City Council - Regular Meeting

Medford City Council Committee of the whole meeting May 12th, 2026 is called to order. Mr. Cler, please call the role. Councelor Callahan, Council Callahan is absent. Council Lemming Council Me Council Scarpelli present. Councelor Singh present. Vice President Lazaro present and President Beers

present. Six present, one absent. The meeting is called to order. Action and discussion items 26061 annual budget process for fiscal 27 preliminary budget meeting number four. This will be the fourth preliminary budget meeting of the fiscal 27 budget process. The mayor has communicated the following departments will be present. assessors, bonds and interest, pensions, facilities, and insurance workers comp. And we will be taking them in that order. Well, maybe we'll take assessors and the facilities. And sorry, Bob, we'll we'll have you do the other two at the end. Um, and we will be having a meeting next Tuesday as well um on the budget. So, that'll be our next preliminary budget meeting. We're going after the May 15th uh deadline in the budget ordinance this year. So, we'll start with our assessor. We have the chief assessor with us. Um we basically have four initial questions and then we'll go to questions from the council on your budget. But the four questions are what's changing between last year and this year? Um what has your department been doing this past year? What are your plans for next year? And what is something that wasn't able to be funded in this budget that you are hoping will be funded in future years? So this year uh it's very much uh the same in terms of what we strive to do each year. Um we're this year trying to get uh more word out to the public about the uh exemptions for the veterans and u seniors. So that's going to be a goal of ours to just get more word and work with uh the veterans department on that. Um in terms of uh budget, not much has changed. you tried to level fund most everything. Um inflation costs for software were up slightly. Uh the reval from last year which was the 5-year uh do research that is not

happening for another five years. So that's where there's money coming out that was in last year. So that helps at least for the next four years and then that will be in for the the fifth year. So that would be fiscal uh what would be that 31 it would happen again. Um and beyond that uh it's not much change in the budget from last year to this year 26 to 27.

Great. What are um some of the things you've been working on this year? Some of the plans for next year? So working on this year again it's a lot of what we do is the same thing over and over again. So this year again working on new growth currently right now um we just finalized the exemptions for 26 the personal exemptions I reported that to the state uh right now I income and expense for uh commercial industrial sector we're going over that helps us inform our income uh tables or standards for uh commercial industrial valuations. So, I'm in the process of doing that right now. We'll have a standards meeting uh usually in July to set the new standards uh for fiscal uh 27. Um the assistant assessor is going through the sales file. So, we study all the residential sales that informs our residential model uh for most of the uh single family, condo twos, 3es, and then the commercial uh sector. the rents for the 111 and 112s that's in our standards meeting in July and that helps us inform those because a lot of that's driven off cap rates and income. Um so that's a lot of the valuation work and it's said in a minute but it it takes months uh to do. So we focus a lot of time on that. Um and then towards the end of the year we get into the reporting. So we start to give our data to the state, meet with the state rep uh and go for certification towards the end of the year. We then um you know work with Bob and get the numbers certified and come back up to here and we'll have uh the tax rate hearing and hopefully set the tax rate soon and uh get ready for the December billing.

Great. And is there anything that wasn't able to be funded in this year's budget that you're hoping will be funded in future years?

There's some software that I think might be helpful uh in terms of just streamlining the process. Um it wasn't in this year's budget. Uh we'll see if I can well I'm hoping to be able to see if we can make some room for it next year. Um there's a lot of new software that's just much more efficient. We have 11,000 parcels, so it's it's nearly impossible with the staff to go and review those. There's a software that allows us to uh fly over the city, if you will, and do a detection change. So, it would say this was here last year or this wasn't here last year, this is here now. It helps with new growth. I personally think it would pay for itself uh just in additional new growth. So, that's the big one that I've seen come out. Um, a lot of assessor departments are talking about that and hoping that uh next year might be able to fit that into the budget.

All right, great. Um, I will go to questions from members of the council. Vice President Lazaro, thank you. Do you ever miss new growth that you're aware of?

It's not certainly not the goal. Um, going back to what I just said, it's happens and that's just because what we try to do is follow the b the building permit. So that's the best way to find new growth is who's building and we go out there and look at it. Now there's people that unfortunately don't put building permits and they put additions on and uh renovations that are impossible to catch without physically going out. So that detection change that wouldn't see inside the house, but it certainly would see outside. that it would help with unpermitted work. Um, it could be shared with other departments, uh, you know, building building departments specifically. So, uh, short answer, uh, no, we don't do it on purpose, but does new growth get missed? Uh, I'm sure it does.

