Public Comment

Transcript (~27 min @ 1:59)

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

▶ 1:43 John N. Tramontozzi: And did I miss anybody, Councilor Mortimer? I'm sorry, Monica, and also Monica Medeiros. You got me, right? I'm a voting member. And also, Councilor Peter Mortimer, as a voting member, is present with us this evening as well. I think I got everybody now.

▶ 2:04 John N. Tramontozzi: So, this meeting is being recorded by MMTV and is also viewable on the City of Melrose website and on MMTV pursuant to the open meeting law. Motion to open the floor for public comment, Mr. Chair. We do have a motion to open the floor for public comment made by City Councilor Peter Mortimer, seconded by City Councilor Kate Flipper-Garabedian. All in favor? Aye. Any opposed, seeing none. This is that portion of the meeting that any member of the public who wishes to come forward to speak on any order on our agenda. There are two orders on the agenda this evening. Please come forward, sit at the table, sign in, including your name and address, and you're welcome to speak.

▶ 2:52 Speaker 1: evening please come forward good evening at first i'd like to say i wear hearing aids so i may answer questions you didn't ask it's been a very long day for me you won't be the first one that's

▶ 3:03 Speaker 1: all right my name is anne bentley i live at 21 waverly place i am one of the trustees for the 21

▶ 3:15 Speaker 1: 27 waverly place condo trust and last june 2nd 2018 we had a sewer backup into two of our units unit 25 unit 27 at the other end from me the it was it was traumatic for the owners or for the

▶ 3:31 Speaker 1: residents there because the crews are asian and they don't speak english very well they are just a delightful couple and they were just terrified because all of a sudden their basement powder room toilet was bubbling over with sewage and they called me about 9 30 and i went over and we all stood at the top of the stairs mr crew was at that point ankle deep in sewage in the basement trying to save possessions and and it was just it was I can't tell you how

▶ 4:09 Speaker 1: appalling the smell was poor mrs. Kuh was upstairs vomiting because it was just horrible and so obviously this was an issue we called City Hall we called DPW but of course at 10 o'clock at night they aren't there so we called the police who contacted them and they were very prompt they came as soon as they could and were able to stop the influx but at that point it had already gone through the balloon walls to unit 27 and went through beyond that to our to our utility room where all of our

▶ 4:55 Speaker 1: water heaters and things are and um i recalled surf pro after the city managed to get the sewage influx stopped and Servpro I don't know if you're aware but Servpro will not deal with a multiple unit 21 sorry 27 was affected 20 25 was mostly affected with the toilet in their basement and the utility room was lesser to a lesser degree but as trustee I was responsible for cleaning that up so Servpro would not deal with all three of us they only wanted one so in my capacity as trustee I said okay I will take responsibility for paying the cleanup of this because we did not want this in our building any longer than than it had to be so we used our some some of our contingency funds to pay the $5,000 and when they left

▶ 5:53 Speaker 1: after three days very efficient cleaning up fortunately number 25 had a tile floor but number 27 had these are both fully furnished basements with with possessions furniture the carpet in 25 you you you would be amazed at how much

▶ 6:17 Speaker 1: sewage a carpet can absorb so we had no walls for four feet down we had no those are electrically heated there was no heat through the very cold winter because we were waiting to see we put our claims in immediately and you know there's a sign there in the claims office don't call us we'll call you so we waited patiently and we waited through that incredibly cold winter with

▶ 6:40 Speaker 1: no heat in the basement for these for these guys because it was electric in the basement and um water heaters were there so we had to worry about the water pipes bursting through the winter still waiting to hear and that's when i'm not sure how

▶ 6:59 Speaker 1: we got in touch with sean or if he got in touch with us first but i think i wrote to him and said how do we get word from City Hall? How do we have, where is our claims? What's going on? There's absolutely silence, dead silence from City Hall. And so Sean took us on. And

▶ 7:23 Speaker 1: it wasn't until he managed to, he got Mayor Inferno to contact the city solicitor to ask him, you know, where are we in this, and it turns out that they had filed in July for

▶ 7:43 Speaker 1: us, and had contacted their insurance agent, and he had come back with, he needed DPW information which hadn't been forthcoming, somehow, somewhere, someone dropped a ball and it, you know, just kind of didn't get picked up. So finally, this is June 2nd, okay, January 24th, we got a letter finally from the city solicitor explaining what had happened and that the process was going forward again. And finally, March 24th, I think, this year, we were told that it was our fault, but that

▶ 8:13 Speaker 1: the city would pay half of our claims.

