▶ 3:22:49 Kimberly Vandiver: And okay, we'll get into budget. Sounds so exciting. I've been informed that we do need to take a break at the four-hour mark, so that MMTV can reset, because they can only capture four hours at once. So we have a little bit of time we can run still. It's like trust the machine. Let's go. All right, so next up we have department budget presentations, and we will be hearing from the Department of Public Works, Director Proakis-Ellis, on her budgets.

▶ 3:23:15 Speaker 9: Thank you. And Deputy Director Jim Troupe couldn't be here tonight, but he was a critical part of the development of this budget, so I just want to acknowledge him. And I see his name's here in the agenda. Adrienne, if you're able to pull up the other PowerPoint.

▶ 3:23:33 Speaker 8: Yes. I have it here. Let me check with Patrick downstairs.

▶ 3:23:36 Speaker 9: Okay. Okay, there we go. So I will try to move through this as quickly as I can given the hour and also how many folks are still waiting to do their budgets. So a couple of the items in these slides, I didn't know what order we would be... I put them together before the agenda was put together, so there's some items that we've already voted on that we won't even really need to talk about. So this is our mission statement. This was developed collectively by our department. "Miller Department of Public Works provides quality services to the community in the areas of drinking water, wastewater, solid waste, recycling, parks, forestry, fleet, highway, cemetery facilities, engineering, and administration while promoting health, safety, sustainability, and fiscal responsibility through the teamwork and commitment of an honest and dependable workforce." So that is DPW in a nutshell. We have four main divisions: administration and finance, engineering, water sewer billing, facilities, and operations. I won't run through all of these. I think you're all pretty well aware of what our various divisions do, but I'll just click through. And Adrienne, if you can just click through the slides with me. So administration and finance does all of our administrative payroll paperwork, public relations. And the next slide. Engineering is managing most of our capital projects, permits for work in the right of way and utility work, development reviews for the planning department, record plans, geographic information systems, and water and sewer billing sits within that office. Facilities, fairly straightforward. Custodial services, maintenance services in all of our city and school buildings, and capital projects in those buildings. And then operations is everybody else. So about half of our workforce is in our operations divisions. Highway, parks, forestry, fleet, cemetery, sanitation, water and sewer, and then snow and ice. That's the division of our budgets, which you'll see as we get into each individual budget. And just to be clear, so I have however many it is, nine, plus the three enterprise budgets. This presentation covers all of that. I'm going to fly through this, and then assuming you'll want to take each one individually, but you will have heard from me all at once. So we have 70 full-time employees, one part-time employee who's our rental coordinator. Four positions that are partially funded by the DPW sit in our budget. Pieces of their salaries, like the park superintendent, sits in our budget but isOtherwise funded out of other budgets as well. We have two night custodians who are funded out of the education stations budget in the school department's budget, which is based on money coming in that goes back out, so they are not shown in our budget document. Every position that was eliminated in fiscal '26 in order to pass the budget has been restored, and our fiscal '27 employee count exactly matches our fiscal '25 budget. And the reason I'm calling attention to that is because we did shift some people around. So if you've looked at our budgets, you'll see some of the salary line items jumping up and others going down. There is a change in four different divisions, two that gain an employee and two that lose an employee, but there are actually more than that that are moved around. It's just the rest of it is behind the scenes. And the intent of all of that is to have people paid out of the divisions where they're actually working. Historically, things have changed over time, and there was always a desire to not make it look strange in the budget previously. And I think at a certain point, that becomes complicated because you have people paid out of one division who are really working in another division. For instance, an employee in parks has been in the cemetery, working in the cemetery for the entire time that I've been director. And so now we have four employees shown in the cemetery because that's what they're actually doing.

▶ 3:27:53 Speaker 7: Mm-hmm.

▶ 3:27:54 Speaker 9: So this is the breakdown of where everybody is, and I just showed the pluses and the minuses. So highway goes up by one for this fiscal year, parks and forestry goes down by one, fleet goes down by one, and cemetery goes up by one. So hopefully that's a sufficient explanation for some of the pluses and minuses you see in the munis budget. Our overall organization is we have the four main divisions. We have a division manager for each of those. So Jim Trou heads up the Administration and Finance division and also serves as our assistant director. Matt Spinelli is our Operations Manager. Jay Coy is acting as our city engineer right now. And I'll talk about that a little bit more in a minute. And then Scott Enos has newly been promoted to our facilities manager.

▶ 3:28:47 Speaker 9: So I'd just like to acknowledge the new employees that we've hired, so in additional Matt Spinelli, we have Jade Butler, who's new to our Parks division, and Fagan Doyle, who's new to our Engineering division. We've had three internal promotions. We really like to promote from within when we can. I think it's great for employee retention and for morale. So we've had three promotions. And then next. We have two great employees retiring at the end of this month. So Linda, who is the face of DPW at the city yard, is retiring. And Dan Gavan, who's the municipal custodian who had been in City Hall for a while, he's been at the police station at different times, he's been at Milano. And so he is a well-liked member of our team. He's also retiring. Vacancies. Actually, if you can go back for one second. We have had the city engineer posted since the override passed with no really valid candidates. I've interviewed, I think, three candidates at this point, and just nobody is applying. Our acting city engineer has said to date that he does not want the position. I've tried to strong-arm him into changing his mind. I will continue trying. But it's amazing to me that we can't fill the city engineer position. It's a good salary, and it's just hard to understand. We've also had a mechanic welder position posted since the override, and we've had parks heavy equipment operator has been posted for quite some time, but we had two vacancies and we filled one of the two. So that one's a little less of an issue. But the other two have been longstanding vacancies that have proven very hard to fill. I won't go through these numbers. These are in the memo that you received for our department. I will note that the number in the memo for potholes was a typo. It's 525 potholes that we filled this fiscal year. And we are caught up on our list, so you can resume the pothole patrol. Yay. Yeah. And then this just highlights some of our other work. I do want to highlight that we have started our curbside composting preferred vendor program with Garbage to Garden. We've been trying to really promote that. We got the cart grant from MassDEP, so we were able to purchase 400 carts, so the next 400 people who sign up, I think we've signed up about 25 to 50 since then. But the remainder of that 400 will get a free cart. And this turkey was walking down the street near the cart that I was taking a picture of, so.

