City Council

City of Salem, Massachusetts “Know Your Rights Under the Open Meeting Law, M.G.L. c. 30A ss. 18-25 and City Ordinance Sections 2-2028 through 2-2033.” The City Council Committee on Administration and Finance co-posted with the Committee of the Whole met in the Council Chamber on _May 19 , 2026______________ at ______6:00_______P.M. for the purpose of discussing the matters(s) listed below. Notice of this meeting was posted on ___ May 1, 2026 __ at ___ 10:54 A.M.__________________ (This meeting is being recorded) ATTENDANCE A&F – Davis (Chair), King, Turowski, & Sydoriak. COW – Merkl, Holappa, Smith, Prosniewski. From the city – Pangallo, Peterson, LeBlanc. ABSENT WERE: A&F – Flynn. COW – Varela & Hapworth. SUBJECT(S) FY27 Operating Budget Meetings & Capital Improvement Plans for the following departments: __________________________ Mayor__________________________________________________________________________________________________ Legal (Solicitor, Licensing, PEG Access Enterprise Fund, DEI)_______________________________________________________ Human Resources (Admin., Worker’s Comp., Unemployment, Group Insurance)_______________________________________ IT/GIS__________________________________________________________________________________________________ IT/GIS, Fixed Costs________________________________________________________________________________________ Library__________________________________________________________________________________________________ Capital Improvement Plans_________________________________________________________________________________ Davis – This is our first Administration Finance Committee hearing for our fiscal year 2027 budget. The meetings will run through mid-June. The agendas are posted on the city calendar. The entire proposed budget, as well as the budget in brief, is posted on the city website under the Finance Department. The latter includes an overview of budget priorities, timelines, revenue sources, and, in general, where our money goes. In these budget meetings, we'll take a deep dive into what our city departments do and their vision going forward. I encourage members of the public to email questions regarding the budget hearings to kdavis@salem.com, and a very big thank you to James LeBlanc, our finance director, and the rest of the finance team for their hard work that goes into the budget every year. We are starting with the legal department in tab 10 page 380. Wheelock – We have 5 full time employees and 2 part time employees. We provide legal advice to all the department heads. We help with answering questions or drafting ordinances. We go to court for the city. We are working on making the short- term rentals process more transparent and safer. We are increasing the stipend for the records access officer for the public records requests (not part of school or police). There is also an increase for the 40U municipal hearing officer because that was a program that started in the middle of the fiscal year. We added a stipend for our accounts payable that was previously grant funded. There is a new position in our office which is the former city solicitor who works part time on special projects. There is also a salary adjustment for FT staff and an increase in the staff training budget for the language assessments and training. Holappa – One of the goals is assisting in enforcing short term rentals? Wheelock – Yes, one of the challenges with short term rentals is that they are difficult to identify so when there are several complaints from neighbors or the renters, the Board of Health will request assistance in issuing a subpoena to booking agents to get records which would show evidence when enforcing the ordinance and issuing fines. Holappa – How much of that work is responsible for the 25% increase in revenue from the short-term rental community impact fee? Pangallo – That increase is not due to enforcement. There is a 3% assessment that is collected by the DOR and returned to the city, so that means there are more short-term rentals. Merkl – The enforcement of short-term rental has been much better. Can you give some clarity on the public records request? If they are taking up so much time you can charge a fee for that. Wheelock - I don’t know how many requests that we get but it is a lot of work and the requests have increased. We must gather the records and review the records to be sure there isn’t something that is protected information that needs to be redacted. King – One of the department’s objectives is to track and monitor vacant properties and getting them usable. Have you had any challenges with that work and is there anything that can make that work more successful? Wheelock – We modified the ordinance for abandoned properties last year that requires that they be registered and certain notice requirements to be posted on the property. We also increased the fees for registering. Identifying vacant properties is