▶ 8:21 Speaker 1: And that rather surprised us, because I don't know how two condo units are responsible for for the city sewer, but we waited and waited.

▶ 8:35 Speaker 1: We didn't accept this immediately because the young men that own both of those condos, the sons of the crews own theirs, and the young men that bought the number 27 wanted to see about suing the city.

▶ 8:55 Speaker 1: So to make a long story short, we've all decided this has gone on so long,

▶ 9:12 Speaker 1: It's so debilitating, it's just so depressing that your city officers just, I mean, we expected more from our city, and it was just terribly disappointing, and we just wanted it to be over, so we decided half a loaf is better than none. So I think we're going to settle for that and just walk away. one thing we have done is we called our insurance agent in immediately to find out the first thing our insurance agents said was a city it's not our problem it's not inside it's outside city's fault so they wouldn't touch it so we changed our insurance to cover internal incidents like this whoever wherever they start so that at least we are covered to repair that mean we had over twenty one thousand dollars in damage to the building alone that we paid for out of pocket and

▶ 10:02 Speaker 1: at the rate that the city is building new condos and new apartment buildings without really addressing the elephant in the room which is an antiquated sewer system

▶ 10:18 Speaker 1: that cannot absorb what we're already putting into it you know we're all taxpayers sooner or later this is going to happen again and again and we'll be paying for it in our taxes so i'm kind of hoping that with a new administration a new council that this can be addressed because we're all going to be paying for it if it isn't one way or another and so i just hope that moving forward nobody else has to go through what we went through and

▶ 10:51 Speaker 1: what brazil street went through because it it i you know i i was at the other end of the building but but trying to help these poor people put their lives back together after this it's it's like having a robber in your home it's just your your home has been invaded and you have to worry about about diseases you have to worry about cleaning up you have to replace your furniture it's I hope no other citizens go through this it's just it's just very difficult for everybody involved and it's not an easy idea you know we recognize it's expensive it's not easy but but this is this is not a this it's gonna happen again it's not going to go away so that that is our story thank you thank you

▶ 11:50 Peter D. Mortimer: very much for listening motion to close public comment mr chair i will draw the motion

▶ 12:02 Speaker 2: thank you please come forward please come forward my name is deborah moore i'm going to read and

▶ 12:11 Speaker 2: hopefully won't get emotional i reside at 24 crescent ave i've owned this property for 41 years i was born and raised here and have lived in melrose raising my own family here as well. I would like to share with you our ordeal that greatly disrupted our life. Nine months ago in February of this year we experienced a most horrific, destructive, unsafe, unhealthy series of two sewage backups in one evening. This occurred from the main line in the street. We watched as our lovely game room, bar corner, laundry and storage area and most importantly my husband's fix all things broken work area were devastated by a steady river of contaminated sewage by the time it was over we had many inches of fecal matter with shards of paper throughout and brown liquid sewage covering our entire basement floor destroying anything that it flowed onto we were and are still emotionally debilitated by our loss of control for the entire night and the upcoming claim process for the whole situation i anguish at the unwanted intrusion this caused to my home and to our life i'd like to give you a brief timeline of interactions we experienced with the city's departments for this event as it was a friday night the police had to be called to dispatch the dpw to our home a crew came to assess the problem and specific equipment trucks were called out to investigate the streets drain system a specific area of crescent f in the intersection of washington street was jetted and a blockage was found and cleared the backup stopped and we were advised by dpw to call in the restoration cleanup company surfro one hour after dpw left another barrage of disgusting sewage began flowing back into our basement again the police were called a second time the same crew the same jet truck was brought back and cleared a different blockage in a different location of the drain again further up on Crescent Ave on the next business day which was the next Monday we initiate the investigation into insurance coverage homeowners versus claiming with the city we were advised to start a claim with the city easily enough a claim was then started within the clerk's office in the legal department assigned us a claim number we only made one request that day and that was to allow us a storage pod to put our undamaged possessions in as the contents of our entire basement were now out in our backyard the answer to that was no we ultimately stored our

