[Nicole Morell]: I'm sorry. Committee of the Whole meeting. Tuesday, June 13th, 2023 at 6 p.m. Mr. Clerk, please call the roll.
[Adam Hurtubise]: Vice President Bears. Present. Councilor Caraviello. Present. Councilor Collins.
[Nicole Morell]: Present.
[Adam Hurtubise]: Councilor Knight.
[Nicole Morell]: Present.
[Adam Hurtubise]: Councilor Scarpino is absent. Councilor Tseng. Present. President Morell.
[Nicole Morell]: Present. Six present, one absent. The meeting is called to order. There will be a meeting of the Medford City Council Committee of the Whole on Tuesday, June 13th, 2023 at 6 p.m. in the Medford City Council Chamber on the second floor of Medford City Hall and via Zoom. The purpose of the meeting is to discuss the proposed FY24 budget of the City of Medford, paper 23-320. The following proposed departmental budgets will be presented. Medford Public Schools, Medford Public Library, Debt Service slash Bonds, Water and Sewer Enterprise Fund. The City Council has invited Chief of Staff, Nina Nazarian, Finance Director, Bob Dickinson, and the department heads for the departmental budgets listed above to attend the meeting. For further information, aids and accommodations, contact the City Clerk at 781 Council President. Um so we're going to take this in order. I will do water sewer enterprise fund. They will do library schools, and then we'll finish with debt service bonds. So, um, for water and sewer, we have water Superintendent Dan Stone King and DPW Commissioner McIver. Um and for the total request for the water sewer uh, to you both for our presentation. I think that's just on. Can you, is that working Shane?
[Adam Hurtubise]: I think that was a sarcastic. Great. Hang on. It was, I think it was sarcastic. How's that?
[Unidentified]: Yes, thank you.
[Tim McGivern]: All right, I'm not going to dance and sing now. So, anyway. Thank you. President Morell and her fellow council members, thank you for having us tonight. As you know, we're here for the water and sewer enterprise budget. I'll just highlight a couple of things. You'll see on the tally of positions at the table that there's a water supervisor position and another water quality controller position. So that's probably the biggest change here in this budget. It's a different funding source than the general fund and we managed to keep us within the, you know, with a relatively small increase, but to get a couple of higher level positions in there. There were other open positions in there that we rearranged to make these positions. Now the reason that we did it is, Dan can go into detail as you'd like, but as we discussed a little bit during the general fund hearing, The assets, the utility assets are, you know, a lot of them are nearing their end of life, including the water and sewer, most importantly, the water. So, you know, we anticipate having to ramp up how we are replacing our water mains and also brakes. So we're anticipating that happening. That's something we're having an additional who can work with more than one crew hopefully in the long run is the direction we want to head as well as taking in more relay work in-house as well. We've practiced a little bit recently on Union Street to get a relay, a new water pipe in the ground by in-house and I think it was pretty successful. So we'd like to continue that. So that's part of the strategy. The other position, the water quality controller position is also new. We have a water quality controller currently, but from the size of our system, the amount of testing that we have to do for water quality and new regulatory requirements coming down the pike, a system of this size should have two. So that should help there. And besides that, another change that you'll see, and one of the ways that we've been able to have this flexibility is taking in camera work in-house. So the technology is such that it's more affordable now than it was just a few years ago. So we're trying to take in the camera work instead of contracting it out. So that's another piece that we changed. But besides that, it's very similar to what we proposed last year. Thank you very much.
[Nicole Morell]: Questions from the council? Councilor Caraviello.
[Richard Caraviello]: Thank you, Madam President. Tim, how far along are we in the meter project?
[Tim McGivern]: We just recently awarded the contractor who's going to be doing the work. So we've purchased the meters and now we- We haven't actually started them yet. Well, we started it because we have the meters. So in-house, we've started replacing the bad ones, but I don't know if we have a start date for the contractor yet.
[Richard Caraviello]: What projects do you have coming up that we intend on using the Water and Sewer Enterprise Fund for?
[Tim McGivern]: We have some equipment purchases that we'd like to make with retained earnings. And then right now we have some MWA loans and we're paying debt service on, I think, six water main replacements, including Union, Guild, Brookings, Vista, and then so the Water and Sewer Enterprise Fund would pay the debt service for those. And then the next round of streets, I believe, would be, we try to get on retained earnings. But plenty of work to do.
[Richard Caraviello]: I was reading your report today from the MWRA and saying that we're not up to stuff on some stuff. Do you want to comment on that, on some testing?
[Tim McGivern]: Sure. Maybe, Dan, you want to feel that a little bit?
[Ron Baker]: So the violations that we've received recently were for lead and copper, and they were just for basically filing and paperwork. It wasn't anything to do with quality or the safety of the water in any way. We do also on our consumer confidence report have an E. coli positive. This happened, we believe, due to an error at the lab. So we retested and there was no confirmed E. coli. But unfortunately, we have to put that in the consumer confidence report. But unfortunately, we have to put that in the consumer confidence report.
[Richard Caraviello]: Are we flushing our pipes on a regular basis?
[Ron Baker]: We are not, we currently have Western Sampson working on a unidirectional flushing program. I don't think the city of Medford has flushed very much at all in the past 30 years. So that's caused a lot of concerns, but we have a program that's starting up. Whether it's successful, we'll find out.
[Richard Caraviello]: What's the cost of that program?
[Ron Baker]: So I believe it's going to be roughly, it's a very rough number, 130,000.
[Richard Caraviello]: Is that going to come out of the water and sort of retain your news accounts?
[Ron Baker]: No, I believe we're budgeted this year, 40,000, and next year, 40,000. So we just have to- Well, we may need to come back or retain earnings.
[Tim McGivern]: One of the things that we're going to find out as we get the fleshing program going again is how much more we need to do, how bad it is, how much money we should be spending each year. So as Dan mentioned, we have about $140,000 planned over the next couple of years, but it may need to be more. and I don't think we have that entirely funded. I know we have, it's partially funded, so we may be coming to you for retained earnings for that as well. That's going to be something that we have to do, we should be doing every single year. Okay, that's it for me at the moment.
[Nicole Morell]: Thank you, Vice President Bears.
[Zac Bears]: Thank you, Madam President. Could you guys describe just the general condition of the system it's age, it's need, any risks that are within that, et cetera?
[Tim McGivern]: Sure, yep, and I'll also refer, I'll speak about it a little bit, and also there's an asset management report that's available on the engineering website that gives some detail. But the system itself, and Dan, please chime in, the system itself was mostly installed in the early 1900s, the 10s, the 20s, and the 30s. The type of pipe they use has a life cycle from 100 to 150 years, more or less. So, you know, we're entering that phase where, you know, the majority of the pipes installed in our city are coming of age. So that's not just the pipes, but that's also the valves, that's also the hydrants, that's also service lines in a lot of cases. So, you know, one of the things that we've made a considerable amount of progress on is service lines, and that's part of the getting the lead out initiative. But what we are still in need of ramping up, which hence the strategy, you know, I think we're going to try to ramping up over the next quite a number of years, is to get the older pipes, mostly the six inch cast iron pipes out of the ground and getting modern eight inch ductile iron in the ground. So that's a focus of us, that's a focus of the MWRA as well.
[Zac Bears]: Great, yeah, that leads right into my next question, which is, what does that long-term strategic plan look like, especially in terms of costs and rates?
[Tim McGivern]: Sure, so that's a great question. And one of the things that we're working with the mayor on doing is a long-term rate study. So it hasn't started yet. So this is going to be something that is very much needed. Other municipalities do it. So it matches any rate increases with funding in the enterprise fund for a strategy such as this, knowing that over the next 10 years plus, our system is going to be, you know, experiencing more breaks and is going to be experiencing less performance. So, you know, we're really looking to make sure that our revenue matches up with the work that we need to do and that that work is going to be both contracted work and in-house work.
[Zac Bears]: Great. This one, feel free to answer however best you can. It seems to me that it would be fair to say that the strategy for a long time has not been kind of comprehensive, looking at the whole system and what it's going to take to bring it up to modern standards. It seems that that's now changing. But one piece of that has been using, you know, basically we've been taking money from the surplus and reserves that are what we call retained earnings, which is really just the reserves for this enterprise fund. every year to reduce rates versus maybe using that to invest in the system and bringing it up to par? Is that a fair statement that maybe we're shifting to a different strategy from just not trying to comprehensively repair the system and keeping rates low with reserves to using all of the money that we collect to make sure that the system is brought up to where it needs to be?
[Tim McGivern]: I think that's a fair statement. I don't want to look backwards and criticize. I'd like to look forward and plan. With that said, when I took the leadership of the DPW, one of the things that I noticed was, a need for some long-term planning here. And that's partially because I was city engineer before this, and we commissioned the asset management evaluation a few years ago, which basically told us where the risky places are, where the most critical pipes are, depending on what they service, and what the age of those pipes are. And it basically overlays all that information. and gives us a breakdown of what we need to do. And one of the first things was to replace the six-inch cast iron unlined lines, which is what that, last year we began with a round of the most dire, six streets, and then we'll just, the plan is to then have another round of six or seven or eight streets to keep the ball rolling until we get it all out of the ground, which We'll take some time, which is why we both need an in-house effort and a contracted effort.
[Zac Bears]: Great. Yeah, and I understand how my framing could seem critical of the past, but it was more so that residents can start to understand that there may be a change in how much rates go up every year because we're moving from kind of a status quo strategy to a strategy where we're fixing the system. And whether that's taken as a criticism of the past or not, I just think it's important for residents to understand that things may feel a little bit different.
[Tim McGivern]: It's right to plan to move forward right now. So, you know, and we're not alone. You know, like I was saying other municipalities have done this somewhat recently where you have to say, Okay, well you know I'm our city had a boom of water pipe building in the 20s and 30s. And we're getting to a point where those pipes are, you know, a lot of them aren't even passing the flow that we would like to see out of them. So it really comes down to the time is ripe to do some long term planning with our revenue for the enterprise fund.
[Zac Bears]: Great. And just last question. This is all in the service of avoiding what you would call what a catastrophic event or do you have a word phrase for it that I can't remember an incident where there's like a water main break or something like that.
[Tim McGivern]: Hopefully it's not catastrophic, but the idea would be to, you know, as we replace the pipes that are the oldest and have seen the most breaks, it will reduce the rate of breaks that we see over time. And it will also, over time, increase the flows and pressures in our system, and it will also increase the water quality of our system. And, you know, we're talking about water here, so, you know, this is all very important. know, that won't last forever if you just leave the same pipes in the ground. So at some point, you know, within the next 10 or 20 years, it's going to reach that point of no return. And we are working on a strategy so we don't reach that point of no return.
[Zac Bears]: Great, may not be something everybody sees every day, but it's something everybody uses, and it's really important, and I'm glad to hear that we're taking this approach.
[Tim McGivern]: Absolutely, yeah, I think, you know, with Dan leading the Water and Sewer Division, and myself now leading the department, we're committed to, you know, planning this out the best way we can. So that's what we intend to do.
[Zac Bears]: Great, thank you, thank you both.
[Nicole Morell]: Thank you, Councilor Caraviello.
[Richard Caraviello]: Thank you, Tim, a couple more questions. Do we plan to do this work, a lot of these changing, in-house or subcontracting to other companies?
[Tim McGivern]: In my opinion, we're going to need to do both. And the reason is that we would need a massive in-house crew to be able to take on all that work. And then at some point, you know, once we're done, you know, what do we do with the crew? So there's a balance. We're going to need to do both in-house and contract work for sure. It's just a matter of what that proportion is, what that balance is.
