ORDER-2019-34 : Amending Melrose Revised Ordinances to add Chapter 222, Article IV: Shared Mobility Vehicles

Transcript (~1 h 30 min @ 31:03)

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

▶ 31:05 Francis X. Wright Jr.: good evening i'm councillor Francis wright i'm the chairman of the legal and legislative committee That committee was scheduled to start at 8. It is now 8.13. We have four items on our agenda this evening.

▶ 31:29 Francis X. Wright Jr.: This meeting is being recorded and broadcast live on MMTV. It will be replayed on MMTV and can be found on the City of Melrose website.

▶ 31:50 Francis X. Wright Jr.: up on the floor for public comment second i i'll take attendance first council abutra here

▶ 32:02 Francis X. Wright Jr.: council Medeiros here council forbes here council zorko here

▶ 32:08 Francis X. Wright Jr.: so our voting members uh non-voting members peter mortimer yeah robert Boisselle here john trementosi here caitlin brugarabedian here and sean mcmaster here we have a motion for public

▶ 32:24 Francis X. Wright Jr.: to open public comment by um council of forbes seconded by councillor

▶ 32:33 Speaker 7: Zwirko um so we're here all in favor

▶ 32:37 Francis X. Wright Jr.: we're now open for public comment anyone would like to come forward and uh speak on any item that is on our agenda this evening may do so my name is trudy mcdonald

▶ 33:13 Speaker 5: i live at 34 south high street in melrose i'm here to encourage you to pass the proposed sustainable food container and package ordinance i want to make two main points first to tell you why i think we need this law and second to tell you what we the members of the zero waste melrose committee have been doing and plan to continue to do to educate our community and our business community about the issues related to plastic pollution in general and polystyrene in particular polystyrene is slightly cheaper than its alternatives however the environmental and health expense far exceeds the cost that restaurants and grocery stores are paying to provide them the health Health effects of polystyrene are well documented. It's made from fossil fuels and styrene, which is a neurotoxin and probable carcinogen. Styrene leaches and increased leaching happens at high temperatures, so with certain foods like alcohols, oils, and fats. Some scientists have even called for polystyrene to be called a hazardous material. The environmental problems associated with polystyrene are many. It's not recyclable and does not biodegrade. Its lightweight often causes it to be blown out of the trash and into the environment, into our lakes, into our waterways, and eventually into our oceans. Where it breaks down into tiny little particles never disappears and it enters our food chain. Many people mistakenly put styrofoam into their recycling bins. This contaminates those bins and increases the cost of our recycling. Much of it is also incinerated and thus releases both the fossil fuels and the toxic chemicals back into the atmosphere. There are good alternatives available to polystyrene and they are biodegradable and some are compostable like paper and aluminum, which is highly recyclable.

▶ 35:27 Speaker 5: Over the past several months, Zero Waste Melrose Committee, myself and others, have done a number of things to educate the Melrose residents and our business community about the problems inherent in disposable single-use plastics and polystyrene in particular. We've had a visible presence and spoke with hundreds of people at public city events over the past several months, such as Healthy Melrose, the Alpine Cleanup Day, and on Earth Day we hosted a screening of, at the library here in Melrose, of the award-winning documentary A Plastic Ocean, which explores the fragile state of our oceans and the consequences of our disposable lifestyle. We had tables at the farmer's market twice this summer, and this fall we were at the Victorian Fair. Many of you have seen the article in last week's local newspaper in support of the polystyrene ban. It was written by two of our committee members, Gina McNeil and Rebecca Interbartolo. Gina would be here tonight, but she's away. Over the past several weeks, several of us have made a concerted effort to educate and get feedback from our business community. We've been in contact with the Chamber of Commerce, and we have visited almost all the restaurants and coffee shops and grocery stores in melrose 43 different building uh merchants so far we have about four or five left to go we spoke with the owners we spoke with managers we spoke with employees if the owners or managers were not there we left information about the problems associated with polystyrene and we offered them lists of comparably priced alternatives to

▶ 37:16 Speaker 5: styrofoam some some of these businesses were concerned about the increased cost but on the whole and most of them understood the need for this ordinance they several had already transitioned to the alternatives and they said one one gentleman said oh styrene that's one that's an old thing we don't use that anymore we got rid of that years ago so a number of our stores had long ago gotten rid of it a few were actually very supportive and even were willing to put up flyers I was talking to them about the plastic ocean the film and invited them to come several were willing to put up the flyers on their store windows because they thought it was an important issue so plastic pollution is not just a local problem it's not just a Melrose problem it's really a global one however in the United States the solution needs to start here at the local level 39 other cities and towns have already passed bans on polystyrene and so have three different states Maine Vermont and Virginia one new Melrose resident who I met at the Victorian Fair he recently moved here from Spain he told me how surprised he was that we were so far behind in implementing laws around around single-use plastic. He said, you know, in the European Union, we passed an ordinance, a law that will go into effect in 2021 that will ban all single-use plastic for the entire European Union. I was impressed. Another gentleman from Bangladesh, who I spoke with in one of the little variety stores on Wyoming Ave, told me that in his country, they eliminated plastic bags five years ago. He was surprised that we took so long to do it.

▶ 39:11 Speaker 5: So in summary, I just want to say that banning polystyrene food items is an important and easily implemented next step towards making Melrose and the planet a safer and happier, healthier place to live. Thank you.

▶ 39:47 Speaker 4: I am here to talk about polystyrene in the schools. So the school lunches have been served on these trays for at least the past six years since my boys have been at the Roosevelt. So this is what we're talking about when I'm talking about a tray, a divided styrofoam tray, and then these are what I'm talking about a paper boat. This is what I'm talking about.

▶ 40:19 Speaker 4: So when I boys first started at the Roosevelt School, I became involved with the Roosevelt green team and we focus our efforts on increasing recycling at the Roosevelt School we set up compost bins there we run the school garden and we wanted to do something about these trays so our first effort was to try to recycle them there was a company called reform it believe it was in Peabody and they were collecting food trays for recycling so from February of 2015 until June of 2017 we collected over 22,000 trays for recycling but they only would accept clean trays so it basically would be if a kid had you know hot dog on here and there was no food on it and they could just tap the crumbs in the barrel we could collect this and recycle it if it was spaghetti or anything like that if had food on it it went in the trash so those 22,000 trays that we collected for recycling was only about 25% of the overall amount of trays that were in use of just the Roosevelt School over those two and a half years recycling industry it's gone through many changes one of them one of the biggest hits was styrofoam styrofoam is a completely separate recycling process so there are no haulers that are going to pick styrofoam up curbside it says completely separate process completely separate machinery so it's specialized industry so when we foam it went out of business we struggled to find another company that would take food trays and honestly it was just not it wasn't wasn't feasible there are currently six companies I believe in Massachusetts that do recycle foam and only one of them will take food but again it has to be clean and it's in Bridgewater so that wasn't wasn't a viable option so we switched our efforts to ask the schools to stop using the trays I started meeting with Ken Dolce who's the Chartwell's director in May of 2017 he had actually already started introducing the paper boats at the middle and high school which I was thrilled to hear so we asked him to try it out at the Roosevelt School as well we have a lot of parent volunteers at the Roosevelt School in the cafeteria because we do a lot of extra recycling there so we have parent volunteers in there about once or twice a week to help the kids sort their waste so he agreed to start with the Roosevelt school we use the paper boats paper boats come in three sizes so the tray is four cents paper boat is two cents three cents and five cents so it's almost cost neutral to switch from this to this the idea is that kids don't like their food touching so on clean lunch days these are in use so if the kid has a hot dog a chicken patty and they can put it in here and put some carrots or corn next to it and the food doesn't mix they use this but if they're serving spaghetti or nachos or fajitas they're still using these trays because they want the separate compartments so we've met with Ken Dolce several times we weren't quite getting as much progress so I asked everyone I knew to email the school committee and see if we could get them to help they told us that it was administrative decision and that we need to talk to Mary Ann Farrell the administrative director of finance so we began meeting with her as well we've run into a lot of roadblocks we're still at the at the same point we were two years ago clean lunches messy lunches and the messy lunches account for about eight lunches a month so spaghetti nachos fajitas are still served on here I was told at the end of 2018 that if they could get the school committee to approve an a cost increase of five cents per lunch then they would be able to look at getting divided trays that were not styrofoam that lunch increase did happen unfortunately the trays have still yet to be purchased I really feel like we've done all that we've can we've contacted every district in the state that has a styrofoam ban provided the school district with information about other trays that are out there available the cost most of these trays cost between seven and nine cents so that's where the five cent price increase was so if they could increase the price of the lunch then they could offset you only need to use these eight out of 20 days a month and then they could still use the boat on the other days so we really feel like the health concerns that Trudy brought up it's really necessary that we need to put an end to use the use of styrofoam trays all together at the school so I appreciate if you would support this ordinance and help me put this to rest once and for all thank you handouts I am Ryan

