Appropriations & Oversight Committee — 2025-05-27
Attendance
Cal Finocchiaro ; Mark Garipay ; Ward Hamilton ; Maya Jamaleddine ; Manjula Karamcheti ; Leila Migliorelli ; John Obremski ; Devin Romanul ; Robb Stewart ; Kimberly Vandiver ; Ryan Williams
Agenda
- Call to Order
- Public Comment
- Department Budget Presentations
- Appropriation Request for FY26
- APPRO-2025-50 : Fiscal Year 2026 Operating Budget in the amount of $107,575,802.
- APPRO-2025-34 : Fiscal 2026 Solid Waste Enterprise Fund Budget in the amount of $3,529,118
- APPRO-2025-38 : Fiscal 2026 Sewer Enterprise Budget in the amount of $8,280,121.
- APPRO-2025-39 : Fiscal 2026 Water Enterprise Fund Budget in the amount of $6,441,569.
- Appropriation Request for FY25
- APPRO-2025-35 : An Appropriation from Sewer Retained Earnings account 6000-319000 in the amount of $200,000 to Sewer professional Services account 604412-529000.
- APPRO-2025-36 : An Appropriation from free cash (account 01-324001) in the amount of $180,000 to DPW Highway (#422) for roadway paving.
- APPRO-2025-37 : An Appropriation from Free Cash (01-324001) in the amount of $60,000 to DPW-Facilities (#402).
- Orders
- Order to Place Override Questions on the November 4, 2025 Local Election Ballot
- Adjournment
Minutes
CITY OF MELROSE APPROPRIATIONS & OVERSIGHT COMMITTEE CALENDAR● MAY 27, 2025 Council Chamber, First Floor, Melrose City Hall Committee Meeting 7:02 PM 562 Main Street, Melrose, MA 02176 Attendee Name Title Status Arrived Maya Jamaleddine Vice Chair Present Cal Finocchiaro Present Ward Hamilton Present Manjula Karamcheti Present John Obremski Present Devin Romanul Present Robb Stewart Present Kimberly Vandiver Present Ryan Williams Present 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
APPRO-2025-34 Enterprise Fund Fiscal 2026 Solid Waste Enterprise Fund Budget in the amount of $3,529,118 Ought to Pass City Council
APPRO-2025-38 Enterprise Fund Fiscal 2026 Sewer Enterprise Budget in the amount of $8,280,121. Ought to Pass City Council
APPRO-2025-39 Enterprise Fund Fiscal 2026 Water Enterprise Fund Budget in the amount of $6,441,569. Ought to Pass City Council
APPRO-2025-35 Appropriation City of Melrose Page 1 6/12/2025 2:31 PM Minutes Appropriations & Oversight Committee May 27, 2025 An Appropriation from Sewer Retained Earnings account 6000- 319000 in the amount of $200,000 to Sewer professional Services account 604412-529000. Ought to Pass City Council
APPRO-2025-36 Appropriation An Appropriation from free cash (account 01-324001) in the amount of $180,000 to DPW Highway (#422) for roadway paving. Ought to Pass City Council
APPRO-2025-37 Appropriation An Appropriation from Free Cash (01-324001) in the amount of $60,000 to DPW-Facilities (#402). Ought to Pass City Council
(ID # 12728) Ballot/Overide Order Order to Place Override Questions on the November 4, 2025 Local Election Ballot Ought to Pass City Council City of Melrose Page 2 6/12/2025 2:31 PM
Transcript
▶ 0:01 Mark Garipay: Yes, right there. Room. What? That wasn't me. Help me understand. Good evening. The time is 7 0 2. Uh, on Thursday, may, Tuesday, May 27th. Sixth. Seventh, 27th. Thank you. Uh, this is a meeting, the Appropriation Oversight Committee. I'm Mark Ape, the chair. Uh, joining me tonight is Vice Chair Jamal Dean. Um, council is, uh, Chetty Counselor Williams, counselor Hamilton, counselor Armo, counselor Reky Council, FANUC Chiro, counselor Stewart Stewart and Councilor Vandiver. This serves as a notice of a quorum for the record in accordance with the open meeting law. This meeting is being recorded and broadcast live on MMTV, uh, going under public comment. I will motion by unanimous consent to open the floor for public comment.
▶ 0:55 Mark Garipay: Seeing no objections, we are open for public comment. This is a portion of the meeting where the public may speak to any item on tonight's agenda. Comments expressing any viewpoint on other matters are also welcome. If there's anyone in the gallery that would like to speak tonight, please come forward. Uh, sign the sheet, your name, address, um, and we have up to five minutes, uh, for public comment. Good evening, everyone. Uh, my name is Leslie means I am the proud president of the Melrose Educators Union. I am also an English teacher at the Melrose Middle School, and I'm here tonight to urge you to come to a swift decision about the override proposal that the mayor will be presenting at the end
▶ 1:40 of the agenda this evening until you have all given your stamp of approval. We cannot begin the work of educating our 400 members, a quarter of which live in Melrose about the specifics of the ballot question and how it may impact teaching and learning conditions in our schools. Our members will be out there knocking on doors. They will be out there holding signs, and we need a detailed plan to deliver to them before they head off on their well-deserved summer break, or more likely off to their summer jobs. We are hopeful that you will see the need to quickly vote on a ballot question that will provide the necessary funds to establish fully functioning schools. We had our year end general membership meeting this
▶ 2:24 afternoon after school let out. We were joined by Senator Lewis and State Representative Lipper Garabedian, and they talked to us about some of the shortcomings in the state's funding structure. And while they recognize those shortcomings, it is clear that the fixes to those will not be in the immediate future. This is why it is so critical that we get Melrose on the right path With the right ballot question, I think we can all agree that we do not wanna be back here next year having the exact same conversation. Once again, Thank you. Thank you, Ms. Beans. My name is Alex Leo, and I'm an eighth grader here at at Melrose. Every year, eighth graders in Massachusetts must complete a civics action project relating to their community.
▶ 3:20 I'm in a group with fellow classmates, grace Kay and Naima Diaz to look at the override. It's no secret that our schools are struggling, roads are falling apart, and programs are losing funding for getting cut. We know that the city council has already been considering an override to increase taxes to fund the city, which we desperately need. But this will not work unless the people of Melrose choose it. Here in Melrose, parents and students have noticed that there are less teachers and more frequent turnover Next year classes all across Melrose Public schools are getting bigger, despite barely having enough teachers to manage our current numbers. Our very own middle school principal is leaving due
▶ 3:56 to severe budget deficits. We cannot retain teachers like this. Melrose is a residential city full of families and children who need a quality education. But what kind of education will students be getting if they don't have experienced teachers to guide them? Decisions that split our community can be complicated and difficult to understand. Everyone, no matter their vote wants Melrose to thrive. Raising taxes is terrifying for many. Whether it be those who've lived in Melrose for decades, or those who've recently moved and are barely hanging on to the rising cost of living, not raising taxes is terrifying. For others who see the problems caused by our limited budget, an override is necessary
▶ 4:34 to keep our community functioning. When Mayor Titis presented the fiscal year 26th budget, she explained measures that needed to be taken. Some may already be aware, but here's just a couple of programs negatively affected by our budget. The Melrose Public Library will be closed on Sundays. 21 city positions will be cut. The future of city events such as home for the holidays and the Victorian Fair are up in the air because paying our police department overtime might not be financially possible, and in our schools teaching and administrative roles will be cut. We need more teachers and more support, not less. Despite our ability to budget, we cannot function as a city without implementing drastic change.
▶ 5:15 This change can be cutting programs and jobs, or it can be a tax override. Talk to those who are unsure, discuss challenging things. Advocate, we decide Melrose's future. Thank you for coming and your engagement. Anyone else, uh, looking to speak? Good evening, Mr. Bell. Good evening. All the real question tonight is what do we want Melrose to be? It is a simple question, But it's a non-partisan, multi-generational question. Each and every one of us has to look into ourselves and say, what kind of community do I wanna live in? It's a choice we made when we decided to settle here. It's a choice we have to remake. Every time an existential financial crisis like this comes up, we're all in it together.
▶ 6:27 There's nobody else gonna solve the problem for us. There's no higher power, spiritual or temporal that is gonna help us pay our bills, our bills. Um, we're gonna get what we pay for no more and no less. So we're gonna all have to decide. And it doesn't matter whether you're right or left or center. You've gotta decide what we want for services and what we're willing to pay for. We're looking to you on the council to not only support putting this on the ballot, we're also looking to you. You are our elected overseers of financial matters. We're also looking to you to lead, to take a stand and hopefully a unanimous stand in favor of an override. You know, it's overdue. Everyone who has looked at Melrose Finances in the last
▶ 7:32 20, 30 years knows that overrides are necessary. We're not in a position to grow our way out of it. We wouldn't want that degree of change of our community. So it's either cut services or it's grow, Or it's pass and override, and it's that simple. So let's face up to the fact and let's be leaders in making Melrose what we want it to be, which is a good community to raise a family and to grow old at home. And that's the simple question. Thank you. Thank you. If you could just, um, make sure you sign in. Um, I am Okay. Thank you. Appreciate it. Anyone else looking to speak? Uh, Jim o Locklin, 39 Lincoln Street. I've spoken to the council several times now about the need for the override with a lot of facts and figures,
▶ 8:39 and you might've seen my letter to the editor last week that spelled all that out. So I won't go over all that again. I do ask the council to unanimously support this override request and act on it quickly. Uh, we are eager to get out there and start explaining to the population what's involved in this and more of why. And we need specifics to be able to do that. Uh, the other thing I ask, and I'll just, not to repeat what Bob said, but it is important, and I ask you all to get behind this as well, don't simply just vote to put it on the ballot, but get out. Dare talk to your constituents. Embrace this. And I don't wanna say do the responsible thing, but the city is in dire financial straits
▶ 9:20 and we need leadership at all levels to help push this over the finish line. Thank you. Thank you, Mr. Role Locklin. Is there anyone? Line? There Are none. Is there anyone? Hi, Shelby Doyle, Tremont Street. I just wanna add that I also support this override getting a chance to go onto the ballot for people to vote. Um, I'm newer to Melrose. I saw the vote that was last year. Came outta nowhere. Whoa, what is this? This year I feel like I've had so much communication from my child's school. I understand what's at stake, but I've also talked to others in the community. Folks that work with me, coworking on Melrose, other entrepreneurs that don't have kids yet. I talked to older folks at the Y
▶ 10:13 or folks headed down to the diner on, on Friday mornings. And people in Melrose, for the most part do understand that this is a place that if we wanted to be a place where it's good to grow up and good to grow old, we're gonna have to pay for that and be sure that we don't let our infrastructure crumble and that we have good common spaces for everybody to thrive. So, um, I ask that you please, as others have said, not just vote on it, but get out there and support it because what I'm seeing, the conversations I'm having, there's a lot of support for it. So I hope that you'll stick your neck out with us to, um, really lead for what Melrose is and hopefully will be, uh, for all of us into the future. Thanks.
▶ 10:57 Mark Garipay: Thank you. Thank you. Anyone else looking to speak? Okay. Um, if there are no objections, I'll motion by Unanim Before I do that, you should. No one else is online. There are No, no one's online. Thank You. Uh, if there are no objections, I'll motion by unanimous consent to close the public comment portion of our meeting. So you no objections. Public comment is now closed. We are moving on our agenda to department budget presentations. We have the Department of Public works in front of us. We have Director pro, aas Ellis, and Deputy director, Mr. Troop. Um, the floor is yours. Uh, we have a number of different departments. Do you have a presentation you wanna present or do you, you wanna do each department?
▶ 12:01 So if it truly, Um, If it's okay with you, I'd like to go through the PowerPoint, um, and then, and then take up any questions. Uh, division by division from the budget, but the PowerPoint covers all of them. Okay, That's Fine. Does that work? Yep. Okay. Just um, point of information for everyone in the gallery, the override. I know a lot of people here for the override question that is last on our agenda. If you don't have a copy of the agenda, F law is yours. Thank you. And I'm not sure if you're able to put the PowerPoint up on the screen, Elena, I'm not sure where that is. It should be, um, if you're able to open the agenda packet, it's in there. If you want to just grab it from there. Is it an iq?
▶ 12:59 What and other stuff? Yeah, she probably, yeah, so she Alright guys, that's okay. Um, yeah, right there. Thanks. Thank you. Floor's, yours. Okay, thank you. Um, so if you wanna go to the next slide. So we have a lot of general information here. It's largely just for anybody from the public who, um, may click on the agenda packet and wanna look at the presentation. We're not gonna go through it in detail. Um, but for starters, thank you for, um, considering our budget this evening and we welcome any questions that you might have. Um, the DPW in this proposed budget is 64 full-time employees, one part-time and two partially funded split into four main divisions. Administration, engineering, which includes water and sewer billing as well.
