APPRO-2023-28 : Fiscal 2024 Operating Budget in the amount of $101,173,341 (one hundred and one million, one hundred seventy-three thousand, three hundred forty-one dollars and 00/100 cents)

Transcript (~1 h 42 min @ 1:10)

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

▶ 1:10 Leila Migliorelli: First on our agenda tonight is appropriation 2023 dash 28, fiscal 2024 operating budget in the amount of $101,173,341. And tonight, first up we have is the Assessor's Department with Chief Assessor, Sarah McClellan. Welcome,

▶ 1:39 Speaker 3: Good evening Chairman, members of the Appropriations Oversight Committee and Melrose Community members. I'm Sarah McClellan, chief Assessor here to present the assessing department budget this evening. The mission of the assessing department is to provide fiscal stability to the community by promptly, fairly and equitably determining the valuation of all real and personal property located within the city. Assessors are obligated under law to assess all property at full and fair market value as of January 1st of each year for the purpose of taxation. This is accomplished the maintenance and administration of property data records. In addition, the department administers motor vehicle excise tax and all property tax abatements and exemptions as allowed by law.

▶ 2:24 Speaker 3: So this is our assessing team. The Board of assessors oversees and governs most of the necessity, uh, the activities of the assessing department, which is staffed by three full-time employees. We're also supported by the GIS analyst and a volunteer from the Property Tax Work Off program. So one of our main goals in the department is to provide excellent customer service and maintain open lines of communication with taxpayers. I wanna recognize the staff in our office for their hard work and dedication over this past year. Their commitment to providing outstanding customer service has been instrumental in achieving our goal of fostering the trust and confidence of taxpayers in promoting transparency in the assessment process.

▶ 3:11 Speaker 3: So the assessing department carries out its main activities on a reoccurring basis annually, beginning January 1st, the department works to collect property data in the community relating to new construction alterations that happen through June 30th, as well as all sales and market activity from the previous calendar year. Assessors analyzes data and use established valuation methods to determine assessments based on market conditions, property improvements and comparable sales. Final property values and new growth numbers are submitted to the Department of Revenue for approval. After D R R approval, the tax rate is set within the community. The approved tax rate is applied to the assessed values and tax bills are generated and mailed at the end of December.

▶ 3:56 Speaker 3: Concurrent to this valuation process, assessors also, uh, process motor vehicle abatements. We did about 650 last year. We mail qualify and process about 400 property tax exemption applications. This is for Veterans Blind senior circuit breaker, um, exemptions and deferrals. Um, and we update ownership information and analyze sales data from roughly 700 records from the South Middlesex Registry of Deeds. In addition to these regular, um, annual functions, uh, here are some of the other projects the assessor's office has undertaken. In fiscal 23, uh, we implemented the Senior Circuit Breaker tax exemption legislation. Uh, fiscal 23 was the first year of this program, but as more people have become aware of the exemption, we expect greater participation in the program in fiscal 24 and beyond. Um, we installed a resident self-service kiosk, which you can see a picture of here. Um, residents are able to access property record cards, GIS maps, historical records, property deeds, et cetera, from the kiosk while interacting with office staff should they have any questions or need assistance. Um, this area is also more accessible to members of the public where some may not be able to see or hear well over our regular service counter.

▶ 5:19 Speaker 3: Um, and we also, um, conducted a change detection study using aerial photography. Um, this helps us discover any unpermitted work within the city and helps to add new growth to the levy.

▶ 5:34 Speaker 3: So for fiscal 24, the proposed budget reflects an overall increase of 2.7%. This change is mainly due to an increase in the salary and wage line resulting from contractual increases. And this city's new salary plan. The furniture and fixtures line has been reduced by a hundred percent as the initial pur intended purposes of this line have been fulfilled. Any associated ongoing costs are minimal and can be managed through other supply lines. Um, the separate expense lines for seminars in education and fiscal 23 have emerged into one line for fiscal 24, but the net budgeted amount for this line remains the same year over year. And with that, um, concludes my presentation and I'm happy to answer any questions that you have.

▶ 6:20 Speaker 1: Thank you. Any questions from the council? Councilor Stewart?

▶ 6:25 Robb Stewart: Thank you, Madam Chair. Thank you Ms. McClellan for being here this evening. Um,

▶ 6:33 Robb Stewart: I'm, I'm kind of interested in that whole aerial photography. How much does that cost and how much revenue does it bring in?

▶ 6:39 Speaker 3: So we, um, share, uh, the budget, I guess from the, um, the GIS budget. So we, um, the vendor that we use, what some of the vendors that we use, we, um, have like a, a separate GIS budget. Um, I'm not exactly sure, um, of the cost of it because we share it across several departments. Like for example, this is from Near Map. Um, so we use other vendors, um, who kind of overlay over near map, um, to do like the change detection, um, software, but it's like a per parcel. Um, it's a per parcel charge, and it's not, it's really marginal for the amount of growth that we, that we get.

▶ 7:29 Robb Stewart: So it pays for its help.

▶ 7:32 Speaker 4: Yes. Okay. Okay. And I just,

▶ 7:36 Robb Stewart: the only other comment that I wanna make is, uh, I commend you for adjusting your budget when it needs to be. A lot of a lot of departments come in here and they just level fund everything, uh, but they don't look at the numbers where there might be efficiencies. I do appreciate that you've done that, so thank you very much. It helps the overall say it's not a lot, but every little bit counts. So I do appreciate that. Thank you. Thank you much, sir.

▶ 8:06 Speaker 1: Any other Councilor Williams? Yeah.

▶ 8:07 Speaker 5: Um, so

▶ 8:12 Ryan Williams: we've been hearing a lot about commercial property being in trouble. Mm-hmm. Right. And I just wanted to get your take on whether you think, given the mix that we have of property in the city, that Melrose will have any noticeable impact from a potential, you know, shockwave of commercial property vacancies in the region.

▶ 8:34 Speaker 3: Um, so Melrose versus other communities is quite a bit more insulated to this kind of a thing because we have, you know, only 5% from our C I P. Um, so compared to other communities, we're in a better position. Um, we haven't seen a lot yet of, um, you know, vacancies and appeals based on vacancy and, um, that kind of thing at this point. But, um, I guess it remains to be seen as the, um, things change and move around moving forward. Um,

▶ 9:15 Ryan Williams: Yeah. Thank you. And I haven't see anything at this point. Um, my next question is around home values. Mm-hmm. Um, so everybody's sick of hearing me talk about looking at houses and the price of houses, but the fact is, you look at a home and it's sold 10 years ago for 300,000, and today it's on the market for 2 million. Mm-hmm. When home values spike to that dramatic of a level, what does that do to the tax rate in the city? So if a, if a home sells for a million dollars more than it sold for five years ago, um, what happens to the taxes that, that, that the homeowner is paying that the next homeowner is paying? How fast does it catch up? What does it do to the overall tax rate of the city? Mm-hmm. Basically with, uh, with a likely trend of homes in Melrose continuing to sell for exorbitant prices, what does that do to our tax rate going forward?