▶ 45:48 Ryan Williams: Williams I live in Ward 7 at our on Malvern Street

▶ 46:24 John N. Tramontozzi: you have a couple more i do just pass them down you need one two at least two more thank you

▶ 46:36 Ryan Williams: great thanks hello everybody thank you very much for taking the time and energy that you've all brought to this debate as many of you i think all of you know street and sidewalk safety is an issue that's very important to me i want to begin by saying that i am on the melrose pedestrian and the cyclist Advisory Committee we have all reviewed the proposed mobility ordinance the shared mobility ordinance and while we support reasonable licensing and regulating at least reasonable license and regulation of the operation of vehicles on the very limited public space that we have available to us to be shared by cars pedestrians bicycles wheelchairs and other forms of personal mobility we have a few concerns about the proposed

▶ 47:25 Ryan Williams: ordinance I think that we're fortunate to have people in the City Council that are willing to bring these concerns forward and have a healthy discussion about them it's always good to see more voices at the table on these important issues as a reporter I learned that bringing voices into a story was only the first step you have to also put the facts in context and it's context that I'm personally concerned with with this order and I think I speak for most of the rest of the committee but they will have an opportunity to speak for themselves we support some aspects of the spirit of the proposed ordinance but I personally don't believe it adequately regard regards the context of the problem that it seeks to solve I've shared with all of you a collection of photographs showing vehicles and snow and ice mounds obstructing crosswalks and sidewalks in Melrose these photos represent the experiences of only a handful of individuals over the last year trying to navigate Melrose on foot a major part of the concern of dockless bikes is their impact on sidewalk use and we're very sensitive to that we have work to do to ensure that our sidewalks are sidewalks are as the existing law puts it convenient to use that's what the law says convenient to use I've heard and I respect the concern that bicycles and particularly shared bikes are heavy and difficult to move when they block our public ways but bicycles represent an extremely small part of our sidewalk access problem here in Melrose and we shouldn't lay the responsibility for the problem on the smallest contributor if we're going to ignore the broader problems we have with cars parking on sidewalks overhanging sidewalks ice and snow accumulation and a total lack of sidewalk in some places

▶ 49:00 Ryan Williams: that makes Melrose impassable we already have several ordinances on file in fact we have six different ordinances that all limit obstruction of sidewalks we have chapter 198 dash 2 which talks about dumping obstructing sidewalks and placement of refuse containers no person shall place any object at all on any sidewalk or crosswalk so as to interfere with the convenient use we have chapter 220-95 towing for standing or parking in specified locations that says no person shall park any vehicle in any of the following places number two is sidewalks number three is crosswalks number four is within 20 feet of an intersection we have chapter 220-37 which says the driver of a vehicle shall not drive upon any sidewalk except at a driveway we have chapter 202-3 which says no person shall ride drive wheel or push any cart or other vehicle or of burden or pleasure upon any sidewalk except for bicycles pushed by hand and finally my favorite we have chapter 202-3 from 2004 which bans the use of gas powered scooters power boards and mini motorbikes on Melrose sidewalks and streets so if you wanted to take your motor your your power board or your mini motorbike to get spirits and charcuterie you're out of luck it's not legal in the city of Melrose that ordinance 202-3 covers a lot of the same concerns that are proposed here tonight our police are already bound by law to report and clear obstructions to our sidewalks and they do so because of staffing shortages our parking enforcement is limited and prioritization of course section 24-8 it shall be the duty of every police officer to take notice of all the nuisances impediments defects and obstructions in the streets sidewalks sidewalks etc of the city and to report to the chief of police who transmits information to the city engineer and director of Public Works to further to illustrate the problem of context the fine for impoundment of bicycles in this ordinance is $25 higher than the maximum fine levied on an automobile that's been impounded and towed by the city which is $50 and it's $50 higher than the fine levied on a car that parks on the sidewalk despite the obviously lower cost of removing and storing a bicycle versus the cost of a 2,000 pound vehicle and that fee structure by the way was last updated in 1989 and you can see that in chapter 220 dash 98 and then much like we heard with the styrofoam ordinance we have to consider the external uncaptured expense to the city of Melrose taxpayers that can happen when vehicles heavy trucks in particular park on sidewalks particularly over surface level utility lines like water and and gas lines I have been canvassing as many of you know I spoke to a gentleman in Ward 7 and his big concern was that trucks have parked during construction on his sidewalk and as a result there are deep cracks in the sidewalk which filled with water the water doesn't drain it freezes and his sister has a hard time walking this all happened because somebody parked their truck on the sidewalk for too long so I do oppose the ordinance not because we shouldn't set a high bar for shared bikes but because the ordinance and the city set too low a bar for sidewalk and street safety and I don't want to scapegoat change at the expense of our public safety cyclists do the least harm to our community and they are the least likely form of transportation to cause injury or death. This ordinance should reflect, it should be amended to reflect the true reality of the danger of our sidewalk obstructions in Melrose. I do applaud the effort to make our sidewalk safer and our community more walkable and I look forward to helping us move towards those goals. Thank you very much. I can take back the papers so I can recycle them if you don't want them. because it's a lot of people.

▶ 52:42 Speaker 6: Hi, everybody. This is Finn McSweeney. I live on West Wyoming.

