ORDER-2015-193 : Amending Melrose Revised Ordinances, Chapter 228-15 by adding paragraph A (3) relative to Unit Averaging as set forth herein.

Transcript (~2 h 50 min @ 1:06:00)

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▶ 1:05:55 Peter D. Mortimer: Alderman Medeiros has added that we conjoin with the four already conjoined orders, order number 193. So we'll have five conjoined orders to discuss in this discussion right now.

▶ 1:06:11 Peter D. Mortimer: That motion has been made by Alderman Medeiros, duly seconded by Alderman Boisselle. All in favor? No, it wasn't you. Did someone second that? President Conn. President Conn, thank you very much, ladies and gentlemen. All in favor of adding order 193 to the conjoined orders, please say aye. Aye. Any opposed? Opposed. opposed that that motion passes yes he didn't second it so the five orders are

▶ 1:06:43 Peter D. Mortimer: under discussion and consideration at this at this time lady and gentlemen

▶ 1:06:53 Speaker 9: would you like to make some opening statements thank you thank you first of all I want to thank the members of the water and sewer committee Alden Forbes auditor de la Russo treasurer Flavin our city engineer Elena Prakas Ellis consultants Chris Woodcock and Dave from Raff's tell us especially Donna Cardillo for her countless hours of analysis and I want to thank all of this board not just for the efforts and the time that we've put into this discussion but for also making water and sewer rates and water and sewer operations a yearly discussion not something that gets cramped into two or three weeks between mid-may and mid-june professionally I feel that this has helped us streamline and improve our overall operations and in a very transparent manner discussions have been going on since late last fall and through the winter to create this package that's before you this evening a package that attempts to solve long-standing challenges that has been discussed in this chamber for several years in summary before we get into a questions and answers I just want to remind everyone what the package of orders that before you is looking to do and what this committee worked in creating these orders first of all it eliminates the proration debate by making rates effective October 1st the water that will be used in July will be billed at the rates that we're discussing tonight however those rates

▶ 1:08:33 Speaker 9: do not go on the bills until October also included our budgets for water the water enterprise system in the amount of five million three hundred thirty seven thousand four hundred ninety five dollars and eight cents and for the sewer operating budget for fiscal year 2017 that starts on June 27th in the amount of seven million seven hundred eighteen thousand four hundred nineteen

▶ 1:09:00 Speaker 9: dollars and nine cents the orders also propose a change in the elderly discount program and the intent of that particular order is to propose language so that the program is inclusive for all senior property owners throughout the city including those who reside in individually owned condos units the

▶ 1:09:23 Speaker 9: orders show the orders also have a indirect very strong commitment to the reduction of I&I in the fall we will be before this board looking for an authorization to borrow for to to implement a new multi-year program to address I and I currently we've had meters in various areas of the city determine where the issues are greatest and this evening we've put an order before you that requests an ordinance change requiring construction and developers to contribute to mitigation funds to address what professionally we feel is the greatest issue with our sewer system and that's I and I the orders can continue our commitment to building reserves in fact Monday Monday evening at the full board meeting we introduced two orders which transfer fy15 retained earnings into our reserve account as a committee throughout the

▶ 1:10:28 Speaker 9: past six months we've also looked at various orders presented by members of this board orders that include unit averaging per person billing and per capita billing these were discussed at length with our consultant was here this evening to continue to discuss those if it's the will of this board however our committee felt that this community was not ready to proceed in that direction at this time lastly the orders include a report from raft Ellis and Chris Woodcock that have several options over 12 to consider four of which came became recommended unanimously from the water and sewer committee those were options 4a 4b 5a and 5b before we continue into questions i just want to take a few minutes to have our city engineer elena proakis ellis formally present what has been happening with our ini program we haven't had the opportunity to present that we've spoken about it during public works budgets but i just wanted to have this opportunity so that the board is aware and can articulate to your constituents exactly what is happening what we'll be doing what we've done what we'll do over the summer and what um this community can anticipate come mid september to

▶ 1:12:05 Speaker 1: mid-october john's passing out a handout and i'll wait till everybody has it for one short so i'll

▶ 1:12:36 Speaker 1: I'll give you this one okay so the review where we are right now with the INI program and with INI in general I think I might have mentioned this the last time I was here that in 2014 according to the MWRA data 59% of the flow that Melrose contributed to the sewer system to the MWRA system was from I&I so it was not wastewater flow it was extraneous flow that we should be attempting to eliminate from the system we've expended funds in previous years to eliminate I&I but we really need to take a step back and have a more holistic program than we have in the past looking at the whole city and then aggressively going after where we find the biggest problems are and so now we've initiated this comprehensive multi-year program and the goal is to identify and remove the most cost-effective I&I to remove if we just remove area by area across the city we're not necessarily hitting the areas where we can get the most bang for our bucks so we need to identify where those areas are and then try to tackle those this will both reduce our sewer assessment from MWRA because our overall flows will be down and then it will reduce the peak flow the peak month flow so that gives us a further reduction in

▶ 1:14:01 Speaker 1: our costs so our current initiative has involved 30 meters deployed throughout the city they were installed between March 2014 March excuse me March 14th 2016 and May 23rd by a company called EST Associates and they've now finished their data logging for the 10 weeks we have data every 15 minutes for that period we simultaneously recorded rainfall data and groundwater data and that allows us to compare what's happening in terms of the groundwater and the weather compared to how our sewer flows are doing and you'll see on the graph on the next page there's a pretty strong correlation and now between the city and Weston Sampson we've started parallel efforts to review and analyze the data we're going to do some analysis in-house they're doing a completely independent analysis and we'll see where we end up in terms of

▶ 1:15:04 Speaker 1: the areas that are the worst and this graph here it's kind of exciting for me it's the first time I've graphed all the data in one place so engineers get excited about this stuff so this shows all 30 flow meters we took a daily average of all those 15 minute readings and just plotted it over the 10 week period and then I showed these bars that are rainfall average daily rainfall in that same period so you can see there's a giant spike on April 7th followed by April 8th and you see the giant spike in rainfall we had over an inch of rain and then the next day our flows go up if you look at where the flows were a couple days before they were around one and a half to two million gallons per day and they jump up almost they jump up over two and a half million gallons per day so this is a significant jump just from one large rain event so this is the type of information we're gonna really get down into the weeds and analyze all these meters and see how the responses are and then determine what areas we

▶ 1:16:18 Speaker 1: should be focusing on so on the last page we'll be completing the data analysis over the next month or two identifying the areas with the largest inflow and the largest infiltration I mentioned last time we look at both separately so we'll look at areas where we need to be tackling pipe repairs for groundwater getting in and then areas that have a lot of inflow during rainfall that might be people sump pumps and other maybe connections between the drainage system and there are different ways that you target those and then we'll be back in the fall with a funding request the money we have available right now from MWRA is two point one six two million and of that one point six to one million is grant money so again this is this money comes out of the assessments that we pay the MWRA and they paid back to the communities so we need to take advantage of the money that we're helping to fund or else other towns are just taking it in their grants and then the remaining 540 000 will be in zero percent loans the steps we'll be taking with that money is we don't go right out and just start fixing things first we need to identify what it is we need to fix so we do further investigations in the targeted areas where we think it's most cost effective things like tv inspecting sewers and then we identify what the problems are and then we come up with a plan to fix them so both the investigations and the final repairs will come out of that 2.162 million thank you

▶ 1:18:00 Peter D. Mortimer: very much president khan please president khan will yield the floor alderman Medeiros

▶ 1:18:09 Monica C. Medeiros: thank you uh thank you very much i appreciate this um i this uh graph here this is from the cameras that were out for the 10 weeks the meters yeah and does do we have the data from the MWRA from our we will be using that data as well so we haven't

▶ 1:18:26 Speaker 1: requested that yet but they've told me that it's available to us it's not on

▶ 1:18:34 Monica C. Medeiros: the church and I know you know it at the last meeting that you were here you had told us that you know one bad month we're measured by our worst month so one bad month can really give you a number on us and I mean we can see from this chart here it looks like there's you know one bad day so you know give or take around April 7th or so that looks like it was you know significantly worse is this something that looks in your opinion like our worst month or does

▶ 1:19:07 Speaker 1: this typically our worst month would be in the spring so that's why we do the flow metering in this period you try to capture the worst if you take the data just from this month and try to apply it to the whole year you would weigh overestimate your INI so there are means to to account for the fact that this is the worst month and then when we try to come up with average annual numbers you sort of extrapolate it across the rest of the year knowing how high the groundwater is at other times of year and you know we heard from one of the

▶ 1:19:36 Monica C. Medeiros: members of the public tonight that you know Melrose is one of the highest rates out there and could that be because of some of these bad months being really bad and our I and I being I believe when I looked at the MWRA assessment

▶ 1:19:54 Speaker 1: something on the order of 12% of our sewer assessment is based on the peak

▶ 1:20:05 Speaker 1: month and then the rest is based on a combination of flow and the strength of our flow but the strength of our flow is typical of domestic domestic flow so that's not really driving anything so the fact that 59% of what we're paying for in our MWRI sewer assessment is groundwater and rainwater is substantial So that definitely drives fees up. And there's a balance somewhere as to how much you spend on I&I repairs and you're staying ahead of the game in what you're spending because you're bringing down your assessment accordingly. And then at a certain point you get to the I&I that's really difficult to remove and is no longer worth removing because you're not gonna see the savings. But being as high as we are, I think there's probably a good margin there we can attack and bring our assessment down in the in the earlier years and then we just keep monitoring where we are from there that's one of

▶ 1:20:59 Speaker 9: the things we'll be doing over the summer we'll and that's why we're crawling and not speeding through this initial phase so and uh we'll we'll look at the impact this program has on the rate in terms of borrowing but we'll also look at the impact that it has on the assessment in the future years in terms of reducing ini and getting us down to something more comparable and and we have been

▶ 1:21:22 Monica C. Medeiros: doing i and i work over the years um and to try to to fix this i know we've worked on a number of projects um but this is a little bit different because we're going in and we've got the this assessment where we've had the the meters out which is something i don't recall happening

▶ 1:21:44 Speaker 9: no it hasn't happened since i think the 90s in the past we did projects and this is a program and i've said that repeatedly here but the program consists of several projects the meters in this analysis will tell us where to go again to get that most return on the investment

▶ 1:21:58 Monica C. Medeiros: and i don't know if you know how do we compare to how does knowledge compare to other cities

▶ 1:22:06 Speaker 1: or other cities in the mwra in terms of in terms of our infiltration and flow the metric that's used typically in the industry is gallons per day per inch diameter mile so that inch diameter mile takes into account the size of your system and the gallons per day is how much flow you're contributing and on a gallon per day per inch diameter mile basis we are the worst on infiltration and i believe we're the sixth worst on inflow and we're the worst on combined inflow and infiltration so that means for the size of our system we have a whole lot of ini

▶ 1:22:40 Monica C. Medeiros: and do you know i think this might have been in one of the the reports um how many like miles of

▶ 1:22:49 Speaker 9: pipe we have or about 90. under 90 85 85 and 90 miles and one last question on this uh regard

▶ 1:23:00 Monica C. Medeiros: we do have to report what we've done um and what you know where can the public see that

▶ 1:23:08 Speaker 1: if they wanted to take a look at it well we'll have when we finish this project we will have a report um weston samson will be producing a report that shows what we found so that would be available um if anyone wanted a copy they wanted to see it um and then the and the mass dep has a new regulation where there's going to be a reporting requirement um that starts in 2017 all towns are going to have to submit their their progress on ini removal so that would be another part of the nippies no this is a separate one it's just based on another state regulation that was recently put into effect to modify the I&I program

▶ 1:23:49 Monica C. Medeiros: through MassDEP thank you thank you very much thank you thank you alderman

▶ 1:23:54 Robert A. Boisselle: Medeiros alderman Boycelle please going back to your graph it looks like or

▶ 1:23:59 Robert A. Boisselle: seven or four ten you we had that rainstorm of almost an inch and you can see all the meters that sort of skyrocket but if you move on to 415 420 one meter this sort of goes from a point we'll say less than a half of million gallons per day to almost 1.5 million gallons per day it seems to be every all the other meters are going down except for this one is this the green line yes

▶ 1:24:27 Speaker 1: I'm suspicious of the green line so we haven't scrubbed any of this data yet

▶ 1:24:34 Robert A. Boisselle: okay I am because it's sort of an anomaly that I think this meter was

▶ 1:24:36 Speaker 1: having problems so what can happen sometimes is that you get data like where it spikes up with all the other meters it looks accurate but that drastic drop and then it's basically level it's not going up and down day to day that would imply that something got stuck on the meter and that it wasn't

▶ 1:24:57 Robert A. Boisselle: reading properly for those is the data being graphic or is it being telemetered

▶ 1:25:02 Speaker 1: to uh somewhere it's telemetered and we have it all downloaded into it okay so there was no

▶ 1:25:05 Robert A. Boisselle: safeguard indicating this drastic drop that occurred in the drastic upgrade in comparison

▶ 1:25:12 Speaker 1: in the software well so what we get as an output is we don't just get flow we get level velocity and flow right from every meter every 15 minutes and i have it in an excel spreadsheet in 15 minute increments i will be able to see if either level or velocity kept reading and the other one stopped reading which would imply something stuck on it and then we would eliminate that portion of the data so what we end up doing with this data once we eliminate anything that we think is potentially inaccurate is we look at averages of flows from usually about 2 a.m. to 4 a.m. over all the dry days compared to all the wet days and there are different ways to compare the data and with ten weeks it allows you to eliminate if there are periods of time that you think aren't accurate on a particular meter you can take those out and still get a good analysis on the overall data okay so that's that's what

▶ 1:26:06 Robert A. Boisselle: will be as long as you're aware of the drastic drop in a drastic upgrade and on

▶ 1:26:11 Speaker 1: this particular line yeah I don't think I don't think it's real and and also you'll notice that this line starts about six seems to be putting latent

▶ 1:26:17 Robert A. Boisselle: service it in comparison to the others that's because I deleted data already