▶ 3:31:28 Speaker 9: And then capital work. We've been doing so much capital work, and especially with the supplemental budget. I was going to list all the projects we have in the works that are not yet complete, and it would've taken up too much time. But we've been getting through a lot of work. The high school bathrooms work is starting in two weeks, which is really exciting. The contractor is already ordering all the parts and mobilizing. So we finished the roof that had been leaking for years, the partial roof at the Franklin School, high school skylights that were falling in. The middle school and the Lincoln have their air conditioning up and running with heat pumps. We renovated the whole Franklin School all-purpose room. That's the picture down at the bottom. We've done lighting upgrades. We've almost completed all the LED lighting in the entire portfolio of city buildings, which is exciting. We've been doing a lot of ADA accessibility work with grant money. Next slideThese were our paving projects listed up here from last year. We added sidewalks on Swain's Pond Ave, which we were excited to do. We replaced a bunch of water main and the L Pond drain, which we were talking about for years, underneath the new development at the old Caruso building is done. So that was with a million-dollar state grant, and so that's an exciting one to have completed. So, on to our budgets. Our DPW budget's comprised 30 million, 30.5 million of the city's total budget. So it's a significant component. 11 million of that, 11.7, is in the general fund. The water enterprise budget, I've said this in past years, but just so that everybody understands clearly, the water enterprise, sewer enterprise, and solid waste enterprise operate as three completely independent funds. The water enterprise budget is completely supported by water rates and fees. The sewer budget is completely supported by sewer rates and fees, and the solid waste enterprise budget is completely supported by the trash fee. And you can't take leftover from one and spend it on the other. And we are very careful within our department to allocate as we're paying invoices and such to allocate accurately between those three funds.

▶ 3:33:53 Speaker 9: So these are all the orders that are before you tonight that pertain to DPW. And then if you go to the next one, this is the further breakdown of each of the codes that you have to vote on between each of the different divisions of the general fund piece. So that 11 million splits out into these eight different funds.

▶ 3:34:21 Speaker 9: So just to highlight the items that were restored in the supplemental budget for fiscal '26 that were carried into the fiscal '27 budget. As I mentioned, all positions that were funded in fiscal '25 are back into our budget. Our summer health program, being open at the city yard every Saturday, overtime for flower watering for the downtown baskets, parklets, overtime to set those up and take them down. Our line painting, which we had scaled back on, is now fully funded again. Our sidewalk repairs are fully funded and then some. Seasonal Sunday municipal trash barrel pickup is back in. That starts around end of June and goes through the end of the summer. And our support for the Adopt-a-Site program is back in the budget. Some highlights across all the divisions. The union salaries we're in the process of negotiating both clerical and laborers. We're at the tail end of negotiation. We have a pretty good idea of where those are going to land. But for the purpose of budgeting, we always budget without the-- If a negotiation hasn't been finalized, we don't include it in the budget. So step increases are included, but you should expect to see some supplemental money going for the COLAs for both our clerical and our laborers. For our non-union members, we included the increases that they would have. Other items that were added back in that weren't in the supplemental budget, but things we'd cut back on previously that we were able to restore to pre-fiscal '26 levels, things like professional development, our clothing line item, a handful of other small supply items that we'd cut back on. All the budgets across all the divisions reflect rising energy and fuel costs. Anywhere where there are fuel line items, those costs are going up, so we've raised some of them to help reflect that. I will note that you're probably aware, but within the munis budgets, we work within what we call roll-up codes. So if there's a section like in facilities, the contractual, which includes all of the heat and electricity for our municipal buildings, the finance department wants us to end in the black for the total for that section, but we're not bound to each individual line. So if we go over, let's say, on school electricity, but then we end up under on municipal building electricity, then that's viable for that to balance out to no net change. So that's how we operate day to day in our budget. So if you see that some of the electricity lines, let's say, went up, but not all of them went up, we can absorb some amount of changes within those roll-up codes. So that's why you don't see every individual line bumped up for fuel and energy. And again, no net change in total positions. So we haven't created any new DPW positions in this fiscal budget. So next, facilities. The most notable items in facilities, I'm going to jump down a couple bullets, but the library electricity reflects that we now have an all-electric building, so that's a huge increase. We have 500,000 in recurring capital that are in the building repairs line item. That was specified in the override as a priority. And this allows us to plan either if we have projects where we know we're going to have a city match and we need to fund $100,000 in order to leverage $200,000 of money from green communities or someone else. This gives us a little bit of money to plan for those projects and not have to come before you every time we want to do one of those smaller projects. And it also allows us to plan some of our larger capital. If we know we have a major need for, say, 250,000 to replace a piece of HVAC equipment or something, we can program that into a year knowing that the intention is for this 500,000 to recurYear over year, and we hope that it doesn't get cut in the future. It also gives us a source if we planned to replace a piece of HVAC equipment a year out, and then something else fails and becomes a critical piece of equipment to replace right away. It allows us to act on that quickly and not always be looking for capital stabilization. Many communities have recurring capital in their operating budget, and this is something we've been asking for for many years in DPW, so we're thrilled to see that it's there. And then we have 100,000 for our annual asbestos removal in schools, which we end up asking for every year as free cash. But because it is a recurring capital item, we've been given the guidance previously that it is more appropriate to just have it in the operating budget rather than ask for it every year.