▶ 52:52 Speaker 6: I'm going to change approaches a little bit. I think Ryan covered the vast majority of sort of the realistic spirit of what we should try to be pursuing when we talk about street safety. I was here last time. This was before the committee, and I wanted just to respond to a couple of the points that were made in in sort of the spirit of I think of Melrose as I found it so far one of the comments that came up was that a gentleman's Street had started become a cut through to to Oak Grove station it's an issue that we all face here in town there is literally nobody who thinks that there is a good amount of traffic in Melrose everyone thinks that there's too much traffic but in discussing the sort of the right-of-way concerns that came up there the right-of-way would apply to a person who was bicycling actively not to someone who was parked who had parked a bike there's really no right-of-way concept for like for a parked vehicle right so I think that when we start to talk about things like right-of-way we get away from what this ordinance is actually discussing and we bring up this boogeyman of bicyclists flying down the sidewalks which like everyone agrees is a bad thing but isn't really what this ordinance is about the second thing that was raised was the idea that well we you know if a if a rental vehicle parks obstructing a sidewalk or a crosswalk we can take it the rental vehicle company so we should be able to take it the rideshare company too that's fine if you want to follow the logic through what the rental car company will do is they will pass the ticket to the person who rented the vehicle so if we think about following that logic through and undertaking this extraordinary effort to be able to have line bike pass back the ticket charges to their riders not that that would you know I think that a would make you all pretty unpopular with some of the people in the city if they started getting tickets for their line bikes but B people would either just stop using the service or line would say we can't ticket people we're just gonna pull out of Melrose that would be a loss for everybody and then the someone raised a point about they had encountered one time a line bike blocking their their driveway at their house Melrose is a great neighborhood community and one of the you know the main use feature of line bikes is that people ride them last mile to their house so if and I would recommend anybody if they get home one night and and their driveway is obstructed by a line bike, like your neighbor put that there. The person who put that there is like your next door neighbor, they rode it home. So just go talk to them and ask them not to do it again. Same thing that you would do if you found their trash barrel obstructing your driveway or their car obstructing your driveway. This is a residential service, people use it to get home. Go talk to your neighbor if you find it in front of your driveway. the last thing I want to raise and Ryan made me think of this he just came up and gave a terrific defense of the fact that people who choose to ride bikes to get around the city are like the bottom of the totem pole in terms of choosing problems and from from in terms causing problems sorry and from what I can gather what happened the last time we met is that this was held in committee so that we could gather additional data not that I'm here to tell any of you how to do your jobs but I wonder why that didn't happen before it came to committee I think the the person who raised the one salient point of data for me last time was counselor Mortimer who said that when these were first deployed it was kind of a it was kind of a mess they just were dumped on the sidewalks a huge number of bikes showed up this the council took action and then the number of bikes was sharply reduced data hooray problem solved right but for some reason now the people who are in favor of getting around the city via these bicycles are in the position of having to defend it and that anchors people in

▶ 57:38 Speaker 6: the idea that there is a problem which needs defending in the first place. I kind of object to the spirit of that, and I wonder why it's happening to these line bikes in particular, which seems so innocuous. I think that for me personally, if I, at my job, called a meeting about um a problem and i said we have this problem we need to solve and they said well do you have the data on the problem no but i'd like to keep meeting on it until the data comes in i don't know it wouldn't go very well at work um like ryan said everyone wants to improve the number of ways people can get around the city of melrose everyone wants to reduce the traffic if If we can get two cars off the streets a day, let's get two cars off the streets a day. If this was passed, I really struggle to do a mental accounting on who would benefit from it. Would anyone benefit from this? Because if you think through this idea that, well, Linebike sees this in the paper and they say, well, we're not gonna deal with Melrose. We're just gonna leave Melrose. There are people, dozens of people a day, would lose out and I'm just not sure why we would want to do that if we aren't absolutely sure there's a problem thank you hi I'm Bridget Gardner I live on 44

▶ 59:45 Speaker 8: Henry Ab and I'm a sixth grade student at the middle school and I think one of the best things that one of the better things that we have at lunch at the middle school instead of at the elementary school I went to which is the horseman is we have the paper trays first lunch and instead of the styrofoam trays and I think there are multiple reasons that every school should switch to the to the paper trays instead of the styrofoam trays one of those reasons is because in science right now we're learning that particles can move from different from different objects and so say a slice of pizza was on a styrofoam from tray and someone was going to eat that slice pizza but it already touched the styrofoam tray one of the molecules from the tray could have moved on to the pizza and then we're ingesting styrofoam which is very unhealthy the second thing is I know the styrofoam is very bad for the environment my mom's she's on the towards zero waste committee and she's always telling me how bad styrofoam is for the environment and so I feel like if so my school my elementary school we didn't have any recycling bins or compost bins or anything like that we only had a trash can and and so all the students we all just threw our styrofoam trays into the trash and if it all ends up on a landfill that's really bad for the environment because styrofoam it takes over thousands of years for it to decompose and by then it's already just polluting the air so much and the whole environment that it's just not helping at all that it can even decompose by them also I learned that that when the molecules travel in our textbook it talked about like the digestive system and stuff and when something bad gets into you if too much gets in if say too much styrofoam can gets into your body it can really make you sick and because some of the chemicals and styrofoam aren't very good for you and it's not good for your body that's all I had I only wrote something very short but please support the ban on

▶ 1:02:21 Peter D. Mortimer: styrofoam and Melrose thank you motion of close move to close public comment

▶ 1:02:29 Francis X. Wright Jr.: second motion to close the public comment by Alderman's councillors work Oh seconded by council Madero's all in favor aye

▶ 1:02:45 Francis X. Wright Jr.: we have four items on our agenda this evening first is order of 2019-34 amending Melrose revised ordinances to add chapter 222 article Roman numeral four shared mobile mobility vehicles is sponsored by um council Medeiros

▶ 1:03:11 Monica C. Medeiros: council Medeiros thank you still getting used to that new title uh thank you very much i just want to uh follow up so yes i i had filed this order uh just almost we're getting close to almost a a year ago at the end of last fall last year and we had first discussed this once in our committee meeting in February and at that time I believe the consensus of the board is that since this was a pilot program that was going on through the MAPC that we wanted to collect some more data before we made some decisions and then again this had been brought back to our committee for the legal and legislative committee meeting that was held in August but unfortunately I know some one of the members of the public had asked why there wasn't data unfortunately some members of the administration were not able to make that meeting and we're not able to get us the data so we again held it in committee and hopefully we will have that tonight in a little bit of a while but in general I want to talk about you know why this is important and so we really want to encourage people to use and try different alternative means of transportation and to make it easier but at the same time we want to make sure that we're maintaining the safety of our roads and that's important because as a whole this ordinance and what's proposed here is really to address some public safety issues and in particular the first one is the accessibility of our sidewalks and I know we talked about and some pictures here tonight about cars parked on sidewalks this ordinance does not address cars there are other ordinances that do address cars this is just to address sharing services of shared mobility vehicles and this could be anything from bicycles to scooters etc and we currently do not have any ordinances on the books that govern or license these kinds of shared mobility shared vehicle services we have laws on the books that govern the way we use these vehicles and for instance it would be not legal to a block or obstruct a driveway but it gets awfully difficult for the police to enforce that if we don't know who the owner of a bicycle is for instance or who had left it there last so I think it's the company that really we need to to look at licensing it's and I think since the time where I filed this ordinance proposed ordinance almost a year ago I've really seen an improved amount and and how the bikes are parked but still I'm finding that almost once a week I'm getting some kind of complaint whether it be through social media whether it be somebody that I run into or if somebody or just me seeing a bike that's that's miss parked so I think there's still a good amount of them that are out there that are that are miss parked and certainly of course you know if you're able to please if you see a bike that's not parked properly the bike should not be blocking the sidewalk in a way that people can't get through they shouldn't be left you know blocking a handicap ramp or something like that please do move them if you can but I know and recognize that not everyone can so sometimes again I said this is sort of a public safety issue we see that there are people who you know whether they've got a stroller or something like that they end up instead of moving the bike they end up walking in the street in order to avoid it and of course that's not safe so that's part of it the other part of it is that this ordinance would address motorized scooters and right now we do have which was referenced here tonight we have an ordinance that was put in place in 2004 to ban motorized scooters from operating on the sidewalk so you can have a motorized scooter personally and use it it's just it's not allowed to be used on the sidewalk and in that ordinance in that section of the ordinance there is a section that talks about impoundment and that's where I got the fee structure for impoundment for this ordinance I just mirrored what was in the section about scooters so so that is more updated in 2004 than the then the vehicle amount that was from 1989 so perhaps we should look at updating some of those ordinances from 1989 however this again is just what I'm going to focus on today because that's what's before us so right now there's motorized scooters I think would be there's so many articles I you know I I tend to follow this and there's been a lot of communities that have banned motorized scooters completely and those that haven't and through sharing services there's been a ton of accidents and in just in February there's a consumer reports investigation found that there was 1500 e-scooter injuries nationwide and in the past year and so that's that's quite a lot and it's something that I don't think that we are ready to take on that responsibility yet as a city and and next is the cyber and financial safety of the riders who use these services so one thing I didn't mention the last time that we were here but actually that morning then you know I'm a candidate for office I got a call from my bank and they had told me that there was a fraud attempt actually several fraud attempts on the campaign credit card and the company that had had multiple attempts for this to be used for was was lime in San Francisco in California I think it was just coincidence I don't think it had anything to do with the fact that I have an ordinance that we were going to talk about that night to regulate these but I think it's because this is the kind of thing when you find people who are trying to use credit cards and see if they can work they usually start with small dollar transactions and see if you can get them to go through so you know they're these companies that operate for only a dollar per bike they may be targets of people trying to get information so if we're going to put our seal of approval on a company and say that they can operate on our streets then I think that we should have a licensing process that that's these companies and make sure that there's a proper way for people to to have somebody that's responsible that they can speak to a real company that we have licensed and that is that we've really vetted through a public process that would happen through this licensing process so with that being said people have wondered like you know are we doing this why should we do this now I want to read a little bit from that consumer

