ORDER-2020-103 : Divided order: An Appropriation in the amount of $579,000 from Free cash (account 01-324001) to various capital accounts as set forth herein.

Transcript (~1 h 5 min @ 1:19:55)

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▶ 1:19:52 Christopher Cinella: uh divided order 2020-70 which was an appropriation for 579 000 from free cash this was in conjunction with at four orders three which were held in committee for a department which equipment drainage discussion I don't know if they're broader did you want to speak to any of these you're on mute

▶ 1:20:30 Paul Brodeur: there you go y'all still hear me so I want to I want to thank you for the opportunity to speak and I want to put this in a little bit of context for for you. So the city started on, these are going to be very rough numbers. The city started out with roughly $5 million in certified free cash. And as a general proposition, it is incumbent upon the city through the council to dispose of that money. I don't mean dispose of in the in the bad way about allocated before the end of the fiscal year and you all know that we have very significant capital needs of various sizes throughout the city and that we were hoping to in a very structured way with the vast majority of this money towards those needs following the cip and when we introduced this first kind of tranche if you will this first allocation um it was with the with the understanding or expressed to some if not all of you there was that there was more to come um and then you know the wheels kind of came off the cart with with covid and the significant threat to both you know certain local revenue streams and certainly uh really putting our state aid in significant jeopardy so that caused us to kind of call a halt to some of the things we picked out what we thought was the most the most pressing um and asked you to kind of hold these hold these in advance if you will these are all still i think very very important needs um but i want to put it in the context of this fiscal um problem and in the context of all the free cash so what we are planning to propose to the council um in fairly short order is to essentially take half the free cash around 2.5 million dollars and put it in various stabilization or reserve funds one of which i think is before you tonight as a hedge against um possible disruptions in our in our cash flow and our funding and our revenue um in the next fiscal year and potentially beyond uh we all have seen i've shared with you guys the uh revenue forecasts that are kind of all over the map uh there is a great deal of uncertainty around the um how the state is going to come in we plan to give you a budget that is very conservative in terms of what we expect for state aid but we still want to build that hedge um because so that would take that would essentially reduce free cash from five million to two and a half if you and your wisdom decide uh to support that plan that leaves roughly 2.5, a chunk of which you've already about $850,000 worth. You have already approved what is before you right now is about a little shy of 580. And that would leave, you know, roughly a million bucks left for us to allocate with additional orders down to you before the end of fiscal year so that is that is kind of the fiscal context of where we are we think that that is a fruit way to go putting those reserves in place as opposed to making some much-needed capital investment because the future is is is unsecure right now but that is a that is a significant hedge and I do think we have the capacity to do these things that are all needed there are folks prepared to defend them but certainly if you in your wisdom want to want to hold the order for a brief amount of time before moving forward after hearing the information tonight I would certainly understand where you're coming from just being mindful that it is it is important to act on free cash before the end of the year I think you know prudently in advance of the end of the year would probably be is certainly what I would recommend so with that as kind of a pretext I know that there are members of the administration ready to discuss various parts of the order with you we welcome that discussion thank you

▶ 1:25:14 Speaker 1: see anybody anybody any questions we have I'm gonna bring in Lena director

▶ 1:25:21 Speaker 1: Public Works and we have the director of IT brought into the room Elena can you

▶ 1:25:41 Speaker 9: hear us yes can you hear me I can okay Neil can you hear us do you want to go

▶ 1:25:58 Speaker 9: first any of the orders sure yeah so I'm gonna be speaking on three three of the items the generator the school security and I believe the third one was the Lebanon and Sylvan drainage but Kristin can you clarify are we discussing all

▶ 1:26:22 Speaker 1: three of those tonight there's four items on the table it's exactly what you said the generator the door school security or locks Sylvan Street Lebanon Street and additional school security, middle school, school

▶ 1:26:34 Speaker 9: security. Good, Neil. Okay. And the fourth one is is the one that Neil will be speaking to. So I will start off with the generator. So we have been in desperate need of a generator for City Hall for some time now. It really came to light a couple of years ago when we had a power outage at City Hall. And I believe it was the first power outage after Neil had started as the IT director and a number of issues were brought to light that there were some sort of temporary fixes that the prior IT department and DPW administration had used to address when City Hall loses power but they were very haphazard and not not a real solution to this problem so the issue at City Hall is that when when the power goes out the server room in City Hall loses all power and the equipment in that server room runs communications for the police department the fire department the majority of our school buildings and City Hall itself so all of those buildings lose all phone communications they lose email internet connectivity a number of

▶ 1:28:06 Speaker 10: functions neil do you want to add anything to that yeah uh so um as you mentioned they we lose um the phone systems regarding the phone system we're in the midst of installing a new phone system and And because of the lack of consistent power for the City Hall, we've had to work around that. So we've spent extra money now. Now we're spending extra money trying to work around the problem of not having a generator at City Hall. Additionally, you know, if we had a long-term outage, which is very possible, we would lose our ability to function on MUNIS as well. So MUNIS is a server that runs in a server, well, a bunch of servers that run in that server room, and we would lose access to that. would lose our email i think elena mentioned that um right now we're losing phones to public safety and city hall because we run all those phones back forth we're also the distribution center for the schools so everything in the city goes through that server room including the phones at the schools uh so we would lose phones well we would lose phones at six of the school buildings and routing so no internet no email for the schools I mean everything would be shut down so it's kind of the crux of the entire system so this project was

