paid out of that line item. We had multiple elections. Now we're only gonna be having one election.
▶ 2:01:35 That number's gonna come down. Um, printing, we had $9,200. Um, negative $7,400. Uh, I'm asking for 13,000. The reason why we're down is because we had so many people, it was a huge election in November. So we had so many people that came on and registered to vote. Okay. Like a huge number. So when I go and I run the extract in January to go and send out the census, my number completely increases from last year. So, however, num, whatever, I think we just sent out 16,000 last year. That number was like 12,000. 'cause you didn't have as many registered voters. So that's why that printing cost went up so much. It's just because we had a huge intake of registered voters after the November election.
▶ 2:02:22 Um, postage stay in the same accu vote is is that's coming down. That's they do all of our maintenance before and after our elections on all of our big machines. Um, we're only having one election, so it makes sense that that's gonna come down. Contract services is basically staying the same. Election supplies is gonna come down because we have one election dues remain the same of $200 and training is going to remain the same. We really haven't been able to take advantage of the training because we've just been so busy and not fully staffed that we couldn't really make it a priority. But now we're gonna start making it a priority and we can start going to training for, um, our clerks association
▶ 2:03:02 and elections adminis, uh, election staff. So, and we also, I just wanted to bring up, we just received $33,000 back from the federal government for our, um, early, for early voting reimbursement. So I was able to like fill out, um, a questionnaire back in January and show them all of our expenses. And then the money just came in last week and we just deposited that. So that would go to us, anything that was just related with early voting. So anybody that was physically working here when we had it here or any of the mailings or any of our supplies. So, um, I put in for that reimbursement and that just came and I just deposited that last Friday. And that basically wraps up elections and the city clerks.
▶ 2:03:49 Maya Jamaleddine: Okay. Um, feel free to ask questions on either, either budget, 'cause they're both presented. Um, council Jamal and Council Williams. Council Romano. Council Vandiver. Thank you, uh, chair and thank you Mr. Puni for, um, all the work that you've been doing throughout the year. I do, um, have question and, um, forgive me if this is, this may be very, um, obvious question, but, um, help me understand, when, when you say we have, for instance, for FY 25, uh, we have, let's say for printing, I'm just giving an example mm-hmm. Uh, $3,000 we have in imbalance. 2050 7 37, right? Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm. How come we are still asking for the same amount? If we are, if we have balance, we Actually are going to have another in.
▶ 2:04:51 Okay. So with printing, there's a couple of things for that line item. All of our letters that we send out, so we send out letters and we, we print our own stationary, but we actually have envelopes, windowed envelopes that we send everything out. So we have influxes. So we actually will be spinning, I actually just ordered a bunch of new envelopes. So that number is actually going to be coming down. It's not going to like, I know it says 2057, but that's probably gonna drop down to about a thousand. So that number kind of influxes, it depends on how much, how many letters that we need to be sending out. And it's ba that print line item is basically for all of our, um, stationary that says city clerk on it.
▶ 2:05:32 Maya Jamaleddine: Got it. So, Or stamps and the stamps that we have. I understand. So that would bring it down if you said, you know, another thousand dollars. So that means you're telling me that the, the actual, and I'm just giving an example for printing, but I can go through every single item for printing. That means you, the projected, uh, uh, budget for FY 26 should really be 2000. I mean, I can't decide on how much it's go. I don't know. 'cause you don't know how many letters you're gonna be sending out. You don't know how many dog registrations you're gonna be coming in. All of that stuff goes into our, into our envelopes that I have to send out. So I, I don't know. I guess, I mean, I could come back and ask for it,
▶ 2:06:20 Maya Jamaleddine: but you just, you don't, I just don't know. I don't know what the influx is gonna be on how many, how much stationary I'll be using. I hear you. So, and, and I'm not trying to, you know, you know, best for, for your department. What I'm trying to understand, if we ask, and again, I'm just giving an example for one item, if we ask for 3000, we actually spent 1000 and you're saying it's going to be another 1000. Mm-hmm. So that's 1000 extra that we are asking above the, our expenses. Is that what we are trying to do on a yearly basis? Or are we considering cutting down, especially with the stretch in, in our budget to bring it down? Uh, I mean, I, I think that when I looked at this, I looked at the trend.
