Public Participation

Transcript (~12 min @ 0:20)

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▶ 0:15 Peter D. Mortimer: This meeting is being recorded by MMTV and is available for viewing in the future on their website or on the Melrose-Mass website as well. Motion. Motion to vote. Conferring has made a motion to open the floor for public participation. Duly seconded by Alderman McAteer-Margolis. All in favor, please say aye. Aye. Any opposed? Hearing none, we are open for public participation. We are going to have a public hearing later tonight on water and sewer items, but we can have public participation now. Good evening, Mr. Moroz. Good evening. I am certain that our clerk of committee has your address for the record. I don't see a sign-up sheet there, but I think we have your address already.

▶ 1:19 Speaker 1: Hi, again, I'm Jerry Moroz. um you know there's a number of articles here tonight that i'd like to comment on and it's even made difficult by the fact that they aren't posted in advance you know i mean i and actually this here says updated june 7th to 4 15 um i don't know what was updated or not but but you know if you know what you're going to have on an agenda well in advance even the basics of it put it up there don't leave it to the last minute that you know things that we don't see you know it's hard

▶ 1:52 Speaker 1: to see that um so my understanding is that the public hearing at eight o'clock is in regard to the setting the water and sewer rates for fy18 or just for sending them from whenever forward um

▶ 2:09 Speaker 1: um on the agenda there's a number of other things um that as i was looking at something

▶ 2:17 Speaker 1: here it looks like that you know mr taymor philip taymor has um has sent you a letter and has published it in the paper as well um and you know i concur with his points and he's done some you know good responsible analysis of of our water system and sewer system and and you know what to me i see that basically the city is making a blatant money grab off of the water and sewer ratepayers and every time we turn around they're grabbing something here there and any which way they can they have in the water and sewer ratepayers paid for the city's use of water and sewer in all the schools and the parks and and everywhere and and now you want to have the water and sewer ratepayers pay for roads now you know that when we rebuild roads we do it in a little responsible fashion that we take a bad road that's already miserable needs to be repaved we do the infrastructure work we have the gas company come in we have the water and sewer work done and then we repave the road nobody can claim i mean except maybe on some you know emergency thing in a brand new road that something goes wrong which you wouldn't expect it to because we just put a brand new water system underneath the road that we just paved to grab 220 000 apparently from the water and sewer enterprise funds claiming it that you know oh we need to pay for paving you know again it's a blatant money grab it's a it's a it's it's it's circumventing prop two and a half in any any way you look at it

▶ 3:57 Speaker 1: um the issue of water and sewer earnings retained earnings and reserves basically we've been through this before in other years no one can because there's no responsible

▶ 4:11 Speaker 1: way to even claim it that somehow we need to have a reserve fund that in theory for a place that did their water and sewer from top to bottom where they have an aquifer to protect where they have pumping stations filtration plant um you know main aqueducts to get things somewhere all those costs on the water side are taken care by mwra on the sewer side we don't have treatment plants We don't have all kinds of things, even the capital costs of that are all embedded in the MWRA rates. So you complain about the MWRA rates, but now you're throwing on top of that, basically double billing the rate payers of Melrose by making them pay for all that infrastructure in the reserves that MWRA has and paying their debt service and everything else at the same time as you're double charging them for that stuff that we don't even have to do. We won't really have a catastrophe in water and sewer, let alone a natural disaster type thing. But, you know, we don't have, you know, if we have a pipe break here or a sewer pipe break there or something happening there, it's something that we do. We don't need such a huge reserve contingency by any means.

▶ 5:29 Speaker 1: And, you know, the representations by members of the city staff regarding these issues I think have been reprehensible. You know, it's fine to have a decent reserve, but here's the other issue, is that if we had our whole system up to snuff, right, and then we wanted to put into reserves a little bit every year to, say, pre-fund capital replacement costs as time goes on, you could make an argument for that. I could make an argument against it too, but you could make an argument for that and reasonable people could disagree. But the issue you have here is you're just sucking money from the rate payers, throwing it in the bank and it's you're not doing anything with it and the fact is is that our sewer system isn't up to snuff our water system isn't up to snuff to put that money there and not use it is it's irresponsible it's it's having money sitting there doing nothing for us and it's in fact it's wasting away because it's being depleted by inflation if we use that money right now and the sooner that we use it the quicker we'd have a return on our investment in having lower water costs because we'd have reduced leakage in the water distribution system and we would have lower sewer costs certainly by dealing with inflow and infiltration which we talked about here a lot but you know nobody seems to get it actions speak louder than words nobody's putting forth any kind of accelerated plan to deal with inflow and infiltration that will actually give a benefit to the ratepayers of Melrose you know if there is money left over

