Departments

Transcript (~22 min @ 40:38)

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

▶ 40:47 Speaker 2: Do you plug in? I don't need to now,

▶ 40:49 Speaker 6: but if this is a long meeting, I'll,

▶ 41:01 Speaker 6: so I was actually expecting the DPW operating budget to be first in terms of how we structured our presentation, but we can take them in whatever order you'd like.

▶ 41:14 Maya Jamaleddine: Um, so we are gonna, so our plan is to do it all together. If you would like to, uh, start with the, uh, uh, with that person, that's totally fine with us.

▶ 41:24 Speaker 4: Okay. Alright. Then we'll run through the presentation.

▶ 41:25 Speaker 6: It covers all the items that are on the agenda, and then, um, you can ask questions as you wish.

▶ 41:38 Speaker 4: Okay. Okay. Thank you Andrew. Um,

▶ 41:40 Mark Garipay: Just a point of order, just so I'm, uh, we're gonna, sorry about this. Uh, we're, you're gonna go through your whole presentation, but when we discuss, can we discuss each budget so we're not jumping around from budget to budget?

▶ 41:52 Speaker 5: Yes. If that's okay.

▶ 41:53 Maya Jamaleddine: Yes. So what we are hoping, like we did last, uh, year discussion, uh, we would like to do a discussion on every item by item so that we don't go, um, yeah. Interconnect.

▶ 42:07 Speaker 6: That makes a lot of sense. Thank you. Okay. Um, so I know we have a lot of new counselors. First of all, thank you, uh, for having us tonight. Jim Troop and I are happy to be here. And, um, as always, to present our budget and to answer any questions. Um, I know we have several new counselors this year, so some of this will be a repeat from previous years for those who've been on the council for a long time. But we always like to highlight a little bit of who, who DPW is, what we do, who our employees are, because I think, you know, given the size of our budget, um, there's so much that we're involved in. Our hands are kind of in everything in the city, and so we just want to help everyone understand what the, the various things are that we do.

▶ 42:56 Speaker 6: Next slide. So we have 68 full-time employees and they fall into four main divisions. Administration, engineering, which also encompasses water and sewer billing, facilities and operations.

▶ 43:10 Speaker 6: Next administration handles all of our administrative functions, accounts payable and receivable. Um, public relations, Linda Garron, who many of you have spoken to when you've called down to the city yard, um, handles a lot of the public relations payroll. We have our environmental outreach coordinator who handles, um, all of the trash and recycling programs and a lot of our other environmental initiatives. And our rentals coordinator who does all of the school building rentals, um, and any of the rentals throughout the city.

▶ 43:42 Speaker 6: Next Engineering and water and sewer billing that are housed here in city hall, um, handles all of the, or the majority of the capital projects, planning, design and construction permits and inspections for anything that happens in the right of way. As well as any private utility work that requires trench permits or anything that connects to any of our utility systems. They review all the developments from an engineering perspective for the planning department, um, maintains all the records and plans, maintains the geographic information system level, uh, layers for this, uh, utilities, and then handles the water and sewer billing

▶ 44:18 Speaker 7: Next.

▶ 44:21 Speaker 6: Apparently I have a button

▶ 44:31 Speaker 1: Work.

▶ 44:37 Speaker 6: All right, I'm gonna keep going. If Jim figures it out, we'll use it and if not, I'll just keep saying next. Okay. Facilities division. So, um, this is a piece of DPW that a lot of people aren't as familiar with, that we manage all the, the city's facilities, all the school buildings, all the municipal buildings, um, the, uh, the municipal buildings being city hall police, the three fire stations and the Milano Center. Um, and the city yard. We handle the building maintenance, capital projects and building security.

▶ 45:11 Speaker 6: Alright, Great. Um, and then lastly, operations, which is our biggest, uh, piece of DPW, which has eight different subdivisions highway. Um, snow and ice actually is the budget that fits in there, but that's not one of the subdivisions. Highway sanitation, parks, forestry, fleet, cemetery, water and sewer. And so each of those other parks and forestry have one budget together. Each of the others has their own budgets, which we'll discuss, um, in the coming slides.

