ORDER-2020-72 : Appointment of Elena Proakis Ellis to serve as Director of Public Works, effective March 30, 2020.

Transcript (~41 min @ 1:40)

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

▶ 1:30 Christopher Cinella: We have a few orders before us this evening. First one is order number 2020-72, the appointment of Elena Proakas Ellis to serve as the director of DPW effective March 30th.

▶ 1:49 John N. Tramontozzi: Motion to suspend the rules to hear from the petitioner.

▶ 1:52 Christopher Cinella: Thank you. I would, thank you. a motion by councillor Tramontozzi to suspend the rule so we could hear from miss pro akasella seconded by councillor mcnaught i'd like to come forward and say a few words and then we'll open it up for questions sure thanks for coming down tonight thank you all so i believe mayor birder

▶ 2:11 Speaker 2: had intended to be here because he had a few words he was going to say but um i'm sure with everything going on he must have been pulled away so um i'll just tell you a little bit about myself and i'm very excited to be here i'm excited for the opportunity to have this position i've been working for the city since 2015 as the city engineer and then since september 2019 as the assistant director of dpw for water and sewer i started out my career back in i went to wesleyan University graduated in 1996 doing earth and environmental science and music at the time and then I worked for an engineering company right out of school camp dresser McKee and decided that I'd like what the engineers were doing better than what I was doing so I switched over to engineering and the

▶ 3:13 Paul Brodeur: rest was history I decided to get started probably probably wise what did you say I said the first paragraph anyway I don't need this at all because I she can she's smarter than me that's one of the reasons why I hired her or I'm hoping we hire her that's really obviously up to you we did as I'm sure you know from the postings we did an extensive solicitation with a very well thought-out job description that included a wide range of things some of which are very traditional in terms of public work services and some of which are a little bit more what we think of as a modern department doing in terms of energy efficiency and transportation and and the like and have we had a terrific pool of candidates I'm happy to say that the best candidate was right in her own backyard Elena's resume if she hasn't gone through it yet I think it's in front of you uh is impeccable it is the the schools that i couldn't get into and locations um some of the greatest parts of the country but the remarkable thing about the about the resume and the experience is that it is um it is absolutely directly in line with what a modern department of public works needs to do science science and engineering is a big big part of what we do obviously Thorp an operations piece and well as well and some of the business of of any city department those those nuts and bolts but where elaine is stirring lies you have already seen for the last four or five years and that is in knowledge of engineering both under the ground and above the ground now that having been said this is not her first stop uh in the in the department of public works world having worked in other communities and also has extensive experience in the private in the private sector so in in adding up all the factors that go into a decision like this um she really stood out in every way and i know you all know that because you've had the opportunity to work with her in the past the portfolio will expand if i do have one concern with her appointment is that engineering is is one of her loves and in many respects she won't be doing that anymore she will be supervising that among other things but this is the absolutely the right person at the right time to move our city forward in the Department of Public Works and with that I will turn it back over to Ms. Proekes.

▶ 5:56 Speaker 2: Thank you, Mayor. So I'll give you the quick synopsis of the rest of the resume and then outline a few of my priorities and then if you have questions. So following working in the private sector right out of college, I decided that I wanted to switch from science to engineering and went out to UC Berkeley and got a master's environmental engineering and then uh had intended right from the get-go to work in the public sector that was one of the things i put even on my grad school applications was that i wanted to work in the public sector and so when i got back to massachusetts i got a job with concord public works and i was their water and sewer engineer for eight years then decided to go back into the private sector for a brief period of time while i had kids and wanted a little more flexibility