▶ 14:48 Facilities and operations within our administration division. Uh, we do all the public relations, accounts payable and receivable payroll. Um, our environmental and outreach coordinator and our rentals coordinator and engineering water and sewer billing manages most of our capital projects, um, out in the community. Roadway projects, water and sewer mains, um, permits and inspections for private work and work in the right of way development reviews. Um, they're the keeper of all of our plans and our electronic geographic information systems and, uh, water and sewer billing. And then facilities, as you should all know, I would hope, um, DPW manages the facilities, both the capital projects in the buildings
▶ 15:36 and also the operations and maintenance. And then operations is by far our largest division, which includes many of the subdivisions that we see on the budget tonight. Highway, snow and ice parks and forestry, fleet cemetery, water and sewer and sanitation. So of note, um, I include this slide every year in the budget presentation, but this year we have two major vacant positions that are not being backfilled due to the budget constraints. And that is our city engineer and our facilities manager. So with the four divisions that we just went through, the, um, the DPW has a manager for each of those four subdivisions. And we are now down to just two managers and myself. So Jim, myself and Joe Hobbs, um, are what's left of the DPW management out
▶ 16:28 of the five positions that we normally have. Um, just a shout out to some of our new employees, Jimmy Geer, Nolan Joyce, Shane Allen, and Adam Ma Luke. Um, they've both, they've all joined within the last fiscal year. And congratulations to Paul Thomas, the Winthrop School custodian, who was here for many years. Um, anyone whose kids went to the Winthrop know Paul, so we are sad to see him go. He retired May 1st. Um, the vacancies that we have right now are one school custodian, one ed stations custodian, the city engineer, the facilities manager, a cemetery, equipment operator, and a mechanic. And all of those are unfunded in this year's, uh, the fiscal 26 budget. Um, I'm not gonna go through these next two slides
▶ 17:18 with our operational accomplishments. They're really just for you folks to peruse at your leisure. Um, these relate to our day-to-day operations and how many of each thing that we've done in the, uh, since the beginning of this fiscal year. And then similarly, our capital projects, I'll talk about just one or two of them. Um, we were very excited that we had A-A-A-D-A grant that we were able to use to add a handicap door opener to Melrose High School, which, uh, grew out of a civics project from a student. And we were really excited to be able to implement that project. Um, and I'll, I'll leave all the rest of the capital projects actually for you to look at, at your leisure. So if we go to the council agenda items, the first
▶ 18:11 and probably most important thing that I wanna share with you on behalf of Elena personally and on behalf of the DPW, we just wanna thank you for your continued support of the DPW. We know that this is a challenging process and we just wanna let you know that we feel as manager, the leadership of the DPW, that we've done this together with you and with your cooperation. So we continue to thank you for your support of, of our department and, uh, we know we're gonna face these challenges and, uh, deliver a quality service throughout the course of a, a very challenging fiscal. 26 in front of you tonight are gonna be the general fund operating budget, $8.7 million, your wastewater, uh, sewer solid waste enterprise budgets.
▶ 18:52 You can see those numbers. Uh, and then we have some free cash appropriations that are for your consideration, including the Penney Road pump station out of the sewer, uh, enterprise fund paving projects, which is, uh, some money appropriated to supplement our paving operation. Uh, and hopefully to be able to do some paving this construction season. And then our facilities construction services will, which will allow us to get to the finish line over at the Franklin School and through the skylight projects, uh, at the high school, you'll also have for your consideration, uh, the rates for water and sewer. And those are, uh, coming up, uh, in the next couple of nights and weeks. Uh, our total general fund budget
▶ 19:34 of $8.7 million is a reduction of almost 4.5% over fiscal 25. You'll see similar percentage in the water enterprise fund, a 4.2% reduction over fiscal 25. The sewer enterprise fund is reduced at 2.7 and as a preview, we are not proposing rate increases. Don't wanna be the spoiler there. Um, the solid waste enterprise budget is going up and that is strictly contractual. Uh, that's a percentage increase year over year, and that's a 3.7% increase over fiscal 25. And then our grand total of all DPW budgets of $26,969,193 represents a reduction of 2.9% over fiscal 25. That equates to over $800,000 that the DPW is responsible for. Uh, that is out of our budget. That drastically affects, uh, everyday services.
▶ 20:30 It really focuses us to deliver needs before we deliver wants. And that's the challenge that we're gonna face in the next fiscal year. As you can see in the division budgets, everything is being reduced. You see the majority of the salaries from the admin and engineering or from the managers. And then we've tried to do some right sizing in some of our line items through the individual budgets. Again, I'll call your attention to a snow and ice budget, which, uh, is increased to kind of match the increase in costs to deliver our snow and ice operation over the year. And it actually narrows the gap for any of the deficit that we tend to try to, uh, offset at the end of the snow and ice season.
▶ 21:12 The other increase, as we just mentioned, is the solid waste and enterprise solid waste Enterprise Fund, 3.7%. Again, that is strictly, uh, contractual. Um, as you're well aware, some of the employees have their salaries broken down through several D pws. There is a breakdown and that is available for, for view. Uh, those are reviewed every year and they're commensurate to the amount of work and the level of service that they deliver in the particular divisions in which they're servicing. Uh, this includes, uh, positions of salary, two full-time employees, uh, shared with other departments. Um, is it you going to take over? Sure, go ahead. Um, so the highlights of our budget, uh, the salary increases.
▶ 22:01 We have a successfully negotiated contract right now with the Laborers Union and the clerical union, um, through extensions to the prior, uh, union contract. So those are extended through the end of fiscal 26. So all the numbers that you see in our budget right now, they include any cost of living increases and step increases that are contractually required. Um, in some previous years when we're in the midst of negotiating, sometimes they're placeholders and then we have to add on after the fact. But fortunately for this year, everything is negotiated and everything you see in the budget is reflects those negotiations. Um, there are some impacts from rising energy costs and transitions toward electrification.
▶ 22:43 Some of the prior heating costs for the library have been moved entirely into the electric line for the facilities library, uh, utility costs, because that building now is fully electric. Um, as you mentioned, the, there's a 2.5% increase in the snow budget just to move closer to our annual averages of actual expenditures. Um, the solid waste enterprise budget increases due to the contractual increases with the, with cosella, but also due to the cart loan, which we now start paying back, starting this coming fiscal year. Um, and then pretty much everything else is level funded or decreased. And I'm gonna run through in the slides that follow a bunch of the reductions. Um, there are far more reductions in our budget than there
▶ 23:30 are increases, and I think it's important, um, for everybody, both here and the public to understand what is being reduced. So as I mentioned before, six positions that were not backfilling. Five are regular budgeted positions. One is funded through the ed station's budget, so that doesn't really show in our budget. Um, and depending on the fees they collect, we may or may not be able to fill that position in fiscal 26. But at a minimum, the five vacancies that sit within our budget are not being funded. And then we are, right now we are leaving the ed station's position vacant as well. Um, we've cut part-time and intern salaries that reflect our summer help program. You might recall that you approved $120,000 of free cash
▶ 24:16 to fund the fiscal 26 summer help program. It's reduced from its prior level in terms of the number of people that we can have. But fortunately, we're in full swing. Um, with having lined up the kids who are gonna be working this summer, um, administration overtime is reduced. We are proposing to take some of our solid waste and recycling events, not the ones that are on the calendar already, but the ones that would be on next year's on calendar, year 26 as calendar and consolidate some of those. So we can limit the overtime. Um, so for instance, you might have shredding on the same day as, uh, hazardous waste, something like that. But we're just trying to consolidate those, um, overtime. We do a lot of items on overtime
▶ 25:03 that we can't do when there are cars parked on the street or when there's too much traffic. So we are not doing the flower watering this year. I think you've heard the mayor talk about that. The parklets, the entire installation and breakdown of them takes place on overtime. So we won't be putting those out. Um, outdoor dining. Previously we just had a permit that we issued, but we were willing to put barriers out for the restaurants and then take them up at the end of the year. That's now gonna be a fee service. Um, same with hanging banners downtown. When we hang a banner that says Vote Tuesday, those will still will still be the ones that put it up, put them up. But if they're for private events, we're gonna have
▶ 25:41 to start charging the entities who, um, are hosting the events for the overtime to put the banners up. It's impossible to do those during the workday because they're right on Main Street. Um, and they require a a lift truck. Um, we've reduced some line items for clothing tools, professional development for DPW staff, um, highway division over time we're reducing, we are gonna reduce the amount of traffic line painting. We're gonna do as much painting as we can this spring with the rest of our fiscal 25 money. And then we'll do our usual just before school painting of the crosswalks in the school areas. And then in the next spring, we may not be able to paint, um, much, if any on the roads. Streetlight maintenance and highway hired equipment.
▶ 26:31 We hadn't been spending those budgets entirely, so we dropped them down a little bit. The national pollution pollutant discharge elimination system, drainage federal permit has a lot of requirements. Um, we, we know we need that money, but we can do kind of the bare minimum under the permit in fiscal year 26. That's the plan. Um, and so we've dropped that down a tiny bit. Sidewalk repairs we've dropped down. And with the operating budget, we'll only be doing immediate safety repairs. And then everything else will be with the free cash budget. We will likely get behind on our sidewalk repair list in fiscal 26. Um, same with signs, street signs, you know, if a stop sign comes down, obviously we'll put that right back up.
▶ 27:13 If a parking sign is faded, we may not be replacing it. Um, sanitation overtime, we are gonna have to cut hours down at the city yard on Saturdays. That's a substantial expense because it is all overtime. Um, we are looking at either just doing every other Saturday just doing mornings or possibly doing fewer Saturdays in the summer so that we can still do every week in the fall during the heaviest period. But somewhere we have to cut out half of the overtime. Um, that's what's reflected in our budget. We're looking at hours at the city art office itself for potential reductions there, um, with no conclusive decision on that. Um, parks and forestry, we've reduced our contractual services a little bit
▶ 27:59 and, you know, we'll just keep up as best we can. We're removing the support for the Adopt a Site program. That was a small amount, but it just means that the people adopting the sites have to do more on their own. Um, automotive parts we've reduced to basically what we've used the last couple of years, but what that means is there's no contingency anymore. If we have a major vehicle repair, we may be before you looking for capital stabilization funds because we've eliminated our contingency in the operating budget. Um, cemetery, we we're dropping down the contractual services and supplies a little bit. Uh, so those are the reductions, the bulk of them. Um, the water and sewer enterprise funds really didn't need
▶ 28:38 to see any substantial reductions because the vacancies resulted in reductions. And we've actually done really well with our MWR assessments this year. On the sewer side, all the work we've done to remove extraneous flow rainwater, um, from and groundwater from the sewer system has resulted in our rates coming down or our assessment coming down. So we're able to, um, not have any increases proposed to our water and sewer rates for next year. Um, and we also don't need to make any transfers into reserves because with the total budget for those funds coming down, we are now at our 10% goal before we were right below our 10% goal of reserves compared to the operating budget. Um, and our rates are projected
▶ 29:23 Mark Garipay: to meet all revenue obligations with no transfers from retained earnings. So this is a good thing. Last year was the first year in a few years that we didn't have to transfer and we shouldn't have to transfer again this coming year. So with that, uh, we'll open it up to questions. That's it. Um, okay. Um, alright. Moving forward. We're gonna go over each, uh, budget one by one. And there may be still questions I saw. I just noticed that you had all these, um, you had a summary in each one, but as we go through each muni report, they'll, they'll probably be questions again, so you may be repeating yourself a little bit, so. Sure. Uh, first up is Department 4 0 1 Public Works admin and engineering.
▶ 30:08 Maya Jamaleddine: So, uh, are there any questions? Councilor Jamal Ledine, councilor Stewart, after that, thank you. Thank you Chair. Uh, thank you both for always being, uh, very informative in all the presentation that you provide for us. Um, I, you know, I hear about all the cuts that we are going to have, um, uh, six employees that are not, or positions that are not going to be, uh, uh, placed. Um, and I did hear about the impact or the services that we will not be providing anymore. Um, can you tell me if, um, and I'm not sure if you have that in mind, but, uh, any direct impact for constituents, something, a service that constituents may be requesting from you, from your department? And now with those cuts, we, you know,
▶ 31:01 moving forward we will be saying, unfortunately, we won't be able to provide this service any longer. Yeah, I think the, the cutting down of our at the city yard is a big one because people are very interested in being able to access the city yard for drop off. Um, the, uh, the reduction in the sidewalk budget is a, is a definite one. If we can't keep up on sidewalk repairs, I know we have a lot of cracked sidewalks around, people would like to see repaired. Um, tree removal is a tough one. Being down one person, technically the we're down one person in the cemetery, but I like to think of cemetery parks and forestry as all a group that does similar work. And so we do everybody's cross-trained
▶ 31:47 and we put everybody where they need to be the most. And I would say, you know, the cemetery when there's a funeral, that's a must have. So we have to do the preparations for that. And so someone typically is getting pulled from parks and forestry into the cemetery to keep up with their demand. And so it ends up being parks and forestry that fall behind. Right now we are very behind on tree trims, tree removals, um, and most likely we'll continue to get behind on those, um, parks. We're doing our best to keep up on our mowing and maintenance, but we have only a handful of employees and we have over 80 locations that we maintain, uh, weekly to twice a week. So, you know, the grass might be a little longer,
▶ 32:32 it might take a little longer for us to get out and line a field or, you know, have things ready for a user group. Um, so those are Some, I know we're reducing the trash barrels as well, right? Yes, correct. So we are piloting a carry and carry out at a few of our parks. Um, we're removing the, the, um, the trash route on Sunday mornings that we just added a few, we a few years ago. Um, so in doing that, the locations that really build up the most over the weekends tend to be some of our parks. And so to not have overflowing barrels in a lot of litter, we're, we're piloting carry and carry out at Foss Park, Hesseltine, the Common and, uh, Cedar Park. And, and just out of curiosity, do you think
▶ 33:17 Maya Jamaleddine: that this would be, um, unfortunately this is, this is what we have, this is all the means that we have. And I understand you're stretching everything in your department, um, as well as all the other departments and, uh, around the city, but, you know, removing those barrels, do you think it's going to actually resolve some of the issue or is it going to create more problem for your department? Because you are going to hear from, uh, constituents that there is trash everywhere. There is, um, fraud probably and stuff. That's exactly why we're referring to it as a pilot. We know a lot of other communities successfully do carry and carry out at their parks. Um, but we don't wanna say definitively
▶ 34:04 that we think it's gonna work, so we're gonna try it out at these locations. Um, but you know, if we have to go back to having them, it is stretching our resources even even thinner. If I could add to though this, this is a proven, uh, strategy to help keep things clean. It's done in the national parks, it's done at local beaches and things like that. And really, as we go through this challenge, I heard from a lot of people earlier, we're asking people for help. And I think that this is a very easy thing for people to help out with. And I think that immediately, as long as we get people to, to help us out, I think they're gonna see drastic improvements right away. But again, we're asking for help. Yeah.