▶ 1:26:22 Speaker 1: where it was showing 50 mgd for the first three weeks or two weeks so there's an issue with that meter and so I've already eliminated the data that I knew was absolutely wrong because it was orders of magnets retired now we've been

▶ 1:26:40 Robert A. Boisselle: doing the I&M now for a number of years are we reporting information to MWRA and DEP on a yearly two years three year basis or what are we doing with the data

▶ 1:26:53 Speaker 9: The MWRA asks for updates yearly on how we've used the money and do we intend to use more. The DEP doesn't require us to do anything. Okay. And the new regulation moving forward, I think next year, right? Right. Next year we're going to- 2017. Start. You'll be required. What are you doing with your INI? In the past we haven't other than informational letters to the MWRA about how did you spend your money? How much INI did you take out? want to do more yeah question now has the information been put into a report

▶ 1:27:26 Robert A. Boisselle: or accumulated somewhere yeah all right is that available to the public online or a call to your office or how does that work we have the reports in my

▶ 1:27:43 Robert A. Boisselle: office from us now is it possible in the future to just sort of put this type of

▶ 1:27:49 Speaker 9: information online I think I think we operate very differently now and right that's what I'm asking anything that's discussed in this chamber or that comes is all on IQ MQ it becomes open okay and you know even this presentation tonight

▶ 1:28:04 Robert A. Boisselle: we'll just put it right on now when leakage problems that we've had especially close to the main depot of your office and so forth is that type of of information reported to the MWRA yes and is that reported anyplace else DEP yeah and do you accumulate that information and report and move it

▶ 1:28:29 Speaker 1: between the different offices or we have it all stored in our engineering folders

▶ 1:28:33 Robert A. Boisselle: for all the previous years so if there's any information requests it goes through

▶ 1:28:37 Speaker 9: whom come through my through your office I'll get it to the right hands okay thank you there are there are DEP statistical reports that were required to submit yearly we typically submit them in the spring April to May for the prior calendar year and we also have MWRA non-billed water reports that we

▶ 1:28:58 Robert A. Boisselle: know with all the sewer information that you have did you instruct these students that were attending your DPW day today on the uses of water and recycling and the uh waste of the where that water goes we did have we did have a booth that told them what to

▶ 1:29:18 Robert A. Boisselle: flush and not flush okay very good thank you very much thank you for coming thank you mr chairman

▶ 1:29:21 Peter D. Mortimer: thank you alderman boyce alderman forbes please thank you mr chairman um just to stay on this

▶ 1:29:25 Scott M. Forbes: topic i know we had uh several discussions regarding unaccounted for water uh and just for the for the knowledge of the board our unaccounted for percentage for water is roughly fifteen percent correct in saying that okay so when we look at when we look at terms of real dollars if the if the water budget is five point three three seven million is it safe to say that fifteen percent of that money accounts for the unaccounted water or is there a specific formula on how you translate

▶ 1:29:59 Speaker 1: that into real dollars I would say fifteen percent of the MWRI assessment portion of the assessment portion yeah which was forty forty seven percent I

▶ 1:30:09 Scott M. Forbes: i think of the total water budget okay but we're talking about hundreds of thousands of dollars

▶ 1:30:15 Scott M. Forbes: that we could recoup with an effective infrastructure correct yeah well it's

▶ 1:30:18 Speaker 1: interesting that a portion of unaccounted for water can just be dealing with old meters and not billing all the water that's really being used so i think it'll be interesting to see now that the meters have been essentially replaced what happens next

▶ 1:30:37 Scott M. Forbes: year if we see a big drop okay and I know I was looking on the there's an MW IRA advisory board website and it lists all the cities and towns whose water and sewer just water all the rate plans all the structures and it just kind of keying off of a question that was asked previously it looks like where it says capital improvement needs it says Melrose is looking at 25 to 50 million dollars of capital improvement needs and out of that 25 to 50 million dollars of needs it says that we're going to be spending 5 to 10 million dollars in actual work who provides that information is that a is that an accurate figure and B who provides that information to the so those are the MW

▶ 1:31:20 Speaker 9: are estimated figures by our department based on long-term capital improvement programs we have a cep program on the water side and we have ini and other sewer issues pump station repairs we we we estimate what our total capital needs are what we may spend over the next three to five years that's not saying we are going to spend it but that's in a perfect world that's what we would like to invest in our system over the next three to five years so out of this five to ten

▶ 1:31:52 Scott M. Forbes: year project that we have or program that's going to be put in place that 2.1 million that we spoke about is that the initial round or is that over the

▶ 1:32:06 Speaker 9: overall goal of the project that's the that's the initial that's the initial

▶ 1:32:07 Scott M. Forbes: round okay I kind of understood that I just want to make sure let's see I mean

▶ 1:32:16 Scott M. Forbes: i can jump around to other i i know you're here and i got some questions for you and i thank you for your time mr woodcock now mr fox indicated at a previous meeting uh that over the last three years residents have been conserving an average of three percent per year when it comes to their water and sewer however during the last three years our water and sewer rates have increased

▶ 1:32:45 Scott M. Forbes: a combined total of 20 so i guess it may not be easy for you to answer but could you explain to us the reasoning for this because you know i have some difficulty trying to explain that to residents when they're saying that they're saving water but their bills are getting higher um i know they're in and this isn't the rate structure that you put in place but i'm not sure if you could you know provide us with any with any information regarding that sure i'll

▶ 1:33:12 Speaker 10: try it's um first off there's a number of reasons people cut back on consumption the cost of water is only one of them whether economy things like that have a big impact too I think the answer when people say you asked me to conserve and then the rates go up you know it's chasing my tail type of thing I think the answer is if if everybody cuts their consumption 10% and the rates have to go up 10% most of the costs are fixed so if the consumption goes down 10% the rates have to go up 10% what happens is the rates go up 10% but the bill doesn't change that's assuming a level budget from year to year and we know that doesn't happen so there's automatic increases just by increased cost but the what happens there is if everybody drops 10% there's no change the reality is some people drop 8 some people drop 12 those that cut consumption more than the average will actually pay less again all things being equal those that conserve less that have an 8% drop in consumption will see an increase in their bill so the rate may go up 10% but they may see a 12% increase

▶ 1:34:34 Scott M. Forbes: in their bill if they only cut back 8% for example okay also this the 2,000 cubic feet that we establish as this tiered you know going from one to another you know I try to look online and try to find out where I found that if that's a mass guideline or a regulation it is it I understand how the formula is generated and transferring from gallons to cubic feet but could you just where does that come from is that is that a is that a Massachusetts guideline is that a a you know in your expert opinion is that that can you walk us through that because I know on the MWRA website you look on every city in town and all the tiers are different you know there there's not 2,000 like I wish there was an established guideline so we could all you know kind of fall in line and see how things are but I guess every town is different all the dynamics are different whether or not we're residential the commercial I understand there are a lot of factors that come into play here but when we talk about this you know there are some communities that tier at 800 cubic feet there are some communities a tier of 3,000 and I think it's because of this Massachusetts general law it's such a blanket statement where you know it says that we have to take into consideration I wish I had it right in front of me here we go the I do have in front of me municipalities the infamous statement about setting base rates in requires an increasing block rate to fairly fairly reflect the resource demand and consumption of high volume water users now when I hear that it says that we must establish a second tier all right but there's no guideline on how the tier is supposed to be established it seems like the municipality has the control over that and there's really no oversight from the state or any type of guidance that they're going to give us because there's still a dozen communities the MWRA system that are on a uniform rate so if you could just kind of I know I I kind of sidestepped and another angle right there but if you could just let us know where the where does the 2 000 cubic feet come from and why do you recommend that that is the tier that we we follow in our structure

▶ 1:36:44 Speaker 10: here in melbourne sure let me just say it and you're absolutely right the tiers of the 60 odd communities in the amwra are all over the place i have no idea why where why some of them set them where they do we do a number of the mwra communities but not all of them and certainly not not even most of them. I can tell you, for example, in Boston, the first one that did have a set of tiers, they set 10 tiers based on 10 different meter sizes and looked at what the average consumption was of each meter size. Now that goes back 30 years or so where they did it. They have since collapsed those into five. And when they collapsed that into five tiers, they combined a bunch of the different tiers that they did have, the 10 years they had so that's where their numbers came from the 2000 here is generally the state has a I'm not sure standard is the right word but a it's more than a goal to that people don't use more than 65 gallons per day per person and if you translate that 65 gallons per day per person excuse me by by the average number of people per household in Melrose, which is different from Weston, which is different from Watertown, which is different from Austin. But if you use it, look at Melrose, the census data, and then the 90, 91 days and a quarter. You get something, it's a little under 2,000, but you need to round it up for the billing purposes. So the 2,000 here actually comes from that number of that standard in the state of the 65 gallons per person. as a goal of not using more than that it's part of the permits for withdrawals from the state is where those numbers all come from and that really applies to the MWRA since you're buying from the MWRA but it is a very fixed real number that the that the state has set as what a a target as to what people should use less than in the Commonwealth of Massachusetts on an annual basis so we did that and it changes from season to season from quarter to quarter obviously to winter it will be lower summer will be higher and to a degree it's compromised and it's easy and it use one number you don't change those tiers each quarter that would start to get to be very difficult and complicated so So there's a real basis for it, where the 2,000 came from. It might be 1,800, I forget the exact math and calculate it out by the number of people per household, but that's where that comes from. In Melrose, again, I don't know where some of the other ones come from, I have no idea.

▶ 1:39:30 Scott M. Forbes: So in Melrose, the average data was where two and a half people per household?

▶ 1:39:36 Speaker 10: I think so.

▶ 1:39:37 Scott M. Forbes: Because that came out to the 1,956, so I guess we round up to 2,000 and make it whole numbers.

▶ 1:39:43 Speaker 8: Okay.

▶ 1:39:44 Speaker 11: Yep. Okay, that's all I have for now, Mr. Chairman.

▶ 1:39:46 Peter D. Mortimer: Thank you, Alderman Forbes. Alderman Lemmerman, please.

▶ 1:39:50 Jennifer L. Lemmerman: Thank you very much, Mr. Chairman. Thank you for all of this information. Going back to the presentation on infiltration and flow quickly. I'm very happy to see this project. Particularly, we're hearing that we're the worst in the system, that's pretty distressing. And when we're doing all of this work and you're providing all this information and to do the analysis to set the best rates possible for residents and we have a system that's sort of working against us you know this is really important work to be done we heard mr. Shani you mentioned that this is a program it's not a project and you know we've seen some projects around the city and what the time it takes to sort of do the assessment and do the the digging and kind of do everything that gets done for these smaller projects that are that are obviously different than this I guess just to maybe manage my own expectations and for information for the public do you have a sense of when what is the long-term time frame for something like this and when we might be able to see

▶ 1:40:56 Speaker 1: some results it depends to some degree on what we find so if we find just a lot of old leaky pipes which tends to be typical the time frame might be in you know next year if we do the investigations and through next spring and then we're certain about what we found because it is good to look at some of these things in the spring then we can jump right into a program of potentially lining sewers so you mentioned digging hopefully we won't have to dig much ideally you can just do trenchless technologies and line sewers and if we find a section that's extremely leaky and we're able to line that whole segment with a good chunk of that money then we might see immediate results in that area and you might shave off some of these peaks in the worst area similarly on inflow if we do some smoke testing where you look for connections between your drainage system and your sewer system which shouldn't exist but you know older systems sometimes they do sometimes you can get you can shave off a very big peak in an area just by finding a handful of those types of connections where you have rainwater that when it's raining it is coming directly into the sewer system and if you can eliminate those you can you can really shave the peak it doesn't that doesn't do as much of a good job fixing year-round I and I but it can bring down that peak month so it depends what we find if we just find that that the problems are spread equally throughout the whole city then it's going to be very hard to to see real

▶ 1:42:38 Jennifer L. Lemmerman: results with one or two projects and in the statistical reports that you mentioned are have we seen yet do we have data that shows that they're the numbers have changed there's been progress in some of the projects that

▶ 1:42:49 Speaker 1: have already been done some of the efforts yeah the last project that was done which was sub areas 21 and 22 this was before I got here but they were

▶ 1:43:04 Speaker 9: we're estimated to remove 132,000 gallons per day thank you component to this program and that's an education piece because some pumps absolutely contribute to this and people may not understand that you know obviously we're not telling people's basements to flood but we will be through our consulting creating some educational material that we want to push out this fall that explains to people you know when you take your sump pump put it into your you know you clean out or your washing machine hook up or whatever that may be your contribute you're contributing to I and I which contributes to our sewer assessment and you know give us a call we'll try to help you find a different way to address that so there's going to be that piece to it too that I'm hoping will help long-term reduce the assessment yes this project is a public

▶ 1:44:01 Speaker 1: education campaign yeah any connections between a sump pump system and the sewer are illegal by state plumbing code so they they definitely have to be eliminated but I know a lot of towns have done what they consider an amnesty program so during their educational outreach portion of the program they tell people if you come to us and tell us that you have an illegal connection will help you figure out how to solve it and you know sometimes that brings some people forward especially if there's any plan to do a house-to-house inspection program which a lot of towns also do sometimes if you let if you give people the opportunity to volunteer and not be penalized in any way some people will

▶ 1:44:46 Jennifer L. Lemmerman: volunteer thank you turning to the rates for a moment I just wanted to mention that you know this is something it's been said here for years many times and I think reiterated most recently by President Kahn in a recent discussion that we had but this regarding condo rates condo owners and and the the way that the rate system affects condo owners and you know I know that the the city has put into effect efforts to to help which I really appreciate and you know whether it's through offering to work with condo buildings to individually meter units and and help with some of that process you know I'm thinking obviously specifically of the towers which is in Ward two you know and and so I think there are some there are some residents who are still left without that option you know that there there are some areas that you actually physically can't do that and so they are left without that that resolution essentially and the city I know we know that the condo that the towers are a special circumstance because they were not properly categorized before the system came into effect and the city really did work to mitigate the effect of that increase which which was you know I certainly appreciated them doing that but we have asked many times in this in this room for information about condos and about what other communities how they handle it and even just that information we have not yet been able to get and you know we've have consultants professionals and experts to give us information and there are residents here in Melrose that are being squeezed into a system that they simply don't fit into and you know I think in order to help them in the situation that they're in we need more information and we haven't been able to get it so I just I don't have a specific question other than what are other cities doing how can we handle this you know what are our thoughts around this but we haven't gotten those answers so I just I guess I'm just reiterating a frustration around that and a maybe a plea for more information thank you Thank You alderman levelman