▶ 1:29:53 Speaker 9: identified as an extremely high priority it was it was named as the number one priority in the cip process it was also named as the number one priority in our natural hazard mitigation planning that we did last year to qualify for fema funds and it was the number one priority identified in our state municipal vulnerability preparedness program which was dealing with climate resiliency so the natural hazards mitigation plan deals with current future natural hazards um everything under the sun from hurricanes tornadoes snowstorms um and then the vulnerability preparedness deals with it takes that a step further and deals with um climate resiliency and changes that could happen in the future and in both of those processes as well as the cip this was identified as the city's number one priority so we have applied for multiple grants for this generator we've not been successful it's very very difficult to get generators funded because they're not a lot of a lot of these funding opportunities you get extra points for having nature based solutions and things you know green infrastructure things that are much more fun to fund in a little more modern in today's thinking but unfortunately backup power sometimes is still just what's necessary to solve a problem and so our latest grant application is what's called a pre-disaster mitigation grant with FEMA so this is the second time that I've submitted this project to FEMA and the third time that it's been submitted in the last decade or so to FEMA and this time around they have said that we have a very good likelihood of receiving the funds but they strongly encouraged us to initiate the design now because we have a 25% match on the grant funds the total grant or the total

▶ 1:32:04 Speaker 9: project cost let's pull it up here including our contribution is estimated at 514,000 and so by doing the design now we would be able to have those design costs if we get the grant they count as our match so there's no no loss of funds and procuring the design services and starting that design right now makes it so that they see that we're very serious about initiating this project and it becomes more of a shovel ready project when the time comes for them to decide on the grant which is December so between now and December we would hope to get through the majority of that design process we would have documents all ready to go out to bid for construction and then when FEMA hopefully decides to give us the money they we fill out some forms that allow us to count the $105,000 that we would expend on the design as our match, and then they would give us the other three quarters of the funding at that time. So we would have basically no capital outlay for the construction portion of the project if the grant is approved.

▶ 1:33:17 Paul Brodeur: If I could just, because I think it's important. This is another one of those items, another of which you'll be discussing a little bit in in a few minutes or hopefully a few minutes that is not interesting it is not no one goes oh wow you bought a generator that's awesome but here's every crisis teaches you a little bit of something and what i've learned from this is um in the need to go remote and and and kind of restructure communications we um we tried to do that with our phone system and we had some significant struggles because our phone system is is ancient it is it is it is completely outmoded it doesn't work for the modern environment that we needed to work in happily um the timing was a little bit off we are halfway through the rollout of of fixing that because the city made some wise investments that and neil is leading that installation that we just didn't get it done before before we had to close city hall uh i i respectfully just we don't want to get to the point where that crisis hits where we go oh man i wish we followed through on that generator and no one no one is going to pat you on the back for for buying a generator it's not going to be well maybe it will be on the front on page to page, we'll see how it goes. But it is, as Ms. Porway-Casellas said, it was identified as our number one need and it is something that we need because when we face down whatever the next challenge is, knowing that we've done this, it will be important to us and important to our constituents. I appreciate the consideration.

▶ 1:35:06 Speaker 9: One other item I just want to add is that one of the things that FEMA uses is the no notice event. and i had some lengthy conversations with mima about our lack of a generator and what that means in this no notice event which is let's say a hurricane or a well hurricane we probably know a tornado that comes through and takes out power and we're down for a week um this is the type of event that we might not be expecting we might be expecting just a thunderstorm one day kids are in school buildings are packed with children a tornado rips through takes out power in City Hall and suddenly all the phone lines to those schools that are on this system are no longer available and you have parents trying to call and find out are my kids okay do we have to come pick them up you know what do we need to do next and to lose communications to lose email and to lose phones in a situation like that is a huge problem so that was one of the areas where MIMA really saw this as a high need was in those no-notice events and then the other thing is you know that the long-term prolonged outage which could occur from a hurricane or something an event like that we always think that that's just not going to happen just because it hasn't happened but here we find ourselves today in a situation that we probably also never thought was going to happen. And, you know, it just reiterates the need to plan for these major events before they happen so that we're not trying to figure things out on the fly in the midst of a crisis.

