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 (~1 h 2 min @ 3:08)

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

▶ 3:00 Jeff McNaught: suspended and first before us this evening is order 2021-122 the city of melrose operating budget for fiscal year 2022 in the amount of 91 million 522 dollars and 33 cents and um first up this evening we're going to bring in emergency management as as I know that Mr. Alpert has a prior engagement that he needs to get to. So that being said, can we bring Mr. Alpert into the room, Madam Clerk?

▶ 3:45 Speaker 1: Director Alpert?

▶ 3:58 Speaker 2: Okay, good evening. Am I unmuted and visible?

▶ 4:01 Jeff McNaught: We can see you and we can hear you. And if you'd like to give us a brief overview, we'd be happy to hear it. We know you have a prior engagement and the council can ask you any questions, and we can let you head off to that prior engagement.

▶ 4:17 Speaker 2: Excellent, I wanna thank the honorable council very much for considering moving me around so I can get in and out quick. And to the honorable council and those watching from home, good evening. To our residents and others viewing, I'm Alan Alpert, director of emergency management. I've been the director in Melrose For 2 and a half years after completing almost 40 years as the emergency management director in Chelsea with the last 15 years as the superintendent of fire alarm. And director of 911 and the 14th busiest 911 center in the state. Retirement wasn't for me. When I saw the advertisement that Melrose was looking for an emergency management director part time and having worked with the late director, Ed Kelly, I applied. I chose this line of work early on in my career because I, like much of you, want to have a positive impact on the lives of our residents in the business community. However, I'm sure most of you are unfamiliar with emergency management, so I'll give you a brief overview of emergency management. 1st, I'm a 1 person department in Melrose. Very rarely the members of the general public initiate a call to me basically, because so many people do not know what emergency management does. But I play an important role in the liaising between the city state. federal government and agencies as well as communicating with our police and fire chiefs department heads and many of their staff members Massachusetts general law chapter 639 the civil defense act authorizes and directs each political subdivision to establish an emergency management organization and appoint a director emergency management is a three-tiered intergovernmental operation like all incidents they start local so it goes from the city to the state which is the mass emergency management agency and federal which is fema and follows an all-hazard approach preparing for various types of emergencies whether they're natural or man-made this is done through a four-phased preparedness approach first is the planning stage

▶ 6:52 Speaker 2: second is training and exercising the plan which brings in an element of education the third phase is response and mitigation and the fourth and sometimes an especially important component, recovery. Most people have very little knowledge of the major role that emergency management directors across the country were faced with due to the unique challenges brought forward by COVID-19. Locally, Governor Charlie Baker invoked sections of Chapter 639 by declaring a state of emergency the shutdown and other orders he placed in effect throughout the pandemic i was in constant contact with the massachusetts emergency management agency mima has had for over 10 years a statewide web-based system called webdoc which was used for virtually all communications from municipalities to the state and then back all requests for ppe cleaning disinfecting supplies and equipment were made on web eoc as the supplies were received they were distributed to public works fire police and school all requests for reimbursement for the federal declaration was made through mema daily i had conference calls webex and other online meetings based on the information received i acted as the information officer disseminating changes and all covert 19 protocols as they were received from the state and federal government from the beginning the day-to-day operations required a great deal of agility as changes were constant. Because of the tremendous efforts of every single department, the cooperation was unbelievable, as well as the understanding and cooperation of our residents. Melrose had a better COVID-19 status than many of our surrounding communities. Public safety is not just about responding to crises or emergencies, It's about preventing them. Emergency managers need operational, logistical, and interoperational skill sets to harmonize the efforts of multiple departments, identify potential problems before they happen, and start the first two phases of emergency management, planning, training, and exercising the plan. That certainly will make us better prepared for phase three, the response emergency management is not all about emergencies or disasters as i said emergency management plays an important role in non-emergency events like to call the happenings and events planning events whether they are planned or demand response for a planned event such as a festival i do the behind the scene work coordinating city departments outside groups and agencies working together with city departments we ensure that our residents are safe while enjoying the cultural and community events we all love like the summer stroll in the victorian fair which i know we are all thrilled to see return this year Last calendar year, all department heads completed FEMA's Incident Command System ICS 101 and 102 training as required by the mayor and received certifications for it. That training proved extremely helpful during COVID-19 and especially planning for the inoculations at Memorial Hall and the testing at the schools. In FY22, my goal is to conduct training and exercising with city departments to become better familiar with the Incident Command System as the default protocol for all incidents and events. This will also streamline our operations and enhance resident services and community outreach by increasing efficiency in our planning process. I will also conduct additional tabletop exercise with city departments, states, and federal agencies to plan for events that could have a negative impact on Melrose. Last month, an incredibly positive tabletop exercise was held in Memorial Hall with fire, police, and emergency management using an actual incident that occurred five years ago when an oil truck skidded on ice and flipped over on Howard Street. There was a release of hundreds of gallons of product that impacted the streets, storm drains, and the storm drains led to the Saugus River. In the coming year, my department is completely level funded. And, in fact, you'll see a very slight decrease in some line items, such as postage, clothing and training, but I have a very small operating budget to begin with. I'd like to thank you for allowing me the time to give this overview of emergency management, and I will answer any of your questions and extend an invitation. If anyone would like to know more about emergency management and our partnership with agencies, exercising coordination, please contact me and feel free to stop by the emergency management office at your convenience. Thank you very much.

▶ 12:57 Speaker 3: Thank you, Director Alpert, for that good, very informative overview.

