001Council will come to order. All rise and salute the flag. Pledge allegiance to the flag of the United States of America and to the republic for which it stands. One nation under God, indivisible, liberty and justice for all. Please remain standing for a moment of silence and honor our veterans, service members, and those who have given the ultimate sacrifice. The clerk will call the role. Council Cologne Hayes here. Council Condan here. Council Crow here. Council Lan. Council McDonald here. Council Sega. Council Simmonelli. Council Spataphora is with us via video chat. So I'll Roll call votes. All votes tonight will be roll call. Council Taylor here. Council Winslow here. Council President Ali here. Under the provisions of the open meeting law, for those of you in attendance, please be informed that UMA Urban Media Arts will
002be recording this evening's meeting. Uh so just to be aware, there'll be audio and video recordings of this meeting. Uh first order of business. Um all please rise for the mayor who is now in attendance. Paper 236-25 order. The mayor will submit the fiscal year 2026 annual appropriation orders for the general fund, water sewer enterprise fund, community preservation fund, and cable access fund. Welcome, Mayor Christensen. Good evening, Mr. President and members of the city council. As you know, over the years, I have really, really been here for the submission of the budget. And I may now come to regret that because based on what you have received tonight, those were the best of times. Our revenues will no longer support our expenses. And this is something that we have seen coming. And it's that we
003hoped would resolve itself through the amazing work of our finance team led by Ron Hogan. But even he cannot come up with any more rabbits out of the hat between inflation, health care costs, and the ongoing inequity of the chapter 70 formula, which we have not had any results of trying to address. Again, our revenues will no longer support our expenses. And so we are going to have to work together over the next several months to come up with a solution that will put us on a track that makes sense for us and the community. Now in the short term uh we have you already know this continue with no new borrowing, no new hires and no new programs. That's what we're doing in the short term. But even with that, the reserves that we
004are utilizing in tonight's proposal will last us for one year, two years tops. So we need to move quickly. This will not be something that we can do overnight. It's something that we're going to have to really work together on in order to put us on a more sustainable path. So, that's where we are. Um, it's not what I was hoping to be here for tonight, but we wanted to let you know this is where we are. And I would now take any questions that you may have. Thank you, Mayor Christensen. And just to to let everyone know, we have received a physical copy. U we have also received it digitally about 15 minutes ago in our email. Um, so are there any questions for Mayor Christensen related to the budget? I see one late.
005Councelor Winslow. So, uh, Mr. Mayor, um, how far short are revenues falling from our expenses this year? Well, let's put it this way. We're utilizing roughly $8 million in one-time revenues to support our operating budget. And the total budget is just for the the folks, uh, roughly 200 million, I think, right? Yeah, roughly 200 million. All right. And as you know we have roughly I think 25 million in reserves. So over two years if we don't do anything they will be depleted and we can we cannot have that happen. We must have reserves for emergencies. I mean you know that things come up that we don't anticipate and we need to be able to have something to turn to when that happens. Councelor McDonald. Yeah. Thank you. Well, I want to thank you, Mr. Mayor,
006for coming in person. Um, certainly you're no stranger, as you say, to to doing so, but I think it's especially important to see um the commitment that you have uh and your team has to working with us to find um a path forward for this community. That is going to mean hard choices. and the uh the the grace that we have with using the last piece of our reserves that we can do so um in a prudent way so that we're not uh getting to a level of reserves where we can't pay our bills and we're hurting our our credit rating, those kinds of things. I think that is that is the grace that we need to now use well to plan together uh so that this time next year we've got a full plan
007in place. And so I I want to recognize your intention and your leadership in uh in that approach. Um I think that is gives us time to have some important conversations with our constituents, with city employees, um with everyone who's impacted by our budget and and I really appreciate your intention of of creating that space rather than, for example, dropping a a package of, you know, predetermined solutions that we then argue over. I just think this really speaks to your collaborative leadership that you're coming to us with this approach. So I I I want to say um I want to say thank you for that and also just say that from my perspective I think we really need to start as from my perspective as finance chair we need to start with all of the
008options on the table uh and then winnow from there and that means looking at ways to cut expenses looking at ways to increase revenues looking at ways to increase revenues in the short term and the medium-term and the long term. um looking for ways to uh do what we do for less, but we've been looking at that. And so it's going to mean doing some less things. Uh and I uh I just want to give you and the community my commitment also to work uh closely with you and with your team in this cycle. Um we just got through the scheduling of that, you know, preliminary scheduling. And so we'll we'll be back talking to the finance team on the 27th. We'll have public hearings as well for folks to offer their input. Um, but
009to really uh use this cycle to to sketch out the uh the choices that we have in front of us and then be able to engage that in the year ahead. So, uh I just want to say thank you for this leadership and um I don't have any particular questions at the moment because I haven't had a chance to dig in. Um but I am uh I'm grateful to be in the honest conversation with you all and with my colleagues. Thank you. Yeah. Our next stop from here is to meet with all of the union presidents and the boards, you know, to let them know where we are because they will have to play a part in this. And um it's the only way we see whether that's uh splits or you know raises being