difficult because no one is there so it is up to a neighbor or someone else to bring it to our attention. Adding back foreclosed properties may be a good improvement because there are more interested parties involved. Sydoriak – Do we contract for outside council, and have you considered bringing that in house? Wheelock – Yes, we do from time to time. That is under legal services. Having 2 full time lawyers on staff is helpful so we do a lot of the legal work in house, but we do have a relationship with several municipal law firms in case they are needed to assist. Sydoriak – Did you budget for the city’s work on zoning, developments and the upcoming election with the ballot initiatives? Wheelock – We haven’t added those costs because they are difficult to predict. I don’t think we have spent everything that has been budgeted in the past, so I think we are ok with what has been budgeted. Sydoriak – The goals you have listed include the city seal task force and rank choice voting. How much time are you spending on those as opposed to your general obligations? Wheelock – For the rank choice voting, we are working with outside council to draft a home rule petition (HRP) which has been submitted to the legislature so we are waiting for a result but there shouldn’t be much more work on that by my department. The city seal task force is complete. The goals are to tie up any loose ends that remain. Sydoriak – Are there any goals that are more time consuming that you will need more staff working on them? Wheelock – it is difficult to rank the goals by the amount of time to be spent on them. I will have to give it more thought. Turowski – On the HRP, is there a tracking method so we know where they are in the process? Wheelock – There is a tracker on the website for all bills with the docket numbers, the title and where it stands in the process, but you can’t track them just for Salem. You may be able to set up an account on their website, and you may be able to select and flag different items. King – My understanding is that there is software out there that you can purchase that will allow you to track it, but it costs money and it makes sense that we aren’t paying for that because you can track it without, but it is more difficult. Pangallo – I appreciate the Cruz and Lovely staff because we can reach out to them to get and update and they have been very responsive in getting us that information. We handed out a replacement page 381 because we mistakenly added COLA twice for a couple of employees, so the personnel budget is $596,025. King – Motion to recommend the Solicitor and Licensing Board personnel budget in the amount of $596,025 and seconded by Sydoriak. Motion carries 4-0. Motion to recommend the Solicitor and Licensing Board expenditures budget $85,900 and seconded by Sydoriak. Motion carries 4-0. Davis – The total department budget is $681,925. Moving on to the Solicitor and Licensing Board PEG Access Enterprise pg. 676 in tab 10. LeBlanc – This is a pass-through account. It is money coming in and then going right back out for the local cable access. King – Motion to approve the Solicitor and Licensing Board PEG expenditures budget in the amount of $691,250 and seconded by Sydoriak. Motion carries 4-0. Davis – Next is the human resources budget. This is going to include admin, workers' comp, unemployment, and group insurance. We're going to flip to tab 11, page 389. Cammarata – Human Resources interacts with all departments. There are 4 full time employees. We have over 60 years of experience with the city. There are many other employment opportunities for staff in the city, and my staff stays with HR. We hire, on board new employees, we check to be sure they have the skills, etc. We do participate in termination proceedings and we conduct exit interviews. We work with MassHire, compliance with contracts, grievances, etc. Turowski – You did a great job of onboarding us. What kind of transportation programs are you working on getting for employees? Cammarata – One of my goals is to work with PERQ which has a program for the city to purchase and/or subsidize passes that employees can purchase pre-taxed like the flexible spending plan that we have for staff. Sydoriak – Do you track open positions? Are you actively recruiting talented staff? Do you think we are fairly competitive? Cammarata – When someone gives their notice, I reach out to the department head with the job description to be sure that it is accurate. Then we post on the website and once it is public, we will reach out to the Mass Municipal Association (MMA) to see if anyone with the correct qualifications is looking for that position. We have participated in job fairs. We have great benefits and we have a lot of people that apply. They say they just love Salem and they want to work here. Sydoriak – With AI are you seeing more resumes sent out? Cammarata – it depends what kinds of jobs we have open. We still have a lot of paper handling. Sydoriak – Have you considered using AI to review the resumes? Cammarata – I think we can handle it ourselves. King – I would be cautious using AI unless we have a subscription to one of the major generative AI tools like ChatGPT because any data that you put into the free versions is no longer your data. My understanding is that some employees had the opportunity for goal setting to make sure we have long term staff. Pangallo – That process was administered through my office, so we could discuss that when we get to the mayor’s budget because Lisa Peterson was the one that handled that. King – Do you do formal performance review? What is the current work from home policy? Are employees using their personal computers or a city owned laptop? Cammarata – We don’t do formal reviews, but we always have staff meetings and check in with our staff to be sure they are okay and don’t need any assistance. Instead of work from home, we call that flex hours and it is the max of 18 hours a week. They can either have flex hours or work from home. They must be an employee for at least 3 months, they must apply for it and then it is up for review depending on the employee’s situation. There are some rolls that can be done from home and some that cannot. They use city owned laptops. King – If there is a snowstorm, are employees allowed to work from home? There are certain persons that must work during a snowstorm but what about others that could be working like looking at the snow emails? Would we have to compensate them more if they are working during a snowstorm? Cammarata – They could choose to work. They are getting paid anyway. Pangallo – People can work from home, but it is not required during snow emergencies. Unless it is a significant storm, we try to have a skeleton crew in the office on snow days, so the building can remain open. Holappa – I would encourage the city to invest in goals setting procedures. It is good for the employer and employees because they agree on what those goals are and the employees work towards that accomplishment. Are the blue bikes included in the program for transportation that you are going to be working on. On page 387, CORI checks have gone up significantly due to a policy change. Why did the policy change? Cammarata – I wasn’t aware that the blue bike was part of that program, but I will look into it. We have access to CORIs through ICORI. We weren’t CORI checking volunteers, so we started sending those CORI requests in. We CORI our seasonal employees and election employees. It is not a policy change but enforcing the current policy. Sydoriak – On the health insurance, are there any innovative approaches that other municipalities are doing to mitigate the rising cost of insurance or is it just something we must deal with? Cammarata – We joined the GIC in 2012 and our rates are much better than they would be with a private carrier. We do education sessions during open enrollment so employees can find a plan that is more affordable for them. We try to keep our employees healthy and keep going to the doctor. We will go out to bid in 2027, but we probably won’t find anything that is close to GIC. Sydoriak – On the workers comp, it looks like we have a target to payout for medicals, are their times that we must pay out more than we anticipated? Cammarata - We still have 4 claims from prior to moving our coverage to MIIA in 2008 that we are paying salaries and medicals and that is what is listed on the budget. Smith – On page 394, there is a credit for early payment of the insurance premiums in the department column, but it is a charge in the mayor approved column. On page 399, the city share for health insurance in the department request is about $700,000 higher than what is in the mayor approved column. I am wondering which is correct on both pages. Leblanc – The department amount is correct. There was a discrepancy in the software that the vendor will need to correct. Holappa – How many employees does the city have? I recently saw that it was 1504 but I thought you mentioned that we insured about 1900? Cammarata – That includes retired employees and retired teachers which is about 1000. Turowski – Can you explain the fraudulent claims? Are those unemployment claims? Cammarata – During the pandemic we fielded around 200 fraudulent claims because of hackers. It has leveled off and we haven’t had many. Yes, they are the unemployment claims. Prosniewski – Thank you! We go back many, many years. You probably wear more hats than anyone else that works for the city and you represent the city well. Cammarata – It is an honor. King – Motion to recommend the Human Resources personnel budget in the amount of $596,025 and seconded by Sydoriak. Motion carries 4-0. Motion to recommend the Human Resources expenditures budget $85,900 seconded by Sydoriak. Motion carries 4-0. Davis – That is a department total of $438,725. We are moving on to workers comp on page 394. Cammarata – We are with an