ORDER-2021-122 : City of Melrose Operating Budget for Fiscal Year 2022 in the amount of $91,000,522.33 (Ninety-One Million, Five Hundred Twenty-Two Dollars and Thirty-Three Cents).

Transcript (~59 min @ 9:05)

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

▶ 9:02 Speaker 3: I don't believe at this time. Would that be related to the Hampshire Power?

▶ 9:12 Jeff McNaught: Yeah, we don't need her right now. That's the third order. I'm sorry. But let me read the first order, the Order 2021-122. City of Melrose operating budget for fiscal year 2022 in the amount of $91,522.33. Tonight, we have the Public Works Department with us. Director Proacus Ellis will be kicking us off to discuss the Public Works Department and many lines that fall underneath that that i i will not read right now because i know you're going to address them uh director proecus ellis the floor is yours thank you uh kristen are you able to allow me to share my screen

▶ 10:05 Speaker 2: making you the presenter now

▶ 10:08 Jeff McNaught: and i know that we received a powerpoint from you uh director proecus ellis if you want to give us a brief general high overview of that i know a lot of people probably didn't have much time to look it over but we have seen you know the rest of the budget in materials that we've had for a while but feel free to to give us an overview um i know it was yeah yes sorry thank you i um i apologize for

▶ 10:37 Speaker 4: sending that so late i was out all of last week um but i was going to run through it it may look sort of long it's about 30 slides but it goes pretty quick so i was going to give just a quick run through um so i'm going to share my screen okay can you all see it ken i see some other blue

▶ 11:00 Jeff McNaught: box do you guys all see that oh maybe it was just mine something i had to close up

▶ 11:10 Speaker 3: i think sometimes you see the little box of um of webex on the screen yeah i tried

▶ 11:12 Speaker 4: i tried to move it to a place where it's less perhaps less distracting

▶ 11:19 Jeff McNaught: I was able to close it out actually, at least I think I did maybe somewhere else. So you can see this. Okay.

▶ 11:28 Speaker 4: Yeah, okay. Um, so thank you all for your consideration of the 22. Um, Department of public works and water and sewer enterprise fund budgets. Uh, Jim troop is joining me and when we get to questions, I'm sure there are some items that he will be best suited to answer.

▶ 11:50 Speaker 4: So, I'm going to go quickly through this, because the slides are very similar at the beginning to what I presented last year, but I did want to remind the council and anybody from the public about who we are at DPW. We are 68 full time employees split into 4 main divisions, administration, engineering, water and sewer billing, facilities and operations.

▶ 12:15 Speaker 4: Administration handles our public relations down at the city yard, our accounts payable and receivable, payroll, solid waste and recycling, um which is actually that position has a different title now which i will share when i get to that slide and uh our rentals coordinator and then engineering and water and sewer billing handles our capital projects planning design construction permits and inspections for both public and private work in the right-of-way development reviews for anything that goes through planning and zoning records and plans geographic information systems or gis and water and sewer billing which is all housed within our office in City Hall. Facilities

▶ 13:01 Speaker 4: handles are both our custodial and our trades people. Building maintenance in both schools and municipal buildings and also building capital projects, building security. I threw this picture in there of the mural that was done as part of the Wayfinding and Placemaking project this year. We had a big hand in getting the location prepped and the lift and making sure that project went off without a hitch.

▶ 13:34 Speaker 4: And then operations, which is the majority of our subdivisions are within operations, highway, snow and ice, sanitation, parks and forestry, fleet, cemetery, and then the two enterprise funds of water and sewer.

▶ 13:53 Speaker 4: i'm pleased to show this slide this year that is fully filled in last year at this time we had the city engineer position vacant and that was also reflected in the budget for the first half of fiscal 21 but we are now fully staffed with our four division heads and uh so our new city

▶ 14:15 Speaker 4: engineer is bonnie reese we also have a new environmental and outreach coordinator that is the position that was formerly called solid waste and recycling um that is lisa scott

▶ 14:29 Speaker 4: we have a new mechanic michael christopoulos a new junior mechanic jonathan nascimento and a new highway division laborer richard cutlip these are all new hires over the course of fiscal

▶ 14:44 Speaker 4: 21. and in the um budget document that brianna had put together there were a lot of uh metrics and so we've updated these the ones um the ones shown on the capital page here are the same as in the budget document but some of the operational ones have been updated uh to today so in fiscal 21 we paved nearly 8 000 feet of roadways we uh replaced 5 000 feet of water main we lined 21 000 feet of sewers we also replaced 280 feet linear feet of sewer on brazil street another capital project as you know was the replacement of our street sweeper and this is our brand new street super shown at the bottom we've had a lot of ongoing projects

▶ 15:34 Speaker 4: other capital projects that are not in construction yet there's the city hall memorial hall generator design that is underway um we actually had a call with the consultants today we We are well on our way to having a full design and bid ready project. The salt shed, which I know is being considered for sending to committee tonight in a later meeting, we've just completed the design and bid process for the new salt shed. Memorial hall envelope project that was started a ways back is finally underway and is now in the, we've selected a consultant and we're finalizing contract with them and then the El Pond Park feasibility study which is ongoing um which we'll talk about in a little while with regard to one of

