ORDER-2020-39 : Request for Update on the Status of the Community Mitigation Funds Grant

Transcript (~1 h 8 min @ 1:41:26)

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▶ 1:41:08 Kate Lipper-Garabedian: seconded to recommend for passage all in favor opposed we'll make that recommendation of the full council thank you again for being here and I've been remiss to mention that um that was sorry not sorry not for you uh that um counselor mortimer sends his regrets he has a medical issue with a family member otherwise he would be here second order on our agenda excuse me is order 2020-39 request for update on the status of the community mitigation funds grant i see that we are we're still in our suspension rules i see the city engineers here if you'd like to join us hi thank you good evening good evening thank you for being here tonight and

▶ 1:41:55 Kate Lipper-Garabedian: And I know that we did receive a memorandum. Maybe, was it today? So I don't know if it's in the agenda yet publicly. Has it been posted online? OK, so it is available to the public online as well. So thank you for being here.

▶ 1:42:12 Speaker 8: Would you like me to start out by presenting? OK. Sure. And I apologize for the confusion on what was posted on Friday or Saturday versus what was posted today. It was just a miscommunication between Kristin and me in terms of what was supposed to go up onto the site. So unfortunately, the more introductory material that was supposed to be providing the bulk of the update was what we didn't post until later today. That was the two memos. You all got a hard copy, though, in your mailboxes. And so what I'd like to do is just run through a little bit of the history, and if you don't mind, I know it's been a long night, but run through the content of the two memos just to give an update on where we are. So we did receive this grant back in 2017 or we received basically notification of this grant in 2017 or possibly even earlier and the requirement of the grant was we were allocated $100,000 in mitigation funds from the Mass Gaming Commission relation to the casino and I believe it the the initial allocation of that hundred thousand actually predates when I started in 2015 but I believe the number was selected based on it was actually because of route 99 because we have that tiny piece of route 99 that's how we qualified for the money but route 99 being a state road it really didn't make any sense for us to try to allocate that money in that neighborhood so but the Gaming Commission does require that the funding be tied to potential impacts or actual impacts of the casino itself. So we had to be a little creative in terms of how we identified where that money could be used and in reviewing the casino documents they were going to have shuttle service and I believe they do now have shuttle service from Malden Center to the casino on the Orange Line. So we thought our most direct connection to places where we could see an uptick in something could potentially be ridership from Oak Grove and people coming from the Melrose direction toward Oak Grove. And the interest of the city at that time was to be focused on pedestrian and bike improvements just because we didn't really have roadway improvements. There wasn't a high need for paving in that area, but pedestrian and bike improvements and accessibility were identified as needs that we had been hearing about for quite some time. So that's how we got to the point of identifying what to do with the money, and so we signed the grant contract with the state just before Mayor Dolan had left, so that was sometime in early 2018, and signed the contract with Stantec at that same time asking them to do an analysis of this corridor.

▶ 1:45:23 Speaker 8: So at that time, we asked them to do this thorough analysis of pedestrian accommodations, bus stops, crosswalks, ADA accessibility, bike accommodations, condition assessment of all the sidewalks in that neighborhood, identifying any deficiencies. And so they came back last spring with their initial, I wouldn't quite call it a report, it was an aggregation of all the work that they had done. I frankly I spared the council that detail because the appendices were about this thick of maps with notations of measurements and things so they did an extremely detailed analysis and presented to us in the spring the deficiencies and at that time we noted that they didn't have any recommendations in their report it was it was just a draft at that time and it was largely a list of deficiencies and their impression was that whatever money we couldn't get from the community mitigation fund grants we would find elsewhere and we were going to do this laundry list of what I would think amounts to hundreds of thousands of dollars of repairs which was really not our intent we had communicated to them that we were spending the first 26,000 on the study and the remaining 74,000 was for the implementation of the highest priority recommendations and that that was where we intended to stop and then everything else would basically sit on the shelf until other funding opportunities had come up or until they worked you know some of the repairs has worked into our operating budgets due to staff turnover since the spring we have frankly done very little on this project I think there's there were some comments in public participation and also some conversation correspondence that I've had with with councillor McMaster concerned that we were moving ahead and not involving folks but I think that is more an issue of just were so swamped engineering is so short-staffed Jackie Byrd was working on this and then she announced she was leaving and then John Shannon was working on it and then he announced he was leaving and so the the annual report that we submitted in November which was just this brief two-page letter to the state and then our review of stantec's document and our requests for some substantial edits to make that into a better final product which they're still working on is really all we've done other than identifying this priority list so I just want to one apologize that we haven't acted more quickly on it but to express that there is absolutely going to be an opportunity for public comment for work with the ped bike committee for further work with the Ward 5 counselor we don't intend to leave anybody out of this process or not account for anybody's input with the ped bike committee I actually meet monthly with their chair he serves also as their infrastructure liaison and so we meet every month and talk about what projects we have going on and his committee has submitted substantial recommendations for us like with the north-south bike roots and other projects that we have absolutely incorporated into our projects so just want to be sure that that's clear i don't want it to be misrepresented that we're you know coming up with priorities and not sharing them with anyone and then the other item that i do want to note is that since this priority first cut list was made with uh under mayor inferna's administration and Mayor Broder has not seen this yet other than a courtesy copy that I sent him on Friday. So we will certainly be looking for his input as well. So, all of that said,

▶ 1:49:48 Speaker 8: the memo on the second page, which is the annual report just runs through. We've spent 23,000 of the Stantec money for the study. And like I said, we've asked them to make improvements the report before we submit it as a final report we need to submit it to the gaming commission and we'd like to submit it to the city council and to the mayor's office their charge at this point is they've included what they consider their priorities but that's where their report will end and then the city will take it from there we don't intend to have them design recommendations the types of things we're looking at don't really require a design engineer so the priorities in in their final report may not be the priorities that we ultimately end up selecting to implement. That's just their opinion as an outside consultant. And we're not going to have them change their recommendations. I think their recommendations are what they are as professional engineers, but then we can take those and identify community priorities