▶ 3:39:21 Speaker 9: Next slide. So highway, we already talked about the change of one position. Also of note, street sweeping went way up because we opened bids. We bid our annual contracts. If we're happy with our contractors, we bid them once every three years. We renew the contract in year two and year three. This was a big year for street sweeping. We used to have street sweeping cost about 46,000. This year, the lowest bid came in at 96,000. So we reflected that. We have no choice. We have to sweep the streets. It's part of our NPDES permit for stormwater, and it's also something the community really benefits from and expects us to do. Snow and ice, we've just been trying to increase it incrementally every year to get closer to the average three-year actual cost. And so each year, we look to finance to guide us on how much to increase that, and they selected 800,000 for this year's allocation. Sanitation. Most of sanitation of all the curbside program lives in the enterprise fund. This is more operations at the yard and that sort of thing. And so there's some small increases just to reflect increases of costs on our end. Parks and forestry, again, we have the moving of one employee. Last year in the supplemental budget, we had an extra 100,000 to try to get caught up on our tree trims and removals. So that's been removed from our budgets. You'll see that as a negative, because that was a one-time expenditure. And we still have the 100,000 for new tree planting in our budget that we got in the supplemental budget that was carried forward. Automotive, this whole moving of positions around, we're actually moving one of the vacant mechanic position, we're moving into the water enterprise fund because our mechanics perform a lot of work on our water and sewer vehicles, and that's never been reflected in the budget. And so I thought it was appropriate out of our three mechanics to have one paid from the enterprise funds just to reflect the complement of vehicles that they have to work on.

▶ 3:41:28 Speaker 9: And then just restoration of other items to meet our needs. And cemetery, same thing, just moving the one employee and then restoration of supplies to match needs. On the enterprise funds, the water enterprise fund, and the sewer enterprise fund, we've had annual increases in our MWRA assessments. So those are reflected in the budgets. Again, rising electrical costs for things like our pump stations. Water meters is a big additional line. So probably 12 years ago, we did a large borrowing order to replace all the water meters in the city. So we went to a different radio read technology. Now that just about everybody has that technology, we don't need to do another holistic replace everybody's meters. It's better to just replace them as they fail. And so rather than someday coming in with another big capital request, we've put 25,000 in each of the water and sewer budgets to allow us to just replace the meters as they fail, and we plan to just carry that into the future. And we were able to absorb that even with no changes to the water and sewer rates. So now is a good time to do that. Some of the old capital was dropping off on the debt end, and we were able to backfill. And then we have the vector. The annual payments for the vector will be 90,000 instead of the previous 80, so we've changed that to 90. Again, solid waste and recycling enterprise fund, it just covers the curbside program. So our contracts with Casella for curbside pickup and hauling, waste management for disposal, and then the carts, the loan for the carts is what is covered there. So any increases there are just to reflect increases in those contracts and loans.

▶ 3:43:19 Speaker 9: So as we mentioned, we have capital items this year in the operating budget. Those are the asbestos removal, the tree planting, and then in addition, and actually, I didn't list the 500,000 in facilities here. I should have. But in addition, we have in highway 1.23 million, which is broken down into 600,000 for roads, 250,000 for sidewalks, 330,000 for drainage, and 50,000 for traffic calming. A portion of that was specified in the override vote that a portion would go toward additional road paving. So I would assume that will continue year over year. The other ones, we would love to have these year over year, but I guess we'll see where things fall out as other costs increase elsewhere.

▶ 3:44:03 Speaker 9: And just to mention, I know Carrie already presented these other items. I just didn't want them to get lost in the discussion that these are the capital outlay items that are in the capital outlay budget that you already approved when Carrie presented it. So I won't go through those again, but I didn't want to not acknowledge that those are also capital projects that DPW will be executing this fiscal year.

▶ 3:44:30 Speaker 9: And then water and sewer rates we already talked aboutNo changes in rates, no transfers to reserves. We didn't mention that earlier, but oftentimes we come with an order to transfer into reserves to meet our 10% reserve goal. We're already at 10% right now in both of the reserve funds, so we didn't have any need to transfer. And the projected rates will meet all revenue obligations that are projected for this fiscal year, for fiscal '27. So, with that

▶ 3:45:01 Kimberly Vandiver: Thank you very much for- That was a lot. Thank you ... for your presentation. I've been informed that we do not need to break. They've already swapped out the relevant card for MMTV. However, I was seeing councilors stretching. Can I get a nod if people are looking for a five-minute stretch break, or are you good to continue? Let's keep going. We continue? All right. Let's roll. All right. So let's begin with department number 401, the first one we have under DPW, which is Public Works Admin and Engineering. If you have specific questions about that budget, let's start there.

