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CC MTG MINUTES JUNE 17 2013 i REGULAR MEETING OF THE AGAWAM CITY COUNCIL • Minutes dated June 17, 2013 Item 1. Roll Call # President Johnson—I'd ask Barbara to call the roll please? ROLL CALL—11 PRESENT,0 ABSENT President Johnson—With eleven present,we have a quorum. • Item 2. Moment o Silence and the Pledge ofAllerlance. President Johnson—I'd ask everyone to rise for a moment of silence and Pledge of Allegiance. Item 3. Citizen's Speak Time • President Johnson —This evening we have a Public Hearing scheduled on the proposed Fiscal Year 2014 town Operating Budget. Anyone who has signed up for Citizen's Speak Time wishing to address the Council regarding the budget will be deferred until the Public Hearing. For those who want to sign up on the back on the piano, there's sign up sheets for those who want to speak . in favor or those who want to speak against the town budget, I'd ask that you go back and sign legibly your name and your address if you want to speak regarding the budget. So those who have signed up on this sign-up sheet addressing the budget will be deferred again until the Public Hearing for the Council. So the first person on the list who hasn't signed up relative to the budget is Brian Halla. Each speaker will be asked to come forward, state their name and address, given the number of speakers, you'll be given three minutes to address the Council. Brian Halla, r please? Brian Halla — I'm Brian Halla, 16 Castle Hill Road. Council members, Mayor Cohen, condominiums in Mass. are taxed as single-family residences on the other hand Agawam only provides services to condos similar to those made available to apartment complexes. This inequity is acknowledged by the Council when condo development projects come before it and • are supported based upon the fact that condo residents use the schools less and aren't supplied with various other services. That is to say condos are seen as cash cows for the city given this inequity. Condominiums have attempted to get just a small measure of fairness during the past two decades. I've spearheaded that effort since 2010. We've worked in good faith seeking an agreement for reimbursement for trash collection costs which we pay for out of our own pockets. • Unfortunately the Council sub-committee with jurisdiction since 2012 has put us on their Agenda just one time in eighteen months. Personally I made an attempt six times to resume talks during the past nine months and was not responded to. Furthermore, the invitation was extended to meet at our clubhouse last month. This was ignored by the Mayor's Office and the Council except for our own Councilor in residence,Mr. Cavallo. This experience makes us believe we are treated as second class citizens here. Tonight, we request that you agree to treat us as single-family residences that we're taxed as or if you feel necessary to amend the ordinance that you believe makes us ineligible for municipal trash services. We request that you amend Mayor Cohen's budget proposal as moving say $185,000 from the General Reserve line item to a solid waste line 1 item in order to reimburse us for trash collection invoices we properly pay and present effective July is'. • President Johnson—Thirty seconds. Brian Halla — We cite the Fiscal Year 2012 budget meeting as precedent for such a budget revision. Thank you. i President Johnson—Thank you. Next is Diane Arventos? Diane Arventos —Hi. My name is Diane Arventos and I live at 84 Corey Colonial and I'm on the Board at the condominium and I'd just like the Council here to consider helping us out with our trash. It's a big expense for us and I feel we, as taxpayers, deserve to have our trash picked up by the town or some type of compensation. Thank you. i President Johnson—Thank you. Next is Bruce and it begins with a C, it's a C-O and that's all I can read. I apologize. Bruce Cone—Gentlemen. My name is Bruce Cone. I live at 170 Brookfield Lane at Longbrook i Estates. I'm on the Board there. I've been going to meetings for the past probably five, six years to no avail. We've been stonewalled every time and I think it's time that you came around considering us as homeowners. I have a friend that has a home, a free standing home, on a nice street with a large yard, two car garage, he pays less taxes than I do and he gets his rubbish picked up. At one time, we couldn't even get the town to Christmas trees on the curb. They wouldn't even do that for us and I think it's time that you started considering us as citizens. Thank you. • President Johnson—Next is Patrick Toney? Patrick Toney—Good evening Council. I'm the Associate Solicitor for the Town of Agawam, I guess my address would be 36 Main Street. I'm sorry. That's better. The Law Department has done some research on this matter and the current state of the solid waste removal for condominiums is that they fall into a category that is not legislated. The legislation requires that the Town of Agawam pick up the trash for one to four family dwellings only at this time. Not eligible are business, apartment buildings and condos. It would require legislation to change that or an ordinance for the Town Council. The reason for this is that the cost of picking up the condominium's trash at last estimation is between $220,000 and $300,000 per year. In these • fiscally harsh times, it would be reckless to enact such legislation and spend this money. I know that you feel as second class citizens,that is that you deserve an abatement of some sort however this would not be an abatement because you are not paying taxes for your trash pickup. It is a payment for a service and it is not considered a tax,unfortunately that's the case. A tax is a payment to a government entity. This is the research we have entered into and I believe only to change,the only way to change this is to enact an ordinance through the Town Council and the • price of it is exorbitant and I don't think it's gonna do the town any services to spend that money. If you do enact an ordinance or such of this nature,then you're gonna have problems with the public school system as ad valorem tax or property tax goes to pay for the Agawam Public School system and people with children in private schools might end up asking for the same abatement as well which would cost the town a considerable amount of money if it does pass. So it is the Law Department's opinion that this is not a good idea at this time. That is all. • President Johnson—Thank you. That concludes Citizen's Speak Time. Again those signing up wishing to address the Council regarding the proposed budget,the Public Hearing will be starting 2 • shortly. Again, reminding those that are here that want to address the Council regarding the budget,there are sign up sheets on the piano in the back. Item 4. Minutes 1. Regular Council Meeting—May 6,2013 President Johnson — Is there a Motion? Moved by Councilor Cichetti, seconded by Councilor Rheault. Questions or discussion on the May 6ffi minutes? Seeing none, all those in favor say Ay? Any opposed? It's unanimous. 2. Regular Council Meeting—May 20,2013 President Johnson — Is there a Motion? Moved by Councilor Rheault, seconded by Councilor • Cichetti. Questions or discussion on the May 2V' minutes? Seeing none, all those in favor say Ay? Any opposed? Please note Councilor Letellier's abstention,otherwise voice unanimous. 3. Workshop Meeting Minutes—May 29,2013 • President Johnson — Is there a Motion? Moved by Councilor Cichetti, seconded by Councilor Rossi. Questions or discussion on the workshop meeting minutes? Seeing none, all those in favor say Ay? Any opposed? It's unanimous. 4. Regular Council Meeting—June 3,2013 President Johnson — Is there a Motion? Moved by Councilor Magovern, seconded by Councilors Rheault and Cichetti. Questions or discussion on the June 3 minutes? Seeing none, all those in favor say Ay? Any opposed? Please note Councilor Calabrese's abstention, otherwise voice unanimous. 5. Workshop Meeting Minutes—June 4,2013 i President Johnson — Is there a Motion? Moved by Councilor Rossi, seconded by Councilor Cichetti. Questions or discussion on the those? Seeing none, all those in favor say Ay? Any opposed? Voice unanimous. 6. Workshop Meeting Minutes—June 11,2013 i President Johnson — Is there a Motion? Moved by Councilor Rheault, seconded by Councilor Cichetti. Questions or discussion? Seeing none, all those in favor say Ay? Any opposed? Please note Councilor Rossi's abstention. That concludes the Minutes. Item S. Declaration from Council President None. Item 6. Presentation of Petitions,Memorials& Remonstrances 1. TR-2013-30 -A Resolution entering into a Memorandum of Understanding for Emergency Transportation (Mayor)(Referred to Community Relations Committee) (Tabled 6/3/13) 3 0 • President Johnson—I believe— Councilor Calabrese—I'd like to leave the item on the table. President Johnson — So we have a Motion to leave the item on the table. Is there a second? Motion made by Councilor Calabrese, seconded by Councilor Magovern. All those is favor of leaving the item on the table, say Ay? Any opposed? The item remains on the table. • Item 7. Report of Council Committees None. Item 8. Elections • None. Item 9. Public Hearin s 1. PH-2013-7(TR-2013-35) -A Resolution Adopting the Fiscal Year 2014 • Annual Operating Budget for the Town of Agawam(Mayor)(Tabled 6/3/13) President Johnson — The item is on the table. Is there a Motion to remove the item from the table. Moved by Councilor Rheault, seconded by Councilor Mineo. All those if favor of taking it off the table say Ay? Any opposed? The item is off the table. The Chair will entertain a Motion • to approve TR-2013-35. Moved by Councilor Letellier, seconded by Councilor Cichetti. At this point,the Chair would entertain a Motion to go into Committee as a Whole to allow the Mayor to make his presentation. Moved by Councilor Calabrese, seconded by Councilor Rossi. All those in favor of going into Committee as a Whole say Ay? Any opposed? We are in Committee as a Whole. Mayor? • Mayor Cohen — Thank you Council President Johnson. Thank you to all the Councilors for giving me the opportunity to present the, I'm, waiting for you to, you'll have a copy of the PowerPoint presentation, but thank you for allowing myself and the Department Heads to meet with all of you on two evenings to present the entire budget and thank you to the Council Sub- Committee for the Schools for meeting with our, under Mr. Cavallo's direction, for meeting with our School Committee for the School Budget. Thank you to all of you. If you look on the first • page of the PowerPoint, Fiscal Year 2014 State receipts are anticipated to be $22,621,402 and that's based on the budget approved by the House Ways and Means Committee and that's an increase over FY2013. There is an offset, the local aid that is allocated to specific programs which is off the Cherry Sheet, our assessments, that total is $493,399. State assessments are expected to total, I'm sorry I jumped ahead of myself, the offset our local aid that is allocated to • the specific program, state assessments are expected to total $563,345. The Fiscal 2014 budgeted revenues and if you read my budget message, I called it a"blueprint for success building a strong community". We are having a limited utilization of unrestricted available funds, otherwise known as Free Cash, of$1.5million which is reduced over the average of the last ten years. New growth is estimated at$1,639,610. The total Real Estate tax levy is estimated to increase by only A%. Agawam continues to be one of the only of few communities to never seek an override of Proposition 2 '/2 or any debt exclusions. The small residential decrease, if we can't, we have to because of the amount of new growth that we had, we have to go with a minimum of a 1.50 tax classification but you can move it, shift, but you can move it to the left anywhere you would like 4 • i and the average what I'm projecting is a 1.5 where the average homeowner of the average house valued at $208,100 would see a small tax decrease of $2.00. While small, it's certainly better than going up. Staffing levels are carefully reviewed. Personnel positions continue to be i carefully reviewed, vacancies continue to be left open and the following positions were not budgeted: in the Administrative Building- a half time Senior Clerk; in the Clerk's Office-a half time Senior Clerk; in the Treasurer's Office—an Assistant Treasurer; and in Inspection Services-- a half time Code Enforcement Officer. The next page is. what I spoke about — the use of unrestricted available funds otherwise known to all of us as Free Cash however it's not free, remains low. You can see in 2005 through 2011 there was two million or$2'/2 million,201241% million, last year I used $1.25 million and this year $1 '/x million. All collective bargaining agreements in the town including school expire June 30, 2013 and we are in negotiations. There is a salary reserve it's included in the Town Budget to allow for negotiated changes to all collective bargaining agreements. Fiscal 2014 Budget Highlights — School Committee Budget increased 4.36% at $38,080,847. The Town Operating Budgets increased by .19%. We have retained all the essential Town and School services, benefits and insurance decreased by 4.29%. We have sent in our report to the state. We will not see a reduction in local aid because we are staying in line with the GIC. We are actually offering better coverage at a cost that is reducing the amount that employees and retirees will be paying on a bi-weekly basis. So we're very proud of what we have negotiated. We continue to be, it's a $497,000 reduction in the amount we're paying for Health Care while still providing excellent insurance even for those of you on the • Council who have chosen to take it. $100,000 added to the Other Pension and Benefit (OPEB) Trust Fund established for future retirees' medical insurance as part of GASB 45, we've been putting in $100,000 a year. The Fiscal Year 2014 budget chart you see 53/2%of our budget is for education. That is why people continue to move here. Our scores are increasing, we have great public safety,we have excellent services and we have a school system that is one of the top in the i area now and for that I am very proud and I thank the School Committee and the City Council Sub-Committee for meeting and agreeing and presenting me, as the Mayor, with a wonderful budget. If you look at education,the appropriation over last year's, an increase of$1.592million, the town continues, Capital Improvements for the school are $375,000. The town continues to pay school share of Property & Liability Insurance, benefits and insurance line items include pension, health, dental and life insurance for School Department Retirees and a Capital i Improvements planned at the Junior High School and the Granger Elementary School as outlined in the Capital portion of your budget. Public Safety—you'll see went up .86%. The ambulance service is continued in Feeding Hills so we still continue to run two ambulances in town and sometimes three. We have four firefighters who continue to be paid by the Ambulance Service. Funding is continued for one police officer which is a school resource officer for the High School and the Animal Control Officer is restored to full time