▶ 2:07:07 So I looked at what you were doing over, not just last year, but the year before. When you pull it up in Munich, you're able to look at fiscal year 23, fiscal year 24, fiscal year 25, and you can look to see how much you're roughly spending. Um, I mean, we're only in, I'm, I'm, I'm in May, but that doesn't mean I'm not gonna be blowing through it and using the whole thing. I can't really, I can't tell. I just know that we do like so many mailings every single day. Like I'm, I, I go through a lot of stationary. Um, for example is that's, I'm giving an example, but I understand what you're saying. I, I just, I guess some of these things, I don't know. You just don't know if, if you're gonna be able
▶ 2:07:48 to, to use them or not. So I just looked at the trend of what the last couple of fiscal years were, and, and that's what I did. I Understand. But now we are in a budget. Um, I understand that. So, and I also think that over the course of the seven months that I've been there, I have been very conservative extreme. Like that's so, like, so, so when I'm looking at this, I'm looking at this and I'm looking at trends of what we've done in the past, and I'm making sure that we have enough money to, to, uh, to just cover what I assume is gonna happen. I personally haven't been in this role long enough to get the history of it all. So I just have to look at the numbers and I'm just going by the numbers of
▶ 2:08:27 Maya Jamaleddine: what I've seen in the system. Right. But I haven't got to live it to, to like know what a whole year looks like. Right. And I, I do hope from all the advancements from you right now, this is not personal. So I do know that you're conserv you're being very conservative in terms of the expenses and stuff. However, that we are gonna separate that. Um, because there is no doubt about it. My focus is now is what is it that we can do with that proposed budget. Looking at the FY 25 and the balance that we have currently, you're still asking a almost the same amount as FY 25. But we do have in a balance. So is there any way that we can consider to, uh, cut down, um, looking at what we have in balance?
▶ 2:09:23 I mean, Is that, is that a motion or are you No, that's a question. Oh, okay. I mean, I, you could look at, you could, I guess if you guys wanna go line by line, I, I don't know. I, I, I guess you, I don't know, like if you wanna go line by line and look at like, OT and see if you wanna bring down the overtime. I mean, that number is low. And like I said, I'm, I'm pretty conservative that if I know that somebody is union, I'll pick up the slack and do it myself just because I don't want to have an overtime charge. So if, do we need 11,400, that number could come down. I just, I just like, if I'm in a situation when we have an election and I need to have union people working overtime, I don't wanna be stuck that I just don't have the money
▶ 2:10:07 Maya Jamaleddine: and now I need to come to, to you guys. 'cause I don't have the money. And they're union workers. So, um, So you, I mean, we have a budget presented to us. If the, if the council after the discussion wants to reduce it, that's fine. Yeah. I mean it's, I mean, you presented us a budget that, that you believe is, is what you need to run your, run your, run your business. So if, If actually it's through the chair and with all of the respect to what you said, it's still as the head of that department, I would like to ask, based on her opinion, if we still ask you based on your experience, based on your opinion mm-hmm. What would you cut from that budget? If we still ask you to bring it down, what would that be?
