Public Participation

Transcript (~11 min @ 18:40)

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▶ 18:44 Peter D. Mortimer: Mr. President, I make a motion to open the floor for public participation.

▶ 18:47 Speaker 2: Second. Second, Mortimer moves that we commence public participation. The motion is seconded by Alderman Boisselle. this is the point in time where any member of the general public may address us relative to any order that is on our agenda for the evening on the motion all those in favor aye aye anyone opposed motion passes sir could you identify yourself please my name is jerry morose i reside at 62

▶ 19:08 Speaker 5: mount vernon street i had to look at the paper to figure that out um anyway i'm here to talk about order 2017-124 and i know you just had a conversation about it in the prior committee meeting but a couple points i think i'd like to make um the mass general laws are already in chapter 186 section 22 provides that landlords can sub-meter if they have a primary meter from the city they can right now sub-meter as long as they divide up the buildings appropriately and do the right certification that they can actually then build tenants for the use of their water separately we don't need to actually have a second city meter in the home to be able to do that the problem we have here why okay so chapter 186 section 22 you don't believe you don't you said wrong so okay let's well but he's saying wrong but okay but this is it talks about sub metering

▶ 20:11 Francis X. Wright Jr.: dwelling units in in mr president if i may yeah okay if he's going to direct the question to me me i'll be happy to answer it yes you can sub meter but when you sub meter everything's being built through one meter right therefore two units in a two family or two unit building is going to be in a situation where you're more likely to reach tier two or tier three my point

▶ 20:31 Speaker 5: exactly that's where i'll go with this okay so i'll finish i'll finish that you said wrong so

▶ 20:36 Speaker 2: why don't we proceed with public participation please okay so as i was saying chapter 186

▶ 20:39 Speaker 5: section 22 provides that a landlord can sub meter a building and provide separate bills from the landlord to those tenants that Thorp still one meter from the city in the building that's what i was establishing originally and that promulgates through 105 cmr 410.354 i think it is that the the regulations around that having established that now the issue we have at hand here is that the city of Melrose has this tiered

▶ 21:15 Speaker 6: water rate that causes so many problems downstream downstream from tearing

▶ 21:19 Speaker 5: the water rate that's why we have condominiums up in arms paying way too

▶ 21:29 Speaker 6: much money it's why we have two family owner-occupied buildings wanting to do these things to try to get around the craziness that all flows from this

▶ 21:41 Speaker 5: tiered water rate I've established here for a number of years that the tiered water rate isn't defensible there is not a conservation benefit to it has been claimed Thorp no fairness issue that we have to somehow penalize families they have more people in them we don't need to penalize condominiums because

▶ 22:03 Speaker 6: they use more water in and basically this order would be completely

▶ 22:06 Speaker 5: unnecessary if we didn't have the tiered water rate structure that we have now and that only started i'll point out just several years ago we never had it prior to that so my contention is that

▶ 22:27 Speaker 5: if we were to take a step back to a rational water rate and sewer rate structure

▶ 22:33 Speaker 5: that didn't bring up a non-issue in terms of cost to the city or anything else about a tiered water

▶ 22:43 Speaker 6: rate structure, that would be the simple thing. Instead, for the last three or four years here,

▶ 22:49 Speaker 5: all we've done is talk about trying to mitigate the damage of this tiered water rate system. At the water and sewer committee meetings, the condominiums, the apartment buildings,

▶ 22:57 Speaker 6: they all come in because it's all causing everybody a problem if the board would simply take a step back from the tiered water rate this isn't an issue

▶ 23:08 Speaker 5: landlords can then sub meter their properties and be able to pass through

▶ 23:15 Speaker 5: the actual costs without trying to say well you know you know well because of the tiered rate it's more money and so how do we build that to the to the

▶ 23:24 Speaker 5: tenants it may be unintended consequences from the board's point of

▶ 23:29 Speaker 6: view of what's happened here but frankly there is rational defensible appropriate

▶ 23:38 Speaker 5: fair equitable system of applying water rates and that would be with a flat rate structure it also complies contrary to some other people that that imply that

▶ 23:50 Speaker 5: somehow it's illegal based on mass general laws that that says that you

