Acceptance of EOEEA Cooling Corridors Grant for $48,000

Transcript (~13 min @ 13:50)

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▶ 13:37 Devin Romanul: All right, the motion passes. The minutes are approved. Thank you so much, everybody. Uh, moving on to our first agenda item this evening is grant ID number 2026-455, acceptance of EOEEA Cooling Corridors Grant for $48,000. Joining us this evening, uh, is Mr. Jake Hoy from the administration. Thank you, sir.

▶ 13:56 Speaker 10: Thank you. Um, good evening, council. Um, I'm here to, um, talk about a, uh, Cooling Quarter Cor- Corridors Grant that we, um, got in the amount of $48,000 and partnered with Mystic River Watershed Association and, um, Medford. Um, Medford got the remaining amount of the grant, which I th- I think was up to 96,000 was the total grant. Um, we got it for, from the Executive Office of Energy and Environmental Affairs, um, to plant 61 trees in, um, in heat island hotspots throughout, um, Melrose. Um, so that will be happening, um, this year. We have to plant the trees, um, before the end of June. Um, so, uh, there's no cash match. Um, basically we'll, um, pay our on-call contractor to plant the trees and to maintain them, um, water them, and we will get reimbursed through Mystic River Watershed Association by, via the grant. Um, Mystic River is the fiscal, um, agent, so, um, we did not get the grant through Melrose. They, Mystic River did. Um, but we will be reimbursed for this work.

▶ 15:06 Devin Romanul: Terrific. Um, first up I have Counselor Finocchiaro.

▶ 15:09 Cal Finocchiaro: Thank you, um, Chair Romanul. Um, thank you for being here. Of course. Um, so I have two questions. One, do you foresee it exceeding $48,000, the, the work?

▶ 15:19 Speaker 10: Um, no. So if 41-- 8,000 is the max that we can do, so if we have to plant less trees based on the, the cost, um, we did take a pretty conservative estimate, so we might even be able to plant more trees. Um, but it won't exceed 48,000.

▶ 15:37 Cal Finocchiaro: Great. And I am not aware of what... Uh, just call it a heat island?

▶ 15:42 Speaker 10: A heat island, yeah. So, um, throughout Massachusetts, um, basically spots that are, um, that have less greenery, less landscape, so more paved, um, areas, um, tend to create what's called heat island, a heat island impact where the temperature is... i- ends up being higher because of the, the pavement, so there aren't, um, areas, uh, and greenery to, to cool off those areas. So by planting trees, it'll help with that heat island, heat island effect.

▶ 16:08 Cal Finocchiaro: Great, that makes sense. And I'm assuming that you have sort of like a list of

▶ 16:12 Speaker 10: places that you're already considering. I, I do. If anyone's interested, I have four copies of the locations and maps. I can pass those around- Great ... and you, you're welcome to keep these if you want. Um, I can also email them as well. Um, in the, um, I believe in Civics Plus is the, the contract that we have with Mystic River. In there in the appendix are these maps as well, so, um, but I can also email them if anyone's interested.

▶ 16:35 Speaker 5: Excellent. Thank you. Mm-hmm.

▶ 16:37 Speaker 11: Terrific. Next up we have Counselor Williams.

▶ 16:40 Ryan Williams: Thank you. I'm curious to know how this interacts with our existing tree planting program. Um, um, so I'm wondering if there's, if you thought about whether there's an opportunity to take some of the more, um, there are like more specific requirements here, like we have to adhere to the DCR, uh, Tree Planting and Care Guide, we have to send them photos of an MCA, a Massachusetts Certified Arborist, et cetera, providing on-site supervision, and we have to provide them with a shapefile for their GIS. And I think that's really cool. Um, would we be maybe just going ahead and creating a shapefile of all of the trees that we plant after we do this?

▶ 17:18 Speaker 10: We do that anyways. Um- You do that anyway? Yeah, okay. We do that anyways. Yeah, so the, the only difference between what our typical planting plan is and this, um, to my understanding, is that they want photos- Mm ... of our arborist being there supervising some of these trees being installed. Um- Yes ... that's the only difference between what we already do and, and what the grant is requiring.

▶ 17:41 Speaker 1: Does the current GIS layer have the species of tree?

▶ 17:44 Speaker 10: It does. It does? Oh, cool. Yep. I didn't know that. Yeah, so we, we plant, we typically try to plant about 100 trees- Yeah ... per spring and fall. Um, and after those planting seasons, we go out, we GPS the locations- Mm-hmm ... um, including the tree species, and then upload those to GIS.

▶ 17:58 Speaker 1: That's, it's in the public GIS it's uploaded or?

