Public Participation

Transcript (~25 min @ 0:55)

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▶ 0:38 Peter D. Mortimer: This meeting is being recorded by MMTV in accordance with the Massachusetts Open Meeting Law. It is available for future viewing on the Melrose Television website and the MMTV website. Motion to open public participation, Mr. Chairman. Alderman Forbes has made a motion to open the floor for public participation, duly seconded by Alderman Boycelle. All in favor, please say aye. Aye. Any opposed, hearing none, public participation is now open. members of the public wishing to come forward please do so now good evening mr. Lillo how are you good how are you tonight good so you know so Julie deal

▶ 1:26 Speaker 1: alone circuit Street and I just have some observations because I know I would love to be able to ask questions but I know we can't do that so it's just some observations that if it could be made public or answers could be found that would be great so in looking at some of this information it was very apparent to me a couple of things stood out in the indirect cost for water and sewer so I'm talking water and sewer health insurance under the water is going up to about 24 percent health insurance under the sewer is going up almost 76 percent and it

▶ 2:05 Speaker 1: would not knowing what that is I mean you have to assume that there's probably salaries and benefits that have been allocated but that's a lot of salary and lot of benefits allocated in one year and I think it would be great for all of us to be able to understand what salaries what benefits were allocated because the second piece is even though that went up 76% pensions for those

▶ 2:32 Speaker 1: water went up 2.26 and for sewer 1.64 which it's either we we've allocated a lot of newer salaries that don't have the pet don't have as much pension something there's something that's a little askew with those those statistics and so for me it would just it would be great to understand why there's that significant an increase in the health insurance and then the second piece I

▶ 3:05 Speaker 1: just wanted to bring up was you know I'm getting to be my own expert in what leaks and what doesn't in this the pipes but understanding that we are sort of at a place where we have a lot of leakage or seems like we do I was looking at some of the MWRA stuff and trying to figure out how did we get to where we are today where it almost see it feels like we're almost in crisis with the pipes and the leaks and all of that and it that may not be true but that's sort what it it feels like or is perceived as I watch this and so as I looked at that I noticed under 360 CMR 12 of the MWRA that it says all portions of the municipal distribution system shall be surveyed for leakage no luck no less than once every two years and then it goes on to talk about if leaks are found the time frame for which they need to be repaired and in no case does it allow really more than six months it says as expeditiously as possible given the amount of gallons that might be leaking out and so for me it be it's trying to understand how if we're doing that and complying with that how did we get to where we are today where now we're going to spend and have to spend all kinds of money to repair what appears to me to be all kinds of leaks and then the last thing that I think I would love to know where I can find this information is the city is supposed to report to the MWRA an annual report on leakage and they have to report what they found what they're doing to repair it all of that and that maybe it's public I can't I haven't been able to find it anywhere so if it is public I think we should all be able to find that easy and if it's not can it be made public so that's all I have thank you thank you very much thank

▶ 5:17 Speaker 2: you mr. little are there any other members of the public mrs. Corker

