ORDER-2018-187 : Authorizing a Bond in the amount of Two Hundred, Seventy Thousand, Two Hundred and Fifty Dollars ($270,250) under the Sewer Enterprise Account through the MWRA Sewer System I/I Local Financial Assistance Program

Transcript (~18 min @ 18:06)

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

▶ 18:02 Jennifer L. Lemmerman: board meeting thank you thank you the next item in front of us and in fact the the next three items in front of us are all we have members of the Department of Public Works with us this evening to address these and I believe the presentation of the three is each related the chair if it's the will of committee would would entertain a motion to join the next three orders for the purposes of discussion and we could separate them later if we wanted to so moved madam chair second we have a motion to join order 2018-187 2018-188 and 2018-189 for the purposes of discussion made by Alderman Mortimer seconded by Alderman Boisselle on discussion. All in favor? Aye. Any opposed? We now have the three orders joined. I will read each of them out loud for anyone watching. Order 2018-187, authorizing a bond in the amount of $270,250 under the sewer enterprise account through the MWRA Sewer System I&I Local Financial Assistance Program. Order 2018-188, authorizing a bond in the amount of $1,685,000 to fund roadway, sidewalk, and public lot improvement projects. And Order 2018-189, authorizing a bond under the Water Enterprise System through MWRA Local Water System Assistance Program bonds for FY 2019 in the amount of $1,025,000. We are still under suspension of rules. We could invite Mr. Shenna and any other members of his department up.

▶ 19:50 Speaker 2: Good evening everyone. Good evening.

▶ 20:27 Jennifer L. Lemmerman: Ms. has loaded up the presentation on the TV here.

▶ 20:33 Speaker 2: Good evening everyone. Thank you for having us here, and thank you for the discussion of these orders together.

▶ 20:41 Speaker 2: they do relate to one another and they do relate to the plan that we want to present to everyone this evening melrose has been one of the most aggressive communities in improving their utility and roadway infrastructure at a time with shrinking federal and state aid over the past several decades funded by prior road programs grants and other outside funding sources the city's reconstructed miles of utilities water sewer drain and our roadways and our sidewalks

▶ 21:14 Speaker 2: the list is lit is very lengthy and it's very visible as you enter melrose weather from the north the south the east of the west and as you drive through our neighborhoods now most importantly it's evident in our fire flow capacities and our ability to adequately fight fires and our water quality and our water pressure improvements the work in our roadway infrastructure

▶ 21:42 Speaker 2: has beautified our neighborhoods it's increased property values or at least helped increase property values it's improved traffic flow pedestrian flow bicycle accommodations now it's reduced roadway hazards emergency roadway repairs and it's made our sidewalks in our neighborhoods safer for children to travel through the roadway improvements

▶ 22:06 Speaker 2: coupled with construction of several new parks and athletic fields the construction of new drainage and flooding facilities water and sewer pump stations and pipeline have resulted in dramatic change for the better so tonight we're requesting a commitment from the sport to continue these efforts

▶ 22:32 Speaker 2: both this year and next our engineering team is superb and together with the consultants they've worked very diligent diligently over the last few years to create capital infrastructure studies that provide us a roadmap of where to invest when to invest why to invest in how to invest neglecting infrastructure we all know leads to catastrophic emergency repairs and ongoing unfunded more importantly emergency issues we've always partnered with this board and tonight we hope that we could continue to be proactive in supporting our

▶ 23:10 Speaker 3: capital programming through the support of the three orders that are before you

▶ 23:14 Speaker 2: so last week during our public works hearing I gave a sneak preview of the program by by placing the schedule and a listing of the projects in those orders and we discussed them briefly what I want to do right now is take a step backwards and and turn to the presentation and look at the three the three segments of the program roadway improvements water improvements and a continued aggressive I&I program and how they all come together so the program is

▶ 23:52 Speaker 2: outlined in the chat what we've done is we've broken it down into smaller more manageable to the I sections the first section is funding and ongoing if you drive around Melrose today you'll see these projects happening the orders before you do not fund these projects but they're part of the program that we've started this year and they're worth mentioning spare Hancock Street North and South High Albion and Day Street are all entering what we call substantial completion punchless mode that's the landscaping piece tree planting piece of the projects first Street and sixth Street will be completed once school is out because that segment abuts the frontage of the Winthrop school we've completed our cemetery roadway upgrades prior to Memorial Day our inflow and infiltration the program that's funded I'd say is a about 80 complete there's one last contract is about to hit the street for open cut repairs throughout the city francis and bartlett are currently in the design stage we hope to be out in on those streets late summer and the orient dav rain gardens are currently being completed so that's what's funding that's what's ongoing no relevance to the order but worth mentioning now comes to the part that are partially funded you may recognize some of these streets altamont dav perkins and warwick are projects that we've recently completed water work in the water program has funded the curb to curb paving of those projects what the additional funding through the road bond that we're discussing this evening does is allow us to do traffic calming measures allows us to improve the traffic signals at warwick and perkins allows us to add sidewalk on altamont ave something that we have heard from that neighborhood as we're out there improving their water their water system the complete street project the bike lane from north to south the howard the howard ruggles improvements to pedestrian traffic and bicyclists and the improvements we want to make abutting the melrose high school melrose veterans middle school pedestrian access ways they're all funded through our complete street program however we need design support we need some additional funding to make some additional improvements that those neighborhoods want that are not included in the project the road program takes care of these partially funded prod programs and truly makes them holistic to what we're hearing that your neighborhoods want the last section is pending funding so our engineers work very closely with the gas company the gas company has an initiative to improve their gas mains in the community cast iron has to come out it's replaced with plastic what we try to do is mirror their work or merge their work with our work and when we can't do that obviously we have to allow them to make their upgrades for the safety of our neighborhoods however our engineers have created a program where national grid is giving us partial funding to re in some instances to replace the entire road in some instances to replace half the balance is funded through the city it's funded through the order that's before you this evening so woodland ave portions of warwick and warren and franklin i believe there'll be a neighborhood meeting out there next week or within the next couple of weeks the gas company is about to put a transmission main there they will repave portions of the road and the small portions that they don't this order will fund this disorder will also fund some sidewalk improvements in that neighborhood and some traffic calming we've heard from that neighborhood continuously at the traffic commission about the need for safer sidewalks and our city engineer is addressing those issues with the project if we can get some additional funding blueberry hill is a development off of forest street the developer and national grid are making improvements on forest street the improvements will fund the repaving of forestry from lebanon to the development actually lebanon possibly to of the town line so additional funding will take care of everything else in that neighborhood that they don't so this way when we walk away we can walk away with a complete project florence heard stanford street they are our next water program water projects pay for the replacement of the water pipe and the replacement of the road over that water pipe this road program covers everything else sidewalks handicap ramps street streetscape issues back to the gas company vinton street is a project that they seem to be on forever but there were two walk two both a high and a low pressure gas main a six very extensive history of leaks out there and as you if you're ever walking through or driving through that neighborhood even five six o'clock at night when construction is done and the trenches are full you can still smell the odor a very very much needed gas project the gas company is going to repave a significant portion of it this bond will pick up the rest east emerson garfield ashmont those are three projects again we're proposing for water the water bond will cover the water work the road bond will cover

