Public Comment

Transcript (~37 min @ 0:30)

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▶ 0:30 Jennifer L. Lemmerman: for a public comment made by President Search, seconded by Alderman, is that Mortimer? Mortimer, Peter Mortimer, yeah. All in favor of opening the floor for public participation? Any opposed? This is the portion of our meeting where any member of the public may come forward to speak on the one item on our agenda for the Appropriations Committee meeting this evening, that is the snow removal order. We welcome anyone who would like to come forward and speak.

▶ 1:09 Speaker 1: Good evening.

▶ 1:10 Speaker 2: Good evening.

▶ 1:30 Speaker 2: so I'm leash Langer I've lived in Ward 1 on Orris Street for about 18 years and I have significant concerns about the proposed sidewalk clearing ordinance at least as it's been proposed and I'd like to address some of them maybe propose some changes to it my house does have sidewalks and when it snows I clear my sidewalk along with my driveway clear my neighbors if they haven't gotten to there as they clear mine when it happens to be noticed but I I'd like to address

▶ 2:04 Speaker 2: some concerns and a quick side note these sidewalks are installed and maintained by the city if they break if Thorp cracks and so on but the there seems to be an assumption that residents should be the one who clear them when Thorp snow and to some extent it seems like it's sort of a hidden tax by the city and so on but for people live by sidewalks but let's put that aside clear Clear sidewalks are obviously a good thing, and to suggest, as I've heard even in this chamber, that being against the ordinance is being against clear sidewalks, I think is disingenuous and intentionally divisive and a little bit insulting. But I think we need to work together to find, or you all need to work together on our behalf to find sort of common ground, alternative approaches to achieve the goal.

