Public Comment

Transcript (~36 min @ 10:00)

Speakers identified by voice; unnamed voices are numbered within this recording. Auto-caption text — verify against the video.

▶ 9:50 Mark Garipay: This serves as a notice of a quorum for the record in accordance with the open meeting law. This meeting is being recorded and broadcast live on MMTV.

▶ 10:02 Mark Garipay: Um, I will motion by unanimous consent to open the floor for public comment, see and no objections. We are open for public comment. This is the portion of the meeting where the public may speak on any item on tonight's agenda. Comments expressing any viewpoint on other matters or on other matters are welcome. Also, uh, if there's anyone here in the public that would like to speak to our orders tonight, please feel free to come up and state your name and the city where you live. Come on right up to the table there. Thank you very much.

▶ 10:44 Speaker 5: Thank you. My name is, uh, David Norcross. Uh, my wife and I live on the corner of West Highland in Ashland. Um, we've lived there for 37 years and I know that there are a lot of issues with traffic. Uh, I'm sure you've all at some point heard some things, uh, negative about traffic in Melrose. Um, but we have our particular concerns on West Highland. And I think overall the biggest concern is people who are using this as a cut through and what it is we can do to reduce that slow down the cars and, um, the volume of cars that are going through. And lemme just say first that the demographics in our neighborhood have changed significantly, uh, over the last 30 something years. When we moved in, there were a lot of kids in the neighborhood, you know, the circle of life. All of a sudden, all the kids, nobody comes by on Halloween, then all the kids are back. And we have a lot of young kids, preschool age kids, toddlers, um,

▶ 12:05 Speaker 5: and there's a big daycare center. And, and that's a concern, um, when you see the amount of traffic, uh, that is going on. Uh, we also have, uh, some people with, uh, disabilities on our street. And there was some older people, uh, like me, you know, artists Prize who used to be in terms of getting out of the way. When I think about this problem, uh, it, it is literally bringing the problem to you. Um, I noticed that there was an interesting example, uh, on Lynde Street when you talked about, uh, there were three streets and you came up with three interventions on those streets. And Lynde Street was the unforeseen circumstance. And it's easy to say, let's put more cops there. Let's put more signs here. Let's put, uh, road bumps, road humps, road pillows. Let's make all the streets go back and forth. Um, but the average person is not going to know the unintended consequences there. And that applies to Franklin and West Highland. So because we are parallel to Franklin are where the issues come from.

▶ 13:30 Speaker 5: So the things that I would want to point out and, and make sure people are aware of is,

▶ 13:38 Speaker 5: um, that in order to avoid the lights in Main Street and Franklin Cars will take the turn down onto West Highland, even though there are two signs that say not to do that in the morning hours. Um, to be fair, they are not terribly big signs, but they are there.

▶ 14:04 Speaker 5: Um, and then you have people who are coming up the side streets. Cliff Street in particular is one. Um, come up Cliff, go down West Highland, get on the main street and go left.

▶ 14:20 Speaker 5: And, um, also there is a regular number of almost every day someone is going the wrong way down Shipman. And there have been a couple of accidents, one very bad accident there.

▶ 14:35 Speaker 5: Um, and so we are, we, being my neighbors that I've talked to, we're fairly confident that people are going over the speed limit. And I did see in the report that, um, there's a sort of optical illusion that occurs on Franklin because it's so narrow that it looks like cars are going really fast, but they're really not. And I'm gonna let the people who are worried about Franklin deal with that, I'll say on West Highland, they're going too fast.

▶ 15:11 Speaker 5: Um, and when we look at the new construction that's coming, which is all, we can just look down the street and we can see the old VFW and you know, um, if you want to go, uh, you can go back to the Lyman's old grocery store. If you wanna go back far enough, uh, r and Ds, all those are gonna be developed. And no one, I can say this pretty confidently, no one on West Highland is convinced that traffic will not get worse. And I listened in on all of the discussions by the planning board and I heard about that. You know, I looked at the cars coming outta the, you know, uh, the liquor store and I made some judgements. Traffic's gonna get worse. So we wanna be prepared for that end, resolve the issues we have now. Lots of thoughts, bigger signs, um, you know, you're going the wrong way. Sign on, uh, up at, towards the end of West Highland where it meets Shipman. But mostly I think what we're saying is, Hey, can you guys help us out? Where's the expertise? And that's what we really want, is sit down with us, sit down with my neighbors. Let's talk about this. There's no silver bullet here. I know that there's no one way to do this, there's no one way to fix this. But there are things I believe we can do, and we would really appreciate your help in finding those answers and in advocating for a safer street for the number of kids we now have in particular.

