Public Comment

Transcript (~10 min @ 32:26)

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▶ 32:21 Michael P. Zwirko: earlier you can't do it enough so I'd ask that everybody stand rise and pledge allegiance with me

▶ 32:40 Speaker 3: with liberty and justice for all.

▶ 32:42 Peter D. Mortimer: Mr. President, I make a motion to open the floor for public comment.

▶ 32:47 Michael P. Zwirko: Second. Thorp been a motion made by Alderman Mortimer to open up the floor for public comment. It has been seconded by Alderman Forbes. All those in favor? Aye. Any opposed? There are none. The floor is now open for public comment. Where any member of the public wishes to speak on any item that is on the agenda, please come forward, state your name and address, please, for the record and for the minutes.

▶ 33:11 Speaker 9: Hi, my name is Jerry Morose.

▶ 33:16 Speaker 9: um your address sir yeah 62 mount vernon street thank you sir melrose mass usa 12176 um so i'm here to speak about of several different of the items on the agenda tonight um two in particular are the issues of water rates and sewer rates and it's a um an annual event with me here

▶ 33:41 Speaker 9: that you know I went to if not all the majority of the water and sewer committee meetings this year and you know heard every bit of the public discussion around what's behind the water and sewer rates and what the proposal might be and I'm here to give testimony that some of the most important issues in addressing what the water and sewer rates should be were never raised in any appropriate fashion within the water and sewer committee and you know some of the big issues are cost of services is you know when you make a water rate you're actually making a statement about who pays not just how much for water but who pays what relative portion of the water system based on the fact that we have a water system based on the use of the water system Thorp a lot of factors there they're called cost of service and Thorp you know dissertations written about how to apply cost of service analysis to water and sewer systems although we had a consultant in here a couple years ago with the big spreadsheet they didn't even approach a cost of service analysis for our system that's one major element that's missing and you know one downstream effect of

▶ 34:46 Speaker 9: that is that our system is still vulnerable for being sustainable because of the fact that we rely way too much on the volumetric portion of the bill for what are largely fixed costs in our system and it should not be news to any of you here I brought this up here for a number of years when we have it when we have a wet year and possibly this year could be that way and we have a low use of the people we will be under funding our water system based on the revenues we bring in the small little raise in the sewer base rate that's proposed for this year isn't sufficient to offset the vulnerability we have in that regard what I'm trying to point out here is that the more that your cost of service aligns the more that your rates align with the cost of the service provided to the individual customers and how they're applied the more authentic your system is and so your systems revenues respond to the costs whether they're increased or decreased in that way so when you do go to review these water and sewer rates in the committee and then back here in the full board I hope that you'll ask certain questions about that another issue of water and sewer rates that I want to raise is the fact that in my view that we have we basically do an end run around proposition two and a half with our water and sewer system and budget the municipal use of water and sewer in our city is not insignificant by any means yet the city is not paying its share of the water and sewer revenue so the enterprise funds are standalone separate funds they're an accounting mechanism let's be clear within the city budget but that does not mean that the city gets to get free water and sewer use and take the city's water and sewer use and put it on the backs of the rate payers instead of where it belongs on the taxpayers and I know some of you think that that well it's one or the other the same bucket but it's not there are different people who apply to the different buckets or the buckets apply of different people and it is not authentic it is not honest to be having costs of our city paid for by people who aren't under the structure of how our city receives its revenues and how it's designed to receive it i think that's inappropriate and at some point in time i hope that this board will stand up and do the right thing even if it means you know Thorp pain right um the rate

▶ 37:19 Speaker 9: ratepayers have pain right now you're trying to put pain or the way the budget has been done the last few years you're putting a lot of pain on ratepayers some of whom are taxpayers but some of whom aren't and the pain should be on the taxpayers and the city should be able to you know again we need to evolve our

▶ 37:42 Speaker 9: city to make things real not make things arbitrary and that underscores a lot of the issues here i do want to say that um this is not essentially a part of the water and sewer rates but it does impact them obviously is that i understand that the little bit of inflow and infiltration work that we did over the last year or more has had a huge positive impact on our city so i thank you and i well i basically thank the mwra for having the money that we then use because Because this board, although you appropriated that money, it's basically free money that you would be crazy not to take from the MWRA anyway. And if anything that I've ever said proves to be correct about INI, it's that the more you invest in it, the bigger payback you'll get.

▶ 38:39 Speaker 9: And so with the rate of inflation of construction costs, the sooner you do it, the more bang you get for the buck you spend. If you wait longer and you have, you know, 8%, 9%, 10% construction cost inflation, you're going to be buying less progress with the money later. So putting the money up front now, while Thorp a lower interest rate environment in the, you know, we don't know where interest rates go, but they're likely going to go up some point here more. And that's another element that will significantly reduce over the long term. You can't do anything about it this year, but it will reduce over the long term the water and sewer rates for our customers relative to where they are today. and then I did make a point in the in the earlier session here about the fact that what's presented to this board as a operating budget does not have valid information in there and I really challenge this board to push back on the on the mayor's office or whomever you have to push back on and say that you want a real document this project a projected column should not be made up it should not be some arbitrary amount from something else and and again I haven't had the time to do a complete analysis of the budget this year yet but in my first cursory look at it I see lots of discrepancies and I see things that you know even the aldermanic salaries I know there was you know we know we know what the aldermanic salaries go to and I know there was a thing a couple years ago but it went you know way down one year and way up another year and then the budget was this and but then we spent way more than the budget and you know we've got to have a sense of what it costs for all the manic salaries and i know it includes

▶ 40:20 Speaker 9: the the staff here as well but as much attention as you will pay to the people who sit at this table from the departments and talk to you about things if you don't have real numbers in front of you you you can't make a real decision and and that's what fundamentally has to change here is that is that we should be able to be very close about our budgeting year by year on so many things because we can we can tweak those discrepancies that we see year by year as long as we ignore the discrepancies they just persist in perpetuity and and I I look forward to a good you know round of discussions about the budget as I've said before I don't think it's worthy of this board to whine about state revenues or anything else you have a job to do here and the job is is how do you fulfill the needs of our city which can seem unlimited with limited resources and those again as I was talking about earlier those are policy decisions you need to make what is more important how do we make certain that we survive this and survive that at the same time and if you do make an expression of needing more money at some point in the future you can do that but if you're not authentic about showing a process here I'll be the first person to say I don't trust that more money is going to get applied for the benefit of our city rather than wasted through the city budget as I see other monies do because nobody's paid specific attention to it so you know I look forward to a good vigorous discussion about all the budget items and the water and sewer items I I don't tolerate as you well know the misinformation that often is presented here at these meetings from people who ought not to be presenting you with poor or wrong information and and I would love to hear all the people that come in front of this board speak to the facts specific facts and not the rhetoric that would really help the discussion here for the budget as you go

▶ 42:23 Speaker 10: over the next month and a half thank you thank you sir any other members of the

▶ 42:33 Peter D. Mortimer: public wishing to speak at this time motion to close public comment mr.

▶ 42:37 Michael P. Zwirko: president second motion to close public comment made by alderman Mortimer seconded by alderman Boisselle all those in favor aye any opposed public comment is now over move to section 3 which is communications from her honor the mayor