in Agawam with the new Mayor in West i Springfield, he chose not to renew the shared mutual aid with West Springfield so we have, Allison will be paid full time by the town. And Public Works — it went up 1.11%. Capital Improvements appropriations include $50,000 increase in highway equipment. Capital expenditures for public works — street improvement program $150,000; DPW equipment of which most of it is for leases and the purchase of antiquated vehicles that are no longer for safe i for the engineering such as a van and one F250 and sidewalk rehab is $5,000 plus we have money that we're carrying over so we'll continue to have close to $15,000 for sidewalk improvement. We'll also hopefully be able to look at the potential CDBG Block grant which unfortunately we haven't been able to get because of the our good management I guess because most cities you gotta have a higher score which means you don't have as much high bond ratings and good budgeting. Solid Waste budget is increased $33,817; weekly trash pickup and yard waste pick is continued. Culture and Recreation is up 1.18%. The library budget increased by $14,167 to meet the requirements for the Library State Certification so that we can receive state funding for the library. The state aid to libraries in Agawam is expected to be $37,305; Park and Recreation 5 • services are maintained and the Council on Aging increased by $2,691. Under Human Services, the Western Hampden District Veterans Services assessment increased by $5,349 to address i additional needs of Agawam's veterans under Chapter 115 but the overall budget went down .99% and those areas—Health Department continues to fund full time school nurses at all schools and the part time substitute nurses continue to be included so that we can maintain coverage at all of our schools at all time for the health and safety of our students. The general government went down 2.07%; Property & Liability Insurance decreased $22,150; vacant position of a half time Senior Clerk remains unfilled in the Clerk's Office and staff reductions continued in the Treasurer/Collector's Officer. The debt principal and interest, luckily this year we've been very fortunate, we've been watching what we bond and tried to be very careful to get rid of some of the bonding, the largest portion of bonding that we still have is for the additions and renovations of all the school in 1998 but principal and interest went down 4.19%. Tuckahoe Turf Farm debt is to be retired in FY 2014; the Fire Department aerial platform truck debt we hope to be retired in FY 2014 and the Junior High School Green Repair project will be issued in FY 2014. The next is the General Fund Debt Principal and Interest and you can see all of the projects that are listed. I am not gonna run through them but you have a list of all of them and they are there for your review. The benefits and insurance went down 1.49%. We have worked hard to keep our medical claims down and the medical claims and insurance includes dental, health and life insurance for both school and town active employees and retirees. Medical insurance decreased $470,926 with coverage continued for retired and active employees. The contributory retirement increased $218,257 and the OPEB trust fund contribution of $100,000 is to help provide for future retirees' insurance as required by GASB Statement number 45. Property and Liability insurance went down 2.96%. We continue the property and liability insurance, all insurance, for both town and schools. Contributions for Workers' Compensation Trust Fund anticipated at the end of Fiscal year 2014; School Department contributions eliminated from the School Budget in 0 FY2011 and continued to be funded through the General Fund budget. The personnel Department continues to administer all Workers' Compensation claims and they've done an outstanding job in keeping those low. The Reserve Fund as you can see, the Reserve Fund maintained at $350,000. The Reserve Fund is available for any emergencies or unforeseen expenditures during the year with City Council approval and there is a Salary Reserve established to fund negotiated salary increases as has always been done in the past during negotiation years. The OPEB Trust Fund contribution of $100,000 - it's the Government Accounting Standards Board known as GASB Statement No. 45 requires cities and towns to establish an amount of the actuarial liability for future benefits other than pensions for all anticipated retiree costs, such as medical, life and dental insurance. A trust fund was established in FY 2013 to begin funding the estimated actuarial future liability. Self-Sustaining Departments, you'll see that 4.45% went up. Waste Water operating budget increased .62%; Water spending increased 11.60%which includes • anticipated debt service for the North Street water main repair that needs to be done and the Golf Course budget decreased 9.53%. Capital Improvement appropriations are what your budget book, I think it's Tab 31, those are also listed here so you can see what they are and that concludes my presentation. I thank you all for allowing me to present this short, concise overview of our budget. I am very proud of the budget. It maintains all services, no layoffs and • maintains a tax rate that is still one of the lowest split tax rates in the Pioneer Valley and as many realtors tell me, people want to move to Agawam because of our low tax rate and I see Councilor Cichetti shaking his head, our good Police Department, our excellent School Department and everything that we offer. We can't do this alone. We do it as a group in collaboration and I thank all of you for your continued collaboration and support in order to move our city forward while still being mindful of all of our taxpayers and the taxes placed, levied, against everyone here in our community. So I thank you and I wish you all well and I look forward to your support in passing the budget as you see fit. (APPLAUSE) 6 0 President Johnson —On behalf of the Council, we just want to extend our thanks to you Mayor and to your Department Heads for coming to the two workshops. I think it was a better format this year that the entire Council was given the opportunity to receive the presentation from each department rather than break down into the sub-committees as had been done in the past. We're in Committee as a Whole. I don't know if there are any questions? Councilor Letellier? Councilor Letellier—Yes, thank you. Good evening, Mayor. In the budget book that we have for the town side, there's clearly stated what the salary reserve is. I've gone through the whole School Budget book a couple of times. I went through the Superintendent's budget message and he refers to the need to get contracts for the five bargaining units and when I look through the $1.592million increase that we're being asked to pass, I don't see anywhere in here how the issue of contract negotiations are addressed in this budget. Could you help me with that? Mayor Cohen — I'll have the Superintendent come up and address you on that as we're in negotiations and since negotiations include my brother, I'll have the Superintendent talk to that. Councilor Letellier—Thank you. President Johnson —Tab 17 Gina— in the School Department's budget, third from the bottom line item. Councilor Letellier—Forgive me,honest to God, I've gone through this twice. President Johnson—Superintendent Sapelli? Superintendent Sapelli—Yes. Councilor Letellier — I apologize Superintendent Sapelli, I did go through this twice and I completely missed it so I do see the figure there. My apologies. I will always admit when I'm wrong. All right. Thank you. President Johnson—Other questions? Seeing none,the Chair would entertain a Motion to come out of Committee as a Whole? Moved by Councilor Perry, seconded by Councilor Cichetti. All those in favor of coming out of Committee as a Whole say Ay? Any opposed? We are out of Committee as a Whole. As I indicated earlier, there are sign up sheets in the back. I'd ask Barbara to go grab the sign up sheets at this point because I'm going to declare the Public Hearing to be open. Once the sign up sheets come up, we'll take those who have signed up first. When you approach the microphone, I'd ask that you state your name and address. Depending on the number I'll indicate what time allocation we'll give to each speaker. All right. We've got nobody that's signed up to speak in favor so at this point, the public hearing is open. I'd ask those who want to speak in favor of the budget to again state your name and your address and at this point, given the size of the crowd in the auditorium, the Chair will give you three minutes to address the Council. If you're in favor of the budget, please approach. Diane Juzba —My name is Diane Juzba. I live at 189 South Westfield Street in Feeding Hills. I'm here today as a parent, a taxpayer, a School Committee member and the Chairwoman of the Budget Sub-Committee. I'm here to ask the City Council to fully fund the budget. During the budget process this year, we had numerous workshops with the Superintendent, Administrators, Directors and several City Councilors attended the workshops we had. We then held a joint sub- committee meeting with the Budget Sub-Committee for the Schools. At each of these workshops and meetings, each line item and dollar in the School Budget were explained in detail and fully 7 • discussed. As the Chair of the Sub-Committee I opened up the meeting to the School Committee and Councilors that were present. There were only a few questions, no concerns and a great deal of support at that time. The Council's School Budget Sub-Committee commended the Superintendent and School Committee for a thorough and fiscally responsible budget. They complimented our collaboration which I appreciate and said that they intended to send their full support to the rest of the City Council. It is extremely disheartening that one week before the budget hearing, I attended a Council workshop held in the Children's section of the Public Library and heard discussion about making cuts to the School Department budget. We submitted a budget that asked for an increase not for frills or extras but to maintain the programs and staff we have in place, to meet the mandates of Special Education, to replace text books — some of them are outdated by more than twenty years — and to negotiate in good faith five bargaining units. No one came forward at our Public Hearing to ask us to reduce our budget, no one asked us to rethink anything in our budget, no questions were asked until that workshop last week. I'm here tonight to ask you to rethink the discussion that you had last week at that workshop and I'm asking you to support our budget as submitted by us and submitted by your budget sub- committee. Thank you. William Sapelli — Bill Sapelli, Superintendent of Schools. First let me thank you for your support of our past budgets and for your support at many of our events and activities, many of you were present at our wonderful graduation that we had a week and a half ago and I appreciate your presence at all of those events. Just speaking to the School Budget, basically commenting on the process that we had, as Mrs. Juzba just indicated, there were three meetings held by the sub-committee which was chaired by Mr. Cavallo and Councilor Calabrese, Councilor Rheault, Councilor Mineo and Councilor Rossi were on that committee and I appreciated your questions and your input at those meetings. If you recall we had that meeting on April 2nd right here in this auditorium where the School Committee and the Council Sub-Committee were here for my presentation and you asked some very pointed and appropriate questions that I think I answered thoroughly and I certainly appreciated your comments and your questions. Then Mr. Cavallo, Chair of the Sub-Committee, was kind enough to invite me to the Council's Sub-Committee meeting prior to the May 20'h Council/City Council meeting where they were going to be voting on whether or not to recommend the School Budget to the Full Council so I came again and answered any and all questions that were posed at that particular night and I was happy to see that they unanimously voted in favor of supporting the School Budget in its entirety to the City Council. That was a vote that was taken that night in my presence and I appreciate that and I look for your continued support in the budget. So I appreciate that and your vote tonight. Thank you. Wendy Rua — Good evening. My name is Wendy Rua. I am a taxpayer, a mother of three school-aged children and a member of the Agawam School Committee. I stand before you tonight wishing to state my full support of the current proposed School Budget. This School Committee held several meetings and a joint meeting with the City Council's School Budget Sub- Committee and at no point in that meeting were any questions asked or concerns raised to Mr. Sapelli or this School Committee about the proposed School Budget. In fact, Mr. Sapelli and the School Committee were praised and given accolades as to the sound fiscal decisions and management used to create a strong level-funded budget. In the time that I've been a School Committee member, more questions and conversations raised by City Councilors directed to me have been focused on a casino which does not even exist here in town than questions or concerns regarding the state of our school or the budget. Agawam is fortunate to be an outstanding model school district. Administrators work diligently to keep operating costs status quo with last year and some even reduced the operating costs of their school budget in the proposed FYI3-14 year. Areas of increase included an update to text books, some of which have been in use since the 1970's, money for new band uniforms due to the poor conditions of uniforms for a stellar • marching band and money for teachers' salaries because this is a negotiation year. To anyone who thinks that a teacher is overpaid, I urge you to spend a day in any classroom. Agawam is • blessed with many extraordinary teachers who serve our district and our children and their hours of commitment are seldom contained to a six hour work day. A common question is also will our taxes be raised and I do believe the Mayor has addressed that tonight by saying there is, although it's slight, a tax decrease to the average homeowner with this proposed budget. I urge you to put politics aside. If you had questions, I wish you had raised them throughout the process rather than at a meeting held last Tuesday in the Children's Room at the Agawam Public Library while • the School Committee was in progress. One final note, I know many of us our proud of the Agawam High School Class of 2013. We shared the stage with them on their graduation day. Mr. Lemanski introduced several elected officials stating the year that we had graduated from Agawam High School. Now it is our responsibility to assure that we provide the resources for our children's education and future. Like we did, many of them may choose to give back to the community,to our community, and one day be mayor or a fire fighter or a police officer or even a teacher. Let's continue to offer them all the best in educational opportunities that we can. Please vote yes on the proposed budget. Thank you. Shelley Borgatti-Reed—Hi. Before