▶ 16:39 Speaker 4: the free cash items um well I am noticing now that this is for some reason this is not the updated slide uh on our number of work orders we actually had completed 4002 work orders through the current day so i think i've opened an earlier version unfortunately um and i know we had filled 494 potholes as of uh today we planted 119 city trees we handled over 53 inches of snow this year

▶ 17:08 Speaker 4: and um i think the new number of purchase orders is supposed to be about 2700. um

▶ 17:20 Speaker 4: Similarly, you'll have to look at the version that I sent you to see if the numbers are updated. Perhaps I just opened the wrong file here. So as of April, we had collected over 5,000 tons of trash, over 2,000 tons of recycling. I know that we have now sold 44 compost bins rather than the 18 that were shown here. collected yard waste curbside and we accepted yard waste recycling and other special collections at

▶ 17:58 Speaker 4: the city yard throughout the year. The fleet division maintains over 140 vehicles and pieces of equipment. The green team maintains 81 different locations of parks fields and open spaces. Between funerals and cremations we had roughly 170 at Wyoming Cemetery and we've been cleaning and disinfecting every school every night and deep cleaning every weekend for the entire school year

▶ 18:28 Speaker 4: um if you'll excuse me for a second i'm actually going to close this and reopen the other version

▶ 18:35 Speaker 4: because i think i think i just opened the wrong file here apologize don't worry about it take

▶ 19:04 Speaker 4: your time okay are you able to see this now or no not yet no there we go yeah those are the updated

▶ 19:25 Speaker 3: numbers i think elena yes and this should be what i sent you earlier today i think i just opened the

▶ 19:28 Speaker 4: draft by mistake yeah so there are the updated numbers on the work orders and okay the real reason i wanted to go back was because i knew that this this is actually critical information here at the bottom of this slide um we received a twenty one thousand seven hundred seventy five dollar and forty four cent grant for mass dep for an upcoming mattress recycling program And I did just want to mention that because that is up for acceptance by the council.

▶ 20:03 Speaker 4: And that grant, the state of Massachusetts will be banning mattresses from solid waste collection in the coming years. And so in preparation for that, they were offering these grants where we could divert mattresses from the waste stream starting now and kind of get our program up and running In advance of the ban, and so that is our goal with this program. We're working with a vendor who can. Who can pick them up curbside and also we'll have a container at the city yard and we might just start out with having them. Having people be able to drop them off for a fee at the city yard during our other special collection events. And then we kind of want to get a handle of how it's going and then and then grow into whether we want to accept them on Saturdays. at the yard every Saturday. But that is the amount of the grant where we're seeking acceptance of the grant from the council. Okay, so back to where we were.

▶ 21:03 Speaker 4: COVID obviously presented a number of challenges to our staff. We've been tracking all year long when employees are close contacts of somebody outside of work or inside of work, and people who are on quarantine, and we've been working with HR and the health department every single week um to identify anyone who has been quarantined and can't come to work um

▶ 21:27 Speaker 4: so keeping staff healthy has been a huge priority um cleaning municipal buildings and schools has also been a huge undertaking we've helped with many special initiatives testing and vaccination clinics melrose helps mass distribution pretty much any time there was a big event covid related uh we we stepped in to help out reopening schools in the fall and the full return for students this spring were also major undertakings um if you um if you had attended any of the school committee

▶ 22:00 Speaker 4: meetings where we presented those in detail you would have seen a lot of what we did for school reopening we've also had outdoor learning outdoor events um we installed tree stumps for

▶ 22:15 Speaker 4: kids to sit on and we installed tents at eight different locations we helped with graduation with the santa ride this winter and then the tracking and submitting of the covert related expenses to mima and to fema has been also just a huge task that gym troop has really

▶ 22:39 Speaker 4: done a fantastic job with so on to the specifics of our budget requests

▶ 22:45 Speaker 4: our general fund request for the dpw is nine million eight hundred thousand dollars eight hundred thousand three hundred eighty four dollars and forty four cents which represents a two point four percent increase over last year our water enterprise fund request is seven million five thousand eighty nine dollars and that reflects the full request including the operating budget plus Debt service, excuse me, debt service and, um.

▶ 23:17 Speaker 4: Uh, indirect costs and. We are requesting a free cash allocation of 400,000 to offset. 400,000 of that 7Million and, um.

▶ 23:33 Speaker 4: I, I believe we've described that, but if anyone has questions about that, I can describe it in more detail during the Q and a. And then on the sewer enterprise fund, our request is 9,160,487 dollars. You'll notice I've shown the percent increase overall and then the percent increase of just the operating budget. Because the indirect costs and the debt service. Add other other costs to the total. To get to this 9.16Million. And so the 12.7% increase is compared to this same number containing all these same items from last year. Whereas the 4.1% increase is what you'll see if you just look in the operating budget. Similarly, the 12.4% is the change to the operating budget. And the 8.3% is the change to the the overall number, including indirects and debt service.

