Public Participation

Transcript (~17 min @ 12:35)

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▶ 12:36 Peter D. Mortimer: Is there a motion to open the floor for public participation, please? Second.

▶ 12:42 Peter D. Mortimer: Is that you? Alderman Inferna has made a motion to open the floor for public participation, duly seconded by Alderman Byrd. This is the portion of our meeting where any member of the public present can come forward and make comments or ask some questions, not to be answered immediately, but maybe in the course of the evening. and ask some questions or make some comments and present them to the board of aldermen also before we begin I would just like to state for the record that this meeting is being recorded and recordings on DVD are available it's also available to see on the MMTV website or on the city website we are pending a motion but I see pending a motion that Alderman Medeiros might want a point of personal privilege trying to get my attention here no just just a

▶ 13:38 Monica C. Medeiros: just doing a little charades to remind you of course of being taped by yeah yeah

▶ 13:45 Peter D. Mortimer: yeah we were early days yeah that was that was right in the pipeline thanks anyway but thank you all right then motion to close public participation no

▶ 13:58 Speaker 4: No, no, no, we haven't.

▶ 13:58 Speaker 5: We have people who want to come forward.

▶ 14:00 Speaker 4: Come on.

▶ 14:03 Speaker 6: Sorry. Yeah, I don't think we- Yeah, we didn't vote for it. Point of order.

▶ 14:06 Peter D. Mortimer: All in favor of the motion by Alderman Inferno, duly seconded by Alderman Byrd to open public participation, please say aye. Aye. Any opposed? Hearing none, we are open for public participation. We are joined by Mr. Jerry Moroz. Would you write your address there? There's no paper.

▶ 14:24 Speaker 7: Right here.

▶ 14:25 Peter D. Mortimer: This is my paper. Can you just state it for the record?

▶ 14:27 Speaker 8: My name is Jerry Meroza, I live at 62 Mount Vernon Street.

▶ 14:31 Peter D. Mortimer: 62 Mount Vernon.

▶ 14:32 Speaker 8: Yes, thank you. I'm here to talk about a couple different issues tonight. The first one I want to raise is, I was here a couple years ago when we did a restructure of the water and sewer rates. I should say, when you did a restructure of the water and sewer rates, not me. At the time, I was asking for investment in the inflow and infiltration issue in Melrose. As you know, the MWRA costs that we pay are largely due to the sewer costs. And the more that we can reduce our sewer consumption, or rather, our metered sewer at the-

▶ 15:14 Peter D. Mortimer: Mr. Moroz, unless you intend to draw a nexus between some of the-

▶ 15:18 Speaker 8: Yeah, well, the general budget of the city is what I'm talking about here.

▶ 15:22 Peter D. Mortimer: Yeah, but that's not what we're on here for tonight. a certain list of certain budgets that are on for this evening i saw that i thought i saw the city

▶ 15:31 Peter D. Mortimer: budget was on for tonight no okay it's kind of it's kind of a stretch we are having a public

▶ 15:35 Speaker 8: hearing on the water and sewer rates but i'm not talking within the water and sewer rate structure i'm talking to the city because what i believe is i believe that the city has an obligation and and good reason to fund the infrastructure of water and sewer more than we do to load all the burden of city infrastructure the water and sewer system is a public good and it's everybody in the community benefits from the water and sewer system whether they use a gallon of water or two million gallons of water and in my view you know we have in the in the thing tonight the bond for the drains and granted we have an issue with some localized flooding in certain areas at big rainstorms and i and you know you look at the pictures there and you say sure we got to do something with that but to be putting that kind of money out and and two years ago when i was here asking for investment in ini instead of buying water meters what i what i was basically saying is that the sooner we do it the sooner we get ahead of the curve of the other towns the lower proportion of the mwra sewer system we pay and that benefits the whole city rate payers but the the to tie the other issue together here is that i believe the city has an obligation to fund in its general operating budget infrastructure of the water and sewer system and i would love to see and i know it's not going to happen this year but i just wanted to come and make the statement again because apparently nobody remembered from two years ago to last year to this year i want to make the statement that it benefits our community to have a robust infrastructure and we do a lot with infrastructure but we're ignoring this huge infrastructure of ini we're only applying funds as the mwra releases them for low interest or no interest funds and when we do it that way we're we're getting better if you will at the same rate as every other community which means even if we get better we're going to pay the same high rates if we can accelerate our investment in ini reduction we can then get to a point where we pay a far less percentage or we will we'll use a far less percentage relative to other communities and we will pay a far less burden of of money for our sewers rates and again i don't believe that it's fair that we put and i understand why you want to take everything out of the city budget to make more available for other things in the city budget and push it up to water and sewer but the truth is the person that uses very little water is in very little sewer has the benefit of the work we do for infrastructure but they're not paying it in the water and sewer rate and I think that the burden some of the burden ought to be on the city and so as you consider the drain bond tonight you know the question I'd like you to have in the back of your mind is is okay for those three areas that we can make the flooding a little bit less that has been flooding for years and if we waited two or three more years yeah we might have a couple big rainstorms and they'll flood again and we'll have some issues with that but the the other side of that is the benefit of if we if we were actually use that money you're considering for drain bond tonight if we had that money to reduce ini we would be much better off and i do want to close this particular issue with one final comment is that you know everybody seemed to understand a

