Public Hearing-- Water and Sewer--8:00 PM

Transcript (~17 min @ 33:24)

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

▶ 33:24 Peter D. Mortimer: You as well, sir. It is 8.02 in the evening. Is there a motion to commence the public hearing, please? So moved. Second. Alderman McAteer-Margolis has made a motion to commence the public hearing scheduled for this evening. The public portion of the public hearing is now open and members of the public are welcome to come forward and address the board with questions or comments.

▶ 33:49 Peter D. Mortimer: Good evening, Mr. Pellrott.

▶ 33:50 Speaker 4: Good evening, everybody. you see you good evening would you uh brian 70 howard street melrose thank you sir for all the

▶ 34:02 Speaker 4: people that are at home where are you okay so i'm here to talk about the water bill and uh the water

▶ 34:12 Speaker 4: rates and i'll keep it short the first thing i want to talk about is why the city has eliminated out of the each department's budgets the water line because now it seems like i'm paying twice i'm using my real estate taxes to pay for the budget and yet the water rates are paying for a good amount of that budget i'm not picking on the firefighters here but those guys work 24

▶ 34:43 Speaker 4: hour shifts they're entitled to take as many showers as they need to they work a hard job I wouldn't do it but that should come out of the fire department budget all those showers I don't know that's just me thinking about the school and all the athletes that take showers that this is a lot of water guys these should be line items not just in the general everybody pay for it next I'm

▶ 35:14 Speaker 4: pretty sure you guys are gonna talk tonight about how you're not gonna raise the water rates which is awesome but a couple years back a consultant was

▶ 35:27 Speaker 4: brought in and the city was encouraged to start a surplus fund in case something happened now i'm hearing we can't take the money out of that surplus fund because it'll hurt our bond rating well it would seem to me that with the water rates too high and now we've learned that the surplus fund fund is overfunded why we can't take some of that money back to drive the rate down on a one-year thing take the excess pay down some of the debt and not charge it to us and then the last thing i just want to talk about

▶ 36:13 Speaker 4: is that i don't think the two-tier system is working the way it's currently set up the 2000 cubic foot limit before going into tier two is not enough for the average family as everybody knows here i have five children they all live at home everybody also knows as i've spoken before that i have a shutoff valve and i don't let my kids take long showers but i just want to show you my last two water bills the one i just got in the mail is 746 dollars and 60 cents the previous water bill i got in march was 823 dollars and 13 cents you got to be kidding me guys i have state-of-the-art appliances I'm conserving as much as I can but a family of seven is not the average a family of five is the average in Melrose and you can't do it on 2,000 cubic feet per quarter it's impossible so I'd like you to look at that tonight and maybe

▶ 37:32 Speaker 4: adjust the rate so maybe twenty three twenty four hundred cubic feet is the threshold before you go into tier two because you know as I've just spoken my water bill is going to be over $3,000 this year I didn't water my lawn last year because of the water bill and now I'm paying the price because my lawn burnt up and I'm paying just as much money to reseed it so I don't know which way i would win but once again if you could look at changing some of the threshold limits and look at a one-time withdrawal from the surplus fund to pay down some of the debt would be cool thanks

▶ 38:20 Peter D. Mortimer: thank you very much mr pelrine any other members of the public wishing to come forward

▶ 38:37 Speaker 1: Mr. Pellerine just gave you an example of how these illegal water and sewer rates impact his family. And I use the word illegal deliberately because they are illegal. Chapter 165, Section 2B says that you can have an increasing block that fairly reflects the resource demand of high-volume users. The Pellerin's family, whether you call them a high volume user or not, and frankly most residential use isn't really high volume in this sense, but he's not causing any more resource demand to the city of Melrose in any way, shape, or form, and a flat water rate is what the legal rate would be. For those of you that want to feel good about yourselves, that you're doing honorable work here, year after year after year, you have voted to have an illegal rate structure against the law, the Mass General Laws, how they're written. Is that what your oath of office is, to violate the law in your vote for the water and sewer rates? I'm being vociferous, right? But you're sitting there passively taking actions, just accepting whatever is told from these people over here that seem to flagrantly want you to violate the law, but you're the ones they're asking to violate it. They're not. They're leading you on. You're violating the law. It's illegal what you're doing to Mr. Pellerine. It's illegal what you're doing to so many people. Some of the other elements you do are egregious, not necessarily illegal. I think certainly probably a citizen group could go to Middlesex Superior Court and file an action saying that the city is illegally assessing the water and sewer enterprise funds for costs that aren't caused by those rate payers. you know you almost slipped something by me here when i got in here and i hadn't looked at the whole agenda i just found another 550 000 you're going to stick it to the water and sewer fund for roadway improvements the 1.610 million dollar um bond and and other appropriations 550 000 of that