▶ 34:45 Maya Jamaleddine: And, and, and again, and the reason why I'm asking this question is because I know that this is the moment where people need to step up and help wherever they can, uh, because unfortunately we are out of resources and we are running thin. Um, my other question, I know that there is few other orders that we sub we approved. Um, are we going to still be able to do it knowing with all these cuts or is it going to be impacted? We should be able to keep up on all the free cash orders that were approved? The, the ones that were approved, they're predominantly either construction that's already in place or that's already been, you know, initiated to, to enough of a degree that we should be able to follow through.
▶ 35:30 Robb Stewart: I would say the, um, one of the orders that's on for tonight, the construction services assistance for our facilities capital projects, um, that will help us implement the projects that will be across all of our consultants, our HVAC, our building envelope consultant, our asbestos removal consultant. They will all help us be able to oversee these projects to get them to the finish line. Awesome. Thank you. Council Stewart? Thank you Mr. Chair. Mr. Tru and Ms. Les. Thank you. Uh, just specific to the administration engineering, um, it's very along the same lines as what council Joel Maldon was just asking is what is the impact, uh, of a typical constituent, um, for, for the 13% reduction that you're facing across engineering
▶ 36:23 and across administration? Where are they gonna see that impact? I want the, 'cause I want the public to hear this. I think the 13.2% reduction in our administration and engineering budget, the biggest impact is the lack of staff. So on the more administrative end, the city engineer and the facilities manager are a large component of this budget. Um, we, I don't know that the impacts will be seen immediately by the public for having those two positions vacant, but the long term impacts are, are fairly significant on the facilities manager end. There's, we know there's a ton of deferred maintenance. We know that our facilities manager was out in the schools all the time, out in the public buildings all the time
▶ 37:09 trying to foresee problems, trying to prevent things from happening. One risk is that we have to be more reactive now. We have to wait for something to fail, um, before we, before we can necessarily get to it on the facilities end. On the engineering end, we're basically putting a halt on all new programs. So we will not be applying for new grants. We've done a lot of great grant work, especially on the storm water quality end of things. Um, and, you know, trying to mitigate flooding, resilience, that kind of stuff. We're just not gonna have the, the person power to apply for those now safe routes to schools. Um, some of the other, you know, safety grants and things that we've applied for, we're,
▶ 37:53 we're not applying for any new grants. So, um, we're gonna work with one fewer body in the engineering division and they are all needed to just get the regular day-to-day work done. I, one follow up question to that, um, in another year where you do have the resources to go for grants, um, what's the, what's the total amount of grants that you'd see in a fiscal year? Roughly 200, 500. Oh, More than that. More than that. So, um, so We're gonna lose that. Yeah, so there's all the money that comes in with the Complete Streets grant is about 450,000. We're working with a million dollar earmark for Alpine Park. Um, a million dollar earmark for the Lebanon Sylvan flooding issue. Um, I would say, you know, in the one
▶ 38:43 Robb Stewart: to several million dollars potentially per year to, uh, in grant funding that we, that we bring In. So the opportunity cost, if I'm hearing this correctly, is we have 800,000 in real cost, but there's several million in that opportunity cost in addition. Definitely, Yes. Alright. That is a major impact because that basically stops progression of what, what your um, what your administration team does. Correct. Thank you. Thank you, Mr. Chair. Council Shati. Um, so Councilor Stewart sort of asked the same question that I had in mind, um, but I'll just extend it a little bit. I think as like award counselor, um, for my constituents, I think the people that I have generally reached out to the most, other than the two
▶ 39:30 Manjula Karamcheti: of you are the facilities manager and the city engineer. And so my question, given the impact of those two positions not being filled, where do we go? Where do constituents go when a pipe bursts, when there's something complicated going on with their own with infrastructure, um, because that's a significant decrease in administration. And so I, I heard you say that people might not feel it right away, but I'm already feeling it in terms of thinking about my role as a city counselor and how I advocate for the things that constituents need when they contact me first. Um, so can you just speak to Sure. Yeah. So the, um, so we will have an email coming out from DPW soon with instructions for the city council
▶ 40:21 and, uh, department heads as to who to contact for various things. Um, we're filling the gaps as best we can between Jim, myself and Joe Hobbs. Um, the, the last three standing. Um, we also have Jay Coy, our deputy city engineer. He, he was just appointed acting city engineer. So even though there's no way he can do both his own job and Vonnie's prior job, um, he will do his best to fill in there. But I would say for constituents, interestingly, the vast majority of constituent in, uh, inquiries that we have, they're really best served going through calling the DPW main number and the engineering division main number because then they can get directed to exactly the right person. Um, most of the time when somebody contacts me directly,
▶ 41:10 I'm not actually the right person. I'm happy to help and I, and I'm happy to, you know, put in a work order or redirect a request. But, um, the most efficient way is usually our, you know, frontline customer service folks who can get that work order right in or who can check to see if it's already in and, and update people on the status. And so that's what we encourage people to do. Thank you so much. Appreciate it. All set. But no, that's a lot Of extra for everybody, so. Yep. All set. Um, any other questions on Department 4 0 1 Public Works admin and engineering counselor or Ramal? Thanks so much. I have other questions on other sections, but since you mentioned two projects that are specific Ward seven, um, would you mind clarifying
▶ 41:54 Mark Garipay: that, uh, I know you said the grants bandwidth is going to be reduced to zero, but the, um, ability to complete those projects that are already in motion, is that going to be affected at all? No, we will, we will do our best to complete them on schedule. Great. Yeah. Wonderful. Thank you very much. What's the will of the committee Council Stewart? Thank You Mr. Chair. I'll make a motion to move this to bottom line. Second, We have a motion to move to the bottom line of department 4 0 1 admin and engineering made by Council Stewart, seconded by Council Ram Ramal on discussion. All in favor? Aye. Aye. Opposed? That bottom line's moved. Next up, 4 0 2 public work facilities. Any questions specific to public work facilities?
▶ 42:43 Robb Stewart: Okay, what's the will of the committee, Mr. Chair? I'll make a motion to move, uh, 4 0 2 to the bottom line. Second. Motion to move four oh twos bottom line facilities and maintenance made by Council Stewart. Seconded by Council Ro on discussion. Aye. All in. Oh, sorry. I was excited. Jump the gun a All a opposed that bottom line will be moved. Next up we have 4 22 Public Works Highway. Any questions on public works? Um, highway Counsel Stewart? Thank You Mr. Chair. Um, similar to my last question, uh, specific to, uh, the highway. Um, I'm, I'm interested again in, since you have a 9.5% reduction, what the outcomes, uh, or lack thereof that the, our constituency will be facing? I know you mentioned I, uh,
▶ 43:41 sidewalk repair was one. Uh, what else? Line painting, sign replacement, sidewalk repair, as you said. Uh, drain maintenance and drainage projects, meeting that federal permit. Um, we'll still meet the permit, but we'll just do the exact minimum of what we need to do. Um, the reductions in streetlight maintenance and, uh, hired equipment were more consistent with recent spending trends. So we shouldn't see necessarily a, um, a reduction service on those two, but all those others will be a reduction in service. Okay. And what I, what I did not hear was potholes. Um, what about potholes? Potholes are done during our normal day to day. They're, they don't tend to be an overtime expense. Um, and the, uh, the material
▶ 44:34 to fill the potholes is still funded, um, to the level consistent with what we've been spending recently. So that really shouldn't be impacted and we're not, uh, we have a full complement of highway division employees right now, so we don't have any vacancies specifically in highway. Great. Great. Thank you. Thank you Mr. Chair. Councilor Ro? Yes. Thank you. Um, can you just gimme an idea of what $35,000 in sidewalk repairs would means? Like how that translates, you know, roughly. I mean, I know, I dunno if that's hard to que No, I can question to answer. Um, I can pull up the pre-cash memo because I think we had Oh, sorry. Some statistics in there. No, it's, I mean it's not pertinent to this particular order, but is
▶ 45:15 Cal Finocchiaro: If, if that's gonna, we're gonna be discussing that, um, as a free cash order later in the night? No, that one was already voted on before. Okay. But I just know in the memo we had said, um, that the $50,000 could do 115 concrete panels. So that gives you a rough Proportion. Okay. So going forward, if a constituent needs a sidewalk repaired and they submit a, like an EO like request, is that, or reach out to us, is that, um, if it's a safety issue that will be taken care of, but do the budget re reduction, you're gonna have to say this might have to sit and not be done. Yeah. And we may have to be a little more discerning on what we consider to be a safety concern. An immediate safety concern. Mm-hmm. We're not.
▶ 46:02 Um, but the process will be the same. Still put in the sidewalk assessment through EOA resident can go online and put, put it in or you can put it in and then we will go out and do the assessment. But we just will, we'll prioritize which ones need to be done sooner. Okay. And this is for concrete, not special For both. Concrete and asphalt. Okay. Asphalt we can repair in-house so we have a little more flexibility. Okay. Thank you. Okay. Um, any questions if not? No, go ahead. Um, Council remodel. Oh, thank you very much. Um, one quick question on road paving. 'cause I'd say other than potholes and schools road paving is probably the number one constituent request that I get. And um, I know you've mentioned it
▶ 46:43 Devin Romanul: before, so if you wouldn't mind indulging me, uh, repeating the statistics around how many road miles we have in the city, how many we're able to pave every year, and what you would consider fully funded in terms of, um, you know, uh, uh, keeping up with the normal lifespan of the, of the road. So we have about 90 miles of roads. Um, actually maybe more like 80 90 I think is water means. Um, and we have estimated that we need about $2.6 million per year to keep up long term on the roadway conditions. We tend to spend between a million and a million and a half per year. None of that comes out of the operating budget. It's all chapter 90 road bond contributions from private utilities who do work in the city.
▶ 47:26 Ryan Williams: Um, and grants. Great. Wonderful. Thank you very Much. Council Williams? Yeah, For the good of the public and council, I just wanted to note that this year Melrose will be receiving an increase in chapter 90 funds, I think to the tune of $700,000 up from 500,000 at least that's what I saw in the preliminary estimate. Um, which of course will pay for labor and paving. It pays, we don't typically use it for any internal labor. Okay. Um, but we use it for our paving Contract. I got it. Okay. Very good. So some of the challenges we're facing here are blunted, thankfully by the state producing a little bit more cash for the Chapter 90 roadway program. Thank you. Thank you. Um, if I could just ask a couple questions.
▶ 48:09 Mark Garipay: Budget went down 77,000 but you have two line items. Storm, I'm sure there's a great explanation, but storm drain maintenance and sidewalk repairs where we have not spent any money right as of yet of 125,000 according to uni that I'm looking at. So, so that's prior free cash. Um, and that pays for, so, uh, with our on-call contractor, DNR paving, we schedule them once a year to do a whole bunch of the larger repairs that we can't do ourselves. And they haven't come in yet this year, so that's why that's unspent. But that will definitely be spent by the end of the fiscal year where we've identified the areas we want them to work in and we're lining them up now. So we'll spend 125,000 that was budgeted this current year
▶ 48:56 Mark Garipay: that hasn't, nothing's been spent yet, but we will spend it by June 30th. Uh, yeah, I'm not sure about the 125 that's in which two line items. Um, ece, it looks like, uh, storm drain maintenance, uh, 5 5 27 1 0 1 5 27 1 0 2 was budgeted. 70,000 year a date spend is zero, the other one was 20,000. Year to date spend zero. And then sidewalk repair, we had 35,000 year to year to date spend zero. Yeah. So the 35,000 is the sidewalks I talked about with the on-call contractor. The storm drain maintenance is we, um, CCTV inspect all of our sewers and drains before we pave and we identify open cut repairs that have to be done before the paving is done. And so that money is set aside for that and we have a different contract who's we're working
▶ 49:49 Mark Garipay: with the contractor, um, to line them up. One, one other thing, just for clarification too, that, that static report that you have in front of you, I just ran one now because there's some updates over the last couple of weeks. We have encumbered that money for the current contracts. So I'm looking at all of those line items pretty much being 100% encumbered as of right now. As of Yes sir. I thank you. There was an answer. Thank you. Would be remiss if I didn't ask. Of course. Um, council fro, Can I make a motion to move the bottom line? Second Motion to move the bottom line by council fro seconded by Councilor CU Shady on discussion. All in favor? Aye. Aye. Opposed? That bottom line is moved onto 4 23.
