Appropriation from Free Cash (account 01-324001) in the amount of $880,000 to Capital Outlay (#931) to purchase DPW Vehicles.

Transcript (~19 min @ 29:15)

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▶ 29:17 Speaker 9: As Councilor Finocchiaro mentioned, it's been a while since we've been before the council requesting vehicle authorizations. I think in the last several years, the only times that we've successfully gotten vehicles were the critical failure that we had that she was referring to with a pickup truck that we had to replace and the electric trash truck. Those are the two most recent purchases that we've made. And each year when free cash has come up, when we were in a very tough fiscal environment, we did request 500,000 per year in vehicles, and that request never made it to the floor of a city council meeting because there were so many other competing requests and so many needs in the city. So we've gotten a little bit behind now. I will mention we had a consultant. We had a grant a couple of years ago for a consultant to do an analysis of our fleet program, and they recommended that we should be spending approximately 1.1 million per year if we want to keep up on industry standard replacement schedules for all of our DPW equipment. That said, we are alsoI guess, a very frugal bunch, and we like to run our equipment as long as we possibly can. A lot of communities have shiny new equipment every 8 to 10 years. That hasn't been our MO in the past. We really try to keep everything running as long as humanly possible. But we are now at the point where we have trucks with literal rot all the way through the floor of the trucks to the ground. They're barely passing inspection. We're welding plates onto the floor of trucks to try to get them to pass inspection that one more year. I think I mentioned we had, I believe it was 19 pieces of equipment down during one of our storms. I think we started the storm with 12 or 13 down, and by the end of the storm we had 19 down. It reached the point where we actually had four or five employees who had no vehicles to drive for the remainder of the storm, and I sent them out with shovels into the yard and said, "Just start shoveling things," because we needed everybody to be present working, and they had no vehicles to drive. So, this is sorely needed. Our proposal is to buy-- We have a heavy dump truck that is already out of service, not working. Our proposal is to buy a new hooklift truck for the department, which is something we don't have right now. It can perform the same work of salting during the winter and have a dump body for the summer, but it also can accommodate a catch basin cleaning assembly. Right now, we spend about $35,000 to $40,000 a year on outsourcing catch basin cleaning. So, we'd like to eventually bring that in-house. The proposed 880,000 does not include the price of that attachment, but if we can fit it in this year, we absolutely would. If not, it's on next year's proposed purchases. But the truck itself, it's basically a truck that has a hook that it can pull different bodies onto the back. And then the other big thing that we were going to buy for this truck at this time would be a brine tank, so we can start using liquid brine for some of our treatment in the winter, which is both more environmentally friendly, and it goes a longer way because it doesn't bounce when it hits the road. And you can pre-treat up to even a day before, and as long as it doesn't rain, the liquid brine actually does a better job of melting the snow when it hits the surface. So, that's our plan for that vehicle. Then we have five dump trucks that we're proposing to replace with four dump trucks and two pickups. Give us a little bit more utility. The pickups would have extended cabs, which help with driving around our summer helpers, who are hugely helpful, but they oftentimes aren't driving to where they need to go, so we need trucks that have enough room to load up five kids and drive them from place to place.

▶ 33:20 Speaker 9: So, that comprises the entire 880,000. And then following up on some questions that Councilor Chen had asked, I do want to mention that the 110,000 per pickup truck includes the plow assembly, a stainless steel bed, or the utility boxes that are needed for the back. It includes the hookup of the radios, the addition of the safety lights, the strobes, and the equipment inside to turn those on and off, and the lettering on the sides of the trucks. So, the 110,000 is not the outright price for just the truck. So, I think it probably sounded exceedingly high, but when you account for the plows and all the other accoutrements that we need for the trucks, the truck price itself was quite a bit less.

▶ 34:07 Devin Romanul: Thank you so much. I'll just note, I concur with your statement about using the vehicles to the end of their useful life. I recall a free cash request we had two years ago where you only requested it when a vehicle basically folded in half when you put it on the lift. At which point- Yes ... it looked like a wet sponge that just sagged.

▶ 34:24 Speaker 9: Just gave up.

▶ 34:25 Devin Romanul: Anyway, up first I have President Freeman.