▶ 45:42 Speaker 6: So this is our overall organization, those four main divisions. Jim heads up all of the administration and finance folks. Um, Joe Hobbs manages all the operations. Jay McNeil is our facilities manager. And Vannie Reese is our city engineer. And I think most of you have met all four of them. They're really the glue that holds all of our department together. Um, we hired a handful of new employees in the last year. I won't read them all off, but this just highlights who some of our new folks are

▶ 46:15 Speaker 6: And some of our operational accomplishments. Um, I have some slides on operational and then some on capital. So these are more of our day-to-Day work. We resolved 4,131 work orders. This was up through, um, the beginning of May 656. Potholes filled 137 trees planted. We handled 14 and a half inches of snow this year. Processed 1,256 purchase orders, collected 6,716 tons of trash through our current hauler republic, formerly JRM. Uh, we collected 2,418 tons of recycling curbside yard waste collection that's done in house. And people don't realize that, that when your yard waste gets picked up, um, that's using our own truck and our own personnel. During those weeks, uh, we recycled 380 mattresses at the city yard and another 402 mattresses picked up as part of our, um, curbside mattress program. We have a vendor who picks those up and we've continued to accept yard waste recycling and special collections at the city yard. We have a handful of events throughout the year. Hazardous waste collections, rigid plastic styrofoam shredding. Um, so we manage all those events as well.

▶ 47:29 Speaker 6: Our fleet division maintains 140 vehicles. We maintain our own fleet as well as police. Um, the, uh, health department, I'm not sure if they're using their vehicles right now, but they have vehicles we've historically maintained. Um, we maintain the Council on Aging vans. We, we help out all the departments. We just don't do the large apparatus like fire apparatus. Um, those are subbed out. The green team maintains 81 locations where we mow parks and islands and, uh, parking lots and plant flowers in a lot of those locations. We do all the memorials. Um, the cemetery, we had 55 burials and 77 cremations to date. This, uh, fiscal year. We hosted more than 1200 students at our DPW Day just a few weeks ago. And we assist with all the city events. So, um, Victorian Fair Summer stroll, um, graduation, all the road shutdowns for those. Um, you know, putting up the barricades, making sure that everything's flowing as it should. We oftentimes are setting up tables and, um, helping out with a lot of other things, um, for all the various city events.

▶ 48:48 Speaker 6: So, capital accomplishments. This is, this writing is tiny because I just kept thinking of more things that we did this year and wanting to add them to the list. I'm gonna run through them real quick just because a lot of them, so year after year, we're asked what's the status of the, the money that you've given us before Free cash, ARPA money, um, I know ARPA didn't go through the council, but, um, other bonds and special allocations grants that we've accepted. And so that's the, those are the funding sources for these larger projects. So we finally finished the city hall generator project. Jim managed that very successfully. We, um, we've been talking about it for years as our highest need from a a resilience perspective. We had major issues when go out at City Hall. It would take down phones at the schools. Um, the business phones at police and fire, not 9 1 1. Um, a a lot of the, the systems come through City Hall through the server room, and so it was a major loss when power was out here. So we finally, after many years of talking about it, we have a generator for city hall. Um, we rehabilitated the elevators at the high school, which was a desperate need put in new hot water heaters at the high school. Horseman and Hoover finally have new roofs. Those have been critical needs for a long time. They also have solar panels. We've replaced six of the Windows systems at the Franklin. We all the windows need to be replaced, the remainder of the doors that we haven't done yet, and the roof at Franklin. So someday you'll be hearing from us again on those, hopefully with the support of MSBA paying for half of it. Um, but that's a major need that we're aware of. We helped with the replacement of the walk-in coolers at the high school, and the classrooms below that had been damaged from some water damage from the previous coolers. That's all fixed. We did a lot of asbestos removal in schools in 2023 in the summer, we installed the three new electric vehicle charging stations at the city yard, and the EV truck has been delivered. We are not using it until we get the wrap put on it that the VO kids are helping us design. So, um, sometime over the summer, we hope to have that all looking beautiful and ready to pick up some trash. Um, we paved a large number of streets. They're all listed here. I won't read all the, all the names. Um, we added sidewalks on Baystate Road. I've been hearing about the desire for sidewalks on Baystate Road since my first week here eight years ago. And so this was a really exciting project. It was a Complete Streets project that's been high on our list for a while. Um, we also finished sidewalk gaps on Woodland and we added sidewalks on the driveway, um, that goes to the Marco Gym behind the high school. So now there's a fully accessible path, especially where voting is happening there. Um, and a new sidewalk up to the patio at the Milano Center. We reconfigured the intersection at Emerson and Vinton. That's now the four-way stop. We also have the new four-Way stop at, uh, Emerson at Tremont and Essex. I think both of those have been really successful projects. I feel a lot safer driving through them. Hopefully you all do as well. Um, reconstructed sidewalks near Volunteer Park, which is our, our new, um, accessible park and G***h Street sidewalks. We just finished, um, we added some new crosswalks and new crosswalk signals on Main Street. We have a few of the new audible signals that actually tell you to wait and they count down, which is much safer for pedestrians. Um, we finished the carpet replacement at Fred Green, the upgrades to volunteer in FO parks to the, to the playground equipment. We replaced water mains on Four Streets. We did a, a, um, grant project from Coastal Zone Management to add infiltration trenches to try to get some of our storm water to infiltrate rather than flowing directly into El Pond. Um, the Memorial Hall Envelope project is substantially complete. We did the Gold Star memorial that hopefully some of you saw on Memorial Day and we finished our time clock replacement project. So those are some of our bigger projects. Um, this list is some of the ones that are still ongoing. I won't read through all these. I just wanted to include them in the presentation that you all have. Um, in case you're wondering about more of the, you know, what's the status of things that we've funded in the past. But the good news is everything's moving along. I don't think there's anything now that is funded that isn't actively moving along.