▶ 1:47:18 Speaker 6: president Khan please yeah my first question is are you folks done with your presentation thank you I wasn't quite sure what the presentation ended it was going to continue and i have a multitude of questions and i wanted to make sure that i didn't miss any of the presentation before i asked questions first question is for mr del russo

▶ 1:47:39 Speaker 6: we have to pass the city budget by next thursday

▶ 1:47:49 Speaker 6: in order to have the budget process properly completed do you need both of these enterprise

▶ 1:48:00 Speaker 6: funds yes okay second part to that question is is the DOR going to need to have the ordinances relative to the rates set by next Thursday I'm through

▶ 1:48:12 Speaker 8: the chair they won't need the ordinance what they will need is a vote of the board and then when it comes time to set the tax rate in the fall all I want to know is by that documentation do all these orders need to be passed with the

▶ 1:48:24 Speaker 6: budget and if not rates have to be passed with the budget I and I verify

▶ 1:48:28 Speaker 8: that with Dick Sullivan this past week our outside auditor I asked him a specific question the rates go with the budget so all all orders have to be

▶ 1:48:40 Speaker 6: passed that are before us by next Thursday what is pertaining to the new

▶ 1:48:49 Speaker 8: fiscal year operating budget correct okay so which includes water and so and the rates have to be

▶ 1:49:00 Speaker 8: set yes they do and the dor has indicated that to you the outside auditors have in one of the the um aspects is that july 1st your budget will be out of balance because you're working on rates that

▶ 1:49:12 Speaker 6: don't support the budget okay would it be possible for you to check double check that with the dor

▶ 1:49:16 Speaker 8: Sure, I'd be happy to do that.

▶ 1:49:31 Speaker 6: I want to talk a little bit about the reserves that are built into this budget and the reserves that we have currently.

▶ 1:49:39 Speaker 6: We have two orders that are before us to move $162,000

▶ 1:49:48 Speaker 6: into our reserve for water and $293,000 into our reserve for sewer. Those are before us at the present time, is that correct?

▶ 1:49:59 Speaker 6: correct and before that action can you please tell me what the balance in the water and sewer reserves

▶ 1:50:10 Speaker 8: would be on the after before the action the action right now it's 241 000 208 12 for water 200

▶ 1:50:22 Speaker 8: 229.32 for SOAR. 229.32. 229.32 for SOAR.

▶ 1:50:40 Speaker 6: 229,300. How much have you built in for reserves in the budget that's before us?

▶ 1:50:46 Speaker 6: How much do you anticipate that you would raise based on the proposed rates?

▶ 1:50:56 Speaker 10: It is $200,000 for each of the enterprise, $200,000 for water, $200,000 for sewer.

▶ 1:51:01 Speaker 6: $200,000 each.

▶ 1:51:07 Speaker 6: So we currently have a little over $400,000 if we act favorably on the two orders of water. And we have around 500 in sewer prior to that. Is that all true?

▶ 1:51:20 Speaker 8: If I make it clear, if in fact the orders are passed you'd have over 400,000 in water and just under 500,000 in sewer.

▶ 1:51:32 Speaker 8: One of the drivers to the additional free cash that we had to make that happen that we had a band bond premium of 82,000 196 95 that for fiscal 15 which is in your free cash for both water and saw so what that means is that additional 88,000 927 that you have to put in there really the majority was from that one-time revenue it wasn't rate driven and the same with saw the The additional $71,717, again, $82,000 actually was from the BNBON premium, so for all practical purposes, we just made our rate-driven reserve fund effective because if we had not had those one-time revenues, we could not put that additional resources to the effort. again uh we're very fortunate with that but that it's not going to happen next year okay um

▶ 1:52:52 Speaker 6: i'm going to make a suggestion and um you know i mean i know mr del russo was not going to agree with me and i would be shocked if he thanked you if he did um but i i would ask the board to give serious consideration and i'm going to make a motion later on in the process to

▶ 1:53:14 Speaker 6: not funding reserves in the rates and the budget that we set for this year and I would suggest to

▶ 1:53:26 Speaker 6: the board that what we have raised so far if we act favorably on the two orders that are before us in reserves are appropriate for this year I would suggest that they create no financial

▶ 1:53:43 Speaker 6: jeopardy i've been sitting here year after year and we have we have many reserve accounts and i'm glad we have them and it's prudent to establish them but the catch-22 relative to

▶ 1:54:01 Speaker 6: reserve accounts is you never can use them because rating agencies downgrade you or threaten you in the event that you go into your reserves and hopefully we'll never have to use these reserves but you know due to a number of circumstances we have high rates here in Melrose maybe it's because inflow and infiltration maybe it's for other reasons but this is an opportunity for us without doing any harm to the budget to provide some relief to the ratepayers if we're backing out $200,000 it's going to drive the rates down as we struggle with trying to grapple with the rate structure and get that down so i'm not going to make a motion now but that's something that i feel is not irresponsible and i would respectfully suggest and ask the board to give some serious thought and consideration to backing out the reserves for this year and you know i was at the famous meeting in 2013 when the dor came in and said we're going to drop the hammer on you unless you establish some reserves. Well, now we have. And I don't believe that there'd be any adverse consequence from the DOR or from rating agencies in the event for this one year if we did not fund the reserves to an extent of another $200,000. So again, that's something that I think we should talk about as we go forward.

▶ 1:55:34 Speaker 6: The rate structure of this potpourri of rates that are before us, the committee recommended the adoption of the paragraph four and five rates, is that correct?

▶ 1:55:51 Speaker 9: And when it comes to four, four A and four B only.

▶ 1:55:55 Speaker 6: Okay. Can you briefly run through what those rate structures would look like, what they would do and what changes they would make? know you've done it before but i think just in the interest of having the public educated if

▶ 1:56:08 Speaker 9: you could bang through that no sure i think it's a very valid question um 4a and 4b and

▶ 1:56:13 Speaker 9: chris is here to reinforce this but 4a and 4b look to recalculate fixed charges by increasing base

▶ 1:56:28 Speaker 6: fees thank you can you explain base fees and base rates people we've heard about them can you explain what they are just so people will know what they are base

▶ 1:56:39 Speaker 9: fees are the part of the the part of the bill that's associated with the meter size and the individual house or building or account and second meters also carry their own base fees so option four looks at bringing additional fixed costs that mr woodcock mr ref and raftel associates identified and takes more of that cost and puts it on the quarterly base fee as opposed to the volumetric base fee now this is a trend that they recommended i don't want to speak for him again you can reinforce my statement they recommended it giving the consumption trends that they're seeing where people are consuming less so you want to make sure you capture most of your fixed costs in that in that base fee that's what 4a and 4b do 5a 5b do the same thing but 5a and 5b collapse the third tier of of the three-tier

▶ 1:57:37 Speaker 9: structure so in 4a 4b you still have three tiers at the same consumption levels that exist today except recalculated base fees which look to capture more fixed costs when you go to the five family for all intents and purposes 5a 5b collapse the third tier into only two zero two thousand two thousand and up the differences between a and b are the amount of sewer that's charged on the water bill for a 5a look to charge 100 of the water as sewer for 4b and 5b will only charge 90% of what comes in as water out as sewer for the

▶ 1:58:33 Speaker 6: bees and just to stop you for a second sure and we've been talking about this for years that the 90% versus 100% but explain the rationale for the change

▶ 1:58:46 Speaker 10: from 100 to 90 please the change to 90% and the bees would be for people that don't have a second irrigation meter what happens is if you have a second irrigation meter you don't get charged for the the water that goes through that irrigation meter you don't get charged sewer for that so if I have two meters and there's a hundred cubic feet that goes through the main meter and a hundred cubic feet through the irrigation meter for sewer I only get charged for the hundred through the main meter make it a hundred the main meter 50 for the irrigation just to keep them separate I don't get charged for the 50 on sewer John has just one meter and he uses a hundred and fifty gallons cubic feet a quarter he gets charged 150 on water and 150 on sewer it's not fair we all know that everything that comes in through the water meter doesn't come back as sewer those that have an irrigation meter it's much closer to 100% though because they have the irrigation meter measuring what doesn't come back. And the main meter, my meter that measures 100, almost all of that's going to come back as sewage. John's meter that's measuring 150, the combined total, only 100 of that may be coming back because he's watering his lawn just as much as I am but doesn't have the second meter. It's not fair to him. I'm getting an advantage of that and I'm getting an unfair advantage on the sewer side for that. So the idea is to have 90% of the water use for John. I'm still to pay 100 on my base meter john would only pay for 90 of the water through his meter

▶ 2:00:26 Speaker 10: so it's an attempt really to recognize that not all of the water for those that don't have irrigation meters is coming back to sewer and make them more on par and equivalent to those

▶ 2:00:37 Speaker 9: that do have irrigation meters and if i can just close that general explanation the bees both 4b 5b carry lower base fees for second meters if 4b or 5b is adopted the second meter base fee equals your main meter base fee as opposed to the 35 and 50 dollar fees that exist today and that would continue under for a 5a so in general that's an explanation of four and five okay proration i i filed an order last year

▶ 2:01:14 Speaker 6: and my bright idea was to have the city fill everybody with the new meters within the last two weeks of june so that we wouldn't have and for people who don't understand it you know we talk about this stuff all the time and we have we talk about this ridiculous jargon like it's it's real language but what we mean when we talk about probation is people who are billed for use in a fiscal year back with a rate for the next year with the higher rate so if we're going back from latin the coming year into this year and we're billing at that rate that's what i mean by proration is that i assume that's what everybody else understands proration to be and it is the intention of the committee the city and everybody else that there will be no proration going forward is that correct that's correct so nobody is going to be billed for fiscal year 216 water at fiscal 2017 rates that's correct so that will not that will not happen

▶ 2:02:20 Speaker 9: whatever option whatever rates whatever numbers this board chooses will not appear on water and sewer water and sewer bills until october and obviously october water bills are for july

▶ 2:02:35 Speaker 6: august and september water use okay so i can safely ask baldwin mortimer to remind me to give my order leave to withdraw uh if i forget because proration is not happening that's correct it's done over with dead the stake is in the house it's not going to happen okay make sure you remind me of that coming up stay tuned okay senior discount

▶ 2:03:04 Speaker 6: explain the senior discount please tell me what it's going to cost and

▶ 2:03:11 Speaker 6: tell me how you derive that figure and who will benefit so let me stop by just explaining that

▶ 2:03:21 Speaker 9: the existing senior discount is not applicable to condo associations it's not applicable to anyone who lives somewhere that where a main meter doesn't exist the current one the current the current existing ordinance what the amended ordinance before you looks to do is extend the discount to eligible condominium owners and the way we're going to do that is to credit their real estate tax what the average value of the program of other people in the program is for a particular year so for instance right now the if this is adopted the discount that people in a condo without a meter would see is 146 dollars one time in either the third or

▶ 2:04:22 Speaker 9: fourth quarter real estate tax in essence that's what the change in the program does in terms of

▶ 2:04:31 Speaker 9: cost in 2015 we had 520 people participating in the program not people but two 520 accounts participating in the program and that was estimated to cost us seventy seven

▶ 2:04:52 Speaker 9: thousand dollars in 2016 there are 580 accounts participating in the program and that costs the operation eighty nine thousand we're projecting that 2017 will see the participation rate increase to 750 accounts based on condo associations we feel may be applicable to this change and that impact is a hundred and twenty seven thousand dollars to the operation that hundred twenty seven thousand dollars was figured into the rate calculations by raft Ellis that's the number they used and in setting the budgets that drive

▶ 2:05:40 Speaker 9: the rates 127,000 for an estimated 750 participants so the rates assume that we

▶ 2:05:46 Speaker 6: passed the elderly discount and that's the figure that was used to develop

▶ 2:06:01 Speaker 6: that's correct again we've been over some of this stuff before but it's important how many people what percentage of the city is

▶ 2:06:26 Speaker 9: being built in the first tier at the present time so the first is zero to two thousand there are currently seventy seventy percent of the bills that go out go out in the zero to two thousand range zero to eighteen hundred range that's found in all of the charts that are in the report it's the it's the third column in every single chart on every single option shows you the percentage of bills that go out in each each consumption category if you go up to 2,500 you capture nearly 78 percent of the bills that go out are at 2,500 or below if you go to 5,000 you capture 93 percent of 5,000 cubic feet captures 93 percent of the bills that go out over the course of a fiscal year so if you go

▶ 2:07:28 Speaker 6: If you go from a two tier to a three tier, for example, the four B to the five B.

▶ 2:07:39 Speaker 6: What impact is that going to have on the rate for the first tier?

▶ 2:08:04 Speaker 10: About three cents on water and nine cents on sewer, for being mature.

▶ 2:08:23 Speaker 6: Okay, I have a question about city water.

▶ 2:08:29 Speaker 6: And my understanding is that the city water use is approximately $270,000 and that's subsumed into the budget that gets passed along to the rate payers.

▶ 2:08:42 Speaker 9: Correct.

▶ 2:08:43 Speaker 6: How widespread is the practice of cities not paying for their own water in MWRA or Eastern Massachusetts?

