Finance Committee — 2025-08-18
Attendance
Maya Jamaleddine ; Leila Migliorelli ; John Obremski ; Devin Romanul ; Robb Stewart ; Ryan Williams
Agenda
- Call to Order
- Minutes Approval
- Public Comment
- Orders
- Calling the Local Election for Tuesday, November 4th 2025 from 7:00 am to 8:00 pm at the Melrose Veterans Memorial Middle School gymnasium complex.
- Requesting City Council approval of the Board of Registrars of Voters Recommendations relative to In Person Early Voting and Mail In Voting for the November 4, 2025 Local Election
- Requests
- Proposed Local Fee increase for Vital Record Production and Licensing to begin in FY26
- Adjournment
Minutes
CITY OF MELROSE FINANCE COMMITTEE CALENDAR● AUGUST 18, 2025 Council Chamber, First Floor, Melrose City Hall Committee Meeting 6:36 PM 562 Main Street, Melrose, MA 02176 The public should take notice that the Melrose City Council may, on certain occasions, have a quorum in attendance due to standing committees of the City Council consisting of both voting and non-voting members. Members attending this duly posted meeting are participating and deliberating only in conjunction with the business of the standing committee. Attendee Name Title Status Arrived Ryan Williams Vice Chair Present Maya Jamaleddine Absent John Obremski Present Devin Romanul Present Leila Migliorelli Ex Officio Member Present Robb Stewart Chair Present
(ID # 12884) Calling Election Calling the Local Election for Tuesday, November 4th 2025 from 7:00 am to 8:00 pm at the Melrose Veterans Memorial Middle School gymnasium complex. Recommend Place on File City Council
(ID # 12885) Election Requesting City Council approval of the Board of Registrars of Voters Recommendations relative to In Person Early Voting and Mail In Voting for the November 4, 2025 Local Election Recommend Place on File City Council
(ID # 12797) Request Proposed Local Fee increase for Vital Record Production and Licensing to begin in FY26 Place on file City Council City of Melrose Page 1 8/19/2025 12:23 PM
Transcript
▶ 6:44 Robb Stewart: Good evening. The time is 6 35. And I have an echo. It just adds like a baseline. Monday, August 18th, 2025. Uh, this is the meeting with finance committee. I'm Council Stewart, the chair also joining me this evening. Our Vice Chair Williams Councils Reky, Roal and President Elli Exofficio. Um, this provides notice of a quorum, um, and in accordance with the open meeting law. This meeting is being recorded and broadcast live on MMTV. At this point, I'll motion by unanimous consent to open the floor for public comment. Seeing no objections, the floor is now open for public comment. Is there anybody that would like to come forward and speak on the items or any other topic? Alright. Uh, since no one is here, anybody online there is
▶ 7:38 Robb Stewart: Not. Okay. Without objection, then I will close. Uh, public comment. Uh, public comment is now closed. Um, let's see. Do, did we have meeting minutes for, uh, finance? Last finance? I believe we did, right? Yes. We emailed to you. Yes. So at this time, I'll motion by unanimous consent to approve without reading the minutes from the July 21st. June 21st. July 21st, July 21st, uh, meeting. Seeing no objection, those minutes are now approved. Okay. Uh, moving on to the agenda. We have three, I believe, three items on our agenda this evening. The first item is, uh, item ID number 1 2 8 8 4. Calling the local election for Tuesday, November 4th, 2025 from 7:00 AM to 8:00 PM at the Melrose Veterans Memorial Middle School Gymnasium
▶ 8:36 Robb Stewart: Complex Committee members. Um, any comments? Motion to Recommend? Second. So we have a motion to recommend by Vice Chair Williams, seconded by Councilor Romanul under discussion. All in favor? Aye. Aye. Opposed? Alright. That will be recommended to the full council. Second item is, uh, ID number 1 2 8 8 5. Requesting city council approval of the Board of registers of voter recommendations relative to in-person early voting and mail-in voting for the November 4th, 2025 local election. Under discussion, what is the will Motion to recommend? Second, we have a motion to recommend by Vice Chair Williams, seconded by Council Ramal under discussion. All in favor? Aye. Opposed? That motion will also, uh, be sent to the full council.
▶ 9:45 Robb Stewart: We have a request ID number 1 2 7 9 7. This is a proposed local fee increase for vital record production and licensing to begin in fiscal year 2026. And there were, uh, a couple of attachments that compared the existing fees, um, relative to our surrounding towns. And then the proposed fees. Uh, I and I assume everybody has seen that and taken a look. So, uh, we shall go on under discussion. Are there any questions? Was there any, um, comment from the administration on this? I'm clear. Should I go, should I go There? No, it's okay if I point of order that's, this is city clerks filing this order. So it would be the clerk, if the clerk had any commentary. If you wanna ask, answer or Yes. Say anything.
