ORDER-2015-192 : Amending Melrose Revised Ordinances, Chapter 228-14 by adding paragraph C relative to Water Meters as set forth herein.

Transcript (~18 min @ 1:50:35)

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▶ 1:50:29 John N. Tramontozzi: all right so that's all that's been changed any further discussion all right seeing none do we have a motion to recommend mr chairman recommended by alderman forbes seconded by alderman mortimer on the motion all in favor aye people seeing none great that will be recommended to the full board and it's at its next meeting thank you thank you the next order up for business is order 2015-192 amending Melrose revised ordinances chapter 228-14 by adding paragraph c relative to water meters as set forth here in alderman Medeiros said you're a non-voting member of the book of the

▶ 1:51:18 Monica C. Medeiros: committee um you want to make a comment then i would like to um thank you very much mr chairman as as you pointed out i am a non-voting member of this committee um this is one of a few orders that i've submitted relative to water and sewer the purpose behind this order in particular is that I had received you know various one of the issues before us is that obviously there's some issue with people who are in multi-unit residential

▶ 1:51:54 Monica C. Medeiros: buildings where they're falling into because we're going by usage of the whole building or all the people on that shared meter they're going into the higher tiers and I understand that we as a city have allowed condominiums and others to individually meter the units when when it is feasible in terms of you

▶ 1:52:16 Monica C. Medeiros: know when they're able to I've heard from people who are in apartments or may

▶ 1:52:24 Monica C. Medeiros: have commercial or commercial slash residential units that they've been told that they can't individually meter the unit and the reason why is because the city didn't want to be going after the tenant for the bill and in these comment conversations I inevitably kept saying like I don't really understand why we can't just bill and why we wouldn't automatically bill the

▶ 1:52:59 Monica C. Medeiros: building owner and so I've submitted a change which would really kind of put

▶ 1:53:06 Monica C. Medeiros: that into into our ordinances to say that we can install meters in something

▶ 1:53:17 Monica C. Medeiros: that's non owner-occupied and that ultimately basically it says ultimately that the owner of the building would be liable for the usage charges I believe

▶ 1:53:29 Monica C. Medeiros: this is it seems to me to be a common-sense addition but you know I

▶ 1:53:37 Monica C. Medeiros: and and then there's been some discussion to where you know many buildings especially the larger ones it really doesn't make sense and they can't feasibly individually meter but in those that can and this might be something as simple as a two-family home this could be simple something as simple as a building that's a mixed-use property where we have one residential unit and one commercial unit being able to kind of separate out these charges I just want to point out that they you know this would cause more people to not be that highest tier but at the same time we would get increased revenue because we would get a fixed

▶ 1:54:20 Monica C. Medeiros: base charge from those additional meters that we would be installing so

▶ 1:54:25 Speaker 8: you said i think this is is a reasonable change so thank you

▶ 1:54:30 John N. Tramontozzi: is there any special will in the uh the committee any members uh alderman wright just a motion to

▶ 1:54:35 Francis X. Wright Jr.: suspend the rules so that we may hear from um city officials mr shenna mr van campen

▶ 1:54:44 John N. Tramontozzi: we have a motion by alderman right second but we are in suspension so why don't we have come

▶ 1:54:59 Speaker 12: forward um you know may have been right you have the floor thank you good evening again gentlemen

▶ 1:55:04 Francis X. Wright Jr.: I just am curious if you have an opinion as to this proposed ordinance amendment as it relates to both legal and practical issues you might see in it.

▶ 1:55:26 Francis X. Wright Jr.: You're here, so I figured I'd bring you up. Sure.