▶ 1:50:51 Speaker 8: and work within those parameters. So the list that we've come up with is eight items. I don't think 74,000 will pay for all eight of these items. So I don't think we would get through all of them. But our recommendation is to do them in this order until we run out of money. But again, we do hope to have a public meeting and whatever other discussion with other groups is desired. So first, we'd like to paint all the missing crosswalk markings at all the cross streets within the entire corridor that means these are three major roads Pleasant Street Washington Street and West Wyoming there are side streets that come out to meet these roads where there are not painted crosswalks parallel with the main road so just at the side street crossings some of them don't have painted crosswalks we'd like to make sure to get those in there and then the bus stop at Wyoming and cottage the riders when they come on and off the bus they go on and off at a grass strip and a and a curb so there's really no accessible way to get on and off the bus there so we'd like to at a minimum put some concrete sidewalk blocks in at the definitely at the front of the bus and then if if there's room to do it at the if there's a backdoor entry as well that's something we'd have to look at a little bit in a little bit more detail in terms of what the MBTA buses where exactly they pull up at that location and how to make that accessible we'd like to repaint Washington Street Washington Street is not wide enough to have full bike lanes but we can have 11 foot travel lanes and three foot shoulders we've done 11 foot travel lanes now on Main Street through the entire north-south bike route corridor we've done it on Upham Street all the way from Main Street to Saugus it's become sort of our standard on bus routes to go with an 11 foot travel lane in each direction it calms traffic and it provides a wider shoulder for cyclists we would put sharrows in the road because technically a three-foot shoulder is not wide enough for a bike lane so we would put the shared lane markings within the road so in instances where somebody did need to ride within the travel lane that reminds drivers that they're permitted to be there similarly it would be nice to do the same thing on Pleasant Street there's a lot more variation in widths on Pleasant Street and more areas where parking is allowed so it may just be striping 11-foot lanes and putting sharrows I don't believe there's room for bike lanes there either but the parking situation is a little different so we we do the same thing we just did on the north-south bike routes and looking at a lot of detail at at the whole corridor and exactly what we could do we want to ensure there's a consistent corridor of sidewalks and ADA ramps on at least one side of the road so that somebody could walk all the way from Wyoming to Oak Grove or from Washington Street to Oak Grove and have an accessible corridor the whole way similar to what we just did on Upham Street with free cash earlier this year we'd like to add more crosswalks across Pleasant Street right now I believe between the start of Pleasant Street or maybe just a couple blocks down all the way to Stone Place there aren't any crosswalks so we've identified at least one location where we can put one which is one of the entrances to converse Lane but we'd have to look more carefully at site sight lines to be sure that we could put if we wanted to put two crosswalks that we saw as a high priority there are definitely a lot of people who cross Pleasant Street for a variety of reasons one of Stantec's recommendations was to relocate the crosswalk from across Washington Street from trenton to clinton road because sight lines are better so we'd want to do that too we would close in the ramps at trenton and put new ramps at clinton um consider adding a crosswalk across washington street at pebble road and then consider whether to modify the island at pleasant and washington to have more sidewalks or more logical crosswalks that one was again one of stantec's recommendations i think there's a lot of challenges in trying to change anything from what it is right now at that intersection but um and again we're unlikely to get that far down the list if the list ends up staying in this approximate order and then I just noted at the end that there are a lot of sidewalk repairs on Stantec's list and they spoke to a lot of residents when they were out there people came out and asked what they were measuring and we heard a lot of comments about cracks and trip hazards and the typical things we hear about cracked sidewalks so I'm recommending that we just take the highest needs ones and put them into our egov system as work orders for repairs and then they just get repaired when they when they come up on the list but recognizing that with our current funding levels for those repairs we tend to be a couple years behind in keeping up on that list so it would be nice if some more money could get allocated there if we wanted to do those more

▶ 1:56:17 Speaker 10: quickly thank you madam chair Thank You miss

▶ 1:56:18 Shawn M. MacMaster: for being here this evening. As background for filing this order, I just wanted to provide some information for my colleagues and for the public. You may recall that John Shanna, the former superintendent of public works, came before us on October 15th of 2018. That was 13 months ago. And at that time, he explained how the grant came about. He discussed the award that we received he notified us that a consultant had been hired to conduct a study that would identify needs and make recommendations at that time he informed us that the scope of work would assess ada accessible ramps crosswalk locations both existing and proposed bus stops and accident records and miss paracas alice affirmed that this evening he explained that the area of study would be the pleasant lower washington street corridor washington street to fellsway east and west wyoming from maine to cottage in that evening again this is october 15 2018 i expressed that it would be important to ensure that the public has a voice in the process especially before any determinations were made and any money was spent mr shenna responded that he envisioned there being a neighborhood meeting and he and i had several exchanges about that in the following months until his departure since then i have also received a considerable amount of inquiries a considerable amount from residents both in ward 5 and beyond those who travel through ward 5 for work getting to oak grove about the status of the grant so the reason I filed the order is because it's now been 13 months since the council and the public were provided information I also made at least four prior requests for information and copies of the consultants report between December 3rd 2018 and December 12 2019 all of which excuse me all of which uh went uh i'm sorry december 3rd 2018 and august 12 2019 all of which went unanswered now in fairness to you miss paracas ellis i have never made any such request of you correct correct and in fact i've never had a conversation with you about this grant or even an email exchange until this weekend when i attempted to prepare you for my questions and some of the concerns that that i have and where i included mayor broder on that correspondence just out of courtesy so he had a sense of uh the types of questions i was going to ask tonight so i say that because i don't want there to be any impression at all that you've been unhelpful or uncooperative that is certainly not the case i know that it's not within your spirit my experience working with you you know has shown me that you're very collaborative and very responsive and that we have a good working relationship so i just think it's it's important because i don't want there to be any sense from anyone whether it's my colleagues or the public that you do not respond to my uh my requests um but you do have some familiarity with uh with the grant you're in a position to answer some questions about process and um some of the questions that we have about recommendations that are made and the work that we'll be looking to do uh prospectively So, some of these questions you touched upon, as I understand it, $26,904 was already spent. That's 26% of the entire grant. And from reading a document that was provided to us this evening, it's not the one that been uploaded uh this weekend it's the uh stated november 6 2000 i'm sorry november 22nd 2019 there's also an attachment uh from november 6th to 2019 um it it doesn't appear as if the consultant's report is actually complete is that correct that's why it hasn't been provided to

