ORDER-2019-23 : Petition of National Grid and Verizon New England to install one Pole in the municipal parking lot behind 419-429 Main St. and to install one JO pole on Grove St. in accordance with Plan # 26150795

Transcript (~26 min @ 46:00)

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▶ 45:53 Jennifer L. Lemmerman: speak on this move to close the public hearing you have a motion to close the public hearing made by president's burko seconded by alderman mortimer all in favor aye any opposed the public hearing portion of this order is now closed uh we could ask the gentleman to come forward again thank you and suspend the rules second we i believe we're under suspension still i don't

▶ 46:10 Jennifer L. Lemmerman: think we need earlier yeah um so first in line uh we have president's work thank you madam chair

▶ 46:17 Michael P. Zwirko: thank you for being here this evening um i i note that the application is for a joint owned poll And you said that you're from National Grid. That's correct. So is there a representative from Verizon here this evening?

▶ 46:29 Speaker 6: None that I'm aware of, no. We will be installing the pole if they wish to attach to it. That's dependent on whether or not that customer even uses Verizon for their service. Rita.

▶ 46:43 Michael P. Zwirko: So I was looking at this plan. We received a memo earlier today, later today, earlier today, in the late evening. in the late evening but my questioning for you at this time is you had stated that the service that is sought by the petitioner due to its size it's unable to be serviced underground but then in the next comment you stated that the lowest cost option was to just put it up through a pole so it either can fit or it can't or there's a cost issue with the petitioner so I'm curious can the cables and all of the infrastructure that's needed for the petitioner be

▶ 47:28 Speaker 6: completed underground they can engineering wise and physically they can we can install that but that will be at a much larger cost to that customer the existing transformer bank is located right down here in this corner about hundred and thirty 140 feet away from this customer so in order to feed the existing building through the same ducts that are already there those ducts would need to be replaced or the cables need to be severely upgraded much larger than they currently exist as the transformer vault itself that currently feeds that customer Papa Gino's and a group of other underground customers right on street there is only has a capacity of 300 kva and right now its summer peak is around 110 so the peak time july 100 degrees out everyone's running air conditioning so it's slightly overloaded as is this per customer is requesting 140 kva so it's nearly half of the capacity of the existing transformer vault so we could serve them underground if we were to install a new transformer vault in the street in front of the building these are obviously very large they're precast concrete like 12 feet by 16 feet 18 feet they're huge concrete boxes and that would be a very disruptive to the traffic on Main Street obviously take a couple of weeks to put this thing in ducks would need to get rerouted there'd be a ton of other utilities that we need to dig around it would probably have to be done with a vac truck rather than a backhoe which would take much longer is much more expensive so going overhead through the

▶ 49:21 Speaker 6: parking lot seemed to be the least invasive and the least impactful and certainly the least expensive option to serve this building I would love to actually go underground from the pole on on Grove Street through the parking lot to a pad mount transformer right behind the building and then go straight to the building from there but there's a that culvert there's a culvert that runs through that parking lot right behind those buildings across the street and keeps going I can't dig under it it's 12 feet down and it's less than 10 inches from the surface of the parking lot I can't have primary cable like 14,000 volt electric cables 10 inches from the surface of roadway it might be fine we put it in but give it five six years a plow could hit it we require minimum 36 inches down from grade concrete in case duct so this is certainly a tricky

▶ 50:20 Speaker 6: building or tricky plot to serve for the you know based off the loads that they

▶ 50:30 Michael P. Zwirko: submitted to us so I get leading up to that and I do appreciate that background

▶ 50:36 Speaker 2: that's helpful there the when did you meet with the city to discuss this

▶ 50:43 Speaker 6: project I met with I met with someone from the department there I think several months ago I don't remember his name I know that the the owners contractor had been I informed him that he was going to be talking to the city

▶ 51:00 Michael P. Zwirko: about this as well I asked because about six weeks ago we placed this on our agenda for this evening and we received a memo this evening about three potential other ways that this this unit could be serviced and I'm just curious if you've had the time or your supervisors or whoever would be you know the project manager has had time to look at these because I'm feeling that this is coming before us a little half-baked so going from the streets not

▶ 51:25 Speaker 6: an option it's way too expensive but it is an option it's just way too expensive it is an option but we're talking you're gonna bankrupt this guy started 150 200 thousand dollars to install a transformer vault in the street the second option there is a grass there's like a mulch pathway between 419 429 and 433 and 437 the bank owns that it could be possible to secure an easement from them to place a transformer in that parcel of land but they could simply say

▶ 52:05 Speaker 6: know we can't for he they own it you know so that's that's something that the

