ORDER-2022-57 : Authorization to Accept a Grant in the amount of $12,093.60 from the Massachusetts Department of Environmental Protection to acquire one electric vehicle charging station under the Massachusetts Electric Vehicle Incentive Program (MassEVIP) Workplace & Fleet (WPF) Charging Program. Funds will be deposited into fund #4053.

Transcript (~22 min @ 2:08)

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▶ 2:02 Jen Grigoraitis: Thank you. And then we have 1 item on our agenda tonight. It is order 2022 dash 57. Authorization to accept a grant in the amount of 12,093 dollars and 60 cents from the Massachusetts Department of environmental protection. To acquire 1 electric vehicle charging station under the Massachusetts electric vehicle incentive program. Workplace and fleet charging program funds will be deposited into fund. Number 4053, and I believe we have 1 member. Of the administration joining us tonight we do, I will bring her in.

▶ 2:41 Jen Grigoraitis: Okay, so while we bring Ms Grover into the room, I will move by unanimous consent to suspend rule 37 B, so that she can speak to the council.

▶ 3:03 Speaker 2: Hi, um, I'm on course you are on and the floor is yours.

▶ 3:07 Speaker 3: So, I'm Martha Grover, the sustainability manager for the city of Melrose and, um. Can't get the lighting right in here. Um.

▶ 3:17 Speaker 4: The when I learned that she file was.

▶ 3:22 Speaker 3: Purchasing electric vehicle, I approached him about, um.

▶ 3:30 Speaker 3: An EV charger, and we procured a quote, and I submitted an application to the states.

▶ 3:37 Speaker 3: Even program, which we've accessed already. A couple of times for electric vehicles and our 2 ground mounted EV charging stations and, um.

▶ 3:47 Speaker 4: We were granted as you noted.

▶ 3:51 Speaker 3: 12,000 dollars and 92,093 dollars towards the cost of this charger.

▶ 4:04 Speaker 3: And, um, or electric vehicle charger, and, um, the balance will be paid out of the facilities budget from and this is a 60%.

▶ 4:19 Speaker 3: The grant covers 60% of the total cost, because this is for fleet use only, it's not available to the public. So when you're applying to this program, if the charger is available to the public, they covered 100%, but this one's just covered 60%, which is great in any case. And I'm here to answer any questions.

▶ 4:40 Jen Grigoraitis: Thank you, Ms. Grover, for being here and for all that you do. Are there any counselors with questions?

▶ 4:52 Maya Jamaleddine: Counselor Jamaleddine. Thank you, Ms. Grover. I appreciate all that information you provided and the work that you've done to get our community more sustainable. When are we looking to have it installed?

▶ 5:07 Speaker 4: As soon as possible. I don't know what the I don't know what the timing would be for getting the equipment. We couldn't sign. We can't sign anything until.

▶ 5:18 Speaker 3: We approve the grant, and then we'll sign. The grant contract, and then we'll sign the contractors contract.

▶ 5:27 Speaker 4: Um, the vendor installation vendor, um, but I do know that the chiefs, he, he.

▶ 5:34 Speaker 3: His board Mustang Machi was delivered last week. So we'll want to.

▶ 5:42 Speaker 3: If this installed as soon as possible to the garage, the police garage behind the behind the police station.

▶ 5:47 Maya Jamaleddine: Perfect and, um, will be paying the 40%.

▶ 5:54 Speaker 4: Left yes, the balance the 10,000 dollars of, um.

▶ 5:59 Speaker 3: Which is represents 40% plus any other ineligible costs that the grant doesn't cover.

▶ 6:06 Maya Jamaleddine: And do you mind to tell us how, uh. What is the total of all, uh, uh, you know. Not the location is just the tools on how many, um, charge charges do we have in a city.

▶ 6:26 Speaker 4: Currently of total available to the public, or for just to the public.

▶ 6:32 Speaker 4: So, we have 2, 2 round mounted chargers, but those are dual.

▶ 6:41 Speaker 3: So, you can they have 2 connectors so you can charge 2 vehicles. There's 1 in the city hall parking lot lot and 1 at Cedar Park.

▶ 6:48 Speaker 3: And then we just finished up the installation of 15 more pole mounted chargers on poles.

▶ 6:59 Maya Jamaleddine: around the city. Awesome. Okay. Thank you so much again for all you do for our community.

