ORDER-2019-27 : An Appropriation from Free Cash (01-324001) in the amount of One Million, One Hundred Sixty Two Thousand, One Hundred Eighty Seven dollars ($1,162,187.00) to various accounts as set forth herein.

Transcript (~46 min @ 1:11:30)

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

▶ 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

▶ 1:11:33 Speaker 7: progress downtown as fast as possible thank you but my vote stands the final

▶ 1:11:36 Jennifer L. Lemmerman: order on our agenda this evening is order 2019-27 and appropriation from free cash 0 1-3 2 4 0 0 1 in the amount of 1 million 162 thousand 187 dollars to various accounts as set forth herein we do have several department heads here this evening for anyone who may have questions and the order is before you

▶ 1:12:06 Michael P. Zwirko: president's workup Thank You madam chair at this time I would just ask if I could call about chief excuse me chief Lyle of the Melrose Police Department greetings

▶ 1:12:20 Michael P. Zwirko: how are you good thanks for being here this evening so police vehicles what do

▶ 1:12:28 Speaker 7: you got we're asking for three during my budget process in the early part of the year I asked for five I have selected the three worst vehicles that need to be replaced yep DPW could probably speak to it as well as their budget pays for all

▶ 1:12:46 Michael P. Zwirko: the maintenance on these vehicles I remember when we were talking back in chief that you had expressed go for a ride from it's uh yeah no i did not um i do remember the five vehicles that you wished and and i think actually we got to a point where we're putting good money after bad and we certainly have yeah and um how is this impacting just our general

▶ 1:13:08 Speaker 7: you know day-to-day operations because i think one vehicle they have to jump they have to jump start it with a power pack just to get it to run and then at the end of the shift they jump at the next shift um that's pretty sad uh the detective vehicle it's been in and out of the shop on multiple occasions and i believe the city is disputing a bill with the dealer for the

▶ 1:13:30 Michael P. Zwirko: emissions on it and that light just keeps coming back on and when you started off uh just a moment ago you said that these are the three leases that you need well these are i requested five like i

▶ 1:13:36 Speaker 7: said during our budget process and there's two more that are not far behind these and at some

▶ 1:13:46 Michael P. Zwirko: point we're just going to park them yeah understood so thank you for that and i know that you had mentioned this in may so um the other um i see mr shenna getting warming up in the on-deck circle so um i'll actually relax my questions i didn't know if others had uh questions for uh chief lyle so i'll stand down at this time madam chair any further discussion alderman Letter garabedian

▶ 1:14:09 Kate Lipper-Garabedian: just for the um public how many vehicles does the police department have in total

▶ 1:14:14 Speaker 7: you'd have to break it down and process so we have eight line cars you should have nine there's one that we haven't been able to replace because we haven't had the funding for it there's one patrol supervisor's vehicle there's six admin vehicles of the six admin three are detectives there's one for the chief one for the patrol commander and one for the prosecutor

▶ 1:14:42 Speaker 5: and then we have two motorcycles as well and a trailer and so which vehicles are we replacing

▶ 1:14:45 Speaker 7: the detective vehicle the call sign is 1242 it's a 2007 chevy tahoe with 104 000 miles on it

▶ 1:14:58 Speaker 7: Next is Carity 4, it's a 2013 Ford Interceptor SUV. It has 99.5 for mileage. And the last one is Carity 5, it's also a 2013 Ford Interceptor SUV. It has 120,000 miles on it. That's the one we keep jump starting.

▶ 1:15:22 Speaker 5: Thank you.

▶ 1:15:27 Jennifer L. Lemmerman: Any further discussion, questions?

▶ 1:15:30 Monica C. Medeiros: maderas when we uh get rid of the old cars do we like turn them in for a cost

▶ 1:15:41 Speaker 7: we pass them down to dpw these three vehicles i i would think that the mechanics of the city i would say the same thing that there's no place for these but to trade them in and scrap value as far as far as i understand thank you thank you thank you further discussion

▶ 1:16:02 Jennifer L. Lemmerman: anyone wishing to speak for the first time president's workup thank you again