I get started I wanted to mention that Mr. Anthony Bonavita who is a member of the Agawam School Committee cannot be here because he has a necessary medical treatment. He wanted me to mention that he's in full support of this School Budget and • asks that you do not make any cuts to it. My name is Shelley Borgatti-Reed. I live at 10 Shelley Lane in Feeding Hills. As you know, I'm a member of the Agawam School Committee, a taxpayer and I have two children in the school system. One here and one at the High School. I come before you today because we heard that there's certain members of the Council that want to cut the School Budget. This comes as a surprise to me as everyone else has stated, at our School . Budget meetings everyone said the budget was well done. I commend Mr. Sapelli and his staff for together a transparent budget. It's fiscally responsible, very sound and it takes care of our children. It is a level-service budget, we want to maintain what we have now. Because we were level-funded for so long, we for many years, we weren't able to purchase text books and things that we need. Our text books are from the early 90's. We have a science book that, our science books are from 1990, that is twenty years ago. In science that's one hundred years old. Technology is changing every day and we're, I admit I'm old, you guys are older, we don't know the technology that these kids have, I can't keep up with that, okay, we are entitled, we have to keep up with it, this is the way our schools, this is the way our generations are moving, they can take an iPhone and do things to it that I never knew even existed. Mr. Feeley and his technology group are working diligently to keep us up to par. Just wiring the schools with Wi-Fi is a major, major task. It costs money to do those things. We have to keep up with technology. That is very • important. The PTO's — thank God for them. They are buying are bright links (?) and our computers for our schools. That should not be funded by the PTO's. That should be funded by our School Department. Thank God we have them. Our teachers are qualified. They are all licensed. We have to commend them for what they do. They work hard in the classroom. They have many, many different state mandates. They have to deal with inclusion and different kids at • all different levels. They're all licensed. We don't want to lose them. We have a great staff in Agawam. We can't lose that. We don't want them going to other towns. Our band uniforms are over twelve years old. I'd like to give you a sample of the rain jackets that our band,Mr. Hueglin who is now a resident of Agawam I might add, is taking our band, they represent our town, he works day and night, they work very hard. This is the rain jacket and these aren't even the bad ones. • Clerk—Thirty seconds. 9 • • Shelley Borgatti-Reed — These are the rain jackets that our Agawam High School kids are wearing. This is just one of them. That is disgusting to me. We have an excellent school system. We have been noted for our Special Ed. We have a drop out rate of.15%. That's two kids, one • which is getting his GED. We have over half the kids, we have 168 kids, received Academic A's maintaining a 3.0 average for their whole High School career. That's amazing. We're asking for a level-service budget so we can maintain our current education system. Clerk—That's time. Shelley Borgatti-Reed — Okay, there no priority more important than educating our children. Thank you. Linda Galarneau — I gave Shelley some of my time. Linda Galarneau, 24 Sycamore Terrace, Agawam. Good evening Mr. President and City Council members. As a School Committee,I am • here tonight to ask that you support our budget as presented and unanimously approved by the School Committee. Our budget represents numerous workshops that provided clarity and understanding for our needs. Again,your approval of fully funding our budget would not only be appreciated but would also be a responsible decision on the Council's part. Again, I thank you very much and I ditto all the rest'of my School Committee members and Mr. Sapelli's comments, certainly can't add to those great comments that they made and to their support and again, I do appreciate your support and hope that you do follow through with it. Thank you. Douglas Reed — Douglas Reed,10 Shelley Lane. I want to thank the Mayor and all of his Department Heads for their efforts. This is a very sound budget that I hope the City Council would support. One of the things that was a little disturbing that although the Mayor was very . kind in including it, the Capital Improvement portion for the sewers was eliminating. This was something that has been going on for ten years and it looks like it's just gonna come to an end and that's a sad state of affairs. Any talk of cutting into the School Department just continues the ridiculousness. It's just amazing, you know, we've got a great town and for some reason, there always seems to be an effort to ratchet back. We don't complete projects. We're always tearing at the kids. It's shameful. It's absolutely shameful. We have condo residents that they want to get their trash picked up. Right next door, the Town of West Springfield went to automatic pick up, single stream recycling, and above what they were saving they found out that they're saving an additional $40,000. Maybe we could look at that and help these folks out. I don't think it's out of the question. The property tax decrease, we'd all like to see it, but if it comes to where you're gonna cut the School Budget, I don't think we're all gonna die over a couple of bucks a thousand just to maintain the level of education we have in this town which is very commendable. • It's commendable to the School Committee and every person that works within the School Department, the teachers that take care of our kids, take care of our kids not just teach them but they take care of our children. They are a part of our children's growth. Please support this in its entirety. Thank you. • Eric Lunden—Hi. My name's Eric Lunden and I live at 123 Hendom Drive, Feeding Hills. I've been listening to this budget process for going on three years now and I've kind of become part of it as far as looking in and it seems it's changed after, in these past three years. This past year it looks like you guys were really involved in the process. You were actually active participants meeting with the School Committee. I think that's a good thing and thank you for that. I'm hoping here that you support the budget, how it's fully funded going forward and it's very • important. We have great schools in town. We have great staff in town. We've got great kids in town and don't forget that foundation, education is the foundation for our future and we should fully fund it. Thank you. 10 • • President Johnson — Anyone else wishing to address the Council in favor of the proposed budget? Francine Cotoia—Good evening. My name is Francine Cotoia. I'm a High School teacher and I'm also a taxpayer in the Town of Agawam. I have a letter to read from a parent that couldn't make it. It was her anniversary so she's with her husband having a nice celebration right now but she wanted me to read a letter to everybody here. Dear Council members, you need to know that the teachers my son has had always say yes to helping him. They have spent hours even after school when he got back from the collaborative program to get a lot of hours of extra help. How can we therefore say no to an increase when they continue to work harder and harder to improve the education of our child? Wasn't it our teachers who helped us get the jobs we have today and gave us the motivation we have to be the very best that we can? Please do not make any cuts from the School Budget because we ultimately send a message to our teachers and community • that education is not important to our children. An increase in the budget would send the right message because teachers are worthy of an increase in pay,they also are worthy of their jobs they work hard for our kids_ They have never said no when I asked for extra help for my son. I'm asking that the Council support the budget and do not say no to what they are asking. Sincerely, Maria Hardy. She lives at 20 Brien Street, Agawam, Massachusetts. I'd like to speak on behalf of myself, a teacher at Agawam High School. Dear Council members, I can fully appreciate the fact that the economy has placed Some fiscal constraints on the town budget however; budget cuts are not necessarily the only place that you can economize. As you are aware, teachers are constantly furthering their education to be better at what we do. When I speak to my colleagues, it's always about what new methods of teaching we can use to be sure that our students learn. In this very competitive society, students must have the very best tools to compete successfully. I • believe we are accomplishing these things at Agawam High School. It's clear based on the results,we heard the Mayor say it himself that we accomplish high college admissions rates, high MCAS passing scores and high graduation rates. I'm not sure there are any other schools in the area doing all of those things simultaneously. I urge you to take another look at the budget and see how the intended drastic cuts that you might be proposing can be mitigated with the satisfactory conclusion for the forthcoming budget and approve what the Superintendent has proposed. Thank you very much for your continued support and of our very dedicated staff that we have at Agawam High School. Thank you very much. President Johnson — Anyone else wishing to address the Council in favor of the proposed budget? • Kara Snyder — Good evening. My name is Kara Snyder, 655 Cooper Street, Agawam. I'm a parent of two elementary school-aged children at Phelps. I've spent countless hours with the PTO. I've spent countless hours as a member of the School Council at Phelps and those hours we spend we fundraise for things like technology, for these that our teachers can't provide, for enrichment programs for our kids and yet with all of that we have to fund our technology and • Bright Links (?) and it's one school and another school and another school and this is just at the Elementary School level. Who has more technology? How can we catch up? That's not fair to any of the kids in this town. To get them up to the High School level that she was talking about, the kids need their foundation and we have to be able to provide that at every turn. If we can't provide that for our children, what do we have moving forward? Thank you. President Johnson — Anyone else wishing to address the Council? Anyone wishing to be recorded in name only in favor of the proposed budget? Seeing none, I will now switch to address the Council in opposition and we had a few people sign up— 11 • Clerk—Sorry,hold on— Speakers in name only: Teresa Urbinati -496 North Street, I'm in favor of the total budget, school and town, please support it. Elaine Mokrzycki--292 Regency Park Drive Agawam,please support the budget in total. Kristin Kutz—Agawam, Massachusetts,please support the budget in whole. Justine Woods—Elementary School teacher in the Town of Agawam, please support the budget as proposed. Bill Heuglin— 8 Plantation Drive, Agawam and I would encourage you to support the budget as well. Paul Sawyer-- 138 South Street and I'd like you to support the education budget. Thank you. Marjorie Savoie—374 Meadow Street and I'm in favor of supporting the budget. Nora Ronnau— 111 Florida Drive, please support the budget. Lauren Longhi— 11 Cesan Street,please support the budget. Shannon Page—47 Barbara Lane,please support the budget. Nancy Bobskill— 13 Columbia Drive, please support the budget. Molly Mittler-- 111 Florida Drive,please support the budget. William Bobskill — 13 Columbia Drive and I would ask you to fully support the budget please. Thank you. Laura Fallon—51 Vadnais Street, I ask the Council to please support the budget in its entirety. John Benjamin—30 Abbey Lane, please support the budget. Kim Houle—72 Anvil,please support the budget. Jeff Corbin—9 Lakeview Circle, I ask the City Council to please support the budget. Joe Buonagurio— 166 Barry Street, please support the budget. Geoffrey Phillips — 172 Cambridge Street, I'm one of the teachers that uses those 1990 textbooks. Please support the budget. Kevin Pender—406 Cooper Street, please support the budget. Mary Bonavita—8F Castle Hills Road, please support the budget. Chris Buklerewicz—355 South Street,please support the budget. Theresa Buklerewicz—355 South Street,please support the budget. Veronica Bobskill— 13 Columbia Drive,please support the budget. Liz McKiernan—35 Silver Lake Drive, please support the budget. Daniel Pryce—35 Kosciusko Avenue,please support the budget. Thank you. Caitlin Martin—37 Maynard Street, please support the budget. Mohumad Motuf(?)- 84 Beekman Drive,please support the budget. • Patti McCauley—Educator at Roberta Doering,please support the budget. MaryEllen Burselli — Speech and Language Pathologist at Roberta Doering. Please continue to put our children first and please support our budget. Carol Patrick— 124 Robin Ridge Drive,please support the budget. Ben Cromlin—61"grade teacher, please support the budget. Michelle Cecchi—282 Southwick Street, please support the budget. President Johnson --Anyone else wishing to be recorded in name only in favor? Seeing none, all those who wish to address the Council in opposition and again we have the first signed up, Corinne Wingard. Corinne Wingard — Thank you. I feel a little bit like the skunk at the garden party but please consider what I have to say. My name is Corinne Wingard. I live at 194 Elm Street in Agawam. I'm not a condominium owner but I'm here tonight to talk about including money in the budget 12 0 for fair treatment of condominium owners in our town. So I'm against the budget because it does not include that provision. I have long felt that residential property owners who own condominiums should be treated equally with other residential property owners and receive the same services. To say we've never done this before is no reason not to do it now because in life things change and lots have things have changed in Agawam. To give you an example—in 1440 my family bought our house and the adjoining lot when it was auctioned off by the mill, and for years we paid taxes on the lot as a building lot but when I went to sell the property in 2006, I learned that there had been a zoning change and my lot with 100 foot frontage that it was no longer a legal building lot, even though I had paid taxes all those years as if it was. So I had to quitclaim ten feet from my own house to sell the lot. So things do change and it is past time I believe for this change to equal treatment of all residential property owners in Agawam. To say it would be costly to the town is also no reason not to do this. Now ours is a country based on fair and equal treatment of all. It is simply wrong to treat condominium residential property owners as second class citizens. The Mayor in his budget presentation stated the budget should result in a • tax decrease to the average homeowner so while we all like to save on taxes, this savings makes the timing perfect to do the right thing and provide full and equal services to Agawam citizens