▶ 53:19 Speaker 6: And this list is the same. Every, all of you have this presentation, um, in an email I sent earlier, and it'll be on IQM too. So hopefully it's more readable there than it is up on the screen here. Um, just highlighting the last one here, our new trash and recycling contract rollout. Obviously that's the big news right now around DPW. Um, there's some pictures, pictures there of the new barrels and a new Cosella truck. Um, barrels are going out right now. They'll be going out over the next two weeks. So we've already gotten a lot of calls. I saw them going out to my neighbor and I didn't get one. So everybody will get them. Um, if two weeks go by and you still don't have one, then encourage your constituents to please call us and let us know. This is how we're gonna find out if there's, um, you know, people who are somehow missing from our trash and recycling program. If they're not on our list, they won't get a barrel. And then we'll figure that out accordingly. Next.

▶ 54:18 Speaker 6: So we have, I think it's eight items, four or 5, 6, 8 items that are specifically ours on the agenda tonight. And then one additional that I put on there just to highlight, um, the revolving fund ordinance change, um, to highlight that the recycling is no longer a part of that, um, revolving fund list because the recycling revolving fund has been moved into the new proposed Solid Waste Enterprise Fund.

▶ 54:46 Speaker 6: Um, actually if you can go back one, so I'm just gonna run through real quick. I know we're gonna talk about each of these individually, but we have the general fund operating budget for all the DPW divisions. Those are each separate, um, in your list. We have the water operating fund, the sewer operating fund or budget, the, um, solid Waste Enterprise fund. And then we have one free cash request, which we'll talk about in detail when it comes up when we come up to that on your list. Um, we have a grant acceptance that's associated with that same project at Laurel and Burnett. And then we have the water and sewer rates themselves, the rate setting.

▶ 55:26 Speaker 6: So this next one just breaks down each of the budgets as they appear in your packet, um, with the various DPW divisions being broken out separately. And then the water, sewer and solid waste Enterprises being each their own funds. Um, with that, I'll turn it over to Jim if you Yeah, sure. Talk about The highlights of our memo here.