▶ 50:33 Um, snow budget. Any questions on the snow budget? What's the will of the commit? Council Williams? We're Still using the brining treatment. No. Okay. We were experimenting with this, correct? We are no longer doing this. We Still hope to move in that direction at some point, Correct? Yeah, we have the capacity to do it. We just don't have the technology to really implement it other than to treat our salt. I see. Okay. Alright, thanks Council. Jamal? I'm sorry. Council Williams. You're all set. Sorry about that. I was, yeah. Thank you. Okay, council Jamal, Thank you. Um, I know that snow removals, snow shoveling, uh, has been an issue for constituents and for the city overall. Uh, with all these cuts
▶ 51:28 and the impact for, uh, DPW department, um, how are we going to see, uh, Yeah, There there'll be no impact in terms of what we deliver for snow, right? The one thing that the snow budget allows us is to spend in deficit. So as storms, as road conditions, as weather forces us to deliver services, there is some consideration we want to, uh, put in place some, uh, financial constraints on our spending for the snow and ice. But when it comes to treating the roads and trying to make them as safe as possible for travel, it's not really a consideration. So we're gonna attack next winter just as we would any other winter. And then once we're done, we'll see where we stand versus what the appropriated budget is
▶ 52:14 Mark Garipay: and then try to, uh, offset that deficit, whether it's through a free cash appropriation or you're allowed to finance it over three years. Okay. Thank you. Thank You. What's up? Yes. Um, any other questions? Ms. Snow Council Vanderberg Make a motion to move the bottom line. Second, We have a motion to move the bottom line of 4 23 Snow made by Council Danver, seconded by council, common Shady on discussion. All in favor? Aye. Opposed? That bottom line is moved on to 4 33 public work. Sanitation. Any questions from the council? There is no question. I'll make a motion to move to bottom line. Second, We have a motion to move the bottom line of sanitation by council. Uh, vice chair Jamal, seconded by Council Ro in discussion.
▶ 53:07 All in favor? Aye. Opposed? Sanitation. Bottom line is moved. 4 75 Public works parks in forestry. It's gotta be questions on this. Any questions Counsel? Jamal, I'll take a stab on this. I know you mentioned that um, you know that it, the maintenance for parks, it won't be like the usual. So we are going to see some, uh, uh, probably the lawn is not, um, maintained like before. Uh, what other stuff? Um, in terms of, you know, park and and maintenance. So we are doing our best to try to get caught back up on tree removals and tree trims, um, because we do finally have a, um, a forestry foreman who came in about eight months ago. Um, so we're doing our best to try to get caught back up. But the problem is that during different times of year,
▶ 54:16 as I was mentioning, cemetery parks and forestry tend to all be a group with a similar skillset. And so they get put wherever the needs are highest at any given time. So, um, you know, we, we really would like to get caught up on the tree work. It's also a safety concern, it's a liability for the city. If we don't keep up on removals, if we have a tree we've identified as a dead tree and then we don't have time to take it out, that's a liability. Um, so it, you know, it's hard to predict what exactly the impacts will be, but I can say fairly that there will be something not getting done. It just depends what the, what rises to the top as the highest priority at any given time. And, uh, all the parks will be the same, uh,
▶ 55:02 Maya Jamaleddine: open the same thing. We are not considering like closing any park or, uh, you know, not using it like, uh, or for the same purpose as before. It's the same thing. Everything is the same in terms of the parks being open available to the public and all of that. Um, I'm not sure if the administration is looking at any changes to how the user groups interact with the parks. Um, user fees or anything like that. I'm not sure where that, what direct direction that might go. That may be something that, you know, if we continue to be in financial difficulty moving into next fiscal year, we'll probably have to look very seriously at, at those fees. Okay. And you mentioned that, um, you know, with all these cuts and train and professional developments
▶ 55:51 Maya Jamaleddine: and stuff, um, anything that is, um, not meeting the state requirement? Uh, we, we will continue to meet every regulatory requirement that we have, state and federal. Okay. Um, there's nowhere that we would sacrifice meeting a state or federal requirement. Again, a huge liability for the city and also the potential to spend more money on fines and such if you don't meet permit requirements. Okay. Um, do you know if we are losing any additional, you know, like any grants that we did, uh, in previous years for parks and uh, forests and now we are not gonna reapply for it, So we don't tend to apply for much other than we've done some stormwater grants that would be in the parks. Um, we haven't been actually particularly
▶ 56:44 Mark Garipay: successful in getting those grants. Um, I'm not sure what kind, what kinds of grants Rob Carillo might apply for or the park commission might apply for. Um, but that would be outside of anything impacted by our budget specifically. Okay. Thank you. Any other questions? I just had one quick one on regarding Adopt a site. Does that fall under the TPW or the Park commission? I know there's always or the park department. Yeah, So the Park Commission really manages the Adopt a Site program, but we used to have a $5,000 line item in our budget, um, to provide some support. So that's what's been removed from our budget. I think that's a, uh, an area that we can, we're all work together and prove on the adoptive side.
▶ 57:29 Mark Garipay: I think it's kind of gone by the wayside, but, um, what's the role of the committee? What'll make a motion to move to bottom line? Second. Motion to move the bottom line of parks and forestry made by Vice Chair Jamal and seconded by co councilor Chetty on discussion. All in favor? Aye. Opposed? That bottom line will be moved. Moving on to automotive 4 85. Any questions from the council? I'm sorry, council Stewart. Thank You Mr. Chair From beyond you? Yeah, No, as as you may have gathered, I'm focused mostly on the, the items that have significant cuts. This one has 16% reduction. Um, and I'll go back to my other question. What is that impact? Uh, from an outcome perspective? So we've been operating down one mechanic since our
▶ 58:25 mechanic left, um, earlier in this fiscal year. And we were not able to backfill, we were told not to backfill that position due to the budget constraints. So it means, you know, less, less workforce in-house. It means more having to get sent out if we can't keep up with the demand. And so that's the 25% being cut from the salary line. Mm-hmm. And then the remainder is being cut from, um, some of the, the, uh, supply and material lines. And as I mentioned, that was cut to be consistent with existing spending, but what that does is it just eliminates any contingency. Sure, Sure. And how does that impact the constituency? Uh, we maintain the police cars. We maintain the entire DPW fleet. The fleet is used for snow and ice.
▶ 59:19 Robb Stewart: It's used for all of our park cemetery, uh, water and sewer. We have, um, vehicles that we use day to day in every aspect of DPW work as well as the, um, the police cruisers and the fire administration vehicles and the Council on aging vans. Um, so we just, we maintain a lot of vehicles that are used in a lot of day-to-day work, both within the city and then, um, things like the senior vans. And so the impact that I, that I would see coming from just a regular resident is that two aspects. One is there could be a slowdown to services because it's gonna take longer to repair and the second is, uh, it's indirect, but, uh, you're gonna have to come to us for free cash to go and get that repaired externally, which means that
▶ 1:00:13 Ryan Williams: that will impact other potential projects that would require that free cash and that would take away from that. Yes. If I, if I can characterize that correctly. Yeah. Thank you. Thank you Mr. Chair. Thank you. Any other questions? Council Williams, I just wanted to um, congratulate you on getting the electric trash truck rolling. I saw it today at Lincoln. It does sound like a a hundred year old mattress because the engine noise is gone. So it's just Springs c Creek, Creek Creek. Creek Creek. Creek Creek. Creek Springs going off. And I was like, you know, what is that? And I looked over and there it was, but it, it's, it's, it's rolling. Um, and it was whisper quiet, no fumes pulled up right next
▶ 1:00:57 Kimberly Vandiver: to the playground where my kids get outta school. Uh, and I was really thankful to see it out on the road. So thank y'all for getting that done. Great. Council Vanderberg. Thank you. Uh, two, two things on that topic. I, I did see the electric trash truck a while ago, and I actually, it, it looks really nice. And I, I saw that, I said, whose truck is that? And it was ours. It was, it was really cool. Um, my question is about, um, the maintenance of the vehicles, and we've talked before, we've had things come in for free cash. Um, there were some vehicles that had gotten behind on their maintenance. There were really, there was a frame that cracked and gotten in bad shape. Um, so if we're, we, there was a little bit
▶ 1:01:35 Kimberly Vandiver: of discussion previously about if, if we aren't able to keep up on all the preventative maintenance across the whole fleet, does it make sense to do this in-house? And, um, I guess I'm, I'm thinking a little bit ahead to, if, you know, we're all talking about if there's an override in what we're doing right now and, and, and we're going to discuss those questions. But in the event that we end up, you know, in an even more dire financial situation a year from now, is that, you know, is that something that you see at some point us getting out of the business of maintaining a fleet ourselves entirely or, or something like that? I would guess that it would be more expensive to send all of our equipment out than to pay our,
▶ 1:02:15 our two city employees. Um, so I think if, if the situation becomes worse, I don't think that would be a, a potential relief valve. Um, I do wanna note also, I wanna give credit where credit is due. The VO designed the end and applied the wrap on the electric trash truck. So if you think it looks great, it was thanks to the vo, It, it really did. I, I didn't know it was ours at first, and I, I was admiring it and then it was even better. It was ours. So thank you. That's all. So will the committee council ro Yep. Thank you. I just wanted to make a general comment. Um, we don't, my fellow counselors, we don't have a lot of questions for you because clearly these budgets are dire, uh, they're, it's our dire either level funded
▶ 1:02:57 Cal Finocchiaro: or in the negative. Um, but I just wanna make a general comment to the residents if they could just going forward, be, um, patient with the DPW because, you know, obviously you're down staff and limited with what you guys can do. So, um, we appreciate all the work that you do and hopefully smooth sailing going forward. Thank you. Yeah, and actually to, uh, to Councillor Vandiver point about deferred maintenance too, I, I failed to mention the, um, the last vehicle that we've purchased through an actual allocation that wasn't sort of an emergency allocation was the electric trash truck. And that's been a couple years now. So we have not, we, we did a analysis, we had a consultant come in. They said we should be spending approximately a million
▶ 1:03:46 dollars a year to keep our fleet at, at its current level and all, um, or to move toward having everything within what they consider to be industry standard ages. Um, and we have not allocated any money other than those couple of emergency allocations to vehicles in the last two to three years. So again, with deferred maintenance, we're kind of, we're heading in the wrong direction, The will of the committee. Motion to move to the bottom line. Second Motion to move the bottom line of 4 85 Automotive made by Council Vandiver. Second by Council Romano on discussion. All in favor a Aye. Opposed? That bottom line is moved. 4 91 cemetery. Any questions regarding the cemetery Council Stewart? Thank you Mr. Chair. Uh, I want to comment on,
▶ 1:04:41 Robb Stewart: um, how the cemetery looked. I was down Saturday replacing the flags and it was very nicely done. Um, I think you did a great job. So thank you for that. I think for, you know, for some such an important day, uh, as that, uh, I think it was great that you stepped up and should compliment the crew on the details. Thank you. Yeah, we'll pass that along. Please Do. Please do. Uh, and so just back to my theme, uh, 27% reduction. Um, how is that gonna impact us residents? That's one staff Member, that's one staff member. So our, uh, expense line items are level funded, so we will maintain the same level of service with the current crew. That's, that's been vacant for the majority of the fiscal year.
▶ 1:05:29 Mark Garipay: So I don't, I don't expect too much of an impact at the cemetery other than there's the same work for one less person. Got it. Great. Thank you. Thank you. Mr. Chair, is that person a, um, laborer or a heavy Operator? No, it's a specialized license holder. So an operator we can rotate people in? Correct. Okay. Um, I had one other question. Oh, uh, more of a comment. This is one of the, one of the departments that actually almost covers its costs with the sales of lots and graves and revenue. So Correct. It's kind of net, net neutral. What's the will of the, uh, committee if there's no other questions? Motion to move the bottom line. Second. Motion to move the bottom line by Counselor Machete.
▶ 1:06:12 Mark Garipay: Second by counselor Ro on discussion. All in favor? Aye. Aye. Opposed? That bottom line will be, um, will be moved. The next three items are gonna be in front of us as an appropriation. So we're gonna just move to the next, um, option. A next, um, item on our agenda, which is appropriations. And there's a separate order for those. Uh, we do not have to move that bottom line. We just have to vote on those three, um, items, the enterprise accounts. So we are done with the department budget presentations and now we're gonna go on to, um, regular appropriations. One second here. I'm missing a page here on the bottom. I'm sorry. Um, first one Council Stewart, do we need to Make a motion To hold the committee?
▶ 1:07:11 Mark Garipay: That's, um, that's down the bottom. That's what I was looking for. Okay, I'm gonna go in order. That's down the bottom. Okay, thank you. Uh, ID 1 2, 6 8 0 in appropriation from the Soer retained earnings account. 6 0 0 0 3 1 9 0 in the amount of 200,000 to sewer Professional Services account. 6 0 4 4 2 5 2 9. Thank you. Um, so the sewer retained earnings, uh, has adequate funds to cover this request. It's a project that the water and sewer rate advisory committee has talked about for the last couple of years. Um, it is designing a replacement for the Penney Road pump station. Unfortunately, this is, um, just the cost of doing business. This pump station only serves about 25 homes, and yet the cost to replace the station is probably upwards
▶ 1:08:07 of a million dollars between design and construction. And so this portion is just the design, um, and the request is for $200,000. Any questions? Council Stewart? Thank You Mr. Chair. What are the ramifications if we don't do it, just so that we understand why we need to do It? Yeah, so right now the, um, the Penney Road pump station, it was originally designed as, uh, what's called a pneumatic injector station. So it was this steel can with these two pneumatic pumps that would, when they'd fill up, they force the wastewater out and it sends it through a force Maine into the Gravity system down on Penney Road. Um, probably in the eighties that system was converted to what we call a submersible pump station.