whose residential property happens to be a condominium. If an ordinance change is required as stated by the associate town attorney then it needs to be made promptly. With all due respect and I do mean that, I request that you reject the budget until it can be changed to provide equal services to all residential property owners in our town but I also have to say that even though I've never had children in our school system, I fully support fully funding the School Budget and please make sure you do that. Thank you. President Johnson—Next is Elaine Carlson? Elaine Carlson — I'm Elaine Carlson and I live at Longbrook Estates Condominiums. I'm here to represent the condominiums owners. I've lived in this town for nineteen years. I'm sick and tired of being treated like a second class citizen. The argument that the other gentleman made about the assessors, about schools, you can send your kid to private school, you have an option about sending your kid to private school, you can send them to Agawam if you wish. Everyone in the town benefits from a well-educated population. Nobody benefits from my trash pickup except me. I am subsidizing all of the single homeowners to get their trash picked up. That is unfair. That is totally unfair. Either start charging everybody in Agawam for their trash pick up or start taking care of mine. The time has come. You can't, condominiums being treated like this is the same thing as sexism or racism or any other ism, the majority cannot brow beat on the minority. This is wrong. Please change it. President Johnson—Next is Mary Fleury? Mary Fleury — Mary Fleury, 70 Dogwood Lane, Longbrook Condominiums. I ask for your support in treating us as equal citizens. It is my understanding that our tax rate is the same for all homeowners and we are only asking in good conscious to be treated equally. If there is an ordinance that needs to be changed, we ask that you consider doing that. Pick up our trash the same as all other homeowners. The town does pick up our recycling, I believe because they make money off of it but they won't help by picking up the trash, neither have I in the ten years that I've lived in my condominium ever seen a snow plow, a street sweeper or a police car and it's as if we are the forgotten people or not as good as anybody else and that's not true because we pay our taxes just like everyone else and we deserve the same services. I also say support the School Budget. I don't have children in there any more but they got great educations. Thank you. 13 • President Johnson — Anyone else wishing to address the Council in opposition? There's a gentleman making his way from the back. Steve Salkin(?) — Good evening. My name is Steve Salkin (?), 420 Main Street, Northfield Condominiums. I share their sentiment of the last few talking about having equal trash pickup with their property taxes. There are thirty-two other communities in Massachusetts that have reversed their policy and do pick up trash now. There are other communities that have never not picked up trash for condominiums so it's not a new idea. We're not breaking new ground. • Someone else talked about the recycling. When it was in your advantage to be able to get the tonnage we needed for the new facility, it was alright to come on the properties for that and then the argument for trash was that it's private property and the liabilities. Well if it's good for one,it should be good for both. So those are just a few of the points. I wish you'd consider that. As with everyone else, I think the school should be fully funded as well but I think when you take a fair and honest look at what's going on with the property taxes and trash pick up. Thank you for • your time. President Johnson — Anyone else wishing to address the Council in opposition to the budget? Anyone wishing to be recorded in name only in opposition to the budget? Seeing none, with that I declare the Public Hearing closed. We have before us TR-2013-35 which has been moved and seconded. Any discussion? Councilor Bitzas? • Councilor Bitzas—Yes, Mr. President. I have front to me the budget and I went through and we went through many times, many meetings. I'm very happy that the School Sub-Committee recommends to the whole Full Council to pass the budget. I see a budget level-funded. I see no cuts in services. I see that we have the lowest rates. How can I vote no for that? So I hope • everybody supports it. Thank you. President Johnson—Other discussion? Anyone else? Councilor Perry? Councilor Perry -- Yes, thank you Mr. President. As I state annually when we review the budget, just remember Council what we pass tonight, we have to pay for in December with the tax shift. Okay? Which in turn is going to fall right directly on every tax payer in town, be it residential, commercial or industrial. Those tax rates will change depending on the shift that we elect to do. If we shift it one way, the $2.00 decrease will go up. If we shift it the other way, the increases will go towards our commercial and industrial residents who pay a lot of money in taxes to us. So it's not only for the School Department and the town's budget, it's for the whole community. Looking at the budget and I want to thank the Mayor and all the Department Heads • that participated in our workshops. I want to thank Councilor CavalIo and his School Sub- Committee for meeting with Mr. Sapelli and the School Committee and working that out. There is a number of different things that we have discussed as a group in those workshops and our job is to answer to and this is the biggest job that we have as a City Councilor is the budget annually. We have to answer to every single taxpayer out there. They don't want to see their tax rates • going up or not even one dollar. I know many of us have discussed in our meetings the residents that have discussed with us, every year it goes up a little bit. Well guess what? My paycheck doesn't go up a little bit, it's actually going down and all the other expenses are going up. So it's your job as my City Councilor to scrutinize that budget to make sure my taxes don't go up one dollar, better yet why don't you make them come down because my paycheck's not going up but everything else is and I can't afford to have that tax bill go up any higher than it is. We have residents in the community that are living on fixed budgets. We have to think about them and we think about the children in the school systems, believe me, fifty-four percent of the budget is going towards the school but we also have to think about all of the other residents in our 14 • • community and we have to keep that in mind when we're looking at this budget and how we want to go about passing it, making amendments to it, but we have to again keep in mind that in November we have to pay, or the taxpayers have to pay. So I'll leave my future comments for later. President Johnson—Councilor Rossi? Councilor Rossi—Yes,thank you. I have to regret that I was unable to attend a lot of the School Committee meetings. I did attend one that Superintendent Sapelli alluded to and I am happy in general with the budget and I think that a lot of it is necessary. I'm in favor of the children and education. I always have been. I was kind of hoping however that maybe they would look or take a harder line with what you earmarked for negotiations. I don't think I could tell anybody in this room that the private sector, their salaries aren't moving forward. I mean they're not even standing still actually, they're kind of moving backwards because the cost of living is going up • around them. There are some people that haven't had raises in years and years. Now I'm not saying that they shouldn't be entitled to some increase but we're living probably in a one percent world, probably less, if any of you got money in bank accounts you know you're getting two points, three points, in the bank accounts so we're probably living in less than a one percent world and yet your budget climbed 4.3% 1 believe it was, your salary increases were $1.6million this year, part of it was for step increases, part of it was for negotiated increases, part of it was for • teachers that for years past when we got grant money, the sustained teachers, we added teachers over the past few years, I don't think I have to remind some of the people in this room as I look over the faces, I think they were here when we did that and I think we said at that time over here that the cliff was gonna come and we're gonna start falling over the cliff so I thought that maybe we should start looking a little bit more closely at the negotiated increases both on the school side • and the town side. Now our budget has increased and I don't know how anybody can sit here and tell us that these tax rates aren't gonna go up. I know the Mayor said that if you look at the lowest form and if your house is valued at $200,000 you'll see a decrease of$2.00, not $2.00 a thousand but $2.00 on your total tax bill. Well I personally don't think that that's enough and I would like to see that the unions agree to come down a little bit. I know we talked about this a couple years ago, it didn't go over very well with the unions and I think they took a 0% and then + they chopped up the step increases that everybody was entitled to which gave them even more than a 2% increase if I remember correctly. Well, my only qualm with both side of the budget is that the increases that we're trying to give to our salaried help and I think if we reduced that number a little bit to maybe bring it down to one percent or even a 1 %z%,we could bring it down if we did on both sides. I believe that at the workshop, I wasn't there, with the numbers I heard it's somewhere around $300,000 for the total Operating Budget including the schools. We could • probably reduce the tax rate and that would give the teachers about a 1 %z % increase as well as the town side rather than a 2%. Now I don't think that that's too much to ask but I'll defer my comments later for the rest of the Council. President Johnson —First we have Councilor Calabrese, Councilor Letellier and then Councilor • Magovem and then Councilor Cavallo. Councilor Calabrese—Thank you. I really want to thank and commend all the City Councilors for the time that they devoted to reviewing. I was on that School Budget Committee and I am in favor of fully funding that School Budget as it's presented. I think our teachers work hard, they do a great job. I know that it's anecdotal maybe to say that it's not unheard of for teachers to dip into their own personal pocket for some of the additional extras that the schools that the kids need to effectively learn the lesson. I'm also torn though about the town side. I am on that Sub- Committee that it was referred to that deals with the Condo Association and I have to agree with 15 • • them, something does need to be done and I kind of was at a crossroads and hit the wall if you will on this particular issue so I'm glad that they're taking more of a proactive stance coming • forth here to be heard so that we can do something with that issue. As far as what's gonna happen tonight with the budget, we'll kind of see. I don't know if there's gonna be any amendments that are gonna be made but I do fully support that, at least the School side of this budget and I'd like to see that be approved tonight. Thank you. President Johnson—Councilor Letellier? Councilor Letellier — Thank you President Johnson. As I do every year, I went through the budget print out as of May 31s° of this year so these printouts cover eleven of the twelve month year and as always, there are millions of dollars that are unspent. In particular, if you look at the Capital Improvement budget, there are eleven sub-accounts which have used 0% of what they've been budgeted for for Capital Improvement. There are that are 4%, 8%, 13%,to me what bothers • me the most and I point of it every year and last year we had a new Department Head, he said"I promise Gina. I'm gonna get it done." Street Improvements budgeted at $150,000. There's $99,645.00 left in that account and we got a memo that said oh we can't fix the streets, we don't have any money. You've got $100,000 left in the account. There's another account, there's the Police Department HVAC system budgeted $75,000 maybe that bill will come in this month, but . zero has been spent. Zero's been spent for the Town Hall Emergency Generator. Zero's been spent Junior High Roof Design. Some of the smaller ones I'm not gonna make a point of. Zero's been spent for the Junior High gym door. Laurel certified to us that we have $7.46million in Free Cash. To me,that Free Cash means we're over-budgeted. We're charging people for seven and a half million dollars for taxes that we're not spending as we say we're gonna spend them. Now obviously you have to have some wiggle room and we can't make specific cuts but I think that • there is room to cut when year after year after year, we get these printouts and we have millions of unspent dollars and quite often it's usually the same things over and over and over again. So we here that it's gonna be done next year or it's carried over to next year and I don't mean to single out Capital Improvement but that was the most glaring. We have the Utility Reserve $50,000 — zero spent; I folder down my tabs, we have additional Debt Service 14% spent. I realize some bills come in maybe later in the year but last year it said we saved $4000 for past years' bills - $4000—not four million, $4000 and so there's Permit Tracking software that hasn't been purchased that was supposed to have been purchased just this year. The Fire Department has like $77,000 in unspent holidays. Well there's no more holidays left in the year so why was so much budgeted for holiday pay? I don't, so I think that there's rooms for cuts, I think we may disagree as to what those cuts will be but if we're having $7.5million in Free Cash, we're over- budgeting in my humble opinion. Thank you. • President Johnson—Councilor Magovern? Councilor Magovern --A couple of issues and I think that Councilor Rossi, Councilor Letellier have dealt with them but I wanted to go over them briefly. Number one is to the education. I'm very pro-education. I've never missed a High School graduation since I've been on the City Council and I sit there in amazement at the achievement that our kids have made especially this year where we have our one going to MIT, I think that that is a tremendous honor for Agawam with all the thousands of kids that apply that we have a student going to MIT. So I'm very pro- education. I wore a band uniform and I can tell you that some of the band uniforms when I was in High School needed replacing and I'm sure it's the same today. That an endemic problem with band uniforms so there's no way that I want to see band uniforms cut. I wanna see the latest text books. My mother was a school teacher in town, my sister was a school teacher in town, so I'm very pro-education and I will support everything that's in the School Budget except I'm waiting 16 • to hear some of the explanations on the salaries because every year on the Council as was said earlier,we are responsible to the taxpayers of this town to keep the tax rates as low as we possibly can. Whenever we get a union contract, it always comes to us after the fact where the