▶ 1:10:15 Monica C. Medeiros: reports article from February I've sent this to the clerk of committees and I hope we can get this added to the record but it says cities are surprised in some instances companies have set up shop in cities without sufficiently meeting local requirements and with few or no existing regulations in place for the battery-powered vehicles communities have been left to figure out how to safely regulate them traditional transportation for higher services such as taxis limousines or limousines are typically regulated by state and local governments but with the advent of app based rideshare services has challenged the regulatory the traditional regulatory structure so that's like us we have licenses for other sharing services like limousines and taxis and even bus services but not for things like line bikes or scooters it goes on but in other cities rideshare fleets arrived abruptly and the rollout of the services was fraught with challenges in some cases basic questions were left unanswered such as where scooters should be allowed to operate and whether you should be required to wear helmets residents and other officials in some cities also complained about scooters left on the sidewalks or anywhere out in public for the next rider to rent soon after the vehicles appeared so did injuries linked to them this is about scooters broken bones fractures blunt head trauma and even brain injuries these are these are serious things and if we as a city in a community are going to do nothing I feel like it is something that we open ourselves up to possibly be responsible for the injuries that people may face as a result of using these these vehicles so I I do do urge us to it may be not exactly this ordinance but I do hope that we will take some action and provide some licensing and regulation for these companies with that I would like to move to suspend the rules to allow members from the Planning Department to come forward I believe they have a

▶ 1:12:31 Francis X. Wright Jr.: presentation second motion to suspend the rules by council of Madero seconded by councillors work all in favor I'm Denise Gaffey the director of planning

▶ 1:12:53 Denise Gaffey: and community development and with me is the senior planner in the planning office I'm a missioner and we're very pleased to be here tonight we were here back in February mentioned and specifically miss Medeiros asked if we could provide an update on the status of the pilot program it's been underway now for just about one year so the timing is actually very good for that we've been through four seasons so we have really some really great data to share tonight I know she's very interested in in the data in addition to the information about complaints that have been received so we have incorporated some of that information into the presentation as well and prepared to talk about the status of our relationship with line bike as well at this point so Emma is the project manager for this initiative she's one who coordinates most closely with line bike and MAPC so she has put together a slide presentation it is pretty much an update of the presentation we gave in February with more current data some of it might be a little bit repetitive so we'll quickly go through it and and then happy to answer questions that you have you could

▶ 1:14:17 Speaker 3: advance this line sure so we're just gonna go backwards a little bit to 2017 that's when we first started seeing some bikes in Melrose and that's because Malden had launched their own pilot with Lyme around this time Malden some other communities in our region had been solicited by these private companies offering to operate these free dockless bike share systems and so in order to make sure that that effort was coordinated you didn't have a different vendor in every town MAPC which is the regional planning authority issued an RFP to select a vendor for a pilot that vendor was selected in February 2018 and

▶ 1:15:07 Speaker 3: here you could see the region for the most part this is accurate Milton never really got off the ground though and Quincy actually is active so that's that's a swap but um you could see a lot of our neighbors mauled into the south and then you know going west a bit and seen a lot of trips throughout this region over 250,000 trips actually well over 250,000 trips have happened before the summer even so the last count we had for the region was you know hundreds of thousands of trips so this has been a really successful system overall could advance the slide so our mayor signed the MOU in May 2018 and that's when the one-year regional pilot began for the whole system it took us a little while to write our regulations so we don't have a license but we have a statement of work which is the same thing it establishes all the rules and regulations for our program and it's signed by the mayor she signed in October 2018 which officially launched the bike share program and at that point we basically were able to put our regulations in place we could tell line how many bikes we wanted to have in the system we could advise them where we wanted them to rebalance them at different hot spots such as downtown and near oak grove and we've had this regulatory framework in place for about a year now and it's worked very well advanced slide yeah oh sorry sorry

▶ 1:16:46 Speaker 3: so each municipality was able to write their own statement of work though they're pretty consistent because um you know what malden wants is not all that different from what we want in terms of where the bikes are being parked and the other logistics that are set forward in the statement of work so in addition to establishing rules about the bike parking program where they're going to be rebalanced where people can go to report complaints it also has specific language and then defying the city from all liability Monica mentioned her concern with someone getting hurt we don't have to worry about that that's what our ordinance covers and so if anyone is injured it's not an ordinance sorry our statement of work it covers that so if anybody were to be injured we are do not have to deal with that liability and also in our statement of work it does not allow scooters we've already regulated that so that's not something that we've had to deal with lime has some scooters in Brookline Brooklyn has a pilot program so they've migrated a little bit but overall those scooters haven't been a problem and we've expressed our non interest in having scooters along with most of our neighbors so it's really not an issue that we're dealing with so here this gives a breakdown between April 2018 and October 2019 we had about 3,500 manual bike trips and over 3,600 e-bike trips so in that amount of time we had over 7,000 bike trips and if you think of all the cars that probably got off the road people who are out exercising we considered that a huge success a lot less co2 being emitted and you know overall it shows that people in Melrose are using the system and this this tracks both trips that have started here and ended here up until this point we were a little unclear about what exactly the the data we had was covering if that was all those trips so now we've we've confirmed that this should cover pretty much all the trips that have happened in that amount of time and you know like we said we wanted to be able to see what would what the data would look like in a year of having the system and it shows i mean definitely interesting seasonal trends but also you know overall that the system has been pretty successful good so this gives a breakdown by month and it tracks both the number of manual bikes and the number of e-bikes so you could see that up until about august it was pretty much all manual bikes and then in august the e-bikes were introduced and so each of 20 sorry yes in August of 2018 and over those first couple months that was even before we had our statement of work so that was pretty much just because bikes were coming in from Malden and other communities we still had you know five six seven hundred trips a month and even though there's actually a lot less bikes on the ground now we're seeing fairly similar numbers of trips obviously they're much more the proportion is much more e-bike because that is the system that lime has sort of invested in as opposed to their pedal bikes but we're seeing pretty pretty similar ridership statistics over the to the to sort of warm weather season so that was that was really interesting for us to see and I was surprised that the numbers were honestly so high this year because they've only been rebalancing about 20 bikes a day in melrose so that is basically if you average about 20 trips a day you get like you know between five six hundred trips a month so it definitely adds up um this just shows uh a map of some of the