▶ 2:08:55 Speaker 10: I don't get the exact numbers, but the MWRA actually called me and started asking me about this about eight, nine months ago, maybe a year ago. from the limited look we looked at it's about 50 50 and that's in the MWRA and I

▶ 2:09:09 Speaker 9: could tell you our engineering office we had some of our staff just cold call communities we reached out to tank communities for bill for don't bill to do some hybrid approach whether it's just charge the city the cost of the MW portion of the of the of the water or charge based on last year or take some different approach but that's um that's what a quick survey resulted in and when

▶ 2:09:47 Speaker 8: when did we when did we cease charging for city water 11 budget is when we then We didn't stop charging within the budget because we asked the question at that point, should we be charging departments or should we not? And that's why we asked the question, because it came up at one of the budgets at FY10.

▶ 2:10:13 Speaker 6: Okay, so I guess the answer to my question is not really that helpful. So half the communities do it and half the communities don't do it.

▶ 2:10:27 Speaker 6: Now, one other thing I want to touch on, could you just go over again,

▶ 2:10:33 Speaker 6: the methodology that we use to determine what indirect costs go into these budgets.

▶ 2:10:43 Speaker 8: If I may, through the chair, please.

▶ 2:10:59 Speaker 12: The, thank you.

▶ 2:11:04 Speaker 8: The process of setting indirect costs, and I do want to reference the June 6th packet that I sent to everyone. And I've talked to all of you Forbes and I have some follow up as well. What we do, just let me begin a minute, is what is indirect cost? Indirect cost, the cost associated with running these service programs and the staff time of your water and sewer program.

▶ 2:11:47 Speaker 8: They, first and foremost, you have got to make a determination as to what services, what programs you intend to deliver that fiscal year. If you look back in FY10, the year we were close to being in FY13, insolvent in the Water from Enterprise Fund we did not engage the way we have the last three plus years which is incredible and you should see an increase in indirect cost not only for the fact that the service cost of the staff that provide the service the contractual obligations and health insurance as we all know in pensions but put all that aside to the because it's not the point of the question from the alderman what we have done in the and I have to step back for a moment the last three years in particular we actually created what we did with the ambulance enterprise system we took nothing from nothing and we built something the difference was on the ambulance you had a grant the safer grant a couple of grants I believe four and four which offset that initial you know cost component you don't have that here so when we woke up really in fy14 we woke up to a brand new world of water and so tear system what does that mean how do you monitor it who's involved it's totally different than anything I've ever seen before and I think anyone in this board has ever seen it wasn't Here's the old residential commercial rate and here we go, here's consumption from last year. Nothing like that. We were mandated to come up with a series of formalities, programs that were going to take us from a very poor position to a position of strength. We just finished the third year of that. And just like the ambulance service starts out with a basic service and they went to advance, that's what we're doing. So we've taken this system, that it was nothing, we put a foundation around it. We brought in the resources, which is existing staff for the most part. And we said, let's get the job done. So we have developed a brand new foundation, a brand new structure, to something that didn't have any component or foundation with it. So in that context, we have two more years to go before the five year goal of reserves will have been met. And we have just completed.

▶ 2:14:34 Speaker 6: Maybe three years.

▶ 2:14:36 Speaker 8: Three years. And we have just completed some phenomenal initiative this year. That the Alderman Kahn and others will testify that have been on the table, have been tossed back and forth. And finally, we have phenomenal resolve, we have a second consultant. And we are now refining what we had started with in 14. Phenomenal, phenomenal progress has been made. I don't ever want anyone in this room to lose sight of that. It's day and night. Now part of that does not come without a cost. I specifically spent time with the Department of Revenue early on to develop this framework, how we're going to make this work and go part of that process brings an indirect cost. Now the Department of Revenue on their website, if anyone has visited it, talks about what are indirect costs and I'm just going to give categories because I think it's important because it's not pie in the sky. It's real, you can touch it. And from the Department of Revenue themselves, health insurance, pension, shared employees, which I wanna talk about a little bit closer. That includes the executive, the accountant, the assessors, the treasurer, the collector, the personnel administrator, law, information technology, Department of Public Works, general insurance, workers' comp, debt, postage, et cetera, and they even have categories, other one, other two, another three, and, but it, it's very encompassing. So it takes someone like me, who's not in the water and sewer budget, says, how much time do you allocate? Quite frankly, in this room, at least 50% of my time is now water and sewer. I have never, I would have never encompassed that at the time we made these changes. And I, and the, but the impact of the changes has created that for the short term.

▶ 2:16:49 Speaker 8: Because what I found was when we got involved in looking at the change.

▶ 2:16:56 Speaker 8: And I'll give you a perfect example here. Because I think it's important for everyone to understand the dynamics behind trying to run this massive operation. And it's a massive operation.

▶ 2:17:10 Speaker 8: This is a water and sewer building report for this past January, and I did three months, January, February, and March. And I'm going to tell you what I look for, and what the report, and this took time, money, resources to develop. It didn't come from the sky, and there's no elves that work behind curtains in the city. So it takes human beings to make all this happen. But what it tells me is this. It tells me that at the end of January, both the water and the sewer fund were negative.

▶ 2:17:45 Speaker 8: At the end of February, both of the funds were negative.

▶ 2:17:51 Speaker 8: At the end of March, both of the funds are negative. In fact, water was negative $239,395 and sewer $37,538. If you think for one minute that I don't get nervous and I don't start shaking trees and picking up phones when I see numbers like this, think again. Because when the system went in, just like the ambulance, we were not confident of how many runs we would get to meet the nut. We did not know if we'd have 1,500 runs a year. We just set the tier system up. We didn't actually know the impact. In fact, no one in this room could tell me who was going to, where we see conservation, where we wouldn't, where we'd see consumption. And the other scary thing which we deal with now, which we never dealt with before, was we actually tracked by month consumption. Is it up or down? Is it up or down over last year? Because consumption drives revenue. So when I look at this, I see a whole bunch of different things that other people don't see. And it's a driving force because it sets a pattern. How are we doing? And if anyone recalls back in, not too far back, 14 and the end of 15, John Shatner, if he doesn't do it now, he probably does in the back of his head. Come May, May 1st, guess what? The breaks are on spending, because we worry that much if we're going to make or not. That still happens, because we have very little control over consumption. And the weather, as everyone's aware, no different than the golf course, dictates revenue. That's just the way it is. So, back to the question. What I do each year is come early time to set the budgets in January. And I think what I'd like to do because of time and the fact that Alderman Forbes had brought it to my attention, to take something like this for FY18 and actually put into it the scope of services that are provided the components the amount and make it part of the regular budget so when you open your book and you see indirect costs you say oh my goodness what why is that so high so that you will see which employees are participating in which and at what level the goal because I want indirect costs to go down and the direct costs went up because the service demands we had to bring in a whole group a whole army in here for a very specific period of time to do all this work and to change the foundation of this enterprise that's what we did and it's done so my expectation is that over time and i'm not talking about uh 7 to 18 but 18 and thereafter that we should begin to be able to pull back have the system run its course in such a way that you'll see indirect cost components not all but components go down all of them in con i also for the sake of it took a quick look and i mean a very quick look at what some of the surrounding communities do for what's called shared employees because i think health insurance is understood for the most part pensions etc but for us for water for this year for shared employees our number is 291 998

▶ 2:21:40 Speaker 8: now for saugus it's 291 845 for reading is 439 225. now those numbers don't mean anything to to me. You know why they don't? In comparison to us? I have no idea what the scope of services are in Saugus or Reading. Maybe they're undertaking a massive change like we did for that short time. So you would have to know that type of knowledge in order to make that assumption. And I did the same thing for the SOAR. Again, ours for Melrose is the same number, the 291. For Saugus, it's 301, and for Redding, for Sewer, it's less, it's 301. I also checked one other community right next door, Malden. Because our average over the last five years has been 11.2% of our total budget expenses. And Malden's very interesting, they actually have one line on their recap. And it says indirect cost, 3.1 million, which is 11.3%. And so my assumption is that they have to have a breakout, etc. But that's how they represent the least on the tax recap. So a long shot answer is that it's predicated on the scope of services. The individuals involved to perform those services by department, Because each department has a different role to play. If in fact we don't look to use legal as much this year, then we hope that indirect cost goes down. So the objective is to put in place those resources to get the job done. Knowing that my expectation is once we have it almost like an attorney key, that we can begin to see it, just like it opened up, to begin to see it contract. Because now we have a model that doesn't need the major work that we had when we developed it. No different than the ambulance. Look at the hours and time spent there, and it's worked out well. So my expectation again, and any questions, but we'll be there for next year. We do provide a better representation of the indirect cost as part of the budget. And perhaps we can accomplish that right in the water and sewer committee. one of our things to do, since we have a lot of things to do, but that's good. But I'm very pleased at where we're at, and I also want to say that I'm very happy that we quite frankly have made the turn because we're in a very, very different position than we were just back a few years, and that's a good thing for all of us. Thank you. Thank you.

▶ 2:24:24 Speaker 6: Thank you. Mr. Chairman, I'm going to wrap up here. As we go forward this evening, I'd be very interested to see what other aldermen are thinking in terms of what kind of a rate structure they would be interested in adopting. I have my own ideas which I'm going to hold for now, but I think that would be something that would serve us well if we could discuss what the aldermen think relative to these various rate proposals. That's all for now.

▶ 2:24:55 Peter D. Mortimer: Thank you, President Kahn. President Kahn has now yielded the floor. And we have four people in queue for first time speaking. Are you signaling that you would like to be in that line, too? Make it five people in queue for first time, and right now we have one person in queue for second time. Next in line, we have Alderman Zwirko, please.

▶ 2:25:17 Speaker 13: Thank you, Mr. Chairman.

▶ 2:25:20 Michael P. Zwirko: My time will only be doubled out of President Kahn's I do have a couple of questions I'm going to try to sprinkle the infield of the panel here just because a lot of issues here before us so I also appreciate the fact that a lot of the questions I was going to ask have previously been answered so it's always reassuring to me that folks are either sane or insane with my line of thinking so my first question generally this was brought up by Mr. Del Russo but I think perhaps mr. Shenna can answer it in terms of annual flows where are we

▶ 2:26:00 Speaker 9: right now are up down where we stand water yes down calendar year 2016 is we've seen a drastic reduction in our consumption you know I can give you a chat take home with you but our our consumption is significantly down in comparison to both 2015 and 2014 we're not alone the entire district is down when we consume less water from the MWRA we're obviously building less water

▶ 2:26:34 Speaker 9: overall fiscal 16 has seen an increase in billed amounts but I don't as done as here I think well coming out of the fall we were up eight nine percent and now we're maybe two and a half percent up because was a very front loaded year in terms of consumption when the fall came it's almost as if the spigots just shut off and it's reflected on this chat in January February March so the reason I

▶ 2:27:06 Michael P. Zwirko: asked that is because last summer especially was a very dry summer and all indications are meteorological meteorology blogs that I'm reading is that it could very well be the same so I'm just curious what impact that may have obviously the drier it is usage goes up but at the same time it's it's kind of funny how you know if you have a dry summer usage is up but if you have a wet summer the sewers it's kind of just funny how these two kind of work inverse to each other but I'm just curious if we're if our annual flows are down year to date and that trend continues which obviously no one knows what impact that could have I don't know if you can answer that but it just kind of like me

▶ 2:27:52 Speaker 9: a little bit Chris can answer that too because our rates do compensate for right right that's what things that weird take all the rates to address that

▶ 2:28:03 Speaker 10: I mean it's a bit of a conundrum on the one hand the Commonwealth wants you to conserve water, conserve resources. The rate structure that you have, the tiers, generally where that drop in consumption happens is at the higher tiers. As we talked earlier, most of it's in the first tier for most of the residents. It's going to be in the first tier, so it's not a big one. But those that are in the second and third, which is very few, those drops in consumption are at higher rates and have a bigger impact. So in general, a drop in consumption is going to mean a drop in revenues and hence the reason for having the reserves because of the structure of rates that you have the weather does have a huge impact as you said I'm not sure about what the meteorological prognosis is for the summer but but I can tell you that just saying wet or dry hot or cold doesn't really have a lot to do with it necessarily it has to do with intensity and duration of rainfall a lot of the stuff we've had in the last few days it's been really nice nice soft soaking rain it doesn't run off stays in the ground everything gets wet it goes down stays in the ground and it's there for a long time rather than some of those quick thunder bursts where if you get an inch in an hour and it all runs off and never gets into the ground so it's not just the number of inches it's not just the temperature it's how it happens when it happens type of thing um are they spread apart i mean if you had you know a half an inch every three days um it's going to be a lot better than having um three inches in one day which would be a lot more water so i mean the the weather has funny impacts because of that it's really hard to to um to estimate what the impact is but the answer is in general the the wetter and the warmer it is i'm sorry the wetter and the colder it is the less water people will use but then

▶ 2:30:02 Michael P. Zwirko: inversely on your sewers you have the problem right then you get the groundwater going up as

▶ 2:30:05 Speaker 10: elena was saying and you get you know some pumps going on in basements if there are any they're not supposed to be but if there are any you know yes so you do have that inverse impact you're

▶ 2:30:22 Michael P. Zwirko: right well thank you for explaining that um the where do i want to go now so i guess the next

▶ 2:30:35 Michael P. Zwirko: thing I'll bring up is so on the the second meter issue you know it's I was thinking about it the other day I was watering my lawn and we hear all the time that the water that we get from the MWRA is the you know best tasting water and it's class best in America or whatever but it's good all these gold metals but the funny thing is that I'm using this great water to water my lawn I mean my grass doesn't care I mean it just wants wet right I mean as long as it's not you know an herbicide it's I have this great water I'm putting it on a plant when you know maybe I mean obviously pie in the sky like a gray water system or something else could be you know better and I can't use a rain barrel because it's not enough water and there's no pressure so it's just an interesting you know I'm sitting out there watering the lawn with this grade a water is almost like I might as well just take a bunch of Poland spring and

▶ 2:31:26 Speaker 13: water my lawn so it's just I throw that out there because boggles my mind but