▶ 24:32 Speaker 4: So, it's a majority of items that have increased. If you've looked through all the line items of our budget, Our salary, they're largely contractual increases, both laborers and clerical union. The laborers union recently rolled over. Our contract with them for an additional 1 year, a 1 year extension with an agreed upon 2% cost of living increase that is not reflected in this budget because that was negotiated after the budget was submitted. So, right now, what you see is the step increases, but it is missing the cost of living increase, which would be handled during fiscal 22.

▶ 25:12 Speaker 4: Um, there is an 11.8% increase in the administration and engineering salaries and that is due to, as I mentioned, the city engineer position. Um, was not fully funded last year. It was only half funded. We funded it from January through. June of this year, so this year we had to go back to having it fully funded. So, that's why you see such a large increase in that salary line.

▶ 25:40 Speaker 4: So, this is a slide I had included last year. It's just for reference if anyone's interested in how many employees are in each. Division and where they're funded from.

▶ 25:55 Speaker 4: So, some employees have their funds, their salaries split between multiple funds. Between the general fund water and sewer, or just between water and sewer. There are also 4 people who we pay a portion of their salaries, including folks at the parks department and. Uh, dog and Jane pits in the planning department.

▶ 26:23 Speaker 4: So, we were asked by Patrick, as, you know, to level fund our budget and so we've level funded every line item other than the contractual salary line items and, you know. Salaries in general step increases for non union employees and the like, and the only additional items that we increased. Are listed on this slide, trash and recycling. Increased by 66,250 that was to that was to. Reflect the increases in tonnage that we've been seeing and also. Costs that go up every year through our contract with. The project increases this year. Total 13,104 dollars, no removal, which traditionally we do go over our no removal budget. So it is prudent to increase it a little bit each year to where. We have a realistic budget, so 25,000 has been added to snow removal. We have 1 sewer capital line item that we. We opted to an even 80,000, and that was an addition of 11,871. Um, that is being done without any effect to sewer rates. So, um, we thought it was better to bring that up a little bit to increase our ability to do capital through our, um. You know, supplement our capital budgets through our operating and sewer. And then our rentals coordinator, we faced an issue with COVID where, when we had no rentals. We had no income from which to pay the rentals coordinator. And she's really serving in a critical role. She does a lot more than just rentals coordination to help out the facilities division. And so we moved her salary into the operating budget. So we're no longer counting on those rentals revenues in order to pay her salary. And then the MWRI water and sewer assessments go up every year. So those are reflected in the budget. And then the only reduction is that poppy machine and maintenance, lease and maintenance budgets have shifted to IT, so those were removed from our loan items.

▶ 28:32 Speaker 4: On the water and sewer end, we have no changes to our volumetric or base fees for water and sewer. The reserve funds will be meeting the 10% goals of having 10% reserves when we transfer from our retained earnings into those funds. Revenues from fiscal 21 from our rate model We're up much higher in actuality because of COVID because so many people were home and using more water than anticipated. And then, as I mentioned before, $400,000 in retained earnings is proposed to be put toward the MWRA assessment. And that is just on the water side. That is because we collected so much more revenue this year, but that also means our percent share of the MWRA system went up. It's just a 1 time hit from so many people being home during coven. So we're proposing to take that extra revenue that we got. And use it to pay that additional assessment from the. In the in the idea that next year things should level back out. And we shouldn't need that that supplemental money. This would just be a 1 time hit. So, sewer water and sewer rates will not change in fiscal 22 and we will be able to continue help helping those who are facing financial challenges from the pandemic.

▶ 30:02 Speaker 4: And then you've seen a lot of what's in here in recent weeks, but just a refresher. We have our multi year roadway and utility program. That includes paving and complete streets. Water and sewer infrastructure improvements, and then working with national grid on gas main replacements.

▶ 30:20 Speaker 4: And so this is probably tiny on your screens right now and not really intended to be read at this moment, but this has been sent out to the council and it's been posted to the city website. This is our construction calendar for this year. And as you can see, we have our work cut out for us. We have a lot going on. Especially in the capital projects, most of these are projects managed by the engineering division. So they have a very busy summer ahead.

▶ 30:53 Speaker 4: And then this is our roadway. Ranking map, which is also on the website and again, not. I really intended to be seen in detail on the screen here, but just to learn you the fact that that is up on the website and. We are slowly seeing more streets turning blue, which means good excellent condition and fewer and fewer streets in that forest category. Even though we re, ranked streets in 2000. Our overall condition index is improving.

▶ 31:28 Speaker 4: On our water system, we always need to be making improvements. We saw on Vinton Street this year what a critical water system failure looks like. And fortunately, we don't have pipes of that size. To create that magnitude of a water main break as the, but, you know, just reiterates. That reinforces the need to continually be upgrading our capital infrastructure. And we are water main project that we just opened bids for a couple of weeks ago. The total contract price is a little over a 1Million. And then the total project cost, including construction administration and police is about 1.2Million. And as you can see, that will take place on Burnett, Sycamore, Honeywell, Brazil Street, a small portion of Washington Street, Felton Street and Ashland from Franklin to Melrose Street.