▶ 2:10:52 Ryan Williams: Well, I absorbed the agenda software reification. I need to keep, I can't supplies I, I guess overtime. Thank you. Yep. All set. Yes. Thanks. Uh, who is up? Councilor Williams. Thank you. Um, one of the things I'm looking for in the budget process, hello? Hello. Thank for being here. Uh, one of the things I'm looking for in the budget process is if I see a line item that I know is attached to a fee or a fine mm-hmm. That goes out to residents, I wanna know why we incur an expense on that line, right. When we could raise the fees to a point where the fees cover the cost of the program. And part of that is understanding the goal of the program. So as a new dog owner, I am new to the dog program
▶ 2:11:49 Ryan Williams: as it's called here in Melrose. So I would like to know what's the, what's the point of the dog program, the goal of the dog program, and why do we incur, um, any expense at all if we have fees for it? Are the fees too low? Is it the cost of printing tags? Is there like a public health and safety issue here where we're keeping records, like what goes into this? Yeah, So this is software. So there's a whole software that we use. Okay. Um, along with that, there are metal tags that we need to purchase. Right. And those have the city of Melrose embedded on it and the number. Um, so there's that. And basically yes. What we do is, is that, and you're well aware of, of, of it, of it now, but we have the applications that we,
▶ 2:12:31 that actually go out with all of our census. So when we send out our census, every single re resident gets the dog registration, the dog registrations all come in, you know, either alone or with the, with the census. And basically we process that paperwork in the system. We make sure that they have updated vaccinations and all of that stuff gets processed through the state site that we, this, this, um, dog program software that we actually have. And, um, and then we usually either mail out the tag or if the person is physically there, we hand them their, their dog tag Now fees. That's, that is something that I, I did all the homework on that already. I, I have it ready. I've talked to the mayor about that.
▶ 2:13:13 I've sent it to Lauren. I went through all of our fees for every single license actually. And I, I have a list of what we currently are at, and I did all of our surrounding communities around us. And then I also have another sheet of all of our proposed fees. Mm-hmm. Because our fees are low. And I totally agree with you that for the amount of work that it takes, I don't think that we are covering and, and for the $25 that's coming in, oh, I mean the $18 or $20 that's coming in, I think that's just going into general fund. Yeah. A general fund. So, um, so there's is a state mandated, like dog software mm-hmm. Component, this is news to me for each existing, We work with a third party with this.
▶ 2:13:57 Ryan Williams: Yep. A third party. Okay. And we set up like, and it sets up all of the perimeters for us. And, and, and yeah. The, the, the deep state dog tracking service, um, it's, um, sorry, it's like, it's like 9 45. Um, uh, okay. So, but do you feel if the, if the fees were increased that it would cover the cost of the program? Or would there still be a gap? I mean, I would think that you would, Well, let me put it to you a different way. I would, I would encourage, whenever you're thinking about raising fees to approach a rate payer model like we do with water, sewer, and trash mm-hmm. We take the total number of people in the program and divide it by the cost. Mm-hmm. And then you come up with what the cost is. Right.
▶ 2:14:36 Ryan Williams: It would be the least expensive part of owning a dog. Right. And we could do that. Yeah. We can definitely do that process. That should, that should, that would be easy. I would be interested when you, when you come before us, if we're talking about this, to know what that number is. Yep. And then you think about like, what's that number versus what are you proposing versus what are we doing? And we can make the decision in that space For sure. I Agree with you and I, I'm making the point on, on dogs, but it's the same for rec fees. It's the same for every fee and, and permit cost that the city bears. 'cause we need to live within our means. And part of that is charging the cost of what the program costs to
▶ 2:15:05 Devin Romanul: Run. I totally agree with you. To the people who use it, including myself. Okay. Yep. Alright. I agree. Thank you. That's it. Thank You. Um, councilor Romanul, Just one quick question. Mm-hmm. You alluded to the, the printing budget going over last time around. Mm-hmm. And, uh, I was wondering if you could speak to whether or not you feel like that the 13,000 is gonna be robust enough. I know that, um, that we only have one election and that, um, you know, the robustness of this election may be lesser than others. I'm wondering if you might be able to speak to making sure that, that you've allocated enough for yourself there. Yes. We, we had like a huge in, um, influx of people that registered, which is wonderful.
▶ 2:15:42 Um, so obviously our number went up so high when we sent out the census, um, along with the dog registrations. Um, but now, actually just as of over the weekend, and some of you maybe have received it if you hadn't filled out your census the first time around, but I just did like a second drop of confirmation cards just reminding everybody, Hey, I, you know, I haven't received your census. Do you still live at this address? Could you just simple check or, or if you changed your address, just sign it and do it. So that number obviously went up too, just because we just had so many more registered voters. I, I don't know. I mean, we, I don't know how big a local election will be. I, I've personally never lived through one here.