010bonus oriented rather than going to the base. We're going to have to look at everything from our perspective in order to move forward. Councelor McDonald. Thank you so much uh Mr. Mayor and and I and I and I recognize how important it is to have that kind of transparency in our negotiations with our bargaining units and I appreciate that. The other thing I just wanted to note that I've heard you say and certainly I've observed is that we are not alone as a municipality in dealing with this. Every city is staring. This transmitt letter says 17% premium increases on health insurance. You can't sustain that year-over-year in a state where we're prohibited by law from raising taxes more than 2 and a.5%. That math doesn't add up at all. And so we are in good
011company uh struggling with this and and I just want to recognize I actually think Malden is in better shape than most despite having no cash cow in our backyard because I think we have been prudent um in saving the cash reserves we have to buy ourselves some more time to make these long-term plans and and using that judiciously. So, I want to appreciate that even the fact that we are not right now laying off people like our neighbors are uh in some of our neighboring cities is um is uh you know demonstrates the financial leadership that that we have today. So, thank you. Yeah, good point. In my experience in budgeting, that probably would have been the first thing to do is to just go in and cut. But credit to our team here, they
012did not want to do that. And I can see why because we're at a point now where we really I believe have a great organization and uh we owe it to them based on all the hard work that they're doing and we hear about to try to not do that at the outset and so that's why you know our team again wanted to just stop and speak with you first before taking our next step. Thank you Mayor Christensen. Uh, councelor Cologne Hayes. Thank you. Thank you, Mayor Christian, you know, for coming down here um tonight. And also, I would love to ask I thought it was really helpful when um you showed up at the finance committee meeting so that we could kind of ask questions. You came with your team and we were able
013to have like some back and forth. Um so hopefully I'm sure you're planning that, but if not, I would love to see you come down, you know, for that meeting. Um, and I agree this is um I haven't had time to look at this. Obviously, we just had it, so I don't have any questions, but I'm sure I will once I dig in. Um, and as far as not letting go staff, um, yeah, I I can't imagine that happening. I've working in city hall, we're we run on a very very small staff budget, you know, streamline, so I can't imagine that happening, and I'm glad that it didn't happen this time. Um, so I also am looking forward to seeing what the long-term planning steering committee has come up with too, just to kind of
014get us started. I brought that up in the um, finance committee meeting. And, um, again, I just appreciate you coming down here and I'm looking forward to digging in and seeing what we can do to, um, help us all, you know, survive this. Yeah. And to your point, uh, we haven't even added to police, fire, or public works in 10 years. They've been at the same staffing level since we began uh back in 2012 2013 and they've come to us before but you know in anticipation of just trying to keep our guard up we always have held firm on the numbers that we had when we came in. Thank you Councelor Condan. Thank you uh Mr. President. That's the incredible part about it. you know, over 10 years, we haven't added not even a handful
015of police officers and firefighters, but take a look at the cars out there. They've probably doubled in this community, you know. So, um I just hope that uh we're not hiring. Are we going by attrition? Uh nope. We're keeping the departments at the same levels they have been. Typically, in a time like this, if there was a vacancy in the police department or another department, you would just leave it vacant and take those uh funds and apply it to the long-term deficit. We are not doing that as of now because again, we want to work with you to see what we should do. But we believe that the levels that they have been at, although may not be optimum to them, have worked based on the reports that we see on a weekly basis from
016them. I mean, uh, you know, Director Knox's department, they're closing out thousands of tickets, uh, a year. The fire department, I think, responded to 10,000 calls last year. And um the police department, I mean, I see the reports every Tuesday morning. There has not been any, you know, real violent crime that gun violence that can bring a city to its knees. And they're doing that with the same levels they've had since we assumed office. The scary part about it, if you if you look at the schools, fire, police, DPW, there's not many much discretionary funds beyond that that you have to I don't know what the percentage is, but it must be up around 70 75 probably more. Yeah, most of our, you know, funding is in personnel. So that doesn't leave you too much
017to you know find some uh I mean uh I talk with some of the state people and uh they they say like every week something gets changed something gets cut out. Do you expect them to cut back on the uh uh grant money and stuff like that? Not as of yet. Um, so far so good on that end. I mean, they've tweaked unrestricted aid, but not enough to make a difference for us. For us, we're talking millions of dollars, as was just pointing it out. So, you know, I think we're okay on that. And the biggest thing with them, and I think you know this, is they they have to step up and address that chapter 70 formula. is just really negatively impacting us. That's our biggest wish with them is to figure out a
018way. What that way is, I don't know. That's why they get paid the big bucks, but to find that way forward to help our community because that is a big piece of why we are where we are. Not all of it, but a big piece of it. Well, thank you, mayor. Thank you, financial team. Yeah, that's the good news we have going for us is we do have, you know, Ron and the rest of the team uh there with us. Yep. And I I feel confident that with them, you know, we will be able to find a way forward. Thank you, Mayor. Thank you, Councelor Condan, and thank you, Mayor Christensen, for highlighting the chapter 70 challenges, and I appreciate your leadership and and the leadership of the administration in uh when it comes to
