← City Council · 2016-10-17 · City Council Regular Meeting
Public Participation Public Works Committee
Agenda
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Transcript
▶ 0:38 Speaker 3: I pledge allegiance to the flag of the United States of America, and to the republic for which it stands, one nation under God, indivisible, with liberty and justice for all.
▶ 0:54 Peter D. Mortimer: Mr. President, I make a motion to open the floor for public participation. Second.
▶ 0:59 Speaker 1: Alderman Mortimer moves that we commence public participation. The motion is seconded by Alderman Forbes before I call for a vote on the motion. Everybody should be aware that this meeting is being videotaped and will be rebroadcast on local Melrose cable television. On the motion to suspend the rules, all those in favor? Aye. Anyone opposed? Motion passes, the rules are suspended. This is the portion of our meeting where any member of the general public can come to the table in the center of the room, identify themselves, and speak relative to any issue which is on the agenda for this evening. Is there anybody who wishes to speak?
▶ 1:42 Speaker 1: Come forward please. That's it. Anyone else? Motion to close public participation.
▶ 2:02 Speaker 4: Hi, my name's Jerry Rose. Thank you for having two of my most passionate topics on the agenda, info infiltration and education. Two with one.
▶ 2:18 Speaker 4: You know, absolutely, there's no question that we should vote to bond $540,500 at 0% interest to do inflow and filtration work with the extra benefit of getting $1.5-plus million free from the MWRA. No-brainer, right?
▶ 2:44 Speaker 4: The problem with that, though, is that if we limit it, again, as I've been saying for years here, to the money the MWRA provides us, that's what everybody else is using across the whole MWRA, and we don't make headway relative to everybody else to actually lower our water and sewer bills.
▶ 3:00 Speaker 4: Even if we save that much infiltration into the ground or that much inflow, if everybody else doesn't commensurate with us, our water rates don't go down, our sewer rates don't go down.
▶ 3:10 Speaker 5: So this idea that administration presents that, oh, we have a program now instead of projects.
▶ 3:17 Speaker 5: It's nice to be organized and know what we're doing and get the biggest bang for the buck. But if somebody doesn't take the lead and say we're going to invest substantially in I&I improvement in this city,
▶ 3:30 Speaker 6: we're going to be suffering and sitting here year after year and year complaining about our high sewer bills.
▶ 3:45 Speaker 5: Now, I heard two competing issues the other night at the Thursday night meeting.
▶ 3:51 Speaker 5: and and and I do want to interject here that there hasn't been good public
▶ 3:59 Speaker 6: process in my view for either of these issues we still haven't had you know
▶ 4:01 Speaker 5: when this is coming up there hasn't been an opportunity to hear the realm of all the issues that need to be addressed in inflow infiltration or in regards to
▶ 4:13 Speaker 5: modular classrooms but what I heard the other night was very telling I heard on On the one hand, we had our administration saying, oh, we're well below our debt limit, so we can easily do this. Pay no attention to the details of it. We're going to be 4% or 5% below that. No problem. But then on the other hand, I heard our administration saying, oh, well, you know, we got to look at our debt limit, and we don't want to do more I&I work maybe until FY20 because then something else will be coming off the debt, and so we'll be able to add more then.
▶ 4:44 Speaker 5: The two are integrated, right?
▶ 4:50 Speaker 6: Every bit of money we waste on a modular classroom project or for something that's not critical
▶ 4:58 Speaker 5: to doing that is then not available to us at some level for inflow and infiltration,
▶ 5:00 Speaker 6: which is the best investment we can possibly make in this district.
▶ 5:11 Speaker 5: Another element that stands out clearly to me is that we have this rush to do modular classes because, oh, heavens, we might not have room for kids in kindergarten next September, right? it's almost like the pork in Washington right you lay in something else it's not a part of that thing but we're going to pass it along with it anyway and
▶ 5:29 Speaker 6: irrespective of whether Horace Mann needs to have some better spaces or not
▶ 5:36 Speaker 6: that's not the issue why you're rushing right now about modular classrooms right Horace Mann is not going to take any more students next year with that
▶ 5:44 Speaker 6: renovation so those issues ought to be separated and I believe that there's a real good discussion to have around horace mann and around the schools in general that's not
▶ 5:52 Speaker 5: happened the mayor is willing to kick the can down the road as he described the other night
▶ 5:55 Speaker 6: about at some point in the future beyond me we have to have a conversation about the winter school
▶ 6:04 Speaker 5: well what i've seen this district do time and again right now is to put money into the schools
▶ 6:09 Speaker 5: without a valid master plan that addresses education facilities in our district all
▶ 6:13 Speaker 5: We're working on a master plan. As far as I can tell, we're not necessarily doing a good job around facilities with that.