▶ 34:27 Bradley Freeman: Thank you. Thank you, Ms. Perecas-Jiles for being here. I think I shared with you when you came before us a few months ago how helpful I found the memo. And to echo Councilor Finocchiaro, how important the work DPW does, and it's important that we do maintain this fleet so we can get all the trucks on the road. My one question I had, and I was looking ahead to the snow and ice memo you prepared as well, and you noted that there was six storms where private contractors needed to be used. If we had had an entire working fleet, would that enable the city to rely less on private contractors for some of these storms, and end of day, save costs on that end if all the trucks are up and running?

▶ 35:05 Speaker 9: So, when we have what we call an all-in event, like the blizzard or the larger storms, we would still need to use all of those contractors. Mm-hmm. But at the tail end of the storms, we could use them less if we had more in-house equipment, and I'll let Jim talk a little more about that.

▶ 35:19 Speaker 7: Yeah, that's one of the big challenges that we have is trying to identify contractors. We could probably use more contractors. The number that we use is just so that we can basically put them out through every ward, through every street in the city. I can remember one phone call, somebody asked, "Can you come down my street more often?" And I felt like saying, "Well, what street do you want me to not go down more often to get down there?" That's the situation that we're in, and that's why we rely on those contractors so that we can get more frequent passes through all of the wards, through all of the streets in the city. So, there'll always be a viable alternative to use. Mm-hmm. And we don't necessarily use the number of contractors, but we would use the number of inches that would be in a particular storm. So, it really comes down to how frequent and how efficient we can get through the entire city, more than the number of contractors that we have.

▶ 36:10 Bradley Freeman: Okay. But having vehicles that were in working order would enable the DPW to do more and put those employees who are, instead of shoveling- Correct ... out on the streets.

▶ 36:18 Speaker 7: Yeah. It just makes it that much easier, especially when you have a 24-inch storm like we had two at the end of February. We're coming down streets a little bit more frequently just because of the sheer number of the equipment out and being used in the road.

▶ 36:29 Speaker 2: Wonderful. Thank you very much.

▶ 36:32 Devin Romanul: Up next, I have Councillor Keram Chetty.

▶ 36:34 Manjula Karamcheti: Oh, I didn't know it was going to be my turn already. I thought I was third. Thank you so much for this information, and I also appreciate the memo. And having been on council for six years, you very rarely are here to replace vehicles because you wait till they're rusted. And every time I read one of your reports, I'm slightly horrified by the condition that we use our vehicles too. And so, I'm definitely in support of this. I think my question is, after this free cash request, are there more things that we need to have a full fleet? What else is missing? What else needs to be replaced? And/or are there just gaps? And I ask that question because my next door neighbor... I'm not an expert in the things regarding DPW and public works, so I often consult with my next door neighbor who has a lot of experience. He's doing some consulting for the city of Woburn and has been coming home to the neighborhood pretty much every day talking about how wonderful that fleet is. And they have the regular stuff that they use, as well as specialized equipment for various scenarios. And so, I'm just curious. Obviously, Melrose and Woburn are very different cities, but are there things that would still be missing or need to be replaced?

▶ 38:00 Speaker 11: Yeah. So,

▶ 38:01 Speaker 9: we do have the year two and year three requests in the memo that we're totaling 780,000 for year two and 795,000 for year three. Granted, the year two would go down to about 600,000 if we buy the sidewalk plow this year, so that would be reduced

▶ 38:19 Speaker 11: a little.

▶ 38:20 Speaker 9: In terms of specialized equipment, the things like this catch basin clamshell equipment, that's something that some towns have and some towns don't that we would really benefit from having. We do have a fairly new street sweeper, so that's great. You will see me back here requesting a down payment on the sewer Vactor truck, another very important piece of specialized equipment that's nearing the end of its useful life. I feel like we just bought it, but we bought it when I first started, and it's been 10 years. So, those are some pieces of equipment that are critical and are more specialized. And then there are things that we do contract out, like for street sweeping, we do a combination of in-house and contracted because we don't have the fleet to do the fall sweeping when it's real heavy with the leaves. So yeah, we are a smaller city. We probably don't necessarily need all the things that Woburn has, but the thing is when you need something, you need to have one of it, the street sweeper, the Vactruck. You have to have at least one.

▶ 39:28 Manjula Karamcheti: Thank you. And just two last comments, and it's kind of a moment of privilege, but I'm going to take it now. Just wanted to say thank you for the City Yard sticker process. My husband raves about very little and was raving about how simple that process was. So, really appreciate that, and also the work you continue to do with the youth, and having those internships available. So, just really appreciate those two things. So, thank you.