▶ 1:09:00 And they used to do these conversions to try to help something limp along a little longer. And they take that steel can and they turn it into a wet well. So the wastewater now comes and fills up the old steel can and then there's submersible pumps in it that now pump the water out. That can, was never designed to be a holding cell for wastewater. And so they wrought out and so the wastewater eventually seeps into the ground. Um, the, there could be backups into people's homes. Um, the more likely, more immediate condition though is that the wastewater starts seeping out into the ground next to the golf course. Alright, Thank you. That is it, Mr. Chair. Thank You. Uh, what's the role of the committee,
▶ 1:09:49 Devin Romanul: Mr. Chair? I'll make a motion to recommend Second. Second motion to recommend by Councilor Stewart. Seconded by Counselor Chetty on discussion Councilor Al, Um, I just wanted to ask, um, thank you so much for the memo. I wanted to ask if there's any implications for the folks living down there as they are looking for either any community input or eventual construction down the road. I know that's gonna be some, some sort of timetable. Um, perhaps you could give some insight there. Yeah, we would probably have neighborhood meetings for this, but fortunately the location of that pump station, it's sort of away from most people's homes. And the new station will be constructed right next to the old one, and then the old one
▶ 1:10:29 will just be decommissioned. So I anticipate very little interest in this project other than maybe the construction impacts of all the heavy vehicles and maybe some noise, but we will have neighborhood meetings. Sounds Good. Looking forward to those for all of you on Penney Road. Okay. Council Vandiver. Sorry, one question. So you said that the, uh, the cost is about a million dollars and how long will this new work be expected to hold us until, Oh, how long would the new station, how long will Last for further work would ever be needed? I would estimate a minimum of probably 50 years, but with the pumps being replaced, but the difference is that you, you build a concrete chamber like a manhole, that's now
▶ 1:11:14 what the wastewater is housed in. And so, you know, we have sewer manholes that last over a hundred years. So, but the components will have to be swapped out over time. The pumps will be replaced on some schedule. Okay. Great. Thank you Council, ed, Jamal, and then council Ro. Thank you. Um, in this project, are we going to hire any contractor because of the positions that we no longer, you know, like when, uh, whether engineer or any, um, yeah. Previous position that you, we used to have, We would definitely have to have a consultant do the design. We would've needed that anyway, but the consultant is gonna have to, you know, carry a little bit more of the load too. We've, when we are, uh, really short on staff,
▶ 1:12:02 I always tell our consultants that we need them to fully manage the project, um, and not wait for us to, you know, advance it to the next step. Doesn't always work, but if you have a good consultant, usually they can move it along. So, so how much we would've haven't saved or not pay for this project? If we had that position already, We would need a consultant to design this one way or another. It's a highly specialized, um, project that we don't have any in-house expertise to design it. So it means that it's, it's not impacted by the, um, uh, positions that we are not going to re Um, I mean the main impact is just the oversight to, you know, track the invoices, get the contracts put into place, all of that.
▶ 1:12:53 That will happen through the engineering division. So it may happen a little bit slower, but once the contract is, once we have a consultant under contract, they'll pretty much be running with it. So it shouldn't be terribly impacted, um, by the budget or the lack of positions. Okay. Thank you. Council ro? Yes. Um, thank you. Um, just to clarify, the 200,000 would be for the design? Yes. And you said how much would the, would the installation or the, I roughly, I threw out a number of a million dollars total between design and construction. That is based on past experience with pump stations, but not with one of this particular size and this location. So a lot of unknowns when you start digging that deep.
▶ 1:13:38 Yeah, understandable. Um, so where would the funds come for something like that? Is that Grants is that, Uh, we would potentially look to the state revolving fund loans, which are 2% loans from, uh, for sewer work. That's one possible avenue. Um, another is that we, if we think we have enough in retained earnings, maybe we, you know, store that away for a year and, and see how much we end up with the following year. Maybe we amass enough mon money and retained earnings to afford it. Um, I think our retained earnings in sewer have at times been over a million dollars. We've used it to, um, mitigate rate impacts in the past, but that's not the only way we can use that. But fortunately with the enterprise funds,
▶ 1:14:24 we're in a much better position financially, um, because we run them like a business and we make sure that we always can cover our costs with the revenue that we collect. And so we're not, we're not playing the same catch up game with the level of deferred maintenance that we are in the general fund projects. Much like an anything else? Sorry, we have to start with the design process. So that's why we need to start with this 200,000. Yeah. Okay. Thank you. Any other questions? Madam Clerk, can you please call the role? Yes. Counselor Jamine? Yes. Counselor Occhio? Yes. Counselor Hamilton? Yes. Counselor Karen Chetty? Yes. Counselor Mki? Yes. Counselor Amano? Yes. Counselor Stewart? Yes. Counselor Vandiver? Yes.
▶ 1:15:12 Counselor Williams? Yes. President Elli? Yes. Chair Garipay? Yes. All in favor of motion passes. Okay, that will get, uh, recommended. Um, next up ID 1 2 7 2 4. An appropriation from free cash account 0 1 3 2 4 1 in the amount of 180,000 to DPW highway number 4 22 for roadway paving. Thank you. Uh, so the administration had indicated to us when we had, um, when the mayor was trying to determine the final bit of free cash and where to allocate it, that roads are one of the main things that the mayor's office hears about the condition of roads, the paving of roads, and so, and, and potholes as well. Um, this money's not proposed to go toward potholes, but hopefully by having more roads in better conditions,
▶ 1:16:03 we are mitigating, um, some of the pothole concerns. So, uh, this year we have more projects that we're hoping to accomplish than we had the funding for. And with this additional 180,000, we should be able to complete everything that's on our construction schedule. Um, there may be a tiny bit of work that lags behind into next year, but for the most part, um, we have, I would say about a dozen streets that we plan on doing some work on this year. Um, the construction calendar is ready to be released and should be up online tomorrow or the next day. Uh, and so this money will allow us to accomplish the full road program that we have. I, I, I'm sorry, I just, I know in the memo we go out, it identifies the streets, you that'll be online
▶ 1:16:52 Ryan Williams: in the next couple days, so residents can go on and see. Yes. Thank you. Council Williams. You Talking about the construction calendar? I'm sorry, what was that? Are you Talking about the construction calendar will be online? Yes. Okay, great. Um, I just, I just wanted to, to do my diligence on chapter 90 for folks who are newer to the budget hearing and who may be listening from home. So I mentioned, um, that the proposed chapter 90 increase from Melrose goes up from like five 60 to 700,000 plus, which is great. And I encourage you to think about, um, if that makes it through the state legislature, what additional, um, stuff we could move up the list. And the second piece is to note that the purpose
▶ 1:17:33 Ryan Williams: of chapter 90 is to improve pavement quality, build sidewalks, restore bridges, and finance, bicycle and pedestrian infrastructure. And so with that in mind, I'm curious how much of the chapter 90 allocation that you're planning, um, for the year, both 180,000 and the like 500, 700,000, how much of it falls into these individual buckets? So with our road program, um, we tend to try to attack individual streets and do them holistically. So it's hard to say, you know, a percentage is going here and, and there for different types of infrastructure, but every time we pave a street, we try to repair all the sidewalks or replace the sidewalks if they need to be replaced. Um, replace curbing, add accessible curb ramps
▶ 1:18:22 where they don't previously exist, improve signage, improve bike infrastructure if there are opportunities to do so. Um, and so we we're, and plant trees sometimes if we have enough money to do that as well. So we look at every street with that complete streets lens. Um, sometimes we, uh, reconfigure an intersection. A perfect example is not for this year, but for next year when we do Hurd Street, we're planning to pave Hurd Street. We've gotten a lot of complaints about herd at cottage and that's sort of an odd intersection. And so if we can tighten that up and make that a safer intersection, we would do that as part of that project. So it's, you know, it's kind of all rolled into one. We don't separate it out as, you know, this is bike
▶ 1:19:07 and this is, uh, pedestrian and and such. But, um, for this year's program, we are actually, if we get the additional money, we've already factored that in. We have a neighborhood, the Ashland Richardson, uh, Renwick neighborhood, Marvin Neighborhood where National Grid has done work. We are hoping to do major sidewalk improvements and curbing improvements in that neighborhood as well as the paving. And that's the difference between if we don't get the full funding and if we do, it just allows us to do more, um, a more complete job with that neighborhood, uh, more concrete on the sidewalks, um, and more, more granite curb instead of berm. So that's basically where that's gone. The, the additional chapter 90 allocation, excuse me.
▶ 1:19:56 Even though it's very exciting to get a couple hundred thousand extra, we actually got a couple hundred thousand extra last year from the fair share mm-hmm. And a couple years ago from the wrap funding they called it. So we've sort of become a customer ready to having a couple hundred thousand more. And then we had the ARPA funds that we used for sidewalks for three years before that. Um, so it, it's not that we are not excited about that extra, but it's not really a lot above and beyond what we've had the last few years. Sure. And just to re uh, remind myself the difference between the appropriation that we make on sidewalk repairs, and this is that the appropriation on sidewalk repairs is
▶ 1:20:36 Ryan Williams: intended to be small, uh, acute repairs where there's been damage or tree root is pushed up a panel, the Chapter 90 funding is used for more planful, larger projects that involve more holistic look at the street. Yes. And with that in mind, did you say Ashland Overlook in Burwick, or, I'm sorry, Renwick? No, Ashland Richardson. Renwick. There was a Slow Streets project somewhere in that vicinity years ago that was one of the streets that had asked, um, somewhere in that neighborhood, there was a street that had asked for Slow Street. I don't remember exactly where it was. Maybe that was over by Briggs, but it was somewhere in that general neighborhood. Yes. That was Briggs. That was Briggs to Sergeant. Yeah.
▶ 1:21:14 That neighborhood. So that's not in the paving area. Yeah, There's a, there is a, there's a number of these kind of y intersections in that neighborhood that are strangely wide. Yeah. And there are also at least two completely uncontrolled intersections in that neighborhood that I'm amazed the Traffic Commission has never heard a request to add a stop sign in one direction or the other. I think it's Richardson and Marvin, or Richardson in Ashland. Um, so We've got a meeting coming up. Yeah. So we, uh, we're very open to modifications to that and controlling some of those approaches because I don't know how anybody knows who has the right of way as they approach those spots. Right. Thank you very much. Any other questions?
▶ 1:22:00 Council Fanucchi. Thank you. Um, are these roads, you know, you have the map of the, like the severe roads that are red and they're color coded? Or would these be red or No, Most of them are either red or orange. Okay. Or they're roads where National Grid had an integrity project where they had multiple leaks and they felt that it was a, a priority pipe for them to replace. Mm-hmm. Um, previously we had a great system with National Grid where we would work together to pick which roads that we both wanted to do, and then we both contribute to the paving. Their program doesn't work that way anymore. They're not no longer allowed to collaborate in quite that same fashion, but, but what they have agreed
▶ 1:22:40 to do is they'll take their total square yards that they're responsible for paving when they do those half roads. Mm-hmm. They have allowed us to take the total number and identify whole roads for them to do, and then whole roads for us to do. So that's how we ended up in the Ashland Richardson Renwick neighborhood is because they worked there, but with a swap, they're gonna do the whole roads on Holland Pilgrim Wentworth, we're gonna do the whole roads on Ashland Richardson Wick. So that's how it's working out now. So they're not always the red and the orange roads, but most of them are. How, how do I get Ashland Grid on Grove Street? They actually have an integrity project for a portion of Grove Street, and we have asked them
▶ 1:23:22 Mark Garipay: to prioritize it. Okay, Great. Yeah. Yes. We, we see that need as well. What's the will of the committee? Motion to move the bottom line or, sorry? Motion to approve. Motion to approve by Council Williams. Seconded by Council fro in discussion. Madam Clerk, can you please call the roll Counselor Jamine? Yes. Counselor Occhio? Yes. Counselor Hamilton? Yes. Counselor Caram Chetty? Yes. Councilor Reky? Yes. Councilor Romanul? Yes. Councillor Stewart? Yes. Councillor Vandiver? Yes. Councilor Williams? Yes. President Elli? Yes. Chair Garipay? Yes. All in favor? That motion, that order will be recommended. Next up ID 1 2 7 2 5. And appropriation for free cash account? Zero one dash 3 2 4 0 0 1 in the amount of 60,000
▶ 1:24:11 to DPW facilities number 4 0 2. Any questions? Council Williams? So We had a question a moment ago by my colleagues about the cost of moving things from in-house staff to contractors. And I wonder if this is an example of that. This is somewhat of an example of that. These are con these are consultants who are already working with us. They've already designed these three construction projects at a minimum asbestos removal, um, the skylights and the Franklin roof and the HVAC chillers at the middle school and the Lincoln. Um, they are all already working with us on those projects, but once we get into construction, especially with no facilities manager, we just wanna be able to have them on site as much as we need them.