▶ 5:24 Speaker 3: welcome nice to see you Terry Corker malice Cargill Street and I'm here speaking on behalf of Philip Taymor who could not be here this evening and had this statement that he wanted read the Board of Aldermen again meets tonight to consider 2017 water and sewer rate matters based on the orders and information attached to the meeting agenda the board appears ready to continue the city's past unsupportable rate setting practices casually dismiss significant unresolved ratepayer issues and ignore the fact that its own consultants have not been able to provide support for its dramatically tiered rates the city cannot substantiate its dramatic billing rate differentials across consumption tiers either based on cost of service conservation considerations or affordability considerations Melrose is top tier combined water and sewer rate is an unsupported 93% higher than its own lowest tier when excluding MWRA charges which are a constant per unit of consumption the city has not conducted a cost of service analysis which and that would show that the vast majority of its rate payers are, in fact, similar to each other and equally costly to service per unit of consumption regardless of volume. Conservation cannot explain significant rate differentials across tiers, either as MWRA district water and capacity are abundant. And affordability considerations cannot explain rate differentials. No other public utility provider would ever be allowed to charge one set of customers at rates anywhere near as dramatically highly and arbitrarily tiered as the cities in order to merely and excessively subsidize lower tier customers. Subsidies for needy residents certainly are appropriate, but they should be targeted at the truly needy. The vast majority of Melrose residents can afford and should pay unsubsidized rates. Contrary to the recent astonishing statement by the city's rate consultants that the setting of actual billing rates should be based on city policy as opposed to data, rate setting primarily is and should be simple, mechanical, and straightforward. forward. Rates should be based on facts, not judgment-laden policy whimsy with the overlay of only modest and reasonable judgment. In fact, MWRA regulation requires that any graduated rates reflect user cost impacts, and the city is therefore not in compliance. The city needs to collapse its current tiered rate structure greatly, and now, to at least reduce the size of the unsupportable huge subsidy paid by higher tier users. Also, the city has still not provided any compelling reason it changed the billing practice for its own internal water and sewer consumption several years back when it began charging rate payers instead of the city budget and effectively increased annual rate payer costs by $270,000, or 2%. Initially, the city said the change was advised or required by the Massachusetts Department of Revenue. Then the city simply said that the current practice was, quote, good and appropriate, unquote. Now the city has produced a May 13, 2016 Powers & Sullivan LLC opinion that it cannot bill the city budget for its internal consumption because enterprise fund question number 17 says in part that, quote, an enterprise fund should not bill another city department for services provided, unquote. This is a complete misinterpretation of question number 17, about which I have talked specifically and at length with the Massachusetts Department of Revenue local services division. Furthermore, this new opinion from Powers and Sullivan contradicts its previous April 28, 2016 opinion that, quote, while there is nothing to prohibit charging departments for usage, the city's current system is considered good practice, unquote. The Massachusetts Department of Revenue accepts either the city's old or current practice, is no preference and did not recommend the change to the City. The City unnecessarily changed its billing practice. It did so in order to raise revenue at the expense of ratepayers and it only disclosed the change this year. The City should reinstate its prior billing practice immediately and make ratepayers whole going forward. Finally, the Board of Aldermen never has challenged the 30 percent cumulative increase in City controlled water and sewer spending for 2015 and 2016, which increase remains institutionalized in the 2017 spending plan. This increase was spread widely across both most direct spending categories and allocated indirect charges from the property tax budget. Huge savings opportunities are possible, one, from either reversing these spending increases and or two from capturing the savings payback which would which should have but hasn't been delivered by that spending as well as three from efforts to control to reduce system inflow and infiltration in general i find it amazing that the city has made a relatively simple management task so convoluted rate setting and management should be straightforward for a water and sewer operation 65 percent of which costs an associated associated effort are provided by the mwra i wonder what goes on within the city's property tax budget where much harder choices abound and more difficult judgments are required philip taymor 44 larchmont road thank you thank you

▶ 11:49 Peter D. Mortimer: mrs corcamelis and that was on behalf of philip taymor as mrs corcamelis mentioned good evening

▶ 12:02 Speaker 3: good evening would you uh state your name lisa halloran 27 whittier street thank you very much

▶ 12:07 Speaker 3: miss halloran please proceed thank you i had a few questions my first question was i never understood why trash was put into water and sewer i don't understand why that had to change and if it stays as it is why we haven't implemented a pay as you throw policy i don't understand why if i have maybe one bag of trash every two weeks i'm paying the same amount as a family who has five or six that are putting out three or four bags of trash makes no sense to me if we're trying to have people recycle more then i think that would be a good way to implement recycling if they have to pay to throw instead of having a trash fee in with the water and sewer my other question is rates so if you have a second water meter I don't understand why there's a charge for $35 every single month that you have a second water meter if I'm not using the sewer to have that meter running why am I paying every single month to use that when I'm not using it I'm only using it at best maybe three to four months that's my question thank you very much thank you very much