▶ 2:00:38 Speaker 8: anyone and and like i said the um i didn't get a chance to really thoroughly read the draft that they provided they provided pieces of the report in the spring and then they provided the remainder of it in the fall earlier this fall and i finally had a chance to review it just a few weeks ago and the it was a draft but the quality even as a draft was not ready for for public consumption um just needed some reorganization and some wordsmithing i would say okay so in terms of

▶ 2:01:12 Shawn M. MacMaster: outstanding work and looking at the um the report dated november 22nd that we were provided um it looks like there are a few items that were not mentioned in the report accident records that would be reviewed concept sketches up to 10 graphics that would be prepared mbta ridership data to be analyzed one public workshop to be held in meetings with mbta officials the police and the fire department and other city departments um are is this from stantec's scope of work this

▶ 2:01:50 Shawn M. MacMaster: is from the actual uh report that was provided and the scope of work that they had provided

▶ 2:02:05 Speaker 8: initially back in December 2017 from the pieces of the report that I felt were a good enough quality to provide for tonight I asked them to prepare what they prepared which was an informational packet which was basically excerpts from the report put together into a format that provided enough information for some review tonight but anything that's missing from that report should be incorporated into their final version of the report or we had drafts of those sections and they just weren't so well enough to to provide for tonight understood so other than the one public

▶ 2:02:37 Shawn M. MacMaster: workshop that wasn't held um the other items that i touched upon do we know if those have been completed or is that work that still needs to be undertaken i believe they've all been completed

▶ 2:02:49 Speaker 8: other than i wasn't aware of in their contract being um meeting with police and fire i don't recall that so i i don't believe that they did that other than getting in touch with police to

▶ 2:03:05 Shawn M. MacMaster: gather accident crash reports okay do we expect to receive any additional bills from the consultant

▶ 2:03:12 Speaker 8: other than what we've already uh paid we have paid 23 244.25 and we expect to receive a bill for the balance of their contract which brings us up to the 26904 when they've completed the report

▶ 2:03:25 Shawn M. MacMaster: when we've accepted the final report do we expect that we would ask them to do any additional work no to date there haven't been any other additional costs incurred other than the consultants report no okay and i think you had said uh that the uh grant was actually uh sought under mayor

▶ 2:03:44 Speaker 8: doan's administration he signed the contract with the state the um one thing that we learned recently is that um we applied for we we signed a contract for the full hundred thousand and then we applied for the use of this first 26 000 but then in talking more recently to the gaming commission contact mary thurlow she did indicate that when once we identify what we want to spend the implementation money on we do have to reapply for spending that portion of the money because the only approval we've gotten to date is the 26904 for the consultant so even though the money is already under contract for the city um through the contract with the gaming commission we don't have permission yet to spend the 74 000 on anything any one particular thing and do you recall when

▶ 2:04:32 Shawn M. MacMaster: we received notification of the award what was or was that before your time and you referenced that

▶ 2:04:38 Speaker 8: may have been before so the award that was in in february 2017 is when we signed the the 100 000 and when we signed with um stantec i believe was also february if not it was within a month on either side so that's when we received approval from the state to move forward but i know the the community mitigation fund documentation that assigned us that value of a hundred thousand was

▶ 2:05:07 Shawn M. MacMaster: long before that there is a cover letter in a task order from stantec dated december 5 2017. i reviewed that late last evening and that the letter is signed by you mr shena and patrick delarusso in the signatory section of the letter there's a handwritten notation by mr delarusso that says awaiting board of alderman approval and again that was dated december 5 2017 just about two years from today i don't think any of us thought of it at the time because we didn't realize that this process back in october of 2018 had begun well before then do you know why it took 10 months for the administration to request that the city council then board of aldermen

▶ 2:05:55 Speaker 8: accept the grant unfortunately i do know and it was that it slipped through the cracks and there was a recollection that we had done it and then realized months later that we had not but i'm not sure that stantac actually started any work prior to when the grant was accepted we certainly signed their contract um prior to that but um but i know there was a long lapse of the coming for the formality of having the board accept our receipt of the money um that was

▶ 2:06:27 Shawn M. MacMaster: long after it was supposed to be so they were they were retained sometime before that 10-month period before the the grant was accepted by the council the document that you said was signed by

▶ 2:06:35 Speaker 8: by patrick and and john the date that john signed it oh that was so december 5 2007 is when the

▶ 2:06:41 Shawn M. MacMaster: letter was sent with that that attachment it was signed by uh mr shena in february i think

▶ 2:06:52 Speaker 8: was february 8th okay so the date of mr shannon's signature the date of the dpw director's signature is the date we always consider to be the start date for our contracts in dpw so there would

▶ 2:06:59 Shawn M. MacMaster: have been conversations so about hiring and attention but the the scope of work would have been presented to us in the form of that document and then it would have been signed and at that

▶ 2:07:11 Speaker 8: point there would be an official yeah i believe though that there was quite a bit of conversation um with under the dolan administration and i believe with counselors at that time as well about what we might be spending this money on but it just wasn't that formality of getting the board approval to accept the grant was was missed okay and before october 18th you know

▶ 2:07:32 Shawn M. MacMaster: generally speaking the time of this is october 18th 2018. do you know generally the type of work that stantec had done leading up to that meeting had they been out in the field at that at that

▶ 2:07:55 Speaker 8: point if you know let me see trying to see if any of their documents have the dates of their field

▶ 2:08:21 Speaker 10: work and council mcmaster just followed we're looking for the answer we do have some people

▶ 2:08:25 Shawn M. MacMaster: in queue and so i think it's fine if miss paracas else if you don't if you don't have that with you um i think that would be helpful um you could perhaps forward that to um this foot and also So maybe a timeline of the work that was conducted before October of 2018.

