Public Participation

Transcript (~9 min @ 0:20)

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

▶ 0:10 Jennifer L. Lemmerman: My name is Jennifer Lemmerman. I am the chair, and I'm joined this evening by Vice Chair Alderman Zwirko, as well as committee members Alderman Bucha, Alderman Lipper-Garabedian, Alderman Medeiros, Alderman Tramontozzi, Alderman Boisselle, Alderman Wright, Alderman Mortimer, Alderman Forbes, and President Infurna. uh in accordance with mass general law we are recording tonight's meeting it can be viewed on mmtv as well as on the city of morrow's website motion to open the floor for public participation

▶ 0:41 Jennifer L. Lemmerman: madam chair second we have a motion to open the floor for public participation by alderman mortimer seconded by alderman boycelle all in favor aye aye any opposed we now will open the floor to any members of the public who wish to speak on our agenda this evening good evening

▶ 0:55 Speaker 1: hi thank you i'm jerry morose um i have um some comments on on a few different things tonight um first i want to highlight that um at least on the public um portal when i click on order print out it doesn't print out the order it just gives me a meeting portal sign in that i can't get through the i can't get through it on the order printouts and at least some of these um i am able

▶ 1:28 Speaker 1: to see some other things by clicking on um the actual um agenda item itself but i just don't know if anybody can pay attention to that because it's not clear what you're seeing that we're not

▶ 1:40 Speaker 1: seeing um anyway um on 2018-123 um the high school roof um i'd certainly like to know more about the

▶ 1:50 Speaker 1: condition of that roof you know I managed property and you know I have the roof in the high school as I understand it is what's called EPDM ethylene propylene diene monomer and it's a rubber roof and if they're the sheets of rubber don't deteriorate they'll last indefinitely the concerns with those roofs are typically the flashing points in the scenes and typically if you update flashing and seams every ten years or so the roofs last indefinitely and you can do that a fairly small amount my understanding is what that we did that back five years ago six years ago when we were doing other parts of the roof there I do know that back in 2015 there was some in my view undue concern about the amount of snow on the roof and there were people up there shoveling and I I heard somewhere that there was maybe some damage done to the roof at that time but but in general rubber roofs why you put them on there and why you maintain them is so that you don't have to go and replace them at the same time when I look at the cost of this they're saying eighteen thousand square feet and eighteen thousand square feet for looking for the total amount of money here was some seven hundred fifty thousand dollars is hugely over what the cost of replacing rubber roofs is I mean by magnitude over I don't understand what's what's that all about so I'd love to hear what the cost per square or the cost per square foot as long as we have whatever good numbers are but um it just

▶ 3:36 Speaker 1: seems I mean 18,000 times that $4,000 it's just it anyway the numbers seem very strange to me so I'd love some clarity in that next thing is is that

▶ 3:56 Speaker 1: the order 2018 dash looking for the number in this paper 1-1 25 $22,000 two issues there I I don't believe like when the Messina arts grants were funded at $10,000 my expectation with funding line items like that is that you know they're given a budget amount of money they can get applications and prioritize the grants and fund them and I find it kind of strange that somebody's coming back and saying oh well we give out all our money we now we're going to get more requests we want more money for this fiscal year I don't think that's good public policy by any means because we know in the budget last year there were things that didn't get funded and even at the at their expense that we funded the Messina in $10,000 if there was another $2,000 available in the budget last year we might have done other things with that i don't think this is good public policy to go and extend a line item that's already been funded at at the expense of something else in the first place and then it i there's no identification about the public works administrative expense professional building services twenty thousand dollars i don't you know it's not clear what

▶ 5:02 Speaker 1: that is i'm maybe guessing that somebody's talking about using that for um some of the school and the school repairs that are that are in the next another order here which is 2018-124 and that includes some of the money for the high school roof as well as these unspecified school repairs and my understanding is is that there is some money that's allocated toward upgrading the elevate the two elevators in the high school that are having certification issues possibly but also upgrades to the middle school auditorium which I find number one that none of these things are itemized here but what's being done I find that is not really a good public process that just to throw a third of a million dollars toward school repairs and maybe a quarter million dollars toward the middle school in that way it feels like there ought to be a larger public process about evaluating the need for them has a school building committee been involved with this about what they're going to do what is the issue with the stage of the middle school what's the issue with the sound of the lighting the fact that we have deficiencies in that auditorium from day one in my view was the fault of the architect in in specifying the the space in a bad way and to be relying on that same architect which we relied upon for a number of different projects over a number of years i find that as you know maybe we should get a different different opinion about that space and from somebody else that's independent and hasn't um we haven't already paid once to design the place and now we're going to pay them again and the question is would the redesign be any better than the original design that brings me also to the issue of the what is listed here as a banned bond premium and And so, from reading something here, I'm certainly not an expert in municipal bonds. But a question that I have is that it seems apparent that the city somehow agreed to pay a higher interest rate on bonds that were issued in November 2017, just a few months ago. We agreed to be paying a higher interest rate on that, is my interpretation, in return for getting a return premium given back to the city. I don't know, did that come through this board to make that decision or not, so that for the next, whether it's 10 years or 20 years on a bond, that we're paying a higher interest rate to then take money now, and also from reading some of the documentation here, it seems that there was some change in the law that now requires that we use a return premium for capital improvements, unless it's $50,000 or under, and we can maybe do something else with it, and this is clearly way more than $50,000. But this idea that somewhere outside of this body, somebody authorized a higher long-term interest rate in order to get some short-term funds to now use and then recapitalize and kind of do it in this way. I mean, usually when you guys talk about a capital project and bonding it, it's around for quite a bit of time with a lot of conversation. And this seems like a really quick thing that we're just jumping into spending, you know, whether it's a quarter million in the middle school or $100,000 in the elevators. It just strikes me as something that needs more information, and I would love to see more documented in writing, not just what happens to be presented verbally tonight.

▶ 8:43 Speaker 1: So that's the end of my conversation. Thank you.

▶ 8:55 Jennifer L. Lemmerman: Anyone else from the public wishing to speak?