▶ 15:03 Speaker 2: undamaged belongings ourselves. Servpro was required to take all the contents that were contaminated out of the home. Our carpet, baseboards, parts of walls were hauled away and disposed of in the Servpro trucks. We were left with the remaining destroyed items to be photographed and itemized for the next insurance adjuster process. The insurance adjuster did not come out for two weeks later. Servpro had many pieces of equipment drying out and air changing our basement for well over a week they covered the soiled items in our yard and tarped it over before it snowed it did snow and ice over during the adjuster period process thank god we took pictures because now we were dealing with mother nature in february that pile remained there for months after the initial first night we were never not once contacted by any department in the city hall not the mayor not the health department not emergency management not the DPW not even our alderman because he had no idea the lack

▶ 16:15 Speaker 2: and concern was truly a concern for me and my family I viewed this as callous disregard that alone must change calls made to the legal department for status updates were always initiated by myself through the next few months I was told a claim could take well over a year to determine liability in May I went to the mayor's office to discuss the lack of communication from within our city she was apologetic but I made no impact fast forward to June when the Brazil Street backup occurred and reared its ugly head all over the news as well as the Waverly Street family backup that was also displayed in the news I again sought out communication with the legal department and another conversation with the mayor in late June I must have made an impact then when I mentioned that maybe I would go to the news media and newspapers and social media within hours

▶ 17:16 Speaker 2: I received a call from the DPW mr. Shana apologized and inquired if Public Works could do anything at this point in time with hauling away the trash this is June

▶ 17:30 Speaker 2: within hours on the very same day I also received a call from the city insurance company Trident calling to let me know our claim against the city for liability

▶ 17:47 Speaker 2: and responsibility was denied the reason it was found to be quote it was found to be caused by grease in debris in line this blockage was a sudden and unexpected occurrence looking back perhaps I should have gone to the media route it seemed like the squeaky wheel got the grease some backups all unexplained all by grease and debris all sudden and unexpected occurrences some claims are reimbursed for damages some claims are offered mere settlements for damages some claims are just denied as in our case coincidentally as I mentioned before I told I was told over and over the claim process could take well over a year surprisingly ours was done in five months maybe an overabundance of negative attention toward the city with multiple backups another short period of time

▶ 18:42 Speaker 2: i do wonder in all truth folks you could all at some time or another win the unwanted one in a million lottery of a devastating surge backup with no damage reimbursement the monetary loss due to these backups for us is very sizable and we don't have twenty thousand dollars but the emotional toll is even worse when we knew no one cared we did not ask to have fecal matter enter our home and ruin our basement and cost us thousands the fact that the city and its insurance company feels it's not an issue and we should just go about our business and rebuild and replace at our own expense is beyond unacceptable. Unfortunately that is what happened to us. I'd like to thank Mr. McMaster for bringing this very unsettling topic of our bad experience to light in hopes that it can maybe change the future for others who endure similar events. I want to thank you all for your attention and your time.

▶ 19:43 Speaker 3: Thank you. Thank you.

▶ 20:24 Speaker 4: good evening my name is jerry morose um i'm here to speak to you on the order of the um request to produce the data on the infrastructure for sewer lines a few things about that first

▶ 20:40 Speaker 4: when requesting data like this instead of asking for a document that's categorized by data recurrence and street address as there it's much more useful to have something that's an electronic form it can be printed out certainly but that somebody can analyze and basically put together addresses or parts of the city or things like that to figure out so you know dealing with the typical pdf file or printed things in the city is not nearly as usable for analyzing and evaluating where are things happening what's happening i think it's important that the city have that that electronic form produce an electronic form I should state that I'm all behind this you know had the city engaged in any kind of interest in infiltration and inflow analysis in prior years at all these types of things would have shown up in a normal inspection of the system I've seen documents even tonight that show that there are areas of the city that the city didn't even have a record of ever having looked in the pipe to see what the what the condition of the pipe was for decades that's unacceptable you can't just assume that infrastructure and when the city complains that the infrastructure is a hundred and something years old well it's not going to get better over time it's you're going to figure out where you're at and and and do things so obviously I really applaud this order in in trying to do this this should be already done I would expect as part of the infiltration inflow work that that our contractor has been doing already that some of the stuff would have been seen I understand the city has was supposed to have obtained a video camera to do inspections that's something that could easily be done as well I do want to highlight it's it's not directly in this order but I pulled together some public records that I was able to go through and I find that over about a three and a half year period from beginning of 2014 to the middle of 2018, I identified 21, at least 21 sewer backups whereby claims were made against the city for these backups.

