ORDER-2019-47 : Petition of National Grid for multiple pole and conduit relocations throughout Melrose as set forth herein as part of Electrical Transmission Line Upgrade Project.

Transcript (~21 min @ 7:40)

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▶ 7:26 Kate Lipper-Garabedian: motion to close public motion to close public comment made by alderman Zwirko seconded by alderman mortimer all in favor aye opposed thank you this concludes our public comment as i mentioned we have four orders before us tonight the first is order 2019-47 petition of national grid for multiple toll and conduit relocations throughout melrose as set forth herein as part of electrical transmission line upgrade project motion to suspend the rules that we may hear from representatives of national grid

▶ 7:50 Peter D. Mortimer: and the director of dpw john chena second we have a motion to suspend the rules made by alderman

▶ 7:59 Kate Lipper-Garabedian: mortimer seconded by alderman forbes uh all in favor aye opposed thank you for joining us tonight

▶ 8:12 Kate Lipper-Garabedian: i think this is a continuation of a conversation on this so we welcome you back and we'd be happy

▶ 8:17 Speaker 4: to hear some updates about this so good evening and thanks for having us back on this order we appreciate the extra time we had to deliberate this internally as I said during our last public hearing this grant of location at the seven poles is a is a small part of a larger program which will take about a couple years the National Grid is set to embark it includes the replacement of nearly 300 approximately 340 poles the installation of these seven new poles and a lot of rewiring of their electrical circuit and about a third of melrose the end of the day the goal is to eliminate the substation on upham street and bring extra power into this grid and other manners so that's my elementary overview of the project we have a Representatives from national grid can obviously get into more detail about it uh the last time we met though i do i do want to note that we did not have specific conditions but we've spent um the last few weeks developing a memo that i forwarded to the board it's lengthy but we'd appreciate it if the order could be amended to include the memo and the map that goes along with it National Grid has accepted these terms and conditions some are general just you know in general regards to the few years that this program is going to take place and how we'd like them to go through the city in an organized manner and how we want to communicate you know day to day week to week and how we don't want one section to bleed into another per se we like to complete a section and then move on to another one um so some are general some speak to detouring some speak to communication and then there's one the the second half of the memo speaks to some specific site specific conditions um regarding the seven locations

▶ 10:22 Peter D. Mortimer: that are part of this order make a motion to include amend the order by including the

▶ 10:30 Kate Lipper-Garabedian: aforementioned men memo and map second second and alderman mormer do you mean the map as well yes yes okay we have a motion to amend the order to add the memo um and also the map and that's really seconded by i think alderman medeiros all in favor aye aye any opposed okay so we have the

▶ 10:48 Speaker 4: amended order before us so we're here to any questions about the memo the map or anything in particular brendan is here from national grid and he's very familiar with the seven locations

▶ 10:59 Speaker 2: and the project great alderman's work oh thank you madam chair thank you for being here this evening

▶ 11:01 Michael P. Zwirko: i know this is uh this is going to be a large project um and thank you for embarking on it it's nice to have at least the polls uh replaced from you know over time their integrity can certainly wane my real question though um is actually for uh mr shenna i just wanted to state that at the last meeting we had an individual from woodruff it's a neighbor of mine and i just wanted to say thank you i noticed here in the site specific conditions that you added at the very last line that you'll work with the affected residents to determine if new trees are desired along the sidewalk and grass strip i appreciate that as i had mentioned during a storm this past fall the tree actually huge tree fell on the residence and it's a nice beautiful tree and luckily no one was hurt a little property damage but to insert that in for the site specific conditions i appreciate that no problem and good luck to the work and i know this will be quite an endeavor so um be safe and be well thank you madam chair sure alderman mcmaster thank you

▶ 12:04 Shawn M. MacMaster: mr shanna thank you for being here sir thank you for being here you may recall mr shen at the last meeting i had mentioned that five of the seven locations are in ward five are there any concerns or issues or anything noteworthy to report to the public based on those five locations since our last meeting where i had some questions and some concerns that i raised and the second part of that question relates to west wyoming can you talk about as part of this plan what efforts the city is able to take to mitigate traffic congestion and those concerns that i brought up around the lincoln school especially during the school

▶ 12:45 Speaker 4: Time yes, so if you get into the the details of the letter in the site specific conditions The Wyoming site we are requesting that the work take place outside of school hours We're also requesting that the businesses are notified prior to the work and that the any abutting residents are as well in regard to Ashmont that location we requesting that the whole be installed prior to our scheduled road program this summer in regard to Washington Street we made note of the daycare and the fact that that's a major commute route to Oak Grove both in the morning in the afternoon and you know obviously be vigilant to that as part of the you know preparations for the work these aren't week-long projects the installation of a pole and and then the rewiring is a day a time or maybe three four days over five to ten calendar days that's typically what it is but there are some site specific conditions to you know the some of the discussion we had before and we feel confident with this team and we they've came to us i think initially in early december and we've been discussing this all along and um it was good to still document the conditions so that the project the project contractors know what they need to do in each specific site well thank you for your attention and your