Um, I have another question if I, if I may, President Bar. Yes. Um, how many employees do you have? How many permanent employees? How many part-time employees?

Four permanent. and we have like a point4 he's eight hours a week a field assessor helping to go out and look at these uh permits or unpermitted work and do the cyclical inspection. So every 10 years by do mandate we're supposed to look at every single parcel in the city. So if we do you know roughly a thousand a year we'll be on that mark. But if a property doesn't sell and there's no permits looked at, it could go 10 years and not be looked at without this uh digital flyover where we'll be able to do a lot more in a year. What's the cost of the digital of the software that you're talking about?

It would be about an additional uh that that layer that detection layer uh is an additional 10 to 12,000 depending on the parcels. That's what I was quoted. But that's like a onetime fee. It's annual. It's an Oh, it's annual. It's an annual subscription. Yeah. Yep. They fly the city three times a year. So, we get a a snapshot, a real-time snapshot about every four months of what's going on in the city. Okay. Thank you.

Do you have any other questions from members of the council for assessing department? All right. I have two. I noticed the field assessor is dropping. Uh, it looks like he's going from 0 75 to 0. 0.25. Is that right? Right. So, he's going from 10 to eight hours. Okay. All right. And is that partially because it's not a revaluation or just like a haircut or Well, trying to uh help with, you know, the overall budget for the city, but I I believe we'll be able to keep up with the cyclicals and not fall behind with those eight hours. Okay. Yeah. Um, and then could you forward those those spreadsheets on the residential exemption when you get a chance?

Yes. I was just waiting. I thought when we spoke or email-wise, we were just waiting for the minutes to come from the meeting. Oh, we sent those over certainly to the mayor a while ago. So, um, All right. Well, I was just waiting for those. I have it ready. So, okay. We will we'll figure out how to forward that to you, but yeah, that that definitely went over to the administration a couple months ago. So that was committee of the whole March March something was early March March. Do you remember the date on that? Yeah, it was late. Yeah, something in March. I don't know exactly. Well, we'll forward that directly, but yeah, we definitely approved those a while ago.

Yep. I have it ready for you. I can get it to you tomorrow. Great. And the acting clerk will email you the file. Great. All right. Um, seeing no further questions on the assessing department, we'll move to facilities and we have our new facilities director here with us. If you want to introduce yourself and share a bit about what brought you here to Medford and then we'll go through the the process, but we like to hear hear from you when it's your first time.

Of course. My name is David McIntyre. I'm the uh director of facilities. I started back in January. I come from, you know, over 10 years of facilities experience and I'm a Medford resident who was looking at getting more involved in my city and found this opportunity and threw my name in the hat to try to join this group we have at city hall.

Great. Awesome. Well, thank you for being here and um we'll go through that same kind of list of questions. What's the difference between last year's budget, you know, for current fiscal year and the upcoming fiscal year 26 and 27? Um, what has your department been working on this year? What are your plans for next year? And what was something that wasn't able to be funded in the upcoming budget that you'd like to see funded in the future?

Great. So, I've worked since January to best understand the um financial situation of my department. So basically the difference between last year and this year there's a decent amount of increases. Utilities continue to go up. Those rates I don't believe are formally set until December. So this is based off of an 8% increase between heating fuel and utilities for those increases. Uh repairs and maintenance material costs again continue to rise. So we show an increase there as well. In regards to um what we've been doing since I've uh arrived, there's been a lot of kind of triage work to best understand what's going on with the different buildings. Quite a few buildings that I'm responsible for. And I have been putting that all together, responding to those individual occurrences and getting the best idea of how to transition over to preventative maintenance, which will be one of my goals going forward into the next year and into the next however many years. the more things we can transition to preventative maintenance, the more we can control facilities costs um by getting things set on schedules to be taken care of and not waiting until equipment and and what sort kind of falls apart. So, in responding

Oh, sorry. I just shut off your microphone by accident. It's back on. What I was going to say is if there's any way you can make the air quieter in this room, but keep going. Sorry. I can look into that tomorrow morning for you. Um but yes, so essentially my main goal would be to transition as many things possible to a preventative maintenance schedule. You know, HVAC systems are a great example of that. If they get tended to on an annual or even semionthly basis, then we will catch things instead of waiting until stuff happens. Um what are the other prompts that could you just repeat that for me?