▶ 10:07 Speaker 3: So, uh, because we can only levy, um, you know, a certain amount, it's, you know, the two and a half plus the new growth that's not growing as fast as the residential values are growing. As the values go up, the tax rate will go down. And if you look at our history except for the year of the, um, override, you'll see that the tax rate keeps going down as our values are going up. Um, we're valuing, uh, the next fiscal year for fiscal 24, it would be, you know, we're looking at calendar year 2022 sales. So everything kind of takes a little while to catch up. But, um, that's how, it's how the, the timeline usually goes.

▶ 10:48 Ryan Williams: So as people are bringing more and more amounts of money into the city in the form of property assets and ownership, the city's actually getting less of, of that in terms of taxes because the rate is not able to keep up. Mm-hmm. Unless we have an override and that allows the city to reset the levy and keep taxes basically where they are, or Right.

▶ 11:10 Speaker 3: Especially because our, you know, we, we don't have as much commercial growth, whereas the commercial rate is so much higher here, you know, for this year mm-hmm. For example, um, than the residential rate. So any growth in on the residential side is, you know, um, not as much of an impact as commercial growth. Of course. Yeah.

▶ 11:34 Speaker 5: Okay. Thank you. Mm-hmm.

▶ 11:37 Speaker 1: President Greg.

▶ 11:38 Jen Grigoraitis: Thank you, Madam Chair. Thank you for being here tonight. I just wanted to quickly ask about how the rollout of the senior circuit tax circuit breaker is going. If you're seeing a lot of engagement from residents, if there's been stumbling box blocks or questions, I know there's legislation currently pending at the state level to raise, um, the cap from 1200 to 2,400, which I really hope passes so that we can take advantage of that here as we talk about things like debt exclusions and overrides. Mm-hmm. Um, but do you feel like we have residents taking advantage of this new, um, option?

▶ 12:10 Speaker 3: Yeah. So we had, um, I think it was like 78 last year who, um, were eligible for, um, that exemption. But in the time, so we did, you know, press releases and all, all kinds of, um, you know, got the information out to the community as much as we could last year. But, um, as the year's gone on, I, I think more people have learned about it. We've been compiling mailing lists, we've been working with the Council on Aging. We've been doing, you know, as much as we can basically to, to get that information out. So we're gonna do another press release for this year, you know, and then we're gonna do, um, more mailings. And, and so I, we really do expect, and we, we have seen in other communities like Wakefield Redding, um, who also have the program that after the first year, they keep increasing, um, you know, as as it goes on. Yeah. Mm-hmm. Yeah.

▶ 13:09 Jen Grigoraitis: Great. I'm happy to hear that. It seems to be, yeah. We're laying a foundation for it. Thank you. Yeah.

▶ 13:16 Speaker 1: Any other questions?

▶ 13:21 Speaker 1: What is the will of the committee

▶ 13:23 Speaker 3: Take A motion to move the bottom line. Second.

▶ 13:26 Leila Migliorelli: Motion to move with bottom line made by Counselor sin. Seconded by Vice Chair Jamine. Anyone on discussion?

▶ 13:34 Speaker 1: Seeing none, Mr. Clerk,

▶ 13:36 Speaker 2: Vice chair Jamine? Yes. Counselor Sin? Yes. Counselor Les? Yes. Counselor Gepe? Yes. Counselor Stewart? Yes. Counselor Williams? Yes. President Greg? Yes. And Chair Mcle? Yes. That's eight. Yes. Unanimous.

▶ 13:51 Speaker 1: That motion carries. Thank you. Thank You.

▶ 13:56 Leila Migliorelli: And next up we have the Department of Public Works with Director Elena Pros and Deputy Director Jim Troupe.

▶ 14:18 Speaker 6: Thank you. Welcome.

▶ 14:32 Speaker 6: So we have a brief presentation prepared. Um,

▶ 14:33 Speaker 7: y'all should have had it in your packet as well.

▶ 14:38 Speaker 8: Um,

▶ 14:39 Speaker 7: Just going through some of our accomplishments and some of, uh, some updates on where we are with some various projects. And then Jim's gonna discuss the budget submittal specifically. Um, and then we'll entertain any questions.

▶ 14:54 Speaker 3: Oh,

▶ 14:59 Speaker 7: So a lot of the beginning here is the same information that we, we presented last year. So since you're all returning counselors, we don't have to spend much time on this, but, um, maybe a little bit for the public of who D P W is. We have 68 full-time employees, and then we have two part-time, um, permanent employees. In addition, we're in four main divisions, administration, engineering, facilities and operations.

▶ 15:30 Speaker 7: Uh, the administration division, which Jim leads, handles all of our public relations, our accounts receivable and payable payroll, our environmental outreach coordinator and our rentals coordinator for all the facility rentals that we do around the city. Engineering is combined with water and sewer billing here in City Hall. Um, they handle all of the capital projects, the planning, design, and construction for those, um, permits, inspections, development reviews, anything that goes through the planning department and zoning board of appeals. Um, records and plans, geographic information systems. All of our data layers, uh, are housed there. And our water and sewer billing functions, facilities handles both the custodial and the, uh, trades aspects of all of our building maintenance and, um, also our building capital projects and building security In conjunction with it. And then operations, which is our largest division, uh, includes eight subdivisions, um, highway sanitation, parks, forestry, fleet cemetery, water and sewer. And then from a budget perspective, there's also Snow and Ice, which has its own separate budget line items, but, um, doesn't have any employees dedicated specifically to snow and ice.

▶ 16:54 Speaker 7: So this is our organization, and I'm happy to report that for the second year in a row, now we have the same, um, same staff in all of these roles. It was nice to not have to update anything on our management team.

▶ 17:09 Speaker 7: And then I wanna acknowledge the new employees that we've hired. Um, being such a big department, we always have, uh, turnover, new people coming in, retirement, people moving on to other positions. Um, so everybody on this list here, 1, 2, 3, 9 new employees that we have this year. Just wanna welcome them to our team. And then we had four retirements this year. Dennis Cashman, Al Garra, Paul Gould, and Angela Pisa.

▶ 17:42 Speaker 7: I did wanna also acknowledge Peter Soko, who most of you probably recognize from his hard work cleaning downtown, um, who we lost this year. Um, he was still employed with the city at the time and had some health issues. He started as a Melrose DPW employee in 1983 and retired in 2010 as a full-time employee, and then started working, uh, cleaning up Melrose, keeping Melrose. Beautiful. So we just wanna thank him for all of his service.

▶ 18:15 Speaker 7: So these next statistics were in the budget book that the mayor's office distributed. Um, most of these are how they were up through early May when we queried the data. And then the final versions of these numbers for the fiscal year will appear. In our annual report. We handled, we resolved 2000, uh, 558 work orders filled. 712 potholes planted 197 new street trees. We handled 20.9 inches of snow, which is a little bit less than our norm. Um, processed 1,254 purchase orders and exponentially more invoices. Um, since some of those POS involved multiple invoices, we collected 5,377 tons of trash, uh, 2,336 tons of recycling with Republic. We collected curbside yard waste, that that's in-house services. Our new mattress recycling program recycled 510 mattresses up through early May, which I think when you picture 510 mattresses and diverting those from the solid waste stream, that's pretty significant. Um, we accepted yard waste recycling and special collections at the city yard. We maintained approximately 140 vehicles and pieces of equipment. Our green team has a list of 81 locations that they mow and maintain every week. Um, two every other week. Wyoming Cemetery, this one is up through, uh, couple days ago, had 78 burials and 67 cremations. This fiscal year. We hosted about 1200 students at the return of D P W Day, which we were very excited to be able to do. And we assisted with numerous city events. We assist with home for the holidays and the Victorian Fair, and anything that involves shutting down the streets, um, road races and such D pws there, um, the day before, first thing in the morning, getting everything closed down, and then, um, cleaning everything up afterwards.