▶ 1:21:19 Speaker 3: most popular routes it's a little hard to see but this shows that many of the streets in melrose have been utilized just obviously some in less frequency than others the most popular route is Washington and then Main Street Pleasant Street West Wyoming sort of between around the corner with Main Street Banks Place going into Oak Grove Berwick Street within Pine Banks Park you could see that people are actually utilizing the bikes lebanon street and then essex street so we can sort of infer that a lot of people are taking the bikes to and from oak grove and that is really important because we sort of think of this as a last mile system so people who take the train to oak grove but might have to wait a while for the bus or might call an uber to go home if there's a line bike that's right there for them to pick up that's a great option so we want to see more of that so if somebody sees a line bark that's parked incorrectly or that's not operating like we've mentioned if you're able-bodied and you can you could just push it to the side so we call it the furniture zone but really what we mean is near the curb so just not blocking the sidewalk sort of near the curb or in the grass strip between the curb and the sidewalk or if you are not able to or you don't want to move it we encourage people to notify line through our c-click fix system that's just been the easiest way for us to know when reports are coming in to be able to hold them accountable we've only gotten 14 complaints over the last year on c-click fix and when we get those lime immediately goes out and moves the bike and if you think about you know 14 complaints over you know a year that's less than one complaint for every 500 rides so if we had the same sort of statistics for drivers all right her roads would probably be a little safer so so again you know we have multiple avenues that people can sort of go to to report bikes but we do think the see click fix is the most successful option. So going forward it is looking likely that our pilot with Lime is going to end at the end of April. The way the sort of the pilot worked is that it started as a one year with the option to renew and I think Lime is probably going to be getting more into the scooter game and doesn't see the Boston region as its main growth area for that so we're in discussions with MAPC and other communities that are in the region about our options because some of the other communities and us included definitely have an interest in continuing with such a system or something like the system just because it's been so successful a dock system is really not an option for Melrose right now something like a blue bike system we've they're part of the conversations that we're having with MAPC right now but we you know we're not contiguous to their system so if any growth sort of happens out of the initial four communities or I guess five communities if you include Everett now they you know they would be interested in expanding to communities that are next to the ones they're already in it's also is a very high cost you have to pay you know hundreds of thousands of dollars to be a part of that system so what's great about the dockless system is it's definitely not perfect we do have to deal with these bikes sometimes but we have a lot of avenues to deal with them we have a statement of work that sort of covers everything and that can be modified if we needed to um it also this is such an influx system that's evolving kind of as the technology evolves and um you know we sort of want to see what our options are uh and kind of

▶ 1:25:44 Denise Gaffey: assess assess from there um yeah i think it's also i think it's also consistent with the type of

▶ 1:25:50 Denise Gaffey: ridership that we're seeing i mean people really are using these as you can see they're mostly 12 minute you know 10 12 minute trips they're using them for that last mile so i think the idea of

▶ 1:26:02 Denise Gaffey: having that flexibility to allow for short simple trips so people can get to get to the train or or to the bus or to the downtown is really the kind of system that works in melrose and and um

▶ 1:26:15 Speaker 5: it's interesting malden as well i mean malden finds that that's that's the the system that

▶ 1:26:18 Denise Gaffey: they want to maintain as well and they have a lot of ridership there but they're again finding it

▶ 1:26:26 Denise Gaffey: the flexibility of the dockless system is is really um is what they is what they want to promote so so we think there's going to be an opportunity to work with malden and even some of the communities that were not part of this initial initial pilot program like stoneham

▶ 1:26:39 Denise Gaffey: wakefield saugus some of the communities around us that weren't touched originally by this procurement We think of an opportunity to work with them on a program like this with a different vendor

▶ 1:26:53 Denise Gaffey: beginning next year. So we plan on engaging, continuing to engage with MAPC in the winter months to advance

▶ 1:27:03 Speaker 5: that conversation and set this up for a continuation maybe with a different vendor next year.

▶ 1:27:08 Speaker 5: That's pretty much where it's at at the moment, and just to kind of reiterate with what Emma

▶ 1:27:17 Denise Gaffey: was saying, we feel like the framework of the statement of work, it's a regulatory framework that is very rigorous and really does a great job at protecting the city's interest, and we feel like it would be premature to adopt the ordinance that's currently proposed, given

▶ 1:27:38 Denise Gaffey: where we are right now.

▶ 1:27:42 Monica C. Medeiros: Is there anything that would prohibit some other company from just coming in and dropping

▶ 1:27:50 Speaker 4: off bikes and starting to operate? Yeah, they couldn't do it without an agreement with the city to remove the bikes.

▶ 1:27:59 Monica C. Medeiros: But I don't see anything that really stops that from any of our ordinances from happening.

▶ 1:28:12 Denise Gaffey: people can ride them in right occasionally you do see a bike from another company and that's you

▶ 1:28:16 Speaker 5: know we don't see i haven't seen a lot of that but i think that is the the benefit of doing this kind

▶ 1:28:24 Monica C. Medeiros: of a regional procurement that we actually and we could still have an ordinance and and and work through mapc with licensing a company like lime for instance throughout as just as our part instead

▶ 1:28:36 Speaker 4: of a statement of work it could be a license uh sure i just think the the way it's drafted right

▶ 1:28:45 Speaker 5: now it would be it's inconsistent with the the way this program works yeah i mean all those other

▶ 1:28:49 Speaker 3: communities that we listed are pretty much operating the same way it's not like line bikes are being dealt with differently in one community than than here and um and i know just we also have

▶ 1:29:02 Monica C. Medeiros: uh chief lyle if he might be able to answer a couple of questions if you wouldn't mind thank you

▶ 1:29:25 Monica C. Medeiros: chief i um i know we we heard about the complaints through c-click fix and i'm not sure this may be through your office or through planning but that's not the only way that people could make a complaint for instance I I heard I spoke to someone today who was unable to come tonight but who had tried to call on a bike and called the number on the bicycle and ended up getting somebody in like Bangladesh you know so did those kinds of complaints come back through the city and do you get notified

▶ 1:30:00 Denise Gaffey: about those they didn't use the bike they don't want to deal with it and so

▶ 1:30:19 Denise Gaffey: in those in those instances we simply either report it on secret fix or call

▶ 1:30:25 Monica C. Medeiros: on so there may be a couple more than the 14 and chief are you seeing any any complaints come through the police department and I understand that you've

▶ 1:30:44 Monica C. Medeiros: seen some more increased scooters recently Lime knows that they're not

▶ 1:31:05 Speaker 3: allowed to rebalance scooters here so they would not have dropped them off and we also and we called to find that out what could have just happened as if a group was riding it picked it up in a community where they could have and just