▶ 1:55:29 Speaker 9: Sure. I have offered an opinion at the request of the Director of Public Works, which was in connection with the proposal to allow for unit averaging. And really in summary form, my opinion letter speaks for itself. But at the end of the day, condominiums are considered by definition, high-volume users. There is a decision of the Appeals Court in Flatley, which is referenced in my letter, which speaks to the owner's request to create an averaging system. And the Appeals Court in that decision concluded that such an averaging system would frustrate the purpose of the tiered rate system which is employed, for example, here in Melrose in that in that case it was the city of Malden so I wrote the letter to the director of Public Works to make him aware of my concerns as to the legal validity of this type of an averaging system I mean yeah I understand your

▶ 1:56:41 Francis X. Wright Jr.: concern yeah no maybe it's me that's not my understanding of what the order is requesting it's appears to be a an order that would allow for the installation which order are we referring to there are four of them I'm sorry it's I was

▶ 1:57:03 Speaker 9: asked to specifically comment on 2015 193 to the director public works I'm not commenting on 192 I'm sorry about that I thought you were considering all four at

▶ 1:57:17 Francis X. Wright Jr.: the same time here that that motion hasn't been made so because it seems to

▶ 1:57:28 Francis X. Wright Jr.: me and that the this ordinance basically states that which may already be I mean

▶ 1:57:37 Francis X. Wright Jr.: if I have a two-family house and I have one meter in it and I decide I want to a second meter in it because i want to have the two units on separate meters can i do that can

▶ 1:57:54 Speaker 10: i presently do that so you can you can currently put the second meter in place for your own use the city will still only have one meter and only read one meter and only send one bill after that meter what you do internally is up to the owner and as long as it's done according to plumbing code you're okay with it I mean if you have a three you have three apartments and you can figure out a way how to split the water going into each apartment you want to do it on your own for your own use so that you could take the one bill the city sends you you can do that but as it stands right now one house has one meter has one account that account is assigned to the owner of that home whether it's single-family or multifamily that's that's how it's set

▶ 1:58:44 Francis X. Wright Jr.: up right now okay so if I may to the maker of the motion what you're asking all the men Medeiros is that they'd be recognized as separate billing unit

▶ 1:58:57 Monica C. Medeiros: billing city and city installed meters yeah units as in residential units not

▶ 1:59:09 Francis X. Wright Jr.: water units excuse me and do we know how many properties this would affect if we I know nobody's asked you to prepare this in advance.

▶ 1:59:16 Speaker 10: Yeah, we haven't prepared a public presentation in this regard. We've looked at this from a macro perspective. I know our CFO has already passed these orders on for their impact to our consultant, Pioneer Consulting, Doug Gardner. And he's already pined, our consultant has said that if we were to look at something of this magnitude, first we're going to be kind of flipping our whole tear rate upside down. Because we're adding more meters, we're splitting usage, top tiers going to disappear. And first and second tier customers, which is the majority of where we have, could see up to double digit rate increases as a result of going this route.

▶ 2:00:08 Speaker 10: So it's against the years of infrastructure that we've built in terms of metering.

▶ 2:00:15 Francis X. Wright Jr.: Okay, and has this been either to yourselves or perhaps to you, Mr. Chairman? Has this been a matter of some lengthy discussion and maybe President Kahn? It's my understanding it has anyway at the water commission meetings that

▶ 2:00:37 Francis X. Wright Jr.: a member of this board has been part of for the last couple of years yeah we've discussed several

▶ 2:00:40 Speaker 10: options we've discussed the averaging option which is part of the next order that's before at lent as well proration which are the third and fourth orders before you was discussed in this chamber as well as at that committee for several months two years ago so all of these have been issues that we've discussed digested looked at many

▶ 2:01:10 Francis X. Wright Jr.: different ways and moved on okay and just so i'm clear because obviously only one of us attends those meetings and it hasn't been me and i don't have the opportunity during the day to attend them when you have those discussions there's a meeting of the minds or there's discussion and i assume or maybe you can tell me do you move forward with the majority cons the consensus or the majority as to how the city should proceed as to water and sewer rates we do and we look at

▶ 2:01:39 Speaker 10: it mainly from the impact on the rate you know what what's the policy and what what's the impact on the rate going to be and at the end of the day that committee can't really do anything other than bring it to this board for a vote and we've done that for three years now but what you bring to

▶ 2:02:00 Francis X. Wright Jr.: this board is is a majority majority view of the unit or the unanimous view of that right of that

▶ 2:02:11 Jaclyn L. Bird: body okay great thank you that's all for now thank you thank you mr chairman um just to to clarify for my own purposes i'm just confused about something so for some reason i was under the understanding that the reason they couldn't go in the non-owner occupied unit was because we then couldn't put a lien on that that's correct okay for the billing purposes right correct so is that the reason why we haven't done this particular thing or is this maybe through the chair different than what alderman Medeiros was looking at i i thought that that was originally the the issue with the reason we couldn't put the meters in let's say the rental unit and build a rental unit directly was because then we didn't have any means of going after that money if the person