▶ 14:12 Shawn M. MacMaster: responsiveness to the issues that I raised I appreciate all of your hard work in coming up with these conditions and I just want to thank you for your efforts to mitigate any disruptions or other issues that may come up in the course of this work for the residents of ward 5 and the neighborhood so thank you sir

▶ 14:41 Peter D. Mortimer: thank you very much chairman lippi garabedian um thank you for your work on this as we know the above ground infrastructure as well as the below ground infrastructure in melrose is old needs a lot of work so we appreciate this to increase the voltage around the city and And it's going to make Melrose a better place. Construction is always inconvenient, as we're learning with some of the projects downtown. But I think you're going to see this, not to do with you, but you're going to see some of those problems addressed by this board in the near future. So we're going to be taking care of this. And I would like to make a request, while you're in the midst of all this extensive work, It could be a golden opportunity to alleviate a lot of the double poles. This has been a request that's been ongoing since I became an alderman 19 years ago. And I can see in the gallery, State Representatives Paul Broda, a former president of the Board of Aldermen. He was working on it back when he was on this board. But the double poles are eyesores, not a safety issue, but they are eyesores. So, always in the course of construction, there's some down time, something doesn't show up, people are waiting. Murphy's Law always applies to construction projects, unfortunately. As anyone who's ever rehabbed a house, and Mr. Shannon can certainly attest to, there's always something that comes up. But in the meantime, maybe this would be a golden opportunity to eliminate a lot of the double poles, the unsightly double poles that we have all around Melrose. be wonderful if you could uh accomplish that to some extent thank you very much uh vice chair

▶ 16:29 Robert A. Boisselle: thank you for coming gentlemen uh i noticed in the memo that came to us uh item number three the city will be responsible for moving our own utilities now the polls also have the cable networks attached to it also is that correct correct have they been informed of the upcoming

▶ 16:52 Speaker 4: work and preparing for the changeover so it's a good question and to your question and alderman one of his comments we met a few weeks ago with everybody who's on the polls from the poll these utility polls have electric phone cable and in some instances fire alarm street lights and fiber optic cabling for our own city and school network so we we all met together they run a pro every poll is listed in the what's that program it's called the engines programs the national joint utility i forget the rest n-j-u-n-s and and so every poll that every utility on a poll is in that program and this project was a gr and that meeting was a great opportunity to update that listing and i know that our engineers have been working with verizon and national grid to update our existing inventory of double poles and now it's very critical in fact one of the conditions is that we continue to use that so that we can keep track of this and we don't lose control of double poles in the city so it could be a good opportunity to clean up what we have but if they stick to the conditions it they absolutely will be able to inventory where the double poles

▶ 18:14 Robert A. Boisselle: are moving forward okay thank you very much thank you manager um i just have a few questions from

▶ 18:18 Kate Lipper-Garabedian: the really the helpful memo that you circulated a few days ago it's also in the public record um when you were just to make sure i'm clear so the general conditions it sort of describes this as a large scale project of at least 240 utility poles and i think you mentioned in here that the whole process is going to take eight to twelve months i think when we just heard from you now it sounded like it might be a little bit longer than that and there might be more than 300 polls

▶ 18:48 Speaker 4: so maybe this is just a subsection of the overall project no that was me okay being tired it's 200 it's 240 polls not 340 polls and the 8 to 12 months that this references is the approximate time that project team that met feels a double pull will be in place it's a two it's at least a two-year project but the eight to twelve months referenced here is we wanted to target a window of how long we expect a double pole to be in place from the time it's installed at the time it's removed we that that was a condition that we felt was important to define so we have a target a target and a window of when the pull it's difficult because we don't know what's on all of them so best case is eight months but we we do feel within a year that they should be able to pull

▶ 19:38 Kate Lipper-Garabedian: that poll great um and we talked last time and you mentioned this time that we're going to decommission the substation located on upham street i recall that national grid will hold on to that property because at some point you might need to use it again i'm wondering if there's any part of that land or plot that can be repurposed for the city it does it looks like a pretty tight spot but i don't know if there's any chance it's a it's a prime location right downtown

▶ 20:05 Speaker 4: there was some discussion about that but at this time I haven't heard anything back from my superiors as to what they're gonna do I know they're gonna replace the roof to the building and do some aesthetic improvements to it but as for public use I'm not sure we have undecided at this time okay and we did condition that anything they do there they should work through our office of planning and community development and inspectional services so we'll be in the loop and whatever happens there and I'm sure those two departments will do everything they can to protect our interest great I think there's even some

▶ 20:36 Kate Lipper-Garabedian: green space in front that I don't know if if even you know for some of the public celebrations we have in downtown if it's possible to put things there I'm not sure then you mentioned so the first step will be that National Grid sets the pole and moves electrical utilities second step is the city moves our street lights fire alarm infrastructure and fiber network cables and then all the other communication at last final step is all the other communication utilities move their lines for the step that involves the city moving things is that at our expense as a city yes it is and you mentioned