▶ 1:31:25 Monica C. Medeiros: left them there so but Brookline is the only community that's in the MAPC region

▶ 1:31:34 Speaker 3: that is allowing scooters so Brookline is not in the lime bike system but they are allowing lime scooters so lime and bird scooters just in Brookline is there

▶ 1:31:44 Monica C. Medeiros: any community that's closer than then you know it said somebody bring a scooter six scooters from Brookline to Melrose to Mount Hood I have ambitious

▶ 1:32:04 Monica C. Medeiros: yeah so you know if my concern is if we don't have anything on the books that I don't see you know this in all due respect a statement of work is not it It's not the same as going through a public licensing process that a company would have to go through to get a license here before the Board of Aldermen, like all the other licenses that we do for livery licenses to taxis to so many other things. If a company just came in and wanted to start doing business here, I feel like we would have an awfully hard time to actually kick them out. and we could say we don't have an agreement with you but if they said you know show me the law that says I can't do this I don't know what they would what we would show them and that's why I you know move forward with creating this ordinance and is there anything chief that you could that you know that would stop a company from coming to do business I know it was tried in other

▶ 1:33:07 Denise Gaffey: community years ago right when they try to play scooters or and they just took

▶ 1:33:17 Speaker 4: them off right I mean if we don't have an agreement in place I don't think

▶ 1:33:19 Speaker 3: there's anything stopping the police from impounding those people those like I don't think we necessarily would need to have it written that the police will impound them to prevent the police from impounding them and we talked back in

▶ 1:33:38 Monica C. Medeiros: February there was a representative from you know one of the things that this ordinance that does in which I would like to see us do is at least in the business districts to be able to find places where these bikes you know would be kept you know for instance we could keep a few at you know three or five or something at City Hall three or around City Hall Memorial Hall somewhere around there three or five around the middle of downtown three or five you know towards the the other and try to do yeah and so at least in the initial discussions that we had in February there was no there was no designated station area for instance of where the bikes would be right that's because you don't have the dock system yeah so we could still you know outline and designate a place

▶ 1:34:38 Denise Gaffey: too so the bikes started out primarily in those locations is there a specific

▶ 1:34:45 Monica C. Medeiros: place at the commuter rail station where they're supposed to leave the bikes and that where the people would know that that's where you can always I think this would be beneficial if people knew that you know you can always get a bike at

▶ 1:35:00 Speaker 3: this place pretty much you can't necessarily require people to bring

▶ 1:35:04 Monica C. Medeiros: these bikes somewhere no but we could certainly start off with the you know with the company and have them rebalance to that if you read the statement of

▶ 1:35:14 Denise Gaffey: work that is how it is structured so and it is structured so that they get occasionally rebalanced to those locations it's frankly right now the way

▶ 1:35:25 Speaker 5: it is working there are so few bikes they have kind of they are starting to

▶ 1:35:31 Denise Gaffey: kind of indicate that they're you know they're not supporting this program as I mean, they're supporting it, but they are moving into a different business model. So they don't have as many bikes in the community right now.

▶ 1:35:45 Speaker 4: So we're hoping if we get the opportunity to do this again with another company that

▶ 1:35:49 Speaker 4: we can start out again with a more robust sort of program where the bikes will be in

▶ 1:35:52 Speaker 5: those locations that we identify in high traffic areas.

▶ 1:35:56 Monica C. Medeiros: And I think that would be beneficial to have a place where, you know, I mean, most of the users of the bikes I think if they knew especially in the downtown areas if it's a matter of one block I think most of them would you know are responsible and we return the bike to that you know area they're also pretty sophisticated most

▶ 1:36:16 Denise Gaffey: users using the app in the app if you've seen it sounds like you have and so

▶ 1:36:25 Monica C. Medeiros: right now just the public should know that the only company that we have any kind of agreement whatsoever with is with line bike and not with any other

▶ 1:36:44 Francis X. Wright Jr.: company so I'll let some other members have questions and discussion thank you

▶ 1:36:50 Scott M. Forbes: you mentioned about the docking stations and the cost we just talk about what that cost perhaps would be because i know for me when i when i spoke at this last meeting i i thought about the idea of having docking stations in the more high traffic areas i didn't know what the cost was affiliated with that so i was just trying to find the balance between the two so could you just talk about that a little bit and what that cost would be

▶ 1:37:15 Denise Gaffey: so we've been told that to have a dock system it would cost the city in the order of about a hundred thousand dollars to have because you would need to have a couple of these docking stations

▶ 1:37:30 Speaker 3: you'd have to have a couple of mini stations if you will yeah it's at least twenty thousand dollars

▶ 1:37:39 Denise Gaffey: per station at a one-time cost or per year um good question um i'm not entirely sure okay i think

▶ 1:37:42 Speaker 3: that might be the initial cost but then the city would be responsible for maintenance and paying

▶ 1:37:53 Scott M. Forbes: for sure I know the way I came into this with this ordinance I when when the line bike program was launched I think I was one of the detractors just because there were just so many of them but I really think that the program itself is kind of fine-tuned and because we always are looking for what the data is going to present itself so as those as the number of riders became evident and the number of bikes were fine-tuned that's why it's called a pilot program right so we want take a look at all of the data and go through it all so i could i know personally i've seen uh the way that the program has evolved i think it's involved in the community's benefit um i do think that if there is a conversation to have something in those more highly trafficked areas where there is pedestrian traffic because me that was my concern as well right so i think there's a balance between the two i also think there's an obligation from the the company for to do more of an education campaign just to make sure that they can get with the appropriate committees that are affiliated with the city and try to figure out what are the barriers right as long as the community can have input in that and I know I myself if I have seen something on the sidewalk I haven't registered the complaint I've just picked up the bike and I've moved it if people want to register those complaints and continue to collect the data then that will force the bike company to respond in kind but I think it's just having the conversation so everybody can be on the same page so for me as far as this ordinance i don't think i'm going to vote in favor of the ordinance because i still think that we can fine-tune it and we can fine-tune it to the community's benefits so thank you thank

▶ 1:39:31 Robert A. Boisselle: you president forbes um counselor boizel i noticed in the document section 22-31 non-motorized share mobility vehicles license the requirements in the process section d indicates insurance And there's about eight lines of insurance information, a million dollars per occurrence, two million for aggregate and commercial, 500,000 per person, a million for vehicle liability. But when you go down to Section 2233, which is for the motorized aspects of this agreement,

▶ 1:40:19 Robert A. Boisselle: there's no insurance at all does that non-motorized insurance carry over to the motorized section also so that's the ordinance that you're through the chair through

▶ 1:40:32 Francis X. Wright Jr.: thank you uh council boys uh council boys i'll pose the question to council Medeiros

▶ 1:40:37 Monica C. Medeiros: thank you um thank you very much as the maker of this order i appreciate your question counselor Boisselle the section 2 2 dash 3 3 there is no there is no insurance requirement because a section a says motorized shared mobility vehicles are prohibited from operating in a public right-of-way on or on public property within the city of Melrose and this is intended to ban the use of motorized shared mobility vehicles and just so the idea is it for this ordinance I categorize these into motorized and non motorized vehicles and specifically mentioned that this shall

▶ 1:41:21 Speaker 1: not if we're not allowing them on the sidewalk where are they going to be used

▶ 1:41:25 Robert A. Boisselle: if they're not allowed in the public right away this is not for for sharing

▶ 1:41:29 Monica C. Medeiros: service to operate a motorized the scooter or something like that I I am proposing that we ban them all together by that sentence because at 745 in the