▶ 1:24:52 Yeah. Um, so it's a, a little bit of a shift. Some of it we would be doing anyway, and then some of it is certainly a shift to having them help more because we're short staffed. Yeah. Okay. Thank you. Okay. Any other questions? What's the will of the committee? Motion to approve? Second, Uh, motion to approve. Uh, ID 1 2 7 2 5 by ca Council ver seconded by council fro, uh, on discussion. Madam Clerk, can you please call the role Councillor Jamal Ledine? Yes. Councilor fro? Yes. Councillor Hamilton? Yes. Councilor Rum Chetty? Yes. Councilor O Abramsky? Yes. Councilor Romanul? Yes. Councilor Stewart? Yes. Councillor Vandiver. Yes. Councillor Williams? Yes. President Elli? Yes. Chair gpe? Yes. All in favor
▶ 1:25:44 Mark Garipay: That will be recommended. Uh, next three items we have are gonna, uh, the enterprise funds and we have to, um, vote to approve the bottom line that was already already discussed. Um, any other que you free to ask any questions if you have some id? 1, 2, 6, 6, 7. Fiscal 2026 Solid Waste Enterprise Fund budget in the amount of 3,529,000 $118. Council Stewart? Yes, Mr. Chair, I'll make a motion to recommend to the full council. Second. Motion to recommend id. 1 2 6 6 7 to the full council made by Councilor Stewart, seconded by Councilor fro on discussion. Madam Clerk, can you please call the role Councillor Jamine? Yes. Councillor fro? Yes. Councillor Hamilton? Yes. Councilor Karen Chetty? Yes. Councilor Abramsky. Yes.
▶ 1:26:41 Mark Garipay: Councillor Romanul. Yes. Councillor Stewart? Yes. Councilor Vandiver. Yes. Councillor Williams? Yes. President Elli? Yes. Chair Garipay? Yes. All in favor That will get recommended. Next up we have ID 1 26 7 1 fiscal 2026 sewer enterprise budget in the amount of 8,280,000 $121. Yes, Mr. Chair, I'll make a motion to recommend this to the full council. Second. Second. We have a motion to recommend id. 1, 2, 6, 7 1 to the full council made by Council Stewart, seconded by Council of Ro on discussion. Madam Clerk, can you please call the role Councilor Jamine? Yes. Councilor Occhio. Yes. Councilor Hamilton? Yes. Councilor Karen Chetty? Yes. Counselor Brunski. Yes. Counselor Romano. Yes. Councilor Stewart? Yes.
▶ 1:27:36 Mark Garipay: Councillor Vandiver. Yes. Councillor Williams? Yes. President Elli? Yes. Chair Garipay? Yes. All in favor That will be recommended. Next up ID 1, 2, 6, 7 2. Fiscal year 2026 WA Enterprise Water Enterprise Fund budget in the amount of $6,441,569. That's a will. Counselors Stewart, Mr. Chair, I'll make a motion to recommend to the full council. Second, We have a motion to recommend. 1, 2, 6 7 2 to the full council. Meet by Councilor Stewart. Seconded by Council Carmen Sheti on discussion. Madam Clerk, can you please call the role Councilor Jamine? Yes. Councilor Occhio? Yes. Councilor Hamilton? Yes. Counselor Carrum Chetty. Yes. Counselor Mki. Yes. Councilor Romanul? Yes. Councillor Stewart? Yes.
▶ 1:28:25 Mark Garipay: Councillor Vandiver. Yes. Councillor Williams? Yes. President Elli? Yes. Chair Repe? Yes. All in favor. That motion will be recommended. Next up we have ID 1, 2, 6, 7, 8. Fiscal year 2026. Operating budget in the amount of $107,575,802. Councilor Stewart? Uh, Mr. Chair, I'll make a motion to hold and committee. Second. We have a motion to hold id. 1, 2, 6, 7, 8 In committee by Council Stewart, seconded by Councilor Choice on discussion. All in favor? Aye. Opposed? That will be held in committee. Last, last up. We have orders. Thanks. I wonder if we do like just a one minute recess just to, Uh, we have a motion for a one minute recess. Second. Second, second. Um, one minute. Maurice is made by Council William second by Council panel.
▶ 1:29:21 Mark Garipay: All in favor? Aye. What? Welcome back. Next up we have orders id. 1, 2, 7, 2 8. Order to place override question on the November, November 4th, 20, 25 local election ballot we have with us. Um, mad Mayor and Gary Golden, our CFO. Mm-hmm. I'll turn the, um, turn it over to you. And we have, I'm sorry, Ken Kelly and, uh, superintendent de lady with us. Thank you Chair Gareg. Good evening everyone. Thank you for having us here tonight. Um, as always, I'm grateful for your service to Melrose and for your willingness to thoughtfully consider this override proposal for the ballot in November. As the chair mentioned, I'm here tonight with our task force co-chairs, city CFO, Kerry Golden and School Business Manager Ken Kelly,
▶ 1:30:11 Jen Grigoraitis: and also in the audience are City Solicitor Phillips and Superintendent dela. I'd also like to thank our two council members who served on the task force President Elli and Chair Repe, as well as School committee Chair Dory Withey and Vice Chair Jen McAndrew. I wanna thank all of them for their dedication to our city for the many hours of work that they put into this proposal that is before you. And for being here tonight. I also wanna thank all the residents who shared ideas with us over the last three months. Please know that your insights were heard and appreciated. The task force convened in February and was charged with getting feedback and making recommendations to me concerning potential override questions.
▶ 1:30:48 Jen Grigoraitis: After seven meetings, a public community forum many emails from residents and advice and guidance from legal counsel. Tonight we are presenting the task force's unanimous recommendation during its discussions, the task force engaged in research on options for an override, reviewing the proposals and outcomes of override votes from dozens of towns throughout the region. We carefully considered the Massachusetts Department of Revenue Division of local services model language and guidance for proposition two and a half ballot questions. And we had discussions. We discussed staffing needs and requirements in the city and schools revenue and expense forecasts and anticipated increases to major cost drivers, such
▶ 1:31:27 Jen Grigoraitis: as union employee contracts, regional school assessments, pension obligations, employee benefits, school transportation, and special education costs. During our process, Melian shared their concerns and fiscal priorities such as school funding services for our seniors and investment in city buildings and infrastructure like our roads, sidewalks, and parks. As you were just discussing, residents also conveyed very helpful feedback about the mechanics and logistics of a potential override, including wanting us to consider multiple options rather than an all or nothing single override ballot question. Cautioning against pitting different parts of the city in opposition to one another, designating revenues raised by an override
▶ 1:32:09 Jen Grigoraitis: to clear priorities and increased transparency. Thank you all for your genuine and thoughtful input. Although many provided feedback and ideas about non override sources of revenue for the city, such as the sale of city land, changes to fee structures and other creative fiscal measures, the fact remains that under Massachusetts law, only one recourse is available to the city to raise revenue. At the magnitude our budget demands the proposition two and a half override. Based on all of this, the members of the task force unanimously recommend a tiered override approach, which enables voters to select the level of services they want to support. And we have put that before you for consideration tonight.
▶ 1:32:48 Jen Grigoraitis: Those three options are 9.3 million to stabilize services at the current reduced level. Preventing further job cuts, 11.9 million to partially restore essential city and school services, reversing recent significant job and program cuts and 13.5 million to substantially restore essential city and school services and positions and invest in additional infrastructure. And I know this is a new approach to override, so let me talk a little bit about how it works. Three override amounts are presented as three ballot questions with information on which e on what each level would fund. Voters would vote on each question, yes or no. If more than one question is approved by more than 50% of voters, the question specifying the highest
▶ 1:33:33 Jen Grigoraitis: dollar amount prevails. So for example, if two of the three options pass, it is not the one with the highest winning percentage, but rather the highest dollar amount that goes into effect. Unlike the menu option recently employed in both Medford and Winthrop, only $1 amount will go into effect with a tiered override question. The community determines what that is. We recommend this format because it provides multiple options to voters. It also clearly delineates what we can and cannot restore in the event of passage. There is no practical way to turn back the clock to previous years and restore every budget cut. But we can target some of our top priorities for restoration and even reinvestment.
▶ 1:34:14 Jen Grigoraitis: It is very important to note that all three options include baseline funding that would help stabilize our community through the end of fiscal year 29. Each option includes funding for the next union contract cycle, three years through FY 29 for all city and school employee union contracts. That's 12 different contracts including teachers, police, and fire. All options include some level of funding for repairs to infrastructure, though higher options would allow more funding for priorities like sidewalk repairs, road work, building maintenance and park improvements. The options all plan for our major cost drivers to continue to exceed 2.5% year over year, including employee and retiree personnel costs like pensions, health benefits,
▶ 1:34:56 Jen Grigoraitis: overtime, and medicare insurance, municipal debt, vocational school assessments, school transportation, special education, tuition and utilities. We heard from the community that they want a transparent plan that reflects to the best of our ability to forecast the cost and challenges our community is facing. I believe we have delivered that in this tiered override question approach. Residents also express that they wanna say in determining our path forward together, this tiered option offers detailed and distinct options for the course we will chart together in the coming years. As I know you've heard me say many times, this community must choose to invest in ourselves. Costs continue to rise over and above 2.5%.
▶ 1:35:37 Jen Grigoraitis: The cuts we have made over the last several years are not sustainable. And what's to come without additional funding will be even worse. As of today, our budget forecast model indicates that without an override, we will be $4 million short of the revenue needed to maintain level services from FY 26, the budget you have all been discussing with cuts and move it into FY 27 $4 million. While I know every resident has different things that they value and prioritize, it will take all of us deciding that we wanna chart a different path forward for everyone in order to stop the cycle of budget cuts that we are currently in. We must fund our own government. No one is coming to save us. And that is an option available
▶ 1:36:19 Jen Grigoraitis: to us under prop two and a half. The option I believe we must employ in which I earnestly recommend and support the language before you, for approval for the ballot in November, represents a set of responsible options for the voters. And I hope you will vote to move this forward and let voters decide this fall. Thank you for all you do and thank you for your time. Thank you. Um, are there questions We have, um, council Hamilton, council melee rally, unless you want, do you have something to say about our, about the task force? Yes. Council Meley, rally Council Hamilton. Anyone else? Go ahead. Um, thank you, uh, Mr. Chairman, thank you to the mayor and, um, everyone else on the task force. I just wanted to say as one of the two representatives
▶ 1:37:11 Leila Migliorelli: of the council on the task force, um, it was a, it was a very difficult and deliberative process, um, to, in which you can see by the, the summary of the memo. Um, there was a lot of discussion, a lot of back and forth. I think those of you who have served with Councillor Gepe and I know that we are never short on questions. Um, and really kind of put the administration and the schools to task in terms of, um, evaluating data to determine what would be best, um, for the city. I'll say that what I, you know, learned, um, is the sort of complexity of the union contracts, which is something we don't work with in the city council. And, um, trying to layer that into, um, the projections and, um,
▶ 1:38:00 Leila Migliorelli: thinking about infrastructure issues. It was, it was all quite complicated, but I feel like the process was very well thought out. We had plenty of opportunity for feedback, um, questions and answers and, um, really proud of the product that we have, um, in front of us tonight and questions for the community, um, to consider. So thank you Mr. Chairman. Thank you. I have, um, council Hamilton, consulate Romano, and I missed a couple. I saw some hands. Come over here. Council Stewart. Council Ver Okay. Council Hamilton. Thank you. Thank you. Um, so I think everyone in this chamber probably understands the challenges, um, that municipalities and the Commonwealth are up against with prop two and a half.
▶ 1:38:45 Ward Hamilton: And those of us here tonight, uh, know better than many and simply put, for folks paying attention at home, we can only increase the tax levy two and a half percent each year. But everybody knows that inflation and escalation is four to 6% a year, sometimes more in recent years. So at some point, logically the rubber hits the road. And in my year and a half on the council and, um, involvement with this administration and observation of city departments, including the school department, ic, um, positive things that give me faith and, um, I'm going to be proud to support, uh, this override measure. Thank you. Thank you. Uh, council, uh, Rahman, Thank you very much. Um, it's thank you Mr. Chairman.
▶ 1:39:41 Devin Romanul: Um, I wanted to, uh, first of all thank the mayor, um, all of your staff, um, every one of my colleagues who served in the, um, with the working group, uh, I really appreciate the briefing and all the detail and, um, am fully supportive. Anyone who's been listening to these hearings, who has been living in our city and understands the, the dynamics that we're operating when the same economic factors that hit you when you go to the grocery store and you look at exit, you know, 11 or $12 or whatever it is the same factors that hit us when we're operating our school systems and DPW and, uh, public safety. And so the thing that I just wanted to comment on and feel free to elaborate more, when, when you
▶ 1:40:22 Devin Romanul: and I discussed this was, uh, and it was in your memo, that to restore the, the amount of investment that we have in our city budget just too short years ago is $20 million extra from, uh, so we're not even asking to restore what was there just a couple of years ago. We even, I think you said July 1st. Um, so feel free to elaborate, but I, I was just floored when I heard that number in terms of what we're asking the public to, to claw back here. So, um, anyway, really wanted to thank everyone's work on this, but, um, just wanted to say that that number really stuck out to me because that's tremendous number of teachers and public safety professionals and, um, countless, you know, potholes and crack sidewalks
▶ 1:41:03 Jen Grigoraitis: and as you are experiencing the world around you, that is the number that is, um, uh, looms large in my mind. Yes, Absolutely. Um, I think one of the things, and I really appreciate the task forces intentionality around this, was recognizing I think people really want a plan, which is something we are very much working on. We hear that loud and clear, and I'm, the CFO Golden is just about one year into her job, so she's working on it. Um, but wanting to be sure that we are actually looking forward through the entire lifespan of contracts. I know for folks who, you know, are not used to the public sector talking about union contracts can feel atypical. It is the vast majority of our employees.