▶ 6:21 Speaker 6: But there are so many issues that you're making this decision about that you don't have in the room with you.
▶ 6:28 Speaker 5: You don't have in the room that large elementary schools, very large ones, are much better academically for students,
▶ 6:40 Speaker 5: much better professional development-wise for teachers, much better economically for administration. you know this idea this lovely concept of you know neighborhood schools that we want to hold
▶ 6:46 Speaker 6: out this facade of oh aren't we so wonderful with neighborhood schools you know they aren't
▶ 6:53 Speaker 5: necessarily neighborhood schools as plenty of disappointed new homeowners will tell you they moved into the district of this school and suddenly their kid ends up over here that's not
▶ 7:02 Speaker 6: a neighborhood school you know the school district calls a school choice now and of course it's only
▶ 7:08 Speaker 5: your choice based on whether or not it fits their needs of where they can put you again these issues
▶ 7:13 Speaker 6: aren't present in your decision. They weren't present Thursday night in your decision. The
▶ 7:20 Speaker 5: other issue that certainly isn't in your decision that, you know, this NASDAQ, I don't even
▶ 7:28 Speaker 6: know what I want to call it. I don't want to even do it justice by calling it a study. I was around last November when they came here and presented the stuff. They told us
▶ 7:37 Speaker 5: nothing that we didn't already know. It wasn't already public information. And they made representations that frankly had no basis for anybody to make a decision on
▶ 7:45 Speaker 5: you can't make a decision today based on what they said validly based on what
▶ 7:51 Speaker 5: they said you can't make a valid decision on deciding to build up these
▶ 7:59 Speaker 5: modular classes because of what they said another larger issue about modular classrooms that that makes me wonder about them is that modular classrooms
▶ 8:05 Speaker 6: will be forever stuck at the elementary schools if the wave moves up into middle
▶ 8:11 Speaker 5: in high school at some point you can't just pick them up and go and bring them over to the fells way and put them on the the the cabbage patch or something it doesn't work right but and i know
▶ 8:24 Speaker 5: there are some people who are parochial about their kids and don't want their fifth grade is suddenly to be up at the middle school with all those nasty bad kids and who were you know at these little elementary schools before but the thing is is that fifth grade going to the middle
▶ 8:39 Speaker 5: school is a far better opportunity academically and socially for them than staying in what a lot of them feel is in a school that's not engaging them
▶ 8:49 Speaker 6: anymore they've already been there for five years they're done with it they
▶ 8:51 Speaker 5: want to move on but what are we going to do because a few parents called you or called mayor Dolan are called some school committee members suddenly we're going to say that oh oh you know we absolutely have to have all the
▶ 9:09 Speaker 5: fifth graders stay in the elementary schools educationally nobody made any
▶ 9:13 Speaker 6: investigation as to what would be good for our fifth graders or our eighth
▶ 9:18 Speaker 5: graders for that matter there's you know I can back up every proposal that I have
▶ 9:23 Speaker 5: and I hope you understand this about me I can back them up with data I can back them up with solutions you know the idea about being a fortune to house the administration somewhere I'd rather see you put some modular offices in the dead
▶ 9:36 Speaker 6: space between the middle school and high school to put administration there with one connection to the high school so they can use the bathroom when they want
▶ 9:42 Speaker 5: to you know that solves that solution now you've got eighth graders being able to mix in between the middle school and the high school as they need you've got
▶ 9:50 Speaker 6: fifth graders being able to be up in the middle school integrating with things
▶ 9:55 Speaker 5: the range of possibilities that's with that option you're foreclosing on if you agree to go ahead tonight with these modular classrooms I also want to bring
▶ 10:06 Speaker 5: into the room here the fact that you know you know I go to meetings and you know I pay attention you know I participate any opportunity that I'm given I went to that meeting in May that was supposed to be the meeting that everybody's referring to that we had the input from the community there was no community input we could write something on an index card and hand it in and I
▶ 10:29 Speaker 6: I can tell you none of the concerns I put in those index cards were ever brought up
▶ 10:31 Speaker 5: or addressed at that meeting.