▶ 2:16:22 Kimberly Vandiver: I don't, I can't imagine it being as big as the last one that we just had. So I would think that the number, 'cause when I pull that extract in January of 26, I would think the number would just be, be the same. Yeah. Yeah. Excellent. I think we're gonna be fine. Thank you very much for organizing all this detail. I appreciate it. Yep. Thank you. Thank you. Uh, council of Vanderberg, Uh, thank you Chair Gar p uh, thank you for your presentation. Um, so I, I have a couple of comments and questions. Um, one is through the chair to the kind of discussion about, um, there've been a couple of good points raised about making sure that the, the, you know, that the budget is accurate and to what we need
▶ 2:17:02 Kimberly Vandiver: and also to what we can cover with fees. Um, somebody, when we were talking about the budget last year, it may have been CFO Golden, but I don't want to to say definitively. Um, I, I had a similar question about, you know, this line or that line. Why aren't we being very precise about, we've spent only $17 this year. Why is it $20 or whatever it was that, you know, it was more than that. But, um, I, I think what I think we should be remembering as we go through this budget is that there are cases where it makes sense to bring a line down or out. So for example, we heard about the veteran services budget. Um, there was an unused outreach line for multiple years of $2,000 that makes sense to take out.
▶ 2:17:40 Kimberly Vandiver: Um, I don't, but for, for, for these light items like printing where it's variable, it fluctuates. Um, it's better to be a little bit conservative about, about what we will, about making sure we don't run out. It's better since there are these fluctuations to air on the side of not running out than the side of running out. Because the downside of running out is you run into a hard stop where suddenly we can't do a function. And the, the, the, what happens if we end up a little high is that goes into capital needs via free cash. And, and so I think it's, you know, I, and there are a lot of things that end up covered with free cash that aren't otherwise in the budget. So I just think it's important.
▶ 2:18:24 Kimberly Vandiver: I, I, for example, would not, I, even though I, I appreciate that, that you have gone through and adjusted these thoughtfully based on we're not using this or we are using this. I think being responsive and making sure it's not excessive is great. But I, I wouldn't want to cut too far into something that might leave you kind of high and dry on something essential, especially when the over, anything over is going to come back in free cash. So, so for me, that specific line and, and some of these lines I'm okay with. Um, so that, that's kinda my general comment. I think about the fees. I just did a little back of the napkin math about num, depends how many dogs. But, um, I think it may cover itself actually based on the,
▶ 2:19:09 Kimberly Vandiver: looks like the fee right now, depending on the dog, a couple is about 20 bucks. And so if you've got a hundred dogs, that's $2,000. If the dog program is 1700, that is covering itself. But, um, but I would also love to see it, I mean, go up where it needs to be. We just paid for fencing for the dog park through free cash and, and like, think about what are the costs to the city of dogs, um, Um, and make sure that it's coming in. 'cause I, I see in the document that was emailed to us that we're looking at just raising it by a few dollars and perhaps we could go more on that, but I think that's, I'm not sure when we're discussing that, but it, uh, the fee amounts, um, if that's going to be brought before us.
▶ 2:19:51 Kimberly Vandiver: But, uh, I I, that may be another time, but I, I agree that we should, we should look at, um, bringing those up in line. Um, let me check if I've got anything else here. Uh, yeah, I mean, overall, I just, I appreciate this and really thorough presentation and, and it, and, you know, you're clearly being thoughtful about how you're spending your money, so I, I appreciate that. Thank you. Thank you. Uh, councilor Stewart? Thank you Mr. Chair. Thank you Madam Clerk. Um, I'd like to make a motion to move this to the bottom line. Second, We have a motion to move the bottom line by Councilor Stewart, seconded by Councilor Romanul. On discussion, I have Councilor McNaught and then Councilor William, uh, counselor Kati president,
▶ 2:20:34 Manjula Karamcheti: me, and then Councilor Williams, counselor Kati. Oh, great. Thank you. Um, first I just wanted to name and acknowledge how much happens out of the city clerk's office and like with elections. It's a highly complicated, um, proactive and reactive department. And I just like really appreciate what goes on there. And not only is it like the city clerk's office supporting city council running elections, but just the number of, like, the number of people who just go into the city clerk's office who need help with something and may or may or may not be in the right place. So just really appreciate what goes on in the city clerk's office. Could you just remind us what the soft, the agenda software is?