▶ 13:01 Jeff McNaught: Councilor Grigoraitis.

▶ 13:07 Jen Grigoraitis: Thank you, Chair McNaught. Thank you, Director Alpert, for being here tonight and for providing us with that overview. I think it's really critical for the public to understand what goes into your role. I think many of us work at places where the continuity of operations plan was taken out of a dusty shelf about 18 months ago and put into effect so i'm glad that there's renewed focus on emergency management and i'm really grateful to hear that you're continuing to make sure that we're thinking strategically and getting our cities repaired and i appreciate what you offered us tonight and at this point unless there's other comments i would motion to move the bottom line did i hear a second

▶ 13:49 Jeff McNaught: i heard a beat but i didn't know if it was a second okay so we have a motion to move the bottom line of one moment department 291 emergency management made by councillor Grigoraitis seconded by president sanella on discussion seeing none madam clerk

▶ 14:15 Speaker 1: will you please call the role chair mcnaught yes yes vice chair eccles yes councillor tramm and

▶ 14:23 Speaker 1: Josie? Yes. Councilor McMaster? Yes. Councilor Garipay? Yes. Councilor Gargaritas? Yes. Councilor Migliorelli? Yes. Councilor Stewart? Yes. Councilor Thomas? Yes. President Cinella? Yes. And yes.

▶ 14:41 Jeff McNaught: The motion passes. Thank you again Director Alpert for being here and we can let you go now.

▶ 14:46 Speaker 2: thank you very much i really appreciate it and again the invitation is open even to the general public if any members of the general public would like to sit down with me and talk about emergency management and learn a little bit more about it i'm more than willing to open my doors thank you

▶ 15:07 Jeff McNaught: very much thank you all very much next we have the um department 693 sailor and soldiers of memorial hall memorial hall building and we have ms pickett broder i believe director can you hear us yes can

