Public Comment

Transcript (~13 min @ 6:40)

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

▶ 6:38 Speaker 1: one nation, under God, indivisible, with liberty

▶ 6:42 Speaker 2: and justice for all.

▶ 6:46 Peter D. Mortimer: Mr. President, I make a motion to open the floor for public comment. Second.

▶ 6:50 Michael P. Zwirko: There's been a motion made by Alderman Mortimer to open the floor for public comment. It has been seconded by Alderman Boisselle. All those in favor? Aye. Any opposed? Hearing none, this is the portion of the meeting where any member of the public could come up and speak behalf on any of the orders that are before us on the agenda this evening any member like to speak

▶ 7:12 Michael P. Zwirko: seeing mayor Inferno present Oh good evening mayor Inferno good evening thank

▶ 7:15 Gail Infurna: you very much mr. president and good evening to the board of aldermen I come before you tonight because I wanted to publicly and personally thank each of you for the time that you took in deliberating our budget this year it was back in early May I came before you and asked for a favorable vote on the budget and I do hope that you will consider that this evening later on 20 years 20 budgets I sat through so I know that side was very interesting to be on the other side I wanted to make sure that you all got enough information so that you could make your decisions get your information and I thought you all did a great job asking the questions you ask questions that I thought were very informative for the public so that I hope it really informed the public as to how our budget you know each department how they do their budget I hope it wasn't too much information the department heads were very cooperative in providing it and my grandmother used to say you could never have too many books so I guess we could say you can never have too much information I have watched all the meetings you know every Monday and Thursday I watched each one my evenings are a little quieter now for what some reason and so it was interesting to hear all the comments and I was really proud of each one of you as you asked your questions because I thought everybody did it very very calmly very cooperatively and with the right intention of getting the information out to the public so that's all I have to say I just wanted to thank you all for your time that you gave thank you good evening sir good evening

▶ 9:07 Speaker 7: I'm Bob Driscoll I'm here as a representative of the Melrose Veterans Advisory Board my just stating your address as well please sure 33 Thurston Road Melrose thank you sir I just want to thank everybody tonight for recognizing the students of Operation United we had another wonderful successful year hosting 12 veterans in their guests to visit the memorials in Washington DC this was our seventh year of planning and over those seven years we've partnered with over 360 Melrose veterans students and their parents and what we described not as a trip but as an experience it's becoming known as the operation experience the feedback from the veterans is overwhelmingly positive although visiting the memorials is an emotional and powerful experience stirring up pride of their military service the veterans tell us it is the interaction with the students that really touches their heart to have middle school students work all year fundraising researching and planning each of the trip components is truly amazing especially with how busy these students are it speaks to the character of the students as well as the sport of their parents their teachers and the whole melrose community to include each of you sitting around this horseshoe tonight as well as mayor dolan and male inferno near inferno the new student respect garden at the knoll which we dedicated on Memorial Day is our own monument acknowledging the bond our students have with the veterans in the community these trips the respect garden the student involvement in honoring our veterans these things don't happen in other places they really don't I am proud of these Operation United students we are recognizing tonight and I am proud to be a Melrose veteran thank you

▶ 11:20 Speaker 7: Thank you, sir. Good evening. Good evening. I'm Jerry Morose, 62 Mount Vernon Street. Question for clarification. The items on the calendar tonight, are those items you're going to be debating and voting on tonight? In the section on calendar? Is that what the question

▶ 11:37 Speaker 7: is? Well, as you go through the agenda, what is the section after items from committee, it goes to calendar and I was expecting you weren't voting on those tonight but if you mayor in front of seem to indicate that you were the will of the

▶ 11:52 Speaker 7: board okay well then I do want to address a couple of those issues then

▶ 11:58 Speaker 7: I've come here to speak a number of times about water and sewer issues and and you know in my view we haven't gotten enough information from the city to support number one the charges applied to water and sewer to support

▶ 12:15 Speaker 7: the fundamental basis by which we're establishing water and sewer rates in the way that we are by having a tiered system which doesn't really apply to Melrose in terms of our cost of service and even in terms of the reserves that we cold you know 10% isn't you know what was proposed before was 25% for reserves and then 20% and then 10% and it at some level it's all arbitrary because no one has done the work to figure out what it is we're holding money in reserve in anticipation of a need for I do want to say that the rates that we pay to the MWRA, the water bills and the sewer bills we pay to MWRA, actually include a significant portion of what would be needed for reserve. The MWRA worries about aquifer protection and distribution systems and water treatment systems. It worries about digesters and separating and getting rid of the sludge from the thing. that equipment all that capital is built into our charge from the MWRA we don't

