Appropriation from Free Cash (account 01-324001) in the amount of $865,000 to DPW-Snow (#431) to close the snow and ice deficit for FY26.

Transcript (~12 min @ 50:36)

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▶ 50:37 Devin Romanul: All right. We are back with a resumption of the Appropriations Oversight Committee hearing. Up next, we are tackling ID number 2026-1149, appropriation from free cash in the amount of $865,000 to DPW Snow to close the snow and ice deficit for FY26.

▶ 50:58 Speaker 7: Good. Thank you. Thank you very much for hearing this. This is an annual, pretty much a housekeeping request to offset the deficit spending incurred during the snow and ice season. This year, our deficit spending is $865,000. It's a little bit higher than the last three years. As a best practice, we present the five-year average for snow and ice this year. It climbed to $1.024 million per year to fight snow and ice. This was a challenging winter, especially towards the end of February and beginning of March, with two 20-inch snowstorms. We saw more snowfall this year than we have since approximately 2015. Working with the auditor, and the mayor and their administrations and their staff, we are confident that the city's free cash can handle this deficit without compromising anything else that's being requested in front of you and for consideration, not only for the DPW, but for other departments as well. The city auditor, in the past and in my history, has had a placeholder. We've stayed below that placeholder, and it affords the city the luxury to offset this deficit each year, rather than financing the deficit over the course of three years. So, we appreciate your consideration and will welcome any questions.

▶ 52:25 Devin Romanul: Thank you so much, and also I want to commend the DPW for the outstanding job that was done on this plowing- Thank you ... this winter. That was a indefatigable effort on your staff's part, and my busted arm is a testament to how difficult the snow was this year. Up first, I believe I have Councilor Finocchiaro. Thank you.

▶ 52:45 Cal Finocchiaro: Again, housekeeping item. Something that happens every year. And it's explainable why it's up at 865,000, because we actually had a big storm season. So I'm just going to make a motion to recommend.

▶ 53:03 Devin Romanul: I'll second. Motion to recommend by Councilor Finocchiaro, seconded by Councilor Khem Chetty. On discussion, I have Councilor Williams.

▶ 53:09 Ryan Williams: Thank you. So I wanted to ask a little bit about the differences in cost between the different operations, just roughly, because I know that we trucked a lot of snow out this year, right? That's true. And I know a lot of communities trucked a lot of snow out, and it was one of the reasons we all were so thrilled with the snow situation in Melrose is because the snow was trucked out, right? And it wasn't just piled up in a corner somewhere to be here until July. So, do you have a sense for above the regular sort of contract or plowing day of operations, how much that snow removal cost?

▶ 53:46 Speaker 7: Forgive me. Are you asking about during the snowstorm and then at the end when we're removing the snow from downtown, the difference in cost? Yeah. So, for the most part, our labor cost is going to stay the same, right? Right. Because it's our staff. When we're paying a plow to come in and do it, it's roughly, let's call it about 165, $170 an hour. When we're coming in for snow removal, those trucks exceed $250 per hour. So, the couple of snow removal efforts that we undertook towards the end of February and stuff would cost nearly 40, $50,000 just for that operation alone. So-

▶ 54:26 Speaker 8: When you say that operation, like that day's operation?

▶ 54:28 Speaker 7: That day's operation. Yeah. Correct. Yes.

▶ 54:30 Speaker 9: Yeah. It's overnight, and we usually need-- So, just logistically, all of our trucks have salters in the back. So we don't have dump trucks to haul the snow up to 99. That's where it ends up going.So we have to hire those tri-axles to come in and haul the snow from the contractors, and that's the $250 an hour. And then on top of that, we're paying our own crews to load the snow. Right. So it's a substantial operation.

▶ 54:58 Ryan Williams: Yeah. And the trucks that we approved a while ago would not really touch that because they're not tri-axle. The ones that we talked about, the big dumps. That we just approved? Yeah.

▶ 55:09 Speaker 9: Yeah. So those would all end up with salters in the back. Right. So it's not that they couldn't accommodate some snow, but if it's winter, they will have salters, and so they're not available for snow. Got it. Okay. But yeah, and they're also not of that same size. The only one that's that same size is the hook lift truck, which we would get a dump body for it. Yeah. But, I suppose that would potentially, since it's so easy to take the brine tank off and put the dump body on, maybe we can use that for some removal.

▶ 55:38 Ryan Williams: Probably wouldn't even hold a third of the snow that a big 100-foot truck would hold. And you'd have to make three times as many trips, which would probably- Right ... cost more.

▶ 55:48 Speaker 7: So for comparative speaking, the 24-hour storm that we had at the end of February was $140,000. Right. The nine hours that it took for the removal was only four contractors. It worked out to be about $34,000. So- Yeah ... you can see that there's significant increases.

▶ 56:06 Ryan Williams: Yeah. And I'm supportive of the request. I was thinking about the cost of it, especially as we consider climate field storms, and so we can be thinking about if there's a big storm, what's that going to look like down the end of the line if we have a year that's tight on free cash, which we have had in the past. Because I've looked back at the budgets and some of the free cash requests for snow and ice were under $100,000 in a very warm year. Mm-hmm. Some of them were $200,000. I've never seen $900,000. Mm-hmm. But it was an unprecedented storm, so you guys did a great job, and I'm happy to vote yes on it. Thank you for the information.