▶ 15:29 Speaker 4: you hear me yes um thank you counselors i want to say good evening and i thank you for your time tonight um for those of you at home that may not know who i am i am kathy pickett broder executive director of the soldiers and sailors memorial building lovingly known as melrose memorial hall the team at memorial hall consists of myself and four part-time operations assistants rob mason dave coder paul tracy and danny santos they are responsible for the logistics both before during and after all of the events at memorial hall in the normal year memorial hall would host over 300 events with approximately 60,000 attendees. The primary mission of Memorial Hall and the Board of Trustees is to honor the veterans who have served and gave their ultimate sacrifice for their country. In addition, it serves as the location for community gatherings and events when the pandemic um first hit and the governor suspended all gatherings it was um memorial hall was closed and as you can imagine that was personally heart-wrenching for me oh you know everybody's head was spinning i'm sure when that happened and you know what's the next step well within days i was called into the mayor's office and tasked with and i quote i need every senior resident of Melrose called and checked on and to see if we can help them this led to the Melrose helps team as the director of Melrose help I wrote a plan an initial plan to get this whole process going and the mayor allowed me to recruit for the team the from the pool of talented city of Melrose workers and the team consisted of 20 city of Melrose employees over 15 different apartments. And we were initially put together to address the needs of over 2,000 of our senior residents in Melrose with weekly phone calls to check in on them and just see what they needed. The team, for example, was selected, and I have to do a shout out to Chris Wilcox now. He came on board and he's the one that set up the whole Melrose House database system, which allowed us to be able to communicate very easily. When the phone calls were being made, the volunteers could input into the database what the conversation was, and then I was able to retrieve that data and know what someone needed and what their needs were. Joanne, for example, from the election office answered all the Merrill's help sign. We needed someone to coordinate. I know all of the city councilors were the ones that were Responsible to coordinate with all the volunteers that called and the logical person was Kristen focus. She was the clerk of committees to be your liaison and the idea of who we picked him where we picked him. Um, to be part of this team was that we needed people who would take the task and the responsibility and own it 90% and be able to. Get to the goal line on their own without any direction, just go run and do it because things were changing so fast and there's always that 10% where you need help. They would come back to the team and ask for help. It was phenomenal, but as we. As the phone calls started being made that the. goal of narrow's helps evolved very very quickly into more than just phone calls we discovered people needed things for example people needed water for the cpap machine people needed cat food people needed dog food people needed groceries because we forget but this was the time when no one could leave their house and we had all these senior citizens that couldn't leave so we needed to help them very very quickly with supplies for example toilet paper people were desperate for toilet paper and i secured a bunch of um toilet paper in the city that i found and we put it somewhere and we were literally running around delivering toilet paper to these senior citizens that didn't have any so that all happened and then it evolved into something even more the mayor discovered and wanted to deliver masks to every household in the city because ppes were in very short supply. So this team, this incredible Melrose Health team, we organized and put together 10,000 bags of five masks within each bags and with the help of over 150 volunteers in one day delivered masks to over 10,000 households in Melrose. The next thing we discovered is we needed weekly groceries to deliver. So I contacted Servant's Hut Food Pantry who was already set up to coordinate and fill bags and knew exactly all the procedures had all the health permits so we would purchase the groceries once a week and they would get picked up by serving truck food printer they put it together and then with over 40 a help of 40 um additional volunteers on a weekly basis we would deliver to the senior residents who couldn't get out and um those people that had food insecurities it was all done confidentially so there was no issues of who's getting it and who isn't getting it um this program lasted um for approximately 12 months and over the course of those 12 months we delivered 3 500 bags of groceries and i have to give a big shout out to the council on aging the rec department initially was helping me pick it up at the servants hot food Pantry, but when their programs started to happen, the Council on Aging Vans, Stacy stepped up and the Council on Aging Van Drivers came in and the Council on Aging staff made all the weekly phone calls to make sure people still wanted the groceries and the van drivers came and picked up the grocery bags and brought them to Memorial Hall so we could distribute them quickly. Another aspect that became clear to us we needed to, Memorial Hall became the site for the distribution of the Edward Jones School Supply Program. Edward Jones office collected all the school supplies, but then the Memorial Hall staff went and picked it all up and brought it back here. Patrick Pendergast in the mayor's office worked with the school department for me to get the names of the people. He set up a form online. I got all the information, I numbered everybody. So there was no names and my staff, we had it all set up in the room and we downloaded all the school supply list in the city and made up the individual bags. And I set up personal appointments with the students and their parents to come. Quietly and discreetly to pick up the school supplies and then my staff took all the extra school supplies and returned it all to the schools. So they could be used throughout the year. Um, then the next thing that was needed to happen was, um, early voting need to happen at a central location. So, Memorial Hall worked with the election administrator to, um. Set up early voting for both elections in September and November at Memorial Hall. And then 1 of my favorite programs we did was something called Melrose University where my staff and I, we set up with the help of it and we set up the room and Chris will help me organize an online. You know, I set up a QR code, learned all kinds of stuff about that where people students from Melrose that went off to college. We called it Melrose University and they were supposed to go off to college. They couldn't go. So, I felt in my head, I was thinking these poor kids are sitting in their bedrooms still thinking they're in high school. So we set up the to be a quiet, safe study area where they can come. They went online book. The appointments came and they studied. As needed, and they also could attend their remote using headsets. They were remote classes. And then finally, memorial hall, the city needed a place to do vaccine clinics. So memorial hall. Became the site for the municipal vaccine clinics. Um, we planned and executed in collaboration with the health department, 8 vaccine clinics, and was able to facilitate the vaccination of 4,000 people. Then something else happened at Memorial Hall is wonderful bill building due to the large script footage and its central location became the ideal location for meetings that needed to occur in the city. because of social distancing couldn't happen for example the conference rooms at city hall could only accommodate two people so we became my staff and i set up on the stage a large conference room we'd have to set up where everyone could sit six feet apart we had the eight foot table set up in a conference room shape and so all the internal mayors meeting any meetings they may need to have with external people or city staff and most importantly the as alan alpert just said um the incident command team they needed to meet constantly and they had a safe location where they could do it without um going against the social distancing guideline we also hosted the morrow's health department serve safe classes the morrow's police new officers training and we held a summit on food insecurities to determine mostly it was to determine how people are going to handle the holiday food distribution with all the local food banks and distribution centers We have for the past 5 years been on the host to the veterans mobile food market, and we were able again, because of the size and the location, we continue to post that monthly food mark. And the Melrose veterans office was easily able to fill all the bags because we spread all the tables out 6 feet apart, but turn the pickup into a drive through because the parking lot went down 1 side and went right back out the other side. so that did not stop all during covert that continued and still continues today additionally i was asked by the return to work committee to take uh to become like the temporary city hall manager and to look at all the covert guidelines which i was reading constantly and reopen city hall and put systems into place for example we hired a greeter and i trained and hired a greeter and so people came in one door put up all the signage and um that all involved and we ended that june 1st city hall is open for business um lastly um we took advantage of the downtime at memorial hall we were closed and we had funds that senator lewis and the then state representative paul broda had secured for some repairs in memorial hall but because we were closed we could easily do it so during this time we used those funds and we refurnished all All of the floors in memorial hall, we repainted all of the reflective. Um, lines when you're in the main hall, so when it's dark, you can see, we replaced all the globes in the front and a shout out to Jay McNeil for finding them. My staff replaced all the led all the bulbs in the main hall and the room with led bulbs. We. Uh, fix the exterior of the foundation of memorial hall, um, because it was especially the back portico was really crumbling. We. hired plasterers, historical plasterers that fixed the base of the columns in the main hall that were crumbling and they don't they they look they they matched them perfectly and and the proscenium which is the archway on the stage there was a big hole um the plasterer fixed that and then we discovered that one of the columns the crown which is the top of the column in the main hall was in jeopardy of collapsing and falling so this plaster fixed fix that and at the same time as part of that project there was an historic artist that came in her and her husband her husband is actually curated an mfa and she has done a lot of the historical buildings around massachusetts and she was able to paint the gold and match it so that it doesn't even look like there were repairs done so um so that was a bonus for us that was the only bonus with the building being closed but um but uh that's so that's what we've been doing at memorial hall unfortunately we haven't been able to have any events but that's what we did during the pandemic and i have to say that um being part of the maryland's house team um personally was a cross collaboration among my co-workers that i normally wouldn't get to work with and it was probably the most rewarding project I've ever done in my professional career and I have to do a huge shout out to my staff who pivoted and changed because the COVID-19 cleaning guidelines changed because we forget in the beginning we didn't know the science and whether COVID lived on the surfaces so my staff would come in for a minimum two hours two of them to do the deep cleaning after every single one of these meetings that occurred in my building and they pivoted as needed and never complained their response was always um so what do we need to do what do you need us to do and they these four gentlemen really stepped up to the plate um as of may 29th i am very happy to report we are open to business and we are very grateful and happy to be back to the business of using the hall to honor our veterans and host community gatherings and events in june i started having events a couple of weeks ago but in june we have 24 events booked so we'll be very very busy over the next few months few uh the months in terms of my budget um it's level funded except for and this happens every year i have to do a slight increase in the elevator you'll see the elevator maintenance line item and that is directly reflective of union labor weight rates go up every year and i just call the elevator contract and say how much is it going up and that's what they give me um so before i take any questions i um i would like to introduce um the chair of the soldier sales memorial building board of trustees which is mary sexton good evening um it's a pleasure to be here and it was great to hear kathy speak i really had an ongoing weekly review of what she was doing and how she was doing but i have to say she gave up her whole year honestly and she won't tell you this but i know because i've been here in this hall at 10 o'clock at night and she has been here if it's necessary she's here and i don't think the counselors i'm sure you know what she does but you don't know how well she does it and how during this pandemic year um thank god we had her because she took charge and and got the right people to you know help her out and it made the city run smoother and i really appreciate everything she's done so thank you thank you