▶ 1:36:49 Speaker 10: If I may just add one additional thing. The purpose behind the state with their MVP grant process was to get communities thinking about climate change and the outcomes from climate change with an outlook over the next 20 to 30 years or even shorter time span and they do predict a real increase in the number of natural disasters from as the result of climate change so they're trying to get communities to think about that and that that is one of the things that we are

▶ 1:37:35 Speaker 9: thinking about and are concerned about so Kristen should I move directly into the school security the doors or should we do all four so last go-around

▶ 1:37:42 Speaker 1: consulate Raman Tosi I believe we went item by item at the end correct we did we did okay so if you if that's the will of the council all right so the next one

▶ 1:38:06 Speaker 9: is the 300,000 for school doors this project is this was born out of when Ann we was here as the assistant director in DPW and facilities manager in working with the school principals and with the superintendent she had identified a number of needs that were that totaled well over 300,000 she'd indicated to me that it would be well over a million to resolve the door problems that we have at our schools but she felt that with a three hundred thousand dollar allocation we could handle the the worst issues and get things better prepared for modern security modern technology and the types of incidents that we obviously don't want to think about but you know active shooters and and school someone entering a school building who shouldn't be there so the project would address issues with both external and interior doors and it would not be specific to one particular school we do have our brand new facilities manager starting on May 18th Jay McNeil I'm really excited for him to start he has a lot of facilities background he presently works at Harvard University and does facilities work there manages both trade and custodial staff and in interviewing him he has a really strong focus on asset management on preventative maintenance tracking all of our assets a lot of what what was discussed by several people with regard to Memorial Hall you know once you build something new how do you do the preventative maintenance and stay on top of it and track it to ensure that you're not letting your facilities deteriorate at a high rate once they're built so so I envision that he will take this these funds if they're approved and will help to identify what the biggest needs are. But these are the needs that I understand at this time. On exterior doors, we have a lot of doors that are just old and they've exceeded their life expectancy. We have some doors that we've had to retrofit in order to get the FOB systems to work on those old doors and they are very temperamental. They have problems frequently. We end up having to attend to them frequently Um, the Franklin ECC has. Large old doors that are very heavy, they're not ideal for Pre K and kindergarten students to try to push those doors open. If there were to be an emergency where they were the ones trying to get themselves out of the building. I guess, traditionally, there have been a lot of instances where we've purchased. These hollow metal doors that I was told were on the order of 13,000 for. for a set of doors um there are solid metal doors that are much more appropriate for the the frequency of use at schools because they're so they're used so often by so many people all day long in and out that these the 13 000 model doesn't hold up the way the 22 000 solid doors hold up and i guess at the middle school even though that facility is less than a decade old some of those doors are already failing because of just the the frequency of their use at the roosevelt we have doors that exit to the blacktop area that are corroded because of salt because it's right next to an area that we do sand and salt in the winter for the students coming in and so those have seen some significant corrosion and could could be replaced so those are the biggest needs on the exterior door end and then on the interior door a lot of that the doors at a lot of the schools it really addresses the issue of an intruder and the ability to close and lock those doors in some schools we have doors that they swing out into the hallway and they actually swing 180 degrees out so if you picture someone getting into a building you shouldn't be there and you're the teacher and you want to close that door and the person's in the hallway you have to fully walk into the hallway grab that door and close it in order to secure the door we also have doors where the vision panel in the doors the classroom doors is far too large they're supposed to be just a skinny little window where you can see out to see if somebody's there we have doors you could actually crack the window and put your hand in and unlock the door um which is again just not not the modern security standards that the new schools are built with um we do have some pricing to put on new doors uh for classroom doors about 2100 each so in a in a school with about 30 classrooms for about 70 000 we could do all the classroom doors in one school we could pick the worst couple of schools and address them that way. I guess we've also been testing a lock system for classroom doors at the Hoover. It costs about $240 per door and it allows the door to basically stay locked from the outside at all times and the door just stays open. And the principals have a master key in case somebody gets locked out, but they always open from the inside. So it's a door that you can always get out in a fire emergency. But if you need to slam the door shut quick it locks automatically and then you can prevent an intruder so those are the types of repairs that we're looking at but my hope is that this first $300,000 would just get us the funds we need for the new facilities manager in his walkthroughs that we already have scheduled with the principals when it gets here to identify you know make a list of all the door needs prioritize them decide which ones we can fit into this budget and then develop a plan from there to use this first 300 000 to attack those worst issues um and again same with the generator we'd rather do this now than when we're in an emergency situation and then retroactively saying oh i wish we could have planned for that um the lebanon and

▶ 1:44:42 Speaker 9: sylvan drainage project i know i had presented once previously so that is alleviating the flooding at Lebanon and Sylvan streets. We have submitted a grant application to FEMA. They have required that we submit some additional information. We're in the process of pulling that together. That information is due at the end of or middle of June. And then we hope to hear relatively soon if we get that funding. That project is similar to the generator project in that we can initiate the design at any time. If we initiate the design now, it just puts us a little ahead of the game if we get the funding. And again, we can apply for those design funds to be applied as a portion of our match for that project. So, that one is not as pressing as the generator. But at the same time, if we get the grant funding, then we are going to need to have the match money available in short order. So approving it now would just save us the trouble of coming back again if we get the funds. And then the fourth item is Neil's.