▶ 56:44 Devin Romanul: Up next, I have Councilor Porco.

▶ 56:46 Speaker 8: Thank you. I echo Chair Romanul voice on the tremendous job you did with the snow removal. My question is, and this might be a question with a simple no, but given the extreme variance in weather, if you knew that we were going to have, let's say, a very similar winter in the upcoming season, is there anything you could have done that would lower the costs than what you had this past season? So in other words, snow removal. Is there something where we could have a fixed cost associated with the removal of the snow as opposed to paying it on an hourly basis or something like that? I'm just trying to think ahead. Are there any lessons that we learned that we could apply to in such cases where we have big storms like this or seasons like that, that we could apply in the future years?

▶ 57:46 Speaker 7: The short answer is no, there really isn't, because most of this stuff is based on an hourly performance. You have no idea how long a storm is going to last. You have that hourly labor that's going to take place during the storm. And then afterwards, it really comes down to a decision. Do we want to remove the snow from downtown? Do we want to remove it from these areas? And there's a cost that ends up being associated with that. To plan for it, we're getting vendors, and we publish the rates for them, so they're bidding on coming in and doing the removal process. So it really comes down to a decision, do we want to incur the cost for removing the snow? If the answer's yes, we're paying X dollars an hour. If the answer's no, then our downtown is going to sit with snow. It's sitting there. So it comes down to really a decision as to what we want to do. It's all a labor, it's a per hour cost to have that stuff get done.

▶ 58:41 Speaker 9: And there certainly are savings to be had if we were to opt to not perform those services. If we scaled back on our sidewalk plowing, or we scaled back on our downtown snow removal. If we were willing to have a giant mound of snow in the back, in the Dill's Court parking lot behind Shaw's and CVS for half of the winter, yes, we could absolutely reduce costs. But I think there's a certain level of community expectation that you're going to be able to find a parking space, that the mound isn't going to sit in the lot for months. And so I think it's always a balancing act, figuring out how much should you be doing versus how much should you be trying to save money. I think the work that we do during the storms is all a must-do. That's the immediate safety requirements, and there's really no scaling back on that. It's a lot of the cleanup efforts afterwards. And to Council Freeman's point earlier, the new trucks will help us save some money on some of the outsourced labor, because if we have no salters left and we're trying to salt the whole city, then the contractors have to stay on longer. If we have all the trucks we need, then we can send the contractors home at a certain hour and finish up the storm with our own staff.

▶ 1:00:00 Speaker 8: Okay. Thank you.

▶ 1:00:02 Devin Romanul: Up next, I have Vice Chair Vandiver.

▶ 1:00:04 Kimberly Vandiver: Thank you. My question is about, you might have more information about this because I saw it go by about a month ago. But I believe that Massachusetts passed a bill that included some support for communities with snow and ice removal deficits. Is that something you're familiar with?

▶ 1:00:24 Speaker 9: So during declared states of emergency, we do have the opportunity to recoup some costs from the state or from the federal government.

▶ 1:00:35 Speaker 9: So when those requests come in, we do submit those, and then we have the option of financing the overages if it's more than, Jim alluded to this before. If it's more than we can handle in one year's free cash, we can finance over three years.Which we haven't had to do. But I'm not aware of anything new.

▶ 1:00:52 Speaker 7: We actually did take advantage of a program, it was called WRAP, Wentworth Road Assistance Program, that the state did appropriate. I'm sure I'm going to get it wrong, but I thought it was about $140,000 that we were able to... It might even have been $240,000, but it was so long ago. It was a previous administration that authorized it. We did take advantage of that and applied for it. Melrose had a specific allocation, and then we brought it in to take care of some of the damage that occurred to the roads over the course of winter. But yeah, we usually are made aware of programs like that and then try to take advantage of them. We did once since Elena and I have been here.

▶ 1:01:29 Kimberly Vandiver: Okay, great. Yeah, and I'm not sure of the status of-- I'm looking at an article from a month ago that's talking about some money to address snow and ice removal deficits, but I'm not sure if that got completely through or what the status is. So I can email you afterwards to make sure that- Yeah. In case it's anything to be aware of. Sure.

▶ 1:01:49 Speaker 9: Thank you. Thank you.

▶ 1:01:50 Speaker 3: Terrific. What is the will of the committee?

▶ 1:01:53 Speaker 8: Oh.

▶ 1:01:55 Speaker 6: I thought we had a...

▶ 1:01:56 Devin Romanul: Yeah, she- Oh, yes. Oh, I'm so sorry. We had several questions. My apologies. All right. Well, absent any other commentary, I believe that was everyone we had in line. Madam Clerk, will you please call the roll?

▶ 1:02:07 Speaker 1: Sure. Vice Chair Vandiver? Yes. Councilor Chen? Yes. Councilor Finocchiaro? Yes. Councilor Jamaleddine? Yes. Councilor Karamcheti? Yes. Councilor Kowal? Yes. Councilor Abramsky? Yes. Councilor Park? Yes. Councilor Williams? Yes. President Freeman? Yes. Chair Romanul? Yes.