▶ 32:28 Speaker 4: On the sewer end, we continue to go through our I and I program. We had a 5 phase program and actually I will put up the phasing map here. Which you've seen before, so phase 1 areas, we've finished open cut repairs. We finished lining the areas that we identified as needing lining. In phase 2, we've now finished lining any place we identified as needing lining. In phase 3, we have now finished all of our investigations. So we've now TV inspected, camera inspected the sewers in all of the phase 1, 2, and 3 areas. So we're slowly working our way through the whole system. And by the end of the five-phase program, we will have inspected every pipe in the city, every sewer pipe in the city.

▶ 33:18 Speaker 4: And then finally, we have our retained earnings requests. These are the ones that are on the docket for tonight. We have tree planting, where we propose to plant about 270 new trees. The request date back to September 2018, and it'll bring the backlog to within one year of the current date. To answer the residents questions during public comment, we do not have an in-house tree warden, but we do. Well, I guess we have an in-house tree warden who is our forestry foreman, but we don't have an in-house certified arborist.

▶ 33:55 Speaker 4: but we included that this time around in our um tree services annual contract so we have somebody under contract who we can bring in as an arborist whenever we need a second opinion we do have a one one year warranty on all of our tree installations and police details are required per the i believe it's the union agreement with the police that when outside contractors are working in the city right-of-way they're required to hire a police detail we install our contractor installs

▶ 34:31 Speaker 4: about 20 trees a day so um in a program like this it would equate to about you know 12 to 15 police details and um those run roughly uh 400 a day so 464 i believe for an eight hour shift um so that's that's the component that is police details it's not a huge component because it is just one police detail for 20 trees um we're requesting a hundred thousand for uh flashing crosswalk push button signals the rapid flashing beacons solar speed feedback signs and then intersection improvements we oftentimes are working in areas similar to what we did last year at poplar and prospect where we um the neighborhood identifies a need to do some additional traffic calming as part of some of our other projects and so um we wanted to have money available for that as it

▶ 35:33 Speaker 4: arises in the coming paving projects um we just completed the repair of over 100 sidewalk um replacements with last year's free cash and we're looking at we have right now 37 repair requests and another 40 assessments to be performed and then we would also use that money toward any curb ramps that we haven't installed yet where new crosswalks have been approved or where accessible curb ramps are identified on our projects that don't have you know where we have to put an accessible curb ramp because we're working in an area and it doesn't have accessible ramps we would use those funds toward those projects el pon park to answer

▶ 36:17 Speaker 4: the residents other question um we are looking at the feasibility of turf in one location only in the west knoll as part of this ten thousand dollar allocation there has been a lot of discussion about the possibility of up to three turf fields but i would say the with the public feedback we've gotten and with the variety of constituents or stakeholders involved in the feasibility study, the majority want to see a mix of different items of passive recreation, active recreation, environmental benefits, stormwater treatment, improved wetlands, habitat. So we're looking to incorporate all of these items and so right now this just looks at a turf field on the west knoll to identify whether there are stormwater or floodplain impacts that there would be hurdles that would be difficult to overcome during design um so this will account for some

▶ 37:15 Speaker 4: test pits and some analysis on the school facility capital projects you have memos um that discuss those the roosevelt school grounds we have some erosion and paving and fencing issues for 100 000 we have the franklin and ripley exterior those are design of roof replacements for both of those schools as well as window and door improvements at the franklin um that would be 150 000 design contract the high school entrance we're already doing some of those improvements with operating funds and with old bond funds but this would be 75 000 to supplement that um the high school roof above the learning commons has some leaks which are potentially going to damage our brand new learning commons so we want to replace that portion of the roof we have an old bond that has about 400 000 left in it so this hundred thousand would give us the money to do the complete replacement at a little over five hundred thousand um and then the hoover school roof we're applying for the mass accelerated mass school building accelerated repairs project Um, where we anticipate they would pay a 50% share and so of the roof replacement at the Hoover and so this 400,000 would be our share. Our 50%, and lastly on snow and ice, we're requesting overages totaling 270,000.

▶ 38:37 Speaker 3: So, I believe that hits on all of the.

▶ 38:39 Speaker 4: Orders that are on the table tonight related to water sewer. and free cash requests and so with that um i will turn it back over to counselor mcnaught

▶ 38:56 Jeff McNaught: okay and if you wouldn't mind closing your presentation just so i can see all the hollywood squares and and the hands that go up uh so far i know i had uh president sneller and and vice chair

▶ 39:17 Jeff McNaught: Eccles. Did anyone else have their hand up? Council Garipay. Okay. Council Grigoraitis.

▶ 39:26 Christopher Cinella: President Cinella. Thank you. Actually, she answered all of my questions, so thank you. And I was going to make a motion, but there's a bunch of hands up, so I'll just let someone else

▶ 39:40 Jeff McNaught: do it. Council Acmasa, did you have your hand up, too, to be in the queue? Okay. You're in.

▶ 39:47 Jack Eccles: Vice Chair Eccles. Thank you, Mr. Chair. Thanks, Mr. Paragasas, for being here. I think I just have one question, and I think I've asked it here before, but I'm still a little confused. It might be a question for Mr. De La Russo. But just kind of to wrap my head around the snow and ice financing a little bit, it just seems – so we're tossing – we're spending free cash. Is this the right way to do that? Whereas, you know, we spend kind of free cash to cover the deficit as opposed to, I don't know, thinking maybe just budgeting more every year to not have to do that. I just am kind of curious if there's a reason why we do that, if that's standard practice.