[Richard Caraviello]: It looks like there's still about 500 houses that still have lead pipes. So is there 500 that are confirmed?
[Ron Baker]: We still have a lot of unknown. Really? So we consider the unknown also lead. We have to consider the unknown also lead.
[Richard Caraviello]: So how many unknowns would there be?
[Ron Baker]: I don't know off the top of my head. I would say somewhere around 7,000, 8,000. Correct. We have 16,000 services.
[Tim McGivern]: to unknown and what the regulations have us do, and this is relatively new, it's due in 2024, is to inventory both sides of the service pipe. So every service pipe, well, not every, but most service pipes have a public side and a private side. So we have to inventory both. And if, say for example, we know that one side is copper, but we do not know what the other side is, then that gets tagged as unknown. And as far as the EPA is concerned, that needs to come out of the ground and they count it as lead, or they count it as needs to come out of the ground, basically. So, or we need to do the work to confirm that it's not lead.
[Richard Caraviello]: So one way- Are we incentivizing the residents to get that done?
[Tim McGivern]: We are, the private side, yes. We're incentivizing the private side by $1,000 rebate. Okay. Yeah.
[Richard Caraviello]: And one last thing. So I think after you put your water meter, the new meters in, I think you're going to see a drastic increase in revenue. Because this happened last time when we changed all the meters. All the meters were under-reporting, and now you change literally about 18,000 meters a change.
[Tim McGivern]: I think right now we're
[Richard Caraviello]: Yeah, so I think once you put those meters in, you're going to see an increase in revenue from that, because that's what happened last time, because they were just underreporting. And that's where the phone calls are going to start coming in.
[Tim McGivern]: Yes, yes. And that's one of the reasons.
[Richard Caraviello]: So people have to be able to make that understood.
[Tim McGivern]: I think, yes, it will have to be educated and some outreach there for sure. I think, you know, that's another reason why the time is right to take a look at our enterprise fund from a long-term standpoint and see what the rates need to look like two years out, three years out, four years out. locked on a number yet, but I'm thinking we probably should be doing 10 years out. So we have a plan. So this body knows approximately what your constituents are going to be experiencing or what to expect as time goes by. So it's no surprise. Thank you.
[Nicole Morell]: Thank you. Any other questions from councillors? Sam, I have a few. So going back to the lead question, is Medford an outlier or any different than CUNY? I mean, I know there's so much unknown, but as far as just like the amount of lead piping we have, are we unique or is this just, this is statewide, this is old infrastructure kind of thing?
[Ron Baker]: In Massachusetts, there's three cities that are the highest. They call them the three M's, Melrose, Medford, and Malden, I believe. Yeah. OK.
[Nicole Morell]: So we are up there.
[Ron Baker]: Yeah. OK. But the other thing is, too, with that in mind, just because we're high in lead, other cities are probably more high in iron, which the EPA is considering the exact same thing. OK.
[Nicole Morell]: I lost my second question after that. Oh, is there any way that change in funding or additional funding would help us change this out sooner, or literally we're kind of going at the only pace you can go at to change these services out, the lead pipes?
[Ron Baker]: If we can grow our department, we can change them out faster. Right now, what we're working on is an inventory to know exactly what we have. So once we do the meter program, all these meters that are replaced, we'll be able to see the service line inside, and we'll be able to get an accurate inventory then. But unless we grow, it would stay at a steady rate that we're at right now.
[Nicole Morell]: Okay. Does this current growth of four people, does that help?
[Tim McGivern]: it's fine yes yes so basically the um uh because we haven't done a long-term plan we've made some changes within uh sort of the boundaries of the um you know the budget that we have uh to make some year one improvements is what i call them uh so those year one improvements are included in here that is like the water quality controller and a supervisor position to begin the process of building out a team.
[Nicole Morell]: And do you have people for those positions already or candidates?
[Tim McGivern]: No, no, no. So we just, the first step would be to budget them, have the money appropriated so then we could begin, you know, the process to, you know, create the position if we need to. I think the supervisor exists and then to begin the hiring process.
[Nicole Morell]: And then just out of curiosity, do you know if those are, positions that are tricky to hire for, or you really don't know until you say again, do you know if those are positions that are challenging to hire for, or you really don't know until you start the process?
[Tim McGivern]: I feel like this day and age, all the positions are challenging to hire for. Um, so, uh, you know, I think, I think, uh, it's hard to know without, without, without starting. So, um, we will, we will start that and, uh, hopefully they're, they're, uh, attractive.
[Nicole Morell]: Okay.
[Tim McGivern]: Yeah.
[Nicole Morell]: Great. Thank you. Any additional questions from Councilors? Seeing none. Thank you both so much. Any members of the public questions? Thank you both.
[Tim McGivern]: All right. Thank you very much.
[Adam Hurtubise]: Just this year?
[Nicole Morell]: Yeah. Yeah. You want to put it back in the stand if you can? OK. Yeah. There you go. Thank you. All right. So we will go to libraries next, which I believe is page 202. So the expenditure summary for libraries is $1,925,177 up $221,046 or 12.97% over the previous year. And we have library director Barbara Kerr here to walk us through this. And then we'll go to questions. What am I doing with microphones? I don't know. Which microphone should Barbara use?
[Adam Hurtubise]: doesn't seem to be.
[Barbara Kerr]: Hello. There we go. Okay. So, good evening. I have statistics I want to give you a bit of a report because we had a very good year. As you may remember, the beginning of last year was tough because we didn't get our shelving we didn't get our furniture it was hard to get set up so we were slow to get our everyday programming and all of those things going but we, we hit our rhythm in the summer. We have had 1111 programs in the last since between July 1 This year and last Friday, and then another one over the couple we probably had five more since then but it's 22,000 people in attendance. This past Sunday we did our fairy tale ball which is the kickoff for summer reading and we had 845 people most of them under the age of 10. It was quite an afternoon, but it was really good. It was very successful people are very pleased. We have fielded 18,000 reference and information questions that's on the first floor. Sam said we need to triple that for children because they never asked just one question. Nicole wanted me to say that we have had almost 800 hours of teen volunteer service as part of their community service, and my other things traffic 188,000 people in the last year have come into the library, our circulation is averaging 30 to 32,000 a month, which is tremendous. And our ebook platforms, we've had 86,000 downloads, which is actually higher than we did last year. And apparently in Minuteman, we're usually 11 in Minuteman in terms of size and circulation and things, but we went up to eight in terms of ebooks. So apparently we're a trend. It's good. We're very pleased with this. What's the other thing? We added a library of things this year, which is kind of a library trend, but it's things like laser levels and food dryer I forget, like we had like games we have a lot of games we have horses we have a little projector and a screen you could take home and we've had almost 3000 checkouts there and that just started a few months ago. So, we're very busy. What is great. And when we built the place, we built it so that people could use it the way they wanted to. And they are, and it's wonderful. So we have people who work there. One of our trustees is there a couple of days a week doing work. You know, not from home, it's better than home. We have people who are using the study rooms to do Zoom job interviews, which is great. We have two literacy groups that are doing classes in some of our study rooms. We're going to have citizenship classes in the fall. We've rearranged everything so and we've added Spanish language books to our collection. Children's is the place to be. And one of the things that frustrated people a lot in the old building was that you came to storytime. And you'd like to sit and talk to other people and there just wasn't enough room to do it, but now we have a cafe. So after the morning programs, the nannies and the moms and the kids are in the cafe and they're there for an hour and a half. The people in the coffee cart call it the nanny wave because after they know they're coming and the coffee cart is doing very well. And actually one of the kids who works on the coffee cart, when he graduated from high school, they gave him a check for himself and a check for charity. And he gave the charity to the coffee cart. And I believe channel seven was coming to do a little thing this afternoon so that should be in the news pretty quickly. And teen I told you teen is yet when don't come to the library on Wednesday afternoons because that's when the teens are there, but it's great. It really is great. We wanted, these are all the things that we wanted. We wanted people to interact. We have community meetings, we have programs, we have joint programs. It's just, it really, it has been very, very satisfying and the response to the building has been great. So we're in good shape in terms of that stuff. And hopefully we can continue to do so.
[Nicole Morell]: Thank you, Barbara. You're going to make me cry during budget season, which I usually do, but not happy to hear.
[Barbara Kerr]: So we'll go to Vice President Barracks. And then there's the budget.
[SPEAKER_16]: I was going to say, you almost had both of us cry. Do you want me to talk about that? Go ahead on the budget. Bring us back to her.
[Barbara Kerr]: Okay, so it has gone up a lot it's visibly it's up a lot but we settled our contract this year so almost all of the increase, our union races. It looks like there's more money for personnel but it's not actually funding for more people, it's more funding for the people we have, which is good. So operationally, it doesn't really make a difference, except I think they're a little happier. It's hard to tell. We've discovered recently that you can have donuts delivered. So the happiness level has gone up quite a bit at the library. So that's that. Well, we're back where we were last year in terms of ordinary expenses. This amount is lower than FY 17. It's the same situation we were in last year where we reduced our ordinary expenses and FY 19. with the understanding it would be put back up with a reasonable raise when we move back in, and it never was. And we're being expected to run the new place with all of its new technology and more needs in FY24 on a budget from seven years ago. And it just isn't, it's not really reasonable. and I was thinking today too that during starting in 2003 we got cut to pieces in the 2010s and we never quite recovered from that. We were on waivers for I think six years which meant we didn't go up 2.5 percent or whatever so we should be a lot further up than we are. I did a calculation if we hadn't cut in 2019 which If I could go back in time, we wouldn't cut in 2019, but we would be at about 519,000 if we'd gone up 2.5% every year. So 383 is, it's below FY17. It's above FY16, which is better than last year, but it is gonna be a struggle this year to do all the stuff that we need to do. I think that was everything I was gonna say, yes.
[Nicole Morell]: Great, thank you. We'll go to Vice President Bears.
[Zac Bears]: Thank you, Madam President. Thank you, Barbara. You answered my first question, which was just talking about all the programming and services. I think it's so important for people to hear everything that happens in this building. I think it's fair to say we built it, and the people are coming, and they're a lot. They're just there all the time, and we're doing a lot of stuff, and it's really exciting. And it's just a wonderful place, wonderful place here in Medford to have. My other question you got into a little bit, which is just that if the library hadn't gone down to the smaller budget for the temporary space, and if it had been increased every year, it would be significantly higher on the ordinary expense, the non-personnel expense budget than it is now. What's the impact of not having those resources on the people who go to library.
[Barbara Kerr]: My original, my budget request was 87,000 higher than this. That covered the basics. We always expect to have to use a little bit of state aid to make up the difference, because we've never actually been fully funded in my memory. But where this is probably going to make an impact this year is with the eBooks, because the way it works, the Minuteman network buys copies. And then everybody in the network could just wait for those copies, which is months. I mean, six months, nine months. Instead, we buy our own copies. It's what we do with books too, so that Medford people don't have to wait as long. We're not going to be able to do as much of that. And we're not going to be able to do as much of that with books either, if there isn't some kind of an increase. I know in the terms of world events, it doesn't seem like a terrible thing, but that's a very basic level of service that we should be funded for, just the ability to provide people with the thing that a library does the most.
[Zac Bears]: The library should have books.
[Barbara Kerr]: Library should have books. Yeah. Just kind of basically, and all of the other stuff.