▶ 18:00 Speaker 10: I don't know if it's in the public GIS, like in the maps online. Um, it could be pretty easily turned on. But it's in our internal GIS system- Cool ... um, as for sure. Yeah.

▶ 18:11 Ryan Williams: Um, so we normally appropriate s- maybe about twice as much money as this for trees, and I'm wondering, are we looking at this as a supplement, like we're gonna now have $148,000 of trees versus cutting the appropriation? Do you have any information on that?

▶ 18:26 Speaker 10: Um, I-If the same amount has been appropriated for trees, then it would be supplemental, um, which I believe that is the case. Um, this is, we're treating this totally separate of our typical planting plan.

▶ 18:40 Speaker 1: Yeah. Very good. Okay, that's it for me. Thank you.

▶ 18:42 Speaker 11: Terrific. Next up I have Counselor Park.

▶ 18:44 Speaker 10: Thank you, Chair Umunnah. A question about the, the actual grant of funds itself. How did they derive 48,000? Do you have any insight as to where that number came from and comparatively speaking, how it goes across the other towns as well? Sure. Um, so the numbers, basically if you divide 48,000 by our 61 trees, that gives us, that gives you a rough cost of, of a per tree to, um, purchase, install, and water, um, for the, the course of the, the maintenance schedule. Um, I think we added some contingency in there also because, so our current on-call contract, um, is about to expire, is about to go out to bid. Um, so we're going to have potentially a new contractor, um, if not the same contractor we've had for the, the past few years. So we used our, our, um, current cost to purchase, install, and maintain a tree with a little bit of, uh, added, um, increase in cost, and that's where that number came from. So the overall cost, the overall grant that Mystic River got from, um, EEA was split between us and, and Medford. And, um, basically we got... We were able to plant more trees than them because their contractor is more expensive than ours. Um, so it could potentially impact the number of trees depending on the contractor that we get and what their costs are, but we're hopeful that we'll get the same contractor- Okay ... and have a similar cost. Okay, so you worked in conjunction with them to come up with- Yes ... that number. Yes. And it wasn't just a number allocated to you. Correct. Yes. Okay. Yeah. Okay. Very good. Thank you.

▶ 20:21 Devin Romanul: Mm-hmm. Perfect. Next up, Counselor Vander.

▶ 20:23 Kimberly Vandiver: Thank you so much. Um, I really appreciate the opportunity that this gives us to, to address these issues, um, and having the data to look at. I did, um, just in looking at this data, I have a little bit of a concern about the distribution of the trees. Um, it looks like they're very heavily concentrated in Ward One, um, and Ward Five only has three trees, which is about 5%, a little less. Um, and it mentions here that, so we're looking at hotspots and we're looking at environmental justice populations. Um, Ward Five does have the highest number of environmental justice populations, or the highest percentage, so that seems a little bit off to me. Um, and then I'm also... I do see there are some just over the border from Ward Five in Ward Seven. See 10 trees, but they're, um, they're on Main Street right along the Pine Banks fields. Mm-hmm. Um, so I guess my question with that is, are they actually going onto Pine Banks land, or are they on city land? They'll be, yeah- And is that really a need right next to the fields?

▶ 21:23 Speaker 10: Yeah, so that, that, um, that is city land. Um, it won't be in, in actual Malden or, or Pine Banks. Um, so as far as the, the distribution of the trees, um, we take into account where other trees are, um, where utilities are, um, where there's actually space to, to plant. So if there's grass strips or green strips and, and things like that. Um, uh, distances to intersections, things like that. So that's... And that is what derived where these trees were planted. Um, we didn't really look at it on a ward basis, we just looked at it on s- where, where can we plant these trees. Um, the ones closest to Pine Banks, it does seem like there is a lot of them, um, there. Um, but if you think of that area between the, the parking lots, the, the main street, um, uh, Hunt's parking lot, there's a lot of pavement in that area even though there are parks, but there's still a lot of pavement, which increases the, the heat island effect. So we're trying to get some more trees planted there that will hopefully have canopies that, you know, will span over some of that pavement.

▶ 22:27 Kimberly Vandiver: Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm. Yeah, I, I could definitely see that. Um, uh, I, I think there might also be opportunities to look at, um... What is the, like Stone, Banks Place or, um, the other side of Main Street by the armory, um, or, you know, some things on Washington and Pleasant. I think Washington and Pleasant are really long stretches that have minimal- Mm-hmm ... planting, and a lot of people do walk from the T into, um, downtown. So I just, I think there, you know, as the Ward Five counselor, I would like to see, uh, ideally more focus, especially on, on walking routes that, that people might take up. I would say just probably Pleasant and Washington more so than Main, um, because Main you can come back onto Derby to walk. But I, I think the idea, the, the overall program is great. I just, I wish there was more going into Ward Five.