▶ 1:16:07 Michael P. Zwirko: madam chair sorry about that I was just going down the roster so we have an order here before us to appropriate from free cash 1.1 little over that 1.1 million dollars the bulk of it nearly 75 percent of it is to funding the structural gap that we have in the school department that we talk about out frequently back in May on May 21st when the school members of the school committee and Cindy Taymor the school superintendent came before us they stated and we approved at that time this 800 some odd thousand dollars for that amount we have another hundred and sixty three thousand five hundred dollars for the outlay of the police vehicles that you just spoke of then we have some outlay for IT tech and I'd ask at this time mr. Ellis could please just come before us to speak of that how are you all right how are you all right oh what

▶ 1:17:16 Speaker 7: do you got so we got appropriation of $80,000 for a server this server would replace we have our current server setup is about eight years old it will be 2019 will be eight years it also draws upon a storage area network device that kind of contains all the storage for everything that's also slowing down so this server would house in distribute files would also house is basically would be the platform for an upgraded munis server our current munis application can no longer be upgraded beyond what it is right now because it has a because of the hardware limitations I'm sorry to

▶ 1:18:03 Michael P. Zwirko: just interrupt so when there's new versions of munis that come out we're unable to actually upgrade as it's being improved right okay we also have we'd

▶ 1:18:10 Speaker 7: like to move towards the addition of a employee self-service server which would allow employees to check their accruals different HR aspects on a mobile app it would alleviate a lot of visits to the HR office a lot of time is spent in that office just you know keeping up with with people people coming in and asking questions so that would alleviate that we also need a an additional server for Eunice this is not the way I designed it this is just the way it goes but to store documents related to our purchasing process our process currently is very paper-based we we distribute paper for everything even if I I keep all my records electronic and put them in a folder but then I have to print them out to get them to process through sign them send them along to someone else they do another chunk of it they send them up with a package a giant piece of piece of paper package someone else who processes the paper it's a it's a it's a long process so we want to try to get that process more digital and to have it so that people can reference those invoices and whatnot online instead of digging through a cabinet in the closet which is actually where they keep them to try to find an invoice when there's a question about it it takes a lot of time additionally we had the idea to put if we're gonna buy a server we wanted to get our biggest bang for the buck so we want to we need to upgrade our current server exchange email client which is at 2010 so it'll be nine years old next year the problem with letting software like that in munis or any other software go long a long time is that it can only be secured to a certain point they can only offer so many patches to secure an application to just a certain extent and then it becomes more vulnerable than newer editions so I was looking at the security aspect of everything's in the operating systems that they run on or out of date too so so would you say that this appropriation

▶ 1:20:32 Michael P. Zwirko: that you're seeking is is really twofold it's an infrastructure upgrade in terms of capacity but then at the same time it's also for security purposes security absolutely functionality

▶ 1:20:45 Michael P. Zwirko: absolutely okay so uh one of the the primary uses of free cash really is for these one-time expenditures that cities and towns are faced with capital expenditures as you know we've heard tonight with new uh cruisers and obviously servers and etc so um this is a good use of the capital i appreciate you uh suggesting it and coming before us at this time and i just have one final question um it's for public works i just see that they're a line on here as well so you may have other questions from other members of the board but at this time if i could just speak to mr shenner

▶ 1:21:18 Peter D. Mortimer: briefly point point of personal privilege um last year i made the rec suggestion and it's just that consideration but please just if you could yield the floor for one second sure if nobody has any further questions for the chief i'd like to dismiss these department heads um if we're done i think we all talked to the chief and then we could all take our turn talking to mr ellis and then we could dismiss them they work a long day so on a point of personal privilege excuse excuse me for just a moment if nobody had anything further for the chief i saw he was up here i think we

▶ 1:21:53 Speaker 4: could dismiss him at this time are there any further questions for the chief no i think and

▶ 1:21:57 Peter D. Mortimer: And maybe we could take some department head by department head so they can.

▶ 1:22:01 Jennifer L. Lemmerman: Thank you, Chief Lyle.

▶ 1:22:06 Speaker 2: Thank you, Mr. Ellis.

▶ 1:22:07 Speaker 7: Thank you very much.

▶ 1:22:09 Jennifer L. Lemmerman: I will take, well, in the spirit of that, let's see if anyone has any further questions for Mr. Ellis.

▶ 1:22:15 Speaker 7: Thank you, Madam Chair.

▶ 1:22:16 Speaker 4: Alderman.