▶ 2:31:29 Michael P. Zwirko: I do want to talk about a couple of the because it's I don't think it's public but I had asked for a study on an option and henceforth will be called option 3b those results came back but I don't think that they're here for the members or I don't think the members got it so in the fall of 2015 I asked the water and sewer committee to take a look at expanding the first tier from 2000 to 2500 they did that it's in the technical memorandum that we received in the meeting when the technical memorandum was vetted I asked after the meeting via an electronic communication for a hybrid of that option and I was hoping mr. Shen if you don't mind just explaining that option before us I don't think the members have it here if you could just explain what that hybrid consisted of and we can go through its findings I think that they're interesting and because it was a request of mine just like to discuss that now sure and I do

▶ 2:32:36 Speaker 9: have it through the chair if I can pass it out please do we can enter it into the record we've called this option 3b the original option presented by Alderman Suarco was option 3 so this is a revised option what it does is maintain the same volumetric um tier zero to twenty five hundred twenty five hundred to ten thousand and then over ten thousand it takes the base fees from option four and it takes ninety it accounts for ninety percent sewer so as you'll see shortly the and i applaud him for his efforts in this

▶ 2:33:22 Speaker 9: the down the issue with this the issue with this rate structure is that it it hits 70% of this community significantly higher than the 5% average increase that the budget has so you'll see you can see it right and lines two and three of the chat below although there are some benefits the the impacts outweigh the benefits and the chart shows this and i will include this as part of the record

▶ 2:33:58 Michael P. Zwirko: to amend the report uh thank you and i appreciate that explanation and you know what i was trying to do um you know it's kind of funny you never know until you try so i thought it was worthwhile that maybe we could recoup some costs that would bring down these tiered rates and in fact that was the opposite effect but i tried to not only build off of expanding that first tier but i also wanted to include some of the progressive rate cost structure that was proposed in earlier iterations as well as the 90% on water for the sewer which I think is in four and five B it came back with results that actually negatively impact the population that I'm concerned about but I did just want to openly vet that so you know it's worth it's worth it to take a shot I was interested to see the calculations I appreciate the work the consultant did to take up that request doesn't look like it's something that's favorable at least by me and I'm sure public should it go into effect so I appreciate the time on that the other the other issue I want to bring up I looked at and I think this questions for mr. de la Rousseau so I pulled the standard and pores report from the fall

▶ 2:35:17 Michael P. Zwirko: of 2015 correct and I may have missed it but I don't see any mention in there of enterprise funds and I'm just curious while the DOR may take a negative view on how we manage or have reserves built in the enterprise funds do the rating agencies like Standard & Poor's or Moody's do that because I I don't think that they look at the enterprise fund accounts I actually think that they only look at issues like OPEB pensions you know debt capacity things of that nature but do they actually peel back the books and say geez you know you need more reserves in your water and sewer enterprise fund do they look at the ambulance enterprise fund I asked this because building off of President Khan's comment regarding possibly stripping out the reserves in this rate structure you know if we're going to do so I want to I'm just interested to know if that's a metric that the rating agencies look at and again I didn't find it in the 2015 report by standards and poor so it leads me to believe that they don't look at those when considering a rate wish that was the case but that's not the case

▶ 2:36:26 Speaker 8: okay they do in fact the standard questions not only for water and so on the standard questions they ask me is a were the funds self-sufficient water and saw all your enterprise funds because when we do our official statement which they have to which is used to go to market the information that we have to present is not only the historical information but it's also the projections of where we believe the position of the city will be where there any deficits in your enterprise systems were there any subsidies and they self-sufficient because one of the things that they do stress and you think it's on the last page in particular as you go to the bottom section they talk about the pressure because that we're under right now no because of OPEB which is we talked about before but also the fact that we are limited by two and a half so they're saying to us the the reality is they're saying to us make sure you do a good job on your other funds because anytime any one of those funds go in deficit it impacts your general fund as long as they feel that they don't see any deficits in the enterprise funds they're not going to note it but you start having running deficits or having the general fund have to run out and rescue you know whether it's water sewer or endless whatever they take notice absolutely and they have to because otherwise they wouldn't be doing their due diligence to the bond buyer in the marketplace and their job is to is to better out all this and they do go through the financials more in more in more detail now than i've ever seen so they spend an extra lot of time now which is good for everyone thank you for that i appreciate it so

▶ 2:38:28 Michael P. Zwirko: know we we have and again building off of what president khan said so we you know we have reserve funds generally at least maybe recently they don't get used like our rainy day fund but the reserves that we've built within the system the enterprise water sewer enterprise building on my question earlier so if we have a dry year and we're in deficit the reserve funds will get used for that the reserve funds are going to could also potentially get used for cost overruns or a pipe burst or they're there for you know the whole litany of costs that we find ourselves at deficit

▶ 2:39:04 Speaker 8: at any one point that absolutely correct and one of the things that we we have to be mindful of is is um these numbers 300 400 000 that would all do respect is small in comparison to the cost of fixing any major issue of pipes or whatever that may happen in the street and when he if But if they come to run to us and say, X happened and we need Y and we don't have it, where do you go other than the city? So the only recourse you have is to default to, well, the city's going to have to take care of it. How, other than take from your stabilization fund? So we're still delicate in that sense. I think, you know, the good thing is we have met our three year goal, which was very, very important. And we can state that with confidence that we're doing the right thing. However, we're still at that point where we've got to finish those last, that last mile, which is always at times the most difficult, like a race, the last mile. But we still have a little bit of ways to go.

▶ 2:40:11 Michael P. Zwirko: Thank you for that as well. I want to turn now a little bit to the INI that we brought up earlier.

▶ 2:40:23 Michael P. Zwirko: guess I have a comment but miscellaneous practice Ellis rather sorry we're never gonna get to zero right it's just it's kind of like economists out there they say the unemployment rate full unemployment three percent you got people that are out of the workforce people that are changing jobs people that are disabled you're never gonna get to zero unemployment we're never gonna get to zero and I and I right thank you the other question I had it has to do somewhat this ordinance change I'm just curious and you had mentioned it yourself about I guess it's inflow issues how do you police inflow I mean I know that you stated we're gonna do an education campaign and you know that may help to your point people volunteering and getting help from the city about sump pumps and things like that but generally speaking I mean how do you it

▶ 2:41:09 Speaker 1: seems like a very difficult there's a police it there's a wide range of what other communities do some communities so house-to-house inspections that I mentioned before are pretty common when once you've identified that you have a serious inflow problem if we find that our our I and I tends to be a couple

▶ 2:41:31 Speaker 1: days after it rains and and then trails off over a sort of slow period after that that points towards some pumps so you can institute a program where you go into every single house in the city you train city staff to do it or you hire a company to come out and do it and you go into every single home and you inspect and then what you do with that information also has a wide range you can some cities will actually fund the improvements through say the MWRA grant program they are through the SRF loan program I know some communities have done it through SRF funds which are 2% interest loans you can say that we'll pay to redirect people but then obviously the city's paying for that out of the sewer rates so it's you know it's paid for by everybody when that's done or you say we'll give everybody X number dollars to to go towards the solution but then you have to pay the rest but if you don't fix it right now you miss this opportunity and then a year from now we're gonna come down and and enforce and you're gonna be required to pay for all of it so it's just a little extra incentive even if you give people $500 towards fixing it but you say that's not going to be available to you if you wait so it's a lot of it is education and

▶ 2:42:53 Speaker 1: just trying to get people to do the right thing a lot of people have no idea that a sump pump is a lot of people don't even know what their sump pump is doing never mind what it's tied into so you're just getting that first step of having people understand and understand that they are breaking state law if they have one tied in that's the first hurdle and then you know it's up to the community where to take it from there and you may not know the answer to this

▶ 2:43:17 Michael P. Zwirko: and it's somewhat open-ended but if you're looking at percentage based or rating let's call a private home or private residence inflow issues versus in institutional ones with our infrastructure I mean do you think it's like a 50-50 I mean would you think that the residential component of inflows probably likely very low again saying we did a very good job of policing this and people were very diligent about changing over should they have an illegal hookup where would you think that the residential issue versus maybe some infrastructure issue kind of ranks is it you perceive our residential problem to

▶ 2:43:55 Speaker 1: be high I can't really say until I take a closer look at the data but that that information does come directly out of the data because if you have inflow that's based on catch basins tied into the sewer you see that as immediate reaction when it's raining you'll see we have 15 minute rain data as well as 15 minute flow data so if you see the water coming in the instant it's raining that's issues in your system if you see it like I said trailing in for several days afterwards and then slowly going down but say your groundwater is still high or your groundwater still low that's that tends to be the private

▶ 2:44:29 Michael P. Zwirko: inflow sources okay do we have you may not be the right person answers but do we have via ordinance or Commonwealth general law the ability to institute a house-to-house inspection is that something that we at the board would have to I mean I know that we can through the meters inspect them you know via radio signal from the street but at times and obviously in changing them we have the ability to go into the residence but do we have the same power

▶ 2:44:57 Speaker 1: to do so existing within the city we have in by ordinance and I maybe John knows what ordinance it is but I know I've read it that we have by ordinance the authority to enter somebody's home to inspect okay thank you the just two

▶ 2:45:16 Speaker 13: or three final questions or points so I actually three four weeks ago I had

▶ 2:45:19 Michael P. Zwirko: copious amounts of free time so I actually cold called another municipality myself to ask them some water and sewer questions i did ask a question related to alderman Lemmerman question earlier with respect to issues that we and she have heard with respect to the the towers that municipality is facing the same issue they do get complaints similar complaints they do have obviously their residents are getting the eventually hitting their top tier and they're being billed accordingly so it's interesting to hear that other municipalities are in that same situation i will also add that the person i spoke to who's the town manager stated that municipal water mr shenna to your point it was about 50 50 in your review in this case this town did the same with respect to their municipal water costs they build them right into the enterprise fund based on usage and they also interestingly enough they used our very own consultant here when setting their rates as well and the final point that I'll note it was somewhat interesting that this this town used what is allowed under Massachusetts general law as a surcharge to subsidize the water and sewer rates I just found that interesting so I looked into that a little bit further but I just did want to say in my own desperation for more knowledge outside of the city of Melrose I found that this town which is a comparable town operated did and produced some of the same results and feedback community feedback that we're receiving here in the last thing I did want to say Alderman Khan had brought up that he would like to hear where folks may stand on this after further and first I do want to say I when we were presented I believe it was back in April by the consultants the one thing I really appreciated about going through this process was that we were gonna have a menu of options I feel that gives us a lot of information I was able to take components of that and create my own didn't work out the way I wanted to but I was still able to do that so after looking at all of them I think that I'm most comfortable with setting a rate in agreement with 4b I don't think that a dual tier structure is something that we should look at I do want to keep the three tiers and I'm appreciative of the components of 4b and in a final note just I know we've talked a lot about indirect costs is that is that a motion

▶ 2:48:06 Michael P. Zwirko: Alderman Suarco that is not a motion no I want the opportunity for other aldermen to be able to weigh in should they feel well the discussion will

▶ 2:48:11 Peter D. Mortimer: continue in any light but is it a comment or emotion it was a comment all

▶ 2:48:16 Michael P. Zwirko: right very good thank you the indirect costs are interesting I know that they can maybe exacerbate some emotion or passion around the issue what I would say is that you know we've spent the past couple weeks going through the budget and we haven't exactly you know found areas that we thought maybe we could strike from and if we were to take out indirect costs in some way from any of these options we'd have to find them in the general fund so some extent it's a damned if you do damned if you don't scenario but it's the same we had a resident that came before us I want to say two or three weeks ago who said because we moved into the tier structure moving back into a flat rate structure is going to cause undue harm to folks so anytime you know we're here okay we have three tiers we have indirect costs moving from those instead of pointing out you know what could be perceived as a problem any movement from those is going to create hardship elsewhere you could say it's a proper proposition two and a half play you could say it's a budget mechanism and call what you want the reality is is if you're moving anything from the water and sewer budget as proposed you have to make it up elsewhere I have not seen where we're gonna make that up so I make that comment I appreciate the time I know I I know I spoke for quite some time, but I yield the rest. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.

▶ 2:49:40 Peter D. Mortimer: Thank you very much, Alderman Zwirko. Next in line, we have Alderman Tramontozzi, please. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.

▶ 2:49:48 Speaker 2: Just a couple of areas of concern that, an interest that I had.

▶ 2:49:59 John N. Tramontozzi: I think I, early on, talked about municipal water usage when I was a member of the rate setting board. water rate setting Commission our recommendation but anyway I think you said there was if the municipal usage of water is a roughly two hundred and

▶ 2:50:16 Speaker 9: seventy thousand dollars yeah that's an a projection of FY 16 an estimated

▶ 2:50:22 John N. Tramontozzi: projection of FY 16 costs so how would that be split give me for example I can imagine the the school department the school budget would be a considerable amount and maybe the parks or which fall under the Department of Public Works

▶ 2:50:42 Speaker 9: does it yes so I we do have a breakdown 140,000 of the 270 can be attributed to school buildings and grounds and a hundred and one thousand seven hundred of it rough numbers again can be attributed to parks open spaces which fall on the public works then we have public safety buildings the library the Council on Aging the cemetery that also get covered in the same manner as those two larger larger department here's the water use so essentially if we we took

▶ 2:51:18 John N. Tramontozzi: out that the two hundred and seventy thousand for example the hundred of that hundred and forty thousand dollars would have to find out I mean how we send it back to the school budget what does that mean they have to find a hundred and forty thousand dollars of budget money somewhere else that could be a couple

▶ 2:51:45 John N. Tramontozzi: teachers couple programs couple more I think it was an open I think it was a good to raise it that it was appropriate to bring out to the public these were questions that were that I heard about and rate and that's why I raised it also I think there was a concern that if the city departments themselves we're not watching them I weren't being billed for the the usage that may not be an incentive to conserve and I think there was some suggesting that you know maybe there should be more conservation suppose especially in the school department too if it's so if this a part of the the the weight setting doesn't go through I think it might be appropriate and I think it's in the future I'm going to propose an order that the the director of public works provide to this board quarterly water use of the the city department so that we can monitor and see if in fact they're conserving like we hope that they will be doing is that something that the that mr. Shenna that's a that you can do if we send an order to you to come back to it with a quarterly or some other period of time to provide us with that department municipal usage of the water and how

▶ 2:53:08 Speaker 9: that's going there would have no no issue doing that I challenge a challenge our management staff and public works to do exactly that you know monitor our meters in the parks and the buildings and continue to find ways to conserve internally so i have no issue doing

▶ 2:53:27 John N. Tramontozzi: that the other one the other thing was the flat rate and we talked about that and i know your position and the flat rate is not it's not appropriate some would say not legal under the statute but um assuming just for argument's sake that we were to go back to a flat rate What would the result be to, say, the first tier of customers up to the 2,000 level, 2,500 or 2,000 cubic foot? What would a flat rate result in the cost to those homeowners?

