REPORTS - RULE 53

Transcript (~8 min @ 56:03)

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▶ 56:07 Scott M. Forbes: items out of order any orders from committee we're now reports rule 53 this is the portion of the the meeting where any member that sits on a body outside of this of which they are liaison or a member report alderman Forbes Thank You mr. president the water and sewer committee met on Tuesday April 24th Alderman's workout actually was there to present was there for presentation to look at a couple of options of shifting water and sewer debt on to real estate taxes it's something other communities and the Commonwealth have done appreciate you coming in and providing that information to us the assessor's office did a study and came to the conclusion that it would not benefit the ratepayers from doing that shift so after a careful analysis and a round table discussion we made a motion to place that order on file but again we appreciate you coming in and giving us that information as far as an operations update the Warwick Road water main project is just about complete as of April 24th there were only 16 services left to replace a couple of the sideline connections on Warwick and Stevens Road and then Warwick and Vinton streets. As of today Thorp been 19 out of 55 lead service upgrades that have been

▶ 57:26 Scott M. Forbes: completed. Also the city engineer did make mention as estimated that 113,000 gallons per day are still leaking from our water pipes which is important that we continue the i and i and the construction projects that we have planned for the fiscal year Thorp still a couple of uh projects in certain wards that still need to be upgrading and they're proactively taking care of those situations monthly billing we're about 7

▶ 57:55 Scott M. Forbes: i think i think more people are going to sign up as word to mouth continues to spread a lot of residents do pay their bills online but there is a cost to all this and it was is mentioned that about 600 more bills a month are being sent out from the treasurer's office mwira advisory board

▶ 58:13 Scott M. Forbes: information the new catchphrase is 2.4 by 24 which is the objective for the mwira to come down to a 2.4 percent increase on a yearly basis by the year 2024. also they're looking their five-year capital improvement plan to be capped at 1.2 billion dollars with a B the advisory board is trying to bring that down to nine hundred and fifty million but obviously good things are on the horizon as far as rate plans that were discussed there are a couple options that are being presented down to the board option one is to keep everything as it stands right now which would be a 1.5 percent increase in water no increase in the water base fees and there would be a zero volumetric increase in sewer with a 2% increase on the base fee as we try to get that up to the 10% option 2 would be moving the first tier up to 22 cubic feet option 3 would be raising the first tier up to 2,500 cubic feet it would be just good to have those options so we could look at them in real time as far As far as reserves are concerned, currently there are retained earnings 412,429 dollars in water, 379,450 dollars in sewer. So in order to reach the 10 percent reserves that we've set before us here as a board, we would only need less than 20,000 dollars from those retained earnings to meet our goals. So we're a year ahead of schedule, which is a great thing. So if we move forward with the $20,000 allocation, we're still going to have approximately a little less than $800,000 between water and sewer. And so what we would like to do is the committee would be considering repurposing those retained earnings into capital improvement projects in the fall. A couple of orders that are going to be proposed that are going to be before us. of them is to borrow a little over a million dollars in the mwra sewer program for ini in a just over another million dollars in available mwra water programs again these are uh the water is a zero percent interest paid back in 10 years the sewer is 75 grant 25 0 interest

▶ 1:00:45 Scott M. Forbes: paid over 10 years with those two allocations there'll be about 900 000 for us to borrow uh from the ebwra when Thorp really no without a sunset clause so basically those those monies will always be available for us as long as we come back and use them and it could be another 600 000 available in july there are three main projects that are going to be done one of them is going to be on east emerson street from strafford road to lincoln and garfield road to east emerson to porter then Thorp the ashmont street uh project from crescent avenue to pleasant street and lastly the florence street project from west foster to west wyoming avenue and

▶ 1:01:33 Peter D. Mortimer: i believe that is it thank you mr president motion to accept the uh report from our

▶ 1:01:39 Michael P. Zwirko: representative the water and school commission second no need for a motion for such is there

▶ 1:01:44 Peter D. Mortimer: any other member of the board that i would uh i would like to have uh some discussion on that that's why i make the motion sure so i make the motion and to accept it to accept the report to

▶ 1:01:56 Michael P. Zwirko: accept the report yes you're breaking away for some precedent here yeah alderman mortimer moves that we accept the report uh from alderman forbes on his dissertation of the water and sewer committee meeting from april 24th that has been seconded by alderman Boisselle on discussion thank

▶ 1:02:12 Francis X. Wright Jr.: you very much mr president point of order point of order i'd be happy to check the rule but i understood when i presented rule 53 uh to our orders uh our i'm sorry our rules of order here as a board that the purpose was simply to report and not to discuss i'm looking at the city clerk

▶ 1:02:40 Michael P. Zwirko: and she seems to be nodding her head rule 53 reads that members shall report back to the board of alderman point is taken at this time i'd say that the motion's out of order

▶ 1:02:50 Speaker 4: as proffered by alderman mortimer very good thank you very much is there any member of

▶ 1:02:56 Michael P. Zwirko: the board of aldermen that sits on another committee that they would like to alderman

▶ 1:03:03 Kate Lipper-Garabedian: kate Letter garabedia sure and welcome back thank you so i'm a little fuzzy perhaps but i just thought i would give everyone a quick update on the school committee meeting that happened on April 24th I was not able to attend in person but I did watch and I think last time that we spoke I had shared with you that on April 10th the school committee voted six to one to put forward an unbalanced budget that the mayor Inferna and her staff took under consideration and worked I think also with the superintendent to think things through on the 24th the school committee came back together mayor inferno found or repurposed reallocated about a hundred and seventy five thousand dollars of funds to go toward the Delta that was between the balanced budget and what the school committee had proposed and then the superintendent put forward a round of additional cuts that would lead to a balanced budget there was some discussion on that and then the school committee voted four to three to approve the balanced budget that I think we will be discussing in future meetings so I think it's a quick quick summary the record includes a revised changelog that's pretty helpful that we can all look at as we take a look at this thank you for that any other members see none