▶ 6:54 Speaker 2: of work schedule there they are over there um and but as soon as they reached the age where i wanted to go back to a 40-hour work week i applied for the job here it was the perfect fit and i knew that at the time and i've been very happy to be here in melrose i think it's a terrific city there were so many things i loved about it coming in and i love it even more having been here for the last four and a half years so with that some of the things that are priorities to me in terms of as a dpw director as paul said it's it's less engineering and it's more management i'm very comfortable with that i've done a lot of personnel management a lot of project management a lot of budgeting so one of the things i'm most excited about is the personnel management end of things we have a terrific team we have a DPW that gets a lot of work done and I'm excited to help that group of individuals grow increase their professional development their training there I want to build a culture of safety I know that's been a big topic within the DPW and I'm excited to bring that to the next level teamwork I think we have a lot of divisions that work extremely well together and I want to continue that and figure out ways to do things better and more efficiently with the excellent staff that we have working together across all the different divisions and then taking a lot of what we've done in engineering and expanding that out to the the other divisions the operations divisions we've done a lot in the last four years to get our data systems better in line with modern technology to get our GIS layers up to date all our utilities we now have the tools that we need within the engineering division to inform decision making and to be a smarter operation than we are right than we were previously when I started and now we need to take that to operations we need to start better tracking the operations work that we do linking that back into the gis so we can use that data when we're out in the field if we find problems have a systematic way that we log them in and then we use that to inform our capital program of where we need to invest our our time and effort and money um so just holistically getting all of our our technology and our divisions more in line with where we've now brought the engineering division so those are some of my priorities um happy to take any

▶ 9:38 Jen Grigoraitis: questions for sure um president Grigoraitis thank you thank you for being here and thank you for your family for being here as well i just this has been a big week of firsts here in melrose and it's really exciting to have what i believe it's only thursday it's only thursday um the first female dpw director here in the city of melrose in 2020 and i just want to say as a someone who's identified as a woman for all the young women and girls out there thank you for showing what leadership and a career path in stem can look like for people um i think the only downside of promoting someone with your excellent credentials is that then it creates a hole in your existing role so knowing that you'll come into the role with no with something with needing to replace your job and without an assistant dpw director can you talk a little bit about your plans for managing staff and filling those vacancies sure so we've been

▶ 10:22 Speaker 2: very proactively trying to fill the two vacancies that we have right now the assistant director of administration and finance and the facilities manager and so we've conducted marianne long conducted first round interviews with a whole bunch of applicants in order to speed up the process before i was selected as the candidate for this position and then i've been conducting second round interviews this week we've completed the interviews for the assistant director of administration and finance and we hope to make an offer tomorrow if not tomorrow with everything going on then early next week for the facilities manager as you can imagine people in the facilities field right now are scrambling they are in a very difficult position both of the top two candidates that we've narrowed down to are in facilities in university environments where things are just insane right now so we've had to reschedule one of our two interviews to early next week one is one will happen tomorrow the other will be early next week so we hope to have those vacancies filled within somebody accepting an offer within about a week and starting the job within a few weeks so those should both be great the nice thing about the only vacancy then becomes my own position and the nice thing about that is that's the position that obviously i'm the most comfortable having to fill for the time being so we will put out an ad for that position we do have some great talent in-house we might have a candidate in-house but that will remain to be seen once we see what we get from we do want to go out to the public i think it's a really important role and we want to be sure that

▶ 12:13 Paul Brodeur: we're soliciting uh resumes for that yeah just to be clear about about the process because obviously we had we had several holes to fill but um hopefully it's obvious that we wanted to set the table um without telling the new director it's kind of like you know hiring a new baseball manager you don't hire the whole staff and then say you're up and these are the people you're going to work with we obviously wanted to give it you know now that it's Miss Proekes give her the opportunity to a redesign the roles a little bit if she thought it was more appropriate to her vision and make sure that the people that get selected fit in with her with her philosophy and her work point

▶ 12:52 Speaker 1: councillor Tramontozzi did you have a question yeah thank you mr. chairman