▶ 2:21:31 Manjula Karamcheti: I apologize, I don't remember. No, It's IQM two. So that's what we use to plug in all of our orders so we can, something that We need explicitly to look at Everything Yeah, yeah. Okay. In all of our minutes and Okay. Got, Mm-hmm. Yep. Um, and then I just, you know, in thinking about elections, this is more of a comment than a question, but I, it's kind of a question. I mean, my understanding is yes, we have our, like, typical regular elections, but sometimes there are special elections. Last year, for instance, we had, we had our override mm-hmm. Um, vote. So just I think in line with what Counselor Van Dever was saying, I think this is actually an area where we want to make sure we have some light item line
▶ 2:22:18 Manjula Karamcheti: items for the unexpected. And if we're following the news nationally, I know that I worry about more requirements in terms of what is needed to vote, um, and what that might mean for hours and more volunteers and more people working. So just kind of thinking about that as well. Um, and just would love to hear your thoughts on that, if that's something that you're thinking about too. Yeah. So actually when the Elections administrator came on, one of the first things that I had him do was generate a letter introducing himself and sent it out to our email distribution list with distribution list of all of our poll workers. Um, I wanted to get a good sense on, he introduced himself, and then I wanted to get a good sense on
▶ 2:23:04 who wanted to come back. Um, you know, so like, actually we have about 98% of the people who actually already wanna come back. Um, so, and with it being, I think that with you all consolidating under one space now too, we get we're, we're in a really good groove. It's, it's much more affordable, it's much more efficient. Um, and, you know, knowing that I, I know the numbers of staff, it was, we were able to figure out like what our number would be on how much it's gonna cost us to run the actual election with payroll. Um, I, I've already generated our entire early voting schedule, so I know how many people I'm manually gonna have to fit, be, have here. Um, I know who's gonna, who's gonna come in.
▶ 2:23:47 I've already, I have two people that I poll with Erica Brown from the senior volunteers that are gonna work all of their hours for me. So they don't start until early voting. So then I don't have to pay, we don't have to pay for anything, so they're gonna do all their hours with me. So I have two people, so that, that will save me too. So I'm, I'm trying to be extremely efficient. Um, and, and, and like I said, I think that having it all in one space, it's, it's, it's brought down your, your, um, expenses. Uh, and I think we're gonna be in a really good groove. We've done a lot of the prep work already for 2020 fives election like now. I mean, we're almost like done with so much of the prep work already.