Sure. Um so just you know what what was work you've been up to this year? what is kind of the plan for the upcoming year and then what are some items that weren't able to be funded um that you hope in the future will get funded?

Thank you. So, one of the other things I plan to do is see whatever kind of costs I can get moved over outside of operating, be it capital or any kind of grant funding. I've already started exploring opportunities with our um planning and sustainability group to see how some of the funding and grants that they have access to could help benefit the facilities department just so we can try to keep operating as even as possible as time goes on. In regards to not funded, I would love to see the department grow in the future um from a staffing perspective, whether that be on the administrative side to help with scheduling and you know invoicing and all that or also on the um maintenance side, be it u maintenance workers or you know someone to help me if there's two crises going on at once in different buildings. You know, having someone I can say, "Hey, can you respond to that and I'll take care of this one. There any questions?

Do we have any questions? Uh, Councelor Molain. Thank you. Nice to meet you and welcome. Um, just had a couple of quick questions um around the budget here. So, I'm assuming I see under like janitorial supplies, it's only 16 as of right now that have been spent on the 65. Is it just because it's going to be late in terms of when it actually hits your budget line to catch up to that 65? I think some of that has been the disconnect between the uh my predecessor and me. There was a time where things maybe were not getting ordered as heavily. Ah okay. Okay. So you anticipate that 65 to be the same moving forward as you

I do think that will be pretty accurate. Yes. Okay. Um and the other question I had I guess around the um building repair. I know it had it at 700 and we were at 751 and you're at 725. Do you already anticipate that um you're going to see hitting that number, the 725? Um I do for this year. Yeah. For uh for the uh fiscal year 27 for next year. I do anticipate hitting that number. Yes.

Okay. Cuz um you don't you're the 751 to uh 725. Oh, I see what Sorry, I'm just question. Yeah, I do think um there are a number of things that you know in trying to comb through all the expenses that have made thus far on facilities, there may be some opportunities to migrate things to capital or through other funding means that I think can help offset some of the stuff that's hit facilities repair so far. And I think once I have a full year of booking all the stuff myself as the issues come in, I'll be able to better align um the expenses with accounts that I I think would fit best. Great. Thank you.

Thank you, Council Lane. Vice President Lazaro.

Thank you. I just wanted to uh uh support what you mentioned about the uh preventative maintenance. I think it that's really important and I think that will do a great deal to um allay some of the large expenses we often see uh because of deferred maintenance over time. So I think that's a great plan. I'd love to see any kind of, you know, if you wanted to give a presentation down the road when you do have that ironed out, what the the plan may be for the future about how you would like to how you would intend to um make, you know, a road map for how to do preventive maintenance so that we can avoid large HVAC and, you know, large expenses that we would have to, you know, put forward all at once. like something that's happening with a bunch of our schools right now. We have to do a lot of like big roof work, lots of HVAC stuff all at once because it just hadn't been done over the course of time. So, I think that's a great idea. I'd love to see more of that. So, thank you.

Thank you. Thank you, Vice President Lazaro. I have a question for you, David, and and thanks for being here and appreciate everything you're doing first few months on the job. Um there's the contracted services line and then there's the building repair line. And I'm wondering um what contracts fall into each of those lines.

Yeah. So I actually am working to better align the GL codes and the descriptions with what services are falling under them. Um, right now I think building repair is a little more emergent um issues where contracted services leans a little more towards um things that we do have some PM setup things like of that nature. I do think it could be a little cleaner. So I have had some discussions with Bob and his team about going forward maybe better identifying uh what these are and being a lot more intentional in what's going into each. So if when you ask that question in the future I could give you a very direct answer into you know these 15 things fall here and the the rest of them go here.

Great. I think in general what what is the scope of the services we're looking at? Is this ongoing custodial? Is this only repair? Like what are the contracts that your department's managing? I I would have to double check where exactly the custodial contract falls. I don't recall offhand. Yeah. Um, that's definitely one of them, though. There are a few other contracts. The, um, inspections for sprinklers and fire safety equipment. That's a contract that the city has. Again, I would have to double check each of the GL's and see what falls where, but that's another one I know off the top of my head that we have as well.