▶ 12:56 John N. Tramontozzi: first I want to thank the mayor for bringing this appointment before us I appreciate that i think you're going to be a terrific director for public works i appreciate our past experience and all you always being available to answer any concerns that i've had in in the ward or even citywide attending neighborhood meetings you were always there i appreciate that and i'm sure that will continue as well you know i respect the fact that you're You're a professional engineer, and I know that may not be one of the specific requirements that we have for the director of the Department of Public Works, but I think it's critically important to have our public works director have that professional engineer background, so I welcome that, and I'm glad that you come equipped with that, especially now you can oversee while that vacancy is still there. You're going to be filling two roles, I'm sure, and your experience with the water and sewer. I know we're going to have budget seasons coming up pretty soon, so we're going to have a lot of issues with that. I know you're on top of things with water and sewer as well, so I think that's also welcome. The challenge, yes, of course, the management aspect of the department will be a challenge, but I think you're up to it, and I look forward to working with you, and thank you for putting and their availability for this job. Appreciate it. Thank you.

▶ 14:24 Speaker 1: Councilor Yarobek.

▶ 14:25 Speaker 3: Thank you for being here.

▶ 14:29 Mark Garipay: I just want to let you know that I fully support this order, but I do have just a couple questions. You mentioned a little bit about your vision for the department. What would you say the top three priorities are going forward for the department?

▶ 14:46 Speaker 2: Well, I guess there are different ways to interpret that, I guess my top three priorities coming in are my first one would be getting to know all the staff meeting individually with every every individual who works in the department and finding out what's working in their minds what's working what's not where Thorp the most room for improvement and and just getting a feel for whether we have the the right people doing the right job. I'm very interested in making sure that people are within the division that they want to be in, not that we have a ton of flexibility to move people around, but I think you get just a better end product when people feel motivated and feel that they're doing what's of interest to them, and I want to be sure that we start with that foundation of people liking what they're doing, feeling that morale as high in the department and also you know it's been a long period of transition and i think people need to get back into a comfort level so that would be my top priority my next priority would be budget season Thorp Thorp a lot to take in on the budget Thorp a lot to understand in terms of how the funds have traditionally been spent in every division how they've trended over the years making sure that we're um we're setting ourselves up properly for the coming fiscal year and ensuring that you know we're growing in areas that we need to and that other areas that can be level funded or where we've underspent in the past if we need to cut from some areas to grow in other areas i want to make sure we have all that in place i think that'll make for a smooth transition into the next fiscal year if we get all that in place um and then my next priority would would really be the uh the technology and the tracking of what we're doing i think that's a huge one if we want to to be certain when we go into areas especially on the utility end of things that we're uh that we're dispatching our crews out to the right items every day we need to to have a better understanding of what we've been doing and where we've been and what the results have been to be sure that everybody's being put in the highest need areas operationally.

▶ 17:15 Mark Garipay: One of the things that's impressed me over the years is that I think the Department of Public Works employees have been able, they've been cross-trained and they fluctuate between different departments depending on the season. Yes, absolutely. result of some of the open positions and the engineering position being open do you see a delay in any of the spring projects roadwork or no the great thing

▶ 17:37 Speaker 2: is so we've been short staffed since for two years now since we had a position cut from engineering for budget reasons so we've been working with three engineers myself and two others for the last two years and we just hired a deputy city engineer so we just added that fourth person so really it's it's not where we want to be ideally ideally we want all four engineers but we're actually once I move into the director role assuming that's the will of the council then we go back to what was the status quo for the last three years or two years of three engineers in the division so I think it's it's going to be seamless we have our projects laid out for the upcoming construction season one of the benefits of our what we've called our multi-year roadway and utility program is that it's all planned several years in advance where we're working our way through utility improvements followed by roadway improvements and so the projects just move up to the next the next cycle each year so this year the roads that were paving are the year are the roads that we did water main work on last year the National Grid has completed gas main work on so it's all pretty well laid out Thorp not a lot of um guesswork to do and then on top of that we have most of our work on the roadway end of things is performed by on-call contractors who we already have under contract so we don't have to bid the items that we do need to bid are on the water and sewer ends and we have consultant support on both of those