▶ 2:58 Speaker 2: I think when we look for other solutions, we can look at our neighboring communities. Our town to the north, our border to the north is Wakefield. They have an ordinance with no fines. To the east and west, Stoneham and Saugus have no such ordinance at all. I don't think Melrose has taken steps to encourage shoveling and to understand why some people regularly seem not to. I know Thorp a list on the mayor's blog, but there hasn't been the outreach to people. People don't always look at the blog. I know at a prior meeting, DPW Director Shanna has indicated Thorp been no direct outreach at all to residents as we do with recycling for door knockers or letters in the mail and so on. And he said because Thorp no such ordinance. But seems to me we could have outreach without an ordinance. They do other things without an ordinance. and certainly we could have it without fines. We might come to find that the people who don't repeatedly clear their sidewalks have other issues, maybe they're non-owner residents, someone's renting the house to them, or they have physical or financial issues, and we should be aware of that. Ultimately, I think if we do have an ordinance, and I'm sort of opposed to an ordinance, but if we do have an ordinance for single and two-family resident properties owned or occupied, it should be without fines. I've heard concern and complaints from some residents either here or online in various community discussions, Facebook and so on, about issues getting to public transit and so on. A lot of these seem to be in mixed-use areas, commercial areas, or people trying to get to schools, or the accumulation of snow in corners from plowing, and clearly people should be able access public transit and and people should be kids should be get able to get to schools that's critically important but a lot of those things should be areas that are taken up by DPW and they are I know but maybe that should be expanded and the area of the question about piles and the corners from plowing and so on director Shana said that the DPW attempts to come back and clear those within three or four days after a snowstorm though we know that they're not required to do so because Thorp not an ordinance but they haven't reached out to people because Thorp not an audience but he cleans up within three or four days but the public is being asked to clear their sidewalks within 12 hours so Thorp a imbalance there as well and sometimes these are very big storms where businesses are closed and schools are closed for an extended period of time winter is a fact of life in New England we all have to prepare for it and deal with it walking on sidewalks or in parts town where Thorp not sidewalks in the streets requires pedestrians to have appropriate apparel boots with good traction for safety and an ordinance should assume that people are going to be appropriately outfitted bicycles are never appropriate on the sidewalk and new england sidewalks in the winter are probably not good jogging tracks either the ordinance states that residents should clear all snow uses the word all and does that mean down to the bare pavement It's not practical, doesn't recognize the realities of the season with melting and refreezing. If we assume people have the appropriate gear, does this apply then to, or should it apply to all types of precipitation, all amounts of precipitation, an inch, two inches of dusting? People walk through that all the time. And so, aren't we really concerned about the bigger storms that make the sidewalks unpassable where we cancel school probably and for then kids to be able to get to school once schools are back open notably in Everett they only require residents to clear their sidewalks when Thorp a declared snow emergency so that's another thing to consider another unintended consequence here if you say I have to clear all snow you went using a lot more ice melt and things that are bad for the environment I with my snow plow you know can get the sidewalk very passable but if it has to be all snow down to the pavement and so I use a lot of chemical that's not good for anybody most people do clear their sidewalks we heard from the DPW that one to two percent of people don't and I assume that they're doing it on their own or shoveling or a snowblower rather than a paid-for-service however if we have fines when they can't get to it it creates a complex situation what if someone who is a regular sidewalk clearer is away for the weekend and it snows on Saturday or they're away for a week perhaps on vacation perhaps it's during a school holiday and it snows unexpectedly you don't have neighbors who are gonna cover you maybe they're away maybe they don't like you whatever it is and fines start to accumulate because the ordinance isn't clear what happens for residents for businesses it's daily for for residents it doesn't quite say whether it's daily or not so you come back from vacation you have a $500 fine and do these fines come in the mail how do you know you've started to be fine and things like that the ordinance shouldn't assume that people will be able to be covered by their neighbors and and so on where someone's not on vacation but they're away on business what if they're ill they have a respiratory infection or high fever it would be against their health to go out and shovel at that time but they have 12 hours to do so what if they are in the hospital visiting someone who's getting critical medical care they're in a hospital themselves because they had a heart attack from shoveling the previous storm you know is there any appeals process is there any due process at all that's not covered here with a fine that all becomes a critical question you know how quickly are people notified as I said before I've heard it suggested that fines could be set to kick in like it's a second year but that's sort of the same problem I have the same objections there I would suggest that if you have an ordinance do it without fines then could always amend it later on if it needs to be updated to say that we should have fine some of the aldermen have suggested trust us that'll be it um you know enforced well to suggest it'll be enforced unfairly is to think the worst of city employees i would say the same thing in reverse if you're saying these people aren't shoveling one to two percent you're thinking the worst of them maybe they have a reason that they couldn't do it at that time um and uh it's been suggested that well it will be enforced gently like ordinances for loud music and so on but you can decide when you play your loud music and you can plan for that you can't plan for a snowstorm you might have something else that's gone on and or when you're ill or when you're away or whatever it is and to have fines associated with that as I said becomes difficult so with all that said I have a

▶ 9:49 Speaker 2: few suggestions amendments I'd like to propose that you can pick up or not or whatever changes and first I'd like to suggest that in section C regarding the residential zone land that separated out the residential area as to a new section D and everything else moves down in a letter in that new residential section I'd like to secondly suggest that the word all be removed and the phrase instead of all be added allowing reasonable passage by pedestrians using weather condition appropriate apparel such that it reads the owner or occupant of any residentially zoned land abutting a sidewalk in the city shall cause snow and ice to be removed from said sidewalk allowing reasonable passage by pedestrians using weather condition appropriate apparel this recognizes that you know it doesn't have to be down to bare pavement and instead it's just a safety issue for people to walk safely additionally in that section where the question came up about when should the 12-hour period start and so it says right now have come upon the sidewalk and I'd suggest removing that and say has ceased to fall upon the sidewalk so that we know that it's like the commercial ordinance that it's when the storm ends you don't have 12 hours I have to be out there at 3 a.m. shoveling or whatever it is immediately thereafter I also suggest inserting an amount of snow that we're talking about so how so that says has ceased to fall upon the sidewalk as the result of a storm causing three or more inches to have fallen on the sidewalk free wasn't arbitrary number that I picked but something in recognition of the fact that people can walk through some snow further I think there should be