Council has absolutely no input as to what the salaries are gonna be which is one of the most expensive parts of any budget and this year the discussion at the meeting that was mentioned earlier was over whether or not we were going to say something about the way we feel about the way the unions should be negotiated as far as the pay that's in the reserve. We don't want to see the teachers take a cut in pay, they've got their step raises, we want to see them get an increase but none of us are really making any more money because of the economy. We want to keep the taxes down in Agawam. That is I think one of the responsibilities we have as a City Councilor so I'm waiting to hear the discussion this evening. I really don't know how I'm gonna vote yet until I hear all the explanation both pro and con for this issue because it is vitally important. When it comes to the condo issue, I've served on that condo committee and I can tell you that's it's a very frustrating issue. We had very good meetings as I can attest when I was on the Condo Committee, we had meeting after meeting after meeting with all the condo people and it came back to state laws, what was the state laws, we never got a definitive ruling as to what we had to do in order to put in trash pick up, maybe we go to trash fees if that would solve the problem. I don't know but again I think that this has started something where during this next year,we could discuss the condo pickup and get some kind of resolution to that fact but overall I think it's a very good budget. What Councilor Letellier said, I don't want anybody to miss the point,that if we've • got$7million leftover in our budget, it's not that we're being frugal in our spending, we're taxing our people too much because we pay for that $7million in taxes so again, we're talking about maybe $100,000 cut here or there, but by the same token we've got that much leftover already, maybe the budget has to be looked at a little bit tighter so that we don't have all that Free Cash but I'm looking forward to our discussion. That's why we're on the City Council, to raise the • issues, come up with some solutions and I think that there's some very good input that you're gonna find out about this evening. So again, thank you all for coming. We appreciate having you here. I wish that we saw more of you at our Regular Council meetings. Thank you. President Johnson—Councilor Cavallo? Councilor Cavallo — I went to every single meeting regarding the School Budget and I can remember one meeting Joe Mineo and I, Councilor Mineo and I were at the meeting. I can remember attending the meeting which I thought was going to be another meeting regarding the budget, it ended up being the meeting where the Academic A's were given out but I was glad I attended because at that meeting the School Committee had to go back and re-examine the budget because of the outdated textbooks, if you recall, I think you all know and I think George Bitzas • was there as well. And how can I, I have a very difficult decision to make, first of all, nothing has been negotiated, nothing has been solved, resolved by the unions and knowing very well how this happens it can go on for six or eight months before a decision is made so I think we don't want to panic yet in terms of what is going to be negotiated. We're a ways off from that but I really believe after looking at it and I would be hypocritical sitting up here on the Council and • telling you I'm gonna vote against the budget. Well, of course, you're part of the budget's part of the entire budget and I really believe that I have to vote in the affirmative, there's no question about it. The School Committee has been very open with I think all of us, the members of the Committee, I have been received very well, not just because I was an educator for many years in this town, leave that aside because I've had my problems too with the School Committee even before I came back on the Council,but the issue is that Mr. Sapelli did present what I thought was a very concise and clear budget and he answered our questions the night of the meeting at the School Budget Sub-Committee with the Council. It seemed as though the members on this stage, all of us including us on the Council, certainly were very pleased with the presentation. There 17 were only about a half a dozen questions. I think I had a couple questions myself and I mean I left it that way. I mean this has come up and all of a sudden now, it becomes an issue so I really believe that you know I've gotta vote in the affirmative for the budget. I have to definitely vote • yes on the budget and I appreciate your help. I would like to say one more thing regarding the condominium people and a couple of us here do own condominiums and I feel that they should be given their fair chance because they have been trying for years and years to do something and they're a hard working group of people whether something is done or whether something is not done. I think the Council owes it to them to sit down with them,the sub-committee, and talk with • them. After all,they do pay the taxes just like all of us. I own a condo, homeowners,we're taxed at the same rate and I'm not pushing this here at all but I think we should be just like we're listening to the educators here that feel that the budget should not be cut, I feel that we're obligated, they're another segment of the community, there's about eighteen, fifteen to eighteen hundred condos in this town. They're not an obscure group of people although they're pretty much quiet. They don't say too much but I think we should be obligated to them as well, at least • sit down and listen. Thank you. President Johnson—Councilor Mineo? Councilor Mineo —I will be supporting the budget, School Budget; I think it was presented very well. I've been in favor of it from Day 1 so I'll be voting in favor. Going back to what Councilor • Cavallo said about the condos, I think everybody deserves the same services here in town and people deserve sewers and I think everybody deserves trash pickup and snowplowing. We're all citizens, we all live in the same town. I think there's gotta be some type of way that we can fix this problem. I sat on that committee, I was the Chairman of that committee for the condos, we did have dialogue with the Mayor's Office, I probably had more dialogue with the Mayor's • Office than any other chairman that chaired this committee so didn't forget about you. I honestly do think you do deserve this. President Johnson — Other questions or comments? Councilor Perry? Sorry. Councilor Rheault? • Councilor Rheault—Yeah, trying not to be redundant of everything that's been said, I've sat up here the longest of all the Council and I've been fully supportive of, I believe every single School Budget that's come in front of us but times have changed and I allude back to what Councilor Perry started off by saying and I echo those sentiments, everything seems fine when you adopt the budget and then things are quiet through the summer and fall and then we have to vote on setting a rate for the taxpayer and that's when I personally and I'm:sure the rest of the Council • shares the same comments, start hearing from the taxpayers if there's a change in their status of real estate. I obviously because of my age, I talk to an awful lot of elderly people and they're hurting,they're hurting badly and I can fully appreciate the fact that, I don't think there's enough money to give to schools to be honest with you so you have to take a look at that. These people are on fixed incomes and they're hurting and I'm one of them on a fixed income so we have some • tough decisions to make and it's nice, as I'm sure as any of you with young children, what's the most difficult thing to say to your child — it's no not yes — it's easier to give them anything they want and they love ya but as soon as you say no all of a sudden they turn against you, momentarily anyways, so if we say no to a part of it, it's not because we have anything against anybody, it's because we have to look at the total financial structure of the town and the total financial structure, someday the bubble, listen to what I'm saying, someday the bubble's gonna break because we pay our people very well and we're a municipality,we're not private enterprise. Private enterprise, I know people that haven't got a raise in six years, seven years, so we have 18 • • tough decisions to make and I'm open-minded enough to listen, if there's any other proposals in front of the Council before I make a decision but it's not an easy one,believe me. Thank you. • President Johnson — Just stepping from the Chair, I want to echo Councilor Rheault's sentiments. As someone who has sat in all of the Chairs —the Chair of the School Committee, Mayor and now back on the Council after well I don't want to say how many years — the difficulty that we talked about the other night is is that as Don just said, it's easy to say yes tonight but we have to then face, as Councilor Perry pointed up, setting the tax rate come • November or December and if we set the same shift that we did last year, it's gonna result in taxes going up for residents not down. The Mayor's proposal on the shift is to shift more to commercial and industrial to result in the roughly level tax treatment. Beyond that, since no negotiations have been concluded, transfers will all come to us relative to whatever raises are granted, at least to the municipal employees not necessarily the school, so I kind of echo Councilor Perry's sentiments that as long as we're okay with it now, we should be okay with it in • the future but as the tradition goes, the Council passes the budget and then when it comes time to set the tax rate, we all complain about the taxes going up especially on the residents' and then when they come before us for the transfers relative to collective bargaining we complain about the money going in that direction as well. So I think whatever we decide tonight, whether it's to go with what's been proposed that we have to understand that unless we want to shift more to the commercial and industrial, it's gonna result in a residential tax increase. And as many of the # speakers, I now work in the private sector. I don't work in the public sector any more. Most people in the private sector haven't had raises in seven or eight years. Most people, at least in the businesses that I touch and deal with, their pay has gone down over the last seven years. So the reality is while I'm appreciative of what all the teachers and public employees do, my main job is to deal with the overall budget number and to deal with those people on fixed incomes and those # people who's pays haven't gone up in the last six or seven years and there is close to a$200,000 tax increase that this budget is predicated upon so taxes will go up if we adopt as proposed. So as long as everyone does it with their eyes open, then we make an educated decision. So, I believe Councilor Perry you were next? Councilor Perry — Yes, thank you President Johnson. What I'd like to do if everybody's done speaking for their first time, I'd like to propose-- Councilor Cichetti—No I'd like to speak. Councilor Perry—Oh, I'm sorry. • Councilor Cichetti—No, that's okay. Thank you Mr. President,Vice President. I'd like to just thank the Mayor and all of his staff that prepared this budget. I think they did a wonderful job along with the School Committee and our Sub-Committee. The process we did this year was a lot more helpful. As being one of the newer Council members on this Council, I think with what the Mayor is saying about a small decrease, even if it's level-funded, I think that it's a fabulous thing • that he's done. We can always shift it more to the left if we want to put a little bit less on the industrial and commercial but it will increase the residential a little bit. The last few years, we have shifted I believe to the left and helped out the business and commercial and we've put more on the residents. Well maybe this year it's time to help out the residents and not as much to the commercial and the industrial. So I'm going to 100% support this budget as it stands. Thank. you. • President Johnson—Councilor Perry? Councilor Bitzas? 19 • Councilor Bitzas — Thank you Mr. Mayor. I am very happy to hear from Jimmy to speak. I agree. I just say exactly what I was to say about the rates, the split. I think the residents of Agawam they deserve to have a better shift. They own houses. They have families. They • deserve to have in favor of the split, the tax split so that way, as I understand the presentation, they're not going to be increasing;we're going to have a two dollars, not$2,000, but two dollars. Better $2 more than less. So this is, it's not a point to vote against it because we increase the taxes, the residential rates, so they're not. So if you look around, how can we say if a budget is good or a town is good, how can we tell be comparison? If we compare the surround towns, we are in a better shape than any town this area. We pay the lowest commercial and the lowest residential rates. I'd love to pay less. I own a house. I want to pay less but it's not possible now to go back because there's no way you can cut more taxes. It looks and sounds pretty good, look at your taxes, but the reality I don't think we can do that. If you can cut taxes, we can cut services. You got police protection, it'd be no garbage pick up twice a week, we have less school, less teachers, less employees, then maybe can do it but I don't think you want that and I don't think the people they want that. Fair taxation is the best thing. Do I want less taxes? Of course I do but I like to see education to be invested, it's an investment. I like to see services,the ambulance, police, fire, the streets. I think we do have a good budget. The other day I was in a restaurant and a guy stopped me and said you know Councilor he said, I moved to town and I love it, good services, good schools, I'm glad I'm here. That tells us a lot. We should be proud of it. Every single one of us here,we go through the budget and we approved it with no questions asked to the Department Heads but you have the right to do whatever you like to do. I have no problem. You vote any way you want but I think it's a very good budget and I think deserves to pass it all of us. Thank you. President Johnson—Councilor Perry? • Councilor Perr y—Thank you Mr. President. Well, George, I'm going to propose an amendment to the budget. It's not going to affect any of the services to the community. It's not going to affect any of the departments in the budgets that they have submitted to us but we're still going to reduce the budget by about$350,000, okay, and it's not going to affect one job or one department in what they've budgeted for, okay? I'm gonna tell you right now George. I propose amendment • to TR-2013-35 Fiscal Year 2014 Annual Operating Budget for the Town of Agawam. The first amendment (1) Reduce the line items appropriations by $150,000 from $20,768,186 to $20,618,186 by (a) reducing the appropriations for the Reserve Fund by $50,000 from $350,000 to $300,000. So we're taking $50,000 off of the Reserve Fund — not affecting anyone (b) reducing the appropriations for the Salary Reserve by$100,000 from $310,000 to $210,000 out of the Salary Reserve — still not affecting one job, one department. Two, reduce the appropriations • for the School Department by $200,000 from $38,080,847 to $37,880,847 recommend Salary Reserves — not cutting one dime for the teachers or the schools. Three reducing projected revenue from the Real Estate Tax Levy by $350,000 from $51,893,527 to $51,543,527 —that's $350,000 it's gonna cover the$200,000 increase in the taxes and not affect one department across the town and lower the taxes, not only to the residential but if we shift it right to both commercial . and industrial. And I also want to make an amendment in the amendment to amend paragraph 2 of TR-2013-35 to read as follows: "The Fiscal Year 2014 Annual Operating Budget is adopted according to the departmental and line item categories contained therein. Said adoption allowing administrative transfers of funds not to exceed one thousand ($1,000.00) dollars in total for the fiscal year from any line item within any category of any departmental or line item budget to any other line item within the same category of the detail department— • Mayor—Excuse me Councilor. 