▶ 1:45:59 Speaker 10: So the fourth item addresses the security from a door access, the electronic door access standpoint. You have the fobs that you hit the reader with the fob the outside the door and it opens the door unlocks the door we have those throughout the city and the schools there was a system a one-off system that was stalled in the middle school at the time when the middle school stalled it probably predates the other systems that were installed elsewhere in the city in schools it's at this point I think what was the school middle school was 2007 it open i believe 2000 uh so this the system is incredibly old the application it's not secure uh the door hardware the the the reader hardware is outdated um and not the not the highest encryption that we'd like uh and then also the system is not compatible with the other system that's everywhere else so we have to issue um separate cards at the middle school versus the fobs that everybody else uses so when buildings they need to get two different uh things and we have to maintain two different systems um so in order to wrap that up into the same system where we're and what happens is when you try to maintain two different systems you get a lot of um it becomes a security hazard just in the fact that you have to maintain two different systems and things fall through the cracks people walk off with cards and they don't get eliminated because they've been eliminated from one system and not the other system um because the other system is being maintained by facilities and not i.t it's just it's um it also is not a centralized system so that we can see if say someone goes into a building and something happens we don't we can't really see what happens in that old system it's so old all of that stuff is logged on the system that is in the city in the server room which I didn't mention as one of the things that would go down our outage is also this security system that's house

▶ 1:48:22 Speaker 10: in the city all but we want to consolidate that system so they're all the same we're operating on the from the same place issuing fobs to place that's that's basically that's basically the project we need to add we actually because of some things that have made the building works and operates we need to add a couple of card swipes in some areas some are broken and there's also the connection between the two buildings is difficult where we're using both buildings and parts of the both buildings for the high school in the middle school simultaneously where people are moving between the two will have a credential.

▶ 1:49:06 Christopher Cinella: Thank you. Let's open up for questions. Councilor Thomas. Mr. Chairman.

▶ 1:49:10 Paul Brodeur: Mr. Chairman, I just fill in a blank or stress something a little bit. We obviously have significant needs. The focus of this money, I just want to be clear, the priority would be on the school security piece. If you take a look at the CIP document, if it mentions it a little bit more, And happily, it has been a long time in the unfortunate modern history of our country where we haven't seen a school shooting in several months, which is something of a record, unfortunately, in these times. But like with some of the other things we're talking about, we have to build that infrastructure to make sure we can be as safe as we can. and this is what really this is the the priority for this money uh is to make sure that we are comfortable about uh you know the level of security that we're providing both to the buildings as a whole but also to the individual classrooms so thomas did you have a question

▶ 1:50:27 Cory Thomas: thank you mr chairman uh director ellis and mr ellis thank you both for being here hey brother thanks for continuing to be here um i guess this is for neil ellis uh mr ellis uh do you have a ups battery backup on your current server yes how long um does that ups kick in for and does that keep all the systems up for a short period of time or can you explain what

▶ 1:50:53 Speaker 10: the ups is okay so so there are a couple of different ups's and they're uh as you can imagine they're in different places so when uh you know depending on the system that you're talking about you know as far as it spreads out say uh switches um if you're talking about schools um say phones

▶ 1:51:16 Cory Thomas: is this in relation to the generator well no obviously ups isn't going to be a replacement for a generator i'm just trying to get an idea and you know anyone listening at home what you have for backup right now and is it adequate or inadequate well the the the battery backup

▶ 1:51:26 Speaker 10: is adequate for battery backup i guess i should say so so all of our network infrastructure the switches are on battery backups so um you know depending on the system say like the act wireless access points and phones and all the schools those are powered by the switch which is a power which is a piece of equipment that connects the computers and the servers and the phones they're all powered by those items so they're on battery backup so those things will last for a little bit longer depending on the draw of the equipment that's connected to it um you know at city hall for the servers we have um we installed just probably a year ago a very large UPS system that will carry a lot more than it had previously, and we connect that to our most priority servers. Even with that on in the draw that those have, it will go down very quickly. thing I should mention in addition to the generator well in relation to the generator is that when we lose power even if we do keep the servers up we have a serious issue because HVAC is not is not cool in the environment so we can only let those things those servers run for so long without cooling anyway so even if we did, even if we could keep it going on a larger battery, we would have to shut it off manually or automatically if it overheats. So, that's another thing we're working on, is trying to get another AC unit in the server room. But, yeah, I'm not sure if that answers

▶ 1:53:33 Cory Thomas: your question. No, thank you for that extra detail. As far as the doors, the school's Exterior doors are all the doors at the schools that need to be ADA compliant. Are they in compliance with the American Disability Act?

▶ 1:53:52 Speaker 10: You're on mute. You're on mute. I'm on mute, Elena.