▶ 23:22 Speaker 10: Okay. Um, we can certainly take a look. I think we can pivot where some are planted as long as they meet the requirements as being in the hotspots, um, and/or the environmental justice areas. Um, so we can take a look at maybe spreading some of them out. But we can also in our regular tree planting program too, we can target some of the areas that you're looking at as well. Great. Um, so we can kind of hit either or for sure. Um, so let's coordinate on kinda some of those areas as well.

▶ 23:50 Kimberly Vandiver: Wonderful. Yeah.

▶ 23:51 Devin Romanul: Thank you very much. Thank you. Next up, Counselor Keramudi.

▶ 23:54 Manjula Karamcheti: Thank you so much. Uh, just as a point of information, I just wanted to note, um, Counselor Vander's comment about a majority of the trees being in Ward One. There's actually only three entries for Ward One, so just kinda wanted to clarify that. Um- Oh, I'm so sorry. I was looking at it quickly, and- No, I just wanted to point that out ... you know what? I think I was looking at the quantity. Just- Yeah, sorry about that. Um, and then just to... I mean, I think all of us in our neighborhoods could point out areas where we would want more trees. So could you just speak in a little more detail about, like, how the hotspots are identified? I see here that it's mass GIS data- Mm-hmm ... and so, so can you just speak a little bit more about that-

▶ 24:32 Speaker 10: Sure. Um, so if you, in the end of that packet, um, it shows you the hotspot maps. Oh, okay. Um, yeah. So it's the- ... I think in the last page, the top left map, those red spots. It actually may be the second to last page. Um, the top left map is the hotspots. Those, those are where, um, MassGIS, um, points out the, the hotspots. So that's where we had to focus the trees- Mm-hmm ... um, within those areas. And those are based off of, um, amount of impervious area. Um, I don't know if they measure actual temperature or if they just kind of base it off of impervious area, but that's where those maps come from.

▶ 25:06 Manjula Karamcheti: So based on that, it's-- we can surmise that due diligence went into determining where the trees are going- Mm-hmm ... for this round with the amount of resources available.

▶ 25:16 Speaker 12: Exactly. Yeah.

▶ 25:17 Speaker 10: Okay, great. Thank you.

▶ 25:18 Devin Romanul: Yeah. Up a second time, we have Counselor Williams.

▶ 25:20 Speaker 1: Oh, thanks. I forgot, uh,

▶ 25:23 Ryan Williams: to ask you, and I, I got a copy and looked at this. I would like this to go in the record, by the way. Can we get this thing put in the-

▶ 25:29 Speaker 5: Yeah. I already told Adrian.

▶ 25:30 Ryan Williams: Yeah. Thank you. Um, so for those who don't know, the Mystic River-- the Mystic Valley River Watershed is only half of Melrose. It's the left half-

▶ 25:38 Speaker 10: Correct

▶ 25:38 Ryan Williams: ... the west half of Melrose. Yeah. And I noticed these trees are also only in the west half of Melrose. That's part of the grant, is it?

▶ 25:43 Speaker 10: Um, I think that's was, was part of the focus. Yeah. Um, but that's also where most of the hotspots are. Yeah, makes sense. Um, so it just ended up- Um ... being that way.

▶ 25:57 Ryan Williams: Th-this is the appr-- it says approved planting. I mean, the grant says we have to follow an approved plan. This is the plan, right? Mm-hmm. So we're gonna follow this. But the discussion point about, um, where there might be more opportunity for trees, certainly this will open up, you know, fifty percent more money in the appropriation for us to fast-track the tree list, uh, a-and you know, get some ideas going for, um, for counselors who have specific, um, questions about where they wanna put a tree. Um, and you know what? I'll make a motion to send this up to full council, a motion to recommend.

▶ 26:32 Devin Romanul: Second. Motion made by Counselor Williams, seconded by Counselor Karemchedy. Madam Clerk, will you please call the roll?

▶ 26:38 Speaker 5: I will. Vice Chair Vanderberg?

▶ 26:40 Speaker 4: Yes.

▶ 26:41 Speaker 5: Counselor Chen? Yes. Counselor Furnokiero? Yes. Counselor Jamaledine? Yes. Counselor Karemchedy? Yes. Counselor Kowal? Yes. Counselor Bremsky? Yes. Counselor Park? Yes. Counselor Williams? Yes. President Ex Officio Freeman? Yes. Chair Romanul? Yes. That motion passes.

▶ 27:00 Devin Romanul: Motion passes and will, uh, be brought to the next full council meeting with a recommendation for passage. Thank you so much, Mr. Coy. Appreciate your time.