▶ 18:49 Speaker 8: couple years ago when i was bringing this issue up that finding a way to get people to stop pumping their basements into the sewer system would be huge and when i left the meetings you know back in 2013 everybody's like oh yeah well that's a no-brainer we ought to do something about that and it's basically more public relations thing than anything else as a start i've seen nothing in two years about that and so we're hurting the city we're hurting the water and sewer rate payers by not doing a simple thing like that that doesn't take huge investment in ini that takes a little bit of marketing work and and i wish we'd do that anyway enough of that issue the next issue i want to talk about and and i just want to clarify so i'm not speaking out of place here but on your agenda tonight i saw the city budget on there and so it is on that agenda right it's it's a

▶ 19:42 Peter D. Mortimer: umbrella order okay so this but but this meeting it's it's only because each time we have to lay the order on the table and return it to the table so we can discuss the specific budgets that are before us this evening but there was a public meeting on the budget which we've already had there'll be a final meeting before the board of aldermen when the entire budget will be open for discussion but this is this isn't the type of night where you can say talk about the school committee or you could talk about the library which aren't on the budget there's one element

▶ 20:16 Speaker 8: that i don't even know where you've talked about it and if i could ask for a little just a little bit of leeway only take a couple minutes um the issue that i raised tonight is again it's a larger

▶ 20:30 Speaker 8: issue we appropriate we're planning to appropriate to the schools 25 plus million dollars as a city appropriation directly to the schools obviously the city has other indirect costs and and the total amount of money spent by the schools ends up being more than 45 million dollars in a year

▶ 20:45 Peter D. Mortimer: um this this is kind of what i'm talking about i just said we're not schools aren't on for tonight

▶ 20:49 Speaker 8: i understand that what what i'm getting is to one place and i'll jump right to it um in the budget you you funded the last two years ten thousand dollars for something called innovation grants for the schools and you funded those outside of the school department budget and you know i didn't see exactly what part of the budget you were discussing that within and that's why i thought that with the whole budget on the table today i could bring this up and just very quickly the issue is is that the super you trust the school committee and the superintendent to figure out

▶ 21:24 Speaker 8: out what money they need to apply to the schools whether you agree with that or not you're trusting them for that and you're giving them forty five million dollars basically to go to the schools now we get this little part of ten thousand dollars that you're holding separately now the question is who is best to know what that ten thousand dollars should be used for should you trust the school committee and superintendent as you do for the forty five million or do you say oh well you know they've got enough we'll try this separately because of something they're not doing that we want them to do now

▶ 21:59 Speaker 8: I'm all for innovation but there are needs of the school department that aren't being met the $10,000 could conceivably meet those needs and mr. Moreau's I you kind of let anyone does what we speak apparently is that what it

▶ 22:11 Peter D. Mortimer: is okay kind of led me to believe that you're going to make a nexus you were going to make a connection like something on the budget this is tonight

▶ 22:15 Speaker 8: well this is in the larger budget and I apologize that I tell me what night you You discussed specifically the $10,000 grant. And is it going to, I don't see a hundred people sitting, waiting to speak. Could I just have a couple minutes to make my point and then I'll be done and sit down?

▶ 22:32 Peter D. Mortimer: We kind of have certain hearings and certain rules. I mean, if we make exceptions for one, we make for another, but why don't you hold that thought for a minute? I'll hold my thoughts for a minute. And Alderman Medeiros, on a point of personal privilege, raise her hand and she may have something that might be constructive. Alderman Medeiros, please.

▶ 22:50 Monica C. Medeiros: you mr chairman i appreciate the moment of personal privilege i just wanted to point out that the public hearing on the budget is set for this coming monday june 1st at 8 p.m correct and at 8 0 5 that same evening is scheduled the public hearing on water and sewer uh and and point out

▶ 23:15 Monica C. Medeiros: that uh the the school committee this well the area in which uh i think mr miraz is looking for is the human resources budget all right which is on hold yeah the human resources budget for the

▶ 23:27 Speaker 8: the school budget well is that 10 000 human resources is that where it is which which is

▶ 23:35 Monica C. Medeiros: on hold that's that's on hold i'm not sure when we're scheduled to review that again i think

▶ 23:41 Peter D. Mortimer: that's coming back up point of order what are we doing here um we are in the midst of public participation i've been trying to be lenient with mr morose uh to try to instruct him that we're talking about certain budgets here tonight um hoping that he's going to make a nexus with something tonight but well your comments are kind of astray you need to stay on a budget and well