▶ 1:41:42 Robert A. Boisselle: morning on Main Street the motorized so units are racing down Main Street and

▶ 1:41:53 Monica C. Medeiros: they're going at a good clip yes and so those may be individually privately owned scooters probably are which are covered by a different section of the ordinance this is only for shared shared vehicle service well then let's go back

▶ 1:42:06 Robert A. Boisselle: to section 32 to 31 D that insurance is for who for the consumer or for the company itself just for the company and this mirrors the so if the individual on

▶ 1:42:24 Robert A. Boisselle: the bike has an accident they're not covered by any insurance using the line

▶ 1:42:31 Monica C. Medeiros: bike this this insurance is is this would be covered I believe lime bike would insure them this is the same as the Arlington they have something that's

▶ 1:42:46 Monica C. Medeiros: not called an ordinance but it's their bylaw or whatever they put in place to

▶ 1:42:54 Robert A. Boisselle: for their license my question is is if you go to the lime agreement section one 1.47 it's stated basically security against legal liability this is their original lime agreement you the consumer signs this piece of paper when they make the contract you agree to hold harmless line for claims damages injuries and so forth and so forth there's there's four lines of lime is not paying for anything if there's an accident or injury or damage

▶ 1:43:27 Robert A. Boisselle: So, I'm not sure why we're asking in Section D $1 million here, $2 million here, $500,000 there for insurance. Who's going to use it?

▶ 1:43:39 Monica C. Medeiros: So, we're saying in the statement of work, it says that the- What is that? I'm sorry. Where does it say that the-

▶ 1:43:48 Robert A. Boisselle: In the line, when you take a blind bike out, you sign an agreement. And 1.417 in that agreement says you agree to hold harmless Lime for claims, damages, injuries and so forth and so forth. You can't, Lime won't pay for anything at this point. You will, he or she will be responsible for any damage they do with the bike or with the motorized unit and so forth.

▶ 1:44:27 Robert A. Boisselle: what's in a contract I just want to make sure we're trying to figure out we're telling these people to put this money in and I'm just asking what's it for is it for injuries or damages that we're going to be associated with because it's in our city and they're using our city to get the bikes and so forth so we

▶ 1:44:50 Speaker 7: Could we direct our questions to the Chair?

▶ 1:44:53 Speaker 1: Sorry, well, I was-

▶ 1:44:55 Francis X. Wright Jr.: I know it's a formality, but it's Robert's-

▶ 1:44:57 Speaker 1: I know, I agree, sorry, Mr. Chairman.

▶ 1:44:59 Francis X. Wright Jr.: And that'll allow each other to answer and there'll be a conversation as opposed to there's been a little bit of talking over one another.

▶ 1:45:06 Robert A. Boisselle: My question comes to this, is that in this document here that we're putting together for the line bikes, we're asking in section D of 2231, 2231 for insurance all applicants agree to provide evidence of insurance not limited to 1 million per occurrence 2 million for aggregate and commercial general liability coverage and $500,000 per person when you when you sign an agreement with Lyme that agreement in 1.4 1.4 point 7 it's indicates you agree to hold harmless line for claims damages injuries and so forth and so forth and liabilities so who's this money for is it for the city is it for the company and the company is not going to pay anything according to their agreement that the consumers signing off on they're posing a question to the chair

▶ 1:46:04 Francis X. Wright Jr.: to well I'll pose it around the order I'll pose it to the legal aspects to the

▶ 1:46:16 Robert A. Boisselle: chair and in the motorized unit they don't agree because they're not allowed on the on a sidewalk and they're not allowed on the roadway and we I guess the way it stated we're not going to allow them at all well my point was

▶ 1:46:31 Francis X. Wright Jr.: questions should be posed through the chair through the chair not to the chair through the chair early it's not the counselor so I would say to you know if you just put present your question as you know through the chair I'd like to ask all the moment arrows I know this is a formality well that was my I was

▶ 1:46:57 Robert A. Boisselle: getting too much to go through you to ask her that question and I don't think

▶ 1:47:01 Francis X. Wright Jr.: it's necessary for me to ask her but if you just say through the chair through the chair and then and she can likewise respond to the chair thank you and I'll

▶ 1:47:13 Monica C. Medeiros: do my best as I am NOT an attorney and don't like to play one on TV either

▶ 1:47:24 Francis X. Wright Jr.: these are rules of parliamentary procedure yes my intention by adding

▶ 1:47:27 Monica C. Medeiros: this was to make sure that there was in you know that one city would be held harmless and into that there would be adequate insurance to cover an individual using the scooter if there was if damage did occur I am not aware of the what you sign when you sign up for line bike and I think this is actually part of the you know why I think we should have a licensing process because this is something where you know it would be best to address that to the SHARING SERVICE COMPANY, LINEBIKE IN THIS CASE, SO THAT THEY COULD ANSWER, YOU KNOW, MY INTENTION IS TO MAKE SURE THAT THEY HAVE ADEQUATE INSURANCE SO THAT THE CONSUMER WOULD BE PROTECTED AND THAT PROPERTY, YOU KNOW, FROM INJURY WOULD BE PROTECTED. AND THIS, AGAIN, I TOOK THIS FROM SOME OTHER COMMUNITIES AND THEIR INSURANCE REQUIREMENTS. I KNOW I WAS READING BACK THROUGH THE MINUTES OF THE LAST MEETING AND I SAW THAT YOU HAD ASK FOR SOME OF OUR ATTORNEY TO WEIGH IN AND I DON'T KNOW IF THAT HAS HAPPENED THROUGH THE CHAIR BACK BUT PERHAPS IN TERMS OF THERE IS INDEMNIFICATION OF OBLIGATION AND LIABILITY I THINK ON PAGE 8 OF THE CURRENT STATEMENT OF WORK AND PERHAPS WE COULD SEE HOW THAT is you know how is that um how is the consumer protected under the current agreement might be a

▶ 1:49:02 Francis X. Wright Jr.: good question for the administration thank you thank you i'm unaware of a response from the city solicitor i don't know if the clerk of committees likewise is on we certainly could

▶ 1:49:15 Francis X. Wright Jr.: hold the matter in committee and those that request him to come forward but that's a motion someone else would have to make thank you thank you any other

▶ 1:49:26 Francis X. Wright Jr.: councillors have any questions councillor McMaster I'm sorry councillors work I was in queue thank you mr. chairman so I'll try to be

▶ 1:49:41 Michael P. Zwirko: brief I think that there's a lot of benefits that we've seen just through the deliberation of this particular ordinance but I don't support the ordinance because I feel that it's a little bit of a layering of regulation for a structure that's already shown to be malleable and evolve with some of the complaints and the consumer issues as well as the market itself so it's a very interesting market it's a market that's new it's emerging you know we as Mel rosians here we're treating this new technology if you want to call it as like an incubator so it's actually kind of a cool pilot program to go through and i think that we're trying to take what we know that exists like a library licensing process or something such as that and kind of cast that onto this new market for a riderless sharing bike system and i don't know if it's really appropriate at this time and i think that the statement of work really captures what it is that we're trying to do here as well as balance um some of the i guess negative perceived or otherwise impacts of this shared mobility service in our community so um i think we've even seen a lot of comment outside of melrose about trying to work with the mbta to have these bikes available for them to loosen their policies because obviously if we're going to talk about the last mile and the importance of that when it comes to personal transportation the mbta should be a partner not opposed to this especially with where oak grove specifically is located and you've even stated in testimony here tonight and previously that we do want the line bikes to be available at commuter rails so there's that weird um aversion that i just don't quite get but i think we're moving in the right direction so i think here in this body and through the work of counselor medeiros as well as the planning office we've seen changes not only in the market but also how we've adapted to those changes and i think that it's it's it's well intended um but i just see it as an overreach and unnecessary at this time i think we've learned a lot through it but i don't think that we're ready to move forward with a with a hard and fast ordinance so those are my comments I didn't have any questions, Mr. Chairman.