▶ 20:19 Speaker 7: So this next slide has a lot of information on it, more than you could possibly read up on the screen there. Um, but this is, these are where our major capital projects in fiscal 23. There are even more projects that aren't listed here. Um, but I'm just gonna run down quickly. These are things that are completed. Um, the paving of Ashland, Brazil felt in place. Sycamore, Honeywell, Burnett and Carle, uh, water main replacements on Frost, Appleton, Irving, and Elliot. We did sewer manhole lining, which actually, uh, wrapped up today. We completed the salt shed, which is pictured there. And thank you all for your support in that project. Um, we completed the addition for the backup ladder truck storage at engine two as requested by the fire department. We, uh, replaced the ceiling in the basement of City Hall, and you can see it in that picture. It's down at the bottom there. Um, that was a major project that we undertook in-house, and we were able to accomplish it. If you walk in now through the, down the lower level in city hall, things are much brighter, much cleaner, um, and replaced a, a ceiling that had major leak damage from prior years. So looks much better. Uh, we finished the Central Terrace Alley project. Put the finishing touches on that. We deployed redeployed the four parklets. We did Milano system, each Milano Center h VC upgrades, and completed the patio awning. A bunch of parks projects that D P W was involved with, along with Joan Bell, the FOSS Ball, FOSS Park, pickleball Court, volunteerer Park Inclusive Playground, and the Lebanon field drainage and other improvements. We completed the Amazing Grace Basketball Court. Um, the, we did a drainage replacement of a section of pipe on Laurel Street that goes cross country that had deteriorated. We finished the line striping and the signage of the South Main Street bike lanes, and we oversaw numerous projects with National Grid, where they both replaced gas mains and then subsequently paved in those areas.

▶ 22:28 Speaker 7: Um, I know we've had questions over the years about the status of projects that you've all approved in free cash from prior years. And so this list on this page, um, all of these projects aside from the bottom one that says implementation, all the ones that say construction have signed construction contracts. So whatever bidding or quotes or whatever procurement to meet the state procurement laws was required. That's all been completed. We have construction contractors on board. Um, and those include the Memorial Hall and city hall generator projects, the Memorial Hall envelope project, sewer pump station generators, school door replacements, high school elevator rehabilitation, the Hoover and Horse Man roof project, the Franklin E C C window replacement, that's replacing six of the windows over there. School asbestos abatement, that's lined up for this summer. We just signed those contracts this week. Um, sewer and drain spot repairs. We, as we do every year, we inspect all of the sewers and drains under the streets that we're about to pave. And then we fix any defects that we find before the streets get paved. So that's, that work has been ongoing the last few weeks. Um, we have the 2023 water main project will be on a small portion of Trenton, and then on now Henry and Redding Hill. That is, we have a contractor awarded in contract signed. We'll be starting that in July. Um, the Emerson and VIN intersection reconfiguration, that's becoming a four-way stop. And, um, tightening up the intersection there by Cedar Park, by Bowden Park. Um, that should be starting shortly. And then we show cemetery digitization. That's in the implementation phase. Jane Pitts is actually spearheading that. Now. Our GIS analyst for the city, um, is working with some part-time labor to try to match up all the remaining records that didn't match easily with the, um, burial pls.

▶ 24:26 Speaker 7: And then on the next page, we're replacing our time clock system. Um, that's in the implementation phase. We're upgrading updating our lead service, uh, water service inventory per EPA regulations. Um, that's also in the implementation phase. We have a removal program that's following that is in the design phase. We're bidding a stormwater infiltration trench project and the Fred Green carpet replacement. Those are both out to bid right now. Um, and then we have a bunch of projects in the design phase, sewer pipe lining, the EL pond drain relocation, that's at the Caruso property to allow the redevelopment there. Uh, Lebanon and Sylvan drainage that we've been talking about for a long time. Our traffic calming toolkit and the pilots that will go along with it, that is almost done, I'm happy to say. Um, and the Lebanon Street Transportation Improvement Project, that is, um, going towards 25% design, and we hope that ends with federal tip funding, multimillion dollar funding, uh, for the construction project. And then we have the school H V A C study and the high school bathroom renovations we're working with. We've selected firms for both of those, and we're negotiating the contract. Um, and then the El Pond Park, uh, 25% design. I do wanna call attention to this. We do have an earmark that can cover a portion of that 25% design, but we don't have the remaining funds secured right now. There wasn't enough free cash for this year, um, to allow for that 25% design. So we will be requesting, um, other funds, Patrick Del Russo, thought capital stabilization would be a good source of, I think it's roughly 170,000, um, for that project because the, um, the federal earmark is a million dollars, and we don't wanna lose the opportunity to use that money by not being able to fund this initial per portion. I'm very happy to say that some of our vehicle replacements have come in, are pictured up there, our new roll off truck, and our new water and sewer division foreman utility truck. Um, everything on this list has come in, in the last fiscal year. We're seeing lead times of over a year on vehicles. So it's exciting when we see some vehicles actually rolling into the yard. We also just got the new Bobcat for, um, for school,

▶ 26:46 Speaker 7: uh, school site plowing that we had gotten the grant for last year from shared

▶ 26:54 Speaker 7: streets. Okay, I'm gonna turn it over to Jim.

▶ 26:56 Speaker 9: So, as you can see on the slide, the D P W general fund request is just north of 10 million. Uh, in front of you later will be the water enterprise fund request of 6.3 million, and the sewer enterprise request of 8.7 million. As you can see, uh, in accordance to the directive from the mayor and the CFO to level fund, uh, our operating budget, uh, except for contractual obligations and salary negotiated increases, we have complied with that wish. And you will see, uh, three line items in our budget with contractual obligations that will, uh, be, uh, uh, increases. But once again, obligated through, uh, uh, contracts with outside vendors. The majority of the salary increases. Uh, uh, the majority of the increases in the budget are gonna be salary increases, both, uh, labor's union and clerical union negotiated, uh, increases. Uh, you'll see increased steps for those two unions over the next couple years, which was a big selling point, uh, and work towards retainage, uh, which is a big thing right now, trying to retain our employees and keep them, uh, the, the knowledge that long-term employees would take with them out the door is not worth, uh, that loss. Uh, the contracts were negotiated back in December and signed. The one thing that we do wanna point out is that this is the last year of our track trash and recycling, uh, the hauling contracts and the disposal contracts. Uh, we're still negotiating right now, or we're trying to get ahead of that negotiation, and there'll be plenty more to come, uh, to place in front of the council and the public as to what effect that will have on the fiscal 25. Uh, one of the line items that will be increased this year is going to be the recycling processing. That is a contractual obligation that was negotiated as part of the extension with j r m. Now Republic,