[Zac Bears]: Thanks, thanks. That's helpful and it sounds like the ebook program is really successful it's where we're actually outpacing what we usually do that we have, we have to ebook platforms do we have one called hoopla that.
[Barbara Kerr]: is also, which is, I think is just for Metro people, and that's at 16,000. And that also has movies, audio, they all have audio books and eBooks. Hoopla has movies. We have a film streaming service called Canopy that also is very popular because it's like eBooks didn't take over the world, but the availability of more formats has made it possible for people to read books, watch movies in different ways. It's all part of books. It's all part of what we offer as our basic, it's what we do. We do a lot of other stuff, but that's where libraries came from.
[Zac Bears]: Yeah. My only other question, because I definitely think we need to work on that by next Tuesday.
[Barbara Kerr]: I would appreciate that.
[Zac Bears]: What would it take for the library to be open on Sundays?
[Barbara Kerr]: Couldn't be this year. Not this year, yeah.
[Zac Bears]: Just in the grand scope, I think that's a good goal.
[Barbara Kerr]: Yeah, it's because that is we know that's what something I meant to mention is we did a strategic plan this year and our staffing levels are significantly lower than everybody. People who are people, libraries that are the same size, have 30 full time staff and probably another 20, 25, 30 part time staff. We have 30 people total. I have 17 full time because we lost again in the 2000s, lost a lot of full time positions. The thing with Saturdays, Sundays is that It is not part of the work week, the regular work week that's defined by the contract. It's a separate staff. So when we figured out the logistics of it, it can be regular staff who want to work, who want to volunteer, and they get $3 more an hour. Or it could be a separate Sunday staff, which is the most likely thing. The wild card is that if it's the people who vote and you can't say no you can't volunteer so if all of the most highly paid people work Sundays it could be as much as an additional $60,000. It's probably closer to 40. It depends. The thing is that's, you know, that's a nice thing. we don't have enough people for the middle of the week. At this point, I can't guarantee that Children's is not gonna get closed every now and then because all it takes is two people with the flu to wipe out the daily schedule. So I wanna get us to Sunday hours, but I wanna make our regular staffing more stable before we start adding other stuff. Because the optics on Sunday hours is great. It looks like this new thing we're adding, but it doesn't, I don't want it to take away from the fact that, you know, we have 700 people a day coming through and we need to serve the days in the week, which are more populated.
[Zac Bears]: Yeah, no, and that's helpful. I appreciate the comprehensive answer, because what would it take isn't just how much would it cost to do Sunday. It's, yeah, is that the first thing we should do?
[Barbara Kerr]: Exactly. And I would say no, I know that people would like that, but it would only be a four, it would be a four hour day, but just wouldn't be. You know, we don't have, we just, we just. Yeah. Ideal situation in a business is one person does one job. No one at the Metropolitan Library just does one job. Everybody does all or most of what was once another full-time job. Some people are doing, Sam is doing like 11. I think I'm down to three, which is nice. And it just, we make it work and we do a good job, but we need some more people. we need to have the opportunity to sit down and do some long range planning for, you know, we wanna get this position and we need this position and how can we do that over five years? That's not something I have ever had the opportunity to do. And we're gonna do it in-house this year, but I would very much like to be able to have that conversation with the administration. Cause I know how to do math now.
[Zac Bears]: Yeah, building the library taught you math.
[Barbara Kerr]: Yeah, I learned how to do math. Payroll taught me math.
[Zac Bears]: Yeah. Those are my only questions. I'll just finish and say exactly, you just talked about long-term planning. Water and sewer just talked about long-term planning. All of the departments we've talked to pretty much in the past two and a half weeks have talked about long-term planning. This council has been talking about long-term planning for at least the four years I've been on it. It sounds like we need to do some long-term planning.
[Nicole Morell]: It would be useful.
[Zac Bears]: Thank you.
[Nicole Morell]: Councilor Caraviello.
[Richard Caraviello]: Thank you, Madam President. You have probably the most popular building in the area here.
[Barbara Kerr]: I think so.
[Richard Caraviello]: The numbers are astounding. And again, we're doing it with smoke and mirrors again. And you know what the part that slays me the most is We have a state-of-the-art library in Medford that we literally own for 50 cents on the dollar. We have that library for half price.
[Barbara Kerr]: Less than half price.
[Richard Caraviello]: Less than half price. And why we cannot fund it properly is beyond me, beyond me. Imagine if we were paying a note on 27 million or 28 million dollars that other cities are paying. the library would probably be shut down. So the city is saving a ton of money and to underfund it to the level that you're saying, I mean, we are the second lowest funded library in the greater Boston area. And we have probably the newest and the best library in the greater Boston area. And it's literally an embarrassment to sit here after two years and be begging for money to keep a library open that shouldn't be asking for money. I mean, we have a foundation that's been helpful, but how often can you keep going to the well of the foundation and the donors? And I know some of the donors are being turned off because they feel the city's not making the right commitments. And they're right. They're right. And the staff has been doing as much as they can to keep on raising funds and raising funds. At what point does the city step up and pay their fair share? You can't expect donors to pay for our library. That's really the bottom line. Again, we own the library for 45 to 50 cents on a dollar and shame on us for not being able to fund it. Thank you.
[Kit Collins]: Thank you, Councilor Collins. Thank you, President Morell. Thank you so much for being here today, Director Kerr. It's always great to hear about all the wonderful things that the library is doing. It's really quite moving, especially since in this building, it's only been open for such a short time and already constituents are flocking to it. These statistics are really, they demonstrate to me like all of the pent-up demand for this kind of community space in the city. You know, demand that was there before it opened its doors all the needs that are being addressed in the library and all the resources that it has it's really beautiful to hear about. I think you could easily make the argument that it's probably the most helpful public building in the city, you know, virtually in person. In light of that, it's really not clear to me how we can build a library to really be a 21st century library for a city of 60,000 people and fund it like we're a small community where there's not a lot of kids, not a lot of need, not a lot of teens, not a lot of families, or not a lot of community groups. Like, because that's us and that's what people are already using the library for. You know, hearing about even something like you said, something so simple as do we have the funding to purchase enough eBooks and books that people can just get them from our library instead of, you know, I think everybody's had that experience where you request a book and it's like, oh, it's coming from Needham. All right, I'll wait another week or whatever. But you make the right point, which is we have libraries that we can provide services here. And I think what is upsetting is that I think we see a pattern of this in our community. when we don't act quickly enough to reverse this chronic underfunding is these basic constituent services get foisted off onto other municipalities or nonprofits or NGOs. And the result is this unreliable or inconvenient access for our own residents, which I think you guys are doing an incredible job with the resources that you do have. But it's just too important to not start reversing that course as quickly as we can. You know, so I know the library only opened, was it around this time last year I don't remember what month it was, you know, and I know that budgetarily we've been in, you know, a hard condition for several budget cycles now. But, you know, we're responsible for funding the city that we do have. We have the state-of-the-art library. It's just, you know, and I know we've been talking a lot about the $25 million in certified free cash that we learned about a couple months ago, which really should be good news, and it is good news in a way. But, you know, what I really am having a hard time reconciling is, you know, that amount of available funding to fill needs in our community and, you know, $100,000 that would make a really big difference for our library now. So it's really hard for me to comment. So I think probably you'll hear, you know, what a priority for this council, the library is. And I think that's because of the good work they're already doing in the community. Thank you.
[Justin Tseng]: I think the I think the best questions have probably been asked but I just, I wanted to reiterate and build upon some of the points that my fellow Councilors are making. It seems like we built a brand new library, right and we were all we're using that to patch over. a lot of the funding problems that we're having and that were long existing before we built the new library, too. And I think, I mean, it's symptomatic of what we often do here is we have something flashy that covers up the maintenance and the long-term planning aspect of things. I think it's just such a shame that we're not fully funding such a beautiful resource and one that we're seeing so much demand for in our community. And so I just wanted to throw my support behind all of you guys and thank you for the work that you're doing despite how understaffed you are. I think residents should definitely know that there's no reason why our ordinary costs should be lower than 2017. The dollar doesn't go as far anymore. I don't think that's a secret to anyone. And that it just puts more strain on you guys. And the new building doesn't help with that, right? I mean, it's a great venue, but the bricks of the building don't give you guys the books. That's not where the books and the eBooks come from. And so I'm 100% behind you all. whatever this council can do to help you get what you need. I think we, all of us behind the rail are really committed to it. And I personally have been bringing it up whenever I've been able to talk to the mayor and talk to other folks in the city to bring more, both bring more attention, but also to push for something substantive in terms of the dollar amounts that we're seeing in the budget. And I am hopeful. I think there have been open channels of communication about it. And so I'm pretty hopeful that we can get something better for you all.
[Barbara Kerr]: One of the things that I forgot to mention was last year there was a lot of concern because there wasn't any in the money in the budget for maintenance, but already has taken that over so that is actually well in hand this year. And it's great. I have no idea what to do on the roof so it's good. So that's good.
[Justin Tseng]: Yeah, and I know you brought that up with us even throughout through before Paul came on but through the year. And so I'm glad to hear that. Yeah, I hope this is one of the areas that if we do see any changes to this budget, which I hope we do, this is one of the core areas that I want to see, is you guys get the money that you need and also to prevent donors from pulling out. I mean, that would be an even bigger travesty, really. I mean, we need to show other folks that we're investing in ourselves for them to want to invest in us.
[Nicole Morell]: Thank you, Councilor Tseng. Any other questions or discussion from the council?
[Richard Caraviello]: Councilor Garbiale. Did the library get any APA funds?
[Barbara Kerr]: Not that I know of. Why? Not specifically, no.
[Richard Caraviello]: Were we not eligible for them or we just didn't get any?
[Barbara Kerr]: Nobody offered any. Nobody offered any? I was not involved in it.
[Richard Caraviello]: We were not. We gave away APA money to everybody but but the library didn't get any of the APA funds.
[Barbara Kerr]: I think we looked into it and there was not really anything that was applicable, maybe, but we did not have any conversation with City Hall about APA funding.
[Richard Caraviello]: Okay. You know, everyone's talked about the $25 million that we have sitting around. There's no talk about how we're going to spend that money.
[Barbara Kerr]: We'll take it.
[Richard Caraviello]: Sorry? We'll take it. You should be taking it. And you should be taking it.
[Barbara Kerr]: Sorry.
[Richard Caraviello]: Um, I said, um, there's no talk about, you know, uh, using the 25 million in free cash to plug any holes here unless the chief of staff is going to give us, give us some, um, miracle, funding to come up with the 100,000 plus that we need to fully staff the library. That's really the part that that uh follows me because you know last year your maintenance costs were low because it was you know everything was new but as the building gets older uh things are going to continue to rise and I know uh I know you might have a couple of service contracts and some things, but I say, the building is going to need to be maintained more because it gets more use than any other building in the city now. So it has to be cleaned every day and fully staffed every day. And it's in some days, I mean, I go in there and I see you and I can't even move upstairs in the second floor because it's packed with people, packed with people. It's just a shame that we're letting this asset, probably the newest and best assets that the community's had in 50 years, we're gonna sit there and we're gonna underfund it and watch it fall into demise. And I for one, I'm not gonna sit here and let that happen. And I will not vote on any budget until it funds your library properly. It's the people's library. and should be funded properly. It's a new building. It's an educational service for everybody in the community, for seniors, for people that come there to use the computers. And this is just a place for books and a place to hang around. People go there to do actual work. And there's podcasts going on, there's Makerspace. This is the best thing that's come to the city in many years. And like I say, I'm not going to sit here and watch it fall into disarray. And I will not support any budget that doesn't adequately fund the needs of this library.
