REPORTS - RULE 53

Transcript (~4 min @ 39:45)

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▶ 39:41 Jennifer L. Lemmerman: Moving on to reports under Rule 53 from any committees or boards.

▶ 39:47 Jennifer L. Lemmerman: Are there any reports? Alderman Medeiros.

▶ 39:50 Monica C. Medeiros: Thank you. Brief report from the school committee and the school committee liaison. The school committee has been discussing the budget for some time, but they have yet to receive the actual line-by-line budget. So that will be out and presented to the school committee for the April 23rd meeting. And so at that meeting, that will be, it's anticipated to be probably the one time that the school committee will really be debating the line by line budget. Member, school committee member, Lizbeth DeSelm had asked and the superintendent had agreed to try to get the budget out a few days early, than the required 48 hours so hopefully we will see that sometime this week and

▶ 40:42 Monica C. Medeiros: and then from there that will be moved forward to the Board of Aldermen so keep an eye on that and April 23rd is the anticipated meeting date thanks thank

▶ 40:52 Manisha Bewtra: you I'll move you check thank you the update from the water and sewer rate committee we last met on March 26th when representatives from the Massachusetts water resources authority and the which is MWRA and MWRA advisory board presented information on their rate setting process they're currently deliberating system-wide rate increases and the way it works is we pay for our share of the system for water MWRA determines water based on consumption reported citywide while the city looks at our meter level data for individual properties our water utility assessment is about one point one six percent of the total system and our sewer utility assessment is about one point three three percent of the total system over the last five years our water rate increases have been lower than the system-wide average increase our sewer rates have been slightly higher and overall combined our rate increases have been about two point nine percent while system-wide combined has been about three point three percent factors that impact water rate increases include consumption conservation as well as leak detection and repair and unaccounted for water and then factors that impact sewer rate increases include infiltration and in flow as well as our share of wastewater flow and the strength of our flow but also our share of system-wide sewered population next step we have two remaining meetings before the rate is set so next Thursday April 25th 2 30 in the Cassidy conference room please keep an eye on the meeting agenda portal on city of Melrose org to to ensure that those dates don't change because we're still before the posting time period but right now it's scheduled for that time is scheduled to be the official rate workshop using the updated working model with FY20 projected fiscal data, direct expenses, indirect expenses, debt, and other costs. Dave Fox from Reftelis Associates, who has been working on this model for us, is going to be in attendance. Then Wednesday, May 1st, in the evening, is 7 o'clock to 8.30 p.m. um we're required to have a mandatory night meeting and it's going to be our last meeting when recommendations will be voted upon to send to the mayor and ultimately submission back to us as the board of aldermen um likely on may 6th as part of our as part of the fy20 budget presentation so stay tuned for those meeting dates if you'd like to provide input into the process and feel free to email me if you have comments thank you thank you are there any