▶ 10:34 Speaker 6: Is that valid public process?
▶ 10:38 Speaker 6: I've asked you here for better public process so many times around a variety of issues.
▶ 10:43 Speaker 5: In the short time you give me tonight, it does not do justice to the complicated decision
▶ 10:53 Speaker 5: that needs to be made. Now it's great for the administration to walk in here and say, oh, we've got a wonderful opportunity for you.
▶ 10:59 Speaker 6: Just vote for this and give us $4.4 million.
▶ 11:01 Speaker 5: I don't even know if the $4.4 includes the $400,000 for the architect or not.
▶ 11:07 Speaker 6: But it is more complicated than they present to you. I went to school building committee meetings.
▶ 11:13 Speaker 5: Not every one of them. But there wasn't a process where people were talking about what's the educational viability
▶ 11:17 Speaker 6: of modular classrooms versus an eighth grade academy and a fifth grade into the middle school.
▶ 11:24 Speaker 5: Middle schools in the country are grades five to eight, by the way.
▶ 11:26 Speaker 6: It's a great process where you actually can develop a really good culture around eighth
▶ 11:33 Speaker 5: graders actually being great integrated role models for fifth graders as they develop.
▶ 11:38 Speaker 5: It gives the eighth graders a good opportunity to stand up and be good humans when a lot
▶ 11:43 Speaker 6: of them might otherwise do something else, when you give them responsibility.
▶ 11:48 Speaker 5: Some of the best schools take their older kids and make them mentors for the younger kids and bring them through.
▶ 11:56 Speaker 5: aren't doing that here again i could go on and on and on with with so many of those things um
▶ 12:04 Speaker 5: i would love to be able to have an opportunity to do that and show you the information behind
▶ 12:12 Speaker 5: all these issues if you vote tonight for modular classrooms and the bond it's done a couple other
▶ 12:20 Speaker 5: quick points that i'd like to make we aren't getting the benefit of good competitive bidding in these projects you've all heard the administration here talking about oh our team with tapay and with with with charlie hay and with patrick and all these things and how wonderful it is well who's going to waste the time to bid out a project if it's already a done deal for tapay
▶ 12:41 Speaker 5: right how do we know somebody else who doesn't know us might come in and say hey i got a great idea that because i don't know you i'm able to see because i'm not embedded with you all the time
▶ 12:52 Speaker 5: we only got two bidders for the simple little design work we did what does that tell you
▶ 12:59 Speaker 5: it's supposed to be i mean i'm sure it'll be advertised properly but have we undermined our
▶ 13:07 Speaker 6: public policy goals of having good new exciting cost-effective solutions through a public bidding
▶ 13:10 Speaker 5: process that's open and available to everybody i i throw that out i mean when i hear the talk
▶ 13:16 Speaker 6: at these meetings sometimes certain things stand out and i i heard a lot of that at the school
▶ 13:19 Speaker 5: committee meeting i even heard it the other night uh you know the mayor's talking about their great team we've had them with the Lincoln and I can't remember all the different whether it's a Lincoln
▶ 13:25 Speaker 4: or Roosevelt they weren't with or whatever but you know the science labs and you know even doing the
▶ 13:42 Speaker 6: Hoover windows everything else in terms of water and sewer we've been over this before but still
▶ 13:51 Speaker 6: it goes unrebutted when administration presents this this idea that we have to take money from
▶ 13:57 Speaker 5: from people and stick it in an account and let it sit there forever, for perpetuity because
▶ 14:03 Speaker 6: we need, quote, some reserves for some future thing that's not happening is ridiculous.