▶ 30:27 Speaker 3: thank you miss pickett are you are you ready to build questions

▶ 30:41 Speaker 3: Can anyone hear that?

▶ 30:47 Speaker 3: Ms. Piggott, can you hear us?

▶ 30:49 Speaker 4: Yes, I didn't hear any questions. I see Lila right there, but I didn't. Excuse me, Councilman. Sorry, let me make some comments.

▶ 30:57 Jeff McNaught: Councillor Migliorelli, I also want to recognize that Councillor Migliorelli joined us just after I called the attendance earlier. So I want to recognize her attendance. And we'll go first to Councillor Migliorelli, and then I have Councillor Garipay next.

▶ 31:11 Leila Migliorelli: Thank you Mr. Chairman and thank you Ms. Pickett-Broder and Ms. Sexton for being here tonight. I don't have any questions I just want to say that's just an amazing list of activities and things you've done this year. You kind of just almost walked us through the entire pandemic and just telling that the story of everything that happened it's kind of hard to remember how much has actually happened and changed and I just want to say thank you so much for stepping up and taking on this new new new activities and duties and really helping the the residents of melrose i mean you really went above and beyond um and i you know not something you could have ever planned for and we really stepped up so i just want to say thank you um on behalf of

▶ 32:03 Speaker 3: melrose for for helping us all thank you thank you thank you thank you mr chairman thank you

▶ 32:07 Mark Garipay: Director Pickett-Brown. Always wonderful to see you, Mrs. Sexton. I have one. I just have a question. You mentioned the bookings in June where we had quite a few. We get a lot of people rebooked after they canceled. How do you, is the phones been working good? How do you, I know it's going to be a while for people to feel comfortable, but what's, you had a black ball. What would you think the bookings going to be?

▶ 32:38 Speaker 4: Actually, it's very good news people. I'm not. Getting people who don't want to book, like, I'm, I'm starting to book like, October's pretty well booked right now. I have a lot of the people, like, it was 50% of the people with the board voted to immediately refund their money when the events got canceled. But 25% of them had credits and all of those people that took credits have rebooked for either this time in June or next fiscal year. The Meryl Symphony has rebooked completely, the Meryl's Youth Ballet, the Nutcracker, their dates are already booked. So, fortunately, I know it seems like a hesitation to come back, but I'd say a good 70% of my bookings have already rebooked. What I have not gotten yet, and this is the hesitancy, is the people that do the fundraisers for their schools or their local softball teams. That hasn't happened yet. I do anticipate that happening. I just think people need time to get comfortable with going into, for example, a comedy show here. The Knights of Columbus has already booked their event for November. So. Yeah, I next year, we're going to take a little bit of hit on the revenue because I did have to move a lot of the credits over till next year. But I think the year, if it's going to 23, it will be pretty much back to normal.

▶ 33:56 Mark Garipay: Will any of that be able to be recouped to the federal federal stimulus? Do you think or.

▶ 34:02 Speaker 4: I'm trying, I'm trying, I have in the process of applying.

▶ 34:10 Mark Garipay: Great thanks. I know this isn't regarding the budget, but I started on your agenda the other night. I believe it was the other night on the exterior and envelope repairs. Is that still moving forward? Are we still on pace to potentially start that in October?

▶ 34:30 Speaker 4: Yes, it is actually, it is 100% on target. The, they have picked the person. I'm sure you'd be Bonnie rice race for the engineer will address it, but it's definitely on target. She comes every month and addresses the progress to our board of trustees and we anticipating construction starting in October and due to whether some of it may have to not be having done through the winter. But the completion date hopefully will be next spring.

▶ 34:57 Mark Garipay: Great. Thank you. Thank you for all you guys. Everyone did at the Memorial Hall this past year.

▶ 35:07 Speaker 3: Vice Chair Eccles.

▶ 35:10 Jack Eccles: Thank you so much for your presentation, Ms. Piggy-Bruder. At this time, if there's no other councillors, I'd like to make a motion to move the bottom line. Second.

▶ 35:23 Jeff McNaught: We have a motion to move the bottom line of Sailors and Soldiers of Memorial Hall. That's Department 693, made by Vice Chair Eccles. Seconded by President Sinella on discussion.

▶ 35:37 Speaker 3: Seeing none, Madam clerk, will you please call the roll?

▶ 35:43 Speaker 1: Chair McNaught? Yes. Yes. Vice Chair Eccles? Yes. Councilor Tramontozzi? Yes. Yes. Councilor McMaster? Yes. Councilor Garipay? Yes. Councilor Grigoraitis? Yes. Councilor Migliorelli? Yes. Councilor Stewart?

