← City Council · 2015-08-17 · City Council Regular Meeting
Public Participation
Agenda original PDF
Minutes original PDF
Transcript
▶ 15:03 Speaker 5: Tonight's meeting is being recorded and will be rebroadcast on Melrose Cable Television in accordance with the dictates of the Commonwealth Massachusetts Open Meeting Law.
▶ 15:13 Peter D. Mortimer: to open the floor for public participation Mr. President. Alderman
▶ 15:17 Speaker 5: Mortimer moves that we open the floor for public participation the motion is seconded by Alderman Forbes on the motion all those in favor aye anyone opposed motion passes this is the portion of our meeting where any member of the general public can come forward to the table in the center of the room identify themselves and declaim on any order that is on our agenda for this evening is there anybody who wishes to speak good evening let me just sign in
▶ 16:05 Speaker 7: here good evening my name is JD lorac I reside at 17 school Street and I'm also a candidate for alderman at large I'm here tonight to comment on the agenda item pertaining to water rates I'm sure it's the case with all of you it certainly has been the case for me as I have met voters and citizens around the city that there is great concern about water and sewer rates and the system for how those rates are assessed in the city in general the concerns seem to fall in two categories one a great deal of concern that the rates are just plain too high that they've been going up and there seems to be no limit and secondly that the underlying system by which the rates are assessed is unfair along several dimensions I'd like to focus tonight on one dimension that I think is really quite obviously unfair and that is the practice of charging for current fiscal year rates even for use that occurs in a prior fiscal year many citizens have commented to me that they fundamentally do not understand why it should be the case that water rates should be assessed at a higher rate for usage that occurred at a lower rate in the past. And just as an ex post facto law in the criminal context is unconstitutional, in some ways, this practice in the ordinance that we have now is an ex post facto policy. And it's unfair because the rules of the game change for our citizens in the middle. I'm sure we can all agree that two tenets that important for any public policy but especially for tax and fee policies is that they be transparent and that they be predictable and I think that the problem with our current system right now is that the system is not completely transparent and not completely predictable it's hard to come up with a sort of parallel for you know what this policy might be like but I was thinking about it and it's as though you know someone goes to Macy's and they buy a pair of pants and it's $30 and then they get their credit card statement 15 days later in the mail and it's $50 because the rules changed in the middle of the game I think that's sort of an accurate parallel to the problem we have with the with the water ordinance as it currently stands and I would like to commend the board for taking it up tonight and in particular to alderman Medeiros for her leadership on this issue it seems eminently sensible that we try to fix this problem and I noted in the packet tonight that all of you have that the consultants that the city has retained to look at this issue kind of deconstructed the changes that alderman Medeiros is is putting forward and critique them on the basis that the tiered water the tiered structure of fees that we have right now are incompatible incompatible and complex with the changes that alderman Medeiros is seeking to my mind that is not a critique of Alderman Medeiros policy change, it is rather a critique of the underlying system. So I would ask and commend the Aldermen tonight to take the proposals on the table seriously. They are sensible proposals aimed at solving a very obvious problem, and I hope that some progress can be made on this issue. Certainly if I am fortunate enough to join you on the Board of Aldermen next year, Alderman Medeiros you will have an ally on this issue because I think what you're doing is very much the right thing thank you thank you sir anyone else who wishes to
▶ 19:56 Speaker 8: speak this evening good evening I'm Karen Druitts and I live at 67 Russell Street in Melrose and I am a 28 year resident of the city and I'm a single homeowner and I would like to bring up the topic of the parking the purchase of of the one Kimball Court building, which is adjacent to the Dill's Court. I have to say that I'm very opposed to the City purchasing that property because I'm echoing Mr. McGuire's comments in the Melrose Free Press that we don't want to remove that property as a commercial property off of the tax rolls. additionally in downloading the parking in downtown Melrose study that was done by Nelson Nygaard in 2012 I found it very enlightening because I had not read it before and while I only downloaded it today I had a chance to you know skim it
▶ 21:08 Speaker 8: and the parking the report here is basically saying that we have adequate parking and i do believe that we have adequate parking so many people do focus on parking in dill's court because that's where so much of our business is located centrally located around that parking space and i think that the city itself has not done enough in utilizing the recommendations of this study um to make improvements to the parking in melrose and i think that adding at least 600 000 bond and i don't know what the exact number was i heard it could be even as high as 625 000 but based based on six hundred thousand dollars each one of those spots if it's 21 spot spaces would cost 28 571 dollars per spot does that make sense for the city of melrose to incur that expenditure and put that unnecessary tax burden on our citizens um i'd like to find out
▶ 22:21 Speaker 8: what the city is is doing what other plans that they have to implement some of the suggestions which i think are really good suggestions and also to find out why that the city only went part way in reconfiguring dill's court because in looking at the picture that they include in the reconfiguration of dill's court it makes a heck of a lot more sense than the reconfiguration that the city has done today so um i just wanted to again say that i'm opposed to this the city spending that kind of money okay thank you thank you hi my name is jerry morose um i live at 62
▶ 23:23 Speaker 9: mount vernon street um i'm here tonight to talk to you uh primarily about the the water and sewer items on the on the calendar um but i just did some quick math here that over the 300 months of the 25-year bond as i recall the bond for the parking lot is um it actually is about two thousand dollars a month per practice oh i'm sorry forget that i my math bad there sorry about that trying to do it too quickly anyway um to the water and sewer issue which i thought much more about before tonight um the recommendation from the committee was to place