[Barbara Kerr]: Thank you, Councilor Caraviello. One other thing I should mention is when we were installing all the technology, because we went from like nine public computers to 38. We have 169 computers now, we have all this other stuff. What the people who were installing it said is, it starts to get old the minute you take it out of the box. So five, six, seven years from now, we're gonna need an influx of money to replace the technology. And that's where long-term planning comes in. But that's something that we've got in the back of our heads that right now everything's new, but know, we've already lost a few things. So going forward, that is the future forward. Long term planning is we need to do that.
[Nicole Morell]: Thank you, Madam Chief Staff. Did you have response to that arbor question or? Yes. I'm sorry.
[Adam Hurtubise]: I will go backwards.
[Nina Nazarian]: I just wanted to clarify that for ARPA related matters, our federal funds manager had coordinated and spoken to by email with department heads to state that if there are any requests for ARPA for a certain period of time, I think there were multiple emails that went out. Perhaps they were missed. I'm not sure if it was the department head email. I know sometimes we're presently, let me take a step back and say we're presently working on folding all of our email communications into one place. There was never a one list type of communication where we could communicate with all employees throughout the organization. We're presently working on that. However, when our federal funds manager had communicated that went out to the department head list, which I have no doubt included all department heads. So I'm not sure if emails were missed or otherwise, but it could be the nuance that the director mentioned, which is the eligibility nuance in the matter of ARPA. And just as far as capital planning and long-term planning, two things. The first is capital planning. Obviously the city council knows that we've gone through a capital planning process. That presentation has occurred. And I just, we'll go about reminding departments and reminding entities of the city throughout. As we've stated, it's a living, modifying document that's going to be modified over time as needs change. Obviously, the library is new, but where the library will need changes in the course of the next three to five to 10 years, obviously, in capital improvements, those things can then be placed on the capital improvements plan and updated. Furthermore, we've gone through a process to begin for financial forecasting. I think the mayor mentioned that in her discussion. So just some pieces of information which relate to what was discussed today. Thank you.
[Nicole Morell]: Vice President Bears, did you have a question for the Chief of Staff?
[Zac Bears]: Yeah. Were you able to review the recording or the minutes of the meeting we had with your outside consultant on the capital improvement plan?
[Nina Nazarian]: I've pretty much updated myself on a number of different meetings, and I think that one's the one that remains for me, unfortunately. Is there something specific I should be looking for?
[Zac Bears]: Um, I think generally we were obviously were encouraged by the level of planning that's happening now versus the past, which was no planning, but we were, I think, let me speak for anyone else if I speak for you and I say it correctly, feel free to chime in. But I think we were generally collectively underwhelmed with the goals and like, you know, it's good we have a six year plan we're spending X amount of dollars. That's helpful. But we didn't know. how much that spending what the goal was of that spending like how much would it actually cost for us to fix everything in the city. So you know we have some plans for the next few years but we don't understand the context of those plans, relative to what it would actually cost to get where we need to go. I haven't reviewed the water and sewer asset management plan but that was something that was very helpful at least for me. and I think for the council with the payment management plan and the sidewalk management plan. And I think, you know, trying to implement that for everybody is a feature of what we've been trying to do between the budget charter amendments and the budget ordinance that we proposed. We really think that that's a great way for the council and the mayor to collaborate with everybody on long-term planning. So there may be some stuff you can glean from that meeting recording or the minutes about our position around capital planning, but in general, I think we're, really at this point, super intent on trying to get a robust process that includes all parties together so we can start answering these questions.
[Nina Nazarian]: Thank you. And I think the only thing I can add to that president morale through you to Vice President Bears and I made reference to it. One of our recent discussions on budget is just the fact that the city has retained its first ever facilities director. This is a critical position, you know, in my experience, and I've done my entire service, my entire career has been in government service. And, you know, As with a lot of things, you have to have a centralized person here to actually shepherd a project through and be the person who's going to provide material input and make sure that the study or the effort captures appropriately the needs of the city from the city's perspective. So this is like the linchpin to our facilities question, which is an incredibly large part of our capital planning process. So I don't want that to fall aside. And I want to point out that how important it is to have this position and have what we have, which is an extremely qualified person in that position who has a tremendous amount of experience that can truly inform capital planning process and a long-term strategy to develop goals that, you know, essentially really put us in a place where we are meeting marks that we need to meet as we, you know, work through capital asset planning and maintenance. As this Council has heard from DPW and engineering in the past, There's, there's a lot to be said and I'm not a facilities person I, my background is actually in roads, believe it or not, but with roads there's a critical time period in which you have to maintain the road before the road deteriorates beyond. you know, there's charts for this kind of stuff. So I don't know to what degree that applies to facilities, but these are the types of things that need to be taken into consideration and folded into capital planning, which is gonna be critically helpful. And that again, just pointing out the facilities director is a critical piece to that. And we've hired the city's first ever with the council's approval for the budgeting on that. So thank you.
[Nicole Morell]: Thank you, Councilor.
[Zac Bears]: Yeah, and I appreciate that and I think right we have, we have these people in these positions, we're starting to do more of the asset assessments and planning. And I think what we're talking about in our other role that we hope to play is how do we bring all these separate strands together into a comprehensive plan, know what it's gonna cost to do all these different things, and then be able to communicate effectively with the public about how we're gonna bring in the revenue to do that. And so, again, I'm super encouraged that we have some stuff on paper, that there are people in places like the facilities director to get us going. It's really taking all those pieces from everywhere and pulling them together right. I don't wanna spot Director Kerr, She said there were some conversations she would hope to have that haven't been able to happen, right? Like, how can we facilitate that? I know that's something the council certainly has, many councillors have vocalized. And I know it's something I hear from residents. How do we take all these pieces that are working on this problem, bring them together and make a comprehensive plan to move the city forward? So I'm excited to work on that with all of you.
[Nicole Morell]: Same.
[Richard Caraviello]: Councilor Aviello. Madam President, to the Chair, to the Chief of Staff. Did you say that, that the library missed out on ARPA funding because they didn't get some of the correspondence?
[Nina Nazarian]: President Murray, I'll throw you to Councilor Caraviello. I know it was my point, I was attempting to communicate that I do believe that they received the correspondence. I think it could be the nuance that Director Kerr mentioned, which is eligibility in terms of the ARPA criteria, because I didn't want there to be any ambiguity that that at some point it was discussed that ARPA funds weren't offered to the library. I think that's untrue. And I don't think that was intended by the communication. I just want to be clear that it could have been eligibility that could have affected the library from being able to take use of ARPA funds. But like ARPA and like the capital plan, the city, through its appropriate individuals, emailed all department heads to ask for proposals for use of funds. I shared other information which may have confused the matter, which was not intended to confuse.
[Richard Caraviello]: Okay, thank you.
[Nicole Morell]: Thank you, Councilor Collins.
[Kit Collins]: Thank you, President Marillyn. Thank you, Chief of Staff Nazarian, for offering that context, as always. kind of while we're on the topic, you know, I really appreciate, you know, highlighting how much a facilities director is going to add to this entire process. I think that's, you know, completely undisputable how much that will add to taking account of our capital needs. And I think, you know, while we're discussing, you know, sort of the talk of long-term planning and sort of trying to get the, I think, you know, I remember the capital improvement plan meeting, we spoke a lot about the patient management because that's been something that I've really been very grateful to be able to reference to constituents, to use as a metaphor myself for accounting for the totality of the need and then being able to triage and take account within it, being able to apply that to more of the city, to the city's needs comprehensively, I think is that sort of North Star that we're all sort of talking about. And just to, I think the point I'm trying to make is that I think this addition of the facilities directors come online, I think is, know, we can't understate how important it is to have that person online. I keep coming back in my head to kind of a cliche, you know, if we want to go fast, you know, go solo, if you want to go far, do it together. I know I'm kind of like laughing at myself, because that's so corny. But I think when we're talking about this, how to make a process, starting for the next fiscal year, we can really say, okay, this is going to be and laborious, and it's going to be hard. And I think it would make this council's job a lot worse and harder, actually. But I think that with that incredible facilities director and with this improved process and more collaboration, we can start expanding that really useful matrix further out to encapsulate more of the city. So thank you for bringing that up. I just wanted to add that.
[Nicole Morell]: Thank you. Um, yeah. And yeah, thank you, man. If you step, we'll go, we'll go to questions that I also already didn't mean to kind of rush you up. Um, I appreciate it. And my fellow Councilors have asked all the questions. Um, I just want to reiterate something that I've said directly to the mayor and that, that, you know, the a hundred thousand dollars, that is small money in $179 million budget. And I don't see why we can't get there. I J's express an openness. I hope it's something we can get there. And I hope that We don't have to have this fight every single year that it becomes a natural we need these funds and then we build upon these funds because that is just the way the budget works this way costs work that's the way you know this, the gem of Medford works so I appreciate you highlighting all the programs, and also just being direct about your budget needs because that's, that's why we're here is to understand. to understand what's really needed. And I think understandably, a lot of people are given a budget and they say, we'll make it work. And I know you will make it work no matter what. I'm sorry, but we kind of get lost in that process and the fact that we don't find out what really is needed that isn't being funded. So I appreciate you for being vocal and open about that, as well as your staff and the board and everyone who's reached out about the library. It's really, really helpful for our process. And hopefully one day this process doesn't happen, 15 days before, 17 days before we have to have a decision, but I'm hopeful we can get at least a comparatively small amount of money to fully fund the library in the way it deserves and it needs.
[Barbara Kerr]: That would be great. Thank you very much. Thank you.
[Nicole Morell]: Open it up to public comment. I know folks probably want to speak on this. name and address for the record please.
[Zisk]: My name is Margaret says, and I have a house on a showroom, and another house on Austin room, and speech. So, so I just want to say that I'm a frequent flyer of the library. But I also want to say that you've already said everything you get it, it's a high volume, beautiful library. So I'm going to tell you a story, exactly because I'm a storyteller. And about a month ago, the library had a planning, urban planning meeting to talk about selling the property around City Hall. And I went. And one of the things that became clear to me in that meeting was that metric really wants to bring people downtown. How do we get more people into the urban businesses. And I can tell you that the library is a source. You just got thousands of people showing up to go to the library. I can tell you that I go to the Arlington Library, and I go to our library quite a bit. But why do I do that? Because they have an amazing collection of things, which I'm glad we have a small collection now, and I use it. outdoor DVD screens, outdoor this, lots of games to entertain my family. I go to the Arlington Library because of DVD collection. And I don't just go by myself. I bring my entire family. Everybody picks out a DVD. And then guess what we do? We have dinner in Arlington, not MacArthur. We all go to the library. My kids are all teens. They go upstairs after school. They're part of that gang. It's lovely. And then what do they do? They walk downtown and they buy food and drinks in Medford. So, two things. One, we love the river, but we also love the library. If we don't fund the library and I can tell you half the time, the library doesn't have my books. As you can see I'm a big book user. We're going on a huge six week vacation this year, and the library doesn't have my books. So, the other day I needed to book a hotel and I had to go to another library to get the book so I could look it up, you know, the travel book, to book my hotels because we were, had to do it really quick. And my library, I looked it up online, didn't have it. So, that's my story. I love our library. They're all very nice people. I recognize many of them. And I use the library all the time, community, all that stuff, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. So, fund the library. It is so boring to go in there and not be able to get my books. E-books are fine, but I'm too old for that. I'm sure other people do that. But books, DVDs, library of things, they're all community resources, and they would bring people more downtown, not less. All right, thanks for your time.