▶ 1:22:17 Monica C. Medeiros: Thank you. Yes, I was wondering if we go to this upgraded version of MUNIS for purchasing records, If there would be an option to allow sort of public viewing of, I know sometimes there's programs like Open Chatbook or something like that. Would there be a potential, you know, option for the public to see it?

▶ 1:22:47 Speaker 7: There's no functionality in it right now that would, say, have a web page that would display kind of numbers that you could crunch yourself or look at. we have looked at a couple different softwares visual budget and there's another one that we're looking at that does do that and would attach to our website to give kind of a transparent view of what our financial operations

▶ 1:23:13 Monica C. Medeiros: are but at least this would you said you could access these things online you mean internally staff could pull up an invoice that they had right right and so therefore too even if there was a public records request through the city clerk's office it would probably be a lot easier to find and answer that question than the current paper process oh yeah

▶ 1:23:40 Robert A. Boisselle: thank you thank you thank you alderman boyce in this upgrade of the infrastructure of the servers and so forth would this eliminate the log jam that the fire department has with its paper

▶ 1:23:51 Speaker 7: reporting systems and so forth uh no as far as it relates to maybe their processing of invoices and purchasing and maybe any hr related functions possibly uh their their backup and reporting is is basically due to just a past reluctance to move in a digital direction um i know uh chief kalina is really really pushing towards that we've been working together closely on getting a software working with them so we're beginning that process now he'll have great reporting going forward with that application okay good with this

▶ 1:24:32 Robert A. Boisselle: infrastructure upgrade are you pushing more towards electronic signatures you

▶ 1:24:39 Speaker 7: know that's that's a that's a tough one because you mentioned that you had to

▶ 1:24:42 Robert A. Boisselle: create the paper and send it off to be signed and send the package back the way it's going on in industry now it's more of electronic absolutely and everything sent automatically in one package digital to the nurse group and

▶ 1:25:01 Speaker 7: so forth you're right the the workflow of how processes are in the city in terms of changing those into a digital workflow in place and then signing off at each location right now the way that we do it for checks is we have little USB or just things connected to the printer that will print the person's signature onto the paper internally we generally don't require signatures but you're right if we're going to something that does the I'll have to look into that I'm not sure okay yeah it makes sense we wouldn't make it take care of

▶ 1:25:45 Robert A. Boisselle: that very easily and so forth so yeah just consider that please thank you

▶ 1:25:53 Kate Lipper-Garabedian: thank you thank you yes thank you for being here tonight I was looking back at my notes from our meeting that we have with you in June around the budget and seeing some of the things that you were concerned about with respect to our IT infrastructure so maybe just at a top line when the city is able to verify what money we have remaining from the previous fiscal year for example this year how does that work does did the mayor's office or who reaches it does someone reach out to you to say we'd like to dedicate some of this money we're trying to figure out where to dedicate this money do you have any recommendations or so you know I'm just interested in I know that you mentioned that servers were a huge part of the work that you've been focusing on I also work noted noted that you shared with us that you have a 30 year old phone system for software that's servicing police fire in City Hall I'm wondering sir how

▶ 1:26:52 Speaker 7: do you prioritize some of these it's it's difficult I think I think the the push for a well this server also has the capacity to handle a phone server so if we get a phone server and we have looked at some that are basically virtual they plug into a server a virtual server it would fit in this server the it's it's difficult because you know munis basically runs the whole city if we don't have munis we don't payroll we don't have invoicing we can't purchase things we can't do HR functions so assessing so it's a critical piece of software we need to make sure that is running that probably put this the highest on the priority left list list the phone system is in trouble so we and it's not just here we have phone systems at the Lincoln and the Roosevelt schools that are also the roosevelt one is not hasn't been made in 15 years the company doesn't support it any longer uh there's no parts made for it anymore so uh that can be a struggle um can i ask what a

▶ 1:28:05 Speaker 7: phone system costs it can range it can range quite a bit uh it depends on what you were looking to do with it there are systems out there that can um are voice over ip that can say take a voicemail transfer it to text send it in an email you know ones that are have conference bridging that are only um you know the main unit is only seven or eight thousand dollars but then every phone is about 150 uh and then you have to consider that a lot of the wiring that we have for phones won't work with a voice over ip i mean we'd have to move towards the right force of our ip phone system um there are no phone systems really being made now that are analog any longer so we'd have to pay for some wiring in different locations around the city so that can add costs whatever we do would service would service not only our building here but also memorial hall fire department police mount hood uh city yard um council on aging milano um everybody okay but not this not those schools