▶ 2:24:30 Leila Migliorelli: Wow. Yeah. We, I'm just waiting on who's gonna be on the ballot, basically. Right. And I just wanna say that I think we've observed your ability to be creative, to think outside the box and figure out what we need. So just wanna appreciate that as well. Thank You. Good. Thank you. All set. Um, president Elli, Thank you. Um, thank you Madam Clerk, um, for your presentation. Um, I appreciate the conversation as Councilor Vandiver said about, you know, thinking about the cuts and, um, and the fact that, not about the cuts, sorry, but about potentially cutting the impact versus, you know, having the fluidity of the, the city clerk budget. I feel like I spent a lot of time this year, um, getting
▶ 2:25:28 Leila Migliorelli: to understand the city clerk's office given the vacancies, um, and the, uh, the elections. And I just, I think it's like a sort of a, maybe like a budgeting philosophy of, yes, 2020 FY 26, we'll have fewer elections, but we're gonna have maybe more elections the next year. This is a, you know, an operating budget. And to leave those items in there, um, for future years, which might be very different than other budgets that don't have as much fluctuations in terms of the cost of printing, et cetera over time. Um, having that there because of the sort of like quote backstop of the, the free cash. So it's, it's not like that if ugh, it is 10 o'clock at night. Exactly. Um, it's, if we don't spend it, it's not like it sits there
▶ 2:26:24 Ryan Williams: and cruise for a rainy day and all of a sudden the city clerk's office is sitting on like a mound of cash. That's not what happens. It goes, it will go back and it'll go back to free cash. Yep. So, um, I've been sitting here listening and thinking about that and kind of came to the same conclusion as Councillor Vandiver. Um, and I'm not gonna belabor the point. Thank you. Thank You, councilor Williams. Yeah. I also wanted to point out that the city clerk's office is, is beholden to all of the regulatory noticing requirements that we have in the city. So it's like, you know, we, we may not have to use it, but having worked with JI over the past few days on trying to reschedule utility poll hearings,
▶ 2:27:02 Ryan Williams: which sounds very mundane until you're the business or homeowner that desperately needs new electrical service in your home for air conditioning or your business, um, you realize that all of the Byzantine sort of regulations at the state level and the city level and the federal level, they all kind of come together and the rubber hits the road at the clerk's office, and then the clerk's office is expected to make it all work and hit all of the right notes. Um, really one of the only departments in the city that's under this kind of stress. And so, you know, I mean, you know, God forbid we have, um, some sort of unanticipated ballot initiative or some sort of, you know, vote that we, that we didn't anticipate.
▶ 2:27:39 Ryan Williams: And we need to have an election and we need to notice a ton of people or all of the buildings that come up in the city. And the, the petitions for, um, sidewalk repair or the petitions for new construction of the petitions for utility polls, all these things that need a person to notice. A lot of that stuff goes out through the city clerk's office. So, um, if we fall short on that line item, we can land ourselves in a lot of hot water and be unable to do the business of the city when we need to do it without having to resort to a city council meeting for free cash, which adds another three weeks of delay to the request. That's all for me. Thank you. Thank You. Uh, council Aldi. Thank you, chair. Um, I do appreciate all my, uh,
▶ 2:28:18 Maya Jamaleddine: colleagues' comments. And I, uh, I hope that this was not led by my, um, questions at the beginning. Um, but I do, uh, plan to ask every single department that comes before us, um, those questions mm-hmm. Because we do receive those questions from our constituents. Sure. Yeah. So when our constituents are going to read your chart and say, how come this department did not spend it, what would be our answer? And I was seeking the, those answers from you. I actually was hoping that when I say, tell me one item that you would like to cut, I was really hoping that I would say none, because we need all these, uh, this money. And I do believe that we, we, you're under, uh, budgeted as a any of our departments.
▶ 2:29:11 Um, uh, and for that I do thank you for your services. And I also, um, will not make the, uh, any suggestion to cut, um, as, um, all what was explained during this conversation. So thank you so much. You're Welcome. Thank you. Thank you. Um, anyone else? We have a motion on the floor. Roll call. Vote please, madam. Okay. C for committees. Counselor Jamine. Yes. Counselor. Karen Chetty. Yes. Counselor Romano. Yes. Counselor Stewart? Yes. Councilor Vandiver. Yes. Councilor Williams? Yes. President Elli? Yes. Chair Garipay? Yes. Motion passes. Um, Did, um, spec specify what budget? Um, what budget was it? 1 61 or one? The city clerk budget or the, uh, The city clerk budget. And now I'll also make a motion to, uh,
▶ 2:30:14 Mark Garipay: move the bottom line number 1 62, the election register. Second. Thank you. We have a motion to move the bottom line of 1 62 Election and registrar made by Councilor Stewart. Seconded by Councilor uh Williams. Uh, on discussion, um, roll call. Vote please. Okay. Counselor Jamine. Yes. Counselor. Karen Chetty. Yes. Counselor Amano? Yes. Counselor Stewart? Yes. Counselor Vandiver? Yes. Counselor Williams? Yes. President Elli? Yes. Chair Gar Pay? Yes. Motion Passes. Thank you. Last up, uh, is our last department, US one 12 City Council. Uh, uh, we have city clerk, uh, ny I gotta get it. I was not, is volunteered to, uh, present tonight for US City Council. I apologize. I was unsure. I didn't know if I was doing it or the present
▶ 2:31:11 'cause it's new, so I just didn't know who had to do it. So anyway, I put this together, but I was not able to get it up onto the IQ two because I didn't miss, I met, I didn't meet the deadline, so I printed hard copies and I have them in front of you on your desk. Um, basically the department overview, you know, 11 counselors, four counselor at large, seven ward counselors. Um, we now, um, have a part-time clerk of committees as well. There's six subcommittee meetings, appropriations and oversight, legal and legislative finance, protection and license, public works, and boards and commissions. Our meeting dates for city council are on the first and third Monday, September through January, March, may, and June.