▶ 1:53:57 Speaker 9: Sorry, that's a great question. So, since I've only been responsible for facilities since I became the director a month ago, I am not certain if all the doors are ADA compliant. I am certain that anything we've done recently has been done to code but i really can't speak to some of the older buildings um if those are all compliant so with it with this money for

▶ 1:54:20 Cory Thomas: the doors would that include bringing doors that are not ada compliant into

▶ 1:54:28 Speaker 9: code any new door request if we were putting in any new doors we would absolutely uh put in compliant doors so i would imagine if something was out of compliance and we replaced it

▶ 1:54:42 Cory Thomas: it would now be in compliance great thank you for that uh interior doors um there are multiple different door lock sets um the most effective for schools i think would be classroom style you know it's kind of um obvious to say uh classroom style but those are only doors like you said at hoover school they only um walk from the inside you can you can manually unlock them from a key are we trying to get them all all the doors in the schools the classroom style hand

▶ 1:55:13 Speaker 9: handle door locks that's my understanding of what the eventual goal would be like i said this first 300 000 would only you know do a portion of of what needs to be done at any of the schools but i would imagine that um that we would probably start with the schools that have the most efficient doors and and aim to replace the doors and the lock sets to be you know whatever the modern standard was and i understand that the hoover was the example we've been i guess piloting some i think it was oak associates doors that um that are that classroom style

▶ 1:55:49 Cory Thomas: great and um lastly probably back to you neil um we're in a flop a fob system are we going to stay with that fob system or are we looking at a proximity card type uh the system that we have

▶ 1:56:04 Speaker 10: um actually the proximity card um you know i'm not this might be semantics but the proximity card is actually an older style of um reader uh this is a it's a different type of radio signal but um You can issue any number of styles of, you know, fob, card. You can get the sticker that you can stick on to, like it's like an RFID style. There are a number of different things. You can even upgrade to a phone app that does NFC to the reader.

▶ 1:57:00 Speaker 10: But anything that goes too far up, we would have to, you know, swap out all of the readers, which we probably will have to do within, you know, 10 years as they get older and the encryption is not as good as what the modern is and, you know, that kind of thing.

▶ 1:57:15 Cory Thomas: but um yeah we want we want to bring the middle school into the same system that everyone else is on right and stay with that stay with that one system yeah in fact the old the system at

▶ 1:57:23 Speaker 10: the middle school is a prox card readers system all right and and can can i speak on the fema

▶ 1:57:28 Cory Thomas: and lebanon street and sylvan street

▶ 1:57:36 Christopher Cinella: mr chairperson do i think we have a couple other couple others in queue i'll if i can get back to you in the second round of questions uh counselor eckles

▶ 1:57:45 Jack Eccles: thank you mr chairman um my most of my questions uh are for mr alice tonight um i i think that while we're on the topic of disaster mitigation i just have a few questions about rit infrastructure and what we could do to maybe you know aside from aside from having well including having a generator what we could do to prepare um so is there a precedent for most things to be stored locally in the municipalities is there a possibility of shifting to sort of more cloud storage in the coming years it seems like from what i'm hearing there's a lot that's coordinated centrally on a city hall and then also if you could just talk about last year did i know that there was an allocation for the new phone system out of sit free cash so if you could talk a little bit about the improvements that that's had as far as any

▶ 1:58:39 Speaker 10: given power at it sure so uh to answer your first question um money uh we would love to do everything well not everything everything but cloud based uh any new software that we're looking at uh we are strongly trying to push it to be cloud-based um it is one of the one of the main things um we've had uh departments approach us with software that is locally installed and of course it's cheaper but that's because we have to do everything on the back end and back it up and there's a lot of licensing uh for server stuff i'm renewing some licensing right now that you know um it's it's basically a thousand to two thousand dollars a license and i have to buy ten of them so so yes absolutely we're strongly looking at cloud there's we have been moving toward cloud storage and software software as a service they call it SAS where basically the whole software is on the cloud and we have a few of those now as it relates to the telephone system we are going to experience significant cost savings from that project in fact we hope to pay for the project it was a hundred thousand dollars we're looking at recouping that cost in 15 months in telephone savings so the way that we designed this and we designed it we designed it in-house really and we investigated different VoIP solutions. VoIP is voice over IP. Myself and my team have experience with several different voice over IP telephone systems and we investigated a few. We found one that was fairly low cost and the way that we designed it is such that there will be no more telephone lines coming in to any copper or well they call them PRI or it's basically a web-based telephone digital telephone system and because we've structured it that way it eliminates the need for say overages by long or even costs for long distance or anything else so you connect to a website for all the phones for all the phone lines uh the the we would like to again to address your concern about the the cloud base they do have cloud-based voice over ip systems uh we investigated those the unfortunate thing about those is that they're incredibly expensive um and when we look at a long-term 10-year projection um the the cloud-based one was is over a million dollars more, unfortunately. And this one, we're gonna be able to bring our costs for phone systems down to, yeah, like I said, about $80,000, 70 to $80,000 to drop over the next year and a half as we can get the phone lines off and into the new system.

▶ 2:02:12 Speaker 4: Thank you, thank you, Mr. Chairman.

▶ 2:02:14 Speaker 10: It's a lot of money. It's a lot of money, I could use another technician. I'm just going to say up front.

▶ 2:02:19 Christopher Cinella: Madam Clerk, can we just get a quick time check? The mic's off, the mic was off, that's a $5 fine.

▶ 2:02:26 Speaker 1: Recording, we're at two hours, two minutes.

▶ 2:02:29 Christopher Cinella: Thank you. Councilor McMaster.

▶ 2:02:33 Shawn M. MacMaster: Thank you, Mr. Chairman. Good evening, Mr. Ellis. Good evening, Ms. Perakis Ellis. I have one question with respect to the generator. You both talked about how some sort of an emergency could compromise our ability as a city to communicate across city departments and you both referenced the school. Would the same concern apply to our police and fire dispatch system?