All right, great. Yeah, because one of the things we're looking at um you know, we contract out mainly custodial services and this you know for for municipal buildings outside of the um custodians that are in your budget and working in your department. Um and school department also public schools also has some custodial contracts and we've been talking about for about six months now um an ordinance to make sure that when we procure those services there's a wage and benefits floor. um when you know communicating with the administration about it. So I'm just kind of wondering you know what's the cost what's the annual cost of our custodial contract? Is it in this 70 you know 136 range or is it in that bigger budget like what's the annual cost

that I would have to I don't know off the top of my head unfortunately.

Yeah. And just just kind of coming back to it, you know, we want to make sure we understand that these are contracted out, but we also want to make sure that when we're using municipal funds and taxpayer dollars that we're we have a kind of a labor floor standards for who we're working with and ideally, you know, folks who are making a a decent wage and have hopefully access to labor unions, which are pretty prevalent in the custodial world. Um, so that's an ordinance that we're we're hoping to pass relatively soon. Might impact the next procurement for you and your your team. So, um, it's helpful to understand. We've been kind of been some feedback from the administration. Well, this will be impacting us budgetarily. So, we want to understand, um, you know, we think that that's a cost that we need to pay. You know, that's important to us, but, um, we just want to understand a bit more how much are we paying for these services every year right now? And how much does more does it cost to make sure that uh the people that we're contracting out to have have uh are being treated fairly? So

I understand. Yeah. Does not directly you, but you know, you're kind of the it's in your budget and and um something you're you're going to be managing at least that contract. Yeah. Yeah.

All right. Um do we have any other questions for facilities? I guess one last thing. you know, obviously we have a pretty significant many significant projects happening at Menford Public Schools. Um, are you in comm community, you know, do you communicate with them around facilities work and um I guess just what does that look like for you? Yeah, I do um meet with Ken Lord just on a uh best practices, you know, just to understand, hey, is there a contractor you've used that you were particularly happy with just to get a sense of, oh, this could be someone good to call or what kind of experience did you have in so- and so? I have no part in advising on any kind of work that's happening over there or anything like that. It's just kind of share to share notes of, hey, I hired this person and I felt like we got this kind of response from them. Just a heads up because I know we use a lot of the same vendors. So, it's been helpful to chat with him and and understand as I learn the different vendors that the city's involved in um kind of what their strengths are and and how they can help us move forward with things.

Great. And I know um you know, we we've done some assessments over the last few years of our city facilities. Um, are there any, you know, when we do a major project on the city side, you know, there's a potential for a new fire station, um, potential maybe for something to happen with the Curtis Tus building if the Medford High School project moves ahead that it's currently structured. Um, are there any kind of big projects on the horizon outside of preventive maintenance, keeping what we have in place right now that you're working on? Um, not that I'm actively working on. I'm aware of all those things that you mentioned.

U my goal would be to um I know the schools had a whole building well not all the schools but multiple schools had this building assessment and conditions. I would love to um do something like that for some of the other city buildings. I think it's very valuable in understanding the the current situation so we can make the best decisions when it comes to larger projects going forward. Uh I have been working on getting sets of plans together that most accurately describe the buildings that we have so that when we do go out to bid for larger projects we can say these are the materials we have you know to limit hey this was a surprise we didn't know this was like this so and I have had some success on gathering those materials so I'm slowly working in that direction.

Great. Um, last two things. Um, you know, we had initially with Kevin Harrington from Medford Community Media, um, and the former facilities director, we have to redesign this space. Um, it's in the capital plan, I believe. Um, just wondering if there's any, you know, did did director Ricky bring you up to speed on the plans for, um, redesigning the city council chambers given that we're adding four new counselors and what's the progress on that? Um and and kind of as an aside, there's a space above us. I don't Have you been in it? I have. Yeah. Are we doing anything with that? There's nothing I am aware of with the space above us.