▶ 52:13 Speaker 6: property owner the developer could reach out to them about but I don't like to

▶ 52:20 Michael P. Zwirko: bet on things like that the city of Melrose doesn't have very much downtown space and we covet that downtown space very much and it's a something that brings people to this community Friday Saturday evenings it brings people here for their lifetime and you're asking to put a pole to draw a line off an existing pole off the opposite side of a very highly traveled street that also

▶ 52:47 Michael P. Zwirko: has MBTA traffic across a public parking lot to use an existing light pole you'll fashion a light to the new pole I understand that and then draw those lines across the street in the parking lot in order to service this petitioner you know we get a lot of complaints as it is that polls are cumbersome and ugly and that obviously due to extreme weather events they can cause power outages so you know my concern is is there's options here that could probably be best explored over the course of another month and this doesn't need to be handled tonight I'm concerned that we're left with either a poll or no service and i just don't feel that we're we're there yet so um is there any immediacy immediacy to the petitioner's need for this 1600 amps uh as of right now i don't think they've completed

▶ 53:41 Speaker 6: construction in the building so i'm actually unsure of that um i don't know what a gentleman

▶ 53:50 Michael P. Zwirko: is you're supposed to so um no and i appreciate you coming here and you've been very forthright and this is good background for us to have um just i'm concerned with looking at the the memo and the discussions because we've known about this for about six weeks now so just a little bit i guess i have more questions at this time not for yourself but for our department of public works

▶ 54:08 Jennifer L. Lemmerman: if that's possible madam chair bring up our director of dpw mr shenna the memo is there

▶ 54:19 Michael P. Zwirko: thank you mr shenna good evening so i i apologize for taking all this time but and i i understand that the culvert there and there could be some construction issues and obviously uh as you rate it's already 110 at capacity but um to put up a new poll for this i'm just wondering with other construction projects that we have you know in the future i mean is this is this going to be the new way that we're going to be able to service power here do you feel that there's a way that we could maybe reroute or use i mean is this the plan we have to go on can can you speak to any options that we may have or what what what we can do i appreciate your

▶ 54:58 Speaker 7: comments and and um and i share them in many ways that this memo came to you this late today at my request this morning our city engineer reached out to national grid and you know just for the record this isn't a national grid request this is being requested by national grid for a business owner in the community that's making the downtown business larger it needs more power understood naturally and um national has been great to work with they had discussions well into the afternoon about other options um you know due mainly to my reluctance of putting a pole in the middle of the parking lot and coming above ground into service one building they laid out several options we've included them in the memo but if you know usually we make a recommendation and this memo doesn't make that recommendation yet yeah mainly because we we feel that these options could be vetted out a little further or perhaps there's another option out there that we just haven't really thought about yet that we'd like to take a little more time to work with national grid work with the customer look at what his true needs are and maybe there's a way to come underground to a certain point and then reduce the amount of overhead exposure we

▶ 56:25 Michael P. Zwirko: don't know those answers yet yeah and thank you for that because that that's kind of where i'm at and in my experience these polls go up and they don't come down you know and i i feel a for you know to rush to judgment now and allow a little bit more time to explore other avenues if there are any um i'm just i get very hesitant because you know we end up adding things to these polls over time new telecom towers that go on you know caps on these poles and then before you know it you've got a pole that looks like a christmas tree so um i i guess uh and and i want others to to speak to this too but but i would be heavily in favor of at least putting this on the table until the december the 17th but i'll i'll relax my questioning at this time thank you

▶ 57:11 Monica C. Medeiros: you madam chair thank you alderman medeiros thank you um i it was wonder i wanted to make sure that you have a copy of this memo and there is a copy there on the table thank you it was emailed to

▶ 57:27 Monica C. Medeiros: him yeah i got it today that's correct yeah okay um i'm just curious when was this petition filed

▶ 57:41 Speaker 6: with the city I wrote the drawing in August 8th and I'm not exactly sure we

▶ 57:47 Speaker 6: have a clerk in our office that submits these so I don't handle it personally

▶ 57:57 Monica C. Medeiros: but I'm assuming sometime after that point I think president's work oh you know has summed up a lot of our concerns we you know polls go up don't come down this is this is a highly trafficked area this is right in our middle of our downtown community i you know i wish we had maybe communicated our concerns a little bit sooner than tonight or today but i do think it's worth taking another look at so right now as far as if we proceeded with the recommendations in this memo and honestly i haven't got to read all of of the details of because we just got it today um ourselves but with putting a conduit underground you think would cause one to two hundred thousand dollars that's the kind of money putting a a

