ORDER-2020-89 : City of Melrose Operating Budget for Fiscal Year 2021 in the amount of $88,397,961.08 (Eighty-Eight Million, Three Hundred Ninety-Seven Thousand, Nine Hundred Sixty-One Dollars and Eight Cents).

Transcript (~8 min @ 3:07)

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

▶ 3:07 Speaker 3: Motion to suspend the rules. Second.

▶ 3:09 Christopher Cinella: Motion to suspend the rules made by President Grigoraitis, seconded by Councillor Stewart and Clerk Calderon.

▶ 3:16 Speaker 1: Vice Chair Migliorelli? Yes. Councillor Tramontozzi? Yes. Councillor McMaster? Yes. Councillor McNaught? Yes. Councillor Eccles? Yes. Councillor Garipay? Yes. Councillor Stewart? Yes. Councillor Thomas? Yes. Councillor Jamaleddine? Yes. President Grigoraitis? Yes, chairman. Yes 11. yes. Members of the, I'm going to make them a trigger.

▶ 3:48 Christopher Cinella: Reminder for the public, this is a continuation of order 2020-89. City of Melrose operating budget for fiscal year. 2021 in the amount of 88,397,961 dollars in 8 cents. And we have our site 196, the energy commission, and just so the speakers tonight are aware, counselors will be raising their hands. That's for me to put them in queue. And also, if everybody could just stay on mute, which I believe everybody is except for Councilman McNaught, that's fine.

▶ 4:29 Speaker 4: Ms. Nelson, the floor is yours.

▶ 4:33 Speaker 5: good evening thank you for having us here tonight like you've got busy lives going it's been a busy fiscal year 2020 for the Energy Commission so we work with the sustainability managers and we are all volunteers who use our time to help the city its residents businesses and nonprofits save energy and money plus we're on the way to reducing our greenhouse gas emissions so as you probably all know Melrose is one of 15 Boston area communities that are aiming for net zero emissions in 2050s and there are many bricks in that row. Mexworth in fiscal year 21 was going to continue building on those bricks but here's kind of an overview of what we were doing and plans for 2021. Our big projects, one was finished up in 2020, was the Big Roof Solar Program. We've been promoting community electricity aggregation and we're just kicking off the Heat Start program. So in fiscal 2020 we wrapped up Big Roof Solar. This is an outreach program for businesses and nonprofits in Melrose. The idea of putting solar installations on some of the big roofs that are here in the city. It actually received a SolSmart Innovation Award from the Department of Energy in November and we learned a lot from this experience. We talked to a lot of businesses and then we worked with three houses of worship to find financing so and tax credits and work them through regulatory issues that were kind of different because instead of the residential ones we've worked in the past all of these solar fields were between 25 kilowatts and we were hoping up to 300 we had three successful installations for about 100 kilowatts of solar energy. But we're also very excited and put some energy into Mellor's participation in municipal aggregation. So community electricity aggregate program is something the city's offering. So we're offering a hundred percent local renewable electricity at a price that's very competitive. And so we've been working hard to spread the word about this to the city electricity customers. So the rates we've negotiated are valid through 2021 and we think this is a great opportunity. We'll continue promoting that this year. Right now, because last fall we signed up to participate in the Heat Smart Cool Smart program, which you may recall was one of your first orders of business in January to accept that grant. So Governor Baker has identified that having heating and cooling that comes from electricity is one of the key components that residents can do in order to reach a climate neutral 2020. so the heat smart program is educating consumers about air source heat burns or heat pumps geothermal heating and then the opportunities for solar water heating we see this as kind of a win-win because maybe not everybody's ready to take that step now but they can learn about it for the future and for those who have been thinking about updating a furnace or adding air conditioning this gives an opportunity for some group buying with vetted vendors that makes it easier for residents to move ahead that is also actively participating in the zero climate action program and melrose is one of three climate community pilot communities so we're working with the massachusetts area planning council along with native in arlington so we're developing a framework we've identified where our greenhouse gas emissions come from and then a playbook for the other communities and so as fiscal 2021 what 2021 you're going to see us coming to you with what we've learned and how we need your support along the way advocacy actually has been core to mac ever since it began building codes, standards, regulations, all of these things are in the background but have a large impact on our energy use. So in 2020, fiscal year 2020, we encourage the building inspector, the office of planning community development to participate and register in the international code voting, which they did. WHEREAS very happy to see that. WHEREAS also following as the state regulatory organizations evaluate how they're going to establish the next level of the building code and the road that they might take to do that because that has been under debate in the last year and then we've also taken a peek at what's going on here in Melrose because it's really important that the buildings we build and the buildings that we renovate are as energy efficient as possible so in the past we've done a lot of community outreach we've been at places like Healthy Melrose, the Victorian Fair and of course Farmer's Market and obviously with COVID we've had to kind of switch gears so we're doing a lot more and we've launched a social media campaign creating a lot of content that people can use at their leisure to educate themselves and participate in the things that are going on so thank you so much for your support for MEC in the past and hope that all these bricks will fall in place and eventually will be carbon

▶ 10:04 Christopher Cinella: neutral in 2050. thank you i'll open it up for questions now we have counselor mcnaught

▶ 10:09 Jeff McNaught: has a question uh i don't really have a question i'm more or less just wanted to say how impressed i am with what you do with the budget that you have uh appreciate the presentation that you've given us tonight and the work that you do year round and um i don't think this is going to be a controversial thing for me to say uh to move the bottom line forward second

▶ 10:35 Christopher Cinella: we have a motion to move the bottom line forward by councillor mcnaught seconded by councillor thomas on discussion anybody else i didn't see any other hands go up seeing none madam clerk

▶ 10:51 Speaker 1: please call the roll vice chair Migliorelli yes council tramitosi yes councillor mcmaster yes

▶ 11:03 Speaker 1: Councilor McNaught? Yes. Councilor Eccles? Yes. Councilor Garipay? Yes. Councilor Stewart? Yes. Councilor Thomas? Yes. Councilor Jamaleddine? Yes. President Grigoraitis? Yes. Chairman Sinella? Yes. 11 yes.