▶ 36:03 Speaker 1: Yes, yes, counselor Thomas. Yes. Yes. President, yes, 11. Yes.

▶ 36:11 Jeff McNaught: I'm sorry, 10. Yes, the motion passes director to get broader and share sexton. Thanks so much for being here with us this evening. We appreciate your presentation and all your.

▶ 36:27 Speaker 3: Thank you and next we have.

▶ 36:31 Jeff McNaught: Sorry around documents next we have department 171, the conservation commission coming into the room.

▶ 36:42 Speaker 3: Mr. can you hear us? Mr.

▶ 36:59 Speaker 5: The bar mission who are dialing in.

▶ 37:06 Speaker 5: I'm looking at the list of participants and I think there may be a couple of our commission members who may be dialing in Ryan Sloan.

▶ 37:18 Speaker 1: He's our treasurer. So, are you saying bring them in the room?

▶ 37:25 Speaker 5: Yes, yes, Jason as well.

▶ 37:57 Speaker 5: So, Jason and Ryan are 2 of our commission members and Ryan's our treasurer. My name is Richard. You said I'm the chair of the conservation commission. I've been chair for. Just a couple of months now, I've been a member for about 15 years. This is our 1st time at our appropriations committee meeting. Our long time chair, Susan Murphy, retired recently, so she used to handle all of this. So this is all new to us. So, welcome to your guides as to how the process works here. We've had a big turnover on the commission and we're starting a fresh.

▶ 38:45 Jeff McNaught: Okay, Mr. Doucette, what I would just say is that you just give a brief overview of anything that you'd like to highlight From the last year, and going forward in the FY22. And then take any questions from counselors that may have any.

▶ 39:02 Speaker 5: Great, most of our work relates to managing the conservation land in town. There are a number of parcels in town that have been. Deed it to the city under our management and the other aspect of our work is as a permanent authority under the Local wetland ordinance and the state wetlands protection act so we meet once or twice a month. And residents come to us seeking permits out of the wellness protection act when they'd like to do construction on their property, building additions, that sort of thing. And when they're within 100 feet of a wetlands, they need to come to the local conservation commission for a permit. And we hold public hearings to deal with the permit requests under the state law in the in the local ordinance. um and the managing the conservation land is something we uh we do with a number of volunteers uh and our one staff person eric devlin who couldn't make it tonight uh and we organize cleanups once or twice a year and last year i think it was last maybe the year before we started also doing um some pulling of uh invasive water chestnut from al pond you may have read about that which it turns out is a much bigger effort than we can do with the volunteers that we have and we've been in some discussions with the Parks Department and the Mayor's Office on how to fund that. The biggest item in our budget annually is herbicide treatment for El Pond and we also at times do towners pond and swayton's pond all the ponds in town are real really shallow uh and all ponds over time turn into swamps uh the sediment fills up the pond and uh people would prefer to live next to a pond than a swamp so we're constantly fighting against nature uh to keep the algae down and keep the uh keep the ponds as they are as ponds particularly alpon because it's so iconic in the middle of the city um and that that herbicide treatment is the largest uh line item has been for many years i'm guessing decades ago the city didn't know where to put that so they put it in our budget it could easily be the dpw or the parks department or somebody else there is at this time one private contractor that does this type of work in the state. They've been sort of gobbling up their competition in New England. So we do those herbicide treatments to keep the algae down in the ponds each year, which one depends on how bad it can be. And Ryan, if you've got anything else you'd like to add, feel free to pitch in.

▶ 42:00 Speaker 3: I would just thank you, Richard, and thank you everyone for hearing us today. I would also add we have um a trail stewardship program there's about 12 members in it um they walk the trails regularly through town to let us know if any maintenance needs to be done um and you know we've for the as richard said for the last few years have uh gone out in kayaks and canoes uh to hand pull the water chestnut in el pond um and have been trying to sort of manage that invasive as best we can. It is a bit of a losing battle. Some of what we do is just routine maintenance for the year and the hope, as Richard mentioned, is really to, you know, plan an assault that is a little bit more permanent and so that we can maintain El Pond in a manner that it really needs to be maintained for the longer vision in Melrose.

▶ 42:56 Speaker 5: And the last thing that we're contemplating at this time is our agent works about 10 hours week and a lot of the work that's done to administer the uh the wetlands protection act and the ordinance and the management of the conservation land was being done on a volunteer basis by susan murphy for many years she's now retired so to help fill that void we're looking into the future to increase our agents hours from from 10 hours a week to two days a week two full days so increase our that line item maybe six thousand dollars or so so i think we were very lucky for many years to have susan doing work that in other municipalities the paid staff does it and there's no one on the commission that has the time available to do that free work that susan was doing for the city so we hope to increase eric's uh hours so that he can fulfill those functions

▶ 44:04 Speaker 5: I'd be happy to take questions.

▶ 44:07 Speaker 3: Thank you, gentlemen. Councilor Garipay.

▶ 44:15 Mark Garipay: Thank you all for being here tonight. I have one quick question regarding the water chestnuts. El Pond is in the center of Ward 4 and I see it overtaking the pond. We have an order coming in front of us for some money on next week. And I believe that's a 5 year over 5 years that that is what it's going to be a lot of. Do we have a dollar amount that that would just if we went and did it all at once what the cost would be to remove. The water chestnuts, if we've got a company to give that.