▶ 11:55 Speaker 2: recognition of the chief concern is is kids getting to school safely on the sidewalk and people travel when it's weekends and vacation and so on so I'd like to suggest additionally after that it says and remain there during them during days that Melrose public schools are in session so in other words not the storm that happens on the weekend and you can clear it up by Monday morning not if it's school canceled it's that bad a storm not if it's school vacation and lastly I suggest that we don't have fines and so in the section having to do with fines to remove the word first in its two occurrences so the paragraph discusses your first infraction be a warning and then after your first fines if you remove those two words first the effect is that the penalty would for resident owner-occupied residences only be a warning all the time so remove the word first in two occurrences regarding only occupied one and two family properties start starting with the text setting forth the penalty therefore you You know, the effect, as I said, would be that it's a warning all the time rather than a fine if you just remove the word first that's there on two occurrences. Those are my comments. As I suggested, I think other approaches to go after the problem outreach, which we haven't had. Finding out why people, certain people, a few number of people are not shoveling. But if we need an ordinance to do that, I strongly suggest we do it without a fine the way Wakefield does and Linfield does. you know but again Saugus and Stoneham don't have any ordinance at all neither does Redding North Reading and so many others thank you for your time thank you

▶ 13:53 Jennifer L. Lemmerman: sir there are additional members of the public wishing to speak on this order

▶ 14:08 Ryan Williams: hello everyone first I'd like to start by saying I was not told there would be

▶ 14:12 Speaker 3: snow in New England when I moved here here we are my name is Ryan Williams I'm

▶ 14:22 Ryan Williams: a member of the pedestrian and cyclist advocacy committee I'm a Melrose resident live on Malvern Street I brought a couple of information points to be shared with the committee with regards to the analysis of snow removal that was performed by the engineering department I think the engineering department did a amazing job of producing that data but it is surely challenging to examine 8400 or some parcels in the city of Melrose with frequency and you know within a certain prescribed time period after snow falls i noticed that within engineering zone analysis of the snowfall that they found between two and four percent of properties that didn't clear their snow either uh in 2016 there were two storms measured so that was either from one storm for four percent um or in 2018 there was only one storm measured and they found two percent and um with regard to the specific sites that were listed the parcels that were listed there were just a few omissions and i thought it might be illustrative to the the board as to understanding that it's not really possible for the engineering department or dpw to know exactly how many parcels are being unshovelled it's a broader question for the community at large

▶ 15:42 Ryan Williams: so i have um about five or six sites i reached out to the members of the committee and i asked

▶ 15:50 Ryan Williams: them for their input we had a couple of interesting parcels noted one was the

▶ 16:04 Ryan Williams: the church on Upham Street there we go the Melrose Church of Christ that was a parcel that was listed as by some community members as being kind of a chronic non shoveler of the sidewalks it's a nonprofit and I think that when community members are faced with these problem properties and I don't mean to disparage the Church of Christ they have limited resources they probably don't have somebody there all the time residents don't always know where to go who to talk to whose responsibility it is and so you get properties like the Church of Christ that's not on the list there were complaints about the sidewalk of West Wyoming opposite Lincoln School that's also not listed on the parcel list as properties that missed shoveling Cottage Street perpendicular to Wyoming which is on the list and it's on there as a both years having problems with not shoveling so that is a problem property and we're all familiar that that's a large multi-unit property Upham Street from Coolidge Park to Main Street which includes Coolidge Park itself and then the First Baptist Church I think of Melrose and teachable moments where both my kids go to school so I'm familiar with that sidewalk people gave general feedback that there were always a few parcels on Main Street and Lebanon Street that were unshoveled after storms but on the analysis there are no parcels on Main Street that are shown unshoveled so either Thorp a few gaps in the data or the folks on Main Street have shoveled their sidewalk every day for every storm for for two or three years totally possible I shovel my sidewalk almost all the time and then of course as mentioned by the previous commenter one of the largest problems that the city has is the issue of DPW plowing over corners and while I do think that the Board of Aldermen should consider better ways to help DPW enforce the need to keep sidewalks and crosswalks clear I think also that having more responsibility for clearing sidewalks generally in the city is going to provide the right atmosphere in the right environment for not only the residents but also the city to take personal responsibility to keep those those areas clear and just as an example of some of the areas that were also by the way not listed on the parcel sheet as being cleared I have a couple of photos of snow drifts blocking specific crosswalks these are all up and down