▶ 40:29 Speaker 3: I think Jim is best suited to answer that question.

▶ 40:32 Speaker 5: Yeah, that's actually a really good question. I think it comes down to municipal finance allows us to actually finance a debt or a deficit over the course of three years. So, what this transfer effectively does, we'll put it in layman's terms, is it allows us not to finance this over the course of three years. So there are surpluses in other areas of the fiscal 21 budget that allow us to cover it, allow us to not pay finance charges, allow us to not pay it over the course of three years and really start blank. So, it's a very prudent move and it allows us to just kind of continue to use best practices in financing for our snow and ice over the course of the year.

▶ 41:14 Jack Eccles: Awesome, thanks. And then my other question was just, is this the second year in a row with no increase in the water sewer rate? I think I remember that from last year. Is that right?

▶ 41:27 Speaker 4: I believe last year we did increase the base fees on one or the other. I think we increased the base fees on sewer. But not on water, and that was, I believe, to get us to the 10%. So we have a goal. Of the base fees reflecting 10% of the operating budget. Or of the revenue requirement and and sewer was way off when we started the process about 5 years ago. So we upped at 2% a year. I think it was starting right around 2%. So, last year, I think was the final year to get us to our 10%. Um, and so then we didn't, uh. We didn't have to increase water because those base fees were already at 10%. And then this year, we didn't have to increase them at all.

▶ 42:12 Speaker 5: Awesome. Thanks. That's all I have.

▶ 42:16 Speaker 6: Appreciate it. Thank you. Vice chair. Councilor.

▶ 42:19 Mark Garipay: Thank you. Mr. chair. Thank you. Mr. Ellis and Mr. true for being here. Um. I appreciate your time today to go over all of most of my questions to try to try to move the process along. Uh, on the meeting, but, uh, I'm happy to see that we have the allocation for the trees. Um, and as, you know, we work together to try to. That was 1 of my free free cash, um, requests, but 1 of the other items that, um. We had asked was a line item for for tree replacement in the budget, an annual line item and. and I know this does not come down for you, but my fear is we're going to be back into the same situation we had, you know, pulling up 126 trees and planting and just using free cash. Was there any talk about putting this in the budget or did they take a look at that request for that line item to add this line item for annual tree planting? I think we figured around 75 or 80,000 would keep us more or less full and gradually increase it up.

▶ 43:32 Speaker 4: Yes, so we were asked to level fund our budget when we submitted it to the finance department, um, other than required increases. And so we did not include that increase, but I did convey my desire to the mayor, um, to have that as a line item in the future.

▶ 43:49 Speaker 4: But it was not included ultimately in the budget, so I continue to advocate for. That we, we should be adding in ideally a line item.

▶ 44:01 Speaker 4: To plant trees every year, so we don't have to rely on free cash and it just happens as a matter of course. And so I'm happy that that's a priority of yours as well. And.

▶ 44:13 Speaker 4: Perhaps if Mr. Delruso is on tonight, if he speaks at all later, maybe he can speak to why it wasn't ultimately included, but it's certainly a priority moving forward.

▶ 44:26 Mark Garipay: I appreciate your help and at least getting the list from 3 years, especially as the ward council is, we get a lot of calls on this. So I appreciate your help on on getting this, advocating for this also. Thank you.

▶ 44:40 Speaker 6: thank you thank you council Garipay council Grigoraitis thank you chairman and thank you

▶ 44:43 Jen Grigoraitis: both for being here tonight i just want to echo um councillor Garipay comments as a ward councillor um pw is something that i rely on a lot and it's really great to see that we're putting free cash toward infrastructure but i just to add a voice that i believe these are also both the trees and some of the sidewalk repair things i would really like to see baked into our budget and i'm also really hopeful that we use some of our arpa funding to further um address our infrastructure concerns i know a lot of those um streets that are rated poor are up in six two and i know many of them are on the list to get done but um it would really i think we really need to make an investment in our infrastructure and continue that investment going forward um and my question with regard to the free cash for the sidewalk repairs and the traffic calming is there have been quite a few um traffic calming measures that have been approved by the traffic commission but haven't been funded are all of those included in the list they are okay so everything that's been approved through the last meeting i mean it's just the list is kind of a vague um uh terminology just

▶ 46:00 Speaker 4: to understand what we're talking about yes so there are i i visited the sites of 14 new curb ramps or i guess it's seven new crosswalk locations recently um with one of our engineers um scott dixon who was going to convey all the information to our contractor and so we will be funding i know those included um two on grove street two unpleasant street washington at shadow

▶ 46:33 Speaker 4: uh franklin near warren and sylvan near rider i think that's that comes out to seven um

▶ 46:40 Speaker 4: those some of those had funding through rideshare funds from prior years and then anything that that can't be funded through the rideshare funds we would fund through this this order