▶ 3:45:38 Speaker 7: Councilor Finocchiaro.

▶ 3:45:40 Cal Finocchiaro: Make a motion to move the bottom line.

▶ 3:45:44 Kimberly Vandiver: Okay. We have a motion to move the bottom line by Councilor Finocchiaro, seconded by Councilor Jamaleddine. Anyone on discussion? Councilor Williams?

▶ 3:45:51 Ryan Williams: Hi. Yes, thank you. So, I wanted to mention something that we brought up with the capital outlay when Carrie Ann presented it, which is that it's a little confusing to tell with the capital outlay line items, which of these are sort of congruent with other projects, or whether they're different projects or whether... One just says, "Access." I assume that's ADA access. That's like a capital line for that. One says, "El Pond" for $71,000. Excuse me, for $80,000. And we just had this big discussion about the costs of El Pond. What is that? Can you go through each capital outlay item and tell us what this for?

▶ 3:46:31 Speaker 9: So, the capital outlay items that I had on my slide, Adrienne, I don't know if you want to put it back up. It was slide page 27. Okay. Those are the only ones that are DPW projects.

▶ 3:46:42 Speaker 8: Well, in the DP- So- I'm sorry.

▶ 3:46:45 Ryan Williams: Oh, in the DPW budget? Yes. In 401, line 55, there's a capital outlay series of $556,000, and the biggest two are Summer, which I assume is Summer Street, $205,000, and Lebanon and Sylvan, which is $175,000, and Munis on page 22. That's what my question is sort of getting at. We had this conversation about the capital outlay budget being sort of a mix of some things were truly recurring capital projects, some of them seemed like free cash requests that were being put into a capital budget that were one time. And some of these things, like advertising, printing, postage, no problem. But when I see a line item for $80,000 that just says, "El Pond," I don't know what that is.

▶ 3:47:27 Speaker 9: Are you looking at 2026 actual as opposed to 2027?

▶ 3:47:28 Ryan Williams: Yes. I'm looking at 2026 actual.

▶ 3:47:32 Speaker 9: Okay. So, these are all funded at zero in 2027- Okay ... because those are projects that you all voted on.

▶ 3:47:37 Speaker 8: Supplemental budget.

▶ 3:47:39 Speaker 9: Yeah. Well, supplemental budget or free cash. Okay. So, the 80,000 is actually the match component for the stormwater design for the EPA grant. Okay. So, the project that we were talking about earlier, that is the 80,000 that was for the design phases- Yeah for that project. The-

▶ 3:47:57 Ryan Williams: So, the only one that continues is access. Is that ADA access? That's still- Oh, it's in projection ... zero for fiscal '27.

▶ 3:48:04 Speaker 9: I see. Okay. All right. So, all of those are projects that are in progress. Some of them, we've spent some of it. That access one, I think was a $75,000 free cash from maybe two years ago- Okay ... that got carried because we hadn't finished spending it, and we're spending that in conjunction with the ADA grant that we have right now to do a little bit more. We did some extra door openers at some of the schools. We haven't paid for that yet, which is why it's still showing as 71,000.

▶ 3:48:32 Speaker 7: Councilor Chen. Is the

▶ 3:48:34 Jason Chen: salaries actual below the request? Is that due to not having an engineer being paid?

▶ 3:48:43 Speaker 9: Oh, the actual? Yes. So, that's the engineer and the facilities manager that was vacant since last spring when... So, both our city engineer and our facilities manager are paid out of this budget. Or some out of water and sewer, but largely this budget, and with both positions vacant for the bulk of fiscal '26. Yes.

▶ 3:49:06 Kimberly Vandiver: Is anyone else looking to question, comment? I can't see Devin. Is Councilor Romanul looking okay over there?

▶ 3:49:12 Speaker 8: Uh... He's asleep. Getting back. Yeah.

▶ 3:49:17 Speaker 9: There he is.

▶ 3:49:19 Kimberly Vandiver: All right. Any questions, comments? All set? Okay. In that case, we have a motion on the floor. Let's have a vote.

▶ 3:49:28 Speaker 8: Councilor Chen. Yes. Councilor Finocchiaro. Yes. Councilor Jamaleddine. Yes. Councilor Karamcheti. Yes. Councilor Kowal. Yes. Councilor Abrmski. Yes. Councilor Park. Yes. Councilor Williams. Yes. President Freeman. Yes. Councilor Romanul. Yes. Chair Vandiver. Yes. All in favor? Motion passes.

▶ 3:49:46 Kimberly Vandiver: Okay. Let's talk about Department 402, Public Works Facilities. Any questions or comments? Councilor Williams.

▶ 3:49:57 Ryan Williams: Just that the asbestos line does recur here, so I assume that that's a capital item for asbestos removal for public buildings, yeah? Yes. Which is, I think, exactly what we were talking about at the other meeting. That's what we want to see, is a departmental recurring cost that we budget for. So, it's perfect. And I'll make a motion to approve. Second.

▶ 3:50:14 Speaker 7: Okay. We have motion-

▶ 3:50:15 Speaker 8: Or a motion to move the bottom line

▶ 3:50:16 Kimberly Vandiver: ... to move the bottom line- On 402. Excuse me ... from Councilor Williams, seconded by Councilor Finocchiaro. Anyone else on discussion? Councilor Chen.