▶ 2:31:51 February and April we have now switched it. So it's now the first and fourth Monday of the month in July and August the third Monday of the month. Some accomplishments. We revamped the role of Clerk of Committees. It used to be a full-time position. We've now switched that down to a part-time position. Um, we had a successful employee search for that. Um, we're, we're rolling out our new agenda software. I'm still slowly building that out. Um, I'm hoping that we're gonna have that done by June. But I have to be honest, I haven't been able to focus like a lot, a lot of time on it just 'cause I've had a million things going on. But it will happen. Um, obviously, um, you all have updated the, the rules
▶ 2:32:33 of the of of order. Um, and so we updated that again in February. Um, to reflect on what we've done with the budget, salary, wages, um, that decreased 33.9% due to taking the Clerk of Committee's role and making it a part-time role instead of a full-time role. Advertise and printing expenses level funded the agenda software decreased to zero. That's because, and I shouldn't, it was it it's not the agenda software, it's actually the website. I apologize. The website, um, has been moved from our budget and it's now going into the mayor's budget. So the mayor is now going to absorb the charges of our website and, um, and we are gonna be taking the charges of, of the agenda, seminars and training.
▶ 2:33:20 Leila Migliorelli: We decreased that to $0 because we just didn't feel like a part-time clerk really needed to have any training. Um, she can be trained by me. Um, and then just I, on the back of the page, I just basically did what I did with the others. I have the fiscal year 25, what was budgeted, what we currently are at, and what we were looking for for 26. Any, uh, any questions? Uh, president Mili. Thank you, Mr. Chair. Thank you again, Madam Clerk. Um, as, uh, the president who worked with, um, the, the clerk to kind of talk about and map out the department, I, this is, you know, where you'll see the changes and, um, strategic changes to assess the, the Clerk of Committee's position reduced that. So this is our attempt at being, um, tightening our belts
▶ 2:34:21 Leila Migliorelli: and looking at what's really needed and being cost effective with the resources that we have. Um, so I feel like that's, that's leadership in terms of the council and looking at our own department and our own support. Um, so that's that savings with the salary and wages. Um, and then the sort of strategic move of moving both the website and the agenda software over to the city clerk's office. Um, and so just, you know, thank you for leading us. And just a, a note about the, you know, the agenda to, I mean, getting that, that I QM two is a beast and it is very problematic and very finicky. Um, and so I'm looking forward to the new software as I'm sure many others, um, in City Hall are too. Um, but just thank you for your work with that
▶ 2:35:12 Robb Stewart: and doing that on top of everything else has been no problem. A huge year of transition, um, for the clerk's office, elections City Council. And I feel like we've done a good job being fiscal stewards in reducing this budget, um, in order to accommodate and be thoughtful about our changes. Thank you. Thank You Councilor. Um, Stewart, Thank you, uh, Mr. Chair. Uh, thank you. And through the chair, I'd like to thank, uh, president Elli for all the work that she has done, uh, with the city clerk to, uh, help refine and, and improve what we're doing in the council. There's a lot of work I think that's been un behind the scenes and I wanna express that, um, personally that I think it's great that she puts her heart and soul into it.