[Nicole Morell]: Thank you.
[Sam Sednick]: New address for the record, please. My name is Sam Sednick. My address is 47 West Wyoming Avenue. But you probably see me most at the library. I'm one of the librarians there. And I guess I just wanted to give some number of context to why we always have this discussion. When we went into temporary space, our book budget went down from $150,000 to $75,000. It has been at $75,000 up until this proposed budget year, and now it's been bounced back from the proposed budget to 125. But to give context to that number, like the children's book budget just for the children's room is $30,000. So for the last few years, children's would have eaten up half of the budget for the entire library if we had been spending the way we should be. So opening a building that has new shelves and new space and new stuff, but not being able to fully buy the books that we need and make sure that the equipment that we have is there. That's part of the drama of our budget request. I guess my drama on being there every day is like in our old library space, we had three toilets. We now have nine, but our toilet paper budget hasn't gone up that much. It's just very basic. We are in a bigger building. We are serving a ton more people than we ever have before. And I really don't want to run out of toilet paper. So in terms of a day-to-day request, our increase in budget is wonderful. It's going towards paying the staff that's currently there. In terms, as Barbara mentioned, in terms of future planning, We just hope to see that the library gets the funding it needs in order to continue to serve the number of people coming through our doors. Thank you. Thank you.
[Zac Bears]: Sam, did Barbara put you in charge of toilet paper?
[Sam Sednick]: Yeah. Oh no. Look, you guys put me in charge of toilet paper.
[SPEAKER_00]: Good evening, I'm Ellen Tonello. I reside at 177 Lincoln Road, Medford, and I am trustee to the Medford Public Library. I'm not known as a public speaker, but if I were to meet you in the street, I could chew your ear off. But I would just like to make a few points this evening. I know you've all mentioned this before, but one of the things that, When I first was working with Rick in applying for a grant with Barbara, the state is part of the outside of the building, the grant that we got, and the city is responsible for the other. All of the funds that were raised from private citizens in Medford or major corporations in and around the Medford area is all that was inside of our building today. That is for all of our patrons and for the citizens in the city of Medford. I will tell you that there were donors that were in the $300,000 mark or even maybe more. But there were also donors that were a $5 donor or a $10 donor. The library is meant for every single patron and our citizens in the city of Medford, as well as we welcome other communities. And the budget that is in front of you tonight is just a very basic budget to keep the building workable and servicing the patrons. It's not an elaborate budget by any means. And hopefully in years to come, we would like to see that we could improve and increase the budget and offer much more than we're offering right now today. with again, you know, other services, including more personnel. I was on a Sunday, you know, there were many things that we would like to improve upon. But before I end this evening, I'd like to tell you just a quick story. perhaps maybe six months ago, I was in the library and I was waiting for Barbara for a meeting. And I happened to be towards the parking lot area where CVS is and there's several private rooms. And I went into one of the rooms to sit to wait for Barbara. And I wasn't paying attention exactly to my surroundings and there was a tap on the glass window. And it was a woman in probably her middle 30s. And she had taken a tablet from the kiosk that was just right there outside the door. And she said, I've. have this room assigned to me for the next hour. And I apologized to her. I said, I'm very sorry. I was just sitting here. And she said, no, she said, I'm having a job interview. She came to the library. She took a tablet from the library. She went into a quiet space to take a job interview. And I waited for her. And when she was finished, she told me she did get the job. So that's just a beautiful story to see what the library is doing for the citizens here in Medford. And I fully understand that you all have the best interest of our library to continue to be funded and so forth. But just that small story I told you this evening shows that You know, there are so many ways this building has offered itself to the community, and I appreciate your time this evening. Thank you.
[Nicole Morell]: Thank you. Any other members of the public wish to speak either in person or on Zoom? One second. This is embarrassing.
[Zac Bears]: Thanks. I just think Alan's point, one of my favorite things that I've been asking Barbara to put it in our library is when you walk into the Boston Public Library, the front desk says free to all. And I think that's really the fundamental value of a library. It's for everybody. And we need it to be there as much as it can be. Thank you.
[Nicole Morell]: Any further discussion from the council? Seeing none. Thank you all so much. All right, we will go to Medford Public Schools. We have Madam Superintendent Eduardo Vincent with us tonight, and we have our budget books for the school, which is separate. And I know you have a presentation for us. I know in our budget transmittal letter, we had $71,027,145.40 with an asterisk, noting that that number would change And then in our budget book from the schools, we have a figure of $71,995,165, which is what the school committee voted in favor of last week. So I will turn it over to you, Madam Superintendent, just talk us through this. Do you need the screen?
[Marice Edouard-Vincent]: I was going to just look at the last slide deck that I had presented at the, so I was going to use it as my reference, but I wasn't going to project the same presentation.
[Nicole Morell]: Okay, no worries. The clerk's stepping out for a moment. He has his screen assigning duties, so I just wanted to make sure.
[Adam Hurtubise]: And I thank you for having me this evening. I'm very pleased to present Denver Public Schools Budget Council, and as I present the budget to you tonight, that I hope to be able to get a happy outcome. Thank you for your question. So our... Did you want me to read the presentation?
[Nicole Morell]: I mean, we've Councilors want to have a communication or just kind of go through highlights. I mean, we thankfully we all got this what Friday. So we've had some time with it. So I appreciate that getting this to us. Yeah, if you just want to share anything you want to call out. I know I think probably the first question is just understanding what number we're likely working from. But yeah, just if you want to talk through that.
[Unidentified]: Yes, it's very direct.
[Adam Hurtubise]: Don't don't hold it. Okay, yeah. Okay.
[Nicole Morell]: If you watch back the other budget meetings we've had. Yeah, it's not you it's the mics.
[Marice Edouard-Vincent]: Yes, so the requested amount is $71,995,165. And in terms of strategic investments that we made this year. We just approved a new literacy program, and for our elementary schools. One of those investments that we made as a district is in the addition of literacy coaches, we've added. A theater teacher has been added to the budget because we are committed to the fine arts and have made an investment in revitalizing the arts, revitalizing our music programming, and taking advantage of the theaters that we have within our buildings. So that was also one of the key strategic investments that we made for this coming school year. We are bringing on additional CTE programming is another strategic investment as we are seeing that we continue to have greater interest by our students at Medford High School in participating in vocational programming CTE programming. We also have made investments for the high school. In terms of stabilization in terms of curriculum and instruction I did mention that we just approved our new literacy program. And we're in the process of still reviewing but in the fall will be approving a new health. program where we had plenty of community involvement and staff involvement. And so those were some of our key priorities, stabilization of our high school curriculum and instruction, enhanced offerings, theater and CTE programming, and bringing in new curricular programs. We also, okay, thank you. We also in, in this coming year, we're going to be looking at increasing restorative practices, such as responsive classroom continued curriculum training for our educators district wide professional development. And some other things that we want to be able to do, which was also listed in our contract negotiations with teachers. We're going to be working on a new high school schedule, where we have the six day schedule on the comprehensive side and the five day schedule on the vocational side. And so we're working with an outside consultant this year to have a combined schedule so that we will be able to maximize offerings that are available for all of our students. So that's also another strategic investment. This coming year, our elementary schools will have full day Wednesdays. And so that also required us to create a new schedule for our elementary schools. And by extending or by having the Wednesday day now be no longer an early release day for our students, we needed to look at the specialist offerings that our elementary school students had. So we did make a strategic investment in Switching from library aids to librarians for this coming school year. So that was something where we need to make that investment so that the teachers would have coverage, so that we could create greater opportunities for our teachers to have common planning time. for them to be able to plan, look at data, look at student work, and make the necessary, have the time to reflect as professionals and make the necessary instructional moves that need to take place. And I believe continuing to look at our, under the umbrella of CELS, social emotional learning, making sure that we have counseling, adjustment Councilors and or social workers supporting our students. And I'm not sure if I already mentioned an investment in literacy coaches, literacy intervention for our students. So those are some of the key structural shifts that we made for this coming year, which resulted in the budget requests that I put before you.
[Nicole Morell]: Thank you so much. Is there anything else you wanna cover or you wanna take questions at this point?
[Marice Edouard-Vincent]: I am willing to definitely take questions and I'll do the best of my ability to answer all of your questions. Thank you.
[Nicole Morell]: Yeah, and I do see we have Dr. Peter Cushing is on Zoom too. I don't know if you ever want us to tag to him too, but just so he knows. Thank you for that. Of course. And we'll go to Vice President Bears.
[Zac Bears]: Thank you, Madam President. Thanks, Superintendent. I'm going to keep a big picture, so I won't drill down to any of those specific line items where you might have to look it up. So this recommendation here is that 71.9 and change figure, 71.9 million. The mayor's budget that we received is only 70 million 71 million sorry 71 million 27,000. Have you, that's what she proposed to the city council is like the amount of the city would be sending to you guys. Have you received a communication or something from the mayor that says that you'll be getting the 71.9 million from her.
[Marice Edouard-Vincent]: I so my last presentation to the committee was for the 71 million, where I demonstrated the areas that we would cut or forego. But at the at the end of that meeting, the committee the committee as a whole put forward the number, the 71-995.
[Zac Bears]: Okay. So you know we can't increase. Yes. It's not a power we currently have. If only the 71 does come through, and sorry to make you do the presentation again, I wasn't there. What would we lose?
[Marice Edouard-Vincent]: Just one moment and I'll... Sure. So the original presented the budget that I presented on. June 5 was 71,835,165. And if there were cuts that were made to bring the number, the things that we would be cutting would be the literacy coaches. At that time, I had two literacy coaches. Approximately 160,000, which we would try to put on a revolving account. The second PIC specialists, so registration specialists, we had two, and we had a vacancy. So, we would, you know, that that position would end up being reinstated. We would not be able to convert the library aids to librarians which was approximately 200,000. The theater performing arts teacher. That was approximately 70,000.
[Zac Bears]: And lose the theater teacher.
[Marice Edouard-Vincent]: So, what I was going, we had a ballot. Yes, we would lose the theater teacher. And so when we subtracted. those amounts we were able to get down to the 71 million but it would just require us to go back to the drawing board to figure out a different solution. So what I presented was the 71. 835-165 and then the committee as a whole spoke with one another and they did make a decision to invest in four coaches. And so that was where the 71995 number came from. Okay, what would those coaches before literacy as well we're bringing on a brand new literacy program we also brought on a new math program. So we would really like to invest in instructional coaches to support the literacy programming. You know the new math programming, you know to support the teachers. So if we were able to have one coach at each elementary school. That would be a tremendous support for them to be providing that side by side support to teachers as new programs are coming. Um, you know, coming along, eventually we'll have a new health program. We have a newer science program at the elementary. So there's just been a lot of new programs that have added, have been added to the schools and to provide that instructional support, uh, expert support in those areas.
[Zac Bears]: All right. Um, all of those sound incredibly important. Um, uh, Some of that, some of that 900,000 is that also for the report, the Medford high school improvements or is that not in that 900,000.
[Marice Edouard-Vincent]: So, with the high school recommendations that were made. When we looked at the current rules and the recommendations that were made, we were trying to be creative and we felt that it was almost budget neutral. And so we're just trying to work. We are prioritizing, providing additional support to the high school. And we are just looking at additional resources within the school and just looking at how we might be able to use different staff people. So it may not look exactly the way it was spelled out in the report, but we are trying to at least be able to provide additional support to the school, to the high school with what is currently available.