▶ 2:02:57 Speaker 10: Yes, actually, that is absolutely true. That is the one thing I didn't mention that I was like, yeah, I didn't mention that. But absolutely, yes, the police dispatch system would go down. Their cruisers also phone home to that dispatch system through the city hall as well. So the cruisers would not be able to do, say, bad guy and plate lookups on the road, nor would they be able to do it in the dispatch and then relay that over the radio. um so you know if we had a god forbid we had a disaster uh like elena said we would have no phones at the schools the police wouldn't be able to look up anybody um they would be in the dark we'd be in the dark i mean yeah we could pick up cell phones and call each other um and get things

▶ 2:03:58 Shawn M. MacMaster: done but it'd be a lot more difficult would it prevent the police department from being able to generate a report in their cruisers? Yes. Yes. How about communicating between the police and

▶ 2:04:14 Speaker 10: the fire department? Police, they could, right, they have a radio. They, yeah, they would be

▶ 2:04:26 Shawn M. MacMaster: pretty much limited to radio at that point. But for, there may be certain scenarios where it may not be in the best interest of public safety to put something over the radio so what i'm getting at is that without being able to communicate over the phone on a particularly sensitive matter that may relate to public safety not having this this generator could impact our ability to provide important public safety services thank you thank you both

▶ 2:05:01 Mark Garipay: for your time thank you thanks uh thank you uh miss pro excuse me miss pro week is ellis and mr ellis for being here i think most of my questions were answered um but just on the school security on the doors um a question um you mentioned that uh when they did the initial study 1.2 million was that for completing um total doors and locks throughout the system or was it various projects that they had identified sorry you're on mute mike sorry i keep muting so you

▶ 2:05:36 Speaker 9: don't get feedback since neil's the same house um and i can hear him so um i think i had just said over 1 million there wasn't a particular figure it was just that to do all the doors would cost well over a million um that was what the information that was given to me by ann waite uh she had given me all the specific figures as to you know the 2100 per door for the classroom doors or the 240 dollars for the lock set or the 22 000 for the exterior doors per door set um so there was definitely a lot of information that went into the numbers but i think the over a million number was just sort of a number thrown out there so i don't think there is a specific number that is to address all the doors in all the schools okay um looking at the cip

▶ 2:06:31 Mark Garipay: the 300 000 i i think you'd mentioned this this may be for doors and door locks it says door locks in the cip so it'll be a mixture if you believe yes yes it was intended to be a mixture it it was

▶ 2:06:44 Speaker 9: intended to address the most serious needs on the exterior doors the um the most serious door needs on the classroom doors and then door locks on a number of classroom doors where where the doors are in good shape and are the style of door that we would like but they just don't have the lock set that we'd like and those are the ones that we would retrofit okay i think you answered my

▶ 2:07:08 Mark Garipay: other question was if we don't are we going to look at it school by school complete one school but we have someone now a new facilities manager that's going to take that on and decide how they want to proceed with that um just on the on the fema grant which um a couple questions this uh we're approving uh tonight uh for the design is there any chance that the fema grant with everything going on i know i mean you probably can't answer this but is there any chance that it may not come to fruition i mean we haven't i know they've given us a signal but they haven't

▶ 2:07:46 Speaker 9: sent us no paperwork or anything like that yeah so with the fema grants um a lot of times they're at least with the one for lebanon and sylvan that's a hazard mitigation grant program grant so that is money that's tied to a particular storm in 2018 in march 2018 where there was a federal disaster declared for massachusetts and then they they allocate a pot of money to address issues in that state based on that declaration. So those funds have already been dedicated. We don't know if our project is going to receive them, but we know that there are a handful of projects in Massachusetts that will receive funding. The pre-disaster mitigation grants, which is the one that now we're applying for the generator for, they're not tied to specific events and so i would say there's the possibility that they're less secure but at the same time i would be surprised if um if that program given how it's for disaster planning um i'd be surprised if that was somewhere where funding was suddenly pulled um i would guess that that's sort of a heightened an area with heightened awareness right now where they would be more likely to keep funding

▶ 2:09:04 Mark Garipay: If we appropriate the FEMA grant, the design $129,000, and we don't get awarded, is this a project that we can afford within our budget? I mean, is this something that we would only wait for a FEMA grant to do? So I'll answer that question for

▶ 2:09:21 Speaker 9: both projects. For the generator project, if we don't get the FEMA grant, this being our highest priority project that project will get funded i've been told by patrick delarusso that that whether it's funded through the grant or funded through our stabilization funds or through our um our retained earnings that project will get funded because it has to it's just too high of a priority to kick it down the road any longer um with the lebanon at sylvan drainage project um I would say that that was in the category B in the CIP, which was the second highest priority group. So I would think that would really depend on where we are financially. You know, if the design takes nine months to a year to complete, then we would see where we are at that point and decide if that was a high enough priority. um it is really bad when it floods there and it does have a very severe impact on a handful of homes and then a somewhat bad impact on another group of homes um and it limits travel and it impacts the sewer system and there's there's a number of impacts that we certainly want to address it at some point but obviously we'd have to see where we are as a community and what other