▶ 40:45 Speaker 1: is water and sewer combined with the 220 i talked about earlier that in itself is 770 000 that you're sticking it to the water and sewer rate payers, you're making Mr. Pellrine pay for replacing roads that Mr. Pellrine shouldn't be paying with his water bill. He's glad to pay it. He's glad to pay it as his fair share through his taxes. But to punish him because he happens to have five great kids is ridiculous. When I did a quick edition of the money grab of the water and sewer enterprise fund just for proposed for fy18 i came up with nearly three million dollars that the city is sucking out of the water and sewer enterprise fund out of both of them three million dollars

▶ 41:42 Speaker 1: you're charging to mr pelrine's family that ought to be born by some of the high value properties in the city through the tax base now i understand there's a prop two and a half limit Somebody in the city has to be an adult and say we have to spend within our means and within what the law allows us to spend under Prop 2 1⁄2. These are basic functions. You know, you're all running for election this year, right? Do you really want to go on record and say you're going to sock it to the Pellerine family, that you're going to do things against the law, against 165 Section 2B, that you're going to basically have a money grab because nobody here wants to make the hard decisions about what we really should be funding whether in the schools or the city it's just a big money grab it can't go forever it's not sustainable the growth rate you have of spending is going to bankrupt both the city and the water and sewer enterprise fund as time goes on something's going

▶ 42:52 Speaker 1: to break when will some of you start asking the right questions of the mayor of the city auditor

▶ 43:00 Speaker 1: The city auditor puts out a number of narratives year after year after year that all seem to be, you know, have all this self-reinforcing language. But, oh, by law, we're doing this and God damn it, we're doing it. Excuse the language. Right. And, oh, because of the law, we're required to do this.

▶ 43:20 Speaker 1: Well, Mr. The city auditor overstates the obligations of the city in some of those ways. And I believe misstates them in many times, in many ways, in many times. you know the indirect costs yes there's an argument you made but what the city has a benefit of the water and sewer enterprises of the water sewer infrastructure as i said before and remember we have the easy thing here we have get our water from mwra it's clean it's plentiful it's delivered to us in a great way with plenty of pressure we have a couple little areas where we boost the pressure those aren't significant cost factors on the sewer system mwra takes all our sewage. They build the plants to take care of them. They treat the sewage. They get rid of the sludge. They have the outfall tunnel. They maintain everything. We're not doing that. Doesn't anybody in this room get the idea that you're charging expenses to the rate payers for things, that you're charging rate payers costs that you don't even have in the city? It's time to get this stuff under control. And every year you wait is a year wasted and a year we get further in the hole. Now, there are critical decisions to make I'm not saying it's easy but you all wanted to run for office you wanted to sit in these seats and have the power make the decision make the decision make the legal decision make the right decision don't punish the water and sewer ratepayers because they have a few people in their family extra than the average for the decisions that you don't want to make in this room don't come here and make unanimous decisions all the time that's worthless have a debate have an argument let's see some some independent thinking let's see some creative approaches to things let's see some legal action by this board three million dollars I'm going to say when I calculate here very quickly is two million eight hundred and forty four thousand one hundred eighty nine dollars is what I came up with here that's the money grab that the city is taking out of the water and sewer enterprise fund that you're planning to for FY 18 those indirect costs most of them are specious you know there's some things but still I just looked it up here on the air it's gonna be impossible because you never label the the things but you know by the way if you're gonna show an indirect cost thing you don't just say how many employees you show how many FTE you'll be in charge to the water and sewer enterprise fund not how many employees you're sharing at some level right the FTE the full-time equivalent is what's relevant here so if somebody wanted to actually support the numbers they have here they would give you the FTE they haven't done that here but the legal department you know out of the sewer sewer fund nearly $24,000, right, to the sewer department. Let's see what they say to the water department. Another $24,000, so again, instead of $60,000 we had last year, now we have about $47,600 that you've taken from the rate payers to pay for the city solicitor's salary. I'm not picking on the city solicitor, that's one example. I could take any other thing here. The treasurer's office, really, 46,000 from the water and another 46,000 from the sewer? In the collector's office, the same thing? These numbers aren't real. They're made up. I'm being plain and outspoken about it because when I've tried to speak to you in a rational way and give you the data and provide the documentation, you just refuse to hear it and listen and act appropriately. That's why I'm here, being vociferous about it, and saying to you, obey the law. Respect the people of Melrose.

