Public Comment

Transcript (~7 min @ 1:35)

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

▶ 1:31 Jeff McNaught: For those of you who are used to being in our meetings by now, we're at the public comment portion of our meeting. This is where anyone from the public can come forward and speak to any item on our agenda this evening. We can check the virtual waiting room to see if anyone is in there. If you are and you'd like to speak, please raise your digital hand. I do see that we have one person, Madam Clerk. You can bring them into the room. Sure. If they can announce their name and address before they begin.

▶ 2:03 Speaker 1: Hey, everybody. Finn McSweeney, 160 West Wyoming Avenue. I just had a couple questions on one of the free cash requests, Which is the public works free cash request specific to the street trees item, which I'm hoping that the council, or whoever is here from the city can indulge me in. I think it's great to be spending some of the free cash on basically, I think, playing catch up on the street trees. They're really, you know, they should be thought of as as infrastructure. And while I generally question the idea of using free cash for infrastructure. Trees, I think, are a little different because, as they say, the best. Time to plant the trees 20 years ago and the 2nd, best time is today. So I do think that using some of this to catch up. On the street tree plantings makes sense. The questions I have are. About the number 1, do we get a warranty? On the street trees, I know that in Somerville, they get a 2 year warranty, but they do pay a little bit more than we do per tree. So, I don't know if we don't get a warranty on the trees. I don't think it's necessarily a problem. But I think it'd be good just for the public to know whether or not we do, because the, the, the street trees have the highest sort of death rate in the 1st, couple of years. The 2nd question is, and I've, I've asked a couple of people this. Does the city have a current tree warden or someone that's acting in that capacity? I think that will be a helpful thing to know in the conversation. The 3rd question, 1 of the things that jumped out about the memo was that. Part of the costs involve a police detail. For installing the trees, I have to imagine and hope that's a real small percentage of the street reinstallations that require a police detail. But if not, I would be curious to know who drives that decision. Is it. Public works, or is it the vendor who installs the trees? And then finally, the memo notes going forward that the wants to make this some more sort of permanent. Funding line item, which I think is great. And I totally, you know, I totally hope that we do that as a city. But the math, it says they want around 75,000 dollars a year. For the plantings and at 550 a tree. That's 136 trees. The memo says that they do 125 work orders just for removals and replacements of dead trees. so i think it'd be good just to clarify um is the is the is the plans for the future just to sort of level fund the replacements or is the city actually looking to get funding to grow the street tree canopy beyond just what's replaced my last comment i appreciate everyone indulging me um is on the um the l pond park um part of the free cash request kind of with respect to what the street tree memo talks about which is increasing the the canopy in the city um to help minimize extreme heat island effects going forward which is going to be something that's a topic more and more in melrose and it's very timely right right now in this heat wave um the the part of the street tree memo that mentions helping to counteract the urban heat island effect is totally right on um and i know that we have this kind of long community conversation that's going to be going on about el pond and the feasibility study and it's clear that the parks department you know their main goal with that study is to do turf fields um and i i guess i would just ask the council moving forward on this this project because the free cash request is a component of it but they're going to be public meetings and things are going to happen behind closed doors the public is going to want to know what's going on but turf fields um have temperatures that are 35 fahrenheit to 55 fahrenheit higher than natural grass fields do And so I think that we have to be honest as a community where, if we're pursuing potential turfing at El Pond, and that's part of the goal of the Parks Department, I think we should use the discussion about heat islands near the business districts as something that can inform that conversation. So, I guess this is more just a comment to the Council. Hopefully, we can have that urban heat island effect be part of the ongoing conversation about the money that we're spending on El Pond, because the heat island is not something that climate change causes, it's not something that global warming causes, it's something that the built environment causes. So to the extent that we can have that as part of the conversation as a community, I think we'll come out with a better end result. Thank you, everyone, for indulging me. I appreciate it. Bye, everyone.

▶ 7:22 Jeff McNaught: Thank you, Mr. McSweeney. Madam Clerk, do we have anyone else with their digital hand raised?

▶ 7:28 Speaker 2: I do not see anyone else.

▶ 7:33 Jeff McNaught: I should say, too, I forgot to motion to open public comment. So I'm going to reverse do that. If anyone had any objection to public comment being opened, please let me know. I'm moving for unanimous consent to reverse open public comment. I think we all took Mr. McSweeney's comments to heart. I tried to take notes on a lot of them. I may email him after and just ask for those questions all to be sent to me in writing because it was a few things that I want to make sure we get addressed. And now seeing no further digital hands raised, if there's no objection, I will move by unanimous consent to close public comment. Seeing no objection, public comment is closed. I do want to note that Councilor Jamaleddine is here because I didn't call her a few minutes ago. Um, so, uh, if there is no objection, I will move by unanimous consent to suspend the rules. As we have some, uh, folks from the DPW here to speak with us tonight, seeing no objection, the rules are now suspended. Um, Madam clerk, can we bring in Director Proakis Ellis? I believe Mr. Troop, and I'm not sure if Ms. Grover is joining also.