▶ 23:55 Speaker 5: can't have a decreasing rate block structure you need to have an increasing rate block structure that fairly reflects the resource demand and the truth is that nobody here in all the years and all your consultants has ever expressed any resource demand that cost the city more money for a higher user of

▶ 24:16 Speaker 5: water and I have certainly asserted and I think forth the proof of it the data

▶ 24:20 Speaker 6: that shows that higher water users of Melrose are already

▶ 24:25 Speaker 5: paying more than what would be by most measures their fair

▶ 24:27 Speaker 6: share of the water system because

▶ 24:33 Speaker 5: since we don't have high base rates

▶ 24:36 Speaker 6: the volumetric flow of water how we bill from basically applies to a lot of the capital improvement of the system

▶ 24:42 Speaker 5: and the fact is that the higher users are paying more than their

▶ 24:47 Speaker 6: proportionate share by unit or by structure, then they would be paying, if we had, I might

▶ 24:55 Speaker 5: have misspoken there, but they're paying more than their proportionate share by virtue of using a high volume of water.

▶ 25:09 Speaker 5: So instead of going through more contortions to try to mitigate the harms of the tiered

▶ 25:12 Speaker 6: rate structure, it would be so simple. It would be a breath of fresh air to have a flat water rate structure, a flat sewer rate structure. Let people have their second meters if they

▶ 25:23 Speaker 5: want it. Let's do the 90 percent or 95 percent of the water use for the sewer use if you

▶ 25:30 Speaker 6: want. But there are historical metrics of water rates and water use that we can use

▶ 25:47 Speaker 5: would scale everything back you'd be calmer about it i'd be calmer about it and we could get back to some to actually talking about the real issues in the water and sewer system which are the fact that more than half of the sewerage we give to mwra did not pass through anybody's house in melrose those are the issues that need attention so i'd rather much rather the water and sewer committee

▶ 26:08 Speaker 5: worry about that than worry about whether we're going to have a landlord be able to put a second city meter in their home and under what circumstances how you make that work and everything else and

▶ 26:20 Speaker 5: you know i i have to apologize i missed the conversation in your committee meeting but i am a little bit puzzled maybe somebody can can inform me about this that i know the the property down at oak grove oak grove village apartments down there my understanding was that you know that those are units those are rentals they certainly went and actually had the city installed at a large cost to them meters for the units down there was my understanding of what they did a few years ago and i can't imagine how they could do it there but the owner of a of a two family dwelling couldn't do it for the two families in that dwelling maybe i'm missing something there certainly um um you know i don't know all the issues about everything but it seems to me that if you can do it for a few hundred units why you can't do it for two again maybe Thorp some some

▶ 27:16 Speaker 5: specific thing i don't know about but to recap we could even this year whether the water and sewer committee brings it to the board or not the board in using the rate model spreadsheet that we got from raftelis woodcock last year we could actually calculate a fair reasonable effective water and

▶ 27:36 Speaker 5: and sewer rate and frankly we could if we go back to the city's fiscal year as a July 1st the time to change it that would be an appropriate time to change it as well it doesn't have to be contentious we can make certain we

▶ 27:48 Speaker 6: receive the revenues from our water and sewer system that we need but more

▶ 27:57 Speaker 6: importantly we can take the all the headaches out of that process and put

▶ 28:01 Speaker 5: the headaches into paying attention to reducing the huge expenses in our water and sewer system that make us i think i saw the last the last data that i saw maybe i think maybe we're third in the mwra third worst in the mwra section second to chelsea and malden i think currently according to the uh how leaky our sewer pipes are so thank you for your time um i don't know if the water and sewer committee is going to take that issue up at the meeting tomorrow it um but i think the board could take a step back and actually say to the water and sewer committee why don't you offer

▶ 28:42 Speaker 6: what what flat rate would be and then we don't have to worry about all these cascading issues

▶ 28:46 Speaker 5: that that are that are so troublesome for so many people in melrose and that make things way more complicated than it ever needs to be thank you so much thank you sir motion to close public

▶ 28:57 Speaker 2: participation mr president second yes since it appears that we don't have anyone else in the audience wishing to speak alderman mortimer is moving to close public participation the motion is seconded by alderman Boisselle on the motion all those in favor anyone opposed motion passes public participation for this evening is concluded our meeting tonight as with all of our meetings is being recorded by mmtv will be rebroadcast on television in accordance with the massachusetts