▶ 21:20 Kate Lipper-Garabedian: now that part of the plan for west wyoming is notifying the businesses and the abutting neighbors is that the case for all of these locations well i know that you had a list that's a part of the record as well of everybody i assume who's already been contacted or will be contacted

▶ 21:36 Speaker 4: um so they typically on poll real poll installations we don't notify okay that's why when we when we require it as a condition we usually condition location by location because they're not usually there and anything they do is if if somebody had to get out of their driveway per se that type of project can allow it um so you can you can allow it yeah yeah i mean they'd usually show up and you know knock on knock on the door and let people out for the day and things like that i see it's not as invasive as you might think it would be usually we're there and like nobody's around okay so people are usually at work especially in a residential

▶ 22:19 Kate Lipper-Garabedian: area the one other question I had was about Washington Street so I appreciated that for Wyoming you made a condition that as you mentioned all the work has to be completed outside of regular school hours and I assume that also includes sort of the hour leading up to school and the hour after it because of drop-off and pickup on Washington Street is it possible to have a condition where you're not replacing the pole during the rush hour the commuting hours since that

▶ 22:49 Speaker 4: is such a heavily trafficked so that's typically that's typically what we do okay what we conditioned is that you know careful consideration should be given to the hours of work and traffic so once we get together i mean they'll usually either install something initially in the morning and go there after nine o'clock or middle of the day or things like that we just we rather than be specific to a particular window in that case we uh we will work it out okay and you feel like that gives you

▶ 23:14 Kate Lipper-Garabedian: enough leverage and negotiating to make sure okay great those are all my questions again this was very um helpful to have this as additional material for our record thank you uh alderman

▶ 23:27 Monica C. Medeiros: medeiros thank you uh just a couple of quick things and so uh this the city is responsible for moving our own utilities and in the condition you said you're in the process of determining which poles contain our infrastructure and the estimated costs to perform these transfers um can you talk a little bit about what you might think the cost would be in in the process to for us to

▶ 23:58 Speaker 4: remove our utilities well what we'll do is we hire a contractor yeah our street lights are removed and relocated onto the new pole we have a vendor on the contract that does that we pay for that type of work in our dpw highway budget on the streetlight maintenance fire alarm is typically done in-house it's done by the fire department and fiber optic cabling is something that we'll have to bring a vendor in that's it cabling some of it we don't we may not need anymore and that's what we're evaluating and some may have to be reinstalled and we'll either do that through our streetlight vendor or maybe fire alarm will be able to do that as well do you anticipate that

▶ 24:42 Monica C. Medeiros: we'll need to go outside of what's already budgeted to to do this would this require additional

▶ 24:51 Speaker 4: not all 240 poles will be installed right away so i think it'll be will be the goal is we hope to be able to cover it within our operating budget i budget for some of that this type of work in general I mean they put they replace poles all the time poles get hit poles right and when that happens whatever is on that pole has to be transferred so some of it is is within that we cover it from within our budget but I've put I have put the auditor on notice and once we start and we'll see where we can go and there might be a need to supplement the budget there might be a need to transfer funds from other lines whether it could be a projected surplus into this line we'll see how it goes but oh the goal is to is to still cover it out

▶ 25:42 Monica C. Medeiros: of our operating budget and then sort of generally and in the past I've heard it you know upon occasion there's been some situations where sometimes there's something on a poll for a company that's out of business and or maybe you don't know exactly that it's there until so you get up on the pole and then there can be some delays and in moving the utilities does this happen to something

▶ 26:09 Speaker 4: we might run into I haven't personally dealt with that and any project that I've handled but I do know of like some defunct telephone companies that you know you know went belly up and their infrastructure still there but I have

▶ 26:27 Speaker 4: not heard any of that from any of the surveyors or engineers have worked on this at all so we don't answer by now that would that would have brought to our attention if it's dead infrastructure that nobody owns and then it can be cut and removed and I guess that's something we'll have to work out with Verizon I would imagine either us or them would probably end up dealing

▶ 26:52 Monica C. Medeiros: with it that's good and so you think that it's possible that we might end up seeing less wires as a result of this project I know that our wires are

▶ 27:00 Speaker 4: probably not gonna decrease I don't know if horizon has plans to remove you know defunct copper cables that they don't know old copper phone lines I know like everything they use is fiber optic now and then but uh i really i'm not sure i would say possibly i don't know if that's part of their scope of work is to remove that rather than just transfer it

▶ 27:28 Monica C. Medeiros: i think that'd be a better question for them but that's okay thank you i appreciate that i appreciate this uh memo mr shena thank you from your department and um and just want to stress to how important it is stated here that the the engine software system is is updated and um

▶ 27:47 Monica C. Medeiros: it's definitely you know i think a great help to everybody involved and

▶ 27:53 Kate Lipper-Garabedian: thanks okay we have an amended motion uh order before us to recommend for passage the order as

▶ 28:01 Kate Lipper-Garabedian: amended second we have a motion to recommend the order as amended made by alderman mortimer seconded by Vice Chair Boisselle all in favor aye that motion carries and will be to the full board thank you for being here thank you thank you our next order is order 2 0 1 9 79 acceptance of revised easements at 360 and 366 Swains