▶ 29:01 Speaker 9: Uh, you have, uh, in your packet the salary breakdowns by accounts. We do have some employees that have a portion of their salary split between DP D P W general funds, and the water and sewer enterprise funds. That's an exercise that we undertake with the CFO to properly allocate those salaries based on the amount of time and work that our, our employees perform in those, uh, relevant departments. Uh, D P W does include portions of the salaries of four full-time employees shared with other departments. Uh, the handout that is with you will show, uh, exactly that breakdown. Uh, gis, uh, our Munis, uh, uh, person. Um, yeah, there's, there's, uh, four, I'm sorry that I'm, I think Cindy Berkeley. And yeah. And, uh, the two for the parks, Cindy Berkeley and, uh, Joan Bell,

▶ 29:56 Speaker 9: uh, the employees by the operating budget. You can see the, uh, administrator in engineering will have, uh, 17, uh, employees. Facilities has 14 custodians and five trades people. Uh, snow removal is, uh, an all hands on deck. Sanitation has two full-time employees, parks and forestry. Nine fleet three, cemetery three. Water is nine fully funded. And the 15 partially funded sewer. Three fully funded and 15 partially funded for the 56 fully funded out of one D P W Division 14 spread amongst the D P W budgets and four that are shared with the other departments. Once again, uh, I say with pride that we have level funded our line items, uh, in accordance to the directives from the mayor and the C F O. The three exceptions that you'll see are the school equipment maintenance item are requests of an additional $27,500. These are strictly contractual obligations that have arisen since the covid, uh, has required a little bit more compliance, inspection, and maintenance of Key H V A C, fire and other life safety devices, uh, in our schools. Recycling processing is a negotiated increase to our trash contract and was critical to, uh, extending the current trash contract with JM Now Republic. And our M W R A Water Assessment, this is based on our usage, uh, in the city, and is assessed by the M W A and it is really dictated, uh, from the m w RRA and passed on through the city.

▶ 31:44 Speaker 8: Do. Yeah, that's, yeah, go

▶ 31:48 Speaker 6: Ahead. Okay. So, um, this slide just shows our free cash requests.

▶ 31:50 Speaker 7: These are actually not on tonight's agenda, but we included them just for the simplicity. We can, um, entertain questions on them tonight or when they come up on the agenda, whatever you prefer. Um, but we are requesting, uh, 67,650 for tree planting. Our requests date back to roughly January, 2022, December, 2021, which is right where we wanna be at this point. We're caught up to where we wanna be. Um, we don't wanna be planting when we do removals. Um, we don't want to be planting in the same location immediately because the roots from the old tree need to have a chance to die off. Um, so roughly a year later is a good place to be, and that's where we are. Um, traffic safety and traffic calming. This has been an ongoing request. Each year. We just, just fund what, whatever the next high, highest priority items are. Um, we're requesting 50,000 for that cemetery equipment and projects. Uh, 66,500 for a turf sweeper and some new landscaping in select areas. Accessibility upgrades. This comes out of the assessment, the, um, ADA assessment that the mayor's office had spearheaded last year. And we were asked if they, if the mayor's office put in for $75,000, could D P W spend that on sort of the low hanging fruit, um, from the assessment? So we've identified items, signage and some, uh, simple things that we can do, like plumbing that's exposed underneath the sink, where if somebody were to touch it, they could get burned. Um, insulating those pipes. Really small things that, I don't know if you've all seen the accessibility report, but there is a very, very long list of small items. And then there are some large items. So we're gonna try to tackle as many of the small items as we can within that budget. Uh, and then our snow and ice deficit for, uh, fiscal 23 is $90,959 and 26 cents.

▶ 33:56 Speaker 6: So, water and sewer rates, just, um,

▶ 33:58 Speaker 7: to mention these because they tie in so closely with the, um, water and sewer budgets, we're proposing a combined average increase of 3.7% for the average Melrose household, which is those who use 1800, um, cubic feet per quarter. The, the number goes from, you know, 3.6 to 3.8. Depending on if you go a little, a little less usage becomes a tiny bit higher percentage because the base fee stay the same. Tiny bit more usage goes a tiny bit lower in terms of an overall percent increase, but we're right there at 3.7%. Um, for an average household, we're also proposing a transfer of $10,179 from water, um, free cash into the reserve fund. So the reserve fund, you might recall, um, our goal is to maintain a reserve fund that reflects 10% of our operating budget. This year. We came before you with a request for a large amount of free cash so that we could stay, um, up to date on our capital project, uh, our 2023 water main project. We wouldn't have been able to do Redding Hill Lab if we didn't have that extra money. Um, having done that, it, it means that we don't have exactly the amount to get to our 10% goal. We're at 9.6%. But, um, you know, as, as has been requested in front of the water and sewer rate committee multiple times, we don't wanna just hold money for the sake of holding money. When capital needs a rise and there's a good use of that money, we, we don't wanna shy away from dipping into it. So we were happy with the, happy with the 9.6% and the ability to finish, um, the whole project this year. On the sewer end, we do have enough to transfer to meet our 10% goal, we need $7,835. So a very small amount to get up to our 10%. Um, the last couple years we had rates that required, based on the rate committee's recommendation, we required a small transfer in the amount of, uh, somewhere between 200,000 and 400,000 from the, uh, reserve or the retained earnings into the operating budget to cover some of our revenue. I mean, our, um, expenses for the year. Um, this year, I'm proud to say that our 3.7% proposed rate increase meets all revenue obligations with no transfers from retained earnings. So it's a true, um, net zero between the money that we project bringing in and the money that we project, uh, spending.

▶ 36:38 Speaker 7: And we do have a memo that was attached to the water and sewer rate orders and the free cash water and sewer orders that explains all the details of our, uh,

▶ 36:47 Speaker 6: proposed rate increase.

▶ 36:52 Speaker 9: Did you have any? Yeah. In addition to the PowerPoint, I do wanna, uh, call attention to the memo that was presented, uh, to head the, the budget submittal to you just outlining some noteworthy change changes and challenges facing the D P W, including, uh, extended vacancies in specifically skilled trades. Uh, we just do not, uh, really get the qualified candidates in those skilled trades. The good thing for us is that we have hired some outstanding entry level candidates, which gives us an opportunity to train and promote from within. But the challenge now becomes, uh, the skilled positions license holders, uh, to fill those extended vacancies and to continue to deliver the services that are expected of the D P W. We are implementing a few big projects, including a capital, uh, uh, asset management tool, as well as time clock implementation that we think will help with some efficiencies in our department. Uh, you also have a breakdown of the salaries, uh, for those that are spread amongst a number of departments. Once again, just to highlight that we are level funding in the majority of our, uh, divisions. However, our biggest challenge is now in our facilities division. Uh, we are unfortunately are understaffed there. And to deliver our services there, we continue to advocate for additional positions. How many could we need? Five. I think that that would be, uh, uh, a good goal. But we don't try to be gluttonous. We think that we could get away with two additional positions. And unfortunately, it hasn't made it through, uh, the budget process. Uh, we would love the luxury and, uh, the responsibility to delegate those positions, whether it's custodial, uh, tradesperson or laborer, just to assist, uh, specifically in the facilities and the increased demand that is placed on the services that we deliver to maintain and upkeep, uh, this critical infrastructure for this city. We're gonna continue to, to search for alternative funding sources. But unfortunately now without the cares, fema, arpa and other reimbursements that Covid provided to us, those are running out. And our fear is that we're gonna be stretched even thinner to continue to deliver the same level of service. You'll have for consideration a free cash transfer for snow and ice this year, uh, through fiscal controls, as well as the mild winter. Uh, it is a, a minimal transfer, uh, as opposed to a five year average of $953,000 average on a budget of 7 25. We're asking for approximately 90,000, uh, and that's attributed to maintenance of the fleet and keeping it on the road. And salt prices were historically high this year. Um, the biggest note that I have to, uh, talk about is that we are entering the last year of our JM Republic contract, which is significantly advantageous to the city. It's our top priority to propose a contract with a new hauler, uh, a new disposal facility that will give the city value for unfortunately an expected increase. And one that is gonna be in line with the current conditions and the current economy as that, uh, as that industry exists. But we want to position the city to be in the best spot. And we feel that negotiating right now gives the city the most leverage in trying to achieve that goal. There'll be more to come early in fiscal 24, but unfortunately it's gonna probably take a year for us to, uh, hopefully perfectly execute the rollout and any changes that may exist in, in that contract. So that's all I have, and I guess we'll look at the last slide that says, uh, we welcome questions.