Okay. Um, in regards to this space, yes, I have been brought up to speed and I have also connected with the architects who were first um, it was mentioned to think it's something we're going to start moving more on once we hit the new fiscal year. Great. Yeah, I think it would be great for us to have a meeting in the new fiscal year to kind of, you know, with us. I think we have a lot of probably design thoughts with the folks who use the space for for these meetings about um and certainly Kevin on the AV side of things, how we can make this room a lot more functional. Um and how we can try to fit 11 people back here in a in a reasonable way. So, um

I think it would be great to, you know, kind of hear the thoughts of the people who who use the space before moving forward with anything concrete. Yeah. And we would love to um you know, yeah, we can set up a meeting in July or August um a committee meeting with us and hopefully we can get to a design that that's works and that we all think will will serve the council going forward. So, we're looking forward to that. Great. And and when you say no plans for upstairs, you mean it's uh I mean it's not ADA accessible, right? because it's not connected here. Not accessible at all, unfortunately. Um, anything that would happen up there would be very limited. So, yeah. Um, yeah.

Okay. Um, might might be worth a cleaning at least. I I can't disagree with you there. Yeah. All right. Great. Um, well, thank you, David. We appreciate your time and your work as our facilities director. Thank you. Thank you very much. All right, we got our last two for the day. Bonds and interest and pensions, insurance and workers compensation. We have our CFO Bob Dickinson here with us. Um, and is there any any order that you'd like to take these four in, Bob?

I don't I don't care. They're fairly straightforward. So, no preference. All right. Right. Then we'll start with our debt service bonds and interest. If you could tell us the difference between this year and last year uh or this year and next year and um yeah, we'll start there and then we'll we'll see if any of the other questions apply on these ones.

Okay. Well, debt service bonds and interest. Um the big one this year is you'll notice interest on temporary notes. That's a school HVAC project that's going on right now. We borrowed $225.7 million shortterm. Um so that's a million dollars interest. That's due in August. And um at that point we'll make the decision whether or not to roll that for another year or to actually bond the whole thing. And that's pretty much it. The Medford doesn't have a lot of debt. So quite frankly yet, but um that means that not much of it is rolling off. There isn't a lot of um in in future years. There's not a lot of debt that's going to be leaving. So that takes up roughly similar amount of money for the next few years. And as a percentage of our total budget, how much is our debt service less than

Oh, I didn't do that. Um, general fund 5%. Okay. Something like that. Is that pretty standard? I I would have to look that up. Okay. in some places. My old hometown has a ton of debt, but you know, it's got a sewage treatment plant. It's just going to have a ton of debt. Um

and and most of the debt in the general fund debt service, that's the police station, the library, and now these new the HVAC projects for the schools. Yeah, the HVAC um Yeah. What's uh yeah, the library, the 25 million for the police station. Those are the more recent ones. Um on water sewer, it's just MWR funding funding for pipe replacements and lead abasements. And those are all, you know, they're they're nice because there's zero interest, but there's still, you know, $6 million you have to pay it off in 10 years. So that's what makes up most of the water sewer debt.

Okay. All right. Do we have any questions for CFO Dickinson on the debt service for the city? All right. Next we will go to the pension budget.

Pension budget. um pension is very very straightforward. We this is what we have to pay based on what the actuaries say um to fully fund uh finally fully fund our pension obligations. So, and um these costs is well, we we actually put in a bunch of um a bunch of years so that you could see that these costs these costs are increasing around 3.6% every year. So, it's eating into our pie a little bit. Um but they do increase every year. It's a significant chunk of money. Um and it'll keep it'll keep doing that for many years. So,

we're on track for fiscal 2033.

Yeah, we're we're on track to to have to have the old pension obligations fully funded by 2033. Obviously, this depends on uh the pension fund has done awfully well in the stock market as many people who own stocks have. Um if there's a big turnaround in stock prices that would obviously change but right now the the state is mandating it has to be paid off by 2040. Um PAR pension board wants it paid off by 2035. Um we're on track to pay it off by 2033 and um we want to stick to that one definitely.

Right. And once that happens, this number goes down somewhat, you know, five or six dollars. Uh it goes down from 21,387 in 2033 to 3,117 in 2034. All right. So it's very

So there's a significant um drop. What one thing to remember of course and what a lot of uh cities and towns have been doing we also have OPED um liability which is not funded at all at this point in time and that's retirey health insurance stuff like that and it's the big chunk of it is retirey health insurance um that liability is in couple hundred million dollars right there. So when I'm looking at this stuff I'm like okay we should take a significant portion of that money and start trying to really put in that into an OPED trust to pay off those um those obligations.