▶ 2:08:48 Speaker 8: Yeah, my impression is that they presented their findings, these documents, which is all their measurements and all of their details. These were the appendices that I didn't subject you to. They presented those to us in spring 2019. so and my recollection is that this was kind of hot off the press when when they presented it to us so i'm not sure that they did anything prior to 2019 so um i could i could ask stantec

▶ 2:09:21 Speaker 8: but that might be um you know i'm not sure that they would know the exact dates i seem to have

▶ 2:09:24 Shawn M. MacMaster: recalled and i could be wrong that there may have been a traffic study in the summer of 2018 which would have been a couple of months prior to Ms. Deschenes appearing before us and that they came back out in the fall for something, but I think it would be helpful to at least know the timeline. Madam Chair, if I could-

▶ 2:09:43 Speaker 8: I didn't do traffic counts, so if there was a traffic study that was unrelated to this contract.

▶ 2:09:49 Shawn M. MacMaster: Madam Chair, if I could just ask one more question about the process and I'll defer to my colleagues and perhaps come back.

▶ 2:09:54 Speaker 8: Yes, absolutely.

▶ 2:09:55 Speaker 10: You could have a second turn.

▶ 2:09:57 Shawn M. MacMaster: understanding miss paracas ellis that melrose has no shortage of residents who had no charge to the city could have helped to identify needs and make recommendations residents who are city planners transportation planners engineers public safety officials and considering that we have a very knowledgeable organized and active ped bike committee is there a reason we didn't utilize local resources up front to conduct an initial needs assessment as a cost saving measure it's just it's concerning that a quarter of the grant has been spent on a consultant when we may have been able to you know identify some of those needs um short of spending the money i know the consultant serves a purpose and there may be things that they can provide that um you know volunteers might not be able to but i think we may have been able to identify some of this up front um rather than you know spend almost 27 000 um the the level of detail that the consultant

▶ 2:10:56 Speaker 8: has provided and once you have the final report you'll see you can tell from from the informational packet to some degree but that's not something that we would ever expect a volunteer organization to do we worked very closely with the ped bike committee on the north south bike route where they did provide some design assistance um taking that information and then working with it to come up with the final routes was probably a 200 hour plus effort on behalf of the engineering division it's it's unrealistic to expect a volunteer group to to provide the level of detail that we would be getting from a consulting company at the time when we were looking at the hundred thousand and what we could use it for it I don't remember any any opinions to the contrary to hiring a consultant to help us with this I think also with our staffing levels we just we need the assistance of consultants it's you know to to manage volunteer resources also requires staff time and and that can be a considerable effort I think this was money well spent they come came up with a lot of information a lot of details a lot of items from which to choose in terms of moving forward I think we can still do a lot with 74,000 in terms of implementation as well it really helps us that we have on-call contracts for things like paving and curb ramps and sidewalks and line striping and street signs and so we have all these contractors in place we don't have to put any of this work out to bid so we could just take a consultants recommendations and then go to our on-call contractors and ask them to implement the things that we want and like I said there's still lots of opportunity for the ped bike committee and others to to weigh in on this process as I mentioned I meet just about monthly with Jonah their chair and he's always asking you know what we want input on and the next major thing that we've discussed is lower Main Street and the line striping down there and they're doing some analysis similar to what they did on the the northern part of the bike route so I think we've we've gotten some phenomenal work out of volunteers especially from that committee and we'll continue to do so but I don't think this was an effort that would have been realistically performed by volunteers madam chair at this time

▶ 2:13:41 Shawn M. MacMaster: i'll yield to whoever's in queue and perhaps come back uh depending on if my other questions

▶ 2:13:48 Manisha Bewtra: counselor future thank you thank you um thank you councillor mcmaster for filing this order and um miss peric is ls for um your comments tonight i think it's i really appreciate your honesty and and just sort of acknowledging you know the city's been in a lot of upheaval over the last two years and and and just keeping very forthcoming that this unfortunately fell through the cracks and then furthermore I think you know you've mentioned the attachments I for one would love to see them I am curious if you know I I guess I'm a little unclear on the state of you know this isn't the final report it doesn't I mean it says informational packet and what we received but whether it's actually a draft and if it just needs a watermark or something to indicate that it's a draft but if it's possible to potentially upload the attachments to maybe the engineering section of the website so not only we but also members of the public and the pet bike committee could potentially be able to look at those maps and kind of dig into the detail yeah I do I do hope

▶ 2:15:03 Speaker 8: to have a chance to get a full what I consider a high quality complete report so that I can review the whole thing make sure that it all makes sense and then provide that to others our expectation is not that since Stantec is just giving their professional opinion of all the needs that's basically what they're hired to do is identify the list of needs I don't envision much more back and forth with them in terms of refining their report or making it say you know something different than what they're already drafting it to say so my my main goal with them right now is just to get something that's cohesive and well-written and that I can provide to everybody but I will absolutely provide

▶ 2:15:50 Manisha Bewtra: that once it's in that shape I'm a little confused on the I guess the the aspect of the scope of work as it relates to the public forum is that what was Stantec's responsibility with that we we expected Stantec to just provide