▶ 58:49 Speaker 6: transformer vault in the street in front of the building could cost upwards of a hundred thousand dollars or more um they're very large very expensive and it's not just installing a concrete box it's reconnecting the other ducts around that area to go to that

▶ 59:10 Speaker 6: transformer vault it's reconducting primary cables secondary cables and then replacing sidewalks patching streets so I mean it's the physical equipment is

▶ 59:27 Speaker 6: probably upwards of $60,000 and then it's the labor and all the other you know patchwork afterwards that drives the cost up so ultimately this is you

▶ 59:36 Monica C. Medeiros: know this is a building that's downtown this is an area of downtown that you know is our business district you know it's going to include once this project has completed ten residential units we've been trying to increase our housing stock in areas and you know make the most use of it I think this is an area that you know we should be looking at and um and as i i would definitely support you know holding this petition but i think it might be something that you know dpw we might want to talk with planning and community development to see you know is this an area where and i don't know how the timing for any of this goes because sort of just thinking off the top of my head here but some of the things like mass works grants and um or some of the housing and community development money you know might be appropriate in this spot to allow us to have as a community you know the infrastructure that we need to support the development that we want is it does seem like quite a lot to put on one property owner right

▶ 1:00:41 Speaker 6: the I will say that these ducks downtown in Melrose and in many other places like downtown Malden downtown Everett Lynn they're a hundred years old and they're designed originally to handle the capacity of lights and then as these buildings get rehabbed you know from two stories to three stories commercial spaces get restaurants laundromats these loads increase significantly I mean just to speak just in this area there's another building it's actually right over there right next to the CVS I'm dealing with that developer right now he's probably gonna get a pad mount transformer on the back of his property he has the space for it and there's an overhead pole line in that shaw's parking lot but that is the best way i'm going to feed his new service which is quite large just like this i know that turner's restaurant has historically had low voltage problems those will improve as we get these new buildings off the existing underground network so in the future if we can get some of these larger customers to get their own i guess backyard transformers that will reduce the impact on Main Street itself you know we won't be won't be digging up Main Street which is something I think

▶ 1:01:58 Speaker 7: we should really avoid and we weren't recommending that they go with that transformer in the front on the ground we really weren't recommending anything but I do believe that the comments made so far by president's work on how about you to hold this so we could continue to study it a little off this is very different than in a new pole on a street or a replacement pole or a usual national grid requests this really has um downtown national grid network at interest and we have to figure out how to how best to serve this not only this building but set that block up for the future and i don't know if running the poll is necessarily the best option right now but there are some infrastructure challenges and we do have the main el palm brook that goes right behind this this building right you know alongside puppagino we have to be very cautious on how we navigate around both sides the front and the back so i think stepping back for another month and allowing the project team to continue to evaluate is the most prudent thing to do right now thank you thank you

▶ 1:03:09 Kate Lipper-Garabedian: further discussion alderman Letter garabedian thank you um thanks for being here and i appreciate my colleagues comments just a couple questions maybe just to confirm in August this board passed a resolution suggesting we were going to hold on any new gas construction projects that were not any new permits this is not this that is not what we are discussing tonight just this is electric only gas

▶ 1:03:39 Kate Lipper-Garabedian: is a separate entity that I don't deal with okay have any access to and then I just would share my colleagues concern about the poll this is as we've discussed a very highly foot trafficked area lots of families use Grove Street to cut over to downtown to access the YMCA for example on Saturday mornings to go to swim lessons it's right next to a senior housing community and many of those residents walk through this parking lot to access downtown so I really appreciate the attention paid to both the optics of our downtown and also then the safety of the people who are who are accessing this area that's

▶ 1:04:21 Robert A. Boisselle: all thank you Alderman Boycelle John the the way this is labeled the building is 419 to 429 Main Street is that going to take six street addresses I mean it looks like a 90 by 90 building I think that's the current address for it that's 419, 29, wow.

▶ 1:04:37 Speaker 7: I've been referring to it all along.

▶ 1:04:38 Speaker 3: Okay.

▶ 1:04:39 Speaker 7: I'm not certain what's going to happen in the future, but that is what we've been referring to as part of the project.

▶ 1:04:45 Robert A. Boisselle: The pole itself, is that going to be in the public land or on the private lot?

▶ 1:04:52 Speaker 7: The way it's proposed right now, it would go on the parking lot.

▶ 1:04:57 Speaker 3: In the public lot.