20 • • Councilor Perry—Excuse me, sir, I'm still speaking. Mayor—Excuse me Councilor. The cuts you are talking about do affect (beep) Mayor—They do affect (beep) President Johnson—Mayor. • Mayor—I say you— Councilor Perry—Mr. President? Order, please? Order? Mayor—If you don't- President Johnson—Councilor Order? This is our meeting. President Johnson—I'll ask you to respect our Rules, Mayor? Mayor--I'll ask you to— President Johnson—We gave you ample opportunity to make the presentation— Mayor— but you have not given me the opportunity to answer any— President Johnson--Again,Mayor- • Mayor—that we not brought up to me when we met and I think as the Mayor presenting a budget I have the responsibility that you did Mr. Mayor when you were the Mayor for the same thing. You had the same conversation with Department Heads, I hope the Council - President Johnson—But I can assure you Mayor I never interrupted a Council meeting- • Mayor— .....respond to those because I think they are— President Johnson—And I never violated their Rules. President Johnson—Councilor Mr. President, I ask order please? Mayor—and I think you are affecting the lives of our school teachers and our employees who I will stand behind one hundred percent. I think what you're saying is incorrect, untrue and a falsehood and you're using and playing to your choir and I think it's wrong (slam) and I will stand behind every school employee(slam)and every city employee President Johnson—Councilor Order Mr.President? Mayor—and I will back them because you people(towards the audience)work hard every day! President Johnson—Councilor Perry? Councilor Perry--Thank you Mr. President. 21 • ! Mayor—You are not .... ! President Johnson—I'm gonna ask you one more time. If you cannot shut your mouth— Mayor—1 WILL NOT!. Councilor Perry—Have him removed from Chambers. President Johnson—I will ask that you be removed from the Chambers. Mayor—....and I will protect my employees like you did! President Johnson — Please Mr. Mayor. We have Rules. We gave you ample opportunity to make your presentation— Mayor — and you brought up new comments that you did not ask at all during the budget meetings. That is incorrect. That is uncalled for and it is an awful way to treat employees to not ask these questions. President Johnson—Councilor Perry has the floor,Councilor Bitzas. Councilor Perry—I'll pass down the— President Johnson —Council Rules require that since the amendment you proposed exceeds ten words in length that it be in writing. Is it in writing? Councilor Perry—It's in writing. Mayor—So you had previous conversations? I will call the Ethics Department because you had a meeting and you acted without a public meeting. Councilor Perry—So you have the proposed amendment that I am projecting to the Council and I'll leave it at that. President Johnson — So the Chair will consider the proposed amendment as a Motion to amend TR-2013-35. • Councilor Bitzas—Mr. President? Mayor-No, no. President Johnson —There is a Motion, Councilor Bitzas, as this point, the Chair is inquiring if there is a second? Councilor Letellier—Second. I think we should discuss these. President Johnson — So we have a Motion made by Councilor Perry, seconded by Councilor LeteIlier. Now the floor is open for discussion on the proposed amendments. Councilor Cichetti? 22 • Councilor Cichetti—We have brought up some other points here and maybe we definitely need to go back into Committee as a Whole to give the Mayor and any Department Heads he would like to come forward to answer any of our questions and anything that we're trying to get answers • to. Thank you. Councilor Bitzas — I think it's very fair. I agree with Jim and I second the Motion. I think it's pretty fair with tones down to understand both sides of the issues. So before we make any decision and vote on this, I'd like to hear both sides. I like to see Superintendent of Schools,the • DPW,the Police Chief and the Department of Public Works to be in front down here to answer us questions. President Johnson—Councilor Cichetti, did you make a Motion? Councilor Cichetti—Yes,I did. • President Johnson — So I have a Motion to go into Committee as a Whole and seconded by Councilor Bitzas. If you're in favor of the Motion to go into Committee as a Whole,vote yes. If you're opposed,vote no. I'd ask Barbara to call the roll. ROLL CALL—7 YES (Councilors Bitzas, Calabrese, Cavallo, Cichetti,Letellier,Magovern • and Mineo),4 NO(Councilors Johnson,Perry,Rheault and Rossi) President Johnson —With a vote of seven yes, four no, we've voted to go into Committee as a Whole. • Councilor Perry—To who? President Johnson—I don't know,that wasn't in the Motion. Mayor — Thank you Councilors for going into Committee as a Whole. I am very passionate about this budget because a lot of time goes into it, a lot of work goes into it and to say that those • cuts don't impact employees is a fallacy. It's an opinion that— Councilor Perry — Mr. Mayor, I didn't say it would impact them financially, I said it would affect their jobs or loss of department— Mayor—Excuse me Councilor. This is my time right now. • Councilor Perry—Oh? See? How do you like it? In my presentation I said, no jobs would be cut, no departments budgets would be cut period. Mayor -You said it would have no impact. Well when we get the minutes we'll look at it. You • said it wouldn't impact any employees, any department, any body. Councilor Perry—Wel 1, I stand corrected and— Mayor - First of all I want to address Councilor Letellier's comments, the $99,000 still remaining will be spent. That will be gone with road improvements as it always is, this time of year we start doing a lot of programs. One, Capital Programs have already by appropriated, the $25,000 for the generator, we're waiting for FEMA approval of the $75,000. As soon as they approve that, it's with the federal government, our 25% has to be shown and Capital 23 0 • Improvements are carried over every year if they're not spent. The HVAC system at the Police Station went out to bid, the bids have come in, that project is starting. That will be expended. We can't do those projects in the winter. Every one of those projects, what was the other one? The tracking, because of the cost of it, it's two phases. I did not want to put the entire amount in one budget. 1 put part in one year, part in another year, next year the last half will be in, thus we are watching how we do the Capital budgets in order to not put a burden on everybody for the whole year. We will have the tracking system in place after next year's budget and all of that money will be spent. It is analyzed, it is looked at. If you cut any budget, as far as negotiations go, we have to be able to negotiate in good faith. We don't one an unfair labor practice. We do what we feel can afford for that year and to say that we are not being fair because in the private sector the public sector, I'm looking at what we can afford to do and not do and if we want to continue to keep people with Master's degrees, Doctorates, PHD's and people on the town side and the city side and attract quality people, our.salaries aren't out of whack with anybody etse's. You can think they are, you can say that, that was tried in one election, it didn't work. Our people are paid fairly and I will protect them because they work hard. They work hard and to say that you want to look at$1,000 and approve every transaction, you approve a budget. It's my job to look at what is spent and not spent, it is not a City Council, a Town Council, it is a Mayor who is elected to do a job and my job is to look at the budget, to present the budget that is fair and meets the needs of our community and our employees and this budget does that while maintaining a fair tax shift. We can't go any more to the right — 1.5 — we have a lot of new growth and I'm proud of it and we need to look at what we can afford and not afford and obviously this is the budget I put forward because we can afford it. For you to sit there and say we can't afford it is a fallacy,that's an opinion. That is not a fact because if we couldn't afford it, it wouldn't be there. I gave you the tax shift in my report so you can look at it and see that be setting tonight's budget because Mr. Perry, you ask this every year, so this year I put it in the • budget presentation and you have the right to give the average homeowner — there's the page right there — you see the paranthesis with a 1.50% shift, the average residential homeowner — would go down $2.00. That's better than an increase while still providing— Councilor Perry—How much will commercial and industrial go up? * Mayor -Now you can shift it to the left. Councilor Perry — How much would industrial and commercial go up? We have to take them into consideration too Mayor. Mayor -Absolutely. • Councilor Perry--How much will they go up? Mayor -As Mr. Cichetti stated, over the last three years,they have gone down proportionately. Councilor Perry —You didn't answer my question. You said it's going down, if we go to the left, how much is it going to go up for the commercial and industrial? Mayor - That's your choice to choose right or left but I'm suggesting a 1.50%, it goes down. The average commercial/industrial- • Councilor Perry—Goes up! 24 • Mayor -And it went down the last three years so there you go. Fair is fair. You didn't seem to mind. You can shift it—absolutely— if you want to put a burden on our taxpayers, you can shift it but that's not the discussion tonight. That budget that is presented is in the best interests of every one of these employees and Department Heads that are here. Councilor Rossi—Point of information? President Johnson—Councilor Rossi? Councilor Rossi—Are we in speech time or question and answer? Councilor Perry—Yeah,really. President Johnson--Well I thought we were listening to the rest of the rant and rave so. • Councilor Rossi—Well, I think the Committee as a Whole was requesting— Mayor -Thank you Mr. Mayor. Thank you Mr. Mayor. When you were Mayor you never were passionate about a budget? President Johnson—I was passionate, Mayor, but I never interrupted a City Council meeting. I never did what you just did so— Councilor Bitzas—Point of information? • Mayor — Well, I guess you weren't as passionate as I was, Mr. Johnson, but I don't think you mind sitting up there, any one of you Councilors made $5,000 when other people were on it it was $300, it's now $10,000, it's more than double. You get health insurance, you get, some of you get all kinds of longevity as you meet twice a month. God bless ya— nobody deprives you. Don't deprive the hard working people of our School Department and our Department Heads and every clerical worker and every person in Agawam. • Councilor Perry—Motion to come out of Committee as a Whole. Councilor Bitzas—I've got a question. President Johnson—We've got a Motion to come out of Committee as a Whole. • Councilor Bitzas—I've got a question for the Mayor,Mr. President, sir. President Johnson —Motion made by Councilor Perry, seconded by Councilor Rossi. If you're in favor of coming out of Committee as a Whole, vote yes. If you're opposed, vote no. I'd ask Barbara to call the Roll please. ROLL CALL--Bitzas? Councilor Bitzas—No, I have questions. • ROLL CALL—10 YES, 1 NO(Councilor Bitzas) 25 • • President Johnson--With a vote of ten yes, one no,we're out of Committee as a Whole. We're back to TR-2013-35 and before us are the amendments that are proposed by Councilor Perry. Those amendments have been moved and seconded. Further discussion on those amendments? Councilor Rossi? Councilor Rossi —Yes, thank you. I see absolutely no harm in reducing the amount of money that we're gonna appropriate to the Reserve Fund of$50,000 - $350,000 to $300,000. That's not going to affect anyone. It just means that we're not gonna put as much money into our Reserve account as previously put it, appropriated. Reducing the appropriations which all that means is you'll have less money to negotiate with, but when you get to negotiations, you can't set a figure. I understand that, that would be unfair labor practice so if it does go up and you do negotiate a higher raise, on the town side it has to come back for approval from the City Council, unfortunately on the School Department, it does not and that's where our hands are tied when we appropriate but reducing money for the negotiated raises does not affect any teachers, does not ! affect any services, does not affect anything, all it does is affect your ability to negotiate. So, but I'm not really all that concerned about that as I am about reducing the levy in its entirety. I think it's about time that the taxes went down in this community and I think in spite of what the Mayor says, he's not a dictator. That's why we have a City Council. We have a Legislative branch and we have an Administrative branch. The Legislative branch is responsible for the money. That's . what our job is now he can make his Motions, he can set his budgets up but it's up to the City Council here to approve those things. I mean we're the watch dogs, that's why we have this, this system that we live under and as far as the other amendment goes, the amendment to paragraph 2, I think that's a good amendment and that is it gives the Council a little bit more authority to give, to be notified of any transfers. Right now as it stands, the Council has very little to do with transfers within a budget, within a category. I think that this would be a good idea, that the i budget that the City Council would be informed of any transfers that come through. I don't think that that's unreasonable. That doesn't affect any employees, it doesn't affect any working conditions or anything else so I don't know what to do perfectly and I'll be honest with you in terms of the School Budget. I think everybody here knows that once we give you your $30million and if you want to take a trip to Hawaii, you can do that and we're powerless to stop you. I mean that's just the way the system works so I'm not saying you're gonna do that, I'm saying you can do that. We can't tell you how to spend your money is what I'm trying to tell you. We do have some control over the town side budget. We don't have that control