▶ 7:05 Jen Grigoraitis: Thank you. Thank you, Councillor Jamaleddine and Councillor Williams.

▶ 7:09 Ryan Williams: I thank you and thanks so much Martha for being here tonight and for bringing this before us and I'm always so impressed at all the amount of the grants and the work that you're able to do to turn Melrose into a greater community. I haven't been a part of this deliberation um and so i'm just kind of coming into this for the first time so i have some questions and i apologize to everyone if they're a little rudimentary but i hope you can entertain me for a few minutes um so my first question i understand this is a two port 220 volt level two charger is that correct right and so they you could simultaneously charge two vehicles with this charger right yep yeah yeah so and this is going in the garage which is the shed building kind of behind like to the south of the police station is that the right building

▶ 8:01 Speaker 4: i think it's more east south east yeah it's it's a brick building um and it would be installed on

▶ 8:05 Speaker 3: the outside not inside but it would be installed outside um and it's when i asked him i apparently

▶ 8:15 Speaker 3: he's got plans to buy another ford mustang mach e in the soon um this year at some point

▶ 8:24 Speaker 5: Yeah, I see the, I see the, the building in question are these are these police vehicles. Are these city owned vehicles or they privately owned vehicles?

▶ 8:34 Speaker 3: City owned vehicles. Okay.

▶ 8:39 Speaker 4: So, so my understanding, and I was.

▶ 8:43 Speaker 3: Hoping he was could be here to answer these questions.

▶ 8:51 Speaker 3: But my understanding is that this 1 that he just purchased is for use by the detective. and they're going to get rid of a ford fusion and then i'm not sure who would drive

▶ 9:01 Ryan Williams: the second one are they are they are these going to be like melrose police cars with the branding and everything on them are they going to be kind of more plain clothes vehicles well when they're

▶ 9:11 Speaker 3: my understanding is that when they are administrative cars and not cruisers

▶ 9:13 Speaker 4: they have they don't have they don't get the full police package they get some components so i'm i

▶ 9:21 Speaker 3: I, I'm not sure.

▶ 9:25 Ryan Williams: Hi, it's always great to see workplace charging wherever you can get it put into place. With this particular building, thinking about the future of the public safety building. I'm curious as to what would happen if the chargers installed and then a couple of years down the road, we decide that this building is no longer going to be occupied. by the police department would it in your mind be still put to use with a public vehicle would it be migrated from one building to the next i mean how would you how would you handle

▶ 10:03 Speaker 3: that outcome uh that wouldn't be my decision i don't really know my guess is that it could be moved to another location or used by the next occupant of this building and i doubt it's two

▶ 10:22 Speaker 5: years away okay no further questions thank you very much my best guess thank you thank you um

▶ 10:26 Jen Grigoraitis: and just to note for the record that we are now joined by um councillor stewart and that councillor mcmaster is unable to be here due to a family conflict um are there any other questions

▶ 10:46 Leila Migliorelli: for ms grover vice chairman thank you madam chair and thank you miss grover for being here tonight um just a quick question how often do these grant opportunities come up is this something that just pop up you know occasionally throughout the year or just kind of curious how much work you have to do and how many times do you kind of have to work this into your schedule for applying

▶ 11:04 Speaker 3: it depends on the grant this particular grant is um you apply until the money runs out and

▶ 11:11 Speaker 3: um so it's kind of first come first serve but and it gets at this i don't know the source of

▶ 11:19 Speaker 3: funding this is dep i don't know how this one is funded i forget but um it gets replenished every

▶ 11:26 Speaker 3: few years and you can max out at 25 vehicles so or and so we've only purchased three under this grant so we have a lot more room and opportunities um i know that there's a lot more interest in the city from different departments to to get more electric vehicles to add more more to our fleet um we're really excited about the ford lightning f-150 and if we could figure out how that thing could plow snow we'd be really excited about it but we'll we'll see

▶ 12:00 Speaker 3: but we we this this grant and others are available this particular one the money's there as long as

▶ 12:09 Leila Migliorelli: it hasn't run out great thank you i look forward to supporting this yep thanks

▶ 12:13 Jen Grigoraitis: councillor williams oh i'm sorry councillor stewart did you just did you have your hand up i did madam chair thank you just because you haven't yet gone first so i hope we'll put you

▶ 12:24 Robb Stewart: in queue council williams thank you thank you miss grover for being here tonight um could you uh um touch upon uh the cost of maintenance of these uh you guys honestly i know nothing about these so what's the cost of maintenance what what should we expect going forward

▶ 12:40 Speaker 4: well the what's being proposed in this for this location is a different piece of equipment called

▶ 12:51 Speaker 3: power charge which we don't have experience with but so far my experience with the charge points and the the control mod is that they require very little maintenance over time The biggest expense over time is the cloud networking, the software network that you need to have that's required by the grant to be able to collect data and do some other

▶ 13:15 Speaker 3: things.