▶ 2:36:03 Kimberly Vandiver: So, thank you Mr. Chair. Thank you. Uh, councilor Williams. I'm, I'm good. Thanks. Council Vanover. Thank you. Um, I just wanted to ask about, uh, the line names, advertising and printing and expensive expenses. If you could, um, give examples of what goes under them. I'm just not aware what they entail. So there can be legal ads that need to go into the paper, full petitions. Um, we have to front all of those. I mean, what's been happening in the past is that the city has just fronted everything and just then sent an invoice and hoped to get the money back. And most of the time you did, but you probably waited like six months to get it. Um, I, the reason why we canceled Ryan and I canceled on the 28th of April was just
▶ 2:36:53 because the process wasn't making any sense and we were fronting all this money and we're chasing all the money down for utility companies. So we've now had them agree that I am going to send them an invoice for all of these legal ads and all of our printing and all of our postage, and they're going to have to submit us the check and once we've received the check, and then we'll move forward with putting the ads in. And so basically that will be reimbursed. So those ads, we front it, but then well, we were fronting it and then we're just waiting for the money to come to come back to us. Okay. So that's for advertising. For advertising. Okay. And, and you also have to print, I mean, we're using all of our pays.
▶ 2:37:32 Kimberly Vandiver: We're printing, you're using stationary that says city council. 'cause we have to send everything out for the hearings. Yeah. Okay. Got it. And so yeah, that, that may it just, the line in an advertising sounds funny as far as what are we advertising the city council, but I got it. We're advertising these things of Do all of the public hearings. Yeah. Got it. Thank you. That's all. Mm-hmm. Um, councilor Stewart, I'll make a motion to move this to the bottom line. Second. We have a motion to move the bottom line by Councilor Stewart second and by Councilor arm, uh, on discussion. Uh, Clerk, can you take the, uh, Hold please. Counselor Jamine. Yes. Counselor. Kara Chetty. Yes. Counselor Romano? Yes. Counselor Stewart? Yes.
▶ 2:38:22 Mark Garipay: Counselor Vandiver. Yes. Counselor Williams? Yes. President Nielli? Yes. Chair Garate? Yes. Motion passes. Thank you. Uh, next up we have appropriations. Two quick things. We just need to hold, hold the orders. Um, uh, motion. So moved. I'm just gonna read, read it. Uh, ID, uh, 1, 2, 6, 7 8. Fiscal year 2026. Operating budget in the amount of $107 million. $575,802. Uh, motion made to hold by Council Williams. Second. Second. Seconded by Councilor Romanul on discussion. Five. Williams. Who seconded that? Uh, Senator Romano. Romano. Romano. Okay. Yes. Motion. Okay. Counselor Jamine. Yes. Counselor Chetty? Yes. Okay. Councilor Romanul. Yes. Councilor Stewart? Yes. Councilor V. Yes. Councilor Williams? Yes. President mre? Yes. Chair Gareg?
▶ 2:39:27 Mark Garipay: Yes. Motion passes. Thank you. Next up Ordinances id. 1 26 75 Reauthorization of City of Melrose revolving Fund table for fiscal 2026. Motion to hold. Second. We have a motion to hold by President Moore seconded by Councilor Williams on discussion. Mad clerk, will you call the role for the last time? Yes. Or second to last? Yep. Council Aldine? Yes. Council letter. Karen Chetty. Yes. Councilor Ramada. Yes. Council Stewart? Yes. Council Vanderberg? Yes. Williams? Yes. President Melli? Yes. Chair Garipay? Yes. Motion passes. What's The will of the committee? Mr. Chair? I'll make a motion to Adjourn. Second, I have a motion to adjourn by Council Stewart. Seconded by President Meili. On discussion. Madam Clerk
▶ 2:40:23 Councilor Jamal Ine? Yes. Councilor Cameron Che. Yes. Councilor Romanul? Yes. Council Stewart? Yes. Van? Yes. Council Williams? Yes. President Ley? Yes. Chair Gar? Yes. Oh man. Close one.