▶ 1:41:38 Jen Grigoraitis: It is our obligation under the law. I think it is also our privilege to recognize, you know, the hard work of our civil servants that are serving our community every day. And it is, it is costly. And so we wanted to make sure that we were looking, we were forward looking about all of our cost drivers to ensure that we are not just promising to add things back and not then able to sustain those costs going forward. I think that's the challenging cycle that we're in when everything exceeds two and a half percent, as Councillor Hamilton pointed out, we are in this cut cycle in order to keep things, you know, keep some things going forward. So we did really try to make sure that the numbers presented
▶ 1:42:13 Jen Grigoraitis: first and foremost, stabilize what we currently have and allowed us to move forward through what we know is coming, which is union negotiations with every single union, which is renegotiating our peck agreement with our, um, healthcare split with our retirees and with our unions. Um, and so that we're hopefully able to be stable. And then what were some investments that could come back? I, I, you know, an override in excess north of $20 million, which would be the largest override. And I believe the Commonwealth of Massachusetts felt like not the right thing for Melrose and candidly also felt like an unfair ask to our residents. Um, so I think we, maybe we can't gain background all in one fell swoop.
▶ 1:42:50 Devin Romanul: I just don't think that's possible. Yeah. Well, thank you for, um, you know, widening the aperture of what we're considering and I really hope the public, um, takes the next five months to really have a good faith conversation about what kind of community we want to have and, um, you know, really appreciative of everyone's efforts. Thank you. Council, council Stewart, Uh, Mr. Chair? Uh, council Vandiver had her hand up before I, so I'll defer to him. Okay. Council Vandiver, sorry. Oh, thank you Mr. Chair. Um, I, I, I think, uh, you know, I, I agree with what's been said. I really appreciate the work of the committee and I think we need, we need an override. Um, I, there's, uh, as we consider
▶ 1:43:28 Kimberly Vandiver: how the community will view these questions, um, there's almost a missing question 1D, which is $0, right? And $0 override means you just said $4 million of cuts. Um, and I I, I almost wonder if there's some way that we could add that into the wording of the question itself as a, you know, whether that were a 1D UA within each of the others and don't cut $4 million next year. Right. But whatever it is, I, I just, somehow that needs to come through in the discussions that are had and, and when people look at these questions, and I hope, I hope that will, will come through. Thank you. Is That a, is that a question you want an answer to or, Uh, if you have any comment about, if, if that's something the committee
▶ 1:44:14 considered, the city solicitor, The city solicit is not ready to jump outta her seat, so I'm gonna let her Do you wanna share? Because Yes, she has a lot of feelings Thank You. From a legal perspective Through, through the chair. Thank you. So I, I was, as the mayor mentioned, um, involved in this process and looking at the, very carefully looking at the language of the questions, um, we are not allowed under DLS guidance to have any advocacy language in the questions. So that includes any mention of maintaining current staffing, preventing future cuts. It really has to only be for appropriating and spending purposes. So for example, what a lot of communities do, what they recommend is if you were going to a cut
▶ 1:44:49 Kimberly Vandiver: for positions, for example, um, and then you would put a dollar amount saying to, to fund for positions like for firefighters, for teachers for example, um, to signal that like that money would allow you not to cut, but you can't actually have any language mentioning cutting maintenance of positions, anything like that, that would be considered advocacy. And you're not allowed to have that anywhere on the ballot. Understood. So, so in theory, if we wanted to make any modification, we could say and fund and we would have to look ahead to what that $4 million Yes. Would lead to in terms of cuts the following year, correct? Mm-hmm. Okay. And is, and that's not something that we have a, a, an idea
▶ 1:45:29 Jen Grigoraitis: of what exactly that future additional cuts would be at this point, is that correct? Not at this time. I mean, I think you all know all too well, since you're in the budget process, the options for where $4 million would be eliminated is pretty challenging and none of them are pleasant. So I certainly wanna, wouldn't wanna present that publicly. First of all, that's ultimately the decision of this body. Um, and not me, but we certainly know that there's very few places that are left as an option, Right? Absolutely. I, yeah, and I, I understand that, that, um, kind of line of reasoning. I just, I, you know, I don't want to get to a point where people vote against the override and then say, wait, I didn't know that we were about
▶ 1:46:08 Jen Grigoraitis: to lose X, Y, and Z. Right? And so how we like balance those priorities. I think our, our hope we were actually talking about this, um, this afternoon is that, um, when you all are back from your summer recess, is to really spend some of our meetings in the fall actually starting to talk about the FY 27 budget with you all and what some of those options would look like for exactly the point that you're talking about so that the community understands what's before us. We, we recognize that by the time we put a document before you all in May, the process is largely complete. So I, we certainly, there's a lot of options we wanna talk about, including some of the things that residents mentioned.
▶ 1:46:44 Jen Grigoraitis: Like, do we need to consider selling land that the city currently owns? Do we need to talk about adding in parking fees? These are all things that folks have brought to us. They're not gonna create the level of revenue that we need, but it doesn't mean we shouldn't also consider other good ideas. Right? Absolutely. Thank you. Thank You. Um, okay, so next up I got Council Stewart, council Ty, council Williams. Council Jamal, council Stewart. Thank you Mr. Chair. Um, thank you Madam Mayor, Ms. Kelly, Mr. Kelly and Ms. Gold, appreciate you being here. Um, I do wanna call out and thank, uh, uh, council Garey and President Elli for all the work that you did, um, on behalf of the council. I we appreciate you representing us, so thank you for that.
▶ 1:47:28 Robb Stewart: Um, and I feel as though we are pretty well united in what we want to accomplish, uh, as a council. So, um, thank you for everyone. Um, what I look at when I read and I read, I read the question over several times and I, I think that there should be, and this is, uh, a suggestion, a recommendation that we really need to communicate very, very clearly what this is. 'cause there could be confusion, right? Um, at for example, um, you know, one, somebody could vote for the second, but not the first and the third, and someone could vote for the first and not the second and the third. And even though they would potentially be totally foreign override, we could be missing the opportunity on establishing
▶ 1:48:22 Robb Stewart: what we're trying to accomplish here. Do you understand what I mean by that? Yep. Right. I mean, ideally, uh, you have 51% voting for all three and then you're done. Right? But that's in the, that's in the ideal world. Um, so I think we, we need as an administration, as a community to be really clear on how, how that vote works. Mm-hmm. Uh, because I, I think it, there could be a level of confusion, uh, for certain, you know, I think most people here understand exactly how it works here. But I think there may be a certain population that is just not as aware. They may show up to the voting booth that day and not even know mm-hmm. What's going on. And we don't want to be in the position where we could lose potential votes on
▶ 1:49:10 Robb Stewart: level one or level two only because they thought they only had to pick one and they voted no, only the other two. You understand where I'm coming from on That? Absolutely. And I think we'll definitely be focusing on a lot of voter education through the, um, city so folks understand what's on the ballot, how do they inform themselves about what the impacts and the options are, and also making sure folks know where to vote and when and that they're registered. Yeah. And, and Mr. Bell had a great marketing saying, right, A place to grow up. A place to grow old. There. There you go. There's your marketing campaign. That's, there you Go. Well, thank you. Thank you, Mr. Chair. Um, councilor Choice. Um, thank you,
▶ 1:49:46 Manjula Karamcheti: Uh, chair Guera pe uh, first I also wanna express gratitude to the task force and to the city for doing the hard and difficult work of putting, um, this together, um, into both of you as well, representing the city council, um, to be a fly on the wall in all of your meetings and all of the discussions. I just really appreciate it. 'cause I know it's hard. I know it's been hard to sit here as a counselor listening to cut after cut on the city side and the school side. Uh, we all do this because we love the city and we care about the residents. Um, and to see us struggling and suffering is, is really hard to be a part of. So your work together gives me hope that we, that we can do something for our city together.
▶ 1:50:36 Manjula Karamcheti: I just have two questions. Mm-hmm. Um, the first question is just related to all the questions. I'm wondering if you could explain for one a, one B, one C. They actually, the date is July 1st, 2025. So could you just help us understand and for, for the community why that date? 'cause what we are sort of in the process mm-hmm. And that date will have passed when voting happens. So can you just explain why that date is what it is? Sure. Yeah. So, um, what that means is effective 7 1 25, um, we would have the ability to raise the levee limit. Um, and so what happens is annually your first two tax bills, um, are based on estimated, uh, taxes. And then when the tax rate is certified in November, um,
▶ 1:51:31 that's when the final tax rate is set. So what would happen is, um, if this overhead would pass, uh, we would come back with an amended budget and it would allow us to collect those revenues retroactive to seven one, um, 25. So folks would see the whatever dollar amount should one win it reflected in the tax bill that they receive in January Yes. Of 2026. Yes. January, 2026. And is it accurate to say that then if an override does pass, we wouldn't have to wait correct till the next fiscal year to start bringing things back and hiring or whatever we determine correct. To vote We would actually be obligated to provide this body with a supplemental budget? Similar to the conversation we had, I think Ms.
▶ 1:52:20 Jen Grigoraitis: Vanderberg, you had asked the question, um, a couple weeks ago, this would be a time when we would come to you all with a revised budget. We can talk about what that process looks like if you wanna do seven weeks of budget hearings or not. But we, we would go through line by line, um, you know, where we're proposing for the monies to go. Obviously the, um, schools would go through a process where the superintendent would make a recommendation to the school committee. And so all of that would happen in the public domain to be added into the budget. It will be, um, time sensitive. 'cause we, ideally we need to do that before the tax recap, which occurs in December. So it will be a, um, busy November.
▶ 1:52:54 Manjula Karamcheti: So we'll, you know, certainly be doing some preparation, um, in anticipation of that. But that's what it will allow us to begin to collect those revenues, but also to put those revenues back out into the community during the next, so We'll be able to restore more swiftly mm-hmm. If, if one of the levels passes. Correct. Wonderful. Thank you. And then my other question was just, um, because there are sort of three levels, will there be some kind of ca calculator that residents can access to be able to understand sort of the impact for them personally? Yes, that's a great question. We will definitely get that set up and available. I know we've had that for past overrides. Um, and I think it's, we can coordinate it
▶ 1:53:36 Jen Grigoraitis: through the division of local services, so you can put your particular parcel in and see what the tax impact is. The broad rule of thumb for Melrose is that for every million dollars of an override, ask for the average house. So there'll be folks that are above and below this number. It is a hundred dollars, uh, per year tax increase. So if, um, like a $10 million override would be a thousand dollars annual tax increase for the average home. Thank you so much. And I just, one comment, I will make it quickly. I know that the residents in our community have asked for transparency, and I just, I feel that the way you've presented information, um, it has been very transparent and, um, I just appreciate that.
▶ 1:54:24 Ryan Williams: I think the, the trust of the folks involved, um, just it matters and I think you've been very clear and straightforward, so I really appreciate that. It's, it's noticed. Thank you. Thank you counselor. Um, counselor Williams. Thank you. Uh, hello. And thank you to everyone, everybody said thank you a million times. So I'll say it again. Thank you. Yeah, you're welcome. I, I think in particular, in particular, I think that the work done by both the committee as well as the mayor's office has created a lot more conversation in the public about very specific municipal finance conversations. I mean, you know, there was a blog that came out this morning. There were folks writing little micro blogs about this all the time.
▶ 1:55:10 Ryan Williams: And there's, I mean, a really thorough understanding that folks have of the different levers of, of municipal finance. And I say this because of how important it is, um, for people to understand that, you know, certain cost centers are more exposed to inflation. And you've done a great job of putting the collective bargaining, ag bargaining agreements in here and making sure that people understand that a lot of this money is going to fund those, uh, those positions. And I've, of course, I've, you know, talked a lot about wanting to see teacher salaries, um, healthy in Melrose and, and also, uh, city staff salary is healthy in Melrose. So, you know, I think it's necessary and it's needed. Um, and I'm very supportive
▶ 1:55:48 Ryan Williams: and, uh, I'm gonna vote for, vote for this, and then I'm gonna organize and knock doors for it, and then I'm gonna vote forward to the ballot. Um, but I wanted to ask a couple of specific questions about the, but the language of the question, um, to help me understand like what we're asking people to understand and, and also for my own benefit so that when I'm talking to people, I can understand it better. Mm-hmm. So, um, so we have three options and I want to know the 9 million option. You said this keeps us going through fiscal year 29. It was like July one, June 30th, 2029. Mm-hmm. Right. So about four years. Um, and we've talked before about how, you know, one of the paths for Melrose is
▶ 1:56:31 Ryan Williams: to have an override every four or five years that will keep us, um, competitive and help us recover some of the losses we've had. Uh, so if people, if they were to choose to vote for this lowest option, that would still solve the issue of not needing future budget cuts for at least four years. That's the, the theory, Yes. Assuming everything comes in where we estimated. Yeah. And so this, this sort of leads me to my next question about like, I think that past override efforts have been, um, maybe not as specific on some of these costs and taking hard looks at the forecasting on them. And I think that this is one of the areas that we set ourselves apart. And I wonder with the specific number of
▶ 1:57:21 Ryan Williams: employees listed in this question, is there a risk that we create for ourselves where because of hiring issues or, uh, wage increases or any other kind of external factor that maybe people vote for a big override and they see 17 school, five public works and two police, but then three years from now we've actually only hired five school and two public works. And so, you know, what's the thinking behind having the specific number of employees in this question? And I, and I preface this because I'm looking at the DLS site, um, for all of these other overrides, and by the way, there's been 25 overrides since Stoneham failed in Massachusetts and nine of them have failed, and 14 of them have passed.