How do we pay for that right now? It's in the insurance budget. So, it's in the in the health insurance. It's it's in the health insurance line. Yep. Yeah. All right. And is that the main other post-employment benefit is health retirey health insurance? Yeah. Um and what what does that consist of? Is that is it like a Medicare supplement or um

um it depends on it depends on the retiree. Um if you know and and obviously spouses too you know if you retire and you're 65 you will be you know you are going to be on Medicare um part A but the supplemental insurance the um the city pays you know 82 and a half% or 85% of that for the retiree and then if you know if your spouse is um you know below uh Medicare age then the city will pay for their health insurance until they are of retirement age. So it's a that's a it's a considerable chunk of money.

Yeah. Because it's of course it's the city and it's the school that all comes out of that's all what GIC charges us. And this may be a question for the next budget, the insurance budget, but how much of the annual insurance to GIC? How much of that is current employees versus the retiree? Uh, I'd just have to look that up. You have to look at that. Yeah. I mean, I've got it. It's on a spreadsheet, but I'd have to I'd actually have to to add it up. All right. That would be helpful to understand. Um, and does the state have a a calendar or a an actuarial deadline for us to fund the OPED liability?

Uh, not yet. I'm heard it's been bandied about, but right now there isn't a firm date. Okay. But, you know, it's just one of those things that cities and towns are starting to fund because it's just a rec recognition that is a liability that the um that cities and towns have incurred. So,

yeah. Okay. Right. Do we have any uh questions around the pensions budget? All right. Next, we'll get workers comp out of the way. Um, this looks like it's going up pretty significantly. Um, from 898 or 928 to 1,213,000. So, you know, over almost $300,000, so it's like 20%. So, if we could talk a little bit more about why we're seeing such a significant increase in workers comp, um, that would be helpful. Um, these are all just calculated based on the last few years. Workers comp, of course, the the big problem with workers comp that we always bring up is that frequently there will be a settlement and those settlements in the past have not been budgeted. Um, so you you know, you're paying out workman's comp for a while and then somebody gets a settlement and it's $60,000 or something like that. And then we've been covering those with year-end transfers. So, this is just a way of bumping up um the yearly appropriation to sort of take that into account and have a little bit more of a buffer there for that type of um that type of activity.

Right. I see the the fringe benefits medical school is going up significantly. That looks like the biggest driver here. Is that is that part of just part of this in general what you just said or is there something specific there? Oh yeah. No, that line um that line frequently it's it's kind of mis labeled. Um the the medical costs are the costs of evaluating workers comps claims. So if I fall down the stairs and hurt my knee, the city has to send me to doctors so that they can check out what's happening with my knee so we can decide whether or not I should be on comp or not. Um medical costs, as I'm sure you realize, have gone up significantly. So, we put that one in there.

And that's that's reflecting the the fact that we budgeted 100,000 and has spent almost 300,000 so far this year. Yeah. A little bit more than that. Yeah. Right. Yeah. Yes. Yeah. Um

so, yeah, this is looking at, you know, this is looking at the costs over several years and, you know, trying to get appropriate budgets for I mean, we're cutting back where we can, but yes. Are we seeing an increase in claims or um like the just the absolute number of claims or is it just that the cost for each claim is increasing? And actually I see um the HR director so I will I'll recognize her. That'd be good.

Director Crowley. Yep. I'm trying to get Can you hear me? We can hear you.

Okay. My computer is spinning. I'm not sure what it was doing. Um yeah, Bob's pretty much hit everything um on the head here, but we are seeing um an increase in the medical cost. So, when we have the claims, we do have some um claims that are um life claims. So, there are people that who are hurt and found permanently injured. So they stay on our um workers comp for life unfortunately and so some of their medicals are going up. We have some of the other medical costs for our uh more recent um claimants going up. So it's just a lot of um increase in costs. We typically see unfortunately on the school and city side more claims coming through the summer season. Um and that's just typical. It's typical throughout the Commonwealth as well, but um so we have seen an uptake just a little, but we are leveling off and um trying to get our folks back to work as soon as possible. So we um also sometimes have to have some case managers on call so that they can help us um determine what the medical records are looking like and sometimes there's a slight cost to that as well. But typically we go through um what we've done over the past several years and try to calculate out the best we can. So that's why you're seeing that that increase. It's because some of the medical costs, the PT costs are going up and um PT is sometimes um asking for more PT so that they can actually get back to work instead of staying on workers comp for extended periods of time.