▶ 46:59 Speaker 1: Please. Something's got to change here. Maybe this election season's got to change, but maybe you all could do it tonight. You could start to say, what's the responsible amount here? Again, we went through these, what do you call them, consultants the last few years that gave, with all the money we spent on them and all the time and conversation here, not one bit of justification was made for cost of service analysis that would indicate that you could steal three million dollars a year from the water and sewer rate payers and then the money that you've stolen you're holding it all aside and what's that sitting there aside for you're not using it to the benefit of the water system you're not using the benefit of the sewer system you're holding it aside probably to have some you know behind the scene money grab later on to take that money for some other use instead of what the water and sewer people water sewer rate payers put it out for. Something needs to change here. You need to do your job. You need to I'm sure some of you have taken an oath so many times you can recite it by heart. I'd like you to respect the oath you take of office and obey the mass general laws. But still, simple decency would say you don't charge people for water and sewer more than what the costs of that system are. and that's what you've done year after year after year you've you've you've depended on the flowery language that comes out of the out of the staff of the city and the the the fallacy of the water and sewer rate committee as if they do any real work there it doesn't happen i go to those meetings you can't pretend any longer you need to take responsibility you and you and you and you and you and you and you and you and you sir you need to take responsibility for this system you are charged with it if you don't want to do the right thing don't run for office this fall do something else let somebody step in here who will take care of the city in a responsible way not keep doing over and over and over of of sticking it to the water and sewer rate payers and sticking other things in other ways as well sorry for being so vociferous tonight i've tried other things in the past and it hasn't worked maybe this will work tonight thank you anybody have any questions for me i'm glad to answer any questions to any degree that you have any uncertainty about the issues that i represent and and portray here as as you well know we don't

▶ 49:25 Speaker 1: do things up that way mr right but you don't have it you don't have boros thank you very much for your time i hope you take to heart what i said i hope you actually act in a responsible fashion as the alderman of our good city thank you are there any other members of the public wishing to come

▶ 49:42 Peter D. Mortimer: forward and be heard at this time seeing none is there a motion motion to close

▶ 49:48 Scott M. Forbes: the public hearing mr. chairman alderman Forbes has made a motion to close the

▶ 49:51 Peter D. Mortimer: public hearing duly seconded by alderman inferno point of order

▶ 50:00 Monica C. Medeiros: Alderman Medeiros are we gonna have any presentation from city staff at this

▶ 50:04 Speaker 5: public hearing or yes yes we are that's yeah just give me a chance and we'll get

▶ 50:08 Peter D. Mortimer: to it as we close the public portion of the public hearing and what I'll do is I will read the order there are three orders that are attached to this public hearing and then the appropriate city officials will come forward and speak on those orders the first order we have is order yes Alderman's work oh please vote

▶ 50:33 Speaker 4: on the closing of the public participation what did we need it was

▶ 50:35 Peter D. Mortimer: that point of order interrupted before the vote thank you a vote on the motion to close the public portion of the public hearing all in favor please say aye aye any opposed hearing none the public portion of the public hearing is