▶ 2:10:46 Mark Garipay: priorities we have. My other question which Mr. De La Russo really answered earlier today was if we appropriate that we don't move forward with that FEMA grant is that money the money I believe he says we'll end up coming back in free cash is what what I was told that was a concern I had earlier um with his 129,000 end up going but he his his um my understanding based on what he said is he would come back to uh free cash so if we don't use it in a certain amount of time yeah i

▶ 2:11:18 Speaker 9: guess that depends on which approach we took like with the generator whether we get the grant funding or not we'd proceed immediately with the design and then we would have that design sitting

▶ 2:11:29 Mark Garipay: on the shelf with the you know just you know i'm okay with the generator i was just curious on that and i should have been more clear that when i when i asked originally yeah no that's okay i i've

▶ 2:11:36 Speaker 9: actually been answering them both just because i think it's important for the whole council to understand the that even though they're both fema projects there is a difference in the approach the lebanon at sylvan drainage we would have a choice if those funds were allocated right now to do the design we could do the same thing that we're doing with the generator and procure the design and have design documents ready and on the shelf and then a much better construction number to know what the construction project would entail and then we just sit on it until we decide to um to allocate those construction funds at some point down the road or we hold off on the design completely we let that 129 000 just sit in an account and we only proceed with the design if we know we're getting the construction money so really it could go either way and that's that would be just however the community and the council wants to handle it i think the um sylvan

▶ 2:12:30 Mark Garipay: street lebanon street project is it helps twofold it helps the the flooding in the cemetery which that we know that goes underwater that corner and it's limited the amount of space they have so it's hurting revenue down there if they eventually we could fix the flooding it gives us more capacity also my understanding is it goes down um it's going to go down along the property line by pine banks and we're going to rip up it's going to be on our property and it's going to connect in under pine banks based on my time on the cemetery it's also twofolds ripping up old roads that we're not going to have to fix in the future there are a lot of other benefits and it will allow us the cemetery commission so chooses to expand uh potential um lots down there by by ripping up some of the roads and depending on how much room we have so it's it's uh it's twofold and hopefully it may even be able to get some uh some brush and bushes along the property line that um that wasn't done with the pine banks dog park project give us some more some more coverage down there um one um one other question i have for mr ellis um i know you answered a question that i had regarding the the funding in the cip on the middle school security was 27.5 and it's coming through at 45. i know you sent us a letter an email earlier today um i kind of briefly uh wrote i read over it because i was working and my wife working three to eleven so i didn't get my son dinner is there any way you could just give us a little synopsis of that just in case some of my other counselors didn't uh didn't get a chance to read that i think you're

▶ 2:14:18 Speaker 9: on mute you're on mute still on mute there you go there you go i still can't hear you

▶ 2:14:29 Speaker 1: Neil, we can't hear you.

▶ 2:14:33 Speaker 6: We can't hear you. Call IT.

▶ 2:14:42 Speaker 6: Go in the other room.

▶ 2:14:44 Speaker 1: Go with Elena.

▶ 2:14:58 Mark Garipay: I'll tell you what, Mr. Chairman, I'll yield if he, when he gets it, when he gets that back, he can, I'll yield to someone else and then he can just let us know on that question, okay?

▶ 2:15:10 Christopher Cinella: Sounds good. I just want to check in on the well-beings of Councilor McNaught and Councilor Jamaleddine. I don't know if this is still with us. Please take a vote. President Grigoraitis,

▶ 2:15:25 Jen Grigoraitis: you're next in queue. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. And I just want to thank Ms. Proekes-Ellis and Mr. Ellis for providing all of this context. It's really helpful to kind of hear how critical these projects are. And also to Mayor Broder for the overview of free cash and your thinking during this evolving fiscal forecast that we're heading toward for next year. My one question is for Mr. Ellis. So I can hold on that. I did just want to say for the benefit of my fellow counselors that I know in a conversation I had with Chief Lyle almost a year ago, he highlighted the generator as something that he is incredibly concerned about the lack of. And I think that this idea of a hypothetical crisis, we're in it. And as someone who has a shared professional history with Counselor McMaster of working with crime victims, we have people who are in their homes right now for the greater public and public safety and public health who are not safe. And the idea that a power outage could prevent a domestic violence victim from being able to reach 911 is something that is really concerning to me. And my question for Mr. Ellis was, if we should lose power right now, does the call box that's outside of the police department for residents who are not able to physically access the building because of the accessibility issues associated with that building, would that call box go down as well?

▶ 2:16:55 Speaker 1: We can't hear you. We can't hear you.

▶ 2:17:01 Speaker 10: Try. Hold on one second. Can you hear me now?

▶ 2:17:04 Speaker 6: Yes. Yes. Okay.