▶ 40:46 Leila Migliorelli: Thank you. Um, just want to make a note for my colleagues that on the agenda tonight are the operating budgets, not the free cash requests or the water and sewer rate. So thank you for highlighting those. But we'll just focus our questions on, on the operating budgets. Thank you. Um, first and q I have is Councilor Gepe.

▶ 41:05 Mark Garipay: Thank you. Thank you both for being here. Um, budgets level funding, so there's not, not a lot of questions. I guess probably a lot of people will be happy they don't have a, they don't have a ton on it, but I, I appreciate you taking the time, um, today to, uh, go over a lot of what I did have. Um, but I, I want to touch base on, and you, you mentioned if we had a full compliment of employees right now, you believe that we need two additional full-time employees

▶ 41:40 Speaker 2: to

▶ 41:42 Speaker 9: Keep, keep Elaine and I may differ. I mean, I think we could use more than two. Yeah. But I think in order to not be gluttonous and be considerate are the other departments and other needs, I think too is a very conservative request. And we've, we've requested this annually since the two of us have been, uh, leading the D P W

▶ 42:04 Mark Garipay: And, and i I, I appreciate, um, you know, we're thinking about other departments, but the Department of public works is really what keeps the city moving. So I think we really need to try to find a way to, to help you guys, uh, help, help the department out with that. Um, and so you requested two when it wasn't approved, there were five, correct? It wasn't approved. Okay.

▶ 42:26 Speaker 7: We requested two each of the last three years, but it hasn't made it to the, the budget that the council receives. Okay. Um, if, if you don't mind, I, I'd like to just highlight a little bit of why that two as a minimum is, is so critical, um, on our facility side. So right now we have, we have a licensed plumber. We have a, um, several employees with licenses in the trades, carpentry, and, um, you know, very qualified tradesmen who are spending, I would say at a minimum, one per day is maybe not right at this moment, but over the course of the year, there have been long stretches where one per day has been filling in on custodial services due to a custodian being out. And so it impacts the projects we're able to get done. It impacts our ability to keep up on our work orders. Um, so we really could use of those two positions, one of them would have to be a custodial position. The other advantage it would afford us is that we pay a lot of overtime, um, for custodial for various reasons. And if we had another second shift custodian, that would free up some of what we currently pay as overtime for, and it's not necessarily out of DP W'S budget. Some of it's outta the school's budget for ed stations for some of its, um, rentals, but they're internal, their school, uh, events and such where somebody in the, within the city's budget is paying overtime for an employee to be here to cover those events, rec department, things like that. If we had one more custodian working a different shift, we could be covering some of those events within our regular budget and paying straight time rather than time and a half. So there would be, you know, some, um, economic benefits to it as well. And then, uh, we've been thinking the other position, if we were ever to get it, would be a labor, just sort of a general floater for facilities who can fill in a custodial shift when there's a custodian out. Um, especially we've had some prolonged absences from F M L A and such and, you know, we, we obviously continue to pay those employees while they're out, but someone else also has to do that work in addition. And then they could also help out with the trades, um, work orders and everything. They could be somebody, you know, maybe more of an entry level who could just help out where needed.

▶ 44:55 Mark Garipay: So it sounds like it's, uh, the two you're looking at are for facilities, but how about parks and forestry and, you know, keeping, keeping up with all the parks. And

▶ 45:04 Speaker 7: So I think when I think we are in good shape when we have a full compliment of employees and we currently have a major vacancy, um, where we've, we've elected to, with, with one of our retirements, we've elected to bring back our division foreman of parks and forestry, which is the position that John Doherty held before he passed away. Um, and we see a real need to reinstate that position and it's presently vacant. We, um, we have some pretty stringent qualifications that we're hoping to meet, and it's just hard to get applicants who have an arborist license and the pesticide license and experience being up in the bucket cutting trees. And so we're, we're hoping to have somebody, um, in that role soon, but we need to have the right person.

▶ 45:52 Speaker 9: And, and to, excuse me, I'm sorry. And to add to what Elena said, the time to do it is now because we had a longtime employee who is at a top step. So the budget impact on any of the other salary line items is now so that we're not replacing that position with somebody that might be at a entry level step.

▶ 46:10 Speaker 2: Okay. Um,

▶ 46:13 Mark Garipay: going over the capital projects, um, it was in the presentation. So I do have a couple questions. Uh, the school projects, will they be done? Are they gonna be going, are they gonna be completed over the summer or are they gonna be going on while school is in session or?

▶ 46:30 Speaker 7: So the elevator project starts while school is in session. It's actually ramping up right now. Mm-hmm. Um, because in order to meet the timeline to be done before next school year begins, it had to start now. Um, but they'll only be working on one elevator at a time, so that shouldn't be problematic. The asbestos can't happen with any students in the building. That'll, that will all be completed over the summer. Um, the Franklin windows that will be completed over the summer, the Hoover and Horseman roofs are scheduled to be completed over the summer. The planning department is really spearheading that project. We're Jay McNeil's working in conjunction with Denise, but she would know more about the exact timeline. Um, the school door replacements are scheduled, the next wave of those will happen over the summer. A bunch of them happened last summer. Um, some of these are interior doors that we're replacing so that they don't swing 180 degrees. So if there's ever an emergency, um, I believe it's the ground floor, the entry level floor of the Winthrop in particular, that's gonna happen this summer. Um, just that if, if there was ever a situation where somebody walked into the building, um, those teachers in the first, you know, the immediate vicinity, that first hallway wouldn't have to go out into the hall to close their doors, um, they wouldn't open 180. Um, that, I think that's all the school projects, the H V C study. We're hoping a lot of that will happen over the summer. Um, and the bathroom design can really happen at any time.

▶ 47:59 Mark Garipay: Um, and I know I've asked this one before, uh, cuz it goes back when I was on the cemetery commission, the FEMA study for Lebanon and Sylvan drainage. Have we had any information on where we are on that?

