ORDER-2016-71 : Be it ordered that the Director of Public Works implement a program to monitor snow removal on residential sidewalks and design a city-wide sidewalk map. The Director of Public Works will report findings to the Board of Aldermen by April 4, 2016.

Transcript (~18 min @ 19:34)

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▶ 19:25 Gail Infurna: Is there a second by Alderman Lemmerman? All those in favor of closing public participation, say aye. Aye. All those opposed? Public participation is closed, and we have one order before us this evening. It's order number 2016-71, be it ordered that the Director of Public Works implement a program to monitor snow removal on residential sidewalks and design a citywide sidewalk map. The Director of Public Works will report findings to the Board of Aldermen by April 4th, 2016. I submitted this order as a spinoff from Alderman Wright when he submitted one looking for an ordinance. We thought we should have some sort of information to kind of justify seeing what we can do for an ordinance. And it's very interesting that we're talking about snow on while we're in a heat wave here.

▶ 20:17 Monica C. Medeiros: A motion to suspend the rules to hear from Mr. Shenna.

▶ 20:20 Gail Infurna: Second the motion. Alderman Medeiros makes a motion to suspend the rules. Is second by? Second. Second by Alderman McAteer-Margolis. All those in favor of suspension of the motion, say aye. Aye. All those opposed, we are now in suspension. Welcome, Mr.

▶ 20:36 Speaker 12: John. Good evening. How are you?

▶ 20:37 Gail Infurna: Good. Good. I think you have some information that you were going to pass out to the board this evening,

▶ 20:42 Speaker 12: your findings. I do. For the record, I just want to say I'd rather be here talking about snow and a heat wave than talking about snow and a blizzard. our engineers in the wintertime did some analysis of sidewalk conditions during snowstorms and what they did was put together a brief survey and I just want to walk everyone through this and I want to pass this out for informational purposes and if there's any follow-up tonight or in the upcoming weeks just reach out and we could try to answer questions and attempts to address the

▶ 21:24 Speaker 12: issue I've also emailed this package to everyone so that you could focus on the third attachment in this package on your computers if you want to zoom in and out of certain areas but over the course of the 2015-16 winter seasons members of our engineering division conducted a curbside survey study to determine basically who was shoveling and who's not sidewalks three storms were evaluated and are used as the representative sample throughout this model again this wasn't a typical winter in terms of the amount of snowstorms the frequency of the snowstorms and the amount of accumulation you got out of snowstorms but we did go out three times on the 24th of January on February 8th and on April 4th so to conduct this study the first thing our engineering division did was use the geographic information system the GIS aerial maps to identify where exactly the sidewalks are and they identified residential parcels that contain sidewalks along their frontage this created a base map that they used to monitor moving forward through the winter and it created a base map that now we have to move forward into other winters after each storm engineers drove the city ward by ward marking down parcels that left significant areas of snow along their sidewalk now as part of the part of the

▶ 23:01 Speaker 12: preparation of this map attention was paid to sidewalks and properties that the city maintained and also sidewalks that had frontages along two roads with the data compiled the attached comprehensive summary spreadsheet that I want to walk everyone through and map detailing these observations were created the summary spreadsheets break down by Ward the number of parcels with sidewalks and the percentages and totals of parcels that shoveled for all three storms or one or two of them so i just want to walk everyone through the spreadsheet which is the second attachment you can see we started with identifying the number of parcels that had number of parcels in each ward then the number of parcels that had sidewalks in each ward then the percentages of those parcels that we plowed as a city as a as a department we we um plow about 30 percent of the sidewalks in melrose the summary totals are all the way on the left the bolded box is what i want to spend some time bringing to your attention this evening on average and in total throughout the city 92 we found that 92 percent of parcels in melrose

▶ 24:30 Speaker 12: actually do shovel um that's a pretty good amount of parcels to find that do shovel it's broken down by ward it's broken down by you can see people who missed one storm people who missed two storm what's what's even better to see is that the amount of people who didn't shovel all three storms was less than one percent so although eight to ten percent of the parcels that were observed didn't shovel all three only want less than one percent of it of them didn't shovel at least once so that's in shot form what it looks like what it looks like in map form is the third piece and this has been emailed to you this evening as we were working on the format a little bit you should be able to zoom in and out of this PDF file to look at streets in each ward and you can see that it's kind of monkey see monkey do and in some neighborhoods where I don't shovel because my neighbor doesn't shovel and when the neighbor across the street sees the two of us not shoveling I don't do it either we we put this together just to show that we're seeing a similar type of pattern with curbside recycling survey that we're out doing right now to see who's recycling who's not recycling how do we improve our recycling rate and we're noticing that there are some clusters and neighborhoods that could