Are we seeing this? Is this like something that's happening in other cities and towns as well? Similar trends. Um yeah. Well, like I said, um they've been similar trends for the communities I've worked with as well, but I do think um if you you did some kind of study, you would see there was an uptake during the um spring and summer months for most communities.

I think it'd be helpful um also to understand a little bit more about the settlements. Are we seeing a higher number of settlements or more more you know more claims being filed? You know could we take a look at that data over the last you know 5 to 10 years? Could we just see how many claims have been filed each year? How many settlements have been reached each year? Um maybe a note of what might be outliers versus um you know if there's occasionally something that's an outlier versus something that's more of a trend. I think that would be helpful to better understand um the increases that we're seeing because it's it's going up pretty significantly and um it's just useful to be able to explain why.

Okay. And I and I I think you've already requested that information too for the administration. So I think that's part of that whole um request for the information. So whatever we have when we're responding can get to you. Okay. That would be very helpful. Yeah, we definitely want to understand that piece of things a little bit more. Okay. Right. Do we have other questions for the HR director? All right. Um, anything for director Dickinson on workers comp? No.

All right. Councelor Mlain would really like to see the breakdown on the settlements around workers comp. Um, okay. Then we will move to the next item, which is the insurance budget for 2027. Um, all right. Looks like we're going from 31 million to 31,220,000 to 34,83,000 9% increase. and I will um turn it over to Director Dickinson to talk about what we're seeing here.

You're seeing that insurance costs a lot. Um obviously the bigger the big driver for the last two years on the insurance budget has been um healthc care costs the GIC has been going up. Uh we're actually right in the middle of which of the increases with them. There been some communities I've heard of that have seen increases on the order of 14 to 17%. So we're around nine for this year. It was a little more last year. Um obviously this number uh it it it can vary in the details per year by which plans everybody is on what the um what the percentage the um city covers on them. But that's the that's the big driver is is health and dental. Um you can see that that's gone up by you know quite a bit. Um and you know it's to a certain extent this is completely out of our control. What the GIC charges for health insurance is what they charge for health insurance. And we are but as even though it's a lot we're not that big a player in the grand scheme of things with them. So there's that one. Um Medicare school that's you you can see that's going to the left. That's that's basically um making that budget more commen commensurate with what we the costs actually are. That that line and the line above it are the um what what the city pays for FICA. So, you know, for for Medicare, um, the city has to cough up seven, it's what is it, 156 or something like that

for Medicare, and the city has to come up with half of that. So, obviously with the school, um, we didn't catch this last year, but with the school increases and the increased work week, the paychecks are bigger. If the paychecks are bigger, the Medicare expense is bigger. So, it's just math, but it's part of this budget. It's not part of the school budget. All right. Um, do we have any questions on insurance? I have a few, but I'll go to the other counselors first. All right. Seeing none, um, first is on the JS. Do you know why or do you have any insight into why we see less um why we're seeing a a lower increase than other communities and higher than others? Is that a formula question or a number of beneficiaries?

I really don't know. Okay. Um does the GIC provide any sort of explanation to the city about the rate change every year or they just send us a number?

They just send us a number basically. Okay. Well, they they they don't even they remember the the GIC consists of eight nine different plans depending on what it is. So, I mean some and some of those plans went up by more than 9%, some of them went up by less than 9%. And I would think that that drives a lot of how that works. It's whatever agreements um cities and towns have with their employees and who takes which plan. So there's two different Harvard Pilgrim plans, there's UniCare, there's the retirey plans. So the you know, if you want the gory details when I'm trying to calculate what the um the cost is going to be, I know what the increases are for each plan. I know who's on each plan right now. So I calculate that budget for the next year and then I add you know 10% for new employees, people switching plans etc. Roughly that's roughly how it's calculated.

Okay. It's another big big spreadsheet. So try to get it as close as I can. Right. We'll go to uh HR Director Crowley. Thank you, President Biz. I think you may have asked why our increases is less than other communities in the Commonwealth. Was that a question you asked or did I hear that wrong? Yes. Yeah. Just trying to understand if we're in the middle of the pack. Um is there a reason that we're in the middle of the pack?