▶ 18:18 Ryan Williams: Main Street you'll recognize them as being approximately from Linfels and Main Street to the senior housing complex on the west side of Main Street just north of the Whole Foods parking lot these are not snow drifts that occurred all at once from one snowstorm and they are packed with ice the issue of a few parcels as you can see in that image it's not even a full parcel it's really just one crosswalk being covered with ice and snow and having no remedy as a resident to address that is more than just wearing snow appropriate footwear as I wear pretty much all the time people with limited mobility and seniors often avoid these kind of situations they obviously can't climb a four-foot hill of snow but they will avoid even an inch of ice and put themselves in harm's way by walking in the street instead and the same is true for people pushing strollers and you might have noticed we have a few of those in Melrose these days and anybody with any kind of an impairment that might that might generate fear from from a slip and a fall as my upstairs neighbor for instance fell on an icy sidewalk and broke his leg right in front of our next-door neighbor's house so all that being said I think that the ordinance is step in the right direction I think that it's important to start somewhere I think that the fines are necessary I understand that the fines are intended to be a kind of three strikes or two strikes program where you don't necessarily levy a fine on every homeowner every time but it is important to have some kind of remedy for problem properties because otherwise with the limitations that we're facing right now in the city budget Thorp not really a lot of places for residents to go to seek relief on these on these issues and as a final note an educational point I will share my understanding that it doesn't matter whether or not the city or the homeowner is listed in the ordinance as being responsible for snow clear if a person slips and falls on sidewalk it's my understanding that the homeowner is responsible for that injury and can be brought

▶ 20:37 Speaker 1: to court so thank you thank you good evening hello how are you i'm well thank you my name

▶ 20:53 Speaker 3: is ted cummings i live at 93 howard street here in malrose and uh some of the things i'm going to go over are going to be repetitive but so i'll apologize for that in advance and i've also got some things if i could just pass out to each of the members i could just pass each one of those little packets around i also brought a list of 34 names of people just that i know that are opposed to the ordinance for varying reasons their names and addresses are on the sheet there along with a a letter to the board and the the reasons why uh vary too much to list it down so we just basically wrote down that those people including myself are opposed to it entirely we don't want it changed amended the language we're against it entirely and i'll explain that why

▶ 21:43 Speaker 3: as the gentleman that started tonight said anyone who's opposed to this nobody's opposed to having the sidewalks cleared i think what we're opposed to is being told that we have to do it or we're going to pay a fine to me personally that seems a little heavy-handed to deal with it in that way, although it would be a nice world if everybody got out and shoveled and it was wonderful and we didn't have any blocked sidewalks and nobody slipped and fell and everything was just convenient and that was the way life was and I'd like to go live in that world. But that world does not exist. So we have to live in the world that we do live in. Just because it's a good idea for people to shovel their sidewalks does not mean that it's a good idea to have a law to make people do it the two things have nothing to do with each other i can i can came up with i won't bore you with it tonight but i can think of 10 things that my neighbors do and people do around town and this and that that i think we should have a rule for that but i don't want to live in that type of world i also don't want to live in a city where the neighbors are going to start calling the cops on each other because someone didn't shovel the sidewalk i don't want to live there it's never been like that here and i don't want to live in a city like that it's divisive it doesn't do anything to bring the community together and so this whole way this whole idea of forcing it on people is exactly what you're going to be doing you're going to be relying on people to call the police or neighbors that they don't get along with to find out who isn't shoveling the sidewalks that's what this is that's where this is going to go i think just even coming up with the idea when i thought about it i've been thinking about it for a couple of weeks you by even proposing the idea you're kind of coming up you're coming at it from a point of view that you drive down the street and you see a sidewalk isn't shoveled you go the guy that lives there must be a real jerk like that's where you're starting from we need a law for that Thorp no that's the only place you could be coming from there are literally dozens or maybe hundreds of reasons why on that particular day that