▶ 1:05:00 Speaker 7: In lieu of a street light. So a street light would come out right now. we have just those aluminum street parking lot lights that would come out a utility pole would go in they would mount the street light onto the utility pole and then there would be wires that would run from grove street across grove street into the parking lot and then from that pole to

▶ 1:05:23 Robert A. Boisselle: the building okay i understand that aspects of it but it seems to be so it's extracting the light pole that's there now and just dropping the pole in now that's correct all right the way this is situated here i mean this is really close to the existing culvert uh is there going to be any extra drilling to enlarge that pole uh no okay no is there going to be any protection

▶ 1:05:48 Robert A. Boisselle: for that pole this is sitting in the parking lot at this point uh we'll probably put some

▶ 1:05:58 Speaker 6: some bollards around it but I would be um yeah we'll probably put a couple bollards around it I was in an existing the existing light structure that's there is is mounted to a concrete yeah concrete tube foundation no it has no

▶ 1:06:15 Robert A. Boisselle: balls around it right now yeah my only concern is is that when Papa Gino's trucks come in they're backing in right they hit that pole is you're gonna take out the entire building in one in one swoop but you have some protection of that pole you'll be protecting the power going to that building and not causing a blackout in that particular area and so forth so just a recommendation John to

▶ 1:06:39 Speaker 7: ultimately that's what we if we recommend to put in a pole yeah then we have to protect it yeah and just the streetlights sit on a concrete foundation that are a little high so the foundation itself protects the right in

▶ 1:06:58 Robert A. Boisselle: some instances if we're talking a power pole you're just talking a wooden pole wooden pole we're talking about right southern yellow pine yeah it's going directly into the ground and you don't have that concrete protecting it and so forth that's it thank you thank you gentlemen thank you thank you I also

▶ 1:07:17 John N. Tramontozzi: have concerns about the pole and the overhead wires but so is it my understanding this this project needs a new transformer yes is it any possibility that this transformer can be encased above ground attached to the

▶ 1:07:40 Speaker 6: building or behind the building really we really don't want to put transformers in basements anymore I don't want to do indoor vaults they're very difficult to access they're very difficult to replace you have high voltage going directly into the building and you have a device that's essentially full of oil so we don't do we don't do vaults in the in the basements of buildings anymore we don't do none of that stuff anymore roofs of buildings not on roofs too difficult the ground it has to be on the ground it could be above ground which

▶ 1:08:08 John N. Tramontozzi: is what the second option lays out well that's what i mean they just don't have the room on their property okay that's that's what I meant to be in case that a concrete encasement above ground you know and next to the building as close to the

▶ 1:08:24 Speaker 6: building as possible that still requires us to get the primary cable from Grove Street to that transformer I can't go underground because there's not enough clearance above the culvert I can't go overhead because overheads ugly I think

▶ 1:08:39 John N. Tramontozzi: maybe give them a little bit more time it's gonna use your magic John and see

▶ 1:08:50 Monica C. Medeiros: if we can get something else thank you yeah just one further thought to you know suggest to speak with the city solicitor's office possibly to it they don't know if there's a possibility of the city possibly granting in easement you know for I would imagine that would be for a value but that might be some possible option of above-ground space I don't know again just talking out loud and thinking out loud but I do think if we were to we may want to move this forward to the full board just to get it out of committee with the intention of laying it on the table on me moving forward without recommendation that's up to what possibly the president's work or make that motion but just a thought logistically because I'm not sure when we'll have another maybe thank you thank

▶ 1:09:46 Michael P. Zwirko: you madam chair and I thank you all the men of yours for the suggestion I guess my thinking was as if we held it to the 17th we could have an appropriations meeting that evening before the full board and then we could take care of it then you know that way we don't have to put it on the table take it off the table put it on the table you know so that that was my thinking and I guess now that I have the floor and and John is here do you think that the 17th would allow you and the engineers enough time to kind of parse this through a little bit so we could dispose of this on the 17th you think of just it's just over

▶ 1:10:16 Speaker 7: three weeks three weeks yeah we would like to give you as much time as you

▶ 1:10:25 Michael P. Zwirko: need so yeah with that and appreciate your being here this evening as well and you know sorry for the peppering of questions but it's just it's a your petition came in a parcel of property that's near and dear to many of us here as well as the folks watching at home so it's just the circumstance that you're involved with right so with that I just asked that this retaining committee I move that this be retaining committee until December 17th of 2018 second we

▶ 1:10:54 Jennifer L. Lemmerman: have a motion by presidents work oh to hold this order in committee seconded by Alderman Medeiros all in favor aye any opposed this order will be held in

▶ 1:11:05 Speaker 7: committee until our next meeting on the 17th just just on on discussion it's

▶ 1:11:11 Peter D. Mortimer: just a picky point but it's you can bring this order out whenever you want there's the chair of this committee it's not necessarily the 17th and should who some miraculous discovery this does get figured out sooner we could have a meeting and bring it forward as not to inconvenience the owner and move