▶ 2:16:04 Speaker 8: us with the information and then we were gonna have a public meeting to look at all the things they recommended and get a feel for what the community's priorities are so the list that I put in my memo is what I identified working with John Shenna and Jackie Bird as in reading the report what we thought were the highest priorities. But the community process we envisioned taking place after that. Stantec was never in their contract. They didn't have anything about holding a public meeting or gathering information because their analysis was going to be strictly empirical. We weren't asking them to make judgements. We were asking them to tell us an engineering perspective what are all the deficiencies and what can we possibly do with them so that's why they made lots of recommendations on potential locations to add crosswalks and locations to fix sidewalks and and that sort of thing um you mentioned that you meet with

▶ 2:17:04 Manisha Bewtra: the chair of the pedestrian and bicycle advisory committee about monthly can you kind of expand on how you anticipate involving that committee uh going forward as we you know proceed with this

▶ 2:17:22 Speaker 8: work i would envision that they would i imagine they will want a copy of the final report from stantec so they can review all the recommendations i would imagine they'd want to weigh in on what their priorities are i know just from from talking to them all the time that they're very interested in bike corridors to Oak Grove down Washington Street and down Pleasant Street we've had those questions even before this really came into being that's a question that's been asked since I started here and I know John Chenna's answer was routinely well we're we're hoping to do that with the community mitigation money so you know that'll be the that'll be when we hit that neighborhood with some sort of bike improvements got it um and well and I

▶ 2:18:07 Manisha Bewtra: appreciate you addressing some of those bike improvements tonight because my impression of the initial priorities or recommendations from Stantec was that they were heavily focused on more the pedestrian side that was my impression

▶ 2:18:24 Speaker 8: at least isn't yes so their priorities like I said they didn't necessarily line up with the priorities in the memo and these are so they did recommend the restriping especially on Washington Street I remember that being one of their recommendations but they just didn't rank it as a high priority whereas I think we absolutely expect that this project we want to see this project addressing both pedestrian needs and bicycle needs and it's there's not enough money to fully address both but I think it's important that both are represented I don't think that we should spend it all on one or the other

▶ 2:19:06 Manisha Bewtra: make sense um yeah I think my I mean I just I'd love to see the work to date or if the final what's it do what's it timeline you anticipate for the final

▶ 2:19:15 Speaker 8: report I'm hoping to have it within the next two weeks okay so then make sense

▶ 2:19:18 Manisha Bewtra: to wait for that just to see kind of where you know more in more detail what these street sections look like and and what their recommendations are I think think you know my concern would be going forward just making sure that our um that we do have some a greater level of public process and engagement um with the neighborhood but also with the pedestrian bicycle advisory committee um just can i mean i'm sure you've heard all these things but in my own experiences of canvassing those areas and trying to cross streets personally but also talking with neighbors um uh you know dealing with uh high speed traffic and sometimes discontinuous sidewalks and and all of that it's a it's a challenging area not to mention uh you know central point for um people commuting to the t so um again i really appreciate your honesty and kind of where we're at with this and um i think a lot of my concerns have been addressed i think with regards to i think some of my colleagues have you know alluded to and and members of the public the cost of um retaining the consultant versus using volunteers um i am uh i think you know i think once we see this final report i'm hoping it'll reflect the 27 000 worth of work which seems very reasonable for for the level of detail i think just what we received didn't match up to that um and certainly i applaud our um uh volunteers in the community for being able to for putting in so much time but i'm also really sympathetic to i think both on your end the need to have a predictable schedule which is easier when you're paying

▶ 2:21:17 Manisha Bewtra: someone versus a volunteer but also um um the uh i i hear the pushback too in terms of just wanting to make sure that we're getting our money's worth um and yeah my main thing is just like i hope we'll involve those folks in uh more robustly going forward thank you any other

▶ 2:21:39 Speaker 10: counselors wishing to speak at the first time councilman master would you like to oh i'm sorry

▶ 2:21:45 Michael P. Zwirko: thank you madam chair thank you for being here this evening um i have just a couple of quick questions so I did pull up the the memorandum that's dated September 27th of 2018 and that talks about how in conjunction with the grant that we've applied for the first 26 904 so at the time we knew that these funds were going to be dedicated for it says here at least perform an analysis and I'm guess I'm just wondering is that this is kind of building off of what councillor Bewtra said is that standard operating procedure I mean it seems to me that we would want to kind of get feedback before we apply for funds for an analysis or at least perform an analysis in a public way that would be much cheaper so I just like did we do this in reverse fashion now we we wanted data

▶ 2:22:34 Speaker 8: gathering because to to go out to the public with no data and just say what are the items that you'd like to see we kind of already had gotten a lot of that feedback actually through the complete streets program we we had all sorts of forums where we were saying where do people think we don't have enough crosswalks and we don't have continuous sidewalks and we had gathered a lot of that data I think we had a good feel for this is a neat area where people would like to see something so we were at the stage of data gathering which is what we paid the consultant to do and then typically the you know the public input comes when you have the list of deficiencies and you want to say okay what do you want to see fixed if we built our list of deficiencies just off of who commented on what they'd like to see fixed right from the outset then you really don't get a complete picture you really don't get a an objective look at what the needs are you just get the handful of more involved people in their opinions so I don't think this was done in reverse at all I think you want to come forward with data and with a list of recommendations and then you want to ask the the community what are your priorities from this because we have X amount of money left to spend and you know what do you want to see it spent on

▶ 2:23:55 Speaker 1: the have you ever seen an instance where the public has an anomaly or maybe

▶ 2:23:59 Michael P. Zwirko: something that wasn't picked up via the data gathering I mean is it is it basically you know here's a priorities and choose from this or is it something that you know hey maybe maybe we actually may have missed something in

▶ 2:24:16 Speaker 8: our data gathering process I don't think we missed anything in terms of you know accessibility and sidewalk repairs and crosswalk locations things like that I don't think we missed anything because they did an extremely thorough job somebody could absolutely come in and come up with something sort of off topic that they think is a higher priority than the things that we contracted with stantec to to do that could certainly result in some new ideas but i think there was buy-in again from the administration and i believe from the council at the time way back when the decision was made to use this money for these corridors um