▶ 2:02:53 Speaker 10: didn't pay yep that's correct and if we start saying that the rental the rental unit the bill should for the rental unit should go to the owner well uh we just we're just going about it a different way i mean there's a master meter in the house the master meter gets read the bill for the master meter goes to the owner we don't have the capability to to send bills to people who rent because at the end of the month that person could be gone and if the bill is not paid we don't have an ability to lean that property so we looked at it from that perspective the perspective of splitting up the apartments into 20 20 bills one for each unit all in the name of the owner wasn't looked at nor does it have support because it would create a rate an impact on the rate that

▶ 2:03:51 Jaclyn L. Bird: we didn't feel was favorable for all of noros um no i appreciate that i just wanted to clarify that for my own purposes here and i i respect the maker of the order trying to find a solution to something that is um you know it's a complicated issue and i think you know we keep trying things year after year to try to make it as palatable as possible but um i think part of this was was something that we had discussed before but i think you're clarifying it for me thank you thank you Thank you, Mr. Chairman.

▶ 2:04:19 Speaker 2: Walderman, Boyzell.

▶ 2:04:24 Speaker 11: Going back to that question, the Oak Grove project. Now they've informed us that they've individually,

▶ 2:04:33 Robert A. Boisselle: each apartment complex, or each apartment is metered separately. Who gets the bill?

▶ 2:04:39 Speaker 10: So in the instance of Windsor Estate, There are master meters on those individual buildings. That's the meter that's read by Public Works. A bill is sent to the Condor Association Windsor Estate, who manages all those buildings, for the one building. What they do from that point on is their call. And how they split that bill up, I don't know. But they do have individual meters in their apartments. They install it themselves. They manage it themselves. split their bill their one bill that the city sends it sends them by some manner amongst all

▶ 2:05:18 Speaker 11: of the people who they rent to but they don't get a breakdown of each individual we don't read those

▶ 2:05:24 Speaker 11: individual meters okay thank you thank you mr chairman any other members of the committee

▶ 2:05:34 Monica C. Medeiros: thank you uh so mr shenny you said that we really don't know how many units this would affect no we don't so we really can't make an estimate on what this would do to the

▶ 2:05:52 Speaker 10: rate and we don't even know how many units we know we know where our apartment buildings are and we know our larger consumers based on the fact that our apartment buildings because our consultant has a listing of all the accounts I mean the exact number I don't know at this point in time but the impact to the rate he felt comfortable with the pining and in writing that it would be a double digit increase to tier one and tier two that's addition to the to the yearly increases we deal with basically we're we're taking the consumption and we're moving it around right but somebody's

▶ 2:06:29 Monica C. Medeiros: going to take that hit if we're doing this we would be adding all of those base charges so say we took a building that had 20 units he takes that into consideration all the base fees

▶ 2:06:42 Monica C. Medeiros: So, and do we have any idea of, you know, we have had in the past, we have some units where the individual home are, lives in one unit, and do we have any idea of if there are existing, say, two-family homes where we have individual, more than one meter on the building?

▶ 2:06:58 Speaker 10: can't speak to every account but it's not something that we that we allow moving forward and if it's if it's something we find we have to we have to deal with it because that's not a situation that we we typically approve in public works one water service one meter one bill it's a single family two family three family that's that's that's um that's our our main objective

▶ 2:07:32 John N. Tramontozzi: thank you any other any further discussion what's the will of the committee regarding this order

▶ 2:07:53 John N. Tramontozzi: well one one one option i guess would be uh placed on file we can refer it back to the water and sewer commission for further review for next year's rates we can just uh place it on file

▶ 2:08:21 Speaker 10: I'll move the motion to place it on the file.

▶ 2:08:23 Speaker 2: President Klein?

▶ 2:08:25 Speaker 11: I'll defer to the committee member.

▶ 2:08:28 John N. Tramontozzi: Motion to place it on the file. Moves to place it on the file.