▶ 1:29:16 Speaker 7: not those schools they're on a separate uh kind of a separate thing they have a cisco uh system right now a cisco system would be overly expensive for those buildings because they have phones in

▶ 1:29:31 Kate Lipper-Garabedian: every classroom so can I ask I'm just one more question about the phone system I hadn't heard before about some of the schools being so antiquated is that a security concern I mean what is what what is the danger of having a really old phone system is the idea that the system can go down and then you can't

▶ 1:29:52 Speaker 7: yeah basically we just I just solved the problem over at the Lincoln recently and the system was put in with the school it's a via DFINITY which is essentially a lucent I mean they've gone bankrupt they're out of business so new parts for those phones aren't really being created the support for that system is is slowly well quickly being gone as people retire who worked on those type of systems it's become really difficult to find people who can work on those systems or know what they're doing with them and they're very complex they're all you know monochrome command line stuff so it's difficult to keep those going okay yeah

▶ 1:30:42 Jennifer L. Lemmerman: thank you thank you any further questions for mr ellis this evening and generator yes i have that

▶ 1:30:49 Kate Lipper-Garabedian: listed but that one you mentioned that's still a huge problem you were looking i mean that's

▶ 1:30:55 Speaker 7: hundreds of thousands of dollars but that's that's pretty critical in terms of emergency management that's pretty critical yes thank you for bringing that up again thank you sure okay i think real

▶ 1:31:08 Manisha Bewtra: quick oh alderman thanks for the reminder um regarding a conversation this summer um so i looked back on my notes and i remember you mentioning um the need for a backup generator at city hall did you just address that yeah i apologize i was like rereading my notes

▶ 1:31:29 Speaker 7: uh can you remind me one more time even though you literally just said so basically we our systems the internet the switching the main switching for all of the schools and the city the school phones except for those two buildings i mentioned all run through city hall and if we lose power right now we can power probably our phone system but again somebody would have to come in go into a a dark server room feel their way around for some cords throw them out the window drag it one out from the basement oh in the snow hook up a cord run it into the power strip and by the time you know somebody comes out if there's a big storm you know it's not going to be easy for i mean i live right pretty close but even in that last storm we had in march like it took me like an hour to shovel out my driveway so i could get out and come come here um it's going to be some time it's not going to be like an immediate switch over where you know everybody's twiddling their thumbs i mean if seriously like if a problem happened in melrose like it has like in california where they have wildfires i mean i don't we're not going to have wildfires here anytime soon but um

▶ 1:32:47 Speaker 1: um no i think he's not no no go ahead oh yeah okay it's like uh we we because we don't have

▶ 1:32:50 Speaker 7: any backup power in any of the facilities that could house people anywhere in this city we're done we couldn't refrigerate food we couldn't have lights we couldn't hand out food we could there's nothing we couldn't even keep our systems running so that the communication for the police in there in their cruisers that's run out of here could access anything so we're in terms of emergencies we're in a really bad place thank you for your patience with the redundancy of my

▶ 1:33:24 Jennifer L. Lemmerman: question sorry thank you any further questions for mr ellis all right i think we are through with questions for this evening thank you for the information thank you have a great night

▶ 1:33:37 Jennifer L. Lemmerman: i believe next in line we have questions for mr shenna regarding the dpw item

▶ 1:33:56 Michael P. Zwirko: good evening again good evening good evening sir so could you just give a quick overview of the um ninety three thousand six hundred and eighty seven dollars that are you're

▶ 1:34:07 Speaker 7: seeking from free cash sure thank you so recently recently well let me backtrack as as many of you in the board know for several years public works together with Martha Grover office of planning and community development we've worked very aggressively with energy management and buildings that's the ability to control heating ventilation fresh air air conditioning not only do you get the benefit of comfort but you also get the benefit of rate savings so we've recently publicly procured improvements to the control system at the Lincoln

▶ 1:34:49 Speaker 7: School we did this with the intent of capitalizing on some 2018 green community grants the funding order this evening will supplement those grants and give us the opportunity to um to fund and to sign this contract and complete this work so um martha grove is with me this evening she's going to come up and speak a little bit about the grant the green community grant expending these funds in a timely manner will allow us to um reapply next year for additional funds i think funds that have proved extremely successful and given us energy improvements in our buildings and then ann waite is with us as well because she's going to describe a little bit the what this project's going to allow us to do at the lincoln

▶ 1:35:48 Speaker 1: schools. Good evening, Ms. Grover. Hi there. Martha Grover, Energy Efficiency Manager.