▶ 3:50:22 Jason Chen: Yeah, just thank you for the LED improvements and also the HVAC. Those tend to be really high payback. So, whatever. It's- You're welcome. Yeah.

▶ 3:50:31 Speaker 7: Okay. Roll call vote, please.

▶ 3:50:33 Speaker 8: Councilor Chen. Yes. Councilor Finocchiaro. Yes. Councilor Jamaleddine. Yes. Councilor Karamcheti. Yes. Councilor Kowal. Yes. Councilor Abrmski. Yes. Councilor Park. Yes. Councillor Williams? Yes. President Freeman? Yes. Councillor Romanul? Yes. Chair Vandiver? Yes. All in favor. Motion passes.

▶ 3:50:53 Kimberly Vandiver: Okay, next up, let's talk about Department 422, Public Works Highway.

▶ 3:51:00 Kimberly Vandiver: Any questions? Councillor Park, and followed by Councillor Chen.

▶ 3:51:05 Speaker 8: Thank you. In the budget for 402, what is MS4 under- ... contractual?

▶ 3:51:14 Speaker 9: So MS4 is municipal... There are four S's in this acronym, and let's see if I can get it right. Municipal Separate Storm Sewer System. Okay. So that is a federal acronym for the federal stormwater permit that we all fall under, that every community falls under for our drainage system.

▶ 3:51:34 Christopher Park: Okay. Okay, very good. Thank you. And I assume the discrepancy in the salary from the 2026 actuals to what the mayor is requesting, or your department is requesting, is because of the transfer of- Yes ... personnel that you talked about?

▶ 3:51:52 Speaker 9: Yes. And yeah, and just to give you a little more detail on that. So we used to have a joint highway and sanitation foreman, and our goal is to have an individual highway foreman and sanitation foreman. And so actually, one of our employees just accepted, after I put this together, an offer for the highway division foreman role. So he will be going into that role this fiscal year. But he will start getting paid out of the new budget where it should be on- Got it ... July 1st.

▶ 3:52:27 Speaker 8: Okay. Yeah. And finally, I noticed there was a spike in traffic calming measures. Did you talk about that and I missed it, for 2026 actual? We're at 124. In 2025 it was at 14,

▶ 3:52:46 Speaker 8: and your budget for 2027 is 50.

▶ 3:52:52 Speaker 9: So everything prior to this fiscal year, to fiscal '27, for traffic calming has been allocated either through free cash or through the supplemental budget. We've never had a recurring traffic calming line item in the budget in the past. I think this was a priority of the community and a lot of interest expressed in it, and so, the mayor put it in as a actual capital line item for this year. Whether that's going to continue into future years, I'm not sure. I guess it all depends on how healthy the rest of the budget is. So this is the first time I've ever been before you discussing an operating budget line for traffic calming. So any numbers that you see before in that line were either a free cash request or a- Got it ... supplemental budget.

▶ 3:53:48 Speaker 8: Okay. You'll have a better idea or picture next year. What's that? You'll have a better idea next year.

▶ 3:53:55 Speaker 9: If it's going to recur, yes.

▶ 3:53:56 Speaker 8: It's going to recur. It's going to be recurring. Okay, very good. Thank you.

▶ 3:53:59 Kimberly Vandiver: Okay. Okay, so in queue I have Councilors Chen, Kowal, and Williams. Councilor Chen.

▶ 3:54:05 Jason Chen: Thanks. People care about roads and sidewalks. We are far below on our actual spend. Is that because by the time it got added back in the budget, and then we had a bunch of snowstorms, so we didn't have actually time to do the work?

▶ 3:54:14 Speaker 9: Yes, and also some work that was planned for last year didn't get done last year. We just got behind, and it was just hard to get things done, especially without a city engineer. So, we had done a calculation a number of years ago. The state asks us every few years, "How much do you think we should be spending per year to just maintain road conditions, pave everything on a 30-year cycle?" And the number I had come up with at that time was 2.65 million, and this is the first year in all the years that I've worked here where we're actually going to spend 2.65 million or more, we're going to spend more, on our paving program. So we're finally getting up to the types of funding levels that we think the city should be using year over year, and I know that 600,000, the plan is to keep it in the budget. And then also we do the road bonds every few years, so we would hope to continue doing that as well.

▶ 3:55:13 Elizabeth Kowal: Okay, so we have Councilor Kowal. So, I'm going back to traffic calming. So I love that you're getting to do all this road work, because as we know, as I think we can all attest to, that's what we hear about the most. But traffic calming has been a massive issue, and I think we all hear about it a lot. I know there's a grant out there for, for example, for Wyoming. But $50,000 actually seems low for traffic calming. So I know of two places in Ward 3 off the bat that you're talking about doing traffic. So what does $50,000 cover? So- And then how do we... I just need to understand more because that is probably one of the biggest issues that we all hear about constantly.