over the School Budget so if we cut the Salary Reserve, you can take it, you can give the salaries out if you want to, you just have to take it from other areas. So as I said, I'm torn on that portion but I do think that there are merits to a lot of the amendments in here especially those ones that aren't going to affect any working conditions, layoffs or anything else but it will reduce the levy and reducing the levy is what we're looking for to try to save as much tax dollars as we can. President Johnson—Councilor Calabrese then Letellier? Councilor Calabrese—Yeah, Councilor Perry, I congratulate your courage for putting this forth in writing. I know that you gave this a lot of thought. I am notorious for voting against budgets because I've always thought that they were bloated and you kind of put your money where my mouth has been for years so congratulations on doing that. I am concerned about cutting that School Department budget. I would just sort of throw this out there if you are amenable to an amendment to your amendment deleting paragraph 2. President Johnson—With the Council's pleasure, we could always consider the amendments on an indiv- 26 Councilor Letellier—Point of privilege, Mr. President? I was going to ask that we consider each of them individually instead of on the whole. That and— President Johnson — As long as there's no objection from the Council, we could treat them individually. Councilor Calabrese—Thank you. President Johnson—No objection from the maker? Councilor Calabrese—Okay,thank you. President Johnson — Councilor Letellier was the second I believe so no objection from the second to treating them individually? Further discussion, Councilor Bitzas? • Councilor Letellier—Oops, I didn't get a chance to have my say. President Johnson--Oh,yes, sorry. Councilor Letellier then Councilor Bitzas. Councilor Letellier — That's okay. Thank you. I have to say that I'm embarrassed by the • exchange that just took place. In prior years we have proposed cuts without any of the theater or the drama and I think it was disrespectful of the Rules and the process and I think there are better ways of getting your point across. With regard to the Mayor's comments on the Capital Improvement Budget, every year we hear that these things are going to be carried over and done next year and I don't know how we're gonna spend $100,000 in a month but it doesn't go to the bigger point that we had $7.46million in Free Cash last year so there's clearly extra money in the budget and every year I look at this as we're billing the taxpayers for budgeting too much. So with regard to the specific amendments, I think a $50,000 cut in the Reserve Fund is not a big deal. We went, we've done with less before and when you have all that Free Cash, once it gets certified you can do Supplemental Budgets so it's not like we're saying this money is gonna go away,we're saying we're gonna tax you less knowing that we're gonna have four,five, six, seven • million dollars of Free Cash after it gets certified. So I think people need to understand that. People need to understand that that money is available once it's certified. So 1(a) I am in support of, 1(b) I'm also in support of. You know many of us own small businesses. We hear from people all the time, why do they get a raise when nobody else does? Why are my taxes going up? So I think 1 (a) and (b) I don't have a problem with. I think if you're reducing the town side Salary Reserve, you have to therefore in kind reduce the school side Salary Reserve and then if, • in fact, the negotiations are such that the contracts are approved at higher than what's in the Salary Reserve, again, we're going to have all this money certified as Free Cash. The money's gonna be there. So I don't have a problem with taxing people less now knowing there's money later. So if you approve 1 (a) and (b) and 2, you have to therefore (3) is just the math for that. With #4, with the $1000, I think that's a little micro-managing and I think if we want to change • the budgeting process to a more specific line item budget, I think that's something that needs to be done by ordinance,where there's discussion, where there's a little more input. I think it's a bit of a surprise to throw it in at budget time so I can't support #4. I don't think it's, I don't think it's, I think it's unfair. So if I'm gonna be embarrassed about one thing, I'm gonna say I think that's unfair. So I would be in favor of 1 (a), (b), 2 and 3. Thank you. President Johnson—Now Councilor Bitzas. 27 • • Councilor Bitzas — Yes. I'm against all of it. 1, 2, 3, 4 and the reason is it is a political statement, nothing but a political statement. We have the chance, we have everybody here, we • stay all night, we have no questions for two nights in a row towards the people that are responsible. Any cut would affect something. My understanding is if you cut $200,000 from the School Department, would affect someone. If you cut all these cuts, would affect someone. All, cut now and wait for later, I mean, I don't, I hope you don't support those things but it's up to you. Thank you. President Johnson I can try re-setting it again. (Councilor Cavallo's microphone wasn't working). Councilor Cavallo —With all due respect and Dennis, you certainly worked hard on this, so I'm not taking anything away from you but this happened sometimes when I was on the School Committee where the previous Superintendent would just hand us something and say we're • gonna discuss this tonight. I think we should have had some kind of a discussion prior to this meeting, like a workshop, and then discuss it. To have this thrown at me tonight— Councilor Perry—We did Paul, last week. . Councilor Cavallo - Yeah, I know we did but you didn't come up with the proposal then. We talked about all these. Councilor Perry—off microphone Councilor Cavallo—We talked about a million things at that workshop. We talked about health insurance, we talked about the GIC, I know, we talked about a million things. You didn't come out and say formally that we're gonna discuss 1(a), (b), 2, 3 and 4. I just got this tonight and I think it would have been in order for us to meet as a Council yesterday or the day before or last Thursday, I don't care what it is,to discuss these therefore I can't vote on this. President Johnson—All right. We've decided to go one by one so the first is 1(a) Reducing the ! appropriation for the Reserve Fund by $50,000 from $350,000 to $300,000. If you're in favor of that amendment, vote yes. If you're opposed,vote no. I'd ask Barbara to call the roll please. ROLL CALL— 6 YES (Councilors Calabrese, Johnson, Letellier, Perry, Rheault, Rossi), 5 NO (Councilors Bitzas,Cavallo,Cichetti,Magovern,Mineo) • President Johnson—With a vote of six yes, five no, you've approved that amendment. Moving on to the next amendment which is reducing the appropriation for Salary Reserve by $100;000 from$310,000 to$210,000. If you're in favor of that amendment,vote yes. If you're opposed, vote no. Barbara? ROLL CALL —6 YES (Councilors Calabrese, Johnson, Letellier, Perry, Rheault, Rossi), 5 NO (Councilors Bitzas,Cavallo,Cichetti,Magovern,Mineo) President Johnson — With a vote of six yes, five no, you've approved reducing the salary reserve. Next is reducing the appropriation for the School Department by $200,000 from $38,080,847 to $37,880,847.00. If you're in favor of that amendment, vote yes. If you're • opposed,vote no. Barbara? 28 • ROLL CALL — 6 YES (Councilors Johnson, Letellier, Perry, Rheault, Rossi), 5 NO (Councilors Bitzas, Calabrese, Cavallo, Cichetti,Magovern,Mineo) President Johnson —With a vote of five yes, six no, you've defeated that amendment. Item 43 would have to be amended to indicate reduced projected revenue from the Real Estate Tax Levy by$150,000 from$51,893,527 to $51,743,527.00. I'd ask the maker of the motion to change the amendment to reflect those numbers and I'd ask the second, Councilor Letellier,to change so #3 is now amended to read `reduce projected revenue from Real Estate Tax Levy by $150,000 from $51,893,527.00 to $51,743,527.00. . If you're in favor of that amendment, vote yes. If you're opposed, vote no. I'd ask Barbara to call the roll please? ROLL CALL —6 YES (Councilors Calabrese, Johnson, Letellier, Perry, Rheault, Rossi),5 NO(Councilors Bitzas, Cavallo, Cichetti,Magovern,Mineo) President Johnson — With a vote of six yes, five no, you've approved reducing the tax levy. Last is amendment #4 which is the change to paragraph 2 of the resolution, if you're in favor of that amendment, vote yes. If you're opposed, vote no. Barbara? ROLL CALL--2 YES (Councilors Calabrese and Perry),9 NO (Councilors Bitzas,Cavallo, . Cichetti,Johnson, Letellier,Magovern,Mineo,Rheault,Rossi) President Johnson — With a vote of two yes, nine no, you've defeated the fourth proposed amendment. So those amendments which are incorporated now into TR-2013-35, include reducing the appropriation for Reserve Fund from $350,000 to $300,000 and reducing the appropriation for Salary Reserve from $310,000 to $210,000 and reducing the projected revenue from Real Estate Tax Levy by $150,000 from $51,893,527.00 to $51,743,527.00. So we are on the main Motion as amended. Further discussion? I believe early on this was moved and seconded but a member of the audience passed a note up wondering whether there was a second. I would ask the Council Administrative Assistant, I believe there was a Motion made and seconded originally on TR-2013-35. Clerk—Right and I was helping a citizen so I did not write it down. Sorry. Councilor Calabrese—I'll formally second. President Johnson —Yes. Councilor Bitzas? Councilor Bitzas—Thank you Mr. President. Even I didn't agree with some of the amendments I have no choice to support the total budget because I want this town to go forwards and I'm glad that one budget didn't pass amendment so I'm very happy for that person who decided the other way and I hope we continue to work in harmony even with some disagreements we have, some passions here and there, but it is all doing the best for our town and I think we can work together a and we pass the budget. I'll go along with it. President Johnson — Any other discussion on the main Motion as amended? Councilor Letellier? Councilor Letellier — Yeah, I heard a lot of groans with regard to the cut for the School Department Salary Reserve and I think for years we've been cutting the town side and we haven't been cutting the school side and I'm not trying to keep the old text books, I'm not trying to increase fees. The Salary Reserve is one way to cut that still gives them room to negotiate and I 29 • feel like no one is paying attention to all this Free Cash that we have every year. We shouldn't be building a budget in the hopes that we're gonna have Free Cash. We should be trying to be as neutral as possible so to cut $150,000 percentage-wise is minute. It's minute compared to the millions in Free Cash we're gonna have after this money is certified. So I don't think we're interfering with anyone's bargaining power but I think that last year we cut the town reserve, we're always cutting the town reserve. We're cutting School Salary Reserve, we're not cutting textbooks, we not cutting supplies, we're not cutting Continuing Ed so I hope people, after the emotions of tonight have subsided,will consider that. Thank you. • President Johnson—Any other discussion on the main Motion as amended? Councilor Rossi? Councilor Rossi—Yes,thank and Gina you're absolutely right and that was what I was trying to say earlier that we're not in favor of cutting the schools. What we're trying to do is lower the levy to keep the tax rate as low as possible by reducing the Reserve and Negotiating Account • simply means that if you negotiated a higher raise we would come back in from our Reserve Fund that Gina said we have so much of and we can appropriate that and come out with another Supplemental Budget to fund that. It's just that simple. But our purpose here with this was to try to get the levy down as low as we can to get the tax rate down so we can see out there that our residents out there can see a decrease in their taxes and everyone else gets satisfied and no . services get cut. This City Council can't add. All we can do is reduce. If we had the power to add, there would certainly, there were areas that I would certainly add to and cut different things but I can't do that. Nobody on the City Council can do that especially when it comes to the School Department. You people have total autonomy when it comes to your budget. Once we appropriate it, you can do what you want with it and no one wants to cut that budget. All we want you to do is understand what our goal was here, what our objective was, was to try to get • that levy down as low as we can to reduce the taxes because come December,this City Council is gonna have to come up here and come up with a shift that those people are gonna at least be happy with out there and we can do that and I thought we could satisfy everyone by coming up with something that was sane and we thought certainly that the amendments were sane but obviously somebody didn't. That's what our goal was,that's what objective was and I don't want you to think that we were here deliberately trying to cut the School Department or trying to cut wages out there for the town employees as well. I mean I know about negotiations, I've been in negotiations for years. I was in charge of the police negotiation process. I understand what it's all about. I understand you can't set a limit, it's unfair labor practice to do that but that's what our intention was and I hope you understand what our intent was. President Johnson—Councilor Magovern? • Councilor Magovern—I just want to reiterate a little bit of what Councilor Rossi and Councilor Letellier said in that we tried very hard to come up with a compromise. I feel that Superintendent Sapelli has done a phenomenal job with the School Budget. I think we have one of the finest school systems in the valley. There is nobody up here that doesn't agree I think with that statement. We all feel that the teachers are doing a wonderful job. From what I've seen of the schools, I'm very, very, very proud of the Agawam School System and I want to see that continue. What we've tried to do this evening is to try to fit it for both people. We've got a lot of seniors as Councilor Rheault mentioned earlier that are on fixed incomes. We're trying to keep the taxes down as much as we can. Keep the shifts where they should be so that the businesses aren't injured and the homeowners aren't injured. However, I just want the public to know that we have put hours and hours into trying to come up with a budget with our workshops and our sub-committees and we do not spend two nights a month on the City Council! We put in countless hours and I wish that somebody would apologize for making the inference that we only 30 • spend two nights a month on this City Council because we put in a lot of hours on our sub- committees. So thank you very much. I think that it's a great budget. I think it's gonna go . through without a problem. President Johnson—Councilor Cavallo? Councilor Cavallo — Yeah, you know, I remember years ago, I was on bargaining committees way back in the 70's to 80's okay, and when we negotiated for example you have a pot of money there,you may decide who knows,to come back, give them a half a percent? You may give them two percent. You may give them three or you may give them zero and tell them we're gonna give you three the next year. We just went through it where I work at STCC, they gave us zero for two years and then all of a sudden they gave us 3 '/2 . I mean, it's like looking at a crystal ball. You don't know what's gonna happen with this negotiation and I said before, I really think you know it's conceivable that some of the negative things that could happen where the teachers may i get zero, I don't know what you're negotiation's gonna be about but it could happen. So we may be looking at a situation where maybe it may be a moot point down the road. Like you Bob, I think Councilor Rossi said, it could be half a point, it could be a point, we don't know but I really believe and I apologize to Dennis and I apologize to you people but I was a little upset but again and I feel strongly about that but at least I'll be a little selfish here, the one item that I was concerned about thank God was saved. So that's what I'm happy about but again we have to take our punches here and if you go down to defeat, you go down to defeat. You take it, get up and next week's another meeting, okay? But anyway,and again you have my support. President Johnson—So we have the main Motion as amended TR-2013-35. If you're in favor of the main Motion as amended, vote yes. If you're opposed, vote no. I'd ask Barbara to call the roll please? ROLL CALL—9 YES,2 NO(Councilor Cichetti and Mineo) President Johnson—With a vote of nine yes,two no,you've approved TR-2013-35 as amended. 