insurance company which is very helpful. We have 4 claims from prior to MIIA. The premium is based on 3 years of claims, the estimated payroll and the rate for the position. Someone that is a tree climber will have a higher rate than an admin. employee. Once a year, they audit our account to make sure that our estimated payroll was accurate. Then if the payroll is different, they will adjust it up or down. Sydoriak – What is the training for workers comp? Cammarata – We did do training for department heads last fall that went through the life of a claim whether a paper cut or an accident out in the field. The risk management training is done by MIIA. We have gotten discounts for the training that we have done through MIIA. King – Motion to recommend the Human Resources Workers Compensation personnel budget in the amount of $296,328 and seconded by Sydoriak. Motion carries 4-0. Davis – Moving on to page 396 for unemployment. Cammarata – We are self-insured for unemployment. We see every claim that comes in and since April 2025, you can get 30 weeks of unemployment instead of 26. The state pays it and we must reimburse the state. If we see someone that doesn’t deserve unemployment, like they were discharged for cause, we protest it. The maximum weekly benefit is $1,105 per week which is a lot of money if we are paying for 30 weeks. Turowski – What factors in for the increase? Cammarata – Partly because they can get 30 weeks and the maximum benefit is higher as well. King – Motion to recommend the Human Resources Unemployment Compensation personnel budget in the amount of $250,000 and seconded by Sydoriak. Motion carries 4-0. Davis – Next, we have group insurance on page 399. Cammarata – We are in our second and final year with GIC so we will put it out to bid in 2027 and see what we get for next year. King – Motion to recommend the Human Resources Employee Insurance Benefit personnel budget in the amount of $21,914,161 and seconded by Sydoriak. Motion carries 4-0. Davis – IT/GIS is next which is in tab 9 on page 368. Ankiewicz – I have a team of 9 right now, with one position open. My department is split up into 3 different areas. First one is our service support for helping staff in their day-to-day, any computer issues. Then our applications team, which supports our MUNIS system. That covers any historical document digitization and the permitting systems. Finally, our network team which is responsible for the city and school’s network infrastructure along with our cybersecurity and our telephone systems. My main goal this year is taking a step back and seeing how we can save money. We had ARPA funds that have run out so there are a lot of increases, so I want to see where we can dial them back next year. King – I usually don’t see IT running the website. Is your team managing the website? Ankiewicz - Each department has a webmaster, so if there is a staffing change or an update needed for a department, they can do that themselves, but we make sure that everything is working with CivicPlus. King – I know that CivicPlus is fairly new, how is that going? And CivicPlus is the main website tool that municipalities use in Massachusetts, correct? Ankiewicz – We have worked with them for a long time, so this was an upgrade. There are other ones, but this is the main one for municipalities across the country. Holappa – The new website is exciting. There are some links that aren’t working when you click on it, it doesn’t go there or it goes to something several years old. Are you working with the department heads to fix that issue? Ankiewicz – We don’t have a process for that. If someone reaches out to us, then we can correct it. Even if it is the public, they can contact us and let us know what isn’t working. It is difficult with a few thousand pages to work on everything that needs to be updated. King – Can you explain the increase in fixed cost for the phone/communication? It went up about 183%. Ankiewicz – We are switching over from a Cisco based call manager system to a zoom phone platform that will include a cloud- based phone system so that is the price increase. It does include elevated licenses for the city staff so they can answer soft phones. This will allow people that are working from home to answer their phone anywhere. This covers the city staff as well as the schools so there won’t be any dead zones for cell service, and the teacher can get the call on their own phone or on the phone in the room. This will make the system more usable. Sydoriak – Do you think we have a strong posture with the third-party vendor that is handling our cybersecurity and are we doing third party audits to ensure that we will be able to handle any threats? Is everything being backed up in case we get locked down by a bad actor? Ankiewicz – We are currently using Arctic Wolf network. We are exploring other options including MS ISAC. Our main goals are the make sure that we have DNS clearance, so we are scouring the dark