▶ 3:55:53 Speaker 9: So what we normally do with the traffic calming money, there's a handful of things that we tend to spend it on. Accessible curb ramps, especially if the traffic commission approves a new crosswalk, we don't have a funding source for that. So we tend to use rideshare money, which we may or may not be getting into the future, and traffic calming money when we want to add crosswalks. We've used it for the push button flashing crosswalk signals. We've used it for the solar radar speed feedback signs that tell you how fast you're going. Mm-hmm. We've used it for some smaller intersection reconfigurations. We're using some of it on the work we're doing on Hesseltine and Farwell right now to narrow that in. And then we use it for our pilot projects, and for the materials for that if we don't get those through a grant. SoMost of the time what we're trying to do is, like Ravine Road- Mm-hmm ... if we're planning on piloting some materials this year, and then that's going to be in our capital program most likely by next year, unless something goes wrong with our plan. That's supposed to be paved next year. So our hope would be that whatever we're doing, we incorporate it into the capital project at that time, so we don't need the traffic calming money- I see. Okay ... to accomplish the actual project. Sometimes that's not true, and we need to supplement a little bit with the traffic calming money. But for instance, let's say on Ravine we decide to have the lanes narrow in like this and come back out to slow people down. Sometimes we're already paying our contractor if the curbing is not set properly or it's sunken down or whatever. We're paying to reset all that curbing anyway. So if we pay them to reset it like this and set it straight- Mm-hmm ... it's not necessarily a big change in the cost when we're already there doing our capital work. So that's the majority of projects where we are able to implement what I think is really good road redesign tends to be when they're already in our capital program, and then we try to do things that will help at that time.

▶ 3:57:54 Elizabeth Kowal: Okay. And I also saw a post on the Melrose on Facebook about all the street work that you're doing. So I guess my other-- Are you comfortable with $50,000 as enough for what you have on your very extensive list for traffic calming?

▶ 3:58:07 Speaker 9: Yes, because- Okay ... we have so much capital money. Okay. I won't say so much. We have the right amount of capital money- Okay ... to accomplish our program right now. If we're looking at specific projects down the road, though, if on Wyoming we end up piloting something, we have potential access to grant money to pilot things, but we've been told we can't use that money to do any permanent installation. So if we put in something as a pilot that we then want to put in permanently, we would probably be looking for specific funding for that specific project, like we did with the 75,000 for the intersection reconfiguration-

▶ 3:58:47 Speaker 7: Yep. Got it

▶ 3:58:49 Speaker 9: ... at Warren and Maple. We came for a specific project, but we don't have a specific project with a price tag yet to- Okay ... to come with. Thank you. Yeah. Okay.

▶ 3:58:56 Kimberly Vandiver: Thank you, Councilor Cal. Up next we have Councilor Williams. Followed by Councilor Carm Jady. You're on deck. Thank you.

▶ 3:59:03 Ryan Williams: The traffic calming lane item has been a huge priority of mine for a long time. I'm really excited to see it in the budget, so thank you and thanks to the mayor for making it a priority. My only piece of feedback is that I don't think that accessible landing pads for crosswalks really excuse me, really count as traffic calming. Am I-

▶ 3:59:25 Speaker 9: It's when they're new crosswalks that the- ... so I do think that the installation, if you look on Lebanon Street, we've added two crosswalks on Franklin, two on Lebanon. They provide significant traffic calming.

▶ 3:59:35 Ryan Williams: I think if they're bumped out, right? It gets to the question of how do you measure the goal that you're trying to reach? Are you actually calming traffic effectively? And I think that for some of these projects you really are. So I think it's fantastic. I'd love to see more money in there. Some of these things, speed feedback signs, I'm a little more iffy on, but it's a good start. So thanks, and just keep doing more.

▶ 4:00:01 Kimberly Vandiver: Thank you. Thank you. And up next, we have Councilor Carm Jady.

▶ 4:00:05 Manjula Karamcheti: Thank you. Great to see you. Thank you for being here and for being here so late. When traffic calming comes up, I get anxious, and I get a case of the agita, I think because I've been as a city councilor for, what, six years now, and I haven't seen an impact in terms of traffic calming on Franklin Street. We continue to have accidents. We continue to get complaints about how unsafe it is to cross. I've been begging for a blinking light on Warren Street to cross Franklin for years, and it hasn't happened. So I guess my question is how do we access these resources? You're saying there's enough funding, and we're excited about it, and yet I haven't seen the impact of that. I know there are more streets than Franklin. I understand that. I respect that. But I...

▶ 4:01:06 Speaker 9: So I don't want to rehash too much of what I had presented during that lengthy traffic meeting that we had maybe a year ago now. I'm not sure when that was. Yeah.

▶ 4:01:17 Manjula Karamcheti: And I haven't seen any changes since then.

▶ 4:01:19 Speaker 9: We have had substantial investment, I would say on the order of upwards of a million dollars on Franklin Street in the time since just before I worked here until now. So I recognize that Franklin Street is a street where people tend to speed, and it has a high traffic volume. It's a major thoroughfare. But the amount of roadway narrowing that we've done and addition of crosswalks and bump outs and all of that didn't exist 12 years ago, and I think during that presentation, I showed a lot of pictures that showed it used to be just wide open, basically four lanes width, and now through the whole Highlands, everything's bumped out at the crosswalks. We've bumped out at Vinton Street. So we've done a ton of work on Franklin. I think it's a street that is prone to speed, and

▶ 4:02:18 Speaker 9: you're not going to be able to solve all of those problems. We will continue to work on Franklin Street to try to make more improvements. But I think we also have to have a realistic understanding of unless we put speed humps on every major road in Melrose, which I think we would also get a lot of pushback from, we're not going to significantly slow speeds in some of these neighborhoods. And we are putting speed humps on Howard, which is going to beWhich is going to be the first major road where we put speed humps or speed tables in Melrose, and we have support there, and then we'll see how that project goes, and maybe it will spawn future projects on other major roads. Um, and we are looking at Wyoming, but I just don't want to lose sight of how much we've done on Franklin Street.