▶ 13:44 Speaker 4: good evening mr morose hi i'm jerry morose um from the last two um statements you know mr taymor has been here in front of you a number of times he spent the year with me through the water and sewer enterprise committee um and you know really the issues we raise have never had a fair hearing um that's my first point my second point is that i find it really interesting with the point raised by mrs halloran that um you know for our trash disposal for which we have zero fixed costs um we're charging it and it's all marginal costs by the tonnage right but we're charging residents as a fixed rate but then by whatever you know reasoning there is on the water and suicide most of our costs are fixed and we're charging biased on the marginal the volumetric rate um i mean it just shows how hypocritical the conclusions the city comes to are in in that in that if there was a principle behind what what was done here if if you were operating on a basic set of principles and going from there to establish what the policies of the city were you wouldn't have these discrepancies you wouldn't have all the discrepancies that mr taymor and i have outlined in this water and sewer process now for a number of years you know i i looked back today at some of the things from last year and i completely forgot that you know it was last year when i looked up pioneer consulting and found out you know we were paying a non-existent corporation to work on behalf of the city for water and sewer rates i hope we're doing better with rap telus woodcock this year but i haven't bothered to look them up What I want to get to here is that, yes, I have come here and have said things, and I've gone to Water and Sewer Committee and said things, but none of the issues I raise have been fairly evaluated and heard. if you proceed with some of these proposed rate structures here tonight you will be acting not in the same scale but still indefensibly in terms of setting and water and sewer rates without a rational basis for it that's what happened when Gardner came to town that's what's happening now these rates aren't showing us what you need and in fact one thing that I really stands out to me is that we hired a consultant to analyze our system, but yet our consultant hasn't even brought to you the data of our water and sewer system that even Pioneer Consulting did. They haven't sat here with a chart showing what the leakage of our system is. They haven't sat here with a chart showing us inflow and infiltration. They haven't given you any basic information whereby you could independently come to a valid conclusion. Right now, as I would expect, you're sitting here with no information other than what some 20 proposed rate structures are. How can you possibly evaluate those without understanding the data that goes behind it? I've asked here a number of times to have a real hearing on these issues, schedule a time that we can have some dialogue. let the consultants things be heard and let's have a rebuttal to them let's have some question and answering of them because frankly what the consultant has proposed and all those rate structures they've touched on a few little elements of things that are worthwhile but they haven't represented them fully this issue of tears is what mr. tamor is is so passionate about and it is so central

▶ 17:31 Speaker 4: here, that we, as I showed the last time that I was here, our base rates are among the highest rates in the country. In the country. There's a few higher in MWRA, there's Seattle, and I forget a couple other places in different levels of water and sewer rates and where they were, but we are at the highest in the country. If the highest in the country isn't enough to get people to conserve is it really rational to say we're going to charge them even more where do you stop a million dollars per hundred cubic feet is that what got to get people to conserve you know people want to go out and drill their own wells and use them for all their everything else right um you know this this process has to start somewhere rational i will tell you that i am here saying

▶ 18:15 Speaker 4: that what's been proposed is not defensible based on the data that i see and from my analysis of it and I draw on a lot of elements in that analysis. No one here has ever discounted anything that I've brought to the table here. We're now talking about infiltration and inflow, which I've been talking about for years. We still haven't made any significant progress in making it better. But what I'm trying to say here is that I've brought real information to you year after year after year.

▶ 18:48 Speaker 4: Nobody has successfully or legitimately shown that anything I brought here is untrue or inappropriate or unfair, but yet you're not willing to consider it. I'm open to expressing to you and showing you what's wrong with what they've done here and why it's not as appropriate and fair and why it's not as equitable as what we could do. I mentioned inflow and infiltration. I do want to make

▶ 19:14 Speaker 4: certain very briefly here, you have on your calendar tonight 2016-200, which it looks like it's basically charging more fees to people because somehow we're going to say that, you know, they're causing us mitigation harm for developing in the city. You know, it looks, it smells, it feels just like another money grab of the city, just like the trash fee, just like the water and sewer fees. Now you're doing this mitigation fee on developers. They aren't the ones causing our mitigation problems. We don't have, we aren't constrained as some places are, right? Some places, Waltham, I think, you know, they can't build without reducing things because their capacity can't do it. They have, you know, negotiated agreements with the EPA and the DEP and everybody else to do that. They have constraints. We don't have those constraints here. It's another way of manufacturing a charge for people in Melrose that's not founded