▶ 2:25:01 Michael P. Zwirko: so oh especially with the advent of the the daycare as well i mean i know that was a huge component right for sure and then we've all heard at least most of us i shouldn't shouldn't speak for everyone about some of the congestion um wayfarer and likewise around um the wyoming hill bottleneck for lack of a better term um so thank you and you had also spoken about earlier this evening just and I think this is really important because it came up in another order this evening that you know we're now ever since about September we have not had a permanent DPW chief we have an interim right now we know that our engineering ranks are down and I think we also have some of our operations staff is also down I'm not sure can you talk about you you explain that there's resource issue um could you you know further illuminate us as to what the resource issue is i mean where are we in terms of ranks fully staffing where we've been plans that you know of and certainly understood what you can and can't discuss or what you may or may not know but i'm just i'm worried about you know this grant of only a hundred thousand dollars in the work that really

▶ 2:26:16 Speaker 8: this city has ahead of itself yeah so um i can't really speak to operations the operations group and any short staff i'm not sure what their staffing is right at the moment but i do know that in terms of engineering start with engineering since i know for sure on that so we had one staff member cut a year and a half ago in the spring due to budget cuts coming into fiscal 19 and we've never refilled that position and so we're now we have a job ad out for deputy city engineer position which would basically be filling that void that void was a project engineer so a little bit lower level but we really need to fill it with someone who can be a second in command who i can hand off whole projects to so we have a handful of applicants we're starting interviews next week so hopefully that will be filled relatively soon i also know that there were there was an ad out recently for the the combined recycling coordinator and assistant at the administration and I'm not sure what the statuses of that in terms of applicants they've gotten but I know that that is surely a vacancy I think those are the two biggest holes that I'm aware of and Rick Stinson's been doing a fabulous job as our interim director so he's continued to move us along i know it can

▶ 2:27:56 Michael P. Zwirko: be difficult during transition so i just i there's a lot of things um in departments where the kind of like the kitchen sink everything kind of falls there right and you know dpw is absolutely it so when there's you know a period where there's a position that's either temporary or not filled it can cause stress down the whole operational chain so i just wanted to bring that up i mean i think that the spirit of all this is great i remember when you know we were able to receive this grant i want to say this you know it was even floated back in 2014 and then finally ultimately you know funds were available so being able to use these funds for areas where there is a concern especially with that certainly being a high corridor for for flow various types of flow so you know it's it's not we just we want to see movement and I think that's really the concern at least primarily tonight and I'm glad to hear that it's the feeling is mutual my last question is you said that and it states this in the September 27th 2018 memo that I referenced but we're gonna have to apply for the additional balance right do they I know that these grants

▶ 2:29:13 Michael P. Zwirko: are somewhat new but in terms of their authority if we say if we go to them with you know six of these eight annotating why exactly we've gone through the process and why six of these eight have been selected do they have any discretionary authority at that point or do they what was what happens

▶ 2:29:33 Speaker 8: then with our application process so in my discussions with mary thurlow um it sounds like because it follows on from the work that we've already done that they've already approved that it should be fairly smooth sailing to get it approved um if we came in with something completely different i could see that they might question it and and could deny it but i've i had heard mixed things about whether this grant was exclusively for planning purposes or could be used for implementation because i think these are called planning grants and so i have asked her that question several times and keep getting the answer that yes it's fine to spend it to apply to spend it on what we've what we've been talking about so you know unless some some other authority at the gaming commission steps in and says no that's not the intention of these funds um every indication i've had is that it shouldn't be a problem

▶ 2:30:29 Michael P. Zwirko: the guide post is helpful there that was just um to the extent this comes back to the public and maybe they raised something that wasn't previously caught or it's outside of that that scope i would just want to know about that going in but appreciate that this whole process is very new to me so um not not necessarily the grant process but how this has worked so So the information you provided tonight has been helpful. Thank you. Thank you, Madam Chair.

▶ 2:30:57 Shawn M. MacMaster: Thank you, Madam Chair. Ms. Paracas-Ellis, the task order that was dated December 2017, that was signed in February of 2018, it indicates that the report would take 10 weeks to complete. What was our expectation of a report? And I think Consulate Bewtra referenced this. sounds like there might be either different definitions of a report it seems like there were multiple iterations of a report that may have been submitted over time what did we as a city think we would be getting within 10 weeks based on what is in that task order um i think what we

▶ 2:31:38 Speaker 8: expected to get is exactly what we will be getting in a couple of weeks the 10-week time frame is probably reflective of the $26,000 price tag and the total level of effort that that is equivalent to for a consulting company that would assume that they immediately were doing the work that they were under contract to do I believe I had mentioned to you in some correspondence earlier today that the we had Stantec doing probably four other projects at the same time and the reality is that we we prioritized some of those projects higher we needed immediate turnaround on some of those other items and so they they worked on those first and there was a long delay before they started this work of this project but in terms of what a report what we would expect to see would be a front end that that describes for anybody reading it whether it be engineers or city council or the layperson describes the process they went through why they were looking at this area what they found what they recommend and then all that backup data in appendices showing the data that they gathered so that is essentially what we're getting from them it's it's just that we've gotten it piecemeal and once it was all put together into what was supposed to be a cohesive report it just didn't it just didn't flow in the way that it needed to the information is all there like I said it's more a matter of organization and wordsmithing that that was the only thing lacking in the report

▶ 2:33:22 Shawn M. MacMaster: so I mean we did get something within that that 10-week period you mentioned earlier you said we had something that came back in the spring and you described it as an aggregation of all of the work that was done and that's spring

▶ 2:33:36 Speaker 8: 2019 though I think that's off by a year from your ten week dates right the