▶ 4:03:08 Manjula Karamcheti: I appreciate that. I'm sure I sound difficult, but I think what we've done hasn't had a lot of impact because of the route from Stoneham into Melrose, from Melrose up to Stoneham, that it's a throughway between Stoneham and Saugus. And so, I so appreciate the investment and the work, I really do, but if there's not an impact, and a biker got hit like three weeks ago, it continues to be dangerous. So if something continues to be dangerous, I don't think you stop working on it. I agree. And so, it's a yes and again for me. And we have kids who are still trying to cross the street to get to the Roosevelt. We have families who are trying to get to the Warren Street Park. We're developing more housing in that area. It's getting more dense. And so,

▶ 4:04:04 Manjula Karamcheti: I just want to say publicly that we need to continue to be paying attention to it, and speed humps and those kinds of things, I think matter. And yeah. So anyway, I'll stop, but-

▶ 4:04:17 Speaker 9: I think there is going to be a raised crosswalk too from one of the developers at the Greenwood intersection. Just-

▶ 4:04:25 Manjula Karamcheti: Yeah ... uh, west of Greenwood We've definitely been pushing for developers to do stuff because- Yeah ... we're trying to access whatever opportunities we might have to put more traffic calming there, so.

▶ 4:04:37 Kimberly Vandiver: I don't believe I-- President Freeman. Motion to move to bottom line. Second. Okay. Motion to move to bottom line, President Freeman, seconded by Counselor Finocchiaro. Anyone else on discussion? And let's have a vote.

▶ 4:04:51 Speaker 8: Counselor Chen. Yes. Counselor Finocchiaro. Yes. Counselor Jamaleddine. Yes. Counselor Karamcheti. Yes. Counselor Cole. Yes. Counselor Abramsky. Yes. Counselor Park. Yes. Counselor Williams. Yes. President Freeman. Yes. Counselor Romanul. Yes. Chair Vandiver.

▶ 4:05:06 Speaker 9: Yes. All in favor? Motion passes.

▶ 4:05:08 Kimberly Vandiver: Next up, we have department 423, Public Works Snow. Any questions or comments or motions relative to public works snow? Counselor Jamaleddine. I'll make a motion to move bottom line. Second. Okay. A motion to move to bottom line, Counselor Jamaleddine, seconded by Counselor Cole. Anybody else on discussion?

▶ 4:05:32 Speaker 7: And let's vote on this budget.

▶ 4:05:34 Speaker 8: Counselor Chen. Yes. Counselor Finocchiaro. Yes. Counselor Jamaleddine. Yes. Counselor Karamcheti. Yes. Counselor Cole. Yes. Counselor Abramsky. Yes. Counselor Park. Yes. Counselor Williams. Yes. President Freeman. Yes. Counselor Romanul. Yes. Chair Vandiver.

▶ 4:05:48 Speaker 7: Yes.

▶ 4:05:48 Speaker 8: All in favor? Motion passes.

▶ 4:05:49 Kimberly Vandiver: Thank you. Next up, we have department 433, Public Works Sanitation. Any questions? Counselor Williams.

▶ 4:05:59 Speaker 8: I want a motion to move to bottom line on this.

▶ 4:06:00 Kimberly Vandiver: Second. Okay. A motion to move to the bottom line, Counselor Williams, second Counselor Finocchiaro, and on discussion, Counselor Park.

▶ 4:06:08 Speaker 8: Yes. Thank you. Just really a quick point of clarification. What is a higher equipment under contractual? I wasn't clear on that.

▶ 4:06:19 Speaker 9: Uh, let's see. Within sanitation, that is most likely anything that we do pertaining to the city yard operations. So if we have vendors that we use to haul out any of the material that we collect there.

▶ 4:06:39 Speaker 10: Yeah, any hazardous waste disposal, special collection events, those sorts of things, those would be contractors. Like if Clean Harbors comes in, let's say, for our hazardous waste disposal day, they would be a contractor that we're paying through the sanitation budget.

▶ 4:06:59 Speaker 11: Okay. So it's a combination of services and equipment, basically, for-

▶ 4:07:03 Speaker 10: Yeah, I would say it's mostly services, but it could be either. Yeah. That line item is not one large contract. Like with street sweeping, we're paying one contractor. This is a lot of little things that comprise our operations at the city yard.

▶ 4:07:20 Speaker 11: Got it. Very good. Thank you.

▶ 4:07:23 Speaker 10: Okay. Anyone else on discussion? So let's take a vote on that motion. Counselor Chen. Yes. Counselor Finocchiaro. Yes. Counselor Jamaleddine. Yes. Counselor Karamcheti. Yes. Counselor Cole. Yes. Counselor Abramsky. Yes. Counselor Park. Yes. Counselor Williams. Yes. President Freeman. Yes. Counselor Romanul. Yes. Chair Vandiver. Yes. All in favor? Motion passes. Thank you. So next up, we will discuss department 475, Public Works Parks and Forest. Any counselors

▶ 4:07:56 Kimberly Vandiver: with questions, comments, or motions? Counselor Finocchiaro.

▶ 4:08:00 Speaker 12: I'd like to make a motion to move to bottom line.