[Zac Bears]: Got it. And you know, I think we have a clear, I have a clear now understanding of the 71.9, what that looks like versus the 71. Something I've been really trying to get at, at all departments, and you may have heard me talk about it with water and sewer in the library, is like, what do we really need? You know, if we really wanted to do everything to the best of our ability, what would that actually cost? I'm not gonna ask you for that number, because that's obviously really big for MPS. But my understanding was early on in the budget process this year, there was a $74 million number floating around. What would that have gotten us above the 71.9 that we're not investing in this year?
[Marice Edouard-Vincent]: So with the earlier number, that was the first pass. So one of the things I didn't talk about were the, in order to maintain level services, for example, with special education, there was a 14% increase in out-of-district tuitions. an increase with transportation and school buses. We have the personnel increases. And so when we initially looked at fixed costs, personnel and non-personnel, that was the first pass. We went back through, subtracted any redundancies, retirements and all of, you know, everywhere possible and just kind of going back down to bare bones or back down to functioning. maintaining level service. And, um, that was how we got to the 71 eight. Um, and that was with the addition of the two coaches. So, um, with only two coaches and the committee asked for the two additional coaches, which put us at the 71 nine. Okay. And, and so, um, you know, the final appropriation that gets approved, we will definitely make it work with the 719-995. We will be able to make it work and provide support to the high school, even if it means, you know, shuffling a few people around, but being creative and trying to think outside of the box.
[Zac Bears]: Yeah, no, and I appreciate it. That outside of the box thinking is you know i'm glad that you all do that, but I wish we didn't make you right that's kind of where I just. we're bringing a new literacy curriculum, we have needs that we want to fund. I think a theater program and a theater educator is an important person to have, you know. I remember when I was in, I was in at Medford High School during the 08 recession and art, music, theater, you know, all of that were things that were hurt, you know, badly. It sounds like 71.9, you know, is what is needed to, to do bare bones plus a little bit to make sure we're effectively implementing all the things that we're working on, new curriculums that are so important. So I know that we've already asked for that from the mayor. I think we're gonna continue to ask for that from the mayor as we have been through the next several days of the budget process. So we'll do our best to get you that, because I think really, It really frustrates me to so often hear folks who are trying to run such important things like our schools or DPW or water, sewer, library, whatever, come and say, you know, we don't have enough, but we'll make it work. You know, I'm glad you can make it work, but it's just not, it's not the situation that we should be in as a community. My last question is just around ESSER funding. I know that there's several ESSER funded positions within the $71.9 million request. With the $71.9 million request,
[Marice Edouard-Vincent]: we would be carrying a small balance on ESSER, but ESSER funding needs to be, when I had to bring the number down to the 71 million, then our balance of 525,000, I brought that balance down to 10,000. So we went to ESSER funding for the year. So that if we did the 71- If it was 71, even I had gone, and we, we, we, we brought down our so balance down to 10,000. Okay, so with the recommendation of the committee. They left this small balance on the ESSER, and we know that it can fluctuate due to unforeseen expenditures. We will still have a small ESSER balance, but it needs to be, all of ESSER funding needs to be spent by September 30th of 24. So you're not able to, you know, maintain FTEs from July to September. It has to be on a thing. So we did get approved for Mifflin. And so we are hoping to earmark year two, that's about a $700,000 program, and year two, year two payment is $200,000. So we are trying to keep a little of that ESSER money to pay next year's balance.
[Zac Bears]: Got it. Just just so I understand. So if it's a 71.9, about 500,000 of that is coming from ESSER.
[Marice Edouard-Vincent]: as the 500,000 of ESSER would remain, it would remain intact as a balance. If it was the 71 million that you said, the first number you said, then we would have 10,000 left on ESSER and we wouldn't be able to do the things that I had said to you.
[Zac Bears]: Okay, got it. All right, so if the city sends anything, if the city, Anything more than 71 point or 71 means less SR gets spent down to fund things that that are needed this year is that. And I don't know if that's a fair question that doesn't I don't think I worded that right say it one more time. Basically my understanding is, if the city were to send you 71.9, then that 500,000 answer would would be remain.
[Marice Edouard-Vincent]: Okay. And we would be able to use it. This year, and yeah, through September 30 of 24.
[Zac Bears]: but if it's less than there are things that we're funding with that S or money instead.
[Marice Edouard-Vincent]: Okay.
[Zac Bears]: And so that's where I want to go with it is next year. So, and then there's also S or money that's already allocated for things that are not in that 71.9 figure. Correct.
[Marice Edouard-Vincent]: Correct. Yes, correct.
[Zac Bears]: And some of those are FTS as well.
[Marice Edouard-Vincent]: Yes, we're carrying about 28 FTS.
[Zac Bears]: Okay, right now and so if we send you the 71.9, there's still 28 positions or full time equivalents that are so funded that will aren't in the in this budget and would need to kind of come into the budget next year.
[Marice Edouard-Vincent]: Yes, it would be a next year. Okay.
[Zac Bears]: All right. Yeah, so there's still on the school side, quite a bit of one-time funding being used for things that we would like to keep doing after we don't have those funds anymore.
[Marice Edouard-Vincent]: Yes.
[Zac Bears]: All right, okay. Yeah, I think that speaks to me, it speaks to the need more, even more to get you to at least a 71.9 now, because if we're less than that, then we're just digging a bigger hole next year. Yes. Okay, thank you. Thank you, Madam President.
[Nicole Morell]: Thank you, Councilor Collins.
[Kit Collins]: Thank you. I had another comment, but I'm so sorry this this if then causal link with the answer I need to ask you about it one more time because I'm confused. Sorry, I'm looking at my notes. I'm a visual learner so taking this in. I'm just joking. If we send you 71.9. There's more ESSER left for next year?
[Marice Edouard-Vincent]: Yes.
[Kit Collins]: I find that counterintuitive. Sorry. Can you walk me through it just one more time quickly?
[Marice Edouard-Vincent]: So when we gave the original proposal, and I'm willing to share the slide deck with Adam or with anyone if necessary. When I put forward the first recommendation, on June 5th, it was for $71,835,165. Great. And that was maintaining a balance of $525,000 on ESSER. Okay. When I was tasked with presenting a budget at $71 million, I had to look at where we would cut 835,000. Where would those cuts come from? So 515,000 I took from ESSER. Of the 835,000, I allocated 515,000. I left a balance of 10,000 on ESSER. And then we cut the remaining positions. So the things that were cut were two literacy coaches, approximately 160,000. The second registration specialist, 50,000. converting library aids to librarians, approximately 200,000, and to expand our CTE offering, and to add a theater teacher, that was an additional 70,000. So all of those All of it combined allowed me to get to the 71 million. So I used ESSER to pay for part of that 835,000. And we just cut other positions.
[Kit Collins]: Okay, thank you. I think what I was finding counterintuitive was why it was advantageous to not spend ESSER funds and to have those be a part of the cut, but I'm assuming that the advantage is having more of it to spend down next year while it's still online. Is that correct?
[Marice Edouard-Vincent]: Yes, because ESSER ends in September, you're not going to be able to pay for an effort. You will not be able to pay for a human being, their salary for the year. You're not allowed to like pre-encumber. They have a lot of special rules. So with that 500,000, we knew there were things that are needed every single year. So the literacy program that was just adopted Um, you know, was $700,000. And, um, we pursued a grant from DESE and got a $200,000 grant. We're going to pay $200,000 this year, $200,000 from ESSER next year, and then that remaining balance, um, will, it'll be back on the operating budget, and we'll pay that in the third year. So we were able to work out some financing with them, and, um, get financing for three years. So, um, it just made sense because Esther is going to be gone. And, um, so if there were things like program, the health program, depending on what, um, the cost of that new health program will be, um, we will, you know, most likely just charge it to Esther because it's, it's a program and it's not a person.
[Kit Collins]: Gotcha. Okay. So if, if those funds are unspent due to bringing the budget down to 71 million, which I hope it doesn't, then the remaining ESSER funds freed up will be spent on non-personal costs. Thank you very much for explaining that. I'm sorry it took me a couple extra rounds to get it straight. Appreciate your many explanations on many meetings. To go back to the big picture. Yes. I appreciate your presentation very much getting into the weeds, giving us the big picture. It's very helpful. You said about, you know, I know there's been three numbers floated around or you mentioned the original number, which it sounds like was corrected. down into the 71 to 72 range. That first one kind of had some redundancies, some things that shouldn't have been in there. You mentioned making 71 or 71.8 or 71.9 work, and I really appreciate that. I know the schools department has been doing that forever. You've always been making it work. You know, I just feel like it needs to be said that the goal is really not to be as scrappy and as resourceful as possible. Those are both virtues. They're very helpful. It's not the goal. You know, the goal is to provide and fund the best possible experience for the kids. And I know that you know that, and that's why you do the job that you do, and it's not at all a comment on your presentation. But, you know, I think that touches on my frustration that your department and so many other vital departments are placed in to try to make whatever work when these cuts are, you know, we hear from constituents and parents and guardians and teachers all year round about the need for, you know, not just to but for coaches and more arts and theater programming and personnel, you know, I don't want any of those things to have to be cut. I think that we can find those funds, and I think that we need to, because I know that all of the strategies that the school committee and you discuss, those are all in the children's best interests. The other thing I wanted to... One other specific question. You mentioned one of the things about, you know, making it work if there's there's less funding appropriate as opposed to more doing some shuffling to still pursue those high school stabilization goals. Could you speak a little bit more to what that would mean you know if there's capacity being moved around. Where would that capacity come from? Who would be taking on more work? Are there areas that are going underserved if it's a matter of doing more with the same amount of people? I'm curious what that would look like. And if that's two in the weeds, that's totally fine.
[Marice Edouard-Vincent]: So one of the things that I shared at the committee meeting is that we do have some positions that we are continuing to like examine and refine and figure out where they would be the highest leverage positions. One of those positions that we have working with families, students, and administrators are engagement specialists. And so we've been looking closely at the work that they are doing. And one of the recommendations was like a creation of a dean or a dean position. And we were looking at that position and just saying, the dean position would be providing support like two periods a day two to three periods a day at the high school level and maybe not necessarily all at the same exact time so the creation of like three dean positions and so we were trying to look at some of our existing staff and saying how could we still provide additional coverage and you know, be creative. So that was one of the options that we were looking at, because we also realized, you know, we need to be responsible and look at all of the positions that we have at our disposal. And those positions were newer positions. And so we've, you know, been fine tuning and kind of tweaking them a little bit. So that was one of the suggestions that was kind of an out-of-the-box way of looking at it. And we said, oh, we should still continue to contemplate that as an option.
[Kit Collins]: I see. Thank you. So it sounds like it's more around tweaking and evolving existing job titles to see if they can be optimized for providing support. Yes. Okay. Thank you for that clarification.
[Nicole Morell]: Councilor Saik.