▶ 24:01 Speaker 8: i'll tell you i i'll tell you i tried here i went on iqm2 i looked in there i see the city budget on there under tonight's meeting i feel like that's open for tonight's discussion if the city budgets on tonight's meeting on iqm2 i mean you know and the thing is is that that may be your

▶ 24:18 Peter D. Mortimer: feeling mr morose well why do you have that excuse me excuse me please don't speak when i'm speaking that may be your feeling mr morose but it's an incorrect fact it's not it's the entire budget is not up for discussion tonight okay so i could have been done completely with what i wanted to

▶ 24:32 Speaker 8: say by now but you know i'll try to make it back monday i have a conflict monday um i it's a It's a meeting that I can't control that I have to be at, but I'll try to be here Monday, and I'll speak to the public hearing if you really don't want two more minutes tonight.

▶ 24:46 Peter D. Mortimer: If you want to speak about something tonight that's on tonight's agenda, and I'll give you a copy of it, or you can see it right up there on the board, we'd be more than happy to listen.

▶ 24:56 Speaker 8: I'd love to see tonight's agenda if I could for a second.

▶ 24:58 Speaker 6: Mr. Chairman, I'd move to suspend the rules to allow Mr. Morales a moment or two to conclude his remarks, please.

▶ 25:04 Peter D. Mortimer: I agree with that. Very good. long as it's the will of the board uh we can do that we have a motion to suspend the rules to allow you to go off tonight's agenda that motion is made by president khan duly seconded by alderman Tramontozzi i'm glad somebody did make the motion quite frankly but otherwise i have to strict stick to procedure all in favor of the motion any opposed hearing none uh you you have

▶ 25:34 Speaker 8: been granted some leniency to uh thank you and and i do want to clarify travel the field one of the reasons why i'm bringing up this issue tonight is that on your meeting on iqm2 tonight there is a letter just about this issue and i wouldn't know why it was posted there if this issue wasn't relevant for tonight so that's all done what i'd like to get at though is the point that i was trying to make is so if you have an extra ten thousand dollars you feel you can spare The superintendent has a thousand needs for it, and apparently you decide that you don't want to give it to her. And I understand that you might want to say you want innovation, and that you might want to have a little bit of money outside of what you give to the school's power structure to do something different with it, and that's great. The problem then you have, though, is that that $10,000 that you have, you basically are giving it to the schools because on that committee you have three or four people of the schools, the mayor has control over those funds, and then you have this other group of people who, some of them were on the letter tonight that you, is on the IQM2 portal. And to be very frank, even though they might be using those funds for something that we think is progressive and good. The question is, why isn't the superintendent doing that with the $45 million rather than with just $10,000, number one? And number two, why don't

▶ 26:59 Speaker 8: we put it outside of the realm of a small group of people, a little clique of people connected with the mayor and connected with the power structure of the schools to really do something innovative? And so then it's a slippery slope you've come to, though, because once you say $10,000 we're going to set aside well you know why don't we make it 20,000 give the school 10,000 less even more why don't make a 50,000 give the schools less than even more where does it stop and I just see the inconsistency here of saying we trust our superintendent we trust our school committee to do what we're doing and then oh well a little dig to them I'm gonna give it separately but then it's really not a dig to them because we're really giving it to them in a different way with with a group of other another cohort of people that are aligned with that and you know maybe the city ought to have something other than I mean who structures it that way that if the grants have to be done is that devised by the mayor or is that devised by the alderman here I just want to raise the issue because I see that sitting out there a parallel issue that I just want to raise in the similar way is the Arts Council and the extra Messina money you know we have an Arts Council populated with people and I think there's even some overlap between the Arts Council in the Messina Fund, but why create two separate things? Why don't we give the money to one group of people who are tasked with figuring out how to best promote the arts in Melrose instead of having two competing things?

▶ 28:28 Speaker 8: And I think that to simplify it would be more pure, in a sense, because what I really fear here in underlying a lot of this is basically there's a political undercurrent behind both the innovation money for the schools and the Messina money separately and you know we need to determine do we trust the people who we have on the Arts Council do we trust the superintendent in the school committee but if you're not going to trust them who really is best to determine what the other money should do and I'll stop there thank you thank you very much mr. Morales any

▶ 29:05 Peter D. Mortimer: Any other members of the public wishing to come forward to speak this evening?

▶ 29:10 Speaker 7: Motion to close public participation.

▶ 29:11 Peter D. Mortimer: Second. Seeing none, Alderman Boisselle has made a motion to close public participation. Said motion was duly seconded by Alderman Forbes. All in favor, please say aye. Aye. Any opposed? Hearing none, public participation is now closed. The first order we have before us is order 2015-171. authorization of a bond in the amount of $485,000 for