▶ 1:35:58 Speaker 1: And I'm just here as the procurer of some of the funds for this project. As you know, we're a green community since 2010, which makes the city eligible for

▶ 1:36:10 Speaker 1: grants every year or two. We've received since then almost nine hundred thousand

▶ 1:36:18 Speaker 1: dollars in just green community funds for a whole host of energy efficiency projects. And this is one of them, and our goal is to finish out this project and be eligible for the next round of funding for another $250,000, which of course we could spend five times. So we're in the process of prioritizing projects for that application. But that's the goal is to put us in place to be able to apply for the next round.

▶ 1:36:53 Speaker 7: Thank you. In terms of what the project does, if Ann can join me a second.

▶ 1:37:02 Speaker 7: We don't go building to building to control HVAC anymore, heating and ventilation. We have the ability to do it through computers, and through technology, and through energy management systems. There's an efficiency gained in terms of cost savings. But there's also an efficiency gained in terms of

▶ 1:37:33 Speaker 7: how we can provide cooler air in the summer, warmer air in the winter at a lower cost. At the Lincoln School right now, we're bringing 100% outside air in. So that means in the summertime, we're bringing really warm air in and cooling it, cooling all of it, in order to provide air conditioning. In the winter time, we're bringing really cold air in, heating it to provide heat. We don't have the ability to control that. You don't necessarily have to bring 100% outside air. And Mark Thompson, who's also here tonight, he manages that on a day-to-day basis and runs all the controls to her computer screening. We don't have that ability, whereas in these other schools we do. We also don't have controls of our thermostats at the Lincoln School. That building, although we look at it as the new Lincoln School, is still 19 years old, and technology changes has probably changed four times over in that regard and so and brought two screenshots that we just want to quickly show you to give you a little bit of the benefit of when we talk about these controls a lot but

▶ 1:38:52 Speaker 1: this is what it actually is so the Lincoln School has seven rooftop units that run the HVAC in the school and when we go to look at it to see if a room's rooms hot or rooms cold or whatever, this is all we get when we look at a rooftop unit. It doesn't give us any set points, it doesn't show us any supply temps or space temps, this is what we get. So often when I look it up, someone will call and say it's very warm in our room. I'll look, I'm like, well it looks like the fans are running, I can see the little things moving. Mark will go over to the school and he'll go on the roof and it won't even be running. It's giving a false information, because we've set it to go on, and it's showing it's on, but it's really not on. So what it needs is, it needs control in there so we can control it. So what happens now is during the winter, Mark goes on the roof, he disconnects the electronics, he sets the temperature to 72, and that's the temperature we have in the school, 72 is what we get for that air going in. And then if we need to change that, he goes back on the roof and resets it. What happens, if we show the next screen, thank you. This is what we have currently at the high school in air handler two, all this information. So when we can look at it, we can see everything from water return temp. So if we look at the water return temp and we know it's low, or supply air is low, we can make adjustments right from our desk, from home, on the weekend. We actually got an alert on Thanksgiving at the middle school that the temp was down to 55 in a certain part of the building. We can react to that right from home without sending. In the past, Kevin Cronin would go out, he'd check the schools, we'd spend overtime money. He'd have to call, make an adjustment, we'd have to do that. We can do it all on the screen, looking at this information here.

▶ 1:40:40 Speaker 7: Yeah, that's an important note, and I didn't mention that earlier, but this not only allows us to control the systems better, it also provides us with alarms emails text alerts of issues and right now we don't have that at the

▶ 1:41:03 Michael P. Zwirko: lincoln school thank you president's work i believe you saw the floor thank you um so uh ms grover you had stated earlier that this is to supplement excuse me supplement the grant this funding is to supplement the grant monies that we've received for um to effectuate the contract

▶ 1:41:19 Michael P. Zwirko: who's the contract with contract would be with burnell burnell okay and this is just uh these are for improved enhancements to lincoln school only oh okay and um i'm well you know what i