▶ 17:01 Speaker 5: So I just wanna say thank you very much for your time. Um, and someone else, I'm sure will mention Ashland Street and parking for the daycare, but I'm gonna let that, uh, I don't wanna take all the glory. Thank you very much. Thank you Mr. Norcross.

▶ 17:15 Mark Garipay: Uh, anyone else?

▶ 17:26 Speaker 1: Uh, good evening. My name is Andrew Riedel, my family and I live at, uh, two 10 West Wyoming Avenue at the corner of, uh, Melbourne. Um, sort of, uh, piggybacking off the gentleman who just spoke, we are very concerned with the speed of traffic on West Wyoming Avenue and the lack of any sort of traffic mitigation along West Wyoming Ave. I'll be, uh, brief with these two anecdotes, but within a one month period, both my wife and I experienced near misses, walking our 5-year-old son to school in the morning. Uh, the first incident I was crossing in the crosswalk at, uh, Melbourne, right in front of our house. There was a stopped MBTA bus in front of our house blocking the entire travel lane. So theoretically, traffic should have been stopped behind the bus. There was no traffic coming, uh, heading west towards Stoneham. So my son and I were at the crosswalk. I looked to the, you know, to the east, saw no traffic coming, saw the stopped bus, no traffic coming from around the bus. So I presumed it was safe to cross. We get halfway across, I see a pickup truck speeding towards us on the wrong side of West Wyoming, passing the stopped MBTA bus. I grabbed my son, the survival instinct just kicked in. I got him across the street. I was absolutely terrified. I, I just, I, I was, my heart was probably racing 200 beats per minute. Um, the driver of the truck did stop. He rolled his window down. He tried to tell me that he was gonna stop when he saw us. I asked him, well, why did you drive around the double yellow line to pass the bus? He just looked at me and said, I passed a stop bus. This was a one-off. And then he drove off.

▶ 19:17 Speaker 1: So I can assure that man, the safety of my family and the families in my neighborhood is definitely not a one-off. And I can't believe just the attitude that some drivers have driving down West Wyoming as if stopping for pedestrians is an inconvenience. Uh, the second incident, my wife was walking my son to school about a few weeks later than that. They were at the flashers at the crossing by, uh, Bob's market, um, due to solar glare and icy sidewalks. There was, um, the crossing was especially treacherous. So, uh, my wife and my son were attempting to get into the crosswalk with the flashers going car heading eastbound. Didn't even see them. Just sped right through the crossing, probably going 30, 35 miles per hour. Thankfully, my wife was alert and she made sure my son didn't step into the road. So within a month, two incidents, just with, just with my immediate family, that could have been tragic. And I can only imagine how many other incidents occur on West Wyoming on a daily basis that I don't even know about.

▶ 20:26 Speaker 1: So why I'm, why I'm here tonight is just to stress the fact. I mean, I've been in contact with, uh, counselor Stewart, who I'm very grateful for his, um, you know, his advice on this. I've been in touch with, uh, mayor Jen, who I've also been very grateful that she's aware of these issues as well as, uh, Sergeant GK of the Melrose Police. Um, he's very kindly offered to increase patrols on West Wyoming. But I guess my why I'm here tonight though, is there needs to be more permanent measures put in place on West Wyoming to ensure, you know, to limit the speeding, to make people aware. This is a residential neighborhood. This is not a four-lane highway. And people like my entire neighborhood, kids cross West Wyoming all the time. Kids going to school, parents going to the commuter rail, people catching the bus, people just walking downtown. West Wyoming is a residential corridor and it needs to be treated as such. So I'm just here tonight to stress, uh, the importance that we feel that this issue needs. And just hoping that, you know, we want to work with our elected officials to make our street and our neighborhood as safe as possible. And we really want to be proactive, not reactive. We just, we just don't wanna wait until God forbid a tragedy occurs and say, what could we have done to avoid this? Because right now there seemed to be a lot of things that I could think we could do to make the street safer. Anything from temporary speed humps to crossing signs in the middle of the road that forced people to slow down to, uh, maybe, uh, councilor Stewart and I were talking about maybe putting a small island at the crossing in front of Bob's. These are all items that I don't think would break the bank, but would make that street so much safer for everybody. So, uh, that's, that's what I got. And I just, uh, thank you all for your time and I really appreciate it.