▶ 4:08:01 Kimberly Vandiver: Mm, second. Motion to move to bottom line by Counselor Finocchiaro, seconded by Counselor Williams. Anybody on discussion?

▶ 4:08:09 Speaker 10: Okay, let's vote. Counselor Chen. Yes. Counselor Finocchiaro. Yes. Counselor Jamaleddine. Yes. Counselor Karamcheti. Yes. Counselor Cole. Yes. Counselor Abramsky. Yes. Counselor Park. Yes. Counselor Williams. Yes. President Freeman. Yes. Counselor Romanul. Yes. Chair Vandiver. Yes. All in favor? Motion passes. Thank you. Next up, we'll talk about department 485, Public Works Automotive. Any counselors on discussion?

▶ 4:08:38 Speaker 10: Any counselors with motions? Counselor Cole. Motion to move to bottom line. Mm. Second. We have a motion to move to bottom line on department 485 from Counselor Cole, seconded by Counselor Finocchiaro. Anybody on discussion?Okay, let's vote. Councillor Chen. Yes. Councillor Finocchiaro. Yes. Councillor Jamaleddine. Yes. Councillor Karamcheti. Yes. Councillor Kowal. Yes. Councillor Obremski. Yes. Councillor Park. Yes. Councillor Williams. Yes. President Freeman. Yes. Councillor Romanul. Yes. Chair Vanderburg. Yes. All in favor? Passes. Thank you. Next up we have Department 491, Cemetery. Anybody on discussion or with motion?

▶ 4:09:18 Speaker 13: I'll make a motion to move to bottom line.

▶ 4:09:21 Speaker 10: Second. Okay, we have a motion to move Department 491 to the bottom line, Councillor Jamaleddine, seconded by Councillor Finocchiaro. Anyone on discussion? Let's have a vote. Councillor Chen. Yes. Councillor Finocchiaro. Yes. Councillor Jamaleddine. Yes. Councillor Karamcheti. Yes. Councillor Kowal. Yes. Councillor Obremski. Yes. Councillor Park. Yes. Councillor Williams. Yes. President Freeman. Yes. Councillor Romanul. Yes. Chair Vanderburg. Yes. All in favor? Motion passes. Thank you. Next up, we have the Solid Waste Enterprise Fund number 6300.

▶ 4:10:05 Kimberly Vandiver: Anybody with any questions or commentary about the Solid Waste Enterprise Fund?

▶ 4:10:14 Kimberly Vandiver: Okay, and I believe the motion for the enterprise fund, this is an approve? Motion to recommend. This is a recommend. Okay. A motion to recommend, Councillor Finocchiaro. Do we have a second? Second. Okay, seconded by Councillor Kowal. Anybody on discussion? So, let's vote. Councillor Chen. Yes. Councillor Finocchiaro. Yes. Councillor Jamaleddine. Yes. Councillor Karamcheti. Yes. Councillor Kowal. Yes. Councillor Obremski. Yes. Councillor Park. Yes. Councillor Williams. Yes. President Freeman. Yes. Councillor Romanul. Yes. Chair Vanderburg. Yes. All in favor? Motion passes. Thank you. Next up we'll discuss 411 Sewer Enterprise Fund number 6000.

▶ 4:11:00 Speaker 10: Councillor Finocchiaro.

▶ 4:11:01 Speaker 12: Make a motion to recommend.

▶ 4:11:02 Speaker 14: Second.

▶ 4:11:04 Speaker 10: Okay, a motion to recommend by Councillor Finocchiaro, second by Councillor Karamcheti. Anyone on discussion? Okay, let's vote. Councillor Chen. Yes. Councillor Finocchiaro. Yes. Councillor Jamaleddine. Yes. Councillor Karamcheti. Yes. Councillor Kowal. Yes. Councillor Obremski. Yes. Councillor Park. Yes. Councillor Williams. Yes. President Freeman. Yes. Councillor Romanul. Yes. Chair Vanderburg. Yes. All in favor? Motion passes. Thank you. And now we have number 451, the Water Enterprise Fund number 6100. Anyone for the Water Enterprise Fund? Motion to move to bottom line on 451.

▶ 4:11:42 Speaker 14: Second.

▶ 4:11:43 Speaker 10: Point of order. Sorry, did you say- I'm sorry. Motion to approve 451. Okay, thank you. So we have a motion to approve by Councillor Williams, seconded by Councillor Karamcheti. Anyone on discussion? Okay, let's vote on Water Enterprise Fund. Councillor Chen. Yes. Councillor Finocchiaro. Yes. Councillor Jamaleddine. Yes. Councillor Karamcheti. Yes. Councillor Kowal. Yes. Councillor Obremski. Yes. Councillor Park. Yes. Councillor Williams. Yes. President Freeman. Yes. Councillor Romanul. Yes. Chair Vanderburg. Yes. All in favor? Motion passes. Okay, so I believe that concludes our segment on public works. Yes? I believe so, yeah. Okay.

▶ 4:12:21 Kimberly Vandiver: Thank you for sticking with us until almost 10:30. I'm just going to request a five-minute break if people are okay taking a little stretch before we move to the next segment. Will someone motion, please? Vote? I motion for a five-minute recess.

▶ 4:12:36 Speaker 11: Second.

▶ 4:12:36 Kimberly Vandiver: All right. Motion for a five-minute recess, Councillor Karamcheti, seconded by Councillor Park. Can we please vote? Councillor Chen.

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