▶ 1:41:30 Michael P. Zwirko: reserved that question it's it's not appropriate it's not in line with this um the the the savings

▶ 1:41:39 Michael P. Zwirko: over time i mean what is it we're putting money out front we received a grant but what is the roi what's the capture over over the life is this is this funds that ultimately we could receive through efficiencies right it's hard to put a number to the exact

▶ 1:42:00 Speaker 1: savings your project like this in fact National Grid incentivizes this project but they just give you a set amount per point that you're adding to the system

▶ 1:42:12 Speaker 1: because they the engineering and everything it's just hard to control there are so many depends on what you set your temperatures at and season that you have building up occupancy hours and there's just a lot of moving parts but

▶ 1:42:31 Michael P. Zwirko: by doing this we certainly will be operationally it's basically it's

▶ 1:42:33 Speaker 1: turning your air conditioner on and then going to work all day right and it just it's just cooling this air that maybe no one's even in that room but we're still cooling the air right now because I mean I don't want to give up the impression

▶ 1:42:51 Michael P. Zwirko: that we do something just because there's an ROI in our investment yeah clearly there's there's gains that are made outside of just this this program itself and the enhancements so I understand that

▶ 1:43:03 Speaker 1: there has to be savings but it's more of what they call prescriptive in the

▶ 1:43:13 Speaker 7: situation it's not formulaic yeah yeah and just for the record this is a school that we operate we keep open 12 months a year there'll be summer school there this year there'll be summer programming there'll be summer camps um every vacation week right and various aspects of the school so the ability to and and people are always looking for air conditioning in the summer the bill the ability to better control that to do that to create a cost savings do that to create a better climate for whoever's in the building whether they're students or campers i think it's it's it's all it's all it's all plus in my opinion in terms of savings i mean if you look at our budget historically rates are always going up when we we do a pretty decent job in terms of negotiating long-term deals and renegotiating them early to try to keep the rate as stable as we can get it but rates always go up so there are some line items in our budget in our public works utility budgets in the facilities grouping that we've been able to increase with you know minimally or not even at all and i think that's a direct impact of um in fact street lights have decreased and that's a direct impact of these energy initiatives these energy initiative driven

▶ 1:44:30 Speaker 2: projects thank you those are all the questions i had at this time thank you alderman mortimer

▶ 1:44:37 Peter D. Mortimer: any work with heat pumps anywhere coming up with heat pumps will you take cool cool air make it cold and you get the kick back on the heat from the other end I know that might be more of a question for mark but is there any look at that any could you come forward I'm sorry just so that

▶ 1:45:04 Speaker 7: the mic picks up in the Learning Commons project there was I think 10 10 heat pumps installed during that but nothing as far as the we couldn't adapt those to the what we have at the Lincoln School just the climates not adaptable yet we have it there's a chilled water system it circulates through the building and we have outdoor air units that use this chilled water but it's they run amok they it's like putting a stone on your gas pedal your car it's just cool cool cool right and then that robs from other areas that need it classrooms the classroom may be hot here but the cafeteria is freezing because there's zero control over it it's it's really amazing that that heat pump technology is kind of it's great cutting edge yeah it's great um but in this case it would take a heat pump of it would be immense because it's outdoor air it's five degree air coming in and you would have to heat that up to 70 degrees at least before you blow it on the students you know it's all about what it takes to condition the outdoor air at 90 minus five if the school's open on a day like that right yeah heat pumps work best at around yeah 50 degrees right that's you know right make 50 degrees 70 make yes you know they're great at taking a slug of air and recirculating and heating up a little bit of the time right but these units have to take that outdoor air that freezing pool there and just do it one shot one pass right yeah but um but the

▶ 1:46:41 Peter D. Mortimer: ones that the learning commons have been pretty efficient yeah they're great good cost savings

▶ 1:46:48 Speaker 1: oh yeah yeah Martha yeah yeah yeah and it's definitely something we would look into in the future I think for some of our older schools with the steam boiler systems right I think it's an option a future option but you have to consider what what's there and what it would take to you know install some of these

▶ 1:47:07 Peter D. Mortimer: systems and the cost yeah well of course I'm always looking for a return on investment and you know any nickel we can save in Melrose is you know due to a lot of the good work you've done already with the solar roofs and roofs and things like that so that's the heat pump is kind of something's coming I'm glad the ones at the Learning Commons are working thank you that's all I have