▶ 2:54:05 Speaker 9: Option two of your report outlines that. if you look at the the top consumers from which are about uh 70 of the 70 of your bills would

▶ 2:54:22 John N. Tramontozzi: increase nine to twelve percent so the average homeowner in that lower tier as a result of the flat rate would pay nine approximately ten percent more seventy percent of the community would see

▶ 2:54:34 John N. Tramontozzi: ten at least ten percent increases oh i don't think seventy percent of the people would appreciate

▶ 2:54:37 Speaker 9: that yeah those are outlined on page seven of the report okay all right thank you i appreciate that

▶ 2:54:49 Peter D. Mortimer: um yeah thank you for that update that's all thank you alderman Tramontozzi alderman Medeiros please

▶ 2:54:59 Speaker 7: thank you uh thank you very much you're welcome um there's a lot to still say obviously it is

▶ 2:55:07 Monica C. Medeiros: getting late I wanted to first move to add the three pages I handed out to the alderman earlier and just recently to at the break to mr. de la Rousseau which are in regard to indirect costs so I have one page that says indirect costs kind of what are they how are they funded where they disclose what do they include and this indirect cost comparison how do they compare this year to last and

▶ 2:55:42 Monica C. Medeiros: lastly kind of a water and sewer chart for the breakdown of the indirect cost over the last five years or so I want to thank mr. Del Russo for providing a lot of information I had asked for some specifics on this and I wanted to you thought that I do believe that this is something that we should be looking at making a little bit clearer in our budget and a budget process so I kind of you know put together an idea of what I thought well I might like to see as an alderman and I would say you know something like the first two pages here would be something that I'd like maybe for us to see you know moving forward so the public can kind of know you know what are the indirect costs in terms of what do they include I'm still Rosa sent a rather large package I tried to summarize just the the basics about what they include and and I pulled out the the change from the actual FY 2016 numbers from the a twos that are reported to the bastio are and what the proposed numbers for FY 17 based on what mr. Delruso had provided so you know and then I basically calculated the percentage they change plus or minus and the percent and that's you know something that we see when we look at our regular budget and I think it would be helpful for us to take a look at as the the process goes so that we can ask you know questions kind of as they happen if we see things that are

▶ 2:57:28 Speaker 8: outliers and happy to put this right in the bucket as we did for the for all the men boys out with the state aid that new analysis that shows the five years we

▶ 2:57:41 Monica C. Medeiros: can do the same thing with this that would be great and then you know in that I do see that there are some outliers and I did have you know I had asked kind what was included in there there was some i was looking for maybe a little bit more specific in a couple of areas um in particular we see this year for indirect costs in water the health insurance cost is up about 20 23 going to 24 percent and um in sewer almost like 75 76 so i'm wondering you

▶ 2:58:16 Speaker 8: know what what the driver is there again it could be the new employees that didn't have it that do have it people from single to family plan they chose may have been less expensive now they've gone to a higher plan it's a combination of all the above and then some but that that's why it'd be good to put in the package yeah going forward i agree and is that the health insurance cost are

▶ 2:58:36 Monica C. Medeiros: those those are for current employees yeah that are for the portion of their salaries that are the the people that we see in the water and sewer budget for salaries that's the health insurance

▶ 2:58:52 Speaker 8: cost for those individuals for those individuals plus anyone on the outside that has shared services but that percentage of that cost also plus the shared service employees and

▶ 2:59:02 Monica C. Medeiros: And I know you mentioned that there is an allocation for OPEB costs.

▶ 2:59:08 Speaker 8: Yes, and again, as we've done in the general fund, because that's a great question, is what we have been working with the actuary to ensure that we are representing some figure at least to show that we recognize that there's an obligation not only in water and soil but also in ambulance and we have to reflect that because as you know that's not going to go away so we just use a figure to represent that we recognize that it's like the fifty thousand the city budget but we can't pay seven million but we could put

▶ 2:59:55 Speaker 7: fifty thousand that kind of a thing it's so so that is this is where it gets like

▶ 2:59:58 Monica C. Medeiros: a little bit confusing so we it is a indirect cost so it's it's funded through water and sewer and a portion of this health insurance might be OPEB right and and then we are actually appropriating it in the general fund budget so this year is the first time that we did that appropriation to in the

▶ 3:00:24 Speaker 8: general fund budget no we've done the OPEB before as a budget as a fund a regular budget what happens this money will get into the OPEB fund these allocations also get applied directly to OPEB so that they add to it and again

▶ 3:00:41 Speaker 8: it's it's not it is a good start and then the question you know people have

▶ 3:00:47 Monica C. Medeiros: asked me a lot about pension which isn't going up so much this year but we do see when you look back you know over the past five or six years or so like in fy 12 in water it was 120,000 and now it's 297 and we look back to you know fy 12 in sewer it was you know 54,000 and now it's 171 so there's some significant increases there is you know how do we calculate that is that just for is that our share of for employees that were our current employees and the shared employees or is that some past employees or how is that number determined great

▶ 3:01:36 Speaker 8: Great question, what they do is, in FY13, we went through this rebirth of water and soil. The Department of Revenue has a cost study formula that they use for

▶ 3:01:57 Speaker 8: the determination of pensions based on the number of employees, total staff, percent of your pension appropriation within the general fund, which as you know has been rising and rising. So what we did is that in 13 we said that we would, their assets will embrace their recommendations. However, on the condition that I said I'd like to not implement the pension allocation right away. And I spread it over multiple years so that it wouldn't impact all at once. And I spread it so I met their objective which they wanted me to meet. did that but I was I didn't do it you know like instantly so that's why you'll see that progressive increase a great question but it was because we didn't want to do it at once court even though you know they made their recommendation we they allowed us to spread it out over most is it safe to call that like

▶ 3:02:55 Speaker 8: delayed implementation to well I don't not really delayed implementation but I think they were also sensitive to the fact that um you know as we've talked about here in this room a hundred times is that it does have an impact on the rate yes and so they were sensitive to that and this phenomenal change they were we had to make for them get things in order that was sort of a given that they felt we were making those efforts we made a commitment to all the obligations as we I indicated so they worked with us on that and then could

▶ 3:03:29 Monica C. Medeiros: could you share with us you know to the future the the formula yeah that would

▶ 3:03:39 Monica C. Medeiros: be great and then last on this you know and again looking over you know several years you know the legal costs we're starting out from you know twenty three thousand and twenty twelve up to twenty nine thousand and twenty sixteen and now we're seeing a drop down to thirteen thousand eight hundred so it's that's that's about a little bit more than a fifty percent decrease so that's that's a change can you explain why that we're seeing that change this year yes a lot

▶ 3:04:14 Speaker 8: of the three-year lifecycle of this initial startup we had a lot of legal issues we still do I mean we can someone you know some silly different opinions whether or not mastering a law is mastering a law but when you start to have conversations and bring in apartments condos and you start to make inquiries and say what if can we do this can we do this can we do not as everyone's aware you have to be on legal footing to do that so whether it's in-house out you're gonna need legal help to do that to make sure it gets so this year I believe a lot of those issues have been settled in their in their way and that we have a better direction than we had three years ago so the expectation is that it like other things we should see the year go down on that balloon and reduce that allocation so it's a process like that okay okay

▶ 3:05:11 Monica C. Medeiros: thank you I appreciate that and and I think you know again adding adding that

▶ 3:05:20 Monica C. Medeiros: to make it more clear would be terrific absolutely also I would like to move I don't see that this correspondence had been added to the record we had a letter from Joan Leighton 49 Melrose Street number 5 C back on June 6 2016 relative these to these orders and I'd like to you know move that this also be added to the record for the water and sewer rate orders. Thank you. Alderman Medeiros has

▶ 3:05:52 Peter D. Mortimer: made a motion to include that correspondence in the record. It was addressed to all the aldermen. Correct. Said motion was seconded by Alderman Forbes. All in favor please say aye. Aye. Any opposed hearing none. That information from Ms. Layton will be added to the record. That's great and I

▶ 3:06:12 Monica C. Medeiros: just you know share the the basics of it and you know this goes into you know what we'd like to see in the rate and I think you know Alderman Lemmerman talked about this and some of the frustration and and she is a resident at the Melrose Towers and a former trustee and who's been you know talking communicating with us for some years on this and you know did she did an average of what they use at the towers and found that the average if you divided you know then the total bill by the number of units that they're averaging 802 cubic feet per unit quarter which is she says is less than half of the 2000 maximum per quarter for tier one so you know it's it's something that you know we talk about a rate and the the state law saying that we have to have you know something that that fairly describes the impact on the system and and measures that and you know it I really still would like to see us address this and and find a way to do that that being said I I think believe I had asked at the last meeting

▶ 3:07:28 Monica C. Medeiros: to have sort of a historical impact chart of how the rate change has affected all of these usage levels and I wasn't sure if we had that I didn't I

▶ 3:07:42 Speaker 9: haven't seen that come back to me yet I do have that also and I think that's an

▶ 3:07:46 Monica C. Medeiros: important piece to take a look at this when we're deciding you know how we're

▶ 3:07:54 Speaker 9: gonna move forward through the chair if we could pass this over as well please

▶ 3:08:00 Speaker 9: do just to explain the chart what you're getting this is average the summary of residential bills from FY 12 through the proposed FY 17 rates that are before you and the 17 rates we chose to use a 4b and 5b so this shows by consumption but the that the resident were average residents of pain and and while you have

▶ 3:08:28 Monica C. Medeiros: things there I know I had asked you about looking at differentiating out commercial and you know I know at that time I was probably a little bit vague last meeting because I thought maybe we might have at the end of the meeting narrowed down our focus a little bit but I'm wondering if we have any difference

▶ 3:09:01 Monica C. Medeiros: in in so do we in this summary of residential bills we don't have any kind of showing but we couldn't we can calculate out if we take an extra step out the percentage change so I I would personally to review this a little bit

▶ 3:09:19 Monica C. Medeiros: more closely to to add and get the percentage change because I again I think that's important when we look at you know what we are going forward I have to say that overall in terms of the I know President Khan was interested in in terms of where we are in the rates. I mean, I really, just eyeballing this, we're seeing that the individuals in, let's say, that 1,800 cubic foot, which we think is most of the bills, went from $246 for the average bill per quarter in FY12 to $328. So, I mean, that is a significant increase. but we also look at tier three which is some building like the Melrose Towers you know falls into in the average bill and FY 12 was 34,000 and now it's 55,000 so that you know those were I'm sorry that's that's I'm comparing this to the FY 17 proposed option B which is actually about what it is now so so I mean those those are significant increases to me and I feel that we have an obligation to try to do something that we can to mitigate that so that being said I mean I would be more in favor of you know if I have to choose from the options that are here you know I would say I probably lean more towards a 5b that has two tiers and we're seeing the percent changes on you know there is a higher percentage on the lower the lower users but you know I think we have mitigate what the change we've already implemented and the cost that we've already shifted to to these other users and you see the the users at the higher level do have some increase but it is you know very very minor so that's that's where I would lead to try to do what we can on a gradual basis to address this problem I would like to see you know what the impact of commercial is because I don't necessarily want to give frankly our commercial users a big benefit over our homeowners so I'd like to just you know see what that effect is if we were to break that out as a category and I want to go back to well I

▶ 3:11:57 Monica C. Medeiros: just want to ask I had filed last May 2015 order number 2015 dash 193 the

▶ 3:12:12 Monica C. Medeiros: concept here was looking at averaging per per person per meter this after some time got there was a vote by this board to send this to the water and sewer rate committee to be reviewed by the consultant at the time we had the consultant for that committee at the time the consultant was leaving you were having a new new consultant and I'm wondering mr. Ruff tell us have you

▶ 3:12:39 Speaker 10: reviewed this option at all we haven't looked at number of people dividing by number of people it's fraught with all sorts of problems that isn't to say it can't be done in the southwest where there isn't enough water they do a lot of things that we wouldn't do in New England and one of them is to look at number of people it gets to be difficult because your billing system first off doesn't have that information so you're gonna have to find out how many people there is are in each one of the properties yes and residential prop

▶ 3:13:12 Monica C. Medeiros: this option the idea was to use the census data since we are collecting that and you know since that time I knew this is a little bit you know of a challenge and I'm not sure that this is the right way to go but I wanted to bring up a concept and since that time we have learned from our assessor that since we have the new Melrose map system he says anything that has an address we can basically tie this together so it seems you know I've watched the the elections officer you know manually type in the census data so if we type it into one system I don't know if it's that difficult to type it into another system

▶ 3:13:54 Speaker 10: but but keep going because well you you probably would have to type it manually into the other system because the two systems don't necessarily integrate and it's as simple as things like 123 Main Street maybe the address in one system in the it may be 123 main ST in another system so something as simple as that they don't match or a space you also I mean you mentioned the census and using that and that's the way of doing it but it does run into problems you have to do it how accurate is it what happens if somebody dies what happens somebody's born you know grandma comes to visit for three months you know for that quarter just that type of thing do it once a year and yeah and and I we did talk about it very briefly in the committee and I think the sense was that the billing system doesn't have that capability to do that and it would mean a change in an upgrade to the billing system I don't know what the cost of that would be if there is one that even does that that would be available to do it and the the administration of it was was thought of at the committee level when we looked at this to be something that it wouldn't be worth it to do it because we didn't have the information to even look at it at this point to be