▶ 46:51 Jen Grigoraitis: okay do you know if that includes the crosswalk at wyoming i know chancellor mcmahon which is connects five and um six council mcmaster and i have received some questions about that i think it was approved about seven months ago wyoming at

▶ 47:09 Speaker 4: yeah so that we were supposed to be putting in a median island and that's already funded through the ride share money we did set aside money for it it's just been a complicated project and so it just keeps getting stalled but we we still have the money and we still intend to complete that project and apologize for the delays thank you and then my only other comment is just i'm

▶ 47:26 Jen Grigoraitis: really happy to see that you're fully staffed you've been wearing a lot of hats for a really long time um and i as somebody who i think emails you far too often would welcome any guidance from you on who of your new um division directors you'd like us to contact us saying um because i'm really happy you're getting a chance to kind of lead and have a team able to help you do that

▶ 47:51 Speaker 3: so that's all thanks for being here tonight okay thank you um thank you counselor did she want me

▶ 47:59 Speaker 4: to answer the question about who to contact or is that more of a general it's just a general if you

▶ 48:01 Jen Grigoraitis: want to i mean i'll think you have to tell the whole public but just i think i know i feel like i'm constantly emailing you with things and to know that you have a team fully staffed if there's a more efficient way for us to get requests to you um i would welcome that information you can just

▶ 48:20 Speaker 4: send that email yeah i will just say to to the whole group that um with margot fleischman starting um actually started today i believe i don't know what the procedures might be you know the mayor's office might set a different process for you know preferred communication channels so i would say

▶ 48:42 Jeff McNaught: stay tuned we will thank you thank you thank you councillor Grigoraitis councillor mcmaster

▶ 48:45 Shawn M. MacMaster: Thank you, Mr. Chairman. Good evening, Director Paracas-Hellis and Mr. Troup. My question is about the water and sewer enterprise funds. You may recall last year I raised concerns about how we determine indirect costs and same concern that I raised with Mr. Shanna the prior year and I've raised with Mr. Van Campen in the past and I'm just wondering have we changed that process at all has the administration devised an algorithm to determine how staff time for particularly from other departments is being is being charged so

▶ 49:30 Speaker 4: I don't know if Mr. Del Rosso is on the call but he did he did reach out to our I believe it's our auditors and seek guidance on our indirect cost strategies and he has a letter that i know we um we provided to the water and sewer rate committee and um i believe was an attachment to the minutes or to the agenda for for one of those meetings um that answers that question and essentially

▶ 50:03 Speaker 4: we we do not have to track the actual time spent and you know nor do i nor would i recommend that we track the actual time spent by different departments in a support role to water and enterprise funds um i don't think it would really be a beneficial exercise in terms of the the complexity of doing so compared to the the value of the information that we would gain i think is Um, you know, it doesn't the, the complexity outweighs the, the information.

▶ 50:30 Speaker 3: Um, we.

▶ 50:35 Speaker 4: We try to estimate as accurately as we can based on the employees working in those roles and what they're doing and what. What functions they serve that relate to. The water and sewer enterprise funds, for instance. You know, collections, how much time it takes them to send out bills or to to deal with bills. Coming in payments coming in. You know, the, the city solicitor, how much time that role spends in. Helping us with contracts with water and sewer consultants and contractors and change orders and, you know, it's all. That's all built into the equation, and we just make our best estimates based on our knowledge of our operations. But I know Patrick did seek guidance from. Powers and Sullivan, I believe it is, and he has a pretty lengthy letter from them reviewing our practices and offering an opinion. So, if you haven't seen that.

▶ 51:40 Shawn M. MacMaster: We can get you a copy. Thank you. Yes, we haven't seen that. So I appreciate that. That'd be helpful. and are you aware of any other municipality director practice ellis that has any type of algorithm that helps to determine um the indirect costs i know we're not required to do it but any communities that as a best practice um have developed something or that have implemented something being done elsewhere in any municipality i am not aware of anyone who actually tracks

▶ 52:09 Speaker 4: that that type of time i think our practice is is the typical practice of other communities

▶ 52:18 Speaker 4: and i do participate in the mw advisory board and the executive committee over there with a lot of other directors and talk a lot about our rate setting processes and the like and i've never heard of somebody actually keeping track or or developing an algorithm like that other than what we do in terms of just estimating thank you and my only other question is with

▶ 52:39 Shawn M. MacMaster: respect to the traffic calming uh free cash the one hundred thousand dollars um how will that be determined in terms of what's prioritized um as you know there are a lot of requests that come in from counselors i think my requests are probably thirty thousand dollars alone which is a third of that and that's not too many requests i think it's only three or four locations so How is that determined separate and apart from whatever may be funded by the Traffic Commission? And does the Traffic Commission projects that are on hold, do those trump the request that consulates have put in for free cash for traffic coming?