▶ 19:13 Paul Brodeur: okay thank you mr chairman if i if i just add to that because having had the opportunity to interview you know in a group setting and then falling in a one-on-one setting that came through in a lot of what she said in a very subtle way and is a priority of a different kind and that is customer service what the DPW has always prided itself on is responsiveness to your request to our constituents request and meeting those needs if we can't or aren't obligated to meet those needs explaining why in a forthright fashion I think it didn't come up because it's embedded in the culture of the department and it's reflected in her comments when it went through through her testimony tonight and also through our interactions with folks out in the community on engineering projects making sure that they understand why things are happening why things might not be happening my schedule might get delayed we recognize that that is very very very important to the reputation and the good work that the DPW does and I know that she embodies that and it's make it will make that

▶ 20:28 Speaker 2: part of her leadership credo as well yeah actually to add to that it's the customer service aspect of Public Works that's what I love about Public Works having worked in both the private and the public sector in the private sector I was working largely on the same types of projects just from the consultant end but you lose that that frontline interaction with the public and I one of the things I enjoy the most about my job is interacting with the public I always say that we can't always make everybody happy we can't fulfill every request but my goal is always to have people leave happier than they came and to understand why we're doing what we're doing and you know most of the time we can't fulfill fill people's requests and that's great but as Councilor Tramontozzi mentioned we do a lot with neighborhood outreach when we're going into neighborhoods to do work we do neighborhood meetings we've developed this model of meeting out on the street corner closest to the project and we find that's how we get the best attendance and the best questions and they turn into little block parties to the residents all get to know each other at the same time and and it's a very just a it has a positive feel to it that I think the community has appreciated

▶ 21:56 Maya Jamaleddine: thank you so much for coming today and for being able to answer all our questions I really appreciate your applying for this job and looking forward to working with you you've mentioned before about a training that you would like to start for you know the DPW staff can you tell me name one of the trainings that you would like to have one of the big ones that I'm

▶ 22:21 Speaker 2: interested in doing is more on excavation safety because we do a lot of of work in-house and ensuring that we're following all the proper protocols for when we're we're digging in the street and that we're using trench boxes when we need to that we're wearing hard hats wearing safety vests all of that that is one element of training that I think we I'd like to see everybody who works on those those types of projects receive that training we've also we've just a A lot of us have just been through the OSHA 10 and the OSHA 30 training. Anyone who wants to do that training in the department who hasn't done it yet, I want to be sure that's opened up to everybody, including staff in the office. And then Thorp just a lot of really division-specific training. For instance, if somebody who's presently working on our forestry crew is interested in becoming a certified arborist, well, we don't have a certified arborist right now, so that's something i'd like to promote is you know is there anyone who wants to start down that road of that training um water and sewer system operators we have some folks with licenses and others without we're not required to have any more than what we have right now but it's it's a great opportunity for people to gain some additional knowledge and also help their own

▶ 23:46 Speaker 1: careers perfect thank you okay you're welcome counselor mcmaster thank you mr chairman thank

▶ 23:48 Shawn M. MacMaster: you miss paracas ellis for being here thank you mr mayor for being here mayor i just had a couple questions regarding the process you talked about the process for filling the the position involved an extensive posting can you talk a little bit about what that posting process entailed

▶ 24:07 Paul Brodeur: and in broad brush i can that's really probably better directed to the human resources director but like all the major positions in the city it is circulated on the city website and to um Mass Municipal Association and presumably to particular professional publications that deal with those kind of specialty um specialty jobs like engineering DPW those kinds of things okay

▶ 24:37 Shawn M. MacMaster: um beyond the uh the posting was there any type of search that occurred in tandem or was a district posting where we sought applicants for the position I'm not sure I understand the crowd

▶ 24:49 Shawn M. MacMaster: we we posted we posted but there wasn't there was nothing beyond that other than we put out the posting and people people applied correct and okay and so and I think what I mean by searches it was more of a more of a local more of a