▶ 23:54 Speaker 3: sidewalk isn't clear sometimes they get shoveled sometimes they don't and those legitimate reasons why it doesn't get shoveled are going to become the excuses of why it didn't get shoveled when you try to give somebody a ticket it's going to be an excuse and it's going to be a legitimate excuse or it's going to be made up excuse that you can't argue about you know my knees hurt today what are you going to say to that person uh too bad you're not you're not going to write him a ticket that's what you're going to do my personal own personal reasons why i'm opposed to it one is going to be way too expensive to even implement we are i heard them talking about a study uh that was done on the homes that the dpw did that i wasn't even aware of i'm sure that cost something so we're already it already cost something to do that if that cost a few thousand dollars that's a few thousand dollars

▶ 24:50 Speaker 3: we could have paid to have shovels snow sidewalk shoveled um also i don't think myself personally i'm a small government guy i don't think any of you have a right morally or ethically or i don't even know legally i'm not a lawyer to compel me to do anything to tell me i got to get up off my couch monday morning and go do something i'm a little uncomfortable with that you can tell me what i can't do that's different you can tell me i can't shovel my driveway into the sidewalk you can tell me i can't do that because that makes sense right that's that's now i'm creating a hazard for somebody else you can tell me i can't burn my leaves because i might burn my neighbor's house down doing so doing so so not being able to telling me what i can't do and telling me what i have to do are two entirely different things and i'm not comfortable with the government telling me i have to do anything that's my own personal view secondly i've got a bad back and it's chronic i could get out of this chair tonight and it could go boingo bango and i would hobble my way to the car and i'll be flat on my back for the next three or four days i will not go to work and i'll be out until my back comes back and i can get up and walk again and i'm sure i'm not the only one so if that happens on the day that it snows my sidewalk's not getting shoveled i'm just telling you now it's not getting done and probably my driveway isn't either Sometimes it takes me a couple days to get the driveway done. I shovel a little bit, get my car out, come back from work, shovel a little bit more, get done with that, make my way around to the sidewalk and my front steps. Sometimes it takes a couple of days. You all live here, you know. Every storm isn't six inches and it's fluffy, and you get to run around there and do it before you go to work. We have to be realistic about this and where we live and what the circumstances are. This isn't a nice, neat thing where six inches snows every time at three and we know it's coming and we could prepare for it and everyone did you know Thorp way too many variables that you could ever prepare to have such an ordinance even just listening to the two gentlemen that spoke before me i'm sitting there listening going i can't believe how complicated this is going to be and all of these complications we're going to lay at the feet of the police department individual police officers who have to think about this jesus was this the church of christ i'm not sure if i was supposed to say anything to this person i don't remember

▶ 27:16 Speaker 3: but i mean that's the road we're going down also not shoveling the sidewalk is not the same thing we have ordinance against having loud parties loud music doing construction before a certain hour we already have ordinance for those things this is not the same thing i'm not the one creating the hazard it's nature it's god whoever did it i'm not the one creating it i don't have any excuse for being a loud ignorant neighbor at one in the morning playing concert music and keeping everybody awake and Thorp no legitimate excuse for that so did the police show up yeah can you get a ticket for that yeah Thorp no legitimate excuse for starting construction work with jackhammers and banging roofing and everything else at six o'clock in the morning and disturbing the neighbors Thorp no legitimate excuse for that that's why we have an ordinance for those types of things and everybody agrees on it everybody doesn't agree on this i think just as a general a body of government we should be passing ordinances and laws and things i know it's just you know majority rules but it ought to be on something that most of the people in the community agree about most 60 70 percent ought to think it's a good idea i think that's