▶ 13:24 Speaker 4: But we've included a year of that in this, and we chose something that's a little less

▶ 13:36 Speaker 3: expensive than some of the others in terms of ongoing costs. A couple hundred dollars annually.

▶ 13:38 Speaker 6: Great. All right. Thank you, Ms. Grover. Thank you, Madam Chair.

▶ 13:43 Speaker 2: Thank you, Mr. Stewart. Councillor Karm, Chady.

▶ 13:52 Manjula Karamcheti: Now you can hear me. Hi, Ms. Grover. Thank you so much for being here and everything that you do. Just a clarifying question for me. This grant is really a supporting grant to provide the charging stations to support the vehicle uh that we're discussing i my question is are there grants available for the building of fleets and i asked that question to get a better sense of what money is needed out of the city budget to build the fleets and then what is provided in terms of assistance in terms of grant support to to build the fleets just get a better sense for me of where the money comes from not just in supporting with the chargers but with the vehicles

▶ 14:46 Speaker 3: themselves right um that question might be might not be one that i can answer all that well um

▶ 14:50 Speaker 4: i can tell you that um typically from what i gather or what i've seen over the years is that

▶ 14:56 Speaker 3: for for our fleet purchases generally come out of um free cash one-time money annually and less

▶ 15:09 Speaker 3: often out of an operating budget or that might come out of a enterprise fund something like that

▶ 15:18 Speaker 3: um it one of the things that we that i did this last year is participated in um

▶ 15:27 Speaker 3: National Grid offered a fleet advisory service program. It's a three-year program that we started this year, where we gave them our entire fleet, the entire inventory. They analyzed it, and they gave us recommendations based on cost-benefit analysis and how long we hang on to our vehicles, et cetera, and gave us recommendations for which ones, which vehicles in our fleet they would recommend we could replace with existing technology, existing electric vehicles that are on the market now. And I think out of about 100 eligible vehicles, 24 made sense to replace, if we were going

▶ 16:09 Speaker 3: to replace them today with electric vehicles, obviously that's going to change over time as more vehicles more electric vehicles come on the market and become more affordable um but we

▶ 16:27 Speaker 3: typically we would i've never seen us buy 24 vehicles all at once that's a huge chunk of change

▶ 16:36 Speaker 3: um so it's kind of you know as and i we also learned throughout going through this process

▶ 16:43 Speaker 3: that we we drive our vehicles until they don't go move anymore um we they they we use them you know

▶ 16:50 Speaker 3: much longer than the typical um the typical time range so um i'm always in support of you know having a better schedule a better replacement schedule and something that is a little more predictable that we can better plan but um that my in my experience it hasn't been the way that

▶ 17:11 Manjula Karamcheti: we've done it and it's department by department well thank you because you anticipated the second part of my question which is how do we move forward in terms of replacing vehicles and assessing when one is needed and that kind of thing so thank you for that yeah and again that

▶ 17:25 Speaker 3: That question could be better answered by, you know, department heads or Patrick Della

▶ 17:33 Speaker 7: Russo or others, but I'm just giving you my observations.

▶ 17:37 Speaker 8: I appreciate you giving it a shot. Thank you.

▶ 17:42 Jen Grigoraitis: Yeah. All right. I have Councillor Williams followed by Councillor Jamaleddine. Is there anyone else? There's a lot of face touching. I don't know if you're all raising your hand or scratching your eyes, so that's who I have in queue.

▶ 17:54 Ryan Williams: Councillor Williams. Again, 1st, I wanted to respond to the question of the source of funds. These are from the Volkswagen mitigation trust fund. And I bring this from a professional experience Volkswagen paid about 3Billion dollars. To the EPA, and it was distributed among the States, and 1 of the key uses was for electric vehicle, charging infrastructure. And this was a long time ago. When they falsified their, their miles per gallon in their clean air findings, their findings. Yeah. Yeah, that's right. Their missions. I had. I had 1 follow up question, which was to clarify that are these the vehicles that were. Purchased with free cash, like, middle of last year, or were intended to be purchased with free cash.