▶ 1:51:55 Speaker 7: Thank you, Councillor. Councillor McMaster. Thank you, Chairman Wright.

▶ 1:51:58 Shawn M. MacMaster: Thank you both for being here this evening and for your presentation. I have one question, and I'll just preface it by saying that as chair of the Protection and License Committee, I do share many of Alderman Medeiros concerns, but I'm also concerned about riders and the company potentially divesting from Melrose based on some of the concerns that were were raised during public comment so I do find those concerns compelling and I'm wondering my question is I'm wondering are we able through the data to identify hot spots for start trips and end trips you know I was compelled by the slide that shows you know typical routes where we're seeing high volume use but are we able to work with line bike to see where rides are starting and where where rides are ending and the reason I asked that is you know representing the Oak Grove neighborhood I think people are inclined to use this service for short trips home as you mentioned you know within a mile or so but I also you know represent the really the least affluent area of the city so many of my constituents may not be able to afford cars or they may save money by not having cars so the last thing I want to do is potentially if this comes out of committee is vote on this and it ends up causing a hardship to my constituents so for me it would be helpful to know if we if that data exists and if so or is that something that you can you know present to us outside of this meeting tonight yeah so

▶ 1:53:43 Speaker 3: unfortunately it's taken a while for us to get the data from Lyme and and MEPC is the one who has been processing it for the last couple months but we finally have gotten sort of the first peak of that and they are going to be releasing that to the public hopefully later this month so we'll have the image I had that showed the the routes that's just a snapshot of that so that will have the breakdown of the most popular routes and it also has a breakdown of all the popular destinations I'm not sure if they also have popular start locations but I could find out about that and so that should be data that is easily accessible in the next couple weeks that would be great if you can

▶ 1:54:26 Shawn M. MacMaster: share that and then miss gaffey's you know we're scheduled to to meet or We're attempting to schedule a meeting next week relative to the development at Marty's Furniture. And as it relates to line bikes, maybe something to think about as we move forward on that process is whether or not there's an opportunity to work with the developer on an actual bike docking location there. So just something to think about as we move forward. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. Thank you.

▶ 1:54:58 Francis X. Wright Jr.: Any other councillors? Councillor Lipper-Garabedian.

▶ 1:55:02 Kate Lipper-Garabedian: Thank you. I'm not a member of this committee, but I would thank Councilor Medeiros for bringing this topic to our discussion. I think it's, as our colleagues have stated, it's been very helpful to learn more from the city about our pilot program and this burgeoning industry that I think there are many reasons to support in terms of the benefits it can provide to getting cars off this road and enhancing people's ability to get around town. And I agree with you that it's appropriate to establish reasonable framework for how businesses should operate here the question right now is whether it should be in an ordinance or whether we want to provide additional time through and through this through the statement of work process to sort of play out and have lessons learned which I think there are really compelling reasons for that it does sound like you're already anticipating that there may need to be at the end of this pilot program of revisiting of where Lyme is heading in our region and who else might service and play a role here and it's really great that we've already participated in a regional process with other communities and with MAPC and I would just encourage you to come back to us to give us updates on how that's going to present what you're thinking and what type of agreement you might be negotiating and also to get input from the community so that people are kept in the loop and can give you feedback um and you can also then share information so um that hopefully it'll be seen more it's more seamless even now that we have some lessons learned from the first go-round um uh so thank you again for um this obviously i don't have a vote on this committee but i just wanted to

▶ 1:56:44 Francis X. Wright Jr.: share those thoughts thank you any other counselors for the first time council Medeiros

▶ 1:56:50 Monica C. Medeiros: for the second time thank you um yes i was just wondering so i to sort of piggyback on uh counselor Boisselle's uh comments and questions and and you know he obviously asked a good question in terms of the proposed ordinance but that does lead me to ask on the current statement of work obviously we have some sections and requirements for insurance for for Lime Bike and I believe they are intended to protect the consumer although we're hearing that and I have not seen this myself so I can't speak to it but based on Councilor Boisselle comments that when a user signs into Lime it's saying that the user agrees to hold Lime harmless so should people who are using these bikes now are they should they have their own insurance i mean like what happens if uh i don't know if they get in an accident you know

▶ 1:57:55 Speaker 4: do we know yeah i'm i don't know the answer to that question okay so do we have the indemnification

▶ 1:58:00 Denise Gaffey: in the um statement of work as we saw and my understanding is their insurance um IT WAS DOCUMENTED IN THE AGREEMENT THAT MAPC HAS WITH LINE BIKE, WHICH IS THE AGREEMENT THAT WE'RE ALL WORKING WITHIN.

▶ 1:58:16 Monica C. Medeiros: SO I THINK THAT THERE ARE A FEW QUESTIONS THAT I THINK, I THINK THESE DEMONSTRATE SOME OF THE REASONS WHY I THINK HAVING A PUBLIC LICENSING PROCESS WHERE WE'D BE ABLE TO TALK to a vendor or sharing service company directly could be very beneficial to not just the city council but to the public as a whole. That being said I would like to know, I think there are some things that have been brought up here and I think there are some issues for instance about routes and I think it would be since we've been talking about this in a very public way i think it would be good if we could get through the chair of a ruling from our city solicitor or some further background of what consumers you know if they are protected or not if they're using these bikes in the city but you know i hear enough members here on the board of on the city council sorry not on the board anymore um but i don't believe that this has the support to move forward i do hope that we as a community um you know i'm you know one one year from now when this or in april when this uh time runs out i will not have this seat here and i as are many of the members as well so I do hope that this comes back because I think it's very important to you know to make sure that we're protecting the people that are here in our community that are using this service and that may you know you use scooters through a service that I am concerned about that I remain concerned about somebody just coming in and trying to operate a service without a license or without any permissions but that being said i i think it's wise at this point to move that this order move forward to the full board with a motion a recommendation for leave to withdraw

▶ 2:00:24 Francis X. Wright Jr.: alderman Medeiros has made a motion to recommend that this matter be withdrawn is that you have

▶ 2:00:40 Speaker 1: a second we're placed on file please would you like to move withdrawn or on file placed on file

▶ 2:00:43 Francis X. Wright Jr.: is that yes okay we have a motion to place this matter on file second second seconded by all the

▶ 2:01:00 Francis X. Wright Jr.: counselor president forbes um the members of the legislative legal legislative committee all in favor aye aye aye opposed the matter will go to the full board with a recommendation to be placed

▶ 2:01:22 Francis X. Wright Jr.: on file thank you thank you thank you thank you second item on our agenda is order 2020-19 expanding the senior citizen property tax work off abatement program by amending melrose revised ordinances chapter 6 section 6-1 as set forth here and before we start the discussion on that I would like to say I did receive a call from the mayor and the city solicitor today regarding this matter they had intended to have Chris Wilcox the city assessor appear to comment on this however he was on a scheduled a vacation and therefore is unavailable today they requested that this matter be held in committee ultimately so that Chris could come