▶ 13:28 Speaker 7: need to hold money in reserve for those items now Melrose didn't really carry reserves for years and years and years and it was only because we had a rate system that was inappropriate back in 2011 2012 whereby we got underwater because that pun I didn't mean it you know we we got we didn't have enough revenue come in because frankly we rely too much on the volumetric portion of our billing system for revenues the significant amount of money that's in the reserves now and and part of the order that you have is actually just a you know a few thousand dollars to up it to 10% to get to that 10% magical arbitrary number as I assert it that money is sitting there not working for

▶ 14:19 Speaker 7: the ratepayers of the water and sewer system in Melrose it ought to be fixing more leaks in the lines so we don't have the rate of leakage that we have in our pipes it ought to be working for inflow and infiltration so we're not paying a huge cost to MWRA and some of you may not know the MWRA's billing system through and through but we have surcharges essentially for our inflow and infiltration those peak flow of sewer months and if there was a downpour tonight that came through Melrose that could make that today this month of June be the highest consumption time in Melrose for the year and we get penalized for three years based on that these are the issues that that we need to be addressing holding money in reserves for arbitrary reasons is not helping anybody and actually the money is just you know it's it's depreciating as it goes right it's sitting there nothing's being earned on it the work that could be done with it could be a larger amount of work done today than if we did that work three years or five years from now another element another point that I'd like to make about reserves is that you are far better off planning in a capital project to take care of an issue before it becomes a catastrophe then paying two or three times the amount of money to take care of the same problem in a crisis situation and to be sitting there with reserves that aren't being used to address known problems in our water sources in our water system or a sewer system and sitting there waiting for them either to reach that critical point with the catastrophic failure it's not a wise use of money and and I'm talking a lot about reserves tonight and it's the smallest part of everything we've talked about indirect costs I do have to address that it's very common for me to come here and make a statement at public comment only just a few minutes later for someone from the city staff to come up here and say that I am in some way ignorant of the issues or to reframe the issues as if I don't know what I'm talking about and I do want to say that I understand and appreciate and agree with the construct of indirect costs applied to the sewer system there's nothing wrong with it at all what I find exploitive is the fact that the city is assessing so much of ordinary city costs to the water and sewer system that aren't commensurate with the with the cost that the water and sewer system put on the city and you know what we talked about last time with the city solicitor he went on I want to be clear he went on and named all the buildings and all the employees and all the wrongful acts that could happen in Melrose that we'd be responsible for in our insurance policy and then he realized that oh well you know oh maybe we do have a lot of things with water and so we have to worry about well I'll tell you if we have that many sewer backups that it's that sewer is costing us that percentage of our overall exposure and liability to people in the city we ought to be using those reserves we ought to be taking that money and applying it to fix the problem so we don't keep flooding people's what did you say people's man caves right so there's a rational way of looking at

▶ 17:46 Speaker 7: that there's a rational discussion that could happen in all the years I've been coming here I have not heard the rational discussion about why we apply funds the way we do why we don't apply funds in a different manner and and more importantly I want to say that I am never hearing anybody come forward from the city side here with actual numbers to support their assertions there's a lot of rhetoric that comes to this room there's a lot of claims about the public being ignorant me and other people that have come before you and talking about water and sewer and frankly that kind of that kind of discussion shouldn't be in

▶ 18:29 Speaker 7: this room if you want to have a real discussion if you know let's have a real conversation about it let's let two sides of the issue be presented here not just have me have a time limit and I realize you're looking at the clock every time here but we have a time limited time to say something and somebody else comes after me and just can claim that I'm completely wrong somehow that's not a way that you should be operating I you know I expect you guys are all gonna vote for these things tonight but you know as well as I know that you don't have the numbers behind these things you're just accepting at face value what's been told to you and you want to claim well you know we have to rely on the people from the city but you know we've heard that over and over and over again and how many times have we gotten into a hole that later on we say we have to do something different and we were always acting like we're

▶ 19:24 Speaker 7: being wonderful and responsible because we're doing something different five years later well the time to do it differently is today not five years from now and I think I actually said those words five years ago so thank you thank

▶ 19:40 Peter D. Mortimer: you motion to close public comment mr. president second there's been a motion

▶ 19:44 Michael P. Zwirko: to close public comment made by alderman Mortimer has been seconded by alderman Boisselle all those in favor aye aye any opposed public comment is now closed move on to the

▶ 19:59 Speaker 8: communications from her honor the mayor and other city officials order 2018-206 reappointment of francis paglia one nason drive apartment 516 to the melrose housing authority board of commissioners for a five-year term said term to expire on the first monday in march 2023 mr paglia has been