019that. I I did I think we saw Councelor forward. Did you have a a question? Would you like to I did. Can you guys hear me? We uh we can Yeah, I just have a statement and thank you uh to the finance chair and certainly and the mayor for coming down. I appreciate it. And uh mayor, this is not going to be a statement for I think this is a statement for the entire organization cuz we are the you know we all have financial responsibilities and I would just take say I think anybody in this room who has a day job knows what's going on in terms of macro pressures right it's it's it's across every every organization and I just think this is you know my statement is is um you know it it
020has it's it's been coming for the last couple months we we we all know what's going to happen at the end of this this ride right it's not like we don't know what The options are the options are we cut we raise revenues or we tax the residents more because I will be quite honest with you given my day job the state and feds are tapped out it's not going to happen right uh but I think as leaders of this organization because that's where we are we must be able to control and focus on what we can control and you know I think you hit the nail on the head the financial team and and Hogan yourself you know we we've you've had expense discipline and we there are recurring themes out there that we
021cannot control uh but I I think as collectively we need to really start looking at things that we can control in our ability to remain prudent with some expenses. I know there's not a lot but I think the idea of sitting back and hoping that something changes the next year is not responsible. So I I'm hoping during this budget cycle I I think any cut in certain areas is something that we have the proactive ability to do right now. And we don't have things like in the private sector of non-essential, you know, business, travel or education. But there are consultants we sometimes hire. There's outside things we do. I think we have to start looking at that. And small cuts like that is not going to fill the the the the um that margin of
022error. But I think it it is a way for us to start looking at little streams of revenue rather than waiting two years and saying it's not a matter of what we cut, it's who we cut. Cuz that's what it's going to be, right? It's going to be a person's name on there. And this is scary. Uh, and I've been around a while. Uh, but I think we start looking at those small expenses and saving opportunities because they add up and and you know, small savings do make a pile. I just think from my statement last year, I had the same concerns and I I believe I sent you an email, mayor, on that. And I'm not saying told you so, but I think collectively we we got to sit in the room with the
023adults and all the unions, all the non-unions and say if we can save anything this year, it only makes next year's conversation a little bit easier, not certainly to the aspect we want to do. And I do do want to say one thing. We know it's a school funding formula. We know it's it's the makeup of our tax base, right? We we we know that and that's handinand and and those are long-term fixes. Um but that's not going to happen in the next two or three years. So I think that the challenge is we really got to start rolling our sleeves up here and having that those those tough discussions. But I appreciate everything the team's done. Uh and I look forward to this year's budget process. Thank you, Mr. President. Thank you, Mayor. Yeah.
024that it should be pointed out um that again, you know, Ron Hogan and the rest of our team have been preparing for this. I mean, if you look at our debt levels now from when we first started, night and day, you know, but again, it's just not going to be enough to get us to where we all want to go. And I know council spor talked about, you know, the world I agree with them. It's never a time, but we have no other choices right now. Thank you, Mayor Christensen. I really appreciate you you attending. Just from the chair, I did briefly look at what was presented and I noticed that there was a um a drop off in some of our our building permit fees. Um and so one of the things I I
025I can say from the council is I do think there's an appetite now to try to allow for more economic development, maybe potentially more buy development in order to get those building permit fees up and kind of plan for the long haul. I think that's really what has carried us through the last 10 years of your administration is the fact that we've had such a great downtown building boom. Obviously, there are some, you know, negative side effects to that, but I think the positive absolutely outweighs the negative, and I look forward to working with you and your team to make sure that we can help bring in new revenue. Um, I do also want to highlight that we have our CFO and controller in the room. We have a full complement. We have our city
026treasurer. we have our our our our legal team uh and we have our clerk of committees. Um so we are here as a full team working for the people of Malden and I appreciate you coming. Yeah, Mr. President, I do want to point out there hasn't been a precipitous drop in permit fees. They are down but they're still really healthy and that's a sign to us that our community is still very much in the game. Uh we just saw a statistic recently that you know the value of Malden is still very very strong and uh we just need to keep that going. 100%. We're in agreement and I appreciate all the great work that we're that you've done in his administration. Appreciate it. Thank you. Any last questions? I'll rise for the mayor. Thank you.
027Thank you. Thank you, Mr. President. [Applause] Next order of business. I think the docket is clear. We like to take a vote to Oh, this finance. Yeah. Is there a motion to refer this to finance? And councelor Clone Hazes's motion to refer to finance. Seconded by councelor Winslow. Uh the clerk will call the role. Oh. Oh, God. Sorry. Sorry about that. Council Pophora, we are taking a vote to refer this paper into finance right now. You're I'm seeing you shake your head. Yes. Yeah, I understand. Um, Council Taylor, Council Winslow, yes. Council President Ali, yes. Okay, the paper's been referred. That paper has been referred unanimously. Is there any personal privilege? Seeing none, um is there a motion to adjurnn on councelor Taylor's motion to adjurnn? Seconded by councelor Crow. The clerk will call the
028role. Council clone Hayes. Yes. Council Condan. Council Crow. Yes. Council Lahan. Yes. Council McDonald. Council Spapora. Yes. Council Taylor. Council Winsow. Council President Dali. Yes. We are journed at 7:24. Thank you.