▶ 48:13 Speaker 7: Uh, yes. So sadly, FEMA finally after three years flat out rejected the project. It was extremely frustrating because the number of hours that we put in answering their requests for information repeatedly, um, with consultant support and everything, and in fact the consultant we were using is somebody who also for other projects, reviews projects for fema. And so we had, you know, very skilled folks helping us who really thought this project should pass. And, um, ultimately FEMA rejected it and we concluded that it wasn't worth appealing any further because the information they were requesting was just the same information we've already given them. We were requesting a phased project whereby they would allow us to get into the design a little further before making a decision. And even that, they said they didn't wanna do that. So now we're going it alone. We have free cash from a couple years ago for the design and we're just moving forward with the design, we're doing all the hydraulic modeling with that money and trying to identify the best approach. We did apply for a different grant.

▶ 49:22 Speaker 8: Um, is that community? No, not c communication. Um,

▶ 49:27 Speaker 7: VNY re our city engineer applied for grant for I believe about a million dollars for construction. But I can't recall what the grant was. We haven't heard back yet though. Okay.

▶ 49:38 Mark Garipay: Um, safe to say that we're not gonna have the free cash for a while to, to finish that project if the grant's gonna be a million dollars.

▶ 49:45 Speaker 7: No. Yet this is a project that we would probably have to bond for. Okay. Um, and,

▶ 49:54 Mark Garipay: uh, El Pond design, um, you said it's gonna cost about 170,000 for the design,

▶ 50:02 Speaker 6: Is that Yes.

▶ 50:04 Mark Garipay: And how much do we have so far on that?

▶ 50:06 Speaker 7: And that's for the 25% design. Um, so the way the federal earmark is written, that was for the environmental and the stormwater aspects of the project. Yeah. And it's a million dollar earmark. So I think with a straight face we can, we can say that about half is, is, uh, storm water design related and environmental design related. And then the other half, so let's say, um, you know, roughly $85,000 we'd have to fund on our own. But it was brought to my attention that, that the timing of the earmark, since it's a federal earmark, I guess they take a long time to get all the paperwork in place. And so if we wanna advance the 25% design soon, we may want to fund the whole 170,000 and then leave the million to all toward construction. We have plenty again on the stormwater end that we could spend the whole million during construction. It wouldn't be any loss of money one way or another. So if we want to advance it more quickly, we would be looking for the whole 170. If we want to wait until the earmark money comes in, then we'd be looking for 85.

▶ 51:11 Mark Garipay: Okay. Um, and then the, um, I've said it on the last, well, since I've been on the council, and I know you've been advocating for it to have a line item for trees, so we're not continuing to use free cash. Um, looks like we got the, it's about a year out for, uh, trees. Um, I just want to continue, uh, hopefully the administration at some point will agree that, uh, a continuous expense probably be in the budget. Um, so I, I appreciate that. And then going back to sanitation,

▶ 51:49 Mark Garipay: we all know that. Um, what do you, what do you, I know it's tough, it's going out to bid, but we kind of know what's out there and what's the market We're at 1.6 million, 1.65 roughly as a budget. Are we looking at you think 25, 30, 50, a hundred percent? Yeah,

▶ 52:03 Speaker 9: You know, it, it would, it would probably do a little bit of an injustice to to guess, but if we wanna do some quick math, we're paying roughly $65 a ton for trash right now. The market rate is about 110 to 120. We do have a wild guard that we do have the transfer station. So I think that the city will be able to leverage that as part of the negotiating. But I mean, we're gonna, we're gonna call the, uh, the best haulers, the biggest haulers, the ones that can handle, uh, customer like Melrose to do our hauling. And I think we're gonna leverage, uh, the opportunity for savings and value with the transfer station. It appears that it's going that way and unless, uh, somebody comes in and negotiates a, a rate far superior to what we'd be able to offer at our transfer station, I just don't see it going anywhere else. But you could do probably some quick math to understand where that's going. 65 to 110 to 115. And that's just for Disposal. That's, and that's just for disposal. So the, the hauling rates, uh, you know how it exists right now. I, I couldn't tell you that we're gonna have the conventional hauling, but uh, that's still to be determined and we still have the, the three haulers, cassella, waste Management and uh, Republic coming in so that we can negotiate and put The city, city in the best position come fiscal 25. This is,

▶ 53:27 Mark Garipay: this is a line item that in FY 25, like you said, that it could be a 10% increase probably on the total budget if it's a 10 million

▶ 53:38 Speaker 7: On the D P W budget. Right. The D P

▶ 53:40 Mark Garipay: W. So it could be an actually additional million dollars roughly. Correct. Yeah.

▶ 53:43 Speaker 9: And there's gonna have to be a lot to, I know there's a lot. Yeah,

▶ 53:45 Mark Garipay: there's gonna have to be a lot of negotiating, but Correct, correct. It's gonna be a tough pill to swallow next year. Correct. Absolutely. Thank you. No more questions.

▶ 53:54 Speaker 7: Thank you

▶ 53:55 Speaker 1: President Greg Reis. Thank you Madam Chair.

▶ 53:57 Jen Grigoraitis: Thank you both for being here and I really appreciate both your candor on what you wish you have and you don't. And also in forecasting some of the stuff that's coming down to us, I think I would really like to see us getting out talking about every 12 months and really talking about multi-year budgets, cuz we know that's Actually how you move things forward. Um, I just wanted to follow up on the, um, your common MS Perellis about the supporting of community events. So when there is an event sponsored by the community that requires D P W is we're not billing anyone, that's just a cost that's being absorbed into the city budget. And do we put any type of including overtime Correct. And are we putting any type of parameters like internally we try to keep it under a hundred thousand dollars? Or is it just how does it get decided what, what we're gonna say yes to and what we're gonna say no to knowing that there's a very real dollar cost associated with it?

▶ 54:52 Speaker 7: So pretty much the same. The events that occur every year are overtime levels reflect being able to fund those. So things like the Victorian Fair and the summer stroll home for the holidays, um, those are, those are built in. We know that, you know, sort of the mayor's office events, we know that we're gonna be providing support for those. Um, if the mayor were to come to us and say, I think I, it would be fun to close Main Street every Friday, all summer and have it be a pedestrian, you know, pedestrian friendly area, we would need a budget for that. That, you know, anything that's wildly on top of what we are used to doing, we would need to have a separate budget line item for that. Or it's been discussed whether to actually someday potentially move all of these expenses to a line item in the mayor's budget. Um, because it's the same for police details. Mm-hmm. And you know, there are a number of of items that come out of the various city budgets to support these events and it's fine to do it the way we've been doing it. It's it's funded and it's fine. But if somebody wanted to be able to see what is the true cost of hosting this event or that event, it might be nice to have it in its own line item.

▶ 56:05 Jen Grigoraitis: And you feel like you can continue to support events like that given your reduced staffing and also meet all of the other obligations that we have around this. Like how, I guess, I mean it sounds like you are both understaffed in terms of not having a number of sufficient positions to deliver and then also understaffed in the sense that you have a lot of vacancies.