▶ 22:37 Speaker 6: Thank you. Is anyone else looking to speak?

▶ 22:43 Speaker 5: Good evening. My name is David Simko. I reside at 99 Ashland Street, um, right next to David Norcross, who spoke earlier. I resided there for 33 years, raised my family there. I love my neighborhood. Um, the, the situation at the corner of Ashland and West Highland is, is gotten, um, ridiculous. The, there's a blatant disregard for the stop sign on West Highland entering into Ashland Street. The cars, um, frequently, let me start by saying I have an un from a portion of my home. I have an unobstructed view of the entire intersection from my home office. I don't see the intersection so much, but I do see the one way section of West Highland Street and Daily, there are cars coming the wrong way out of West Highland Street onto Ashland Street. And I think the city knows that because there's actually a stop sign there. Um, so, which I think has mitigated the, the, the accidents that used to occur there with some alarming frequency. Um, there's also a daycare center in the church, um, downstairs, which is a thriving business. Great. Um, but the drop off and pickups morning and afternoon with the families, um, during ru rush hour obviously, uh, narrows the street, Ashland Street there to one lane. It's a two lane. It's a, it's a two-way street. And the, the, the doors opening and closing as children are taken out and put into their cars, uh, it, it, it, it, it frightens me because I see so many cars, especially in the evening, cutting up Ashland to go down West Highland to miss the light on, on Main Street. It's a constant steady stream of traffic. It's not just a few cars. So, um, I, I hope the city can do something about it. Um, I I, I just, I see a tragedy, um, on the horizon and, and I know we'd all like to avoid that. Thank you.

▶ 24:36 Speaker 6: Thank you Mr. Simco.

▶ 24:38 Mark Garipay: Anyone else looking to, uh,

▶ 24:43 Speaker 6: speak Mr. O'Donnell?

▶ 24:46 Speaker 7: My name's John O'Donnell. Um, my family, we've been here since my father bought the house right after World War ii and there's, I live on West Highland Ave. In between Shipman Ave, Ashland Street, there's eight houses. Three other houses are generations that have been there since the end of World War II is we have a blind lady that lives on the street. Um, we have another lady that's 94 years old and it's a one way and they thought about it years ago, make it a one way, this way, everybody doesn't run instead of going up Franklin Street doesn't run up West Island ave I've been threatened with my life. I had a gentleman tell me, 'cause I wouldn't get out of his way either. If I get out of the car, he's gonna kill me.

▶ 25:46 Speaker 7: It didn't really bother me that much, but I reported it to the police. I've been hit my cooler. I had my cooler in my hand and I was hit by a lady who was dropping her child off at the daycare center. And I jumped on the sidewalk to save my life. I ran over the cooler.

▶ 26:10 Speaker 7: She went to the police station and they all let that go. And it's to a point where either somebody's gonna get killed and I mean, they've got sign, they put signs up on Chipman Ave. There's two big signs. They're probably two by two on both poles. They had one down the other end of the street. They have a stop sign down there. They put the bike lane down there, which is used.

▶ 26:41 Speaker 3: Everybody uses it and it's great.

▶ 26:45 Speaker 7: But when the cars are coming the wrong way, and I have, my grandson is challenged

▶ 26:53 Speaker 3: and it's, somebody's gotta do something, it's got it's time for the city to step up.

▶ 27:00 Speaker 7: And I mean, we've been complaining about it. I've, I've turned around, had the police there numerous times, and everybody just kind of, and I also, the officers are asking me, what can we do?

▶ 27:13 Speaker 3: I goes, park your cruiser in my driveway. Just sit here.

▶ 27:19 Speaker 3: Well, we can't do that. I'm like, why? You're gonna protect, you are gonna protect us.

▶ 27:26 Speaker 7: And, and I have nothing. I mean, Merrill police is great, but it, it comes down the chain

▶ 27:34 Speaker 3: and somebody's gotta do something

▶ 27:37 Speaker 7: before somebody really gets killed. And we got the daycare there

▶ 27:42 Speaker 3: and there's little kids running around everywhere.

▶ 27:47 Speaker 3: Thank you for your time. But

▶ 27:49 Speaker 6: Thank you Mr. O'Donnell

▶ 27:58 Speaker 8: My name is Carol Alton and I am representing Woodland Avenue Neighborhood. Um, I think everybody probably should be aware that we are deeply concerned about the cut through situation on that street. Um, we're not

▶ 28:20 Speaker 8: professional, so we don't know what the answer is other than that. It, it is a crisis as West Wyoming, Ashland, west Highland. I mean this, from what I've heard from these gentlemen, is a citywide problem. And from my neighborhood, I'll speak for myself, but I know I speak for other neighbors. We don't feel like we're being heard. Um, you know, deliver. Drivers don't wanna come up our street police details when they rep pave the street, didn't want to work there because people have no respect for the human being.