▶ 26:04 Speaker 12: use improvement these are the statistics again only after three storms but it's more statistics than we had at this point last year or at this point last fall when there was debate and discussion as to whether a in a bulkier sidewalk ordinance was in fact required so if there are any questions I'd be

▶ 26:29 Gail Infurna: more than willing to answer questions followed by President Kahn going back to

▶ 26:37 Robert A. Boisselle: the map the yellow line and board 4 indicates a the snowplow route is that correct correct in the little pink squares indicate not plowed or not shoveled frontage is not shoveled okay but if the plow is going through I mean how do you make that decision it's not being shoveled if the plow is going

▶ 27:04 Speaker 12: through that particular street so there there are some that are corner lots there are some that the sidewalk the city sidewalk does only one side it's difficult to look at it that scale and there are some you should blow it up then yeah and honestly there are some that we missed and it was this is a very good exercise for even our own operation there are there are some frontages that we had difficulty going through with the size of the equipment we had to make our our own adjustments so you'll see that too along some routes where there are some frontages that we missed and we use this as a guide as well to improve our

▶ 27:44 Speaker 10: own operation okay thank you thank you president cut thank you madam chairman

▶ 27:51 Speaker 7: this this gathering of data was prompted by some proposed ordinances to find people for not shoveling snow and things of that nature and i remember listening to myself when i said that i would not support such an order and i did not think it was necessary and that i felt that for the most part the city was doing a decent job shoveling our streets now three storms isn't going to tell the story forever but um it seems to me that if one half of one percent of the city residential parcels are not being shoveled per storm that that is not a problem that makes me want to pass an ordinance to find people uh for not shoveling their sidewalks basically based on on what appears to be the scope of the problem. We just did receive this information tonight and perhaps the Public Works Department, although they're going to have to wait a while, would like to gather more data on this, but I'm happy to see that such a infinitesimal percentage of the sidewalks are not being shoveled. I feel confident that my position was correct the last time and it would be correct again

▶ 29:22 Monica C. Medeiros: disorder is put forward again what's that alderman Medeiros thank you uh yes i i'd like to say i agree i'm i'm glad to see that it is such a small percentage and point out i do see in in some instances there are certainly neighborhoods and in specific streets that are you know cul-de-sacs or very kind of off the beaten path, and I can see why perhaps those residents, even though they're supposed to be shoveling their walk, might not. What I'm wondering is, since we do have this detailed data, is there a way for us to go out and educate those specific parcel owners and let them know that, of course, you're supposed to shovel your walkway and maybe let them know some of the resources that are available? I know that's shoveling lists and things like that on the mayor's blog if there are you know people who are you know I know I can see one list here where somebody's been sick at the house and maybe they might need assistance is there a way that we can reach out to these individual parcel owners ahead of

▶ 30:28 Speaker 12: next winter storm you know it's a very good point and hey last year there was lengthy debate whether to change the ordinance and the ordinance wasn't changed it didn't stop us from changing how we run our operation I think one one of the main goals of our department is to produce safe travel during a storm and now in today's world more importantly after storm especially in a community that doesn't have busing that where the kids rely so much on walking so safe travel doesn't end with roadways it now goes on to other modes of transportation and most importantly pedestrians we have the information we could elect to enforce we could elect to educate if we choose the educate education route you know we put a put a flyer together try to remind people do the right thing this is a great community that seems to do the right thing and does rise up at times whether it's to shovel a hydrant whether it's clear catch basin if that's the will of this board that's something that I'll put the resources that we have and our department to work on this coming winter we don't have unlimited resources but we were able to put this together on some you know during storms and I'm sure we can do some outreach and see how it see how it works if that's the will of the board but again you know anything that we can do to improve the safety of the community is something that we would

▶ 32:05 Speaker 4: support in Public Works yes thank you Alderman McAteer Margolis thank you um

