[Scarpelli]: 今晚，我们要感谢我的团队。 虽然人数很多，但我要感谢在座的每一个人。 如果你来自梅德福，请举手。 只是感谢您今晚来到这里并提供帮助。 太感谢了。 我们举办了一些活动。 我知道今晚是一个艰难的夜晚。 我知道今晚我们举办了大约三场不同的活动，但我们说我们需要做点什么，因为事情发生得很快。 我们之所以来到这里，是因为我们想讨论 2.5 号提案的推翻和债务排除。 因此，选票上将出现三个问题。 稍后几个人发言后我再给大家提供更多信息。 但其中之一是债务排除，这是针对新消防总部的。 我很幸运，我们有一位来自消防部门的工会领导人。 丹妮尔·马索里诺将会在这里。 一会儿她就要说话了。 很自豪地说我打电话询问他的意见，因为我认为他可能是 最聪明的教育头脑，至少在马萨诸塞州。 他是我尊敬的人。 遗憾的是，我认为在那个人离开之前人们不会足够尊重他。 但我给这位先生打了电话，问了他一些问题。 五分钟之内，你就会感觉好多了，因为他用他的知识来教育你。 我问他是否可以出来，花一个周五晚上出来演讲 发表他的意见，以及他作为教育领导者的观点，他管理我们的学校系统很多很多年，仍然在州一级、州高层工作，他将分享他的一些知识，然后我们将填补人们提出的一些问题的一些空白，我们可以帮助教育每个人，以便他们在 11 月 7 日理解这意味着什么。 现在，我想介绍我的朋友罗伊·贝尔森。
[Belson]: Nice to see everybody. Thank you for giving me an opportunity to say a few things. And hopefully, what I express will help you understand what's going on. Obviously, I'm here to share my perspectives and my thoughts about the upcoming questions on the November ballot, especially those that affect public education. So while I'm no longer the superintendent of schools, I'm in my seventh year of retirement or semi-retirement, I still stay very aware of education items, both in the community, the state, nation, and it's very enlightening to see what people are doing around the commonwealth. I spent 50 years in Medford public education, 23 years as superintendent, And I also served at different times as the budget director, the curriculum director, and the personnel administrator, as well as a teacher. So I care deeply about what happens in our schools and our community. I'm not here tonight to criticize the school administration. I know how hard they work. I know the challenges that they face. And I know that some of the things are beyond their control. I have always believed, and I still do, that schools deserve solid levels of funding and that the budget process must promote and support quality programming, stability, and predictability. Budget development must be resourceful and creative. It should not be a destabilizing force, exercise, and create uncertainty and conflict. And I think that's what's happened in the last couple of years. Yes, there will be from time to time differences among officials, educators, constituents, but at all times, they should be based on the facts, on available resources, best practices, and the needs of students and their families, as well as the community at large. The current override ballot questions, initiatives, and two of them in education, and one, a debt exclusion for the fire department, Call for, if you will, in the school department, a $7 million hike. You had a half a million dollars for the DPW at 7.5. This is a property tax levy. This request is based upon the argument that the school system has been perpetually in a structural deficit, and it's not true. Pertinent questions are these is it true that it's we're in a deficit. How does Medford compare with other communities around us? Are there good alternatives? available to meet our needs Is this a one-time request or will there be another one a larger request in the near future? And I think you know the answer to that What is the real impact on the Medford taxpayer? And does the voting public truly understand the pros and cons? And has there been sufficient information and time for the public to make an informed decision? So let's take a look and let's consider the following. The last two years relied heavily on the use of federal ARPA and ESSER funds. They were put out there because of the COVID crisis. It was well known that when these funds were used up, there would be a need for the city to sustain staff and programs with local and state revenues. Otherwise, there would be undesirable cuts to program and personnel. So was this necessary? When the budget process took place in the last year, everybody knew that those funds had to be replaced. And those funds enabled the city to build up a free cash reserve that is three times what has ever been in place. Almost at this point in time, $35 million. And if that was the case, was it necessary? And did the mayor really fail to provide full funding consistent with the school committee's request? when there's a significant amount of free cash available to the city, much higher than the amount available in previous years. The school administration by law is required to ask, and the school committee as well, for an amount sufficient to support the schools under Proposition 2 1⁄2. It's their legal request to do that. The mayor or the city manager in the past, when 2 1⁄2 passed, had the bottom line, and the city council can only approve or cut what the mayor provides. So it's not simple. The amount of money reported to DOR of free cash was $25 million in 2004. And as I indicated, they added another $9 million or thereabouts in the current fiscal year. Why, given the often repeated mantra of the mayor, transparency. Interesting word. And the city's financial director, that they failed to provide a clean and complete report on the city's financial position to the city council and the school committee. I think the answer's simple. The answer is that they wanted to leverage a crisis to create a need for an override. Because you're in a situation where you don't have it, you're threatening cuts to important services, and if you don't give me the money, we're gonna have to do drastic measures. This is not Proposition 2 1⁄2. In 1981, 1982, I was in the school system. I was working with the superintendent's office. And the budget of the city of Medford for the schools was $19.4 million. That year, we had to cut $3.2 million. That's a cut. 150 people got laid off. That was difficult, very difficult. We are not in that situation right now. We are not in that situation. When the 2024 DOR, Department of Revenue Tax Recap Report is studied, and I did that, There are clear underestimates of revenue amounts when compared with 2023, specifically by almost 15%. So in other words saying, if investment income was X, it was 14% less