▶ 14:06 Speaker 5: We needed that money yesterday. We needed that money last year, two years ago, three years ago, yet to do I&I work, what did we do with it? We stuck it in an account. It's
▶ 14:17 Speaker 6: doing nothing for us there. As long as we're making large capital improvements year by
▶ 14:22 Speaker 6: year into our water and sewer system we don't need to have those reserves there's three ways of paying
▶ 14:26 Speaker 6: for projects right you can pay for them operationally every year boom we're going to pay
▶ 14:33 Speaker 5: this money for something you can pay for them later on by getting the money now through a bond and paying them over time or you can prepay them and have the money there to pay for them now
▶ 14:42 Speaker 6: we're wasting the resources of our water and sewer rate payers by letting as much money sitting in
▶ 14:49 Speaker 5: there like is it a million dollars now between the two i don't know it's you know there's so
▶ 14:51 Speaker 6: many numbers are thrown around there it's crazy and the surplus this year is going to be huge
▶ 14:59 Speaker 5: right the problem the problem is is that like i and i is the thing that gives us the best return
▶ 15:07 Speaker 6: on investment had we done i and i instead of these water meters we'd start to be seeing in
▶ 15:14 Speaker 5: this fiscal year the benefit of that but we're not and again i want to emphasize that until we
▶ 15:21 Speaker 5: get together don't just act like oh we've got this great program until we get together and actually invest substantial money in I&I it's not going to help us all the money you bond and spend if you do it the same rate as
▶ 15:29 Speaker 6: everybody else with MWRA funds it gets us nowhere so where's the solution going
▶ 15:36 Speaker 5: to come from it's not coming from the mayor it's not coming from the water and
▶ 15:42 Speaker 5: sewer department it's not coming from the water and sewer committee when
▶ 15:46 Speaker 6: When there's a gap like this in the city, where does it come from? Does the buck stop with you? Do you have to do something or are you powerless to do something?
▶ 15:53 Speaker 5: Do you have to wait for the mayor to say, oh, we should bond something out for I&I and
▶ 15:57 Speaker 6: make it work, we should use reserves?
▶ 15:59 Speaker 5: You do have the power here. You know you do. At one level or another, you have the power to make something work. It's not happening. So thank you again for voting to bond the $540,500, which allows us to get free over
▶ 16:16 Speaker 5: 1.5 million, and the 540,000 is a zero-interest loan. And that's great for the work that'll do.
▶ 16:25 Speaker 6: But if we don't do better than everybody else, we're stuck in the same hamster wheel we've always been in.
▶ 16:33 Speaker 5: And, you know, the modular classrooms and spending extra money on Horace Mann, and,
▶ 16:39 Speaker 5: you know, if we already – last point, and then I'll go. know we already went 26 years violating federal law with Americans with Disabilities Act 1990 when President Bush signed that 26 years we've gone
▶ 16:53 Speaker 6: without making that accessible we have other schools we haven't made accessible either certainly nothing's fully accessible except a new building
▶ 17:02 Speaker 5: you know you really should look at what the thresholds are but how much money
▶ 17:04 Speaker 6: you put into Horace man before you are forced to make it all compliant you're
▶ 17:06 Speaker 5: probably under that but really do we want to keep investing more money in
▶ 17:13 Speaker 6: in these schools that aren't doing anything for us especially the smallest ones
▶ 17:21 Speaker 6: and not to figure out a way of making our facilities provide opportunities for us educationally because right now our facilities and it's not whether they're old or new
▶ 17:34 Speaker 5: it's not whether they're pretty or ugly you know i i know places in india that in the middle of
▶ 17:38 Speaker 6: nowhere that are the most decrepit places in the world that do some of the best education right what it's about is providing the right structure educationally not physically and so
▶ 17:53 Speaker 5: please i know they want you to rush it i know it's presented to you and you have to vote today or it's not going to happen and everybody's and you're going to have people screaming that there's
▶ 18:03 Speaker 6: nobody in school next september but can you take a step back can you separate the horace man from
▶ 18:08 Speaker 5: the other modular things can you take a step back from both of them and say what's the opportunity at the middle school in high school because when you have a wave goes through there and now you have too many kids you're not going
▶ 18:19 Speaker 6: to take sixth graders and put them back in the modular classrooms at Horace Mann
▶ 18:24 Speaker 6: and Winthrop are you you know there are so many issues there I'd like the opportunity to have the issues fully discussed in vetted and have some
▶ 18:34 Speaker 5: rebuttal to the the the pre-gone conclusions that are brought here by
▶ 18:41 Speaker 1: administration thank you thank you sir anybody else who wishes to speak this
▶ 18:44 Peter D. Mortimer: evening motion to close public participation second Alderman Mortimer
▶ 18:47 Speaker 1: moves to close public participation motion is seconded by Alderman Porcel on the motion all those in favor aye opposed motion passes motion to