▶ 44:50 Speaker 5: Dollar amount, we've got a bid. I think they, I believe the amount that the big we got from its solitude lake management was 27,500. So, that's the total and what they do is they have essentially is sort of a specialized backhoe on a very that floats out on the pond on on pontoons and it's, it's called a hydro rake and it just, it just rakes up and pulls, pulls the plants out. And then you bring it over to the shore and then then we have to deal with it. And if it's not too much of it. Then the can deal with it, it's a plan, so it can be composted like any plant. So, I think we need some aggressive harvesting of the water chestnut. If you really wanted the pond to be deeper so the water chestnut wouldn't set its roots in, then the pond needs to be mucked out, and in the old days, ponds would be drained and bulldozers would get in there and just scoop the muck out. Most people, I think, don't realize El Pond is only a few feet deep. If the muck was more firm, you could walk across it in the summertime, but it's very deep muck that is built up over time and it is possible to hire firms to to vacuum out the muck. And make it deeper and more pleasant. But that would be, I'm guessing several 100,000 dollars. So, at the very least, I think we need to get the mechanical harvesting done.

▶ 46:25 Speaker 2: Right, Richard, probably worth adding to what happens with the water chestnut is it forms a whole bunch of nutlets. The nutlets are barbed. They eventually fall off and they set up in the sediment and so a single plant can produce hundreds of those in a given year. They set up in the sediment. And if you don't pull them before they mature and drop off, they're viable in the sediment for 5, 8, 10 years. And so the execution of the strategy over five years will have you getting everything from that given year and prevent other nutlets from dropping. And then you're kind of catching up to it. And five years from now, it's gonna be back closer to hand pulling and an easier sort of maintenance plan.

▶ 47:17 Mark Garipay: Great, thank you. And one other question on the conservation maintenance line item, I'm assuming that's the treatment of the ponds, the annual treatment of the ponds. And we have towners, you get the ponds up at Mount Hood. Is that really enough money to do what we want to do in order to keep the ponds healthy?

▶ 47:37 Speaker 5: The ponds up at Mount Hood, the parks department does that. And that's, so that's additional funds that they have. So we've done in the past, towners ponds, swains ponds, and elk ponds. It's enough so long as we understand purely a band-aid so the the chemical treatment what it does is in a freshwater environment there's very little phosphorus in the water and phosphorus is a nutrient so the chemical makes the phosphorus particles heavier and they sink to the bottom and they're tied up in the sediment so there's no phosphorus in the water and that's what helps keep the algae population down. Ideally, in the ideal world, we'd muck out the pond and we'd find out, well, why is there so much phosphorus in the water? Urban ponds tend to have a lot of phosphorus from sewer leaks into the street drains, old septic systems, even things like dog poop in the streets feeds the phosphorus in the water column so i think it would be advantageous for the city to better understand why is the phosphorus so high going into the pond and that would require some study and again that would cost money and we'd be happy to pitch in what funding we have we have some funds left over from an old grant lakes and ponds grants about just under eight thousand dollars that could go toward that effort but to do a real good study of understanding where the inputs are why is the phosphorus so high uh could take a lot more than that but until then we'll keep putting band-aids on because that's that's what we have on the budget great thank you very

▶ 49:27 Speaker 3: much thank you council garibay council mcmaster thank you all for being here uh mr ducet you

▶ 49:32 Shawn M. MacMaster: mentioned an interest in uh increasing mr devlin's hours and um the reason i raised that is the budget we have before us for this particular department is level funded so i'm wondering is that a request that was made directly to the administration the request hasn't been made uh

▶ 49:49 Speaker 5: since we're not familiar with how the budgetary process works it's something we just discussed at our last two meetings so it's really it's something brand new so we'd be open to your guidance as to the best way to move forward to do that so um we as a council are not able to

▶ 50:07 Shawn M. MacMaster: increase budgets we can only decrease so i would encourage you to have conversations with the administration uh if we pass this budget uh and it's level funding that's not to say that there may not be resources that the administration can't find so i would encourage you uh to have those conversations directly uh with the mayor's office thank you thank you thank you council mcmaster

▶ 50:36 Jeff McNaught: seeing no other hands raised what is the will of the committee i want you to recommend the bottom

▶ 50:47 Jeff McNaught: line second second motion to recommend department 171 the conservation commission um to move the bottom line made by councillor Garipay seconded by councillor Migliorelli on discussion seeing none we're gonna have the madam clerk call the roll but i just want to acknowledge that councillor Jamaleddine is with us she joined us a few minutes ago but i was just waiting for a break um so we're 11 strong again um madam clerk will you please call the role chair mcnaught yes

▶ 51:20 Speaker 1: vice chair eccles yes councillor Tramontozzi yes councillor mcmaster yes councillor Garipay yes Yes. Councilor Grigoraitis. Yes. Councilor Migliorelli. Yes. Councilor Stewart. Yes. Councilor Thomas. Yes. Councilor Jamaleddine. Yes. President Zanella. Yes. 11 yes.

▶ 51:57 Jeff McNaught: The motion passes. Thank you for being here, Mr. Doucette, Mr. Jankaitis and Mr. Sloan. We appreciate it.

▶ 52:06 Speaker 5: Thank you. Thank you.

▶ 52:09 Jeff McNaught: Next, we have the Marist Police Department. We have Chief Lyle coming into the room. This is Department 211.

▶ 52:23 Speaker 1: Chief Lyle, can you hear us?

▶ 52:25 Speaker 3: I can hear you.

▶ 52:25 Speaker 6: Can you see me?