▶ 53:16 Speaker 4: So, the Traffic Commission only votes on new crosswalk locations. So the Traffic Commission items are separate from requests for solar speed feedback signs and push button crosswalk signals. Those are the traffic commission does not vote on those and, um, also the traffic commission doesn't have any budget. So. Anything that's funded anything that the traffic commission approves is always pending funding. And so it's the ride share funds that we've tried to allocate in recent years. To account for some of these locations that the, that the traffic commission has approved. But any time a request comes in, or a rapid flashing beacon. A solar speed feedback sign. An intersection reconfiguration, um, we maintain a running list of all those requests with who requested it and when and and any other information. That's pertinent and then when we have a funding source identified. Between the between me. The city engineer, the, um, uh, operations manager and operations foreman. and the highway foreman and then the police chief and the police traffic safety officer we look at the list and we look at how much money we have and then we decide what we're going to fund next so i believe a lot of what came in from counselors is going to be funded as as part of those priority projects um i don't i agree with you that i don't think we have money to fund all of them through those items through those free cash items but we will fund the ones that are the highest priority and as far as priority goes the types of things that we look for are the traffic volume the pedestrian volume speeds if we know that they're excessive speeds in a neighborhood um safety concerns crash histories uh those sorts of items are what go into the the prioritization thank you thank you mr chairman thank you council mcmaster

▶ 55:31 Maya Jamaleddine: council jamaladeen thank you chair thank you um miss alice and mr um I'm sorry for being with us today. I wanted to thank you and echo my fellow counselors on this presentation and the communication that's been between us and trying to answer all our questions. I wanted to follow up on my fellow counselor's question with in terms of communicating with you and you mentioned someone named Margot. Is this an employee?

▶ 56:18 Speaker 4: City employee? The mayor's new director of strategic planning. So essentially Patrick

▶ 56:28 Maya Jamaleddine: So, we weren't made aware of that. That's why I just want to know who is this new person.

▶ 56:36 Speaker 4: So, yeah, her name is Margot Fleishman and I thought that something had gone out. Citywide, but and I also thought that today might have been her 1st day, but I could be wrong. I was not in City Hall at all today. So I don't know if she started yet.

▶ 56:50 Maya Jamaleddine: No problem. Thank you so much for all the answers that you provided. Thank you.

▶ 56:57 Speaker 7: Thank you.

▶ 56:58 Jeff McNaught: Thank you, Councilor Jamaleddine, Councilor Migliorelli.

▶ 57:02 Leila Migliorelli: Thank you, Mr. Chairman, and thank you, Ms. Breyka Salas and Mr. Troop for being here tonight. I just wanted to say thank you to all the DPW's work this past school year in helping to clean and sanitize all of our school buildings. That's not something I think you had ever probably imagined on your radar screen. And, um, I really appreciate the extra time and effort that your team put in to make that happen. Um, and I, all the questions that I had have been answered along the way. So I'd like, uh, to make a motion to move the bottom line. For the budget and counts chairman, you can tell me which number that is.

▶ 57:40 Jeff McNaught: Well, I'm glad you asked because I think what we should do, if you wouldn't mind removing that, if we could conjoin a bunch of lines here. I'll entertain. If anyone has the spreadsheet open, Council McMaster?

▶ 57:58 Shawn M. MacMaster: Yes, Mr. Chairman. I'm not sure if it's your intention. I would just ask that the water and sewer enterprise funds be kept separate from any other conjoined orders.

▶ 58:06 Jeff McNaught: Yeah, I believe those are, um, those are part of the revolving funds anyway. So those would be voted on separately. Um, but but before we get to conjoining, um, I just had a few quick questions, uh, director and Mr. troop 1 thing I'll be very brief 1 thing that we talked about earlier, uh, direct director was the fleet vehicles. had a question from a constituent about um fleet v i think it's fleet vehicles that you know and i just want to answer this for them and for the public does anyone from the city take a vehicle

▶ 58:45 Speaker 4: home at night or do they stay in the city so a couple of years ago um maybe i would say about three years ago the city changed their policy uh or at least i certainly the dpw changed its policy and eliminated take-home vehicles. The former director used to have a take-home vehicle and at that time I remember he switched over to taking his personal vehicle every day and I know we had our water and sewer division foreman who had worked for the city for over 40 years. He had a take-home vehicle and upon his retirement I think he was the last TPW employee to be taking a vehicle home and he retired probably two years ago so since that time we have a you know a policy

▶ 59:31 Jeff McNaught: of nobody taking home city vehicles great thank you um another one is maybe more of a comment maybe a question the solar speed signs which are effective and always helpful um a lot of feedback on whether or not they can be bigger i don't know that's maybe a discussion we can have offline but in thinking about it after people brought it up they are a little bit small and you don't see them until you get pretty close to them but that doesn't take away from their effectiveness so um thank you for moving forward with getting us more of those um one thing i had a question about was you said the majority of the feedback that you've gotten on the turf at el pond was that people wanted a mix of alternative use space turf and i don't i don't remember all the things that you said but was there a survey done or is there any data that we have that we can look at that

▶ 1:00:24 Speaker 4: yes so um i'll have to find out what is still available i'm going to make a note what's still available on the website and um but weston samson our consultant for that project did