when they were projecting their revenue, almost $18 million. Why create a crisis? Before you ask the public for an override, should you not first use the obvious resources available? You can always go back later on and say, you know, we used up our resources. But when you have them, why won't you use them? Let's talk about the tax rate. The Medford tax rate is low. The residential tax rate is low comparatively to area communities. Nothing wrong with that. I don't think anyone feels like it has to be number one, the highest tax rate in the Commonwealth. So it's not a bad thing when affordability for housing and other needs is challenging. If the overrides and debt exclusion pass, taxes will increase, I think, by at least 10%. especially when you include the 2.5% statutory increase that happens virtually every year. And what about the impact of re-evaluation? You know what's going on right now, they're checking your houses out. And by the way, if you haven't noticed, your house is worth more than it was when you bought it, in most cases. And when they reassess it, they're gonna reassess it and the taxes are gonna go up. And on top of that, you're probably gonna pay a little bit more for water and sewer, And when you add it all together, if you have to take an equity loan, you're gonna pay a hell of a lot more interest than you might like. And if you're a new person wanting to buy a home, the mortgage rates are still at 6.2%, and even if it goes down to 5%, it's a hell of a lot higher than it was when people refinanced a few years ago. And what about renters? Some of these people will never have a chance. They just won't be able to to get in and the landlords are going to pass on the rent to their tenants. So, that affects people too. When you think about it, there's also a deduction, tax deduction limit. You used to be able to take your income tax and your house property tax and interest. You can't do that anymore in the current rule. So, you can't even deduct some of the stuff that you used to be able to do before. Some people can get around it for various reasons, Not everybody. If you look at the age factor in the community, 22% of Medford residents are over the age of 60. 14% are 70 or more. A lot of these people are on fixed incomes. They don't have another alternative to go to. And they're probably supporting their children, their grandchildren, and everything else like that as well. So a hit like this is really significant. By the way, as the high school project moves forward, and it's in the planning stage right now, undoubtedly there will be another override request, which isn't out there right now. That'll make three override requests. The two that are there now, and the one that might come up, plus the debt exclusion, in the very near future. Given the cost of a rebuild, or renovation, this will be the biggest number that you've ever seen. The SBA reimbursement rate is not known at this time. It will only cover certain costs. Not everything is eligible. If you look at high schools that have been built or renovated in recent times, you're talking somewhere in the vicinity of $200 million to $400 million to redo the high school. We've got vocational shops and other things like that that have to be preserved. That's an expensive thing. And if you maybe get 35, 40%, not getting the 90% that we got for the schools, the K through 12 schools that we got several years ago with Rick as the chairperson of the building committee at that time. And we, by the way, sold the old schools so that we actually made money. Don't tell anybody. You don't get that now. So you're gonna be talking about potentially 100 to $200 million of local assessment, over and above. That will impact taxes on top of the early override assessments. And by the way, if the override passes in November, you will see the increase on your January 2025 tax bill. You're not gonna wait a year to build it up, you're gonna see it in January. It's only a few months away. Now one of the arguments that comes around is that somehow Medford salaries and cost per pupil are not competitive. Now as a educator, I think I started off with this, I want every nickel I can get for the schools. I mean, I'd be less than honest if I didn't tell you that I think the schools deserve every nickel we can give them. And we have plenty of needs. But no one gets everything they want. And no school system is able to do that. And no community is able to do that. But let's take a look at the Medford Public Schools financials. And this is according to the latest Department of Elementary and Secondary Education statistics. The state average per pupil is $19,714. Medford is currently spending $21,372. Arlington is spending $18,615. Malden is spending $17,428. Melrose is spending $15,540. Peabody is spending $16,996. And I can go on and on. Now, someone can say, well, there are, Mystic Valley, by the way, one of the charter schools that sucks away dollars from our budget, is paying, is spending $14,167. Now, there are places, Somerville, 23,958, we just built a building so you can see where that's involved. And by the way, if you wanna chase Cambridge, Cambridge is spending $36,712. Of course, Cambridge has got a property base that's incredible. And Burlington is $25,297. And by the way, if we were still sending kids to Minuteman, the cost would be $34,176. And if we continued to send 50 kids there like we did when we cut it off, we'd be pushing $2 million a year. of money out of our pocket. And that's why we rebuilt the vocational school. And people argued about, why are you not sending the kids to Minuteman? Because they're sucking dollars out of Medford. And we had a right to rebuild our own school and run our own programs at a far less cost. So then the question comes about teacher salaries. Where's Charlene? Charlene, the room boy. All right, Charlene, don't take offense. OK. If you look at the average salary