web. We are checking attachments that come in to make sure that they are clean. We are doing cyber awareness training, so sending out fake phishing emails to see if anyone opens it and getting reports on who opened them so we can continue to train the staff. We do have redundant connections off site of the building that they are housed in, and we do have the ability to lock out bad actor computers. Sydoriak – Are we checking that we aren’t using more licenses than we need? Ankiewicz – The Microsoft 365 licenses are in the IT budget. For the Adobe licenses, we give each department one that will come out of the IT budget. If they ask for more, then it comes out of the department budget. We do have some shared licenses, for example with MassHire to mitigate costs. King – Motion to recommend the IT General Administrative personnel budget in the amount of $848,289 and seconded by Sydoriak. Motion carries 4-0. Motion to recommend the IT General Administrative expenditures budget of $12,500 and seconded by Sydoriak. Motion carries 4-0. Davis – Next, we move on to the IT fixed costs on page 373. King – I am curious about the GIS software. Which departments are using that software? Ankiewicz – Assessor, engineering, traffic, planning and a couple others. We just worked with CAI, and they are going to take the data from our ArcGIS ns Patriot software so we can expand on the maps for the public. They will be able to expand sections of the map to see where work is being done. King – Motion to recommend the IT fixed costs expenditures in the amount of $1,196,000 and seconded by Sydoriak. Motion carries 4-0. Davis – Next is the Capital Improvement for IT in the red tab, section 7, page 244. Ankiewicz – We have the Great Room upgrades so we can use it for public meetings, and this improvement will include noise canceling upgrades. Digitization, if we have some historical documents that need to be digitized. The Life Cycle Management is there in case something breaks down and needs to be upgraded or replaced. LeBlanc – The Life Cycle Management includes $9,600 for the new poll pads for the clerk’s office. Holappa – What happens to the equipment after it is old and replaced? Is there any that gets sold because they can be valuable in the used market? Ankiewicz – We work with e-waste vendors that picks up the equipment, but we destroy the hardware before it gets picked up. We have tried reaching out to some vendors to see if they will do buybacks for the phone equipment that we will be updating but the technology moves too fast. As far as the laptops, we don’t really have a cycle, so they tend to last longer than they are supposed to. Davis – Moving on to the library in tab 24, page 602. Mansfield – The library is a place to get books, movies and music. It’s a place for research, access to technology and free technology assistance. It is a place to ask questions, a place for programs and gatherings, a place for tourists and a safe place to spend time. The library is open 7 days a week. There are 16 FT employees and 25 PT employees. Our goals always center on improving our services and supporting our community. We plan to establish regular adult programing to help foster connections between community members. We have a union and AFSCME for our custodian as well as non-union increases in our budget. Our new contract includes stipends, and longevity increases which is new to us this year. We have requested cost related increases for our operations, and our materials line is required by the state to be 13% of our budget. King – One of your goals is to create more partnerships and support vulnerable library users. Can you talk a little about that? Mansfield – The library is really an unofficial a shelter. We often see some of our most vulnerable community members come in to get warm or cool off to stay out of the elements. Access warm water for a cup of soup. Holappa – Thank you for dealing with our most vulnerable. Are there any equipment, training or precautions that your staff are taking to work with them? Do you ever have to deal with sharps? Mansfield – All of our staff is trained for de-escalation. When LifeBridge changed its hours, we saw an increase in the vulnerable community members, and we were finding sharps regularly. We have a partnership with Healthy Streets in Lynn, so they gave us sharps containers and we are all Narcan trained. King – The toddler programs that you have are amazing. But have you considered doing more teen programing? I have had teens reach out to me asking for more. How can we help? Do you need more staff or volunteers? Mansfield – Teens are difficult to program for. We are seeing younger teens, but the older teens are difficult. Mostly we see the older teens come in to use our computers. Most of the teens need community service hours, so we have created drop-in programs, and they can complete their hours. Sydoriak – A lot of our media is becoming more digitized, is there additional costs with