▶ 52:28 Speaker 5: Not yet.

▶ 52:30 Speaker 6: There you are. Sorry.

▶ 52:36 Speaker 3: Good evening, Chief.

▶ 52:37 Speaker 6: Thank you.

▶ 52:38 Speaker 3: Good evening, everyone.

▶ 52:40 Speaker 6: Thank you for this presentation this evening. And my head's messing, I'm sorry.

▶ 52:48 Speaker 3: Well, thank you. you all have a copy of our powerpoint i hope

▶ 52:52 Speaker 6: they do first off i you know before i go anywhere i have to thank the murray's police department for the past 12 months these officers our admin staff everybody here from the maintenance worker to

▶ 53:05 Speaker 3: parking people everybody during covid uh we the covid was present in the

▶ 53:11 Speaker 6: building here uh officers were responding to serious

▶ 53:16 Speaker 3: not just medical calls but disturbance calls knowing covid was present in that house or that apartment officers went in there they donned equipment they went in there and they

▶ 53:23 Speaker 6: took care of business and you know what i can't thank them all enough for for their support over

▶ 53:30 Speaker 3: this past 12 month period and also i'd like to thank kim upton the powerpoint that you're looking

▶ 53:33 Speaker 6: at was put together by kim upton and a lot of kudos to kim for thanking her for doing that she is president of the room now with that being said um you have my powerpoint i'm available for

▶ 53:45 Speaker 6: questions um i know your time is precious so i'm ready for questions does anyone have questions

▶ 54:00 Jeff McNaught: for the chief okay seeing no questions um um what is the will of the committee

▶ 54:12 Shawn M. MacMaster: councillor mcmaster yes mr chairman i do have one question uh chief lyle uh good evening uh thank you for being here uh and thank you and miss upton for this presentation i think you've taken it to a new level um and what we have in front of us uh is excellent so so thank you for that drawing your attention to the powerpoint presentation the very last slide focuses on overdue payments and if i'm understanding uh this slide correctly does this relate to overdue payments for uh hired police details yes it is standing those are funds that we're

▶ 54:51 Speaker 3: We're unable to collect, they're all at least 60 days old. Some of these vendors here have gone out of business. They change and then they open up a different company. It's constantly a chase with them. I've gone to court myself.

▶ 55:03 Speaker 6: I've been rejected. They asked that I bring the city solicitor in city solicitor, take out the complaints against the companies and chief.

▶ 55:13 Shawn M. MacMaster: I see that approximately 43,000 dollars is attributed to Melrose public works.

▶ 55:23 Speaker 6: Can you explain what that is that's outstanding detail work that officers have performed or outside.

▶ 55:29 Speaker 6: Agencies have performed working for for various projects. I know that they operate on the grants and bonds, but some of their stuff is a little behind.

▶ 55:39 Shawn M. MacMaster: So, if that were to be paid, how is that done? Is that an inter departmental. Payment does that is that come from the Department of public works?

▶ 55:48 Speaker 3: Yes, actually a check is sent over in our office.

▶ 55:51 Shawn M. MacMaster: And is that the same for what's outstanding from the school department?

▶ 55:55 Speaker 6: Yes, all city departments pass by check via in-of-office mail.

▶ 56:05 Shawn M. MacMaster: So when that comes to your department, what then happens to it? Where does it go? Or where should it go if it comes?

▶ 56:14 Speaker 3: Well, when we do receive payment from whether it's an outside vendor or EPW or any other

▶ 56:19 Speaker 6: Agency in the city, because then it's processed in the admin office and it's deposited into our detailed account.

▶ 56:28 Shawn M. MacMaster: Is there any process in place right now to work that out? Internally to recoup the, those details. I mean, that's 43,000 dollars.

▶ 56:38 Speaker 6: We went to the level of DPW.

▶ 56:43 Speaker 3: We created a portal for them because we are constantly going back and forth with information for them. I repeated documents, we created a portal. So all our details detail slips invoices or everything are in that portal for every single detail by number.

▶ 57:01 Shawn M. MacMaster: Okay, and for the, the external. Payment, so it looks like there are a number of them stop and shop. Miller's Wakefield hospital. Other entities that have requested police details, and it looks like the amount owed if I. Did my map correctly is 19,805 dollars and 15 cents. You mentioned that some of those entities are no longer operating or they're operating under another name for those that are still operating. We know who they are. I would encourage you with new city solicitor starting, maybe to have some conversations about trying to recoup that money. $42,000, almost $43,000 internally, almost $20,000 externally that's due. I think there should be some effort from the administration to try to get you the support. I don't think you as police chief should have to be going into district court filing complaints. There is a mechanism to recoup that money and I'd like to see that happen. To the extent I can be a supportive

▶ 58:16 Jeff McNaught: chief please let me know well thank you thank you thank you counselor mcmaster vice chair

▶ 58:21 Jack Eccles: thanks chief for being here i'm just looking at um you noted in the presentation it's a generators 25 years old is that something that you think you might be looking for a replacement at some point is it nearing the end of its life you know what it is as everything ages like any

▶ 58:36 Speaker 3: vehicle the longer the longer in life the more cost we're just anticipating additional replacement

▶ 58:49 Speaker 3: a few years ago we had to replace the radiator it had you know brought it out that was a couple

▶ 58:51 Speaker 6: thousand dollars so it's an it's an estimate on what what will go next gotcha do you see it being

▶ 58:57 Jack Eccles: cost effective to replace it in the next few years i don't even know what it would cost to replace