[Justin Tseng]: Thank you. I think a lot of the very, very substantive questions that I had have been asked about, I mean, the ones that are more or less under city council jurisdiction, which I think is important to acknowledge. And so I wanted to put on the record that I think the 71.9 is very important. The programming, I mean, I'm preaching to the choir. I know you understand it, but I wanted to put it on record that I think it's very important that we get to the 71.9 or as close to the 71.9 as we can. The positions that you mentioned that we would lose if we don't fund the 71.9, some of them are so fundamental to making our school district succeed and setting ourselves up for success. And a lot of the other things, I mean, are just as important, actually, and are things that other school districts do. And it's things that people expect from Medford, expect from the Medford Public Schools that we should be doing and should have always been doing, just that we have been chronically underfunding our schools. And so I think it's really important that we get there and for us to definitely try to wean off ESSER funding. I mean, I think you've made the point really clear that we need to keep that balance there. We need to make sure that we're not digging ourselves into a deeper hole, as Councilor Verrall said, come next year, especially given that we know that as a city, we have what essentially a fiscal and pretty unavoidable fiscal cliff coming up. I wanted to thank you for your leadership in a very difficult time. It's, I mean, coming off from the pandemic and all the consequences of the pandemic, be it health related, mental health related, everything else, it's incredibly difficult. There's so much to manage and I totally admire you like staying in there and working so hard for us. I was wondering if you could speak a little bit to the kind of investment in guidance and mental health. You kind of mentioned it in the opening statements, and I just wanted to give you a chance to speak a little bit more into it, especially for the parents who've been asking questions about that and watching at home.
[Marice Edouard-Vincent]: So our guidance department is led under the leadership of Stacey Shulman. And at the high school in particular, we have guidance support, adjustment Councilors, school psychologists, social workers, and we do have a few partners, outside partners as well, who work with us. So I want to say we have close to 40, if not in the 40 range of, school psychologists, social workers, adjustment Councilors, guidance Councilors. So depending on what the student may need, we try to provide targeted services. I know in particular at the high school where we have the three houses on each floor as you go in, it's almost like a little clinic. where you know students are there. They're working with their Councilors so a lot of social emotional support is available for students that require that help and we are definitely remain committed to meeting the needs of all of our students. And so that is definitely a commitment. And we have at the high school, we have the largest amount because we have over 1200 students at the high school complex, but the middle schools as well, the elementary schools, we have support at all levels. And, you know, we target the supports based on what the students need. So I do feel it's a very robust offering for our students. And if families reach out or if they're not sure they can always reach out to their school principal and ask you know, for additional help or go on our website and look at our page and you can see all of the different Councilors that are available there. But we are, we remain truly committed to meeting the needs, the social emotional needs of our students because the pandemic really did impact everyone, even if, you know, whether you got COVID or not, we had to just, you know, drastically shift how we lived. And for some students, it truly impacted them more deeply than others.
[Justin Tseng]: I noticed that there's, um, there there is an increase in the guidance salary budget here and I was wondering if that was due to me, I was hiring planning to hire new guidance Councilors or guidance staff, or whether that's just us we taking stuff off of Esther moving into the kind of the general funding for the schools.
[Marice Edouard-Vincent]: I'm just running to that tab. One moment. And you, you were asking about the, the increase.
[Justin Tseng]: Yeah, um, I was just wondering if we were hiring hiring more teachers or more staff to work in the guidance department or if that was coming off of if those were existing staff that were taking off of Esther and putting into the
[Marice Edouard-Vincent]: No, I'm, I'm seeing a BCBA behavioral position added an additional adjustment Councilor added for the McGlynn elementary school, and a district wide BCBA and. So those are added positions, and there's one paraprofessional behavioral specialist position added to the Brooks Elementary School. So those are three additional positions that look like they're being added at the Brooks, district-wide, and the McGlynn.
[Justin Tseng]: Got it. I was just, I didn't, I wasn't sure if that was formally like part of, we were using ESSER money to fund it or if that was new. So that's super helpful. A lot of teachers and parents have been asking us about, at least asking me about the re-engagement specialists that we plan to bring in and what exactly their role is. If you could speak a little bit to that, that would be great.
[Marice Edouard-Vincent]: So depending on the level, our engagement specialists work with students, some of our students that are most vulnerable, some of our students that may have school avoidance, don't want to come to school, trying to reconnect with the students, reconnect with parents. Some of our students may have specific, you know, emotional needs or self-regulation needs. So our behavioral specialists, no, our engagement specialists work with the administrators, work with, you know, with the students, work with the families to try to keep them engaged, try to help our students that may, you know, be thinking about dropping out and they're just overwhelmed with life. So they work with us in a many, many different ways. It just depends on the need and it depends on the level. Some students, if they're not coming to school, they may reach out to the parent or go to the home to say, we miss Johnny, we want him to come back. So they support administration, they support the school functioning.
[Justin Tseng]: Oh, great. Are they people that teachers could turn to if they're noticing their kids are missing a lot of classes? Could they refer their students to the specialist?
[Marice Edouard-Vincent]: So at the high school level, when the teachers put referrals in, just the way the system is structured, it would go to the assistant principals first, and then they would you know, if it needs to be, you know, who it could be give the work could be given to, they would make that determination. There were some students that are already on their caseloads. So those students, they also just check in, you know, they're in school, it could be just a quick high five checking in to make sure that they're there. So it really depends on, you know, what the need is. And then again, as I said, we have the guidance Councilors, the adjustment Councilors, the social workers. So sometimes if a student is truly in high needs, there may be a team meeting, an SSTS student support meeting where everyone comes together at the table and kind of says, how can we support this child so that they can succeed? So there were different ways that they can be used at the high school. They plug in anywhere that's needed. They're supportive in that capacity.
[Justin Tseng]: I'm glad we're, you know, I'm glad we're investing in that. And I think my if anything, and this isn't about you or this budget, it's that I, I'm only afraid that in the long term that they're going to be such an important role that will need more and I don't, I wouldn't want to burden the people overburden the people that we where we have slash we're bringing on. But it is helpful to hear about that position. I think a lot of parents and teachers are very interested in what we're going to do there. And so I'm very happy to learn about that. And I guess a quick question I forgot to ask. I was wondering if you knew off the top of your head the guidance Councilor to student ratio, at least at the high school?
[Marice Edouard-Vincent]: off the top of my head I cannot say the specific ratio, and I believe in other school committee meetings and in speaking with Ms. Schulman, she has stated that we are in compliance with the ratios. Again, I'm not sure with the entire CEL team. So again, the BCBAs, the adjustment Councilors, the guidance Councilors, social workers, the school psychologists. And because they all fall under the behavioral health and counseling umbrella, depending on what the child needs, their particular need might be able to be serviced by two individuals. So I think sometimes, you know, I would leave it to Ms. Schulman to figure out like this particular situation would need, you know, an adjustment Councilor or the guidance Councilor or the school psychologist or the social worker, depending on what their needs are.
[Justin Tseng]: Great. Yeah, I know it's complicated to calculate and figure out it was before I did it, did this stuff, it was one of the projects I was working on for a state senator in Boston about work for the BPS and working at the ratios and the how necessary it was to increase it. So it is something I'm interested in, but I understand it's tough to calculate it. So I was just curious. Again, I wanted to thank you and the members of our school committee for working so hard over a difficult year putting together a budget that think there were a lot of demands and a lot of asks about you guys about you and from the for you in the school committee and if we're able to get to the 71.9 I mean it doesn't cover every single wish list item from from all the elected officials and parents in the city but I think it would represent something that we can really accept. I'd be dismayed if it stayed at the 71 figure, and it would make it very difficult for me to vote for the budget if it stayed that low, but if we can get close to 71.9, as close as we can, that'd be great. Thank you. Thank you.
[Nicole Morell]: Thank you. Councilor Caraviello.
[Richard Caraviello]: Thank you, Madam Superintendent for attending. A couple of questions I have here. How many teachers do we anticipate retiring or leaving at the end of this year? Teachers?
[Marice Edouard-Vincent]: I believe we're at less than 20 this year. And that's about average.
[Richard Caraviello]: I want to say that's about an average number.
[Marice Edouard-Vincent]: But I can get an accurate number, or I know Dr. Cushing's on the line, maybe he can reach out to HR.
[Richard Caraviello]: Does that include the administrators also?
[Marice Edouard-Vincent]: Yes, I have one administrator retiring, so that could include the administrator as well.
[Richard Caraviello]: So these teachers that are retiring are?
[Marice Edouard-Vincent]: I wanna say it's in the vicinity of 20, but that's the number that's coming to mind and I'll see if anyone responds.
[Richard Caraviello]: Okay, I'm looking at, so this year we have about approximately 4,000 students, correct? Yes, 4,200. Is that up or down from last year and the past previous years?
[Marice Edouard-Vincent]: The students, our enrollment, 4,200, we're fairly consistent.
[Richard Caraviello]: So how many students, do you know how many students we had last year?
[Marice Edouard-Vincent]: I wanna say we were in the same range, 42, 42 max could be 4,300. We're essentially at the same.
[Richard Caraviello]: We're down about 200 students.
[Marice Edouard-Vincent]: Maybe 100.
[Richard Caraviello]: I added up, it comes to 4,048 students, according to this budget here. So, we've lost about a couple of hundred kgs today.
[Marice Edouard-Vincent]: During the pandemic, we lost students. We had students that went to parochial schools because of the hybrid. So that was the year that we saw a bigger attrition, I would say. And then we did get a significant amount of students back. In fact, last year, we had to add bubble classrooms at some of our elementary schools because we had over enrollment, the Roberts and the Brooks, they were getting a lot of kindergartners and we had to add like a fifth bubble classroom. So you do lose some, but then you gain as well.
[Richard Caraviello]: Do you know how much funds were spent on consultants this year?
[Marice Edouard-Vincent]: So for our consultant to work with Medford High School.
[Richard Caraviello]: Well, for the whole school system. If you don't know tonight, you can come back.
[Marice Edouard-Vincent]: For every single consultant, I don't have.
[Richard Caraviello]: Madam President, if you can make that resolution that the superintendent gives us a number of the funds that we spent for consultants.
[Nicole Morell]: Do you want a motion or you just wanna include it as one of the questions? I'll make that a motion.
[Richard Caraviello]: Okay. That be answered. Are all our teachers fully funded now? All the contracts funded? Do we have any teacher contracts?
[Marice Edouard-Vincent]: All of our teaching contract is done. We're working on four more contracts.
[Richard Caraviello]: Do we have four more?
[Marice Edouard-Vincent]: And we're still actively negotiating.
[Richard Caraviello]: Okay, so where are those funds in the budget? The funds for the contracts that there's that are still unsettled within the school budget was when the school.
[Marice Edouard-Vincent]: We had allocated in our budget, we had allocated a 2%. That was what was originally kind of set aside for all of our CBAs. So, I mean, we're not there yet. We're still, we were negotiating today, we'll be negotiating in another week and a half. So we're still making progress. And... Okay, so...
[Richard Caraviello]: The public schools received a net increase in aid this year of $3,131,750. Is that correct?
[Marice Edouard-Vincent]: Can you say a net increase? I didn't hear the second piece.
[Richard Caraviello]: In state aid?
[Marice Edouard-Vincent]: In state aid. Oh, from the cherry sheet.
[Richard Caraviello]: Yes. Did all that money go toward the budget?
[Marice Edouard-Vincent]: I want to say I believe so. I can't speak specifically to, I know that Medford Public Schools has always been funded above what the state aid sheet says, but the state recommendation and what a district needs to function The city of Medford has always allowed us to function. So, you can see an increase but like what it looks like boots on the ground is, is different. So, where we are right now. Yes, but Medford is one of those communities where we're kind of like a urban rim. You could compare yourself to another community that receives significantly more state aid.
[Richard Caraviello]: I know our social status.
[Marice Edouard-Vincent]: Yes, that's what it is.
[Richard Caraviello]: It makes us lose money. We're using $700,000 in revolving accounts to pay for the paraprofessionals.