▶ 24:03 Speaker 9: these items on file and i urge this committee to please not do that this is the time of the year to start talking about water and sewer rates not necessarily to change them for this year although So if it was deemed appropriate, that might not be a bad thing. But this is the time to start talking about water and sewer rates, and the structure of the system. So that when the budget time comes next year, and the rate setting time comes next year, you've already given thoughtful examination and due time to all the underlying issues that are inherent in this topic. I sent you a letter today to go into a number of the details about, In my view, the irresponsible report by this person that we keep hiring as a consultant for our water and sewer issues. This person does not show that he has given us any value in terms of making our system more efficient. He just plays around with the numbers and to try to make it look like we're taking less money from residents than we really are. And whether that's sanctioned by other people within the city government, I don't know. But I find it very manipulative and certainly not transparent as to how it's presented here. I gave you a pretty detailed breakdown of what I disagree with about what he said. He claims that Alderman Medeiros proposal will have a devastating effect. He gives no, in his report, no support for that conclusion whatsoever. He shows simplistic reasoning within his report to you. I urge you to keep these things on file. Number one, Alderman Medeiros thing that if we're going to keep this twisted system of a three-tiered rate structure, allow people to mitigate the damage done to it the best they can. I applaud Alderman Medeiros for making that suggestion. I don't think that that is the ultimate solution. I think the ultimate solution is to have a fair rate system that is one rate for all people whether you live in a condominium or an apartment building or a single family home. what's fair a lot of a lot of nonsense was spoken about two years ago and we all heard it we were all in the room together about how you know this tiered system was fair and equitable well it's not fair and equitable to say that to the people at Melrose towers or the people at any other condominium that because they have one meter for a big building they're going to pay more per person for water and sewer than any other person using the same amount of water in in Melrose that's unfair and that this has gone on now for two full years and now we're into a third year i find it outrageous and i brought this issue to your attention each and every year this issue came up i did it in advance i did it this past spring as well do not please do not place these on file please open up this discussion the other issues about the water and sewer rates um the prorating with the new meter system if people are able to
▶ 27:08 Speaker 9: think clearly, probation will not be necessary. The meters can be read on June 29th. The bills can go out June 30th if you want to with the current fiscal year rates. Everybody can get their usage for a whole fiscal year done and billed in the same fiscal year. Now, I understand the timing of the bills. You don't want to have people have water bills due the same time as August tax bills, where you can certainly make some accommodation for that issue. But the truth is, is that Alderman Medeiros proposals are real and positive as mitigation factors to an underlying broken system. Let's fix the system, but let's work off of what Alderman Medeiros has proposed so we can explore all the options and make sure that we actually frame a system for next July that's true and honest and accurate and representative of true cost of the system i need to say that all this attention to the weird rates is it's a perfect distraction to the real issues we aren't attending to containing the costs in our water and sewer enterprise funds we aren't this consultant hasn't proposed good ways of reducing pumpage that's not built because of leakage in the system this new consultant hasn't proposed good new ways and creative ways of reducing our ini inflow and infiltration into the sewer system through which we pay millions of dollars extra because of that that failure of us to do and as i said before if we keep improving our system in the sewer side especially at the rate at which mwra releases low interest funds we don't get ahead of any other town in those huge fixed costs of mwra that are apportioned proportionately to all disc all cities we'll have the same proportion still we need to get ahead of the curve move ahead of what the standard funding for mwra is and reduce our ini that way this in this huge time right now of the highest mwra debt payment we would save millions of dollars from elrose if we would get ahead of the curve if we keep going along and saying oh well they gave us a million dollars of free interest money we'll use that like every other community does we're just in parallel with every community we don't get better these are the serious issues about water and sewer that aren't being addressed by the water and sewer committee that i can tell by the consultant that i can tell and certainly because it doesn't come to you even by this board i really urge you do not reflexively place these things on file i really wasn't happy with the the you know the the attitude towards these things at the at the committee meeting where they were voted to be placed in file i felt that it wasn't giving these issues their proper due um thinking um anyway i look forward
▶ 30:01 Speaker 9: to having the issue of water and sewer rates discussed robustly in this chamber maybe in some public meetings so you can actually have a fair hearing of all the issues because we all know that the people from the public that come forward here all the time to bring forward issues um you know in a short period of time you can't address the issues but then this committee often gives very long periods of time to people who are sitting here and who are saying things that aren't true and without giving any chance of rebuttal i i do want to point out specifically that um at the meeting where this was was discussed um the issue of proration uh mr schenner from the department public works responded as if that well we can only take care of the probation issue if we go and do monthly billing 12 monthly billing and then we'll take care of the probation issue and he even said well that would be an expensive costly thing to do kind of kind of diminishing the that we should actually do that well i don't agree with that assessment i believe that we can have quarterly billing still just do it at the right time you know read the meter january 25th send the bills out january 30th you know we're done with it you can still do quarterly bills it doesn't have to be a monthly thing nobody here seemed to pick up on that it doesn't have to be monthly to have it timely so these are just a few of many issues that i've given to you in the letter that i sent to you i really urge all of you to please open this issue up for public discussion for for addressing it the issues in the open for clearing away all the weeds around this so we can come to some good consensus thank you thank you sir is there anybody else who
▶ 31:49 Peter D. Mortimer: who wishes to speak this evening motion to close public participation mr.
▶ 31:52 Speaker 5: president second alderman Mortimer wishes to move to close public participation the motion is seconded by Alderman Lemmerman on the motion all