▶ 56:24 Speaker 7: Yeah, I will say that our overtime line items really haven't increased over the years. And so we are facing the situation where when, when directed to level fund everything, that's not a contractual increase that means level funding overtime. Mm-hmm. And obviously everybody's salaries go up every year. So the overtime, uh, funding levels translate to fewer hours year after year after year. Um, so we are tight, I would say in the close of this fiscal year in our operations division, we're tight in a lot of our overtime lines within the individual divisions. Um,

▶ 57:00 Speaker 6: so you know,

▶ 57:01 Speaker 7: at some point we are gonna have to look at increases to those or or reduction in something that we do on overtime. Like for instance, prepping for Memorial Day is always more work than, than we can do in the 40 hour work week. So we usually have our, um, our parks, our green team usually comes in some Saturday mornings to catch up and because

▶ 57:25 Speaker 2: you know,

▶ 57:25 Speaker 7: there's only a certain window of time between when the snow stops falling and when Memorial Day happens and there's a lot to get done in between there. Um,

▶ 57:35 Speaker 6: so you know,

▶ 57:36 Speaker 7: at some point we'll have to decide do we keep the same level of services and increase the overtime line items or do we cut back somewhere. Mm-hmm.

▶ 57:46 Speaker 10: Thank you. Um,

▶ 57:48 Jen Grigoraitis: just following up on some of the identified priority projects and how they're moving, I know some of the things up there like the traffic calming toolkit, I mean the funding for that was approved three years ago. Um, I believe it was June of 2020. I'm happy to be wrong. Um, I

▶ 58:02 Speaker 7: Think that's an ARPA funded project. Mm-hmm.

▶ 58:05 Speaker 10: Oh it is. Okay. Maybe it was

▶ 58:07 Speaker 7: 2021. So yeah, it wasn't quite that that long.

▶ 58:08 Jen Grigoraitis: Okay. So 2021. So are we, is the, that's two years ago. So I mean are we now kind of in a standard place where things like we're funding things and we're seeing them actually be implemented 24 36 months out? Or is that something that we're starting to recover from? As you know, COVID has, you know, things have come back online.

▶ 58:27 Speaker 7: Yeah, I would say we are starting to recover. I think, um, when our engineering division is fully staffed, we're able to ramp up. We have a vacancy again in our engineering division right now, uh, our project engineer. But um, you know, I think some of that backlog was worse during the period of time when we didn't have a city engineer. And um, now that we have Vny and she's extremely capable of taking projects and running with them, we're seeing a lot of things we're, we're catching back up on a lot of things. Okay. And also, as you know, that management team that I showed on the one slide with Joe, Jim, Jay McNeil and vny, um, they were all new what,

▶ 59:09 Speaker 6: three years ago.

▶ 59:11 Speaker 7: And so getting used to how to manage projects, Jay came from a non municipal job. So just learning the ropes on MUN municipal procurement and Project oversight in that, um, in that arena is a little bit of a learning curve. And I think everybody's there now and we're able to much more quickly execute things.

▶ 59:31 Jen Grigoraitis: Um, I think it's really helpful to have the visual of where things are at not to ask more work of your understaffed department, but I think if that's something that can easily be put on the city website, I know I constantly get questions from residents about things that we've talked about, the traffic calming toolkit, when are crosswalks being implemented. I think having a place that can point to where in the process we are can help to, um, demystify some of the like, why am I not seeing the thing that you all talked about at a meeting two years ago? Um, so just if that's possible. Sure. Um, and then again, on the list of projects, and I know we have a lot on the CIP P, what capacity, if any, do we have internally to start to prepare for taking advantage of the Inflation Reduction Act funding as that starts to come online for capital projects. Um, is that something we have capacity for?

▶ 1:00:20 Speaker 7: We are, we are trying whenever we can to take advantage of federal grants and, you know, all the money that's supposed to be rolling in. But, um, a perfect example is the, um, the lead service removal project. We were strongly encouraged by mass d e p to apply for the state revolving fund funding because there were tens of millions of dollars coming into Massachusetts through that, through the infrastructure bill. Um, and, you know, the Biden administration said, we want all lead services out. And so the, um, these tens of millions of dollars were going to come through the state revolving fund program. DEP encouraged us to apply. We applied for a 1.35035 million project. We scored very high in the, um, D p's intended use plan for the, for that program. And then we were informed that because we're not a disadvantaged community, we're getting 0% principle forgiveness. So they're offering us a 1.5% loan, which we can get a 0% loan from the m w. So, you know, the, these funds that are coming in through these programs, they sound fantastic. And then sometimes when the rubber hits the road, they're just not what, not as advertised. And the money becomes just extremely hard to actually get our hands on. Similar to the FEMA program, I mean, these FEMA grants, you do your hazard mitigation plan, and then MEMA and FEMA say, okay, now you qualify for these grants. And the process to apply for those grants. We applied for the city hall generator that we didn't get after a lengthy process. And now the Lebanon and Sylvan program, you know, if they keep funneling these federal infrastructure dollars through these existing programs that are so hard to access, you know,

▶ 1:02:06 Jen Grigoraitis: Or hard for a community like Melrose to access given who we are. Right. Okay. All right. That's helpful. Um, and then my last question was just about the school buildings. Just I think the theme for some of these budget hearings in general has been the infrastructure needs. Memorial Hall we've talked about, obviously, you know, we're addressing the library, the public safety buildings. But just thinking about that, we put 3,700 residents every day in those school buildings in another 300 staff. And given how low staff your facilities department is, how often are you actually able to walk through school buildings and assess what are the needs, what is happening? Um,

▶ 1:02:45 Speaker 7: So the, the good news is that we have an extraordinary relationship with the principals and the custodians with the principals as well as Jay McNeil with the principals. And so Jay's in the schools all the time. Obviously, the school custodians live in the schools every day, and they communicate very quickly with Jay if there are needs. Um, the teachers communicate well with the custodians when there are needs. So, um, we are, I I would say we're sort of, we have our finger on the pulse at the schools all the time of the immediate needs on the capital end, though, we've, you know, we've just com completed the, um, capital improvement plan with the Collins Center. And I really hope that the mayor's office intends to present that in some fashion to the council and to the public, because what we concluded, the D P W submitted over a hundred projects and the year one funding alone for, um, once the call center prioritized our projects, all the projects, um, the year one funding from free cash had a need of hundreds of thousands of dollars more than the free cash that the city has. And on the capital end, the recommendation for bonding for just fiscal 24 was 7.5 million. And we're being told that we don't have capacity right now for any of it. So we've established a really fantastic needs list of unattainable projects in our present financial situation. Um, and, and so there has to be an answer to that. I mean, I personally think that putting some capital in our operating budget would be a fantastic thing to do, but obviously that would require an override. But I just hope that if there is an override in the near term that some, some capital number is thrown in there, even if it's 2 million a year, um, you need those recurring funds so that when you have a capital improvement plan and you say, this school needs new H V A C and this school needs new windows, and that you actually have some means of funding those projects, you're not just identifying them and putting them on a list.

▶ 1:04:54 Jen Grigoraitis: Yeah, and I think, I mean, the Winthrop doors, uh, project is a great example. I mean, I think until you really think about the fact that we have a bunch of elementary school students, that if there is the need to secure those students in the classroom, a teacher has to walk into the hallway, lock the door from the outside, and then close the door, like that feels like something we probably wanna address sooner rather than later. So, um, I appreciate your thoughtfulness. Thank you for answering my questions. Um, I'm sorry there isn't more, so more money and more opportunity. So thank you. Thank you, Madam Chair. Thank you.