▶ 3:15:08 Monica C. Medeiros: able to do that but thank you I appreciate that because I've been you know waiting for some time to have the discussion and I'm glad that you know this year we are looking at some different options and I think looking at it more thoughtfully than we have in the past you know that that being said as well is another reason why I feel strongly that the simpler the system we have and especially after hearing mr. de la Russo's comments tonight about how much work is involved in in having the tiered rate system I know you know it it has to be there's so many you know and I don't know if the public totally fully you know grasps like how complicated this is to forecast going forward because there's so many moving parts that have to do with you know we we can't tell exactly how much water anybody is going to use and when you have multiple tiers you have to figure out how many people in each tier are going to use how much water and and that seems to be tremendously complicated and put a lot of risk and involved in the system and you know and I know we have a lot of expert people here that we you know we trust but at the same time it makes it more risky and more variable and I think a simpler system would be better so that's where I'm leaning there I want to talk a little bit about retroactive billing and proration proration was the solution to making up for retroactively billing people because we were for some time and we are still right billing people on a rolling quarterly basis so not everybody in this room for instance receives a water bill on you know at the same month our water bills are rolling based on how we're collecting it and I know I had been out of water and sewer committee meeting and mr. Flavin said you know this is this is also a little bit helpful in terms of managing the flow so that not everybody's getting the bill at once I and in proration was just a fix in order to stop people from being billed for water they used in the previous rate period at the new higher rates and so I understand that we're going the the plan here is to not bill anybody until October how are we are we how are we going to determine if we're not we're not reading all the bills at the same time still is that correct so I don't really understand how this solves the problem exactly of making sure that everybody is being charged for the water they're using when they're in the quarter that they're using it rates that

▶ 3:18:02 Speaker 9: this board will hopefully recommend this evening go into effect in July water you start using in July is at the new rate however that bill won't be the July to July bill which has water from April May and June will be at the existing rate the August bill which has water from May June and July will be at the existing rate September bill again water from July June July and August the existing rate so it's not until October when water is only from July August and September that the new rate goes into a field B for everybody from July from October on from October October on October is the first billing cycle that encompasses calendar year fiscal 17 water use everything before that July August and September it's only a portion of 16 calendar use and it's a portion of 17 calendar use so we're gonna bill all that at the existing 16 rate so you're

▶ 3:19:14 Monica C. Medeiros: gonna all of it so if somebody's meter is read on August 1st and they've got

▶ 3:19:25 Monica C. Medeiros: June July and August in those three months what happens to that month of

▶ 3:19:33 Speaker 9: June bill that's billed at the 16 rate and how how do we know what they used in

▶ 3:19:36 Monica C. Medeiros: June and not what they used in we know the difference from the last time the

▶ 3:19:40 Speaker 9: meter was read in the date we read the meter that's the differential we put on

▶ 3:19:45 Monica C. Medeiros: that's the differential but it but we're not reading all the meters coming July 1st no no so if we have a meter that was last read May 31st and and then read

▶ 3:19:59 Monica C. Medeiros: again in August 1st or yeah August 4th I might be cutting out months there give

▶ 3:20:10 Monica C. Medeiros: or take then I don't see how you separate the the billing period without

▶ 3:20:17 Speaker 9: maybe prorating the bill we're just gonna build it at the 16 rate until the entire 90 day cycle on the bill is an FY 17 calendar year but you see how this is

▶ 3:20:29 Monica C. Medeiros: still not now some people might be getting a little bit more of a benefit than others it's not really solving the the problem of the inconsistency in let

▶ 3:20:43 Speaker 9: try to say it in a different way typically everybody gets four bills at a rate and that's the rate that the board goes into effect in july because of this offset everybody's going to get a fifth bill at the f16 rate you'll only get three at the sorry you get four at the 17 rate the fourth is the next fiscal year and then from that point on it moves forward where you get four again

▶ 3:21:11 Monica C. Medeiros: at the rate that's set at the rate that's are we changing the date like i i change we're not

▶ 3:21:15 Speaker 9: changing anything how we read of how we build we're still going to build quarterly we do we read a quarter of the city every month we're just not going to change the actual dollar amount on

▶ 3:21:29 Monica C. Medeiros: the bill until the october bills yeah i i want so badly for this to be completely resolved but don't really see that this resolves the problem I I was hoping that we would get to this these new meters installed and I'm also wondering how we are doing with that and that we would be able to you know when we first talked about doing this would be able to read the whole city in you know four hours and it sounded great and you know we could maybe take a reading at the you know the day or a week before the rate change we're going to go into effect you know i know again mr flavin

▶ 3:22:11 Monica C. Medeiros: mentioned that that might cause extra billing costs because they're getting it all at once but just delaying the change doesn't and still leaving the inconsistency and when the bills are read doesn't actually solve doesn't actually make the problem go away because we're going to have the same problem next year that we have had last year and i think the idea is to make sure

▶ 3:22:41 Speaker 10: that no one is billed for usage prior to july one um without getting proper notice in our rates

▶ 3:22:53 Monica C. Medeiros: in our our rates i actually don't even change in july one i think they changed on july 27th I mean June 27th but but yes I mean that's the goal but I don't see how this

▶ 3:23:11 Speaker 10: unless you pro-rate I'm not sure it ever goes away unless we read everybody you

▶ 3:23:14 Monica C. Medeiros: know pretty close to the rate change period and I as metering technology

▶ 3:23:20 Speaker 10: changes first off you'll be billing monthly in ten years so this will will probably be a non-issue in 10 years. You'll be building monthly. It's odd that water and sewer don't get built monthly, but that's a New England thing. But in the meantime, it's hard to do without the proration, which is difficult to do. If you really don't know when the water was used, you're just assuming it was an equal amount every day, which we know isn't true. And so I think perhaps the ultimate solution is monthly, monthly which more and more people are starting to do now and sooner or later you will be in is this the metering technology gets better it gets cheaper and cheaper to do it where the meters are read a lot chronically rather than

▶ 3:24:09 Monica C. Medeiros: somebody walking around with a pencil well I would encourage President Khan not to withdraw his motion yet on that and last but not least I'm hoping we can

▶ 3:24:17 Monica C. Medeiros: go through the water and sewer actual budgets I've kind of been anticipating that we would get sort of an overview and I mean I do see there's some line items that have you know significant percentage changes and that's something that you know I look at I don't know if the the board wants to take this up another night that's fine but I think that we ought to be looking at that that's you know a major component of our job is alderman so you know I would like if you could you know if again it's the will of the the board you know to go through it another night but I think we ought to be going through it let's go

▶ 3:25:01 Monica C. Medeiros: then okay great can we please look at the the water budget and mr. Shana you know in the essence of making this easier you know your budget if you could please address you know anything that you know we've got a more than a 5% or so increase in some of these line items if you could it kind of explain what

▶ 3:25:22 Speaker 9: they are and what's going on with them we could start with water and the bottom line the bottom line of the water budget is increased two and a half percent there are some lines that have increased and again when you look at the percentages you have to keep in mind that it's sometimes it's a percentage of a lot of smaller number it creates a few increase that it creates but postage is up electricity is up six percent obviously gas is up our consulting costs

▶ 3:25:56 Monica C. Medeiros: are up in the gas and electric are we in contracts they're same card it's the

▶ 3:26:02 Speaker 9: same consumption the same contract and same suppliers as all our other municipal accounts except these are for water water in this case water pump stations and the sewer budget it's sewer pump stations our professional service

▶ 3:26:20 Speaker 9: line is up because we're looking to study and update our CEP capital improvement programs and do some other professional develop professional service work through our engineering office and then our supplies some of our supplies are up some of that is volume driven as some of that is market driven things are costing more and our bids are coming in slightly higher okay most are our M there's a line Malden 99 that's the that's what we pay Malden we have an intermunicipal connection at Malden at route 99 we're not consuming as much water as we did in the past we only have three customers there aggregate industries is the largest they've changed after a couple of years of um of of high water use they've changed their operation and they're relying more on water out of the quarry their volume has gone down obviously we're taking in less water from all volume from walden which led

▶ 3:27:28 Monica C. Medeiros: to that cut okay and it looks like the mwra assessment i'm thankfully happy to report here is

▶ 3:27:37 Speaker 9: only a 2.6 percent increase that's correct and our salary line is only up 1.4 percent that includes all of the contractual changes in the collective bargaining agreement uh

▶ 3:27:49 Monica C. Medeiros: we have here a municipal debt that does not belong in this budget it just got just got added here by accident i think no no that is does belong here sorry that's that's some of our debt payments on work that we've we've water water work that we've

▶ 3:28:12 Monica C. Medeiros: completed over the last decade of thank you I find that helpful so we're anticipating we've heard about earlier a lot of work and so the in generally my take on this is the increases that we're seeing in the budget are relative to the the capital improvement plans and utility costs I'd say utility costs

▶ 3:28:29 Speaker 9: material slight increases in material cost and engineering engineering studies and designs and some of the work that we want to do in house as well again overall it's only two two and a half percent increase on the bottom line of

▶ 3:28:58 Speaker 9: the budget in sewer just get to the sewer is a 2.7 percent increase on the bottom line of the budget salaries are increasing 1.6% the MWRA assessment is increasing 2.8% and again everything is very very similar lines as in water that are increasing due to utilities and we have some material increases as well we have decreased equipment parts in the sewer we're spending a lot of money on the vac truck back trucks new so I proposed the cut in that line that was

▶ 3:29:44 Speaker 9: accepted we also gas and oil line in sewer and I don't know if I mentioned it but in water too we also proposed cuts and gas and oil given the the economy and the impact the positive impacts of our fuel station we are

▶ 3:30:04 Monica C. Medeiros: showing a 65% increase which isn't a tremendous amount we're going from actual 2016 budgeted amount of $7,000 to now an anticipated I'm going to call it sixteen thousand fifteen thousand nine hundred dollar increase in part-time salaries and wages and a 21% projected increase in overtime can you talk about

▶ 3:30:33 Speaker 9: about those two lines sure the the part-time line we've added a second summer intern to help analyze the sewer data we're collecting and to also help us in our GIS efforts to go out and update cards and update information so what we see on our computers and on paper matches what's out in the field the overtime line has increased because we we intend to do additional work to

▶ 3:31:09 Speaker 9: date we've expended about 60 percent of our or actually this was as of may 4th we had expended about 60 percent of our original budget but we're doing more work and more work so there's more overtime associated with that more work that's the only thing we can use that line for is overtime if we don't use it it stays there and it gets turned back and becomes retained earnings at

▶ 3:31:31 Monica C. Medeiros: the end of the year okay thank you uh i appreciate that and just to uh clarify i guess i'll be more specific in terms of uh rate modeling i i i would like to see the commercial use broken out and in particular i'd be interested in seeing that in uh the two options that have been mentioned so

▶ 3:31:57 Monica C. Medeiros: far tonight five five B and four B and four B well I mentioned five B and I

▶ 3:32:12 Peter D. Mortimer: think that's it thank you alderman Medeiros next in line we have alderman

▶ 3:32:17 Gail Infurna: Inferno please thank you very much mr. chairman first of all I just want to thank you for your presentation on the INI program I'm glad to see that it is a a program and not just a project I've been sitting here for years and it's been a project after project so it's nice to have it as a program that I know will continue to go forward and also I've I've been all over the place with between my paperwork and all the little scratches here so I'm hope I'm gonna catch it all the regarding the reserves and I've been sitting here for a long time and I think mr. de la Rosa you said it very articulately tonight with your explanation of what happened in FY 10 FY 13 we sat here you know before that through that I do want to continue going stronger I I don't want us to to go backwards I'd like to be in the position of strain so I am not really interested decreasing our reserves in this budget at all my question my big question was in doing all my little readings here I believe I saw in this packet that had the options that all these options generate the same amount of revenue yes correct I think that's important to get out there that no matter what option we choose the revenue is going to be the same and I don't really have a lot of questions there's been a lot of information being put out here tonight I do like the idea that proration is done and I hope that it will be done and I want to say that I'm sure the late Sue Kelleher is very happy once we pass something like that she was always down here talking about that so I think that's good the other thing is at this point I leaning towards 4b I would love to make a motion on it but I'm not gonna let dr. dr. president Kahn not have the thunder because he was the first to mention it so as we hear this you know I hopefully he will make a motion to go with option 4b on that and and thank you for all the work that the committee has done on this it's been daunting you can tell by the paperwork and all the information we've had for weeks and weeks to get through it so thank you Thank You alderman inferno alderman

▶ 3:34:54 Robert A. Boisselle: for cell please many of my questions have been asked by previous alderman but one question couple of questions John in the water leakage near the headquarters

▶ 3:35:10 Speaker 9: how much did that cost any idea we have a rough idea how much volume of water we

▶ 3:35:15 Robert A. Boisselle: lost yeah not the volume but the actual physical cost of repairing the problem

▶ 3:35:21 Speaker 1: we can run that number and the cost to repair the problem right this is the

▶ 3:35:25 Speaker 9: leak on Tremont Street right you want to know how much water we lost and what just the cost of repairing the leak all the cost of repairing a leak was uh

▶ 3:35:36 Speaker 9: actually we just got yes well we replaced the entire water main on

▶ 3:35:41 Robert A. Boisselle: Tremont Street for $400,000 $400,000 Grove Street last year had a problem and

▶ 3:35:47 Speaker 9: how much did that cost that was less there was about half of that amount after

▶ 3:35:49 Robert A. Boisselle: that and how did you pay for that I mean how where did that money come from we

▶ 3:35:53 Speaker 9: borrowed we borrowed against the MWRA programs okay so there was no use of the

▶ 3:35:59 Speaker 9: reserve funds at all we didn't have adequate reserve funds but you didn't have adequate

▶ 3:36:01 Robert A. Boisselle: reserve funds so if you had adequate reserve funds you would have paid for that and we wouldn't have any uh problems with the mwra and paying that back again that's the um the will of the sport when we

▶ 3:36:12 Speaker 9: have reserve funds it's in your hands we can propose but if you don't allow it to go forward it's it's in it's that's your decision what to do with the reserve funds that's an adequate expense

▶ 3:36:28 Robert A. Boisselle: if that's the direction you want to go there's been a proposal this evening to not fund the water reserve or the budget reserve or the sewer reserve and the that comes out to about 457 000 about half a million dollars if that was used to lower the rates how much would that be spread any idea what uh 163 000 for water and 294 000 for sewer that would break out let's say we're talking about 4b this evening um so if we now the volumetric charge is 631 for water 631 to 940 for water and 12 to 15 dollars for sewer so if we were to eliminate all of the reserves

▶ 3:37:17 Speaker 9: the spread would be 620 to 924 on water and would be 11 52 11 52 cents to 14 and 74 cents on sewer

▶ 3:37:38 Robert A. Boisselle: that would be the um the new spread in the tears so the charge from the from the form that we're seeing here the dollar change per quarter goes from six dollars to 35 so you're talking about anywhere from probably about 550 to 33 dollars difference about sounds about right

▶ 3:38:02 Robert A. Boisselle: So there is some savings on a quarterly basis?

