ORDER-2022-21 : Amending Chapter 228 of the Revised Ordinances of the City of Melrose Water, Sewers, and Drains

Transcript (~12 min @ 32:10)

Speakers identified by voice; unnamed voices are numbered within this recording. Auto-caption text — verify against the video.

▶ 32:24 Jen Grigoraitis: President Zanella yes six yes okay thank you so the rules are now suspended um so the other request that I would make of the committee and please let me know if I'm losing audio um is and to entertain a motion to take order 2022-21 amending chapter 228 of the revised ordinances of the city of melrose water sewers and drains out of order we have one member of the administration who's here solely to speak to that order tonight so as a courtesy i wanted to try to bump this up um if the committee is so inclined yeah move into uh

▶ 33:07 Jen Grigoraitis: take it out of order 2022-21 second so we have a motion to take order 2022-21 out of order made by councillor Tramontozzi seconded by councillor eccles mr clerk can you please call the roll

▶ 33:23 Speaker 2: chair Grigoraitis yes vice chair Migliorelli yes councillor Tramontozzi yes councillor mcmaster

▶ 33:38 Speaker 2: yes councillor eccles yes and president sanella yes six yes okay thank you so that passes so we

▶ 33:43 Jen Grigoraitis: now have order 2022-21 amending chapter 228 of the revised ordinances of the city of melrose water sewers and drains before us and i believe we have ms proacus ellis and ms reese coming

▶ 34:19 Jen Grigoraitis: for us? Can you hear me? Yes. Are we waiting for Vani? Yeah, I think Vani, she texted me

▶ 34:22 Speaker 10: a couple minutes ago. I think she is on. Do you see her, Andrew? Yes, she's coming on right now.

▶ 34:35 Speaker 9: Okay, there she is. Oh, there she is. Okay. All right, and I will turn it over to you.

▶ 34:43 Speaker 10: So, an issue that I had identified when I first started with the city six years ago was that the water and sewer ordinance was extremely outdated. And when new regulatory changes had been made at the MassDEP level and others, they had been sort of shoehorned into the existing ordinance and it was never really fully updated to reflect current practice and just modern standards of ways that water and sewer systems are typically run. also um largely there was language in the ordinance that just didn't um just didn't match up with either the the typical practice of the department or the city staff um and there were references to very specific language in the state law that was basically quoted verbatim but as those laws have changed the language wasn't updated especially pertaining to backflow prevention industrial wastewater the references to the mwra still said metropolitan district commission so that dates back to the 90s those updates had never been made permitting processes for what's required to apply for water and sewer service or to replace services were not um not clearly spelled out ownership of uh of service or utility service lines it's always been that we own the water services from the main to the property line and the property owner owns inside of that and on sewer the property owner owns all the way out to the main but that the the language that specified that was very um just vague and not uh But really, it was a bit challenging when we would get into those discussions with property owners, even though even though it was known that that was the policy. We have some fees that were specified within the ordinance, others that were not for things like inspections, turning on and off water. We had very old fees that were listed that are far from accurate at this time. so we proposed moving all of the fees and the rates out to a schedule of fees just to be very clear we're not proposing any changes to who sets the rates how the rates are set how the committee the water to rate committee votes and then the council and the mayor approved the rates that is all still exactly the same we're just proposing to pull the listing of the rates out of the ordinance so that we're not updating the ordinance each time and the definitions were different in one article from another which made things very confusing there were references to drainage systems within the sewer section because we formerly did not have a drainage section and this committee recently approved article 5 which was the new stormwater section for the ordinance and And so we were able to remove any duplicate language now from the sewer section. And as provided in the memo that I sent to the council a couple of weeks ago, in general, we just wanted to clarify, modernize, and better organize our ordinances for water, sewer, and drain that you previously approved, but it all falls into the same article. I did take a last read through today, and I identified some very minor, actually there are seven extraordinarily minor items that I think may warrant a change from what was submitted to the council. And so, if it's appropriate, I'd like to just run through those quickly. Chair Grigoraitis, is that appropriate?

▶ 38:51 Jen Grigoraitis: sure are you you just want to are you referencing the the tracked changes version just so people can

▶ 38:58 Speaker 10: maybe follow along so i would actually look at the the non-tracked changes version because the

▶ 39:11 Speaker 10: track changes version is just so cumbersome um so number one is just that we in the definitions in Article 2. We just missed the definition for division, which is a term that we use fairly extensively later in the ordinance, and so that would be the City of Melrose DPW Water

▶ 39:34 Speaker 10: Division. Number two is the definition for inspection. It should really say backflow

▶ 39:43 Speaker 10: inspection because it used to specifically live within the backflow article, and once we moved it to a consolidated definition section for water it just didn't it needed to be clarified number three is the definition of owner again that was moved from the backflow section but we use the term owner throughout articles two and three to refer to the owner of record of any property and so i'd like to just define it as owner of record of any property item

▶ 40:24 Speaker 10: four is in section 228-6 and we converted throughout the entire ordinance we eliminated any his or her or him or her language and replaced with their or them and we just missed one in item a it says his or her agent and i'd just like to change that to there item number five is in

▶ 40:46 Speaker 10: section 228-14 it says under b it says all water meters up to it says under one inch in size will be furnished and placed to maintain by the city that should be up to one inch in size the way it's worded right now it talks to it talks about under one inch and over one inch and it forgets to say that what happens to a one inch meter so it should be all water meters up to one

▶ 41:23 Speaker 10: engine size and then finally i think i have two more um number six is just in section 22819 this is just a formatting error there should be the four paragraphs should be items a b c and d

▶ 41:43 Speaker 10: and lastly section 228-24 is where we removed the backflow definitions from and so we just forgot to put the note this section intentionally blank that should appear in there's nothing now into 2024. so

▶ 42:12 Speaker 10: those were the only edits um bonnie did you have anything you'd like to add before we get into

▶ 42:19 Speaker 10: questions i don't think we can hear you i still can't hear you i think we just yes

▶ 42:34 Speaker 1: Yes.

▶ 42:36 Speaker 7: Yes.

▶ 42:37 Speaker 1: I'm all set. Okay.

▶ 42:40 Speaker 10: So, with that, we'll open it up to any questions.

▶ 42:45 Jen Grigoraitis: Do we have any questions from the committee? And I just – Council McMaster, I don't – I can't see you, so, for some reason, I don't know if this is the issues in City Hall, but we don't have video on you, so I don't know if you're raising your hand. Are there any questions from the council?

▶ 43:07 Jen Grigoraitis: All right. we have any emotion either to the suggested amendments to what's proposed

▶ 43:19 Jen Grigoraitis: before us or any counselor tram and tozy you I don't know if there's something

▶ 43:25 John N. Tramontozzi: you to say no that's right I was I'm gonna make a motion to recommend the order as amended this evening second so we have a motion to recommend for

▶ 43:37 Jen Grigoraitis: passage of the order as amended by those seven amendments that were outlined by Ms. Proekes-Ellis made by Councillor Tramontozzi seconded by Vice Chair Migliorelli is there any discussion seeing none Mr. Clerk can you please call the roll

▶ 43:56 Speaker 2: Chair Grigoraitis? Yes. Vice Chair Migliorelli? Yes.

▶ 44:06 Speaker 2: Councillor Tramontozzi? Yes. Councillor McMaster? Yes. Oh there we go okay he's

▶ 44:14 Jen Grigoraitis: just said let me know he's having some technical issues. Councillor Eccles? Yes.