▶ 29:51 Speaker 2: the road work dexter road is a project that we committed as a community to there's a development off of dexter road and they are improving their portion and we're going to do the rest from dexter dexter road from that development to swain's pond to complete again complete the neighborhood and our attempts to walk away from neighborhoods completely addressing all of their issues perkins street is a water project that requires some additional paving we were also able to get the gas company to address perkins street from the lindfels parkway to warwick grove that was never part of the original project but again once they got going replacing gas pipe we noticed that the last block had to be replaced as well the strength of the working

▶ 30:44 Speaker 2: relationship allowed that to take place the balance of the streets are projects that we will start next year and it includes lower Main Street the lower Main Street is from Mount Vernon to Sylvan Street it's a section of Main Street that is very wide it's a section that is failing but it's a section that's heavily used whether it's people trying to get to Pine Banks commuters trying to get to oak grove or it's just another entrance to into melrose it's the one segment of main street that has not been addressed in the last 12 to 15 years this program addresses it and it's um i think it's our only project on a main collector road but it is definitely needed that will also try to address pedestrian needs during the complete street study that was an area of um marked for bike improvement and pedestrian improvement whether it's handicap ramps or bike accommodations so that will all be tied in together next year on that project so those are the projects how did we select them that i've heard that a lot this is a map of melrose and this is

▶ 31:57 Speaker 2: our roadway ranking map so what we did last year coming out of the winter was we excuse me we performed the roadway inventory of all the publicly owned streets in melrose and we did this through gis through people gis our engineers went out with ipads in hand and drove the streets several times back and forth looking for alligator cracking trenches potholes i believe there were 13 parameters that they looked at and they scored each segment of the road

▶ 32:33 Speaker 2: using an algorithm in that computer we got an overall ranking and then we grouped the streets by ward into poorest poor fair and good and excellent condition the color-coded map is that blue is good red is poor our engineers are about to launch this onto our

▶ 32:54 Speaker 2: website now that it's presented to the board we probably hope we hope to get it online next week so that the alderman and your constituents can go online and see exactly how it is that the methodology that we apply towards ranking roadways so that's how we do it we just don't arbitrarily pick a

▶ 33:20 Speaker 2: Street what it results in is projects like this spare Street Hancock Street to the left before to the right and to the bottom after a safe trial a safe sidewalk continuous one side of the street exists today and you can see cleaner edges to the road which helps drainage and berm and grass strip again all safety issues that were addressed north and south high street to the left the before picture to the right what exists out there today recently completed within the last few weeks we worked very closely with this neighborhood this neighborhood was a pleasure to work with extremely extremely unsafe conditions which required out of the box thinking from our engineering group and a lot of cooperation from the residents but it ended up in a product that i believe they're very happy with and which is definitely much improved albion street which is a thorough cut through to the high school heavily traveled and you can see the not only the improvement in the roadway surface but also in the driveway aprons and in the handicap ramps so that's what happens when we invest

▶ 34:43 Speaker 2: those are the projects that we listed before the projects add up to 1.65 we're requesting one point six eight five there's a little contingency built in for staffing and some other needs the program also takes into consideration our calendar year 19 that's next year's chapter 90 funding so all in all if this order passes between this year's chapter 90 our complete streets this year complete streets next year this order we could be investing well over three million dollars in our roadways from the in 2018

▶ 35:20 Jennifer L. Lemmerman: and 2019 flipping to water mr. Shana I'm very sorry to cut you off in the middle of your presentation we do have to start a public hearing at 8 p.m. so I'm wondering if this might be a good time where we're in the presentation to do that is that okay yep thank you thank you for your flexibility I'm sorry I

▶ 35:57 Jennifer L. Lemmerman: have to do that to you now we do have this order before us these three orders

▶ 36:05 Jennifer L. Lemmerman: conjoined if we want to make a motion a motion has not been made to pat for passage at this point table we don't even just don't need to do anything

▶ 36:19 Jennifer L. Lemmerman: there's a there is a motion to table the order I think we could we can do with that to second motion to table the order to take it back up after the public hearing made by Alderman Medeiros seconded by Alderman Mortimer the joint the