▶ 2:33:44 Shawn M. MacMaster: contract was in 2018 contract was signed in 2018 but ten weeks from that would take us to the second week in April and on April 7th this would be of 2018 which would be within ten weeks I had emailed mr. Shannon and Jackie lavender bird to inquire about the report and he had mentioned at that time on he responded april 12th um that they had an internal meeting scheduled that week so it seems like that that that initial iteration of a report or aggregation of all the work that was done i think that meeting

▶ 2:34:20 Shawn M. MacMaster: was in april 2019 though i'm sorry april 2019 correct so yeah so there was a year in between

▶ 2:34:28 Shawn M. MacMaster: or a year in 10 weeks but within that 10-week period some was something provided within that

▶ 2:34:34 Speaker 8: no okay no the first work product that we saw were these documents that i received at that meeting in spring 2019 and again that's because we we had all sorts of other work going on with them and we said do this other work first they were designing the roundabout and we were trying to stick to the um the time frame for the complete streets uh grants they were um they were analyzing the north south bike route some point in that time they were analyzing upham street for us they've been doing traffic counts they did some sign analysis for us on particular speed limit signs and things we've we've just we had them under contract for a lot of different items transportation related and a lot of them had more concrete deadlines all of the uh the the recommendations

▶ 2:35:25 Shawn M. MacMaster: and they were you know really broken down into i guess three geographic areas within ward five and part of Ward 3, Pleasant and Lower Washington Street being one geographic area, Upper Washington Street to the Fellsway being another, and West Wyoming from Main to Cottage being the third, all extremely worthwhile. Is there, understanding that this, I don't want to call it seed money, but I'd like to see it, if it results in something more than piecemeal projects, albeit important, something that perhaps is a larger effort to sustain the types of changes in the area. And I'm wondering if you foresee this being part of a larger strategic plan that we would build off of and seek other funding sources or look to free cash to really build upon these so that we really have a robust effort on that corridor to address as many of the needs if not all that we can so is there a larger plan in mind and if so what

▶ 2:36:36 Speaker 8: would what is that so I think the reality of these types of projects is that they do end up lending themselves to free cash because they're they're not in conjunction with paving needs so they don't end up being roped into our chapter 90 spending the roadway bond that we approved in fiscal 19 has been we've identified which projects that needs to be used for so there won't be certainly leftover money from that so it's very similar to Upham Street and what we did recently we had that on the complete streets list we were looking at it for a potential tip federal project and that didn't end up being a great candidate for a tip project according to MassDOT so we ended up allocating a good chunk of free cash to do pavement repairs and then again similar to this to have a continuous corridor of ADA compliant sidewalks and ramps so that now somebody can go down Upham Street all the way from Main Street to the Saugus line in wheelchair and have a ramp at every intersection and a crosswalk at every intersection so those are perfect free cash projects especially again where we have the the contractors under contract as on an on-call basis it's easy to what if money becomes available to do that sort of work there's not really design involved with it unless it's an odd case but we're able to handle that in-house with just close inspection during construction I don't envision that this wouldn't be funded through the complete streets program because we have the program kind of laid out for the next few years of what we're applying for so without it being good for tip or chapter 90 or complete streets I think operating funds and and free cash are the places to look there's always the the road bond that we approved in you all approved in fiscal 19 um takes us through fiscal 20 and then we'll probably have to come back for more money again you know for fiscal 21 and forward for additional paving so we could always try to roll it into that type of project as well i just have two final questions i know you've had a long

▶ 2:38:57 Shawn M. MacMaster: day and we still have mr wilcock here to um hear from on another matter um can you just describe what the next steps are i know you said you're hoping to have the final report within two weeks what are the next steps where do you see some sort of public discourse within those steps so

▶ 2:39:15 Speaker 8: we could post the final report when we have it to the website um we can and we'll send it to the council we'll send it to the pet bike committee um and and really we'd be looking to you for your recommendations on how best to have a public forum we're happy to do a presentation here um or some someplace closer to the neighborhood um right uh and my apologies

▶ 2:39:39 Shawn M. MacMaster: if you answered this does the money need to be spent within a certain period of time

▶ 2:39:45 Speaker 8: not that i'm aware of no i when i spoke to mary most recently i indicated that we would be applying over the winter for spring construction and she said that was fine okay um so just to end

▶ 2:39:55 Shawn M. MacMaster: on um a positive note we you know we talked a lot tonight about um much of what hasn't been done in this grant over the last couple of years but i did want to recognize you and your team in the engineering department and mr stinson and everyone in tpw for all that you do and all that you have done especially most recently on ashmont the street looks beautiful the work is right on schedule actually it looks like it's at least almost complete in terms of what we were looking to get done before christmas i think we're ahead of schedule uh the neighborhood um residents are extremely uh pleased um in that you know i know that's been a very uh lengthy and comprehensive uh project so um you know thank you for all your work on that and i know that is really just one example of all that you do and i know my colleagues would agree over the course of the year to respond to our requests and citizen concerns so i just want to uh you know i want to thank you for that and i appreciate your uh you being here tonight again like i said it's been a long day for you and um look forward to you know working with you uh moving ahead on the work

▶ 2:41:12 Manisha Bewtra: that's left to be done so thank you okay thank you uh counselor butra thank you um i had a couple more questions that i'd forgotten to ask um so one thing that kind of caught my attention and and maybe is part of the reason for some confusion around any public process that's happened to date is probably in a couple other sections, but under deficiencies, problem areas, section 2.4, and then if you look at the Washington Street piece, for example, there's mention of talking with residents and presumably as part of the field observations that Stantec was making, and I kudos to them for speaking to folks and not just taking measurements. But I think with regards to the final reports, just a little bit more detail on their methodology. And so those conversations are kind of put into context as not being necessary. I mean, my understanding is that they're not necessarily part of a formal traffic count or specific outreach, but presumably just people who happenstance encounters that were while they were in the area. is that correct exactly okay um and then um the other thing that caught my attention um if you could address under recommended improvements um you know just what the policy of the city is currently uh on page 21 of the document which is our packet page 27 um uh the second paragraph from the bottom of the page um it reads shallow tree roots below the surface are likely contributing to the deterioration of sidewalks resulting in numerous incidents of pedestrians tripping on cracked and broken sidewalk services we recommend placing asphalt sidewalk panels at these locations where tree roots cannot be cut back and reconstruction of the remaining sidewalk panels intimate concrete to meet 88 compliance um for me that kind of brought up a couple of questions one on sort of our policy of using asphalt versus concrete um i think from whether it's durability or as well as just aesthetic quality of concrete but then also you know i think this is a challenge throughout the city of you know tree roots and sidewalks are always we want the trees and we also want the sidewalks um so just curious if you could address that uh from an engineering standpoint and city policy