▶ 7:03 Speaker 1: from the water meter replacement fund don't grab it for the city side you know a sanitary sewer system and in a safe water system are both public goods and the public as taxpaying entity has has an investment in keeping that up in fact the firefighting capabilities of the whole city network would if you were actually doing a real a real cost analysis of the system you would say that a lot of that would be the burden of the city right but the city's absconding with money from the water and sewer enterprise to fill its own pockets to do its own things that's people in the city you know the money might go to one place but there's other money being spent that certainly could be going to pay the city's bills and I want to highlight some of those things I mentioned earlier the you know there's probably about four hundred and fifty thousand dollars a year that the city of Melrose does not pay in its water bills just doesn't pay it says now we're not going to pay our bill we'll let the rate

▶ 8:14 Speaker 1: payers take care of it right the the reserves that you're taking in you just taking them from the rate payers throwing them in something and then certainly you're gonna have a back-end way of pulling them out for some other purpose other than the rates other than dealing for it with the water system on

▶ 8:30 Speaker 1: behalf of the ratepayers. You know, when's it gonna end? You know, all these different things, it's as maddening as the fake news, right? You know, people come here and claim, oh we're doing this great thing for the city and all this. All it is is a plain old-fashioned blatant money grab and nobody seems to care. I don't understand why you don't care. You are

▶ 8:57 Speaker 1: effectively violating proposition two and a half and violating your fiduciary responsibility to the ratepayers and to the taxpayers by not having the cost of the city paid by the appropriate parts of the city where they belong you all know I could go on and on and on about every issue here and in detail and you certainly don't want that but the problem is is that I come here year after year after year, raise the exact same points year after year after year, and then there's a wink and a nod and, oh, yeah, we're dealing with that. We're going to have a program instead of a something, you know. And it's all meaningless. It's just talk. Nothing's being done that's significant that needs to get done. Time is precious. You know, we have wasted five years now since we were here talking about this in 2012. Five years. And we still aren't using the $2 million sitting near the MWRA has given us for sewer. I mean, we have a plan, but we could accelerate this plan. We could take the millions of dollars that you sucked out of the rate payers sitting in the reserve fund. We could put that to inflow and infiltration and leakage on the water side for sure too. We could have the city start paying its bills and investing that money into making a good sewer system. We are at basically the top of the MWRA, maybe Belmont or somebody else a little bit above of us, something like that, but we are egregious in what we do to our citizens here. You are egregious in what you do to our citizens here by setting the rates that you set. And I know you don't appreciate me saying that, but frankly, how much more blunt do I need to get? I've given you rational argument year after year. I back it up. I give you a presentation that's more than you ever want to see to know the theory behind what I'm saying, and you just deny it and walk away and say, oh, well, we'll just vote unanimously. Let's just go and do this you know somebody's got to stand up here alderman medeiros does occasionally come here and say there's a problem here the issue of the indirect costs that alderman medeiros raised last year is a huge issue you know when i saw the half of the city solicitor's salary is being paid by the water and sewer fund last year that just that just broke it for me it's like how ridiculous is that the city solicitor is not spending half his time on water and sewer issues i'm sorry and if he is there's something else broken in there that somebody ought to be looking at and the board of aldermen should be doing that you know we will get well in the terms of the budget

▶ 11:28 Speaker 1: of the water and sewer department i'll get to the rates later on when we when we speak about the rates but the budget basically isn't real it's a fake budget and and all the smoke and mirrors that the city has they put up there every year and they change them around and oh well oh we're We're not going to raise rates this year. Well, hello, we double charged everybody last year, and now we're only going to one and a half times overcharge them this time. And oh, we're doing a great thing because we're not raising the rates. Now, I know Mr. Mortimer wants me to stop, but you know when you'll-

▶ 11:57 Peter D. Mortimer: Mr. Moroz, I insist that you stop. You've taken your ten minutes, you've been very vociferous, we've waited patiently.

▶ 12:03 Speaker 1: Is the vociferousness the problem, is that what you're saying?

▶ 12:05 Peter D. Mortimer: You're going to get another chance to talk. Do not argue with me, or I will not let you speak later. Thank you. Now please step back.

▶ 12:22 Speaker 2: A motion to close public participation.

▶ 12:24 Peter D. Mortimer: Alderman Forbes has made a motion to close public participation. Second. Duly seconded by Alderman Zwirko. All in favor, please say aye. Aye. Any opposed, hearing none, public participation is now closed. The first order we have before us is order 2017-172. A transfer in the amount of 15,000 from Memorial Hall salaries, five one zero zero zero to memorial hall miscellaneous supplies zero one six nine three two dash five three zero five zero one alderman's worker was made a motion to suspend the rules that we may hear it's duly seconded by alderman inferna that we may hear from the director of memorial hall miss pickett broda good evening miss pickett broda how are you