▶ 28:24 Speaker 3: my own personal opinion this also isn't the same thing as speeding this isn't the same thing as parking my car too many too far away from the curb there are ordinances ordinances for that But the ordinance says I can't park more than 18 inches from the curb. So when a police officer comes by or the traffic enforcement officer walks down Main Street checking for violations and parking and you've been there too long, they know it's 18 inches. It doesn't say, this proposal is very vague. It says it has to be shoveled wide enough for two people to pass by. Well, which two people? Two skinny people? I don't know the answer to that. so you're opening up a place where the officer is going to try to enforce a ticket and you're going to have a pissing contest over due to two people meet can two people pass by or not so how do you do that it would have to be a number like the building code i'm a builder i have to build a set of stairs 36 inches clear opening not 35 not 35 and a half and not 35 and seven eights they got to be 36 you know why because two people can pass by on the 36 inch set of stairs the building inspector comes out and says he doesn't come out and say oh that looks too narrow i don't think two people can go by and i go well no i think two people can pass by no he gets a tape measure and says it's only 35 and a half it doesn't meet the code it's not within it doesn't meet the code it's wrong it's a violation we this is just too arbitrary it's way too arbitrary and not and again we're laying it at the feet of a police officer to do all of this work this conversation that i'm having with you is the conversation we're going to have with the cop at my door trying to write me a ticket that's why i'm kind of saying it the way i'm saying it give you the real life scenario this is what the police are going to do they're going to come to my door and i'm going to say no i think two people can get by he's going to say well two people can't get by well let's go down and try you go you you go let me get my uh skinny brother-in-law i mean it's absurd it really is Thorp just Thorp way more thing better things they ought

▶ 30:42 Speaker 3: to be doing with that because of some of these reasons it's it's going to be enforced unfairly and it's going to be completely arbitrary and we're going to be leaving it up to the police to decide whether or not you have a good enough excuse and that's not how the law is supposed to work either everybody that didn't shovel a sidewalk gets a ticket or nobody gets a ticket it's not the guy that his neighbor called the cops on him he gets a ticket and someone else who didn't get caught doesn't get a ticket that's not the way it should work we're going to have an ordinance then everybody who doesn't shovel a sidewalk has to get a ticket which means somebody has to go out and check all the sidewalks and again i'm assuming that's going to be laid at the feet of the police department and i don't want to be the one trapped in my car in a rollover accident on a snowy road and the police are up on swains pond road checking driveways and checking

▶ 31:34 Speaker 3: sidewalks so it's either you have to enforce it equally or don't enforce it at all and then i

▶ 31:41 Speaker 3: have i have uh some questions about this entire thing who is going to get the ticket is it going

▶ 31:48 Speaker 3: to be the homeowner or is it going to be the resident has that been determined and and i don't even know the answer to this how do the police determine who lives in a house do they know that when they pull up to your house do they know who lives there and who the owner is or do the police have to go on a goose chase now and find out who the property owner is and uh we have to issue them the ticket or if we're just going to give it to the resident the person that sits out okay so we give it to the resident now you knock on the door it's a two-family house who gets the ticket of a two-family upstairs or downstairs i have a friend of mine when i talked to her about the first thing she told me was i already fight with my upstairs neighbor about shoveling the driveway they won't even do the driveway i do the driveway i can just imagine asking them telling them we have to do the sidewalks now so i don't know are we going to write two tickets are we going to split