▶ 59:04 Speaker 6: that unit i don't remember it's been quite some time since it was installed the last time we replaced it i don't know nobody in the board was there but we had manholes blowing up on

▶ 59:12 Speaker 3: main street i don't know if you folks remember that um and our generator had uh cocked out so

▶ 59:22 Speaker 3: it didn't work um 9-1-1 system was jeopardized we had battery life we had to bring in verizon

▶ 59:26 Speaker 6: to come in and assist us so um it was a big deal then gotcha and then my other question is just

▶ 59:31 Jack Eccles: the overnight traffic enforcement officer is that budgeted it doesn't i don't think that's budgeted for right now that's that's a goal of yours to add later that would be the evening shift

▶ 59:47 Speaker 3: that would be support support the traffic division here um there was no means for us to address the

▶ 59:49 Speaker 6: 25 miles an hour when the city went to 25 citywide and as well as well as everybody in the room here

▶ 59:57 Speaker 6: i get complaints that you get complaints as well as about traffic in general i think it's

▶ 1:00:03 Speaker 6: the biggest complaint in the city is generally traffic and that's something we're trying to

▶ 1:00:09 Speaker 6: address we run it we run a real thin shift and this would give us the ability to have a traffic

▶ 1:00:11 Speaker 3: officer during the day and a traffic officer in the evening it would be absorbed in the budget

▶ 1:00:22 Speaker 3: it's not additional salary there'd be a stipend involved but it has to be negotiated with the

▶ 1:00:24 Speaker 6: union and that's something we're looking forward to because both contracts expire at the end of

▶ 1:00:31 Speaker 7: of the month. Gotcha. Thanks, Chief. Appreciate it.

▶ 1:00:40 Jen Grigoraitis: Councillor Koukouridis. Sorry, I promise I'll be very quick. Thank you, Chief, for being here tonight. I just wanted, the PowerPoint is fantastic and thank you to Ms. Upton for putting it together. I just wanted to highlight slide six with your goals and objectives and just, I know I've talked with you and some of your officers about all of these things and I'm just really thrilled to see such a forward-thinking, holistic approach to some of our concerns, particularly around calls related to mental health and families that are involved with multiple systems and agencies. So it's just great to see that. And yes, traffic is one of the top calls that I get as a ward counselor, and I always appreciate the responsiveness from you and your department on those calls. And I'm hoping that we're able to come up with some more creative solutions, but it It is always going to be a perpetual problem. So thank you for this information and I will motion to move the bottom line.

▶ 1:01:36 Speaker 7: Second.

▶ 1:01:38 Jeff McNaught: You have a motion to move the bottom line of the Police Department, Department 211, made by Councilor Grigoraitis, seconded by President Cinella. On discussion, seeing none, Madam Clerk, will you please call the roll?

▶ 1:01:54 Speaker 1: Chair McNaught. Yes. Vice Chair Eccles? Yes. Councilor Tramontozzi? Yes. Councilor McMaster? Yes. Councilor Garipay? Yes. Councilor Grigoraitis? Yes. Councilor Migliorelli? Yes. Councilor Stewart? Yes. Yes. Councilor Thomas? Yes. Yes. Councilor Jamaleddine? Yes. President Cinella? Yes.

▶ 1:02:30 Jeff McNaught: Yes, 11. Yes, motion passes. We also have, um. Account 2665, the false alarm account chief. I don't know.

▶ 1:02:43 Jeff McNaught: Does anything further you want to say on that? Or if anyone has any questions. I think it's probably something we can just vote. So, I would ask what's the will of the committee on. 2021 account 2665.

▶ 1:03:07 Robb Stewart: Mr. Chair, I'll make a motion to recommend to the bottom line.

▶ 1:03:14 Jeff McNaught: Second, you have a motion to move the bottom line made by Councilor Stewart, seconded by Councilor Thomas. Madam Clerk, will you please call the roll? Chair McNaught?

▶ 1:03:26 Speaker 1: Yes. Vice Chair Eccles? Yes. Councilor Tramontozzi? Yes. Yes. Councilor McMaster? Yes.

▶ 1:03:39 Speaker 1: Councillor Garipay. Yes. Councillor Grigoraitis. Yes. Councillor Migliorelli. Yes.

▶ 1:03:46 Speaker 1: Councillor Stewart. Yes. Councillor Thomas. Yes. Councillor Jamaleddine. Yes. President Sonalas. Yes. 11 yes. Question passes. Chief, I know we have a free cash

▶ 1:04:00 Jeff McNaught: your order coming up for you in a moment um first i just want to say thank you to you and miss upton we we said it last year we'll say it again um you're the way that you present uh your information for these meetings is the model um it's easily digestible um easy to see and um we just want to thank you and the whole force for everything you've done over the last year um Looking forward to putting this pandemic behind us, but really appreciate the efforts of the entire department. Now, we just have some cleanup work to do on a couple of orders that we've gotten used to holding in committee before we move on to the next order. I'll entertain a motion to hold 2021-122 in committee.

▶ 1:04:58 Robb Stewart: I'll make a motion to hold order 1, 2, 1 dash 1, 22.

▶ 1:05:07 Jeff McNaught: Okay, the motion to hold 2021 dash 1, 22 in committee that's the city of Maro's operating budget made by counselor Stewart. And it by counselor, Gary, Adam clerk, we please call the roll.

▶ 1:05:20 Speaker 1: Chairman not vice chair. Yes. Yeah. Yes. Yeah.