▶ 20:16 Speaker 4: in anything real. I ask this city once and for all, finally, let's get to something real here. Let's do some real budgeting. Let's look at the real costs of the system are. Let's not just inflate pension costs as we see and inflate indirect costs and go on and on and on. And make, you want to, if you go up this year, you're going to be basically, I'll do the analysis, but I think probably the highest rate in the country if you go up with some of these scenarios. Do you want to be the highest rate in the entire country for water and sewer i don't think you do i think it's embarrassing and what that doesn't ever come up here is what are we doing to reduce the operational costs of our system our consultant hasn't said anything about that our dpw hasn't said anything about it except oh inflow infiltration

▶ 21:03 Speaker 4: will do something about it that's not working for us all this great work that everybody's been you know applauded for doing for the last three five years on everything why are our rates skyrocketing skyrocketing like they are i don't know if you have to come to a conclusion

▶ 21:16 Speaker 4: tonight in water and sewer rates i don't think there's any you know statutory obligation for you to do so um i know that you're basically intending to um continue the current rate structure till october so why don't we have a real hearing of the issues i would expect that you want to be informed about them you want to know what's behind it what why why is jerry morose coming here and and criticizing you week after week after week i don't want to do that i want to come here and say you made a great decision you took a careful analysis of all the data in front of you you applied good principles to them and came to a good result that result might be high because our water and sewer operational costs are high currently that's a separate issue but we can make a real water and sewer system in something in mr tamor's um statement you know this is simple basic stuff and for this city to struggle with simple basic rate setting issues for this many years and still not be in any better plane in terms of resolving them that's another embarrassment you know how can we do the more complex things about figuring some underlying things out that are complicated if we can't take a basic math spreadsheet and figure out what our water

▶ 22:44 Speaker 4: and sewer rates would be equitably you know some of you feel that because i come here and i've talked for 10 minutes a bunch of times that somehow oh i've exhausted all my opportunities and i you've given me wonderful opportunities and everything's just great and i can't complain i'm sorry i'm complaining this board hasn't done its job in my view as a board i don't believe you have you know when you bring people that are paid to give you the answers that somebody's told them to give you which is what seems apparent to me from every person that parades up to this table that you suspend your rules for yet you never suspend the rules for a member of the public to come forward here and present to you factual information that goes against what somebody else is

▶ 23:25 Speaker 4: sitting here doing it's an unfair playing field basically here you have instructions for the mayor's people come up and tell you exactly what he wants to tell you whether they misrepresent it whether they you know waffle here or there or somewhere else i mean even even you know i don't tell me if this is unfair but you know for the city solicitor to come here and make a representation here about the legality of a tiered rate structure but by prefacing with based on all the information that the consultants in the department gives him

▶ 24:00 Speaker 4: You know, pretty big escape clause there, isn't it? You can read the statute yourself. I've showed you an interpretation of that statute that I think is defensible, and I'm willing to defend it. Nobody has shown me anywhere in the statute about tiered rates that it has to be this what you're doing here and what they're telling you you have to do.

▶ 24:21 Peter D. Mortimer: Mr. Moroz, your 10 minutes have elapsed. If you'd like to wrap it up quickly, that would be appreciated.

▶ 24:28 Speaker 4: So in closing, I would hope that you don't do something rash and make a determination on these things tonight. I actually have presented through the Board of Aldermen and also through the Department of Public Works a prototypical rate scenario that would change some of the premises about how we set our rate structure. And I propose that they take that and put it into their model to calculate it because they have all the model there we're paying them 30 000 bucks for that but yet it comes back you know oh i'm sorry we can't do that we they don't want to spend the money to have the consultant do what the consultant was already charged us to do was to evaluate proposals that we bring to them or to evaluate other proposals what i'd ask is let's let this process occur take another month take

▶ 25:18 Speaker 4: another two months do something but let's let this process occur so that we can get all the facts on

▶ 25:29 Speaker 4: the table we that we can have the facts compete against each other if you will to see what facts can stand up beyond there and i ask you that thank you mr morose are there any other members of the

▶ 25:46 Peter D. Mortimer: public who would like to come forward seeing none motion to close public participation alderman Lemmerman has made a motion to close public participation seconded by alderman's worko all in favor of closing public participation please say aye aye any opposed hearing none public participation is now closed we will proceed to the budget which has been an ongoing process

▶ 26:09 Peter D. Mortimer: for the last couple of months it is order 2016-158 city of melrose operating budget for fiscal year 2017 in the amount of $75,328,574.79.