ORDER-2022-17 : Acceptance of Municipal Vulnerability Preparedness (MVP) Grant from the Massachusetts Executive Office of Energy and Environmental Affairs (EOEEA) in the amount of $108,655

Transcript (~19 min @ 2:29:37)

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▶ 2:28:53 Speaker 2: order 2022-14 appointment of james osterman 54 ellis farm lane to the affordable housing trust for a two-year term said term to expire on the last day of february 2023 that'll go to the committee on health education and welfare order 2022-15 reappointment of douglas mcdonald 47 batal street to the cemetery commission for a three-year term said term to expire on the last day of february 2024. that'll go to the committee on health education and welfare order 2022-16 amending chapter 198 of the revised ordinances of the city of melrose solid waste and recycling ordinance update and schedule of fees that will go to the legal and legislative committee for 2022-17 acceptance of municipal vulnerability preparedness grant from the massachusetts executive office of energy and environmental affairs in the amount of one hundred eight thousand six hundred fifty five dollars mr president i move for immediate consideration

▶ 2:29:55 Christopher Cinella: on this item we have immediate consideration uh before us on 2022-17 any objections seeing none This matter is now before us. If there is no objection, I'd like to suspend our rules so that we can hear from some of the administration. So seeing no objection, our rules are now suspended.

▶ 2:30:18 Speaker 2: Welcome.

▶ 2:30:21 Speaker 6: Good evening. My name is Jay Coy. I'm the deputy city engineer.

▶ 2:30:26 Speaker 4: Elena Paragasalis, DPW director.

▶ 2:30:28 Speaker 2: Thank you for coming.

▶ 2:30:32 Speaker 2: I'd like to speak to the...

▶ 2:30:34 Speaker 6: Yes. So we were awarded a grant from the Energy and Environmental Affairs Office in the amount of $108,655, which I'll point out that there's no cash match coming from the City of Melrose. It's a two-year grant that's in the purpose to do a stormwater flood study analysis to determine where flooding is happening, how we can resolve to reduce and prevent that flooding within the community it's like I said it's a two-year grant that we're going to be doing in collaboration with 16 other communities in the Upper

▶ 2:31:19 Speaker 2: Mystic watershed region. Any questions from councillors? Councillor Stewart? Thank you Mr.

▶ 2:31:28 Robb Stewart: President. So where would you focus? Would you focus on the West Knoll for one? So

▶ 2:31:32 Speaker 6: we're focusing on in there's going to be 17 communities as I said it's Melrose it's it's the Upper Mystic community communities that I can list them for you it is Arlington Belmont Burlington Cambridge Everett Lexington Malden Medford Melrose Redding Somerville Stoneham Wakefield Watertown Wilmington Winchester and Woburn so it's a it's a collaboration between all communities where we're studying where the flooding is happening due to stormwater and our aim is to be able to reduce and prevent stormwater flooding in a 2070 10 percent event so that's our goal and in order to really make it effective we do it collaboratively with the other municipalities so we're not piecemealing each city by city and this way you get the kind of a overall bigger bang for your buck in that way um you it's more effective that way and just to add to that um it

▶ 2:32:35 Speaker 4: is focused only on the mystic river watershed portion of the city because it's part of this mystic resilient mystic collaborative work and so it's anything that discharges to el pond el pon brook spot pond brook that side of the community also where it comes in from wakefield and stonem that's part of the el pon watershed or the mystic river watershed so anything that goes the other direction towards bennett's pond brook or toward the cemetery you know the lebanon sylvan flooding that um that area is actually lebanon sylvan eventually ends up in spot from book so take that back but um generally more that side of the city does not go toward the mystic river

▶ 2:33:23 Robb Stewart: watershed so it would not include that so what parts will be a part of this impact study so the

▶ 2:33:30 Speaker 4: whole northwestern section of the city is sort of the upper watershed and then coming down through el pond so anything that drains to el pond and then the outlet to el pond comes down main street and then goes through corey street and some other areas out toward spot palm brook along the train tracks and then down toward the malden line by oak grove so anything that's tributary anywhere with the drainage system or the surface runoff is tributary to those areas so it kind of is you know a swath that follows that path down through the city all the way to the western edge

▶ 2:34:11 Robb Stewart: of the city sure and i appreciate that but so anybody that's lived here for a while knows the spots that flood right not where it might flood but no spots that will flood and that's what i think what we really care about is which areas that do flood will be examined so that remains

▶ 2:34:35 Speaker 6: to be seen that's that's up to the yeah that's the so the year one is the study is the it's the figuring out where it floods why it floods and the year two is to coming up with a toolbox on how to address those to change policies and let's see yeah so we come up with a toolbox to look into our regulations whether it's zoning storm water building in order to address those so that in the future with those regulations they address the climate change when it comes to the stormwater flooding so that it will prevent it in the future and and the reason why i'm pressing a little bit