▶ 25:05 Paul Brodeur: local search or statewide search I have no idea about the circulation is the professional publications that the that the ad went into okay I know that we did have applicants from I don't think we we did we did have and speaking to the global recruitment not specifically to the directorship I can tell you we had folks as far away as South Africa we quite frankly didn't treat that as an entirely serious proposition but it was very interesting to see the breadth or the geographic diversity anyway of the folks who reached out it was posted in

▶ 25:39 Speaker 2: american public works association uh job listings and emails and everything thank you um and the

▶ 25:45 Shawn M. MacMaster: mayor one of the things i appreciated was the public input that you sought through um listening sessions can you just talk a little bit about that and how that um informed um the process that

▶ 26:00 Paul Brodeur: sure i appreciate the question so um as you all know we did a listening session not specifically directed at who who would you like to see be the next um department of public works director but more how do you think dbw is doing what would you like to see dpw embrace in terms of programming and work ethic focuses whatever the case may be and folks were able to participate in an actual meeting in the cassidy conference room that had good turnout that focused a lot on i'll put a lot of it under the rubric of sustainability we also had a great deal of input from the public via email that input was a little bit more all over the map i guess i'd say there wasn't one thing that every single person routinely said you know it's got to be the roads it's got to be trees it's got to be better plowing or anything like that the email i don't think Thorp any significance to this the email tended to focus a little bit more on what i guess i'd think of is traditional dpw tasks like pothole filling road conditions and things like that the folks that showed up at the meeting game in general were more talking about

▶ 27:23 Shawn M. MacMaster: sustainability energy those kinds of issues and was there any other um input that you that you thought sought whether you know cross departmental or line staff uh to help inform your your decision

▶ 27:33 Paul Brodeur: uh i had conversations with um a conversation with the staff down at the city yard of the folks that were on the search the initial screening committee i guess you'd call it included the the superintendent the planning director our current interim director of dpw extensen and marianne long personally we obviously perhaps it's not obvious check some references talk to my colleagues in other cities and towns about um both about specific candidates and about what they thought more generically were important things to look for

▶ 28:15 Shawn M. MacMaster: Thank you, Mayor, for the diligence that you put into the process. Just a couple of questions for Ms. Paracas-Ellis. How do you see yourself working with us as members of the City Council as Councilor Tramontozzi knows 95% of what a ward alderman does is DPW related and Thorp a lot of interaction. So what should we expect in terms of that interaction from you?

▶ 28:37 Speaker 2: Well, first off, I think you'll find that I'm very responsive. I try to respond as quickly as possible to questions or concerns, both back to the councillors or to constituents who've contacted you about different issues. When you have more extensive requests for information, I traditionally have been always happy to pull the information together and get it out when we could, given all of our hectic schedules but um i'm interested in transparency and just answering whatever questions you have as they come up and making sure that your constituents are happy with our

▶ 29:22 Shawn M. MacMaster: services as a dpw and having worked with you over the last couple of years i know that that is within your nature you talked about some of the neighborhood meetings we participated in several together and you do bring a strong commitment to customer service and to in a strong sense of i think responsiveness as well in terms of the interactions that i've had with you as you know we have an aging infrastructure which presents a number of challenges is there any low-hanging fruit that you see that might be more easily addressed than some of the large scale problems

▶ 30:01 Speaker 2: that we confront as a city well i think the um on the capital end of things i think we're in great shape with our programs that we tend to use the mwra grant loan money for on water and sewer so in terms of larger capital repairs i think we're on the right track and we'll just keep going on that track in terms of the lowest hanging fruit right now i'm not sure if the council is aware but we had applied for a asset management grant for the sewer system through mass dep and we were informed recently that we did get that funding or we were at least on the draft intended use plan the state puts out which means we should be getting the funding um come the beginning of the fiscal year so um i think that's going to be an easy one for us to tackle because it's i think it's sixty thousand dollars of grant funding and then i believe it's a twenty thousand dollar expenditure for us from the sewer fund to start better tracking our operations on the sewer end and i think that's going to pay dividends in terms of our ability to stay on top of problems