▶ 1:47:31 Monica C. Medeiros: madam chair thank you Alderman Medeiros thank you I know the the Roosevelt school was sort of renovated around the same time is this is the system at that school the same as as this or different no yeah at the Roosevelt each each

▶ 1:47:42 Speaker 7: classroom brings in outdoor air at that point at the classroom unit if you drive by you'll see the little grills under each window at the Lincoln it's these units on the roof that are running crazy that they deliver the through ductwork

▶ 1:48:02 Monica C. Medeiros: to each class the entire building and so is this what's proposed here is is that going to eliminate that or reduce that the outside air coming in or will it still the system will essentially function

▶ 1:48:17 Speaker 7: the same it puts controls on the system it allows us to run it more efficiently at the at the room

▶ 1:48:25 Monica C. Medeiros: level and and I know especially at the time I think that some of these things were put in place and I think it's you know still the concern that you know we like to have outside air and that it's there was a concern I think at that time that a lot of buildings the older buildings you know air quality concerns that sometimes it was just recycling old sick air but I know as we you know look at potential risks unfortunately like is there any way if there were you know god forbid and you can knock on the table again presence or go is there any thing to if something were in the air that we wouldn't want to get into the school some kind of chemical or something or just even ash or you know smoke out in California for those wildfires is there a way to sort of either filter the air coming in or to sort of shut off the intake or something I don't know if we have those kinds of or would this new system allow that yeah

▶ 1:49:32 Speaker 7: there's air filters on it now but they're just standard filters you know disposable filters they catch a lot of pollen and stuff but as far as shutting them down you'd have to say you know if you were alerted to something you can

▶ 1:49:47 Monica C. Medeiros: shut them off remotely and that's something you could do from home you can

▶ 1:49:51 Speaker 7: we can see it on the we can do that now if you go back to that first on this you see it says fan on and off right but that's not true status that's why when Ann said oh she turned it on and you go out there and it's off well there's no feedback there's no there's nothing that actually says oh it really is on that's how poor the control system is but in the new one you could at least say okay

▶ 1:50:18 Speaker 1: somebody it's proof of that it's wrong so you could shut a damper all the way

▶ 1:50:24 Monica C. Medeiros: off it's freezing cold the winds blowing it's coming in you can just shut the damper down the weekend no one's in the building yeah I think that I think it certainly makes sense and you know certainly especially in the summertime if you have some built some rooms being occupied and others not it definitely you know no matter what time of year but especially in the summertime we may have more vacant rooms it probably definitely make a lot of sense so thank you thank

▶ 1:50:54 Robert A. Boisselle: you thank you I'll remember so that second screen is that was being shown on the screen here that's at the middle and high school middle school and high schools that's the high school that's the high so it's at the high school not at the middle school right are you projecting to move this type of screen into the other schools middle school and the elementary schools in the future if

▶ 1:51:17 Speaker 1: if grants come forward so other schools have controls maybe not as elaborate as

▶ 1:51:22 Robert A. Boisselle: they have controls no the top of the line here we're talking about would you consider incorporating that into the elementary and the middle schools down

▶ 1:51:34 Speaker 1: the line if grant money was available so they have the they have the controls I could show you a picture of the Roosevelt it would have a lot of the

▶ 1:51:41 Robert A. Boisselle: same things of course some of the schools do have that especially the ones

▶ 1:51:44 Speaker 1: that have air conditioning so the Roosevelt would be one definitely the

▶ 1:51:52 Robert A. Boisselle: middle school in the other schools any plans for them that don't have this type

▶ 1:51:57 Speaker 1: of so the the heating is pretty well and you can look at the if you looked at the Hoover you can find out a lot of information the Hoover even though there's not air conditioning on the heating end of things but that's does

▶ 1:52:06 Robert A. Boisselle: Hoover send you a signal when the temperature is 10 degrees outside doesn't

▶ 1:52:11 Speaker 1: and the boiler doesn't start up, we'll get an email alert saying.

▶ 1:52:15 Robert A. Boisselle: So there is communications doing the deep freezes similar to what we had this past Thanksgiving and so forth.