Yeah. So, um because GIC has such a a large volume of participants, they're able to give a better rate than say like a Blue Cross Blue Shield or a private Hav Pilgrim. So that's why you see we're kind of in the middle because those private insurancees don't have such a large pool like the GIC. So they're able to to give us a better rate through the GIC than if we went out outsourced um through like a direct Blue Cross Blue Shield type of situation.

Sure. I sorry I think I meant um within the GIC. Were you saying Bob that there's other cities that are going up 20% because they're not in the GIC? That's just what I've heard from others. Yes. Basically, every every every city and town in Massachusetts and probably nationwide is experiencing large health insurance um premium raises. So, it's this is just gossip around. Got it.

So, I don't know if they're specifically in the GIC. I don't know what their makeup in the GIC is, right? what you know who's getting which plan or whether or not they're on Blue Cross Blue Shield or private Harvard Pilgrim. I just know that other cities and towns have experienced larger increases than we are experiencing this year. All right. Um two other things I noticed the unemployment budgets going down pretty significantly. Is that what's that a factor of?

That's just based on on numbers that I've seen recently. It it does seem to have gone down. Um, we might have cut a large check for something. I don't know why our actuals are up that much, but it's not it's not a large part of the bud the budget really. So,

I'd have to look at that. I think the the we had in 26 we had to make up um we're working on that. we had to make up some underpayment from many years before. So, we've made that up. So, um that's, you know, that's what I came up with when I was looking at the year the year overyear budgets for this and expenditures. Okay, I might have been wrong. Maybe I should have asked for another 25K. All right. But

um and then the last thing is on our insurance premiums, police liability, and the ordinary expenses. Um what are those insurance premiums? Does that include general liability insurance for the city from lawsuits? That's exactly what that is. Okay. And that's determined that's that's what I was told by the JRuddy corporate um um representative who does our insurance. And that's for, you know, building cars, police, police vehicles, all of that fun stuff. All right.

Um, is that also covering us from personnel lawsuits, settlement, you know, the city's been in a pretty significant number of settlements and issues in arbitration with unions um and employees. Is that at what point does our insurance kick in? Is that one policy there? Um, I would think most most personnel issues would not be covered by this. This is like if you know you walk into city hall and trip over a wet store. Yeah.

Um those those you know other settlements or you know if they're labor disputes or something like that that would be not be covered by these policies to my knowledge. Okay. So, these policies don't cover like MCAD complaints or labor disputes or arbitrations with unions. This is just about if there's a vehicle accident or someone falls on a sidewalk or does this cover, for example, like a sewer backup? This is your homeowner's insurance and and your auto liability and all that sort of stuff. Okay. So this is just covering like personal injuries or or if a vehicle or private property is damaged due to the city.

Yeah. Okay. And is that just a monthly premium and and this is the total? It's a monthly premium. Um these are based on you said it was going to go up between four and a half and 5%. So that's what I put into the budget.

Okay. Um all right. it would be helpful to understand, you know, are there what is the city's liability insurance in these other matters? Um, and does that come out of this budget? Is that in the law department budget? Um, because we're just trying to understand where when the city's being sued and settling, who's paying for that, what accounts is it coming out of? Um, what insurance policies are covering and addressing that? and you know what's the end cost to the residents for those lawsuits and those decisions. Um so if there is there I guess my question is is there any other insurance outside of this budget? Um like in the case of a lawsuit?

No. No. Okay. Not that I am aware of. No.

All right. All right. Do we have any other questions for the CFO on the insurance budget? All right, seeing none, um this is our budget meeting. We'll have another budget meeting next Tuesday. Hoping to have uh some more of our departments that we haven't seen yet at that meeting. And we are this is our committee of the whole. We're moving into our regular meeting in a few minutes. Um, if you're on Zoom, stick with us on Zoom. If you're watching on YouTube, you might have to switch to a new live stream. Um, but we will be back in about 5 minutes once there's a motion. Is there a motion to keep the paper in committee and adjourn? On the motion of councelor Leman to keep the paper in committee and adjurnn. Seconded by seconded by councelor Main. Mr. Clerk, please call the role.

Councelor Kalan. Council Lemming, Council Maline, Council Scott Py, yes. Council Singh, yes. Vice President Lazaro, yes. And President Pierce, yes. Seven, the affirmative. None of the negative. Motion passes. Committee of the whole adjourned. We'll start the regular meeting in about five minutes. Thank you. If you're on Zoom, you can just stay in the Zoom room. Thank you, Bob.