▶ 18:38 Speaker 3: It's just 1 that I know of so far. Oh, okay. Okay. But that's the 1 thing and I think that that was approved. With free cash funds last fall.

▶ 18:51 Speaker 4: Or even last spring. Okay.

▶ 19:00 Speaker 3: I'm not appreciate the background, but it's been quite a while for, for the. You know, for the vehicle to arrive, thank you.

▶ 19:06 Jen Grigoraitis: Supply chain issues are real counselor.

▶ 19:14 Maya Jamaleddine: Thank you again, just a quick question and just for the sake of the public that watching us right now. Do can't we have. Why do we need in another way? Why do we need this charging? Um, at that location to be used only by. You know, 1 car or 1 person for. Can't we have it for the public and everyone can use it?

▶ 19:51 Speaker 4: Yeah, um, I think it's because the, the garage and the parking around the police station.

▶ 19:57 Speaker 3: Is only for police vehicles and for police staff and I think that for. My understanding is that they, they, because a lot of these cars. You know, in the future, as we acquire more electric vehicles, they're used around the clock for multiple shifts. So they need to have. Does it doesn't need an access to charging? So they are always so they know for sure that.

▶ 20:23 Speaker 7: A charger is there so they can depend on it.

▶ 20:26 Maya Jamaleddine: So, in another way, do you think that this event wouldn't may not be available in the future if we decided to add more electrical cars? I mean, right now, we only have one car and if we find a location that is convenient. And can be used for the public and the same time for the police department while we can save up the ten grant. Because it would be covered from my understanding 100%.

▶ 21:01 Speaker 9: Within that, you know.

▶ 21:04 Maya Jamaleddine: Would we be able to get another grant once we have more cars?

▶ 21:12 Speaker 3: Yeah, I, I, this, this Eva grant has been around with the, we used it for the 1st time in 2014. so it, it, it's. it gets funded and there's more money coming from the infrastructure bill and from other sources to support electric vehicles and electric vehicle charging there's going to be a wave of more grants

▶ 21:33 Speaker 3: and electric vehicle charters and funding available over the next several years so i would hope that um and i've i have quotes to install more um at dpw and a couple other

▶ 21:48 Speaker 3: locations this is the one that made the most sense to pursue for this grant because he had it he's got this word mistake mustang coming on online okay thank you answer your question

▶ 21:59 Maya Jamaleddine: um you did you did i i guess i'm trying to think now that we are you know i consider that we're very tight of budget and we are trying to save up as much money as we can especially with the dpw there always there is a lot of things that we need to spend on added with a dbw um so my question was whether this is a necessary spending or whether we can save up where we can find a we can utilize that location that charging for the public and save up the 10 grants and in the meantime be able to charge the police chief um cars yeah i think that um sharing a charger with a with a fleet

▶ 22:45 Speaker 3: especially especially fleet vehicles that are used around the clock um it'd be really hard to share that kind of a charger with the public because um the detective or the you know police department

▶ 23:02 Maya Jamaleddine: would need need access to it at all times that's very uh fair um answer thank you appreciate it

▶ 23:12 Mark Garipay: Councillor Garipay. Thank you Madam Chair. At this time I'd like to make a motion to recommend this

▶ 23:19 Jen Grigoraitis: order for passage. So we have a motion to recommend for passage made by Councillor Garipay, seconded by President Sinella. Is there any discussion on the motion before us? Okay, seeing

▶ 23:31 Jen Grigoraitis: no discussion, Mr. Clerk can you please call the roll? Vice Chair Migliorelli? Yes. Councillor Eccles? Yes.

▶ 23:52 Speaker 1: Counselor Garipay? Yes. Counselor Jamaleddine? Yes. Counselor Stewart? Yes.

▶ 23:57 Speaker 1: Counselor Karamcheti? Yes. Counselor Abramski? Yes. Counselor Williams? Yes.

▶ 24:18 Speaker 2: President Cinella. Yes. That's 10 yes. I don't think I voted. I'm a yes. My apologies. That's okay. I thought I got to settle it at the end.