▶ 32:09 Mary Beth McAteer-Margolis: thank you for putting this together and having your staff look at this it is encouraging I think to see that we are where where we more or less thought we would would be I just wondered it seems like sometimes there is confusion from the public on what the routes are that the city plows does it change annually I was trying to remember when my kids were little and walking to school at one year it was one side of the street one year it was another or something is that no

▶ 32:41 Speaker 12: case or no I can speak to the last decade is decade or so we have really not altered them great maybe there is a neighborhood that needed an extension to get on to the sidewalk route that's a neighborhood that saw change in population or the type of families that lived in it the the school routes are created in conjunction with the school department we feed off the information they give us of how the kids are getting to their schools we post them the beginning of every winter so that families are aware we post them on the school websites we post them on our websites I know the mayor has blogged it the last three winters at least to try to get people to see these are the sidewalks we do and we encourage people to get on to those routes there's a particular pocket or neighborhood pocket that now has a change and the type of people that live there and we need to get those kids out we'll do that but

▶ 33:44 Mary Beth McAteer-Margolis: that really hasn't happened in the last yeah I just I remember hearing about the fells way which I guess we plowed the sidewalk on the fells way we do pieces

▶ 33:50 Speaker 12: of it but the DCR is doing more and more every year right and one side being not

▶ 33:54 Mary Beth McAteer-Margolis: done and having difficulty for you know some of the ward two residents who were kind of in that in one of those pockets and and I also just wondered in some of our more dense neighborhoods if if there was any indication that it was difficult for residents to shovel and maybe not so much this year but in past years because of not having room to put the snow and if that ever comes in to play with the

▶ 34:28 Speaker 12: city's decision as to where to plow we set the roots and we stick with the roots but human nature the more it snows and the heavier it gets and the less room that gets the less people shovel you know it's almost like I okay put up the white flag I'm not doing it I'm done walk on the street but whereas a winter like this it's you know at times initially it's fun to shovel and then it's like all right it's not that bad and then I want to just break the shovel in half and never see snow again I think we were coming off a winter where people really didn't mind doing it right whereas two years ago I think it was a different story so you're right but no we typically stick with our roots and we start with our roots we stay with our roots and because we would have the same issue if we all of a sudden halfway through the winter decided okay let's go do a particular run of sidewalk we don't know where the grass is we don't know where the property lines is whereas you know we kind of follow our way as we

▶ 35:32 Mary Beth McAteer-Margolis: repeat storm after storm so is it your thought that perhaps going forward the best approach would be to either blanket the whole city with a notice at the beginning of the winter or maybe have people go maybe have some of your staff go out again and then do a targeted drop of houses that haven't shoveled and just give them a notice as a reminder or don't have any recommendation for how to

▶ 35:59 Speaker 12: I think my recommendation is to keep the discussion alive the good news is that there's 92 90 92 90 to 95 percent of this community to doing the right thing the bad news is that this 5% to 10% that typically does sometimes don't and you know really shouldn't let those people slide everyone should do the right thing and you know we shouldn't be happy until everybody does whether that's done through enforcement that's done through that's the will of the board but that's

▶ 36:29 Speaker 12: definitely something that I'll keep full in the forefront of our bill you know our resources and public works there in the winter so with that in mind madam

▶ 36:41 Mary Beth McAteer-Margolis: chairman would you accept a motion to retain this order in committee second

▶ 36:46 Gail Infurna: Alderman McAteer Margolis makes motion to remain this back to committee second by Alderman Boisselle are there any further questions any further discussion

▶ 36:59 Scott M. Forbes: just a just a quick point and I agree with the dialogue that's been brought up up here I'm really focused on the the number of 352 which is the number of parcels that didn't shovel during the study we had a mild winter three storms he had 352 parcels that didn't shovel out of those three storms 79 didn't shovel for two out of those three storms so in the best interest I think the reason why this order was even brought up was in the interest of public safety because it only takes one incident with either one child or one person walking on a sidewalk that has to move into the street and I don't think that we want to be there to you know the reason why this was put in the place is so we can avoid something like that to happen it's the best interest of public safety I would definitely like to keep the discussion going as we go so I recommend that we

▶ 37:48 Gail Infurna: keep this in committee thank you any further discussion being on all those in favor of placing this on hold say aye aye all those opposed this motion will be remanded back to the committee of public work and that's the our only order this evening for public work is there a motion to adjourn second Alderman Lemmerman makes a motion to adjourn seconded by Alderman Boycelle all those in favor aye all those opposed the evening is now adjourned