[Marice Edouard-Vincent]: Um, yes, that, that was part of, um, when we worked with them, that was one of the ways in which we would be able to fund it. Um, we were committed to, um, making a significant increase in our Paris and we, and we were able, um, to do that and they definitely, um, deserved it. So it was something that we, we knew and, um, we accounted for that.
[Richard Caraviello]: How do we plan to fund that next year?
[Marice Edouard-Vincent]: provided our revolving accounts, our rentals and all of our other programs continue to function as normal, we should be able to fund that with no problem.
[Richard Caraviello]: Okay. So if we, I know we've all talked about the ESSA funds, I think, and I'm just gonna make sure that I'm getting, so you're saying at this particular moment, we're not using $500,000 in ESSA funds, correct?
[Marice Edouard-Vincent]: At this particular moment, we're showing we have a balance of $525,000 to go into next year.
[Richard Caraviello]: So at this particular moment, we're not using it?
[Marice Edouard-Vincent]: We're not using it. It's on hold.
[Richard Caraviello]: If we don't get the money to fill the gap, are we going to have to use that money?
[Marice Edouard-Vincent]: Yes. Yes, definitely.
[Richard Caraviello]: So that's going to leave us with virtually nothing in the combo, but you said about $10,000.
[Marice Edouard-Vincent]: Yeah, I had left, the way it worked out, I had left it with just a $10,000 balance.
[Richard Caraviello]: So that would mean next year, I keep going back, I think we'll, like I said before, I think we'll squeak through this year, but next year was gonna be the budget of budgets because all the free money is going to be gone and life as we know it is going to be different. And that's where some of my concern is. next year, like I said, because we're going to use, because if I understood this correctly, the mayor is going to use about $3 million in ESSER funds to plug into this year's budget.
[Marice Edouard-Vincent]: Do you mean ARPA or? ESSER. ESSER. I'm not sure. I would have to defer to the finance. Is he there?
[Nicole Morell]: Director Dickinson, do you mean?
[Marice Edouard-Vincent]: So you don't have a- I thought you said Dr. Cushing was on, he doesn't- When you're saying the ESSER funding, like we've used the ESSER funding and we've left a balance of 525,000 to go into fiscal year 24.
[Richard Caraviello]: I just wasn't sure when you were saying- So in the event that we have to use that money to plug the gap, how are we gonna fund those positions next year?
[Marice Edouard-Vincent]: Um, you know, we'll, we'll have to really make some tough decisions.
[Richard Caraviello]: That's what my concern is. Like I said, I said, the departments, um, will squeak through this year, but next year is going to be, the cliff is going to, we're all going to be falling off the cliff next year, trying to find money because all the free money is gone. And that's really where, um, where we're not looking to the future with our spending, you know, not just in your department, but other departments. Yeah. I think my other Councilors have answered all the questions. That's really the question I need to ask.
[Nicole Morell]: Thank you. Thank you. Any other questions from the council?
[Zac Bears]: Just super quickly on the chapter 70. It's not really a question. It's just a clarifying because it can get kind of complicated as I'm sure you're well aware. Um, when I look at the cherry sheet, the net increase from chapter 70 minus, it's basically chapter 70 minus charter schools. There's a couple little things that are in there, but that's basically the calculation. It is about 3 million higher than it was last year. The proposal from the mayor at 71 million is only 2 million higher than last year. So we got a million more in state. Basically, the city is in this we're using the state aid increase, right? To take a little bit, you have the city give a little bit less than it did last time as a proportion. If you take this, I know there's grants and everything, but let's boil it down to just say the school budget is city contribution and state aid. The city contribution is going down a little bit as a proportion and the state aid is going up a little bit. So there is a million dollars in that chapter 70 that is not flowing to you guys, at least from my analysis.
[Nicole Morell]: Thank you. Any other questions from the council? I see we have Councilor Knight on Zoom. I don't see his hand up. I think as Councilor Caraviello said, I think we, my fellow councilors addressed asked the number of questions I was going to ask. So I appreciate that. And I just also want to add my voice to, you know, I'd really, I appreciate you coming here with a 71.9 number. I really hope that is the number that comes back to us for a number of reasons. I think most recent, you know, we all had that, that Welch report. And I think similar to the library where, you know, we're spending money, or the small amount of money, and then to not do the next thing, to not do, you know, we get this report that says here are all the things we need to do, and then hoping we have the funding to actually do those things, to understand that we're faced with challenges. We spent the money to find out what those challenges are, how we can address them, and then hoping we get the money from the administration to actually do those things and make the changes to really bring us to where we need to be. I think the report was heartening in a way, too, in that we face a lot of challenges a lot of other communities face, but we have them outlined now. So I appreciate that. That of course is a small part of this very large budget. I appreciate the highlights. That's really important as far as literacy programming and all of that, the arts. I thank you for calling that out. And I really want to see that, that fully funded and hope we can get there when we get that number before us on Tuesday night. So, and I appreciate your time as always and back to councilor Tseng.
[Justin Tseng]: Sorry, there was one point that I wanted to close on, and it just escaped me when I was speaking. But I was going to make the point. We've been talking a lot about the consequences of the pandemic, be it with mental health, safety, all of that. It might not be obvious on paper, but the missing positions that we would cut out if we don't get to that 71.9 are positions that would really directly to address all of those concerns, right? I mean, I think the literary stuff is very self-explanatory, but when we look at the importance of converting libraries to the library staff or the theater teacher, all of those are ways in which we can tackle those concerns that a lot of parents have in the community as well. And that's, I think, a very compelling reason to support the 71.9 figure and to really work hard to get there.
[Nicole Morell]: Thank you, Councilor Saik. Any further discussion from the Council? Any members of the public wish to speak? Seeing none. Thank you so much, Madam Chair. Thank you. Appreciate it. All right, and we will go to debt service bond and interest on page 251. I will give Director Dickinson or Madam Chief of Staff a moment to join us up at the podium. The expenditure summary for debt service bonds interest is $6,474,578 or $9,457 increase 0.15% over the previous year. I'll give Director Dickinson a moment. Is there anything you want to share? Any highlights you want to call out for us?
[Bob Dickinson]: There isn't much of a highlight in debt service. This is what our debt service is going to be for the next year. So in the general fund, there's $4.99 million in actual debt service. We also have bands out, so there's an additional $100,000 in that budget to cover the interest that we will be having to pay on the $2.75 million in bands that we have out. A small smattering of interest and principal costs comes from revolving funds for the debt on here.
[Nicole Morell]: Sorry, sorry, no, it's is it the mic? Okay, just being a little closer to the mic. Sorry. Okay, you can just take it out or that. Yeah, there you go.
[Bob Dickinson]: There we go. So a small amount comes from revolvers, for instance, the Hormel Field debt. And then there's water sewer debt for $1.4 million. That's simply what the debt service is. So if there are any questions, happy to entertain them.
[Nicole Morell]: Thank you. Questions, discussion from the council on debt service bonds and interest?
[Zac Bears]: Thank you, Madam President. Thank you, Director Dickinson. I was looking at the DLS community comparison chart, and I pulled up just our neighbors, Winchester, Arlington, Somerville, Melrose, Everett, Stoneham, and Malden. We're the lowest of all of those communities, relatively significantly in the percentage of our annual operating budget that is general fund debt service. I have thoughts that, you know, that makes me think we could maybe, and I'm pretty sure the CIP keeps us at about a 3% target, if that's correct, but.
[Bob Dickinson]: Well, respectfully, wait until you try to build a new high school.
[Zac Bears]: Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, exactly.
[Bob Dickinson]: So, I mean, we have to look at that down the road. Yeah, you know, compared to my former employer, that's a very, very simple debt schedule and there isn't a lot of debt out there actually, quite frankly, but it's a very, it was a very different place in terms of what we had to fund, so. But yeah, there's not a great deal of debt burden on Medford right now.
[Zac Bears]: Right.
[Bob Dickinson]: You gotta pay for it, so.
[Zac Bears]: Right. No, and that's, you know, that's the positive side of it. You know, my feeling is like, does that also mean there's capital needs that could be funded through debt service that we're maybe not funding? If we were to do a debt exclusion for a new high school, would that count towards the general fund debt service or would that be outside of it?
[Bob Dickinson]: It would be general fund debt service, but because it would be a debt override, we'd simply add it to the tax rate. It would be added to the tax rate. We'd simply tax more in order to pay that specific debt. But when you think about the tax rate, a 30-year debt, I think I did this the other day, a 30-year debt at 5% on $200 million, you're talking about $13 million a year. That's 10% of what we're taking in terms of what we're charging in real estate and personal property tax right now. So taxes would go up 10%. Right right right to fund that so yeah we you yes an override would be paid for outside of the general fund budget essentially it would be tacked onto the property taxes.
[Zac Bears]: Well, I'm just really glad that my, probably much less scientific than your estimate was about 12 million. So I was pretty close.
[Bob Dickinson]: Um, and again, that's, that's running, of course, in interest rates have been very volatile. That's one of the reasons we have a hundred thousand dollars set aside for short term interest rates right now, because they're much higher than they were last year. So, okay.
[Zac Bears]: So, so when I'm looking at this and I'm seeing Winchester at like eight, 8% of their operating budget, Arlington, Somerville at 6%, that's because they've done overrides, debt exclusions for construction projects. I mean, I know they all have.
[Bob Dickinson]: It may be and it, you know, it has, just to give you an example, I mean Nantucket which I'm familiar with has, I wanna say, $100 million out there in sewer debt alone. But that's because Nantucket is an island that has sewer treatment plants, two of them. they're enormously expensive. So there was a need to do that. There was no way around it. To actually compare surrounding communities' debt, you'd have to look at it at a more granular level to see exactly what they use the debt for.
[Zac Bears]: Cool, well, that's helpful. Because I was looking at this and I was just saying, is this, is this a, are we an outlier or is there a specific reason that we're so much lower? And it seems to me at least knowing, you know, that Winchester Arlington and Somerville have done large debt exclusions for capital projects relatively recently, that would explain the difference to me. So great. Thank you.
[Nicole Morell]: Any other questions on debt service? Any members of the public wish to speak? I think that comes to all of our separate topics or separate budgets. We did have, I don't think we've covered the Hormel Commission or the License Commission. Neither of those budgets have changed. If anyone has any questions at this time, we have the Chief of Staff and Director Dickinson on the Hormel Commission and the Licensing Commission.
[Zac Bears]: Sure. Just on Hormel, I don't know if the Chief of Staff could speak to it. We've gotten some There were a lot of folks at high school graduation and the field was in pretty bad shape. And we heard that the booth is in pretty bad shape. If you could, if you don't have anything on it now, totally understood. But if you could let us know if there's a plan to address the conditions of the field and the booth at Hormel, that would be helpful for me. Thank you.
[Nicole Morell]: Thank you, Director Dickinson. We do have a motion from Councilor Caraviello. Do you have it?
[Adam Hurtubise]: It's a carry along. Move to get an answer to the question, how much was spent on the consultant school system?
[Nicole Morell]: Thank you. Do we have a second? Seconded by Susan Bares. Mr. Clerk, please call the roll. I'm sorry. He is still on. I don't know if he's had to step away. I know he has four children. Yes, five in the affirmative, zero in the negative, two absent, the motion passes. Motion adjourned.
[Justin Tseng]: I'm trying to figure out the date. That's me.
[Adam Hurtubise]: Yes, Councilor Caraviello, Councilor Collins, Councilor Knight, Councilor Scarpelli is absent, Councilor Tseng, President Morell.
[Nicole Morell]: Yes, five in the affirmative, and I have two absent, the motion passes, meeting is adjourned.
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