▶ 55:48 Speaker 5: Um, uh, I wanna echo a Elena's statements to thank you all for your continued support of the DPW and taking the time to review the budget. I'm proud to report that this budget is compliant with the mayor's wishes and instructions to deliver a level funded budget with only contractual obligations as being the increases that you will see in front of you tonight. Um, the highlights of it are very simple. We're entering the trash and recycling contract, which represents a fairly large increase in the cost of that service and thus the shift to an enterprise fund. Uh, the remaining budgets, as I mentioned, are level funded. The one exception to that is gonna be our facilities department where we're seeing the effect of an increased supply contract in electricity. Uh, we went from about 8 cents to about 13 cents. It's a significant increase. It was proposed as part of the last year's budget presentation and not funded. Uh, so we are working through, uh, whatever we have to with fiscal 24, but we've conservatively pro proposed increases for fiscal 25, and that's what you'll see in front of you. You'll also see a shift from contractual obligations associated with cleaning at, uh, Memorial, uh, middle school as well as the high school. That shift. We decreased the scope in the thought that we'd be able to deliver more services, uh, at the middle school with two full-time employees, thus the shift from ordinary expenses to salaries. And we've worked with the finance team and the mayor's office to propose to make sure that there's value add and that the budget could support that. But we expect an increase in service, uh, at the middle school, uh, especially as we get into the hire of the full-time employees in, in fiscal 25 and then at the start of the next school year. Other than that, I'm happy to, uh, turn this over for questions and, uh, happy to report that we've delivered the budget as requested and as instructed.

▶ 57:53 Maya Jamaleddine: Thank you, Mr. Thank you. Um, director Ellis,

▶ 57:57 Speaker 6: Do we have, we actually have a tiny bit more on the presentation. Okay. Sorry. You can go. Um, this just breaks down our employees by, uh, by operating division. So I just wanted to point out in our memo, we run through the salary breakdown between different funds. So you'll find that there are employees who are paid from water and sewer and the general fund, and there are different percentages that capture the amount of time that they spend in those different areas. Um, that's a question that's come up year over year, so we always include it in our memos so you can see how that's divided up. Um, there are a handful of items that were not funded in the fiscal 25 budget that we did request, and I just wanted to highlight those. One is the EV charging stations. Oh yeah. Thank you. Um, the ev charging stations have now fallen to DPW. We have them at the police station. We have 'em here at the city hall lot. They're at some of the, um, the commuter rail lots and they're now also at DPW and there's no budget line item to accommodate repairs to those. And now that they're a few years old, we've been having to fix them, um, and having to contract out repairs. So we've just been finding money where we can, um, left over from other items to pay for it to date. So we proposed 15,000 for next year, but that did not make the cut to the budget. Um, we also reduced overtime as directed across the board five by 5%. And, um, we have been requesting an additional custodian and additional labor position in facilities every year for the time that I've worked here. Those have made it to finance, but they haven't made the cut for the final budget that you all see. So I just wanted to highlight that that is a need that we have that's not shown in our budget, but something that we will continue to ask for each year and hopefully someday there will be enough money to fund those.

▶ 59:47 Speaker 6: Okay. Lastly, water and sewer rates. So, um, the proposal that you have in the memo from the water and sewer rate committee is a 4% 4.8% increase for the average Melrose household across their water and sewer bill. Um, answering, uh, the public question earlier. So presently our reserve funds are funded at 10% for sewer and 9.6% for water. We haven't had enough free cash in water to get up to that 10% the last couple of years. We still, um, don't have enough to do that. Um, this year we do have, you'll be hearing from us, um, at a later date about we do have revenue shortfalls because it was so wet last summer that we didn't use as much water as a community in this, in fiscal 24. So one of the things that those reserve funds are for is to cover shortfalls. If we don't collect enough money, we still, we always wanna keep the water and sewer enterprise funds completely self-sufficient. So we don't wanna have a situation where we're looking to general fund or we're looking elsewhere to, um, to make those funds whole. So that's what the reserves are for, for that, or other emergency situations where we'd have to kick in those reserves. And so we do anticipate that this year we're gonna significantly dip into the reserves to have to fund, to make up for the lack of water use from the wet summer, last summer. Um, but we'll be before you had another meeting to discuss those, um, values, those dollar amounts. But I just wanted to address that because the question was asked. Um, our rates that are proposed at this 4.8% average increase, they meet all revenue obligations with no transfers from retained earnings. So we do have the free cash from the certified free cash from last year. Um, and we aren't planning on using any of that to, um, to offset the rate for this year. We've done that a couple years ago, we did that, but, um, we can't do that year over year because that's, it just sets you up for a larger increase down the road. Um, so everything about the water and sewer rates is in the memos that we've submitted. Um, and we can answer any questions on that. I think that's it.

▶ 1:02:06 Speaker 2: Thank you. Okay.

▶ 1:02:10 Maya Jamaleddine: Um, so we have number item, uh, number line, uh, 4 0 1 for DPW, admin and engineer. Um, any question on this item?