that especially with licensing and inflation? Mansfield – It is an ongoing struggle because the publishers have increased the prices for eBooks and they only allow us to have them for a short period of time. Some vendors are tripling the price of an eBook, and it is only good for a year. There is some legislation at the state level. Davis – I appreciate your work with our vulnerable residents. How are you getting the word out for those that don’t have internet access? Mansfield – We don’t have any print marketing besides our flyers. We do have a digital newsletter, and we are part of the employee newsletter now. We appreciate everyone spreading the word. King – Motion to recommend the Library personnel budget in the amount of $1,390,657 and seconded by Sydoriak. Motion carries 4-0. Motion to recommend the library expenditures budget $454,908 and seconded by Sydoriak. Motion carries 4-0. Davis – Going to the CIP in the red tab section7 page 245. Mansfield – We are still in our ongoing quest to make the building ADA accessible. We are requesting money for small repairs but most of it will go to fix the HVAC which constantly needs attention. Furniture upgrades to make our spaces to be more useful. Davis – Finally we will look at the mayor’s budget in tab 1, Pg 277. Pangallo – We are trying to rely on property taxes less. We have a very strong team that work well together. Goals setting for the mayor’s office are different than other departments because our goal is to run the city. Peterson – We developed a new goal setting for our employees this year. It is just starting but so far it has been successful. The city is the front line especially now that we have lost so much from the federal government and our team works very hard. Turowski – For the performance metrics, what method are you using to track constituent contacts? Peterson – That is comprehensive, so its phone calls, walk ins and emails. We track all of that. Turowski – Code red registered number went down a lot. Was that because of the data breach? Peterson – We are looking to move that to another provider and almost ready to make that announcement, but I am not sure why there was such a drop off. Merkl – We have been reading about our neighbor communities that they have to cut services to our vulnerable people. It is great that we have been working hard to keep those services in place. They are so important and your staff works so hard to work and help everyone that needs it. Holappa – How do we quantify the impact of inflation over the last year? Also, speaking of policymaking, there are some members of the council that would enjoy being involved in that at the discretion of the mayor. We have had some great presentations by department heads, and I think having those types of presentations are great for the public to see. Leblanc – There are certain areas that are easier than others but mostly in our public services and other contracted services, you can see that they have been impacted by inflation. King – I like that you are doing goals, and I think you should consider annual performance reviews. Can you explain what the difference is between news and announcements subscribers and SalemMA.gov subscribers? Pangallo – News and announcements is just specifically that whereas SalemMA.gov, they signed up for at least one notice through the city website. King – Who gets the new resident guide? Pangallo – We have access to information about new home purchases from the Registry of Deeds but not to new renters unless a landlord discloses that to us. If they aren’t included on the city census already, they will get a new resident guide. Lori Stewart provides those guides to multi-unit rentals so those management companies can provide those guides to new renters. It is also on the mayor’s website. Davis – Lori Stewart has been very helpful toward housing stability. Have you considered expanding that role, maybe even adding a department to assist? Pangallo – We have not considered an entire department, but Lori has been working very hard and reaching out to those that need her services as well as landlords and management companies. We also have access to the Housing Stability Service with the Essex County Bar Association. That is a grant funded program. Turowski – I appreciate that messaging is bilingual. It is very hard to engage with people that don’t speak the same language. Pangallo – We are giving a stipend to employees in all department that can do translations for residents, and we have started to send all communication out in English and Spanish just like the schools have been doing for years. King - Motion to recommend the approval of the mayor’s personnel budget in the amount of $792,131 and seconded by Sydoriak. Motion carries 4-0. Motion to recommend the mayor’s expenditures budget $122,001 seconded by Sydoriak. Motion carries 4-0. On the motion of C. King, the meeting adjourned at 8:42 P.M. Kyle Davis__________________MBC (Chairperson)