▶ 29:01 Speaker 8: What can being done? I don't know. But we're asking for some help to please find an answer for all of us that have these concerns for our safety as residents. Thank you.

▶ 29:15 Speaker 6: Thank you, Ms. Alton.

▶ 29:23 Speaker 3: Hi, my name is Lonnie Nelson. Um, I am here speaking as a mom of a 3-year-old at the Franklin School. I also live in that neighborhood on Linden Road between Green and Lin Falls Parkway. And I was, uh, one of the people on that, um, part of Lynden who witnessed fatal crashes on Lin Falls Parkway. And we put, put together a petition a few years ago that got a ton of signatures and just emphasizes like a lot of what everybody is saying, that something needs to be done. And I understand there are challenges and jurisdictional issues within Falls Parkway, but just emphasizing that is something that's come up again and again. And I know it wasn't on like the official thing, um, brought today, but I don't wanna forget the people who have died on that street and the people who have been permanently like traumatized from having dead people in their yard because there hasn't been action. And we were out with our neighbors at four in the morning seeing somebody die in their car right there, like, and then multiple times. So that's as mom. I'm also here as the chair of the ped bike committee in Melrose. And we're a group of just volunteers who are trying to make the streets safer and we bring together voices of people across the community, but also try to like work with the city and advocate to make the streets safer for people. Biking, walking, and moving around. Um, as you can hear from everybody who's spoken so far, the need for traffic calming is really clear. Uh, and it's not just on Franklin or Highland, it's across the whole city. There's people on other, the other side of the city saying the same thing. Um, and our group represents people from all across the city. So I think you all have heard enough of that. Um, what I'm gonna try to emphasize is that not only should the city not wait to do everything they can to slow down cars right now, but I don't think that we need to do studies upon studies measuring the speed of cars to find out that people are going too fast. And it's the difference between 25 miles per hour and 30 miles per hour that people can die versus being injured. So there are things that can be done with like quick actions that don't require studies and consultants in years and years. And then finally in five years, there will be a permanent speed hump on Franklin. Like there needs to be something that's done before then because somebody will die or get seriously injured and then it's gonna be on all of us, all of you who are in power. Um, so I don't think we can rely on individual people to follow traffic rules as much as everybody seems to think it's, oh, distracted driver, somebody wasn't paying attention, they ran a stop sign. You can design streets in a way that will minimize the injuries and the deaths that happen. And there's people whose professions are like built on that. There's theory, there's ideas, um, that have put put out there. Our group did some research and put together our proposal for recommendations for Vision Zero, um, recommendations for Vision Zero Action Plan. And we met with Mayor Jen and shared some of that. And I just think, and we talked about safe systems and safe streets, it's not just assuming that people will do the right thing and drive slowly. We have to make actual changes to make it easier for people to not kill somebody. 'cause nobody wants to do that. It's never what they're intending to do. Um, one thing I wanna emphasize is that all, a lot of the people that already spoke talk about near misses. And that's a huge thing that we don't capture right now. There isn't a place where you can go and see how many people almost got hit who almost got their kid run over. And that's something that I, our group is interested in helping with gathering data, trying to like pull people to get that information in a place. 'cause there's so many people in our community that experience that on a day to day and they don't know who to tell and then they come to the, to this group or the traffic commission. But it would be great to like gather that information of people who almost got hit because that would inform some of the decisions that have to be made, how to prioritize these interventions. Um, so that's something I wanna emphasize and I know there's other people that wanna speak. So I think that's most of it. Thank you.

▶ 33:10 Speaker 6: Thank you Ms. Nelson. Anyone else

▶ 33:14 Speaker 6: looking to speak?