2. PH-2013-9(TOR-2013-6) —An Ordinance to Amend the Code of the Town of Agawam Zoning Ordinances by§180 Article XYI(Residence A-6; Low Density Multi-Family Community) (Planning Board) (Referred to Planning Board and Public Hearing Date Set for July 8, 2013) (Tabled on 613113 to 718113) President Johnson —That item is on the table until our next meeting which is when the Public Hearing is scheduled. 3. PH-2013-9(ZC-2013-2) -A Petition for Zone Change for Parcel Owned by NWST,LLC located at 26 North Westfield Street(Referred to • Planning Board and Public Hearing Date Set for July 8, 2013) (Tabled on 613113 to 718113) President Johnson — That item is also on the table until our next meeting which is when the Public Hearing is scheduled. 4. PH-2013-10 (ZC-2013-3) -A Petition for Zone Change for Parcel Owned by NWST,LLC located at 32 North Westfield Street(Referred to 31 • Planning Board and Public Hearing Date Set far July 8,2013) (Tabled on 613113 to 718113) President Johnson — That item is also on the table until our next meeting which is when the Public Hearing is scheduled. 5. PH-2013-11 (ZC-2013-4) -A Petition for Zone Change for Parcel Owned by NWST,LLC located at 38 North Westfield Street(Referred to Planning Board and Public Hearing Date Set far July 8, 2013) (Tabled on 613113 to 718113) President Johnson — That item is again on the table until our next meeting which is when the Public Hearing is scheduled. • Councilor Letellier — I'm sorry, Point of Order? Are you gonna refer these to the Legislative Committee or which? President Johnson—I believe I did at the last meeting. Councilor Letellier—Okay,just double checking,thank you. • President Johnson —I believe Councilor Cichetti has a meeting set up next week on the 26t`to deal with the items. Councilor Perry—Do you want to take a two minute recess until it clears out? • President Johnson—No, we've only got one more item. Rena 10. Old Business 1. TOR-2013-5 -An Ordinance Amending§180 of the Agawam Zoning • Ordinance Entitled "Article XII. Floodplain Zone"(Planning Board)(212 Readings) (Referred to Legislative Committee) President Johnson — Is there a Motion to approve the second reading? Moved by Councilor Letellier, seconded by Councilors Magovern, Rheault, Cavallo and Cichetti. Questions or discussion on TOR-2013-5? Seeing none, if you're in favor of TOR-2013-5 vote yes. If you're opposed vote no. Eight votes is required. I'd ask Barbara to call the roll please? ROLL CALL—11 YES,0 NO President Johnson —With a vote of eleven yes, you've approved the second and final reading of • TOR-2013-5. 2. TO-2013-19 -An Order Granting an Application for Abatement, Redetermination,Extension or Deferral of Sewer Betterment Assessment Requested by Soldier On,Inc.,for the Property Located at 702 South Westfield Street,Feeding Hills,MA.(Council)(Referred to Administrative • Committee) 32 • • President Johnson — Having attended the Admin Sub-Committee meeting, I believe their recommendation is to table this item? I believe the Admin Sub-Committee voted that we were gonna table until the agreement with Soldier On was prepared— • Councilor Rossi—You're absolutely correct, Mr. President. I put it in my meeting that you were gonna get together with Attorney Dos Santos to come up with a contract and it was going to be tabled until that time and we couldn't do it here. But I did put it in there,there was a Motion and seconded made to send a positive recommendation but I stand corrected on there and for the Minutes I would like to have it corrected,that it was agreed upon to table until such time that that contract is drawn up. President Johnson — So we have a Motion to table is there a second? Moved by Councilor Rossi, seconded by Councilors Cavallo and Rheault. All in favor of tabling say Ay? Opposed? The item is placed on the table. i Item 11. New Business President Johnson—There's no New Business. Item 12. Any other matter that may leeally come before the City Council. i President Johnson—We'll start with Councilor Cavallo since his mic doesn't work. We're sorry Paul,that was supposed to be George's mic! Councilor Cavallo —Hopefully everyone is friendly tonight and go home and watch the Bruins' game. We hope they win. I have no further business tonight. President Johnson—Thank you. Councilor Bitzas? Councilor Bitzas—Yes, thank you. Last Saturday, I was at Symphony Hall in the graduation. It was fantastic and I'd like to congratulate all the students and also the parents. They were very, very proud to see how happy they were, the faces, so congratulations, the best wishes and aim high. President Johnson—Councilor Calabrese? Councilor Calabrese—First budget I've voted in favor of in seven years so I want to commend • everybody- President Johnson—You voted yes last year. Councilor Calabrese—I meant the Operating Budget. President Johnson—Yes,you voted yes last year. You're two for two! Councilor Calabrese—Oh my goodness, you looked. Second, second in a row. Anyway, I want to really commend everybody for the hard work that they did on this. This was a tough one and I think we have a good rational,reasonable budget and thanks so much for everybody's hard work. i President Johnson—Councilor Cichetti with a score update? 33 • • Councilor Cichetti — Nothing yet. I'd just like to say congratulations to all the seniors that graduated from High School and also congratulations to all the spring sports. Every one of them • had a great year—boys' volleyball won states, girls softball Western Mass— President Johnson—Went to the State Final and lost 1-0. Councilor Cichetti—They had a great spring season in all the sports. Thank you. President Johnson—I think it was Don's granddaughter that had the only hit in that? Councilor Perry? Councilor Perry— Just real quick. I want to thank my colleagues for the budget meeting this evening and all the hard work that you all did in regards to looking at this budget and passing it. That's what we're all up here for. Like I had said earlier, we're up here and it's the most • important thing that we do as a City Council and yeah, we're all passionate about it. I'm passionate about it but the bottom line is we're up here to do it for the taxpayers — all the taxpayers, not just the people who show up at our meeting and we really, I hope we will move forward with looking at Paragraph change as a group, an Ordinance change, in regards to line items and the amount of money for transfers that have to come before us and again I just want to thank you all for participating in the workshops and the great job you did on this year's budget. Thanks. President Johnson—Councilor Rheault? Councilor Rheault—Yeah, I'd like to comment first on the girls— it was as exciting a ballgame as I've witnessed. The reason why I missed graduation was because my grandson got married that day so I had a difficult choice to make to present my granddaughter with a diploma or go to my grandson's wedding and obviously you know what I chose. The other thing is that I'm happy about the debate that we had this evening because that's what democracy is all about — an exchange of ideas. What I'm embarrassed about is the temper tantrum shown by the leader of our town. I think that's embarrassing and I think he owes the Council and the public an apology. • President Johnson—Councilor Magovern? Councilor Magovern—Again, I just want to say it was a great graduation. I haven't missed on since I've been on the Council and I think it was 316 graduates I believe. It was a wonderful testament to our Agawam School System and I agree wholeheartedly with what Councilor • Rheault said about the discussion this evening. I hope that it will end up being somewhat of a milder tax bite on both businesses and residents and Councilor Perry—thank you very,very much for your hard work in putting together these numbers this evening. Councilor Perry—Thank you. • President Johnson---Councilor Mineo? Councilor Mineo—I'd like to thank you too Dennis,even though I wasn't in favor of it. You did Councilor Perry—That's okay, that's okay, Joe. You did do a lot of work. I mean everything at the last meeting, you did present everything. I'd also like to congratulate the Class of 2013. 1 had my last child graduating this year and I do want to say one thing and I wish I had said this earlier. My three children have got great educations from the Town of Agawam. My oldest has got his 34 • Bachelor's and Master's from UMass Amherst or UMass Dartmouth and UMass Amherst. My middle son graduating from Hartford. They're both working, one works for the state and one . works for the City of Springfield. They've got good jobs. They don't ask me for money anymore and I've got my daughter who will be attending STCC next year. I've been very fortunate with the school system here and that's why I voted in favor of fourteen school budgets and if I'm still on this Council next year, I'll continue to vote even though I don't have any children but I'll continue to support the school system. Correct, my daughter has Mr. Cavallo next year in the fall. So thank you. President Johnson—And he got a three percent raise, Councilor Rossi? Councilor Rossi—Let's hope he earns it. Again, I'd like to give my congratulations to the Class of 2013 and also the Girls' Softball Team. I watched a good many of them games. I followed them all the way through up to the States, I couldn't go to States, I had another commitment and I just couldn't go to Worcester but they played a great game. I followed it on MassLive and there was just some phenomenal, phenomenal players on this team. They have nothing to be ashamed of for that one defeat in Worcester. They played a great, great team in Milford and they can hold their heads high and Dennis, I congratulate you on that. I would have liked to have voted for the fourth one and I am for it. I was probably one of the fore-runners on that but I thought at the last minute that maybe we should get a little more dialogue and maybe come up with—maybe $1000 • is a little bit low, I don't know, but I though that maybe we could probably talk a little bit more about that but I do believe as I said in my presentation that we should have a little bit more control on this City Council. I don't think that we get enough notice. I think that there's a lot of spending that goes on, there's a lot of interdepartmental transfers that go on that this Council never ever sees and I think that we should see it. I mean that's what we're here for; we're the check and balance of this community. It's our responsibility as legislators to do that. It's our responsibility to ask those questions and I think we deserve the answers that are out there and we're not really getting the information so I am in favor of it but I just think we need to get some workshops going and maybe the President can line something up where we can talk a little bit more about it. But good job! President Johnson—Councilor Letellier? Councilor Letellier — Yes, thanks. I'm debating if I should hold my tongue or sink. So I'm gonna try to find a middle ground. Anybody who knows anything about this Council or any past Council knows that if all you do is show up twice a month and open your packet, nothing would get done. This year our committees have been very diligent, trying to be proactive, hying to bring things to the Council instead of being reactive and waiting for things to come to us and so that was completely uncalled for. With regard to questions that we're asking now, I said at the budget workshop with the Mayor present, until I get my printout, I'm not making any comments on what I'm gonna do on the budget, same as I do every year, again not a shock to any Department Heads or the Mayor and we also didn't have a Free Cash figure when we had those two budget meetings with the Mayor. So until we had that final data from Laurel and Cheryl, I don't think we could make a rational decision about the budget. We came up $45,000 shy of making it sort of a neutral budget in terms of taxes. So I think we did what had to be done and what could be done and I think in the future, we should be looking more at how much the Free Cash is and not taxing people, you know? If you have a department that consistently and I've said this again and again, consistently does not spend their budgeted money, why do we keep r giving it to them? And it's the same things over and over and over again,you know, and at some point that's just the definition of stupidity, isn't it? Making the same mistake over and over again? So and you expect something different, so 1 think it was completely unfair. I think it was 35 a cheap shot and to say that he wasn't warned that we were gonna make cuts? That's the point of the Public Hearing! We almost always propose cuts. Again, not a shock! I'm just aghast. Thank you. President Johnson — I just want to close with two points. Everything that we discussed this evening relative to the budget for those, I believe, nine councilors that came to the workshop last week, we all discussed the exact same things which was a duly posted public meeting, which any member of the general public was invited to attend. The second thing I wanna close with other than saying congratulations to the Class of 2013 and all the sports teams is I wanna say thank you to all of you. We had a very heated discussion tonight but we maintained decorum amongst ourselves and I know that as we leave this evening, no matter how we voted, we all still get along and we're all working together for Agawam. Councilor Perry—Exactly. President Johnson - So with that, I'll entertain a Motion to adjourn. Moved and seconded around the house. All in favor say Ay? We are adjourned. Adjournment at 9.•2&m. 35 •