▶ 1:58:05 Ryan Williams: So, you know, it's happening everywhere. Some of the numbers are very big, 6 million, you know, 8 million. Um, but very few of them have very specific language around, you know, we're gonna hire five teachers. Some of them do, some of them say two firefighters or three firefighters, but a lot of 'em, you know, Belmont just says supplement the, the capital budget. Mm-hmm. Supplement the town budget Natick said the same thing, you know, to, to, um, fund the operating of capital budget. So what's the thinking behind adding these specific job numbers, and do we see a risk in, in having that level of specificity for something that's kind of maybe a little out of our control? Do you want me Yeah, go.
▶ 1:58:49 Jen Grigoraitis: So, I mean, I think yes, there's, there's always risk. I mean, I will caveat that these numbers, I think we've really looked at the known cost drivers for our budget, the things that you all are constantly hearing about that, you know, special education, transportation, all of those things. What is not factored in here is should the federal government significantly change how it chooses to fund states. So I, I do wanna caveat that. Um, I think we've done some other efforts in partnership with the council to prepare for some of that. But, you know, if the way government is funded from the feds on down is completely upended, that is not reflected in here. And I'm not actually sure we could act, you know,
▶ 1:59:24 Jen Grigoraitis: actively prepare for that in a reasonable way. I think, um, the task force landed on this language because we felt this was the level of specificity that we hear from residents. They wanna see. I think there can be different norms in different communities. And, you know, you mentioned Belmont. I think that that's a community that does fairly regular overrides and just how that, that language goes on. Um, I will say that when we did, we did look back at every override that's gone on a ballot in Middlesex County since I think either 2018 or 2019, most of them use the standard. What we've seen in Melrose, the single question with a lump sum, with varying degrees of detail about what's in there.
▶ 2:00:04 Jen Grigoraitis: This, to us, felt like it let the public know what the intentions were with these funds. I mean, you know, I'll use everyone's favorite caveat. Obviously, if there's a global pandemic, I think we would wanna think about, you know, we may be shifting some of our priorities, but again, all of these funds have to be placed into a line item in a city or school budget, which means that that is happening in public in conversations with this body and or the school committee. So I think there will always be, you know, it's like every other tax dollar that we have, the, um, privilege of being stewards of where we have a public discussion about the priorities and where that money is gonna be spent. Yeah, and I think you, you raised a fantastic point that,
▶ 2:00:41 Ryan Williams: um, a lot of this is trying to hit a lot of moving targets. There are a tremendous number of levers and dependencies in municipal finance. On school side, it's ridiculous, but on the city side, there's a lot as well. So I think, you know, when, when voters are reviewing this and looking at the, at the questions, um, they should be thinking about it in terms of that long term lens. You know, the intention is to hire these positions. The intention is to bolster these operations. And then the, the details of how that gets worked out is going to be the longer, harder work of coming before the school committee, coming before the council talking about what's necessary, what our priorities are. So anyway, again, just thank you for a very thorough job,
▶ 2:01:24 Maya Jamaleddine: and to everyone who, who worked on this, um, for getting a really robust conversation started around this, I think it's gonna be very, very helpful. I'm really excited that there's community conversations about municipal finance seem very happy. Me too. Councilor Jamal. Thank you g thank you both for, um, all the amazing work, uh, that you've done, um, For so many months, uh, right now. And I know that it's not the end. Um, I'm gonna share my experience as a parent. There is not even one day at my house that we didn't hear from one of my kids. Uh, my teacher is not returning next year. Mm-hmm. Every single night we have around the dinner table a conversation that one of the teacher is not coming next year.
▶ 2:02:15 Maya Jamaleddine: And it's, it's impacting, um, our kids and our youth, uh, wellbeing, and it's impacting their, um, academic. It's, uh, it's really, um, and, and we still not in next year. Mm-hmm. So I can only imagine how, uh, next year is going to be if we don't pass this override. So I truly, uh, hope that everyone who is listening and everyone who will watch this, uh, will understand the impact that's going to happen if we don't pass this override. Um, I will also share as a, uh, employee of, so for another town that is also trying to, uh, pass another override and, uh, the, the major cuts that's being, uh, happening in schools and all the activities, um, and the struggles that, um, um, parents and, and youth are sharing.
▶ 2:03:20 Maya Jamaleddine: Um, I wanted to thank the youth that came tonight and shared their stories and, and voiced their concerns to us. It really, uh, means a lot. And I feel, um, embarrassed that we had to, to bring them to these meetings to advocate for themselves rather than, uh, being granted for them and, and knowing that we can provide the minimum possible for our youth. Um, I, uh, probably this is a question that could be for both of you or also for the school department, um, for those, um, that are now being compensated because we removed one of the, uh, positions or one of the, you know, uh, whether, I'm gonna give an example. Um, the principal at the high school who is going to be the principal also for the middle school going to be compensated.
▶ 2:04:20 Maya Jamaleddine: Uh, my understanding, um, now if this override passes, how is going to be, how is this going to be handled? So I think I understand your question. You're asking about the, the principal, um, compensated for running the two schools. Yes. So that is built into our FY 26 budget right now. That is not contingent on the override, um, passing. So, um, that's been built into our budget extensive talks this spring about how that model would look discussed many models, and that's where the one we landed on. So that's built into the FY 26 budget currently. And, and if hopefully the override passes, um, that compensation will be, um, taken back. If we hire, if we fill, uh, that position as principal for middle school,
▶ 2:05:11 Maya Jamaleddine: If that position was filled, you know, that's something we would explore. We always base staffing funding on student and student need district needs. So we would, we would examine that, and that would be, that wouldn't be something that I would decide in isolation. That would be something that the administration would talk about and make a decision on that moving Forward. So no decision is made right now. Nothing is clear, but we will be deciding, or you guys will be deciding moving forward, uh, once the override passes. Yep. All, all, all funding decisions are, are based on student need, district needs. Yes. And do we have already the finalized numbers of all these compensations? So we have for next year, we have a settle contract
▶ 2:05:50 Cal Finocchiaro: for teachers and paraprofessionals. Those are our two biggest, um, collective bargaining agreements. And we do have those in place for next year past that we do not have, uh, we are not currently negotiating with them past next year. Okay. Thank you. Thank you. Uh, I have Council ra then Councillor Brisky. Yes. Thank you so much for your presentation. And I just, again, wanna thank both of you for spending so much time in that task force. You know, um, you have day jobs and city council, so I'm sure that took up a lot of time. So we appreciate that. Um, and I just keep on coming back to this one question, and I don't even know how to get across, but I think for, and I'm just making a general statement,
▶ 2:06:33 Cal Finocchiaro: but for the residents that are sort of questioning this, like, I keep come coming back to why, if we had plethora amount of funds in the city, why would we dedicate so much time and resources, task force, you know, looking for funds, ways to fund the city, and why would we cut so many jobs? I mean, there's an issue here with, with, with funds, right? We're not doing this just because we wanna do this. It obviously, I think there's like 40 other communities around in Massachusetts that are going through something like this right now. I think you said 25 just tried to pass, uh, 14 pass. Um, so I think people, if they just think about that, you know, this is, this is not fun. We're not, this is not something we wanna be doing. Right?
▶ 2:07:18 Cal Finocchiaro: Um, and the city needs money, so, and this is the way we, this is the really the only way that we can, um, get the amount of funds that we need for the city to either go along as we are or kind of get better to put in basic terms, right? So, um, I think really that's kind of what I come back to a lot of times, like why we wouldn't be doing this if we didn't have to. Very true. Thank you. Uh, councilor Osky. Yeah. Uh, thank you to both of you and the task force and everything. And, uh, thank you specifically to Maya for bringing up the issue of the middle school. Um, you know, uh, the budget is sort of what we value. And when I heard we were cutting the middle school principal, I was, wasn't shocked
▶ 2:08:08 because I knew that we needed to pass the override before, but I was definitely not happy about it in the context of how middle schools function and, um, understanding that we have to make a cut and that, you know, um, you know, the, uh, principal at the high school is amazing, but the idea that we're gonna have a thousand middle schoolers, um, you know, my kid being one of them, um, with a shared principal, if that doesn't emphasize the need for this override, I can't imagine what would, uh, 'cause they create middle schools specifically for a reason because the kids are no longer, um, elementary age and they're no, and they aren't ready for high school. Like one day they will have a teddy bear
▶ 2:08:56 and the next day they'll have a boyfriend or a girlfriend because that's the way middle schools are. And to manage that, uh, it takes a special disposition and it takes, uh, a group of special people and we have those people in place, but now we're losing them as Maya pointed out, and we're losing them in drastic and dramatic fashion, which really isn't, um, what Melrose is about in any fashion. Um, and so the idea that, um, this doesn't pass would be shocking to me. Uh, so this is just more of a comment than a question that I am happy that you brought that up, and I am glad that, uh, we're moving forward in the direction. I really can't wait till November. Thank You Councilor Hamilton for the second
▶ 2:09:50 Ward Hamilton: Time. Thank you. Um, I didn't thank everyone the first time. I apologize. We're good. Thank you all. Um, don't forget the Two that were on the committee. I'd like to especially thank yes, president Elli and chair Repe for your leadership and, and on, truthfully, like, I think those were two ideal folks to assign to that committee. So thank you. And I know, I think I can speak for our fellow counselors when I say that, um, between the two of them, we all have a lot of confidence and faith in their abilities. Um, I feel like I'd be remiss if I didn't ask. So we have three questions with big lump sum numbers. As we, as the, um, override campaign gets underway, will we see an understanding of like how those break out,
▶ 2:10:42 Ward Hamilton: uh, because there are differences, um, from one question to the next. So I guess not really a question that you have to answer, but a, a comment, my observation would be that it would be very helpful for the community to understand other than a lump sum number, what's the difference between a maintenance, uh, and repair budget for DPW? That's roads and sidewalks, road sidewalks, buildings. Mm-hmm. Those types of things. I understand the sensitive nature of the, um, numbers for the bargaining unit, and I'm confident that we'll find a way to, um, you know, give, not give up that information while at the same time, um, having that level of transparency for our voters. So thank you. Thank you. Thanks.
▶ 2:11:22 Mark Garipay: Thank you. Anyone else? If I could just, um, give my experience of being on the, on the committee. Um, I think, uh, someone that knows, I usually pretty outspoken. So, uh, we had a, I'm, we had a lot of, a lot of discussion. I mean, I went from, I changed my opinion three different times. Um, it was great. Hear, hearing all the feedback from, from, uh, everyone else on the committee. We did. We didn't always agree on things. Um, but I think it was, uh, it was good to get everyone in a room and, and actually have a conversation and respect everyone's opinions. I think it was, um, I think it was very important. I think it's a huge step forward for this process. Um, to Counselor Williams'. Point on, I was going back and forth between one number
▶ 2:12:14 Mark Garipay: and one question and, and three, and I just thought over the, my history in Melrose, we've had probably five to six overrides and one is passed, and I think maybe it was time to look at it a little differently. So, um, I was happy, um, with where we, where we ended up. And, um, I was happy to be on that, on that committee with my fellow school committee, city employees and President Elli. Uh, but the mayor, thank you. You deserve a lot of credit. But the heavy work went to Kerry, the CFO and Ken Kelly. They did yeoman's work numbers changing 'em. So behind the scenes, the city owes, both of you did a gratitude coming up with these numbers and, and I appreciate it when I was in there. So thank you very much. Appreciate
▶ 2:13:06 Mark Garipay: It. If I could just add, city Melrose is very lucky that CFO Golden is here. She is, um, a wealth of resource for, um, municipal finance. I learned things from her all the time. It really is, um, her leadership that's been very helpful through this process. So City Melrose is very lucky that she's here. And you've done yeoman's work and done a great job since you've, you've been with us for three years. We've been through it. Yeah. Councilor Comm Chaney. I was just gonna make a motion to recommend Second. Second. We have a motion to recommend id 1 2 7 2 8 late order to place override question on the November 4th, 2025 local election ballot. It's made by Councilor McNaught, seconded by Councilor Stewart.
▶ 2:13:50 Mark Garipay: On discussion. Madam Clerk, will you please call the role? Yes. Councilor Jamine? Yes. Councilor Occhio? Yes. Councillor Hamilton? Yes. Counselor Rum Chetty? Yes. Counselor Reky. Yes. Counselor Romano. Yes. Councillor Stewart? Yes. Councillor Vandiver. Yes. Councillor Williams? Yes. President Elli? Yes. Chair Garipay? Yes. All in favor That will be recommended to the full council. It'll be placed on the number of fourth local election ballot. That concludes our business. Thank you for everyone listening at home. It's been a long night. Thank you. Everyone in the gallery that had to wait. I will entertain a motion to adjourn. Mr. Chair. I will make a motion to adjourn. Second. Second. Motion to adjourn by Council of Stewart.
▶ 2:14:33 Mark Garipay: Seconded by everyone. One discussion. All in favor. Aye. For adjourned.