▶ 39:53 Speaker 9: Great.

▶ 39:55 Devin Romanul: All right. Terrific. Up next, Council Williams.

▶ 39:58 Speaker 8: Thank you. When we installed the salt shed, which the veterans on the

▶ 40:02 Ryan Williams: council will shudder at- ... because that was the hot thing, we put a brine system in, correct? Correct. And it's operating. It is- I mean, it's functional ... it is able to operate. Yeah, it is able to operate, right. Yes. And we talked about this, but this is a question I have. We never went ahead with a brine body- Correct

▶ 40:20 Speaker 9: ... for a truck. Correct. This is the one we've been talking about since then.

▶ 40:23 Speaker 8: Yeah, for like six years, right. Yeah. Okay, cool.

▶ 40:26 Speaker 9: The request that I've put in annually to fund vehicles that doesn't make it this far- Right ... has included that truck every year. Yes.

▶ 40:33 Ryan Williams: Yeah. So, I wanted to connect those two dots because this is something that we splurged on way back when to create a brine tank that we could use to save money on salt and be more environmentally friendly and et cetera. But we've never had the money to then operationalize it, and now we do. So, I think that's absolutely fantastic, and I'm glad that we're doing it now.

▶ 40:54 Speaker 9: And I do want to add that we also were gifted from another community, a small brine tank that can go in the back of a dump truck.

▶ 41:01 Speaker 11: Mm-hmm. Okay.

▶ 41:01 Speaker 9: So, we will have two. If this goes through, hopefully by next winter, provided lead times don't prevent us, we will have two trucks able to operate with brine.

▶ 41:11 Ryan Williams: Yeah, and I did actually get to witness the clam grabber doing the catch basins.

▶ 41:17 Speaker 9: With the contractor? Yeah.

▶ 41:18 Speaker 3: Yeah.

▶ 41:18 Ryan Williams: Yeah, it was pretty awesome. Yep. So, I want to shift over to the second part of the appropriation. We've all talked over here a little bit about, or some folks have talked about electric vehicles. Do you have a preference at this moment for the smaller trucks for the cemetery? Are these trucks going to stay on the cemetery and be exclusive to cemetery use, or will they be distributed to other parts of the city for other needs? Where's your head at on that?

▶ 41:46 Speaker 9: So, the cemetery trucks do plow as well. Okay. They plow at the cemetery- Okay ... but then they can also be used to plow beyond the cemetery. I see. So, the cemetery trucks, we can't do electric for those. It's the two pickups that I'm thinking we can maybe do one. We need a plow on at least one of them, but I'm thinking that we might be able to switch around. We currently have an administration vehicle- Mm. Mm ... that is a Ford F-150- ... that could have a plow. So, if we were to get, say, a Ford Lightning or the Chevy equivalent for the other pickup truck, that truck could be used by the- I see ... administrative personnel, and then the current truck, the F-150, could be used with a plow in operations.

▶ 42:31 Speaker 8: Okay, appreciate that. Thank you.

▶ 42:33 Devin Romanul: Up next, Vice Chair Vandiver.

▶ 42:36 Kimberly Vandiver: Thank you. Thank you for putting all this detail together, and I'm excited that we're finally in a place where your request for capital can get to this point. It's a lot of vehicles, and I was wondering about the additional support work that would need to be done as far as identifying the vehicles, purchasing them, figuring out the maintenance schedule, actually performing the maintenance schedule, onboarding people, teaching people to drive them or operate them if they're different than the other equipment that we've had before, and all of that kind of overhead. Is that something that can be handled with the existing personnel? Is that something that will get backed up, and things will have to go sequentially? How will that all work?

▶ 43:19 Speaker 9: I feel confident that the existing personnel are qualified and able to drive any of these vehicles. The heavy dump truck, I think, would be a CDL vehicle, so it would be limited to only our commercial driver's license employees. But all the other trucks, any employees could drive them. But I feel confident that these trucks will be lower maintenance and easier to drive, and will have all the bells and whistles of backup cameras and flashing lights when someone's approaching from the sides and all the newer safety technology that the old trucks definitely don't have. So, I think on the whole, it will actually be less work to drive these and maintain them.