▶ 22:58 Speaker 4: What's troubling is that a number of the claims that seem to be by one adjuster from the insurance company all seem to have zeros next to them, whereas other claims that have other adjusters actually made payouts. It may not be the city's direct responsibility to be sure that the insurance company is being fair about what's happening here, but it's distressing to see that some people had losses that went and made a claim, and some people got as little as $250 or $375, but other people got $30,000 in your claim, and another claim of $5,339.

▶ 23:42 Speaker 4: In my view, and I've seen some of the records from Crescent Street, this was not an issue of the homeowners on Crescent Street. This was a city line plugged up with roots, and when roots plug up a line and the flow gets slow the grease starts to build up and clog it up more and you get your your your greasebergs of fatbergs in there and then that something can just have a tiny little opening once that gets stuck it backs up that was the occurrence on Crescent Street it's unconscionable that our city that our DPW that our city solicitor would have all permitted the narrative that somehow

▶ 24:24 Speaker 4: this wasn't the fault of the city and that the city didn't have responsibility

▶ 24:36 Speaker 4: for it and who's to say that there's a conspiracy around that that's deliberate or who's to say that it's a culture of the city staff and the city representatives obviously the insurance company has a financial interest in saying that all city doesn't have to pay anything for this but I'm seeing misrepresentations made in these claims and I think that's unfortunate I think there's another investigation there beyond the issue of what's the condition of the pipes in the city it's you know I think people have to find out what exactly happened in all these other circumstances you know if these are in here's a question the city knows that there are certain areas of town that they have to use a back tour truck and clear bellies in the lines and stuff like that because they're chronic problems the issue is nobody's actually made an attempt to try to fix those problems and it's crazy to be having a chronic circumstance are going back time and time and time again I hope this order will identify where the problems are and then we can have a prioritized list of correcting the problems so that we don't put any other residents at risk in the future and now that we have a video inspection camera I would hope that we can have I mean we actually should have a comprehensive video inspection now but over time we ought to be evaluating a certain number of miles every year of the sewer system to be sure that we don't have a chronic problem building up and if we do we identify and take care of it your order is is certainly the first step in that and I do applaud it to what I was just

▶ 26:09 Speaker 4: talking about insurance claims when it's touched on a complete listing of any and all that related insurance claims I think it's important to have the backup records of each of those claims have made available again in electronic form so people can actually analyze them what actually happened in each case why did somebody determine or claim that the homeowner was at fault and and I got to

▶ 26:38 Speaker 4: tell you it it smacks of a malicious practice that the city goes to somebody and says oh well it's not our fault but we'll offer to pay half well right there is a red flag to me that if it wasn't the city's fault the city would have no obligation to pay for any of it and in fact shouldn't be paying for any of it but if the city is going and making an offer of paying for half for something that the city isn't responsible for, that's illegal. You can't apply city funds for individual people if it really wasn't the city's fault. This idea of splitting it in half, I'm interpreting some of what I'm seeing here as if the city's being egregious and trying to shirk its responsibility and put it off onto the homeowner when it's really the city's responsibility. But if the city ever did pay half of somebody who was really the homeowner's fault, that would be an illegal act. would be misappropriation of funds of the city on behalf of an individual that that that warrants another investigation by the board of alderman or the city council i apologize um anyway in summary

▶ 27:47 Speaker 4: this order is a great step to start there's a whole lot more work that has to be done around this um i hope that with a new administration and some new members of the city council that that we can have a culture change around infiltration and inflow that you know we can actually work toward improving the city rather than trying to say oh don't look past here there's no problems here occurring or if there's our problems they're not ours you know it is our sewage it is our problem

▶ 28:18 Speaker 4: and philosophically isn't the city organized for the benefit of all its residents not to try to

▶ 28:28 Speaker 4: I take the benefit of the city coffers and put it off the challenges onto individual homeowners who aren't responsible for it. That to me is a sad commentary on our city and how it's operated in the past. I hope we never see that again. Thank you.

▶ 28:45 Speaker 3: Thank you.

▶ 28:48 John N. Tramontozzi: Is there any other members of the public who wish to come forward to speak on any items on the agenda? Motion to close public comment, Mr. Chairman. Thank you. Seeing none, there's a motion to close public comment by Councilor Mortimer. Do I have a second? Second. Second by Councilor McMaster. All in favor? Aye. Opposing, none.