▶ 3:38:05 Speaker 9: Yeah, there's absolute savings if you remove all of the reserve.

▶ 3:38:08 Speaker 8: Okay.

▶ 3:38:12 Robert A. Boisselle: Well, John, in your committee, since you were the chair of that committee,

▶ 3:38:21 Robert A. Boisselle: you gave us ten, item two, A and B are not conforming to state, so you throw that out. And status quo, well, we're looking for something different. We've been talking about 3B this evening, 4B, 5B,

▶ 3:38:44 Robert A. Boisselle: and the question is, as chairman of that commission, which one would you actually recommend and why?

▶ 3:38:55 Speaker 9: Well, there are several options before you. That's absolute truth. An equal truth is that what I can definitely tell you is that there isn't a single option that makes everyone happy when you're dealing with tears. um the committee was in support of a 4a 4b 5a 5b again we just the differences between the two five collapses the third tier um a and b bills sewer differently they're very they're very um and they they both increase base fees so they're very similar with the exception of that third tier disappearing in the fifth option um it appears that most of the discussion is between 4b and 5b which is something that i'm more comfortable i think the committee in general was more comfortable going back to 90 percent um so i think you headed in the right direction

▶ 3:39:53 Speaker 9: um with the entire package in mind the senior discount passage of the senior discount the strong commitment to ini rate implementation at 10-1 if i had to rank the two i would I would rank 4b slightly ahead of 5b I think 4b is slightly ahead of 5b because it best manages the increases to over 80% of your accounts your customers meets the fiduciary responsibilities that the enterprise system has to has to meet it supports continued continued infrastructure improvements and gives the DPW water and sewer operation the ability to to staff leaks and to respond quickly to two repairs and to buy material for the repairs and it supports a the fiduciary commitments that the auditor has spoken to the DOR and really to the future of the future residents of the community I mean I've we've heard consistently affordability stability of funds stability of increases i think 4b supports that if 5b is the will of this board again i i would just rank that slightly behind 5b slightly behind

▶ 3:41:19 Robert A. Boisselle: 4b good um the vacuum truck that was on display this morning is that the new one that has been

▶ 3:41:29 Speaker 9: bought that's correct and what does this truck do so this um this truck is used to maintain the sewer system we jet lines you can clear sewer lines that don't flow as well you can clean catch basins you can clean sewer manholes with it you can clean aspects of the sewer system we we identified over the winter we did a study at in the cemetery trunk sewer lines drainage lines that went through there the study could only take us so far now that we have the truck i believe next week we'll be in the

▶ 3:42:03 Speaker 9: cemetery cleaning those lines to the point where we can get the camera through to to identify more

▶ 3:42:10 Robert A. Boisselle: efficiently what the issues are and by cleaning out those lines you eliminate the water problems

▶ 3:42:15 Speaker 9: in those particular areas oh give us definitely give us alleviate i think would be the correct term but most what is it and what is that um that would be in ward seven seven um but most importantly the sewer truck responds to emergency sewer blocks you know we can't we can't we don't have magic glasses to see through the round we don't know when sewers are backing up we have a list of sewers that historically have backed up and when issues happen we've added to the list but we don't know what's going to get clogged at what time but when it does happen there's usually an emergency it's usually in someone's basement and if that basement is finished it causes damage the ability to have that truck available in melrose in our garage 24 7 is huge to that person who's a who who's experienced in a backup because of a city issue in the sewer main that's That's the most important and that's the biggest value that this truck brings to the community in addition to the ongoing maintenance abilities that we have.

▶ 3:43:16 Speaker 8: What was the cost for that truck?

▶ 3:43:18 Speaker 9: It was 400 plus, and the payment is built into the existing FY17. The lease payment is built into the FY17 sewer operating budget.

▶ 3:43:32 Robert A. Boisselle: Very good. Thank you very much, John, and thank you for the demonstration of the I&M.

▶ 3:43:38 Speaker 9: Thanks. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.

▶ 3:43:38 Peter D. Mortimer: Thank you, Alderman Boycelle. Alderman Wright, please.

▶ 3:43:42 Francis X. Wright Jr.: Thank you, Mr. Chairman. The hour is really late. I'm just, with regards to reserve funds, I'm just going to quickly

▶ 3:43:58 Francis X. Wright Jr.: say that I appreciated Mr. De La Russo's explanation, and I agree with Alderman Inferno that we need to continue making contributions to our reserve funds but based on the hour i'm going to leave it at that um elena i didn't hear it maybe i missed it um with regards to i and i i guess saying melrose is the percentage um of uh i guess is the flow that goes into the melrose is 59 do we know what the average is for mwra communities i don't know the average per se but

▶ 3:44:36 Speaker 1: the um i can tell you the typical range would be anywhere from 25 would be doing extremely well and i would say 75 would be doing extremely poorly so and you do see the full range we we do have

▶ 3:44:55 Francis X. Wright Jr.: that information from mwra i just don't have it with me okay so 59 obviously is not ideal and we definitely want to prove that but if we would get down to 25 percent that would

▶ 3:45:07 Speaker 1: be like gold standard that would be ambitious but I would say typical is 40 to 50 percent in these older New England communities okay so we're a little higher

▶ 3:45:19 Francis X. Wright Jr.: than typical right okay so a little bit higher I mean the first perception when you have 59 percent is that we're 59 percent off the mark but we're not we're or about 10% off the market.

▶ 3:45:30 Speaker 1: I think Alderman Suarco mentioned zero is not a goal that you ever attain or ever even attempt to attain.

▶ 3:45:36 Francis X. Wright Jr.: No, but it doesn't sound like even 30% is a goal we're gonna achieve.

▶ 3:45:40 Speaker 1: 30%, it would be nice to be there. Some communities are down in that 25 to 35% range. It would be terrific to be there somewhere.

▶ 3:45:48 Francis X. Wright Jr.: Great, thank you. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.

▶ 3:45:51 Peter D. Mortimer: Thank you, Alderman Wright. Alderman McAteer-Margolis, please.

▶ 3:45:54 Mary Beth McAteer-Margolis: Thank you, Mr. Chairman. Thank you for being here tonight for all the work you've all put into this, and I know both Elena and John were at the DPW day early this morning with me, and Mr. Alderman Boisselle, so it's been a long day, but it's been very interesting to hear opinions and questions from my fellow aldermen, and I thank them for their thoughtfulness as well. I've been leaning towards option 4B all along. I think it's the most equitable distribution of increase. I toyed with the two-tier rate because it sounded a little sexier and maybe people would like it better. But what I see from my calculations is that we get about 60% of the population is paying a much higher increase and 40% is paying a much lower increase. So the people at the higher end are paying a lot less, and maybe, you know, maybe it's time to really reconsider the people at the top end, and as Alderman Medeiros said, which percentage of those are commercial, and whether or not you think, as a committee, as a water committee, you will find another solution to the multi-unit dwellings going forward.

▶ 3:47:26 Mary Beth McAteer-Margolis: are you hoping to still try to tweak that in some fashion i believe we've as a committee we've

▶ 3:47:30 Speaker 9: looked at every possible option if you stick with the tiers and and you stick to volumetric billing

▶ 3:47:46 Speaker 9: this these are the options and um and moving forward i don't think there's very little we can do if we stick with volumetric reading meters and billing based on consumption these this is the group of options okay well thank you for your

▶ 3:47:57 Mary Beth McAteer-Margolis: candor in that I also support continuing with a reserve fund I think we're pennywise and pound-foolish if we don't I would wonder mr. de la Rousseau if we we, you know, would be in any jeopardy with DOR or anyone else if we withdrew from making contributions for a year.

▶ 3:48:30 Speaker 8: Yes, I think it goes to our credibility because that's what I told them we were going to do.

▶ 3:48:36 Speaker 8: And that's what they took my word in the basing what I told them based on what we were going to do. So, I would hope that we continue that because not just my credit, but the side of the city, too.

▶ 3:48:51 Mary Beth McAteer-Margolis: Okay, thank you. And as far as the probation is concerned, because we're going to be essentially billing for two months at the past price, there must be a cost factor that we're absorbing for that?

▶ 3:49:06 Speaker 9: Yeah, there is, and it's addressed in the second page of the study. Okay. the consultant has done is compensated for the delay or the lack of revenue that will be we won't collect in july august and september okay and uh he's co he's uh he's figured that into his calculation and right up front in the report it addresses it and there's a bug there's a stacked bar graph that shows what covers what what percentage of the increase goes

▶ 3:49:38 Mary Beth McAteer-Margolis: towards what okay so um i definitely am happy to see that we can do that and hope that going forward when the meters you know all kind of get in place that we can move to a system that will really be more equitable that we won't lose money and that everybody will feel like they're paying exactly what they should be paying and what their neighbors should be paying so nobody's playing favorites anywhere I think it's somewhat you know part of the nature of a system like this that as you said mr. Shana no one's ever going to be totally happy and feel like they're paying exactly what they maybe want to pay or should pay but as a community I think we have to know that we have a system that is old that needs work and we have to be willing to commit to to doing that as a community and some of us may pay more than others and some of us may be a little bit less and some people may be able to afford to pay more and may not have to pay that so hopefully with the senior discount and the other things that you've put into place we can we can move forward with this and as several other people have said I I feel like I will be supporting option 4b and I also I also just have to say, in my capacity as the MMTV employee, we have about four minutes left before we have to take a recess. Because our DVD will need to be changed if we're going to continue. So, heads up.

▶ 3:51:12 Peter D. Mortimer: Thank you, Mr. Chairman. Thank you very much, Alderman McAteer-Margolis. Alderman Forbes, you are next in queue, sir.

▶ 3:51:19 Speaker 9: Thank you, I've got four minutes to make my mark.

▶ 3:51:21 Speaker 11: But we can have a recess.

▶ 3:51:26 Speaker 2: can the recess now if you like and now i'm changing up the table change up this dvd first and foremost

▶ 3:51:29 Scott M. Forbes: i uh i i concur with uh alderman Tramontozzi about the municipal water usage this is a conversation that we actually had about floating the idea of being able to give those numbers to the public on a quarterly basis it establishes information available to the public it also can identify certain trends whether or not we're increasing or decreasing what's our worst quarter what is our best quarter so that is something we did start that conversation i'd love to work with you on that that would be great as far as the plans are concerned i push plan five in the water and sewer committee um i understand that option 4b is it's identical to the tiers that we have now with the only addition of a base charge i was thinking of along the lines of president khan when he said that when you talk about water and sewer rates the goal of the committee or the goal of the board as a whole is to be able to defend and justify the number when challenged i took that to heart and so when i saw the two tiers if you line them up there's only one i think it's at 5000 cf that is the one area where option 5b is more expensive than option 4b every one of those areas option 5 offers a savings over option four and all and i understand that as you go further down the line when you see the higher volume water users you see an extreme difference in savings but focus on that first tier if you line up these options the difference is is nothing and so when you look at how do we establish our rates we establish our rates at 2000 cf how do we get that number well we just heard from the consultant how we got that number i can relay that to a rate payer and whether they agree or not agree they can understand where i got the number i can justify that i can't justify 10 000 cubic feet to somebody i understand that there's a you know you and we are still in compliance with chapter 165 section 2b where we have the one rate sometimes a simplistic approach can be the best approach if we're looking to do something different this is an opportunity for us to at least give it a try for a year and see where we stand and we can reevaluate but this is this has no minimal or this has no big increase for 5000 cf the difference is 12 to 13 a quarter that's a 52 increase in the course of a year everything else it's more beneficial for option five that's why i pushed the plan it is an opportunity for us to do something different i think it's something that you should all consider um and i'm going to end with that but as as far as the reserves go we're entering a big i i project in the fall i i don't want to cut reserves because we don't know what we're going to be cutting into in the fall we could be opening pandora's box for all we know reserves are there for extraordinary circumstances and i understand that it's a benefit and a factor when we go to bonding and it makes our whole underwriting process look a lot more favorable however if if there's any time that we're going to tap into something like that it would be during these times right here so i think it's more beneficial for us if we have the money and we stay the course continue with the continue with the five-year plan and then we can reevaluate at that point in time i i do feel really strongly about that as part of the water and sewer committee i know that everyone's done a hard that we put in hard days and and there's been a lot of hours going over a lot of paper I want to be able to continue that process I know I volunteer for that position I would like to I'd like to stay on that position even moving forward next year so thank you I know I exceeded four minutes but I'm all

▶ 3:55:16 Peter D. Mortimer: set thank you very much thank you is there a motion to recess did you just make that Alderman Medeiros has made a motion to recess because we need to to change the DVD that is being conducted by MTV, MMTV. And that motion was seconded by Alderman Sierko. All in favor of a recess to change the DVD, please say aye. Aye. Any opposed, hearing none, we'll be in recess for about three minutes till Patrick downstairs can make the switch.