▶ 33:20 Speaker 1: Thanks everyone for your time. Uh, Finn McSweeney, um, live in West Wyoming. I just wanted to, you know, with members of the administration here, um, encourage, you know, act as another voice encouraging Mayor Grita to accelerate work on, uh, turning Melrose into a Vision Zero community. I think it's part of her platform that she ran on that I was super excited to hear about as a voter. Um, this is obviously an issue that cuts across basically everyone, um, in the entire community. We all know that we're a community whose resources do not match. Its, you know, ambitions of, of what we think we can be. Um, but establishing a Vision Zero policy and commitment for the community helps with all of the little decisions that we're always making every day, every month, every year, kind of along the way. It's not something that needs to necessarily be accompanied by a funding source. Uh, you know, we passed a Complete Streets policy to access funding, but without a dedicated city side of, you know, a a dedicated city funding source. Um, we passed an electric vehicle first policy without a dedicated funding source for purchasing them. There are ways of kind of guiding all of the decisions that we make along the way and making sure that we are remembering kind of what our goals and ideals are as a community for traffic safety. We may not be able to, you know, spend $20 million a year on permanent, um, streetscape improvements, but every year, you know, we have traffic commission meetings where they are making decisions and it would be really helpful for that group of volunteers to be able to point to a document that says, here's kind of the gold standard for what we want to see in Melrose. One of the other, um, speakers tonight talked about his experience in the highlands of a stop sign being installed and how he felt that was really helpful in reducing crashes. I think the traffic commission here is like two or three of those requests probably every single time they meet. And the committee members don't always have clear guidance to say, well, do we want to, uh, approve stop signs as a way of mitigating crashes? Are stop signs appropriate? I think with a Vision Zero policy, it helps those resident volunteers make those decisions. We have a DPW who works super hard in a multi-year planning process on their paving schedule, working with, um, national Grid and the utility companies and giving them another tool in their arsenal to say, right when we're rebuilding this portion of sidewalk when we're rebuilding this portion of a street, we want to see, um, really forward thinking safety improvements. Some of the other speakers tonight talked about the development work happening in the Highlands. Um, every time the planning board talks to a developer on one of these multifamily projects, they have an opportunity to ask the developer to make small contributions toward the neighborhood for improvements. We had a developer who had a, a project, um, actually in, uh, Wyoming Hill who agreed to look into funding a speed hump over by fades way barbershop as part of their project. Every time a project of a certain size gets approved in this community, the developers have to pay money into a streets scape improvement fund. But there's kind of no policy at the city level to say, where does that money go to? I think it'd be a great story if we could tell the residents of the Highland, Hey, we have these three projects that got approved. If they are built, the community's gonna get, you know, say a hundred thousand dollars across those three projects and we know we're gonna use that money to improve street safety for pedestrians in the Highlands. Right now, that policy document just kind of doesn't really exist. Um, you know, I'll conclude by saying that people love to talk about kind of the Victorian atmosphere in Melrose and we hear about it all the time and how charming the city is. I think that people tend to overvalue the look and feel of the houses and undervalue the look and feel of the street scape and the built environment. I walk and bike in this community every single day, and I never have to cross a highway. It is amazing when we were looking for places to move to, my wife said the number one place I want to like live is somewhere where I can get off work and walk to a yoga class. And we have it here. She literally, you know, six years after we moved to Melrose, she has that, she literally does that like three times a week, walks downtown and goes to a yoga class. And so many people cherish that walkability of the community. Um, and we need to be really forward thinking and proactive about saying, this is our top priority, is making sure that we always protect and preserve that walkability and that people are always feeling safe. Um, so that's it. I appreciate the time. Thanks everybody.

▶ 38:19 Mark Garipay: Thank you Mr. McSweeney. Um, I'm just gonna jump, uh, shift over to, we have some people online and we'll come back to anyone in the gallery that wants to speak.

▶ 38:44 Speaker 8: Would you like to say Anything? Hi, can you hear me? Yep. Yes. Yes. Okay, lovely.

▶ 38:48 Speaker 9: Yeah, so I live, um, coast of Franklin Street on West Highland. Um, I have two young kids and a dog and we love to go for walks. And my main concern is just around the speed of cars. I know that there's a lot of traffic volume and you know, people like to be in Melrose, they like to drive in Melrose and people commute through Melrose and that's, you know, largely, you know, unavoidable. There's gonna be a lot of cars around. Um, but there's enough speeding fast enough that I just regularly feel unsafe. Um, particularly having a toddler. You know, we live right by, um, a lot of other families with young kids. Um, we live near that daycare that's been mentioned. Um, and I know there's always gonna be some speeding. Um, but it feels like regularly, particularly on Franklin, you know, on West Island too, but particularly on Franklin Street, um, the section that we live close to is, uh, 20 mile an hour zone, which might be, you know, a little bit overly optimistic, um, but cars go fast enough that I really just don't feel safe with my kids and that I'd like to feel safe walking with my kids around the neighborhood. So I don't really have a solution, but that's the, that's the concern. Thank you.