▶ 1:52:22 Speaker 1: This functionality is a result of the ESCO project that we did in 2014-15. So we installed an overlay, this integrated energy management system of over 12 buildings, including City Hall and a number of schools. Police station. Police station. So we have this kind of insight into a lot of those buildings. It's dependent on the equipment that exists in the building. The high school obviously is the last upgraded and the most complicated system, right? But yeah, this exists. It's just that the Lincoln underlying system is 20 years old and it can't, it's not communicating, it's not sending the right signal and information.

▶ 1:53:01 Robert A. Boisselle: But the technology is starting to come into the system or into the school systems to protect the public buildings and so forth.

▶ 1:53:10 Speaker 7: It's there and we rely on it 24-7.

▶ 1:53:13 Speaker 1: That's where we've gotten so much of our efficiency and energy savings is from the ability to centrally manage all of those buildings from her phone.

▶ 1:53:25 Robert A. Boisselle: Very good. Thank you very much. Thank you, Madam Chair.

▶ 1:53:28 Jennifer L. Lemmerman: Thank you. Alderman Herbert Garabedian.

▶ 1:53:31 Speaker 5: Yes, and I actually just, I have a question maybe just for our directors and going back to the police vehicles comment so I don't know

▶ 1:53:40 Kate Lipper-Garabedian: if there's I think we might be done with the other so I think everyone else maybe you can head on unless there was anything else you wanted to share but I

▶ 1:53:49 Speaker 4: really appreciate the information are there further questions for the folks at

▶ 1:53:55 Kate Lipper-Garabedian: the table right now okay good okay so I just wanted to circle back on the the police vehicles because I recall at our budget hearings one of the things that you were planning to do over the fall and into the winter even perhaps was do an inventory of all the city vehicles to sort of scaffold them in terms of what were most critical and sort of create a list and so certainly I recall chief while coming to us and talking about some of the the issues that he had with his vehicles we also heard from the fire department that they have some very antiquated vehicles their spare ladders from 1996 their engine number fours from 1999 their ladder and engine number two are from 2007 engine number three is from 2010 and I believe that you maybe even spoke to some of the DPW vehicles being in need of I'm blanking on the word replacement thank you so just could you give us a quick update on sort of the work that you've done to track all of the different concerns with our city vehicles and you and your sense of where

▶ 1:55:09 Speaker 7: we're going next yeah it's a it's a fair point and it is something that I mentioned previously and it's something that we're working on internally this order comes before you just you know really because the police department at this point in time needs those vehicles well I've been working with the the department heads will be meeting with each department head over the next few months to outline their fleet, their existing conditions, the type of replacement repair costs that each vehicle has been experiencing, and to come up with some type of plan which will hopefully be ready by February, which outlines the entire city from a fleet perspective and their needs. And then at some point in time, the administration can make a decision on, oh, we have so much to invest. Where do we want to invest it? What are fire's needs? What are public works needs? What are anybody's needs? Inspectional services, recreation, I mean, there are vehicles throughout the city. The council on aging vans. So yeah, we're in the process of doing that. We should have a document in draft form by February.

▶ 1:56:20 Kate Lipper-Garabedian: And so, at this juncture, from your view of looking at the city more comprehensively than any one department might be looking at it, it's your opinion that the three police vehicles are of the most critical nature to address through this particular appropriation?

▶ 1:56:37 Speaker 7: At this point in time.

▶ 1:56:39 Speaker 5: Okay. Thank you.

▶ 1:56:41 Jennifer L. Lemmerman: Thank you. Are there any further questions or comments from the committee?

▶ 1:56:44 Speaker 2: Motion to recommend for passage.

▶ 1:56:46 Jennifer L. Lemmerman: We have a motion to recommend for passage made by President Search, seconded by Alderman Mortimer, on discussion.

▶ 1:56:52 Monica C. Medeiros: Thank you. Madam Chairman, I'm not sure whether you have or if you would please ask for the balance in certified free cash before and after this order passes, assuming it passes.

▶ 1:57:07 Jennifer L. Lemmerman: Absolutely. I do not have that, but we'd be happy to ask for it to be attached to the order before our final vote.

▶ 1:57:12 Speaker 1: Thank you. Sure.

▶ 1:57:15 Jennifer L. Lemmerman: Any further discussion? We have a motion made and seconded to recommend for passage. All in favor? Aye. Aye. Any opposed? This order will be recommended for passage in our next full Board meeting.