▶ 2:43:49 Speaker 8: standpoint yeah so that i did catch that recommendation and that is inconsistent with what we would do on a major roadway like this um we would be it is a valid way to deal with tree roots to put in an asphalt sidewalk in just that one section you maybe remove two blocks that are all cracked and you just put in asphalt because you can make it gently rise up and back down and that is something that is done and there's nothing wrong with doing that other than the aesthetics of the patchwork that you end up with and on a on a major corridor like this I can't envision that that would be our solution it would be more likely that we would just go back a few more blocks and just try to ramp up with the concrete sidewalk to make it over those tree roots if it was a healthy tree that we didn't want to remove trees absolutely lift sidewalks in a lot of cases but our policy has always been we don't remove healthy trees unless there's you know some some immediate hazard we also similarly we get questions all the time of you know tree roots are growing into my sewer can you come take the tree down and as a policy we do not take down healthy trees that's a problem with the sewer not a problem with the tree so um well no thank you i

▶ 2:45:04 Manisha Bewtra: that i appreciate the answer and it was kind of what i was hoping to hear and with regards to um concrete use of concrete versus asphalt i've certainly seen asphalt that's also been broken

▶ 2:45:19 Speaker 8: up by tree roots um it's just much easier to fix and and i can't say that that wouldn't be a good solution on a side road um as a you know a temporary fix even if it's a number of years temporary fix until we're back doing a major sidewalk project on a street um you know it is it is a valid way to address that sort of problem and in the right location i don't think it's a bad thing but we're not going to do that on a quarter like this thank you thank you that's for my

▶ 2:45:51 Speaker 8: question one other quick note that I just didn't mention somebody had mentioned the Lincoln School and that is mentioned in the report but the recommendations that Stantec made about circulation and pull-off areas and everything was really beyond the scope of what we asked them to do and I am very certain that the gaming Commission would find helping to improve school drop off to be well outside the scope of anything related to the casino so I would say I thought we would leave their recommendation in there since it is within the corridor but it's something we certainly can't with these funds

▶ 2:46:31 Kate Lipper-Garabedian: thank you I just have a couple quick things actually building on that last comment one thing I'm it'll be really helpful as my colleague said to see the final report I'm hopeful that it will be a document that will be useful not only only for identifying with a community input ways in which to spend the remainder of the grant money that we've been awarded but also perhaps for future endeavors including with respect to the Lincoln and I think the public comment that we heard today was also about a previous study that had been done around the Lincoln School so now we have a little bit more up you know newer data as well so to the degree that this report did cost a sizable amount of money hopefully we can get use out of it beyond even just the dispensation of the money that's associated with this particular opportunity one other place where it's possible we would have other sources of funding could be as large commercial parcels of land get redeveloped along this corridor and I understand that that's likely to happen with Marty's furniture property so we might also consider when we're prioritizing how to use this funding where we might actually be able to leverage the negotiations with any development there to address some of this artery including because I think it's fairly close to where Pleasant and Washington meet that and I believe that's one of the items on this list of identified priorities yeah I think

▶ 2:47:55 Speaker 8: though that island there was was revamped when Stone Place was built by that developer based on comments by the city at that time so I'm not sure if we would come to different conclusions this time but certainly we that's one really nice thing about have any having any of these things in a report we do the same thing with our complete streets prioritization plan if we see somebody proposing a development in a neighborhood where we have a prioritized recommendation we absolutely expect the developer to help contribute to that

▶ 2:48:30 Kate Lipper-Garabedian: effort so and I think in that vein sort of just a spirit of innovation and experimentation strikes me as a good option and a lens to think about this work in and this is an exact excellent example that you've just raised a sort of we had an idea for that island we executed it we're still seeing some issues maybe there are ways that iteratively we improve the process and there are certainly some low-cost ones that we've heard about tonight I know that there is I've seen these 3d looking crosswalks that Malden put it I mean there are all kinds I see you cringe so maybe I that's not a great example but it'll be great to sort of engage the community and hear from people and also educate us and at the same time so I look forward to that next step in the

▶ 2:49:14 Speaker 8: process okay and I cringe only because I I think as a driver if I saw that I would slam on the brakes and probably get rear-ended so I joked that we should let other communities be the guinea pig for that idea and okay see how the crash

▶ 2:49:27 Kate Lipper-Garabedian: history ends up and then decide I guess good news bad news is Malden is one of those communities so right there right next door we can check in with them pretty easily so that's all for me and I'm what does the will of the committee

▶ 2:49:39 Shawn M. MacMaster: but I'm sure at this time I would make a motion to recommend that this order be

▶ 2:49:46 Speaker 10: placed on file second have a motion made to place this order on file made by

▶ 2:49:50 Kate Lipper-Garabedian: by Councillor McMaster and seconded by Councillor Zwirko. All in favor? All right. Any opposed? We will make a recommendation to the full committee for that. Thank you very much for being with us tonight. We'll turn now to the last agenda item that we have, which is order number 2020-42, request to set a public hearing on classification of property for November 25th, 2019 at 7.30 p.m. and subsequently determine the classification of property. And we do have the city assessor with us tonight