▶ 40:01 Speaker 6: Thank you. Anyone else on mine?

▶ 40:09 Speaker 8: Is it? Um, yes, there is. It's Michelle.

▶ 40:16 Speaker 8: Is she Michelle? Is she not come?

▶ 40:20 Speaker 8: Michelle, Eddie here she is.

▶ 40:25 Speaker 3: Michelle. Uh, yes, I I live on Ashland Street and I have, um, similar concerns that, that Dave and Dave have mentioned earlier. Um, we have a very small dog and crossing Ashland Street near West Highland is frequently concerning and dangerous. Um, we, we often carry our dog across the street because of this. And, um, I think something needs to be done about the speeding down Ashland Street and, and people speeding on West Highland.

▶ 41:02 Speaker 6: Okay, thank you very much.

▶ 41:06 Speaker 6: Is there, uh, anyone else on line?

▶ 41:09 Speaker 8: Um, I think that's it.

▶ 41:13 Mark Garipay: That's it? That's it? Mm-hmm. Okay. Is there anyone else in the gallery looking to, uh, speak Mr. Olin?

▶ 41:26 Speaker 9: Good evening. Uh, Jim o Locklin 39 Lincoln Street. I've lived in Melrose for over 30 years now, and over that time I've addressed both the city council and the Traffic Commission multiple times concerning road safety. And I just want to echo some of the concerns that I've heard from my neighbors here. I've come down multiple times to talk about speeding on Lincoln Street, speeding throughout the city and people running stop signs. I also want to echo the concerns that Finn brought up. I walk down to the square at least once a day, if not twice a day. I'm always walking and it's very important to me that I can walk around across the street and not get hit as such. I was very glad to see road safety on tonight's agenda. Personally, I believe for enforcement is an important component of road safety. While I'm eager to hear what the city can do regarding road safety, I think the Melrose community needs to be realistic with respect to available funding for city services, including traffic calming and enforcement. And I do want to acknowledge, I looked at the PowerPoint before coming down here tonight, the 68 page PowerPoint, and I think the city is doing a lot with a little, and I want to apply, uh, the city for that. But frankly, with the current state of the city's funding for fiscal year 2026, not only am I concerned that we will not have enough funding for additional traffic control measures, I'm also concerned that we may not have enough funding to maintain what we have. To that end, I pulled some information from the Massachusetts Department of Revenue Divisional Local Services website. The first thing I looked at was municipal per capita operating cost for fiscal year 2025. This rate is a community's total operating budget divided by its population. For Melrose, the per capita operating cost would be the $113 million budget divided by our population of about 29,000. That works out to be about $3,900 per person per capita. Operating cost is equivalent to per capita revenue and is one measure of municipality's ability to provide services. This is a 20,000 foot look and there are of course, many factors and nuances, but what I found is that melrose's per capita operating cost is that the 27th percentile when compared to all other Massachusetts communities set another way on a per capita basis, 73% of the communities across the Commonwealth are spending more than Melrose on municipal services, 73%. I also compared our per capita spending to that of the seven peer communities that the city assessor uses to compare property taxes, Malden Saga, Stoneham Wakefield writing Linfield and Winchester, except for Malden, which has more than twice our population and may have some economies of scale. Melrose has the lowest per capita operating cost of these peer communities, the lowest directly relevant to tonight's discussion. I also looked at per capita public safety costs as presented by the division of local services for fiscal year 2024. The most recent year that that data was available, Melrose's per capita public safety cost was at the 29th percentile when compared to other Massachusetts communities. Said another way. On a per capita basis, 71% of the communities in the Commonwealth are spending more than Melrose on public safety. 71% Melrose also had the lowest per capita, total public safety costs of the seven peer communities evaluated. In summary, on a per capita basis, more than 70% of the communities across Massachusetts are spending more on than Melrose on public safety and municipal services. We are also lagging behind our peers. While there's always room for improvement based on this per capita analysis, Melrose does not have an efficiency problem. We have a revenue problem. It is clear to me that an override is needed and I plan to support it this fall. I ask the, I ask that the community support it as well. Thank you.

▶ 46:08 Speaker 6: Thank you. Mr. Olin. Is there anyone else online?

▶ 46:11 Mark Garipay: There is not. Is there anyone else in the gallery looking to speak?

▶ 46:23 Mark Garipay: There are no objections. Uh, I'll motion by unanimous consent to close the public comment portion of the meeting. Seeing none, we are now closed for public comment.