▶ 44:00 Kimberly Vandiver: Great. And the other trucks that they're replacing would be retired, so as far as space, you wouldn't need additional space for storage?

▶ 44:09 Speaker 9: I feel strongly that when a new vehicle comes in, one goes out. Because I think there's a temptation to keep old things around, and it's really never favorable, and they just take up space. So, my intention is that we would be-

▶ 44:24 Speaker 7: We might be in front of you for a surplus declaration. Exactly. Yeah. We're not keeping any of these old vehicles.

▶ 44:30 Kimberly Vandiver: Okay. Great. And I appreciate your comments about electric vehicles as well, and working those in where we can and where it makes sense, and as we also think about needing to use them for plowing and everything like that. So, thank you.

▶ 44:44 Devin Romanul: Terrific. And last on my list is Councilor Chen.

▶ 44:48 Jason Chen: It sounds like this $880,000 of vehicles is for everyday use, all season round- Correct ... general purpose vehicles, and there is some pooling that you can share and back different departments up. For the more specialized vehicles that are maybe the vac truck that you mentioned, can we enter a sharing agreement with other municipalities if they only use it 10% of the time, we use it 10% of the time?

▶ 45:11 Speaker 9: So, the vac truck is one that when you need it, you usually need it immediately. So, I wouldn't say that's a good candidate for a shared agreement because it's mostly addressing sewer backups or drainage backups, and it's usually emergency situations. We use it also for day to day. But when you need it in an emergency, you need to have it. There are some other trucks that communities do have mutual aid agreements on. Things like

▶ 45:41 Speaker 9: some communities have camera trucks for doing the CCTV inspections of the sewers. We don't have one of those, but that's the kind of thing that if we could partner with five other communities and have one, that's one that you-- It's scheduled use. And actually, the catch basin cleaning assembly, you could say that that could be something that different communities could potentially use. But, other than the catch basin cleaning assembly, everything else is pretty much... Well, and that's just one assembly on a truck that we'd be using for all sorts of other things. So, I think these would be used pretty much every day.

▶ 46:21 Speaker 9: Did that answer everything?

▶ 46:22 Jason Chen: Yes. But it's also, do we have sharing agreements with other towns for any vehicles?

▶ 46:28 Speaker 9: We don't, and that is something that I'd really like to look into. I know when the whole trash strike happened, communities were looking to have mutual aid arrangements, and we were in a position where we were unable to lend our truck to another community because, I don't know, we couldn't come to whatever legal agreement we needed to accomplish that. I think it would be fantastic to proactively establish some agreements with other communities so that if our truck, let's say our sewer vac truck goes down and we have a major sewer backup, it would be nice if we didn't have to call a vendor if we have people who could drive Malden's truck, or if Malden could bring their truck with their personnel. I think it's a great thing to have that, we just don't have it right now.

▶ 47:20 Speaker 3: Up next, Councilor Karamcheti.

▶ 47:21 Speaker 6: I would like to make a motion to recommend.

▶ 47:23 Devin Romanul: Second. Motion to recommend made by Councilor Karamcheti, seconded by Councilor Finocchiaro. On discussion? Madam Clerk, will you please call the roll?

▶ 47:30 Speaker 1: Vice Chair Vandiver? Yes. Councilor Chen? Yes. Councilor Finocchiaro? Yes. Councilor Jamaleddine? Yes. Councilor Karamcheti? Yes. Councilor Kowal? Yes. Councilor Abrumsky? Yes. Councilor Park? Yes. Councilor Williams? Yes. President Freeman? Yes. Chair Romanul? Yes.

▶ 47:49 Devin Romanul: The motion passes. The motion passes. This order will be brought before the next full council meeting. Up next, and I do want to be cognizant of time. I think we've got a little buffer.

▶ 47:57 Bradley Freeman: Do we want to-- Point of order. Do we want to just break for full council at this

▶ 48:00 Speaker 8: time? Go ahead, because it's 7:46. It's a little past time.

▶ 48:03 Devin Romanul: Yeah. Sure. All right. We unfortunately have having such a engaging discussion. For folks in the general public, we have to start our meeting vaguely on time. So we're going to gavel in, gavel out. Don't turn off your televisions, folks. We'll be right back. I'll now a motion by unanimous consent for a brief recess to gavel in the city council. Seeing no objection, we are in recess.