▶ 10:38 So at this point, I just was putting out, um, it's been a while that we have increased fees in the city for any of our licenses, um, or, or certificates that we provide to, um, our local businesses or residents. And with the costs of ink and Bond paper and labor and databases and software all increase in, we still continue to keep our costs at the same amount. And so we were just looking at our costs, looking at our expenses, looking at our, some of our surrounding communities. Um, honestly, just making sure that we just looked at our costs and made sure that we actually are covering, um, bringing in what, what we, what we spend. And so we just came up with a proposal of some fees that we, we feel like should be slightly
▶ 11:36 Kimberly Vandiver: increased and we presented those. Okay. Uh, so any questions from, uh, committee members? Alright, So Council Vanderberg, Uh, thank you. Uh, chair Stewart, I'm not a member of this committee, but I did want to just comment. Um, the one area I would suggest taking a look at and possibly bump up of them further is the dog licenses. Um, just considering that animal control comes up frequently, I don't know what the cost of that is to Melrose and it's typically dogs would be loose, dogs would be a source of that, um, need. Um, and we also did just, um, have a capital expense for work at the dog park. There may be other maintenance associated with that. And I would just wanna make sure that, you know,
▶ 12:28 to the extent that that needs to be covered, that the dog license, they're keeping up with that. I don't, that's just my comment as a non committee member. I sure won't do. Do we know, um, how much money the dog licenses bring in? It's, it's on I QM two. Say what? It's on IQM two, How much it brings in annually, not how much it costs. Yes. I, yeah, I have it on there. Okay. If you, I have a hard copy here if you want it though. I have, I'm looking at the, uh, the current license fees and the proposed license fees Point of order. If we're, if we're gonna be asking the city clerk questions, we should allow her to sit at the table and answer the questions fine. Sorry. But if we're not, I don't know
▶ 13:13 what is captured on camera if she is over there on camera or not. Oh, I see it. Yeah, yeah, yeah. It's, it's nested in the main item. Exactly. Yeah. Yeah. There's like six attachments. Yeah. Should I go up the Yeah, sure. So we see that the dog licenses bring in about $41,000 a year. And that's under the old scheme of, excuse me, uh, 15 to 20. And the increase suggested is, So actually, um, it was, it's 41,000 as of today. Yeah. For 2025. Right. The year prior to that was 48,426. So it'll probably be around the same. Okay. Um, my expenses, I mean, you have to look at how many people are touching this dog license. Um, you know, you have animal control touching it. You have city Clerk's Office, you have the Board of Health.
▶ 14:16 Um, so, you know, like, like the clerks at the Board of Health as well. So there's a lot of different people touching this. There is the v paper, there's the, we, we are charged every single year for a maintenance fee for the software. Um, that number goes up depending on how many new, um, dogs that we bring on. Mm-hmm. So that number slowly increases. Um, yeah. So it's just, it just has been a while and we, it's been a while and we just felt that at this time we needed to start raising some of these, raised in some of these fees. 'cause it is time. Yeah. I to, I totally agree. Assuming, yeah, I totally agree. So I guess my, my question is, do you feel that the raise goes far enough to cover the costs
▶ 15:01 Ryan Williams: that you incur? 'cause I know the raise is, is par is in parity with other communities, right? Mauldin's not on the list, but they're also a 15, $20, um, fee. So, so do you think that that $25 is enough to cover the costs that we incur plus the improvements that dog parks and all these, you know, services that We provide? Yes. And yes. And, and like internally when, when I was meeting, um, with our staff, like, we don't wanna go too far for the residents, but we just felt that would be enough now just to cover some of our labor costs in the increase Okay. In, in the paper and the ink and the software. That, that would be just enough. Well, thank you very much for that information and also for the excellent rundown
▶ 15:45 Ryan Williams: of everything on IQM two and the attachments. Um, I think it's, um, I agree that we should be making our license fees match the cost that they're expected to fund. It sounds like you've done that work and you figured out what that cost would be. So I'm good to leave this, um, to leave this as it is for right now, and I'll make a motion to, uh, recommend Second. Okay. So we have a motion on the floor by, uh, vice Chair Williams, uh, to recommend seconded by, uh, councilor Roal under discussion what is, uh, all in favor? Aye. Aye. Opposed? Alright. We will recommend this to the full counsel. Uh, that is the last order. Um, without objection. I'll motion to, uh, adjourn. We are adjourned. Thank you.