▶ 31:08 Shawn M. MacMaster: and stay ahead of problems thank you the mayor referenced customer service we just talked a little bit about that being a good manager obviously involves recognizing that we can always do better are there any opportunities that you see to enhance the very strong customer service foundation that we have currently in dpw i think we need to get more information available

▶ 31:28 Speaker 2: online that's probably the biggest one i think for the most part i've been very pleased with everything i've seen from our department in terms of customer service in terms of you know when when we're out on the street filling a pothole repairing a sidewalk when the public comes and talks to our crews they're respectful and informative and and so I think historically they've been very good so it's just building on on that foundation of what

▶ 32:03 Shawn M. MacMaster: we already have my last question is on day one you probably thought about what it's going to be like when you walk into the office any thoughts on what the first thing is that you're going to do

▶ 32:13 Speaker 2: i have a strong feeling it's going to relate to coronavirus which is not the best way to start out but i think you know i i can't don't spoil it again yeah i i can't envision a scenario where that's not still the top priority

▶ 32:31 Shawn M. MacMaster: um in a couple weeks so well i'm very pleased to uh support um uh the nomination and i'll be voting um in favor of the tonight you are a consummate professional your resume is exceptional my interactions with you have been extremely positive neighbors with whom i've interacted after our neighborhood meetings have offered their compliments so i think the mayor made a very smart choice here and i'd like to again thank you congratulate you appreciate your service to date thank you mr mayor and i'd also like to thank your family for being here your your children look a little young to maybe appreciate one of them as a way to appreciate what's happening but as the president said a short while ago this is an important day for the city of melrose and i think they will look back with great pride when they really understand what this means for you and your family and for all of us in melrose so congratulations thank you

▶ 33:34 Jack Eccles: Thank you both for being here I know that I've worked with you briefly I've known you for a short eight months and I'm excited to work together even longer. So one thing that I think we can all agree is very important is data driven decisions can you talk about what you've done downstairs in your office that's kind of taking some outdated you know physical copies of records and digitizing them.

▶ 33:59 Speaker 2: So we have the geographic information systems layers, they were created for our utility systems in 2007 and then they weren't really kept up to date after that. So we've been, as we've been doing other work in the city such as when we put a camera through a sewer pipe, we now link the video and the report from that inspection back to the pipe on the map so that when somebody calls and says you know i'm building a new house and i don't know if Thorp a stub available for this new house on the sewer i can actually launch a video from my desk in a matter of seconds and watch what the inside of that pipe looks like and see exactly where that connection might be made so all the all the little things that all the bits of information that we get in we're trying to link those all back into the gis so that we can access that information one of our biggest projects excuse me that's been ongoing for the whole time i've been here and we're making some headway but but the slow process is digitizing all of our water and sewer tie cards so that is the connection from the main in the street over to each house each of the 8300 water and sewer customers on the sewer side we have these books that go back to the 1800s and each page is a sewer connection and on the water side someone had the wise idea of creating two versions of every card so we have one version here at City Hall and one version at the City Art and they don't always have the same information so on those we have 17,000 of them and we've been having senior citizen volunteers scanning them in our office some terrific volunteers who've been coming every week for years and so on the water side we now have the a through M streets 100% scanned and on the sewer side we have 30 out of 130 books now scanned but when when we have a problem now we had a sewer back up at someone's house that was caused by some work that National Grid was doing and this was a few months ago I was home I got a call on a Saturday evening I opened up my laptop typed in the address we happen to have both the water in the sewer card I was able to convey all the information over the phone to our crew and they knew exactly where the problem was what caused the problem so that's that's some of what we're doing the other just real quick I love this stuff so I could talk about it forever