▶ 2:35:09 Robb Stewart: i'm not trying to be too hard here but uh my ward ward three gets a lot of impact from the drainage that comes off the big hill there and as you know like for example the fells way where there's flooding down there and that then contributes to um it's more in stoneham but uh where west wyoming avenue uh typically has all that flooding so it'd be helpful to know where and what can be done in other words with this money while you do this i will support it obviously but i think would be helpful for the community to understand specifically who is going to get

▶ 2:35:52 Speaker 4: benefit from this i would say that a good reference point for that is anything in our natural hazard mitigation plan that we did a couple years ago that has a chapter that's entirely dedicated toward known flooding areas and so if we were asked for a list right at the beginning of the project of areas that we know to be the worst that's our list we've already done that background work so i would reference anybody back to that list okay great thank you i would also say that any any policy changes zoning recommendations or regulations that are recommended as part of this project they would likely want those to apply to the whole watershed or even the whole city if we thought they were helpful citywide okay great thank you both thank

▶ 2:36:33 Robb Stewart: Thank you, Mr. President. Thank you.

▶ 2:36:37 Maya Jamaleddine: Councilor Gimaldi. Thank you, President Sinella. Thank you for being with us tonight. During this study, would residents living around this area, like the flooding zone, be affected by that study? Like, would they see any actual activities happening to the point that we have to not divide them in advance to say that there is a study happening?

▶ 2:37:04 Speaker 6: would think at most you might see people surveying the the drainage network um and whether in the in the catch basins or drain manholes but we have a lot of that information already that we can so i should back up so the mystic river watershed association is the one who's they're really spearheading this effort um melrose is just really the the face of the the grant money and the project manager but they're doing all of this and this is their third go-round um with the same exact project they started in the lower mystics focusing on cambridge they moved up to lexington and another community as well and now they're moving into these upper mystic into the 17th so they successfully have done this basically the same exact project just in other communities so they're they're the ones spearheading the the infoworks model which is a big study of of the watershed modeling i would assume it's going to start with a desktop analysis first so you probably won't see much activity in the city at all and i honestly don't know if they will need to have people on the ground doing um any sort of um you know any sort of work or not but certainly you know we would notify people if if we have to if we have to thank you and you mentioned that um

▶ 2:38:23 Maya Jamaleddine: there there is or this work is already being done on other communities can you tell us a little bit about what results they have came up with or any solutions i i so i don't know what the results are

▶ 2:38:37 Speaker 6: looking like because so this is a two-year grant and the first year is the study and the second year is the the tools so i don't know where they are i think they're in year two of their first go around so i think they're figuring out um all of the results now so we're kind of a year behind so i don't i can't speak to the results they're getting for the other communities and would you

▶ 2:39:01 Maya Jamaleddine: know if there would be a changing in the zoning in a way that you know some of the areas that are not in a flood zone would go back to be in a flood zone or vice versa so the flood zones

▶ 2:39:15 Speaker 6: so i can't speak to that only because i know that's a fema issue when you go in with flood you know flood zones and flood maps i don't think this is going to affect that but i'm not sure it's more it's more of a storm order calculations of where the the flooding is happening rather than a a hundred year flood zone type calculation but i'm not sure if that could roll into have the flood zones changed um and then you know and then impact that so i'm not sure if it goes into that that's something i'd have to look into okay thank you i would guess that on at least on

▶ 2:39:53 Speaker 4: the immediate el pond area we just redid that flood analysis in great detail with a consultant and got it approved by fema a couple years ago so that one shouldn't be changing because that's based on all the current information okay thank you councilman mcnaught thank you mr president

▶ 2:40:12 Jeff McNaught: i'm just wondering that since the mitigation study that was done a couple years ago where we learned of all the hot spots if you will or regular areas that flood what have we done to

▶ 2:40:26 Speaker 4: address those areas most of what we've done is chase grant funding and some successfully and some unsuccessfully so we've been trying to get um so the the hazard mitigation plan and the municipal vulnerability preparedness process the workshops that we did resulted in a priority list and from that priority list the the generator for city hall was the absolute top priority we sunk a lot of time into repeatedly applying for different grants to try to get the generator paid for and as you know they were repeatedly unsuccessful which is why you all approved the free cash for it this past year that was our top priority in both plans so now we're finally in design and we should have that out to bid very soon the city hall parking lot was another area that we identified as having substantial flooding and that we've again applied for grants a couple times and have not gotten them we have another grant application out right now and we hope to get that um and combine it with some city funds uh the lebanon at sylvan flooding was deemed to be probably the worst in terms of property damage and so that actually does qualify for fema funding because of the level of property damage and we have been in the application process since i believe 2018 and that application is still active and they still plan on approving it but that's apparently the timeline for a fema approval so so those are the ones that we've really pushed forward as highest priorities but we have some smaller items just more emergency planning um part of the generator project now we've added in a connection for backup generator at memorial hall because that is identified as one of our shelter locations and we identified in the plan that we have shelters that have no backup power which is really pretty useless as a shelter in a lot of situations um so that's going to be solved through the generator project as well so um yep those are those are the ones we've moved forward okay but we really haven't