for the Medford teachers, average salary, and this is latest numbers, obviously it's gone up a little bit. The average salary is $88,179. That's the statistic. If you're on the top step, 10 years, a master's plus 60, this year fiscal 25, you're gonna make $111,000. In Arlington, the top salary is $83,466. I mean the average salary. Melrose is $76,369. Beverly is $84,765. Malden is $83,366. Marblehead is $84,365. Mystic Valley, their charter school, is at $73,823. Prospect Hill at $78, another charter school. And so on and so forth. Our teachers deserve good pay, but they don't leave because they can make $2,000 or $3,000 more in another community. They leave because they're afraid they might get their job cut. They leave because they don't have good benefits. And in Medford, health benefits and other benefits contractually are outstanding. There are a lot of reasons why people stay in the Medford public schools or come to us, because our benefits are good, very good, by the way, and our salary is competitive. There is a teacher shortage in the country, so, you know, Medford's gonna be affected by that. There are a lot of people not going into education right now because they're feeling that it's too challenging. But people will stay with us for stability. So the argument that somehow we're not competitive is not real. Now, what are the alternatives besides free cash? Well, first of all, Medford's new growth is in the tank. We're on any building permits currently in place at City Hall right now. And unless you're really big on a beer haul, that's the only thing that I know about. How much are we leaving on the table? How can we grow the tax base rather than increase taxes on residents? We're not doing it. We're not doing it. Don't penalize the school system operations by building up huge reserves in free cash. Don't underestimate revenues. Let's strive for affordability. And in the request for the override, there's these general categories, teacher salaries, this, that, and the other thing. Be specific. The people who are voting for this are voting against it need to know where every dollar is going. They don't want to just hear it's going into a tank someplace that hopefully will support the kinds of things that we consider to be important. General categories don't cut it. The override vote is less than two months away. And residents, citizens, are already voting. They're going to start voting very soon. So besides the general information on the web, of the city's web, What does the average citizen know about the need and the impact? Probably not a lot. Many of you will vote by mail at the general election, or the president and senator, and local races are at a minimum. So there aren't a lot of people who might even come out, because, you know, they'll vote for the president and that's it. The Secretary of State, I'm going to pull this out. Most of you probably got this. Secretary of State sends out this every year, every year there's an election. And in it, not only are the candidates identified, but the ballot issues, there's five ballot issues statewide. They're identified with pros and cons and research so that you as a voter can actually decide based on some information based on partisans born against and research whether to vote for a particular item. I haven't seen anything in this city that would even comes close to that. You have a lot of people who will go in there that day and they will not know the impact of what they're doing. Some of them will think they're voting for $7 million for a new high school. They're gonna be surprised. Many will vote by mail. So, is this the right way to request an override from our taxpayers? Our city deserves, our citizens deserve more transparency than we're currently seeing. Our citizens need more information on the city's finances. The city council needs more information on the city's finances. They don't have it. How many times, and we go to Rick or to anyone else, George, how many times have you asked the city's finance director, is he still reconciling some previous year? Well, they're working on it. No one wants to tell anybody what's really there. And that's a problem. So people will vote without really knowing. Our citizens need to know that there will be a likely third override coming to them in the future for that high school. Now, whether it's a rebuild or it's a renovation, it's going to be expensive. It's gonna be expensive. And SBA will not give us 90 cents on the dollar like they did way back when. And we will not have buildings to sell off to pick up the rest and make money. Our citizens need to be assured, need to be assured that the school budget will not be shortchanged. That any municipal service will not be shortchanged. When legitimate resources are available without an override. Let's not leverage the override. Let's not create a crisis in order to get an override through. If there's a need for more money down the road for operations, after the high school project becomes known and the reimbursement rate, well, okay, put it out there and people can talk about it. But right now, you haven't got all the information. Right now, you don't know The big ticket item coming down the road. You haven't got any idea. At least you don't, many of you don't. And it's important that you do. Because too many people out there are going to be pushed out of their homes. Too many people are going to not be able to afford to come to Medford. And our school system will be played with. You don't leverage the school system. You make sure, you don't leverage the fire department, the police department, you don't leverage the, you make sure they have what they need to do the job. And if you've got the resources available, then do it. And if you really, really need something, then you make the case for it. And in my opinion, the case hasn't been made. The case hasn't been made. Thank you for listening.