▶ 32:47 Speaker 3: it 12 50 each what are we going to do some people don't have sidewalks so as part of the ordinance maybe we should add the languages and if you don't have a sidewalk you have to go shovel someone else's sidewalk because that's the only thing that would be fair that would be fair if you're going to wheel her out one side of the street has a sidewalk the other one doesn't so this guy's sitting over here having his coffee how you doing joe oh i'm kind of killing myself the cops are going to be here at noon you know that's the real life scenario what we're asking the residents of the city to do and now the police going to come to my door or go to someone's door to write a ticket I don't know how this is going to work I'm assuming they're going to pull over And they're going to come to the door and knock on the door And write me a ticket just as if I got pulled over So now you come to my door Or someone's door And a woman answers the door She's nine months pregnant And my husband's away on a trip I'm waiting for the plow guy to come Are they going to write her a ticket I'm going to tell you right now They're not going to write her a ticket Now you get on the street And the guy doesn't have as good of a story He gets the ticket It's not fair

▶ 33:54 Jennifer L. Lemmerman: Mr. Cummings, I'm sorry to interrupt you. I just wanted to let you know, so our rules allow for 10 minutes and we've gone over, but you can finish up, but I just wanted to let you know.

▶ 34:02 Speaker 3: I'll go quickly. I wasn't aware of that, I'm sorry. But I'm also representing 34 other people who asked me to come here and speak for them, so maybe I can get a little bit of leeway.

▶ 34:15 Speaker 3: I think the impact on the police department itself is going to be negative. I think it would be demoralizing to spend four years in the Marine Corps and get out and become a police officer and ask to go up and give Mrs. Jones a ticket because she didn't shovel her sidewalk fast enough. I don't think that's a very good thing to do. They went to college to become law enforcement professionals, not run around checking to see if sidewalks have been shoveled or not. It also takes their attention away from accidents, crime, other things that are going on during the storms. People call in the police department that actually need the police. when Thorp something going on and they're going to be busy doing other things the other thing would be the cost we're gonna have to take all this citation booklets that they have now we're gonna have to throw them all out we have to redesign new ones I don't know how that process happens but someone must have to design it somebody here I don't know somebody has to approve it we have to train the offices how to reuse the new books It's going to cost, it has to cost, I'm guessing, tens of thousands of dollars to redo all of those books. We're going to have to have training. We're going to have to train the police officers. We're going to have to have record keeping, because if you're going to write me a warning and you're going to write warnings, you're going to have to keep those records somewhere. They're going to have to be filed away. If I'm going to be a habitual offender, which we're going to have to define what that means, if I'm a habitual offender, you better keep the records, because if you write me a ticket at the end of the winter, I'm going to want to know how many times I was, you know, and gonna have to have an appeals process so we're gonna have to have an office like the parking Commissioner someone's gonna have to man that that's gonna cost money

▶ 35:53 Speaker 3: it's gonna cost tens of thousands of dollars I just have two more things and then I'll be done I'll be quick thank you very quick when we were here for the meeting over sanctuary cities some of the same people sitting in this room said the police don't have the time or the resources or the money to be enforcing immigration laws that was what I heard them saying here so unless suddenly Thorp money in the budget to be doing this I'm assuming they still don't have the money for doing less important things and last I have free ideas if you'd like some free ideas the mayor can put out a robocall on the robocall system that they do to all the residents every morning and ask and plead and beg please go out and shovel your sidewalks that doesn't cost anything this we have students that are looking for community service hours we can very easily get that list of people that will shovel give it to the DPW and we can have a phone number to call to say hey I can't shovel my sidewalk my back hurts can you send somebody up that wouldn't cost anything I also gave you a copy of a doorknob knocker that I designed the last page there I can get 1500 of those printed on this to print for 175 you could put them in the dpw workers trucks if they see a driveway a sidewalk or a building that's a problem they could get out they could hang in the door ask them nicely you don't even have to ask them they can hang it on the door you see what it says on there with the phone number and uh i'll even pay for them and i'll donate them to the city if you don't pass the ordinance thank you mr cummings that is all

▶ 37:28 Speaker 3: thank you very much thank you motion for a recess a motion for a recess yes for the purposes of