▶ 2:42:43 Speaker 2: been able to do much because we don't have the money to do it is that right well the the purpose

▶ 2:42:46 Speaker 4: of the natural hazard mitigation plan is you know from a federal perspective the purpose of that plan and keeping it active every five years is to qualify for fema grant funding and so we have continuously applied for FEMA grants um you know and moved forward with it in that respect we haven't other than a little project here there we haven't done anything other than that that's specific to it I do know that there's been discussion of emergency management Alan Alpert moving forward with a lot of the planning that we identified as necessary like updating the comprehensive emergency management plan and continuation of operations and that sort of planning and i can't speak to the status of that i'm not sure what his

▶ 2:43:41 John N. Tramontozzi: um what he's done on that thank you council chairman tozy thank you mr president um is this 108 000 grant earmarked specifically earmarked from melrose or is it part of it's part of the

▶ 2:43:54 Speaker 6: entire package i believe it's part of the entire package does that also mean that the other cities

▶ 2:43:56 John N. Tramontozzi: and towns have to vote to accept the grant before it can be applied i i don't think so no no since

▶ 2:44:05 Speaker 4: we we applied as the lead community so that's why we're here before you but the other communities

▶ 2:44:15 John N. Tramontozzi: are just riding on our coattails okay well that's that's interesting well well good good job in uh stepping forward and uh and applying um it's uh it's to our benefit i guess and it's the other cities and towns lost so that that 108 really is the entire amount that is going to be available for use for this study okay thank you thank you thank you counselor thomas thank you mr president

▶ 2:44:39 Cory Thomas: um quickly you just referenced uh well welcome i'm sorry uh you referenced the fema grant for the lebanon street and sylvan corridor um it's still pending do they have any idea of one that

▶ 2:44:52 Speaker 4: is going to go through we have answered so many requests for additional information and they come like every six months mima sends us a new request from fema and we answer the questions and then we wait and then we get another letter six months later asking for more information this this is my first go around with even getting this far through the fema process so i don't know what it looks like when you actually get funding i'm hoping that we know that soon but i know mima is very much in our court for getting this funding um and and so they've been pushing fema to try to approve it more quickly but has mima provided any updates

▶ 2:45:27 Cory Thomas: or timelines for us in anticipation of acceptance of it they've given us a lot of apologies

▶ 2:45:35 Cory Thomas: um and that's about it all right thank you you know not only does this affect residents but it also affects uh the melrose wyoming cemetery uh you know so you know it affects people not only in melrose but you know other communities neighboring as well thank you for the update

▶ 2:45:52 Jack Eccles: counselor eccles um i was going to make a motion for passage but um on discussion i'll make the

▶ 2:45:58 Jeff McNaught: motion for passage emotions passage one more question in relation to flooding generally we do have the fema maps for the city right how often do those have to be updated flood maps

▶ 2:46:13 Speaker 4: yeah i don't know if there's a have to be it's kind of on fema's schedule sometimes they do like sweeping updates of you know a whole chunk of the state um and then if we go before them and we request an update like we did with el pond they'll update the map just in that one area after they go through the approval process but i don't know that there's a set yeah i'm i'm not sure

▶ 2:46:38 Jeff McNaught: to be honest would you mind looking into that for if statutorily if the city is supposed to update the flood maps every you know x amount of years or would you mind reporting back on that

▶ 2:46:50 Jeff McNaught: and on top of that do you know when the last time the city of morrow's flood maps were updated um

▶ 2:46:59 Jeff McNaught: not a gotcha question if you want to report back on that that's

▶ 2:47:06 Speaker 4: within five years yeah within five years but was that just when we did el pond okay thank you okay

▶ 2:47:14 Speaker 4: yeah well we can get that information appreciate it so we have a motion before us made by councilor

▶ 2:47:18 Christopher Cinella: eccles i didn't hear a second because councilor mcnaught jumped in there with a question about being called on but um seconded by council mcnaught councillor Garipay did you have a question

▶ 2:47:34 Speaker 2: on discussion any discussion madam clerk could you please call the role councillor eccles yes councillor Garipay yes councillor Grigoraitis yes councillor Jamaleddine yes councillor mcmaster yes councillor mcnaught yes councillor Migliorelli yes councillor stewart yes councillor thomas yes councillor Tramontozzi yes president snella yes 11 yes thank you thank you thank you thank you

▶ 2:47:59 Speaker 2: order 2022-18 acceptance of the american rescue plan act grant in the amount of eight million three hundred seventy four thousand one hundred and seventy four dollars that'll go to the appropriations committee order 2022-19 authorization to accept a grant in the amount of 101 108 dollars from the massachusetts executive office of energy and environmental affairs municipal vulnerability preparedness program and authorize the mayor to execute a contract with eea