▶ 1:00:39 Speaker 4: two very extensive surveys there were hundreds of of responses it was sent out to the entire Recreation departments distribution lists for all of their programming and. I'm trying to remember what other channels we use. We definitely use social media and the city website. We got a huge response and so we did a survey upfront about the current uses of the park and then we did a survey later about the options that we presented and what people liked or didn't like about them. And so, yes, that data very much exists and was. And really showed a broad interest in what people wanted to see there, but there were certain themes that repeated. Over and over, like, passive recreation, walking trails. Environmental improvements we saw a lot of requests for and increased reliable. playing fields so um you know in an area that gets wet turf is is part of that equation to make those fields more useful in more variable conditions right and and the only reason i ask is we know

▶ 1:01:54 Jeff McNaught: once it comes time to really do something about that the the community will certainly be talking a lot more so i just wanted to get it out there that that was done so thank you for that um and then the last thing i was going to ask was when we did we discuss a roof um improvement for the horace man school with hoover i thought that's what we did a few weeks ago i know that you had

▶ 1:02:22 Speaker 4: hoover in your presentation i believe when when i was sent the list for today's meeting i did not see that amount for the horse man on the list which is why i didn't include it in my presentation I was trying to stick to just orders that were on tonight's agenda so I and I believe it was either the school department or the planning department who had put together the memo for those two roof project projects so I was going under the assumption that somebody else had presented that already but if that's incorrect then I'm happy to answer questions about it no no we can

▶ 1:02:59 Jeff McNaught: again something we can probably talk about offline but thank you um now if um the the numbers that if somebody were willing to can make a motion to conjoin numbers those would be 401 402 422 423 433 475 485 and 495 do i have anyone who would like a motion uh

▶ 1:03:34 Speaker 2: Madam clerk, I see your hand up. I believe cemetery is 491. that's right.

▶ 1:03:43 Jeff McNaught: What did I say? 1, 9, 5, sorry about that. All right, let me read them again and and then someone can, um. Jump up and say, I'd like to make a motion that can join those 401, 402, 422. 423, 433. 475, 485 and 491.

▶ 1:04:13 Christopher Cinella: Council President Sinella? Motion to conjoin 401, 402, 422, 423, 433, 475, 485, and 491.

▶ 1:04:23 Jeff McNaught: Motion to conjoin all those numbers made by President Sinella, seconded by Vice Chair Eccles. On discussion, seeing none, Madam Clerk, can you please call the roll?

▶ 1:04:34 Speaker 2: Chair McLaughlin? Yes. Vice Chair Eccles? Yes. Councilor McMaster? Yes. Councilor Garipay? Yes. Councilor Grigoraitis? Yes. Councilor Migliorelli? Yes. Councilor Stewart? Yes. Councilor Thomas? Yes.

▶ 1:04:56 Speaker 2: Councilor Jamaleddine? Yes. President Cinella? Yes. Ben, yes.

▶ 1:05:02 Jeff McNaught: The motion passes. What is the will of the committee on the conjoined line items?

▶ 1:05:08 Speaker 5: motion to move the bottom line on the conjoined line items

▶ 1:05:14 Jeff McNaught: motion to move the bottom line on the conjoined line items made by vice chair Eccles seconded by councillor Grigoraitis madam clerk will you please call the roll chair mcnaught yes vice chair Eccles

▶ 1:05:30 Speaker 2: yes councillor mcmaster yes councillor Garipay yes councillor Grigoraitis Yes. Councilor Migliorelli? Yes. Councilor Stewart? Yes. Councilor Thomas? Yes. Councilor Jamaleddine? Yes. President Cinella? Yes. And yes.

▶ 1:05:50 Jeff McNaught: Okay, the motion passes. Next we have the revolving accounts, the Recycle Waste Management revolving number 2657 and water enterprise sewer enterprise and um retained earnings it's as if necessary i don't know if um i don't think that that's involved in this but um what is the will of the committee on uh the revolving account number two six five seven does anyone want a

▶ 1:06:32 Jeff McNaught: a motion to move the bottom line.

▶ 1:06:34 Mark Garipay: I make a motion to move the bottom line on revolving account.

▶ 1:06:40 Speaker 1: Second.

▶ 1:06:41 Jeff McNaught: A motion to remove the line on the revolving account 2657 made by Councilor Garipay, seconded by President Sinella. Madam Clerk, will you please call the roll?

▶ 1:06:53 Speaker 2: Chair McNaught? Yes. Vice Chair Eccles?

▶ 1:06:57 Speaker 5: Yes.

▶ 1:06:58 Speaker 2: Councilor McMaster? Yes. Councilor Garipay? Councilor Grigoraitis? Yes. Councilor Migliorelli? Yes.

▶ 1:07:11 Speaker 8: Councilor Stewart? Yes. Councilor Thomas? Yes.

▶ 1:07:14 Speaker 2: Councilor Jamaleddine? Yes. President Cinella? Yes.

▶ 1:07:21 Jeff McNaught: 10 yes. The motion passes. At this point I will entertain a motion to hold in committee order 2021-122. that's the city's operating budget. Motion to hold. Second. Motion to hold in

▶ 1:07:39 Jeff McNaught: committee order 2021-122 by councillor Grigoraitis seconded by councillor Garipay. Madam Clerk will you please call the roll. Chair McNaught. Yes. Vice