▶ 36:34 Speaker 2: but the other big one is our roadway condition assessment that we just finished last week so I'm proud to say that we have a new map we're doing this every three years our staff drove every street in the city and ranked with 13 different parameters on a tablet every segment of every road in the city and then we put it all through an algorithm back at our office and it spits out a rating for every segment of every road and then we make a color-coded map we split them into four categories so now we know when someone calls and says my street is the worst street in Melrose we can say well actually you're the 38th

▶ 37:10 Speaker 2: so that's a tool that we use a lot and we're excited that we've just updated

▶ 37:15 Jack Eccles: that I just have one more question one thing I was happy to see included in the job description was sustainability conservation and climate change initiatives could either be talked about something that you is ongoing or you'd like to see come up in the coming years on that front I'll start with some bad

▶ 37:32 Paul Brodeur: news or I'll start with what I think the hardest thing with that we're probably going to deal with in that respect in the next several years is recycling costs I know you all know about it you know what is happening with the marketplace around recycling we are in a very very favorable position right now and unusually favorable position what that unfortunately means is the shock to the system that other cities and towns are going to face when the new pricing hits is going to be significant that does not mean we are in any way going to back away from recycling but we are certainly going to seek to do it to kind of react to the market to a certain degree and do it better do it more aggressively do it more purely if you will and try to get try to get to a place where we're where our habits are better and where we're you almost have it's almost like cholesterol these days Thorp good recycling and bad recycling we need to do better and we're playing yeah as I'm sure I think you all know we now have the recycling record coordinator back online fairly recent hire she is terrific and she has already started work in that direction so I think we will see some progress there but that's something you can expect for us to have conversations about quite a bit over the coming over the coming

▶ 38:52 Speaker 2: couple years and I did have an opportunity to meet with jrm today and also to tour their recycling plant actually with my son yesterday and it it really brought home the point of that it's the quality of the recycling that we're putting in our bins that is what is driving a lot of what's happening in the market and it's very important that everybody follow the the recommendations as to what goes in the bin versus what goes in the trash so I think we're gonna try to do a little more outreach on that as well I mentioned the website before and Sam our new solid waste and recycling coordinator is going to be also managing the website for DPW and hopefully we'll be getting a lot of information out to to improve that in terms of other sustainability initiatives we are we've been actively working through the municipal vulnerability assessment program we did our mvp report last year we applied for an action grant this year for redesign of the city hall parking lot to mitigate flooding and to add green infrastructure and we received funding as you all know so we're now actively in the design process on that so that will be an exciting project i think we need to make every every decision that we make in terms of facilities has to have a component of sustainability considered it's not always going to be the driving factor but it has to be every time we're replacing hvac we're replacing lighting we're redesigning a space where we can have more natural light or have something else that that brings down our energy costs we just have to think about that in every decision

▶ 40:38 Paul Brodeur: that we make i'd say i didn't mean i didn't need to leave you with the feeling that that there was no good news certainly we milrose continues to be a leading municipality uh in this area the it's probably best to think about that is absolutely a part of the job description and the role but the most important part of the role is working in concert with planning with our sustainability coordinator and integrating those concepts into everything that we do and we'll continue to pursue that you know be a transportation road design that's four square within dpw um certainly certainly trash but some of some of the other things in terms of like facilities where it would be facilities plus um martha grover and her sustainability role having that input making sure we're making the best decisions we can

▶ 41:33 Jack Eccles: great thank you both i look forward to supporting this order and working with you soon

▶ 41:37 Speaker 1: I don't believe Thorp any other questions up no actually no questions but just wanted to say

▶ 41:40 Leila Migliorelli: thank you for coming tonight and I'm very excited about this position it's a critical position for our city Elena you were one of the first people I heard of in the city that I've heard you know outstanding remarks from and you kind of proved it tonight going through all of your credentials and plans for the future so I look forward to working with you and excited about this higher

▶ 42:02 Christopher Cinella: thank you thank you any other questions no so what is the motion to recommend second we have a motion to recommend by councilor Tramontozzi seconded by councilor mcmaster all those in favor aye any opposed hearing none the motion passes for a recommendation to the full board thanks very much