▶ 2:17:08 Speaker 10: Okay. I think the problem – that box out there actually operates through a copper telephone line, which unfortunately Verizon has notified us that they'll be removing all copper lines from Melrose. It also calls 911 again. That's through a copper line. I, we're in the process of repairing that box right now, actually. I personally hate that box. I want to rip it out and put in a real call box that is kind of a closed system into dispatch or connects to one of the phones, but doesn't call a phone number to get back in. With respect to, I think I caught a little bit of what you were saying at the end about 911. The 911 system, the next generation 911 system that the police have, is actually a separate system than from the phone system that we operate through City Hall. So if someone, if we were down and someone called 911, I have to do this with my hand if I talk about phones, then they would definitely be able to get to the dispatch.

▶ 2:18:24 Jen Grigoraitis: so it's the non-emergency numbers that would be impacted yes in communication

▶ 2:18:27 Speaker 10: between them and fire yeah and obviously being City Hall in the schools correct

▶ 2:18:36 Speaker 10: you know I'm sorry I didn't I missed councillor Gare pays question they

▶ 2:18:50 Christopher Cinella: screwed up my question thank you anybody else for the first time did you

▶ 2:18:57 Mark Garipay: want to follow up on that? Mr. Ellis, I know I had a question earlier that I submitted when talking to Mr. De La Russo regarding the dollar amount of $45,000 in the CIP. We had $27,500. I know you had sent out an email. I didn't really get a chance to take a good look at it, and I'm not sure if my counselors, in case they have any, could you just give us a little synopsis

▶ 2:19:25 Speaker 10: of what that what that was sure so the original uh so the original quote was was basically via a walkthrough that we were doing for the camera system in the middle school so we we which continues to be a problem we have uh issues with the middle school cameras um again they were put in with the school and uh and we're looking at those but we we were with the uh our vendor lantel who maintains and installs most of our security equipment and we showed them that system and they gave us a kind of a working quote to um kind of present without really a thorough inspection of the system. And just from my experience with installing a number of these systems, my gut feeling was that it was going to be closer to 45 to be safe. And I was able to do a walkthrough with Lantel two and a half weeks ago. And they gave me a quote that was almost forty thousand dollars uh we actually i eliminated things to get it down to that amount i might have to add a couple things in we're in negotiations but it's gonna hover around that amount forty thousand and then just as a uh small contingency uh in case we have to do any additional work or wiring which is always an issue uh you get into these buildings and then it turns out you need to run a wire you keep because something's not working and that adds on another couple grants that um so it 45 should cover us with a contingency okay uh one other question i forgot to ask with

▶ 2:21:10 Mark Garipay: this with the doors and then you know the door security for the middle middle school and the door locks um is that a project if it's approved tonight that will think it'll be completed before school starts what's the time frame on on that yes yes that's uh that's something that i could

▶ 2:21:27 Speaker 10: pull the trigger on um very soon i would expect to do it you know spring summer and the same thing

▶ 2:21:47 Speaker 9: with the locks you think um uh i think it depends on the projects um it depends on on what jay identifies as the top priority projects because sometimes there are long lead times on on specific um items if there are certain doors that we need to order that are custom um retrofitting locks i would imagine would be something we could do over the summer though

▶ 2:22:08 Mark Garipay: with us not to just take advantage of the spaces we have all right thank you very much

▶ 2:22:21 Cory Thomas: thank you council thomas thank you mr chairman um miss proecus ellis uh i know there's only with seven weeks left left in the fiscal year uh what is the likelihood of hearing from fema regarding that grant for the um lebanon and sylvan project uh highly unlikely only because

▶ 2:22:35 Speaker 9: the additional information they've requested i believe it's due to them on june uh 12th and so they work at a snail's pace and my guess is that the chances of them turning that back around in three weeks to say whether we got the money or not is um is highly unlikely

▶ 2:22:59 Cory Thomas: all right thank you i i just like you know to enter into the record um you know this is obviously my neighborhood in ward seven um former council president scott forbes has worked on this prior to that uh board chair board president bill forbes um worked on this um this whole area was pretty ravaged during the mother's day storm about 15 years ago i got water in my basement that year too um as did many neighbors that we had to reach out for fema assistance in this neighborhood um so you know even if we don't get funding in fy20 i i'd like to make you know make sure this stage is a top priority for um not only the city but ward 7. so thank you very much for all your work on this thank you what is the uh will of the committee

▶ 2:23:52 Jen Grigoraitis: I would like to make a motion for a recommendation for passage

▶ 2:23:56 Christopher Cinella: second motion for recommendation of passage by president Grigoraitis seconded by councillor Tramontozzi discussion any other discussion um clerk please call the roll vice chair Migliorelli

▶ 2:24:10 Speaker 1: Yes. Councilor Tramontozzi? Yes. Councilor McMaster? Yes. Councilor McNaught? Yes.

▶ 2:24:21 Speaker 1: Councilor Eccles? Yes. Councilor Garipay? Yes. Councilor Stewart? Yes. Councilor Thomas? Yes. Councilor Jamaleddine? Yes. President Grigoraitis? Yes. Chairman Acinella? Yes.

▶ 2:24:45 Christopher Cinella: 11 yes excellent thank you thank you thank you 2020-76 authorizing in the bond a bond in the