▶ 1:05:25 Maya Jamaleddine: Um, vice chair Jamal Laine. Thank you. Thank you, director Praks and Mr. For being with us, uh, tonight and for your, you know, great work, um, on your department. Um, I'm seeing 9.6 increase in the salary item

▶ 1:05:45 Speaker 7: In which,

▶ 1:05:50 Speaker 7: Is that in administration and engineering? There

▶ 1:06:00 Speaker 7: just lost it. Oh, that, that might have been in water sewer.

▶ 1:06:04 Speaker 1: So in, in the first page, the,

▶ 1:06:07 Maya Jamaleddine: for next current year.

▶ 1:06:10 Speaker 7: Oh, that's in sewer.

▶ 1:06:12 Speaker 1: Yes.

▶ 1:06:13 Maya Jamaleddine: So I do see 8.9 total increase. Is that,

▶ 1:06:20 Speaker 9: That just, Yeah, so, um, we have, uh, two employees in our sewer division that are at the max step. Mm-hmm. As part of the negotiation in the, in this, uh, union contract, they added steps at the bottom, at the bottom end of their, of their stuff. So now, rather than just getting the cost of living adjustment, they're now getting step adjustments on top of that. So that would account for a little bit more of an increase than what normally you would see, or a bigger increase than what we'd see in, um, like the, the 3.7 or the 2.9. And some of them are lower because we've replaced some long-term employees with some people at an entry level step. So, uh, there's the, there's gonna be the difference for those.

▶ 1:07:07 Maya Jamaleddine: So those that are at entry levels, um, employees, are you, um, assessing their salaries based on their, um, years of experience or based on their, um, you know, certificate or degrees? Yeah, if I,

▶ 1:07:25 Speaker 9: If I understand your question correctly, the way that the salary grid, the, the people who would come in at the entry level step, they're, they're at steps one or two. And as you progress, you're getting the, I think it's a straight 3% increase, uh, year after year. So once you get to that top step, some of those people were getting just a cost of living adjustment. But now to add those additional steps at the end of the salary grid, they're getting not only the cost of living, but then the adjustment to that they're adding into that next, uh, step according. So it works out to be somewhere around 5% Okay. Or so for those. But then you also have the, uh, non-union negotiated salaries for those people that are adjusted and spread amongst the, the various divisions. So you'll see that a little bit higher in the water and sewer suicide, more so the sewer, because you have the people at the top step.

▶ 1:08:16 Speaker 7: Also, we do hire, um, we do look at experience and the certificates and such when we decide what level to hire at. So typically if we're hiring somebody right out of high school, we have a lot of summer helpers who we, it's great we get to pick the cream of the crop when, when we have a labor position open. Mm-hmm. Because we typically have a handful of folks who have worked for us in the summers and then want to come in as full-time employees. Um, they tend to get hired at step one. They tend to be coming in with, you know, the summer experience, but not other training or education. Um, but if somebody is coming into a labor position but already has, let's say their hoisting license or, um, a water license or such, we would hire them above step one in order to be competitive. We would have to hire them above

▶ 1:09:05 Maya Jamaleddine: Step one. Any, um, collaboration with the Vogues, uh, in terms of those that, you know, get graduated from, um, those schools? Do we have any kind of work for them?

▶ 1:09:16 Speaker 7: We, we did hire one junior mechanic. Yeah. I've, I've been advocating for a long time for the junior mechanic position to be, um, you know, someone right out of the vo. And we did hire one employee who had been at the Vogue, but then he didn't end up staying so Awesome. Um, but definitely we're interested in that.

▶ 1:09:33 Maya Jamaleddine: Yeah. And you've mentioned that you were looking to increase to add two more positions. If we were going to get those two positions, do you know how much that would the, the budget for those two positions would be? Yeah, so

▶ 1:09:48 Speaker 9: We've, we've budgeted those positions about 52 to $55,000. So it adds about a hundred, 104, 105. If, um, we look at what we submitted versus what was approved in the two line items for salaries and wages. It works out to be pretty much exactly the 52 and $55,000 difference from what we submitted versus what was approved.

▶ 1:10:12 Speaker 7: And then there are the indirect, the, um, correct, the, uh, insurance benefits, costs and everything, which would be on top of that. And I think our rate is, if I remember correctly, somewhere in the range of 30% on top of that for insurance.

▶ 1:10:27 Maya Jamaleddine: Got it. Um, now my last question, and I appreciate your patience. Um, you've provided a list of those projects that are still in pro uh, progress, right? Um, is there any project that for some reason, and we know there is so many reasons that happened during the pandemic, um, your department decided not to proceed with this project?

▶ 1:10:52 Speaker 7: Nothing that's been funded, no.

▶ 1:10:56 Maya Jamaleddine: So everything is on track and, you know, planning to complete it? Yes. Okay. Thank you. Thank

▶ 1:11:02 Speaker 1: You, Counselor Stewart.

▶ 1:11:09 Robb Stewart: Thank you, Madam Chair. Thank you Mr. Rouen. Mr. Parz Ellis, appreciate you being here this evening. Um,

▶ 1:11:17 Robb Stewart: I have the, the operating budget that was handed to us on May 5th. All right. So that it's not the end of the fiscal year. There's a couple months left in the fiscal year. And is there a bit of a tail in terms of your spend? And, and the reason why I ask is, uh, you feel very short across a lot of your departments in terms of budget versus spend.

▶ 1:11:44 Speaker 9: Yeah, there's, there's actually, there's actually quite a few factors there. There are, there are definitely some seasonality things. So I'll use, for example, uh, parks and forestry when you're getting the, uh, fields and the parks and everything like that ready, uh, you know, you're gonna see historically, uh, a spike in spending towards the end of the fiscal year. Uh, when we are looking at facilities, uh, one of the things that we've had an extreme benefit of is, uh, both fema uh, reimbursements, uh, covid and ARPA funds and things like that, so that it's served as a little bit of a crutch, uh, for us to use to deliver some of the services as well as some of the things that we do for energy savings that directly affect, uh, the operating budget. Looking forward, what we want to try to do is we want to try to put some fiscal controls in place to position ourselves at the end of the year. And what we're currently trying to do is we're trying to put forth some energy savings measures, taking advantage of national grid incentives and other rebates so that we can achieve some energy savings, uh, in those particular departments. And then the savings supplements some of the things that we're gonna do in terms of maintenance. So right now in facilities, you're gonna see them spike with some spending for, to prep for their summer projects in the other divisions. We're gonna prep, prep them and get them ready so that they can purchase the stock supplies that they need to start off fiscal 24. But, uh, one of the big expenses that we're gonna, uh, see in the next couple months are gonna be those summer construction projects that we eat up quite a bit of, uh, drainage and, uh, other maintenance items and water and sewer. But we're also gonna propose a significant energy savings project that we're gonna pay for now, rather than put on, on-bill, uh, repayments. And we're gonna use appropriated monies, fund those projects and pay for them fully, and then truly achieve those savings in the energy, uh, line items, specifically facilities in fiscal 24. It's gonna position us to be, uh, uh, a little bit better to deal with increasing costs and other demands to deliver the services in fiscal 24. So we do look at that and we do try to chart that over the course of the year. And then once we get to about April or May, now we want to position ourselves so that we're ready to go to deliver the summer projects and then to position us well for the next fiscal year.

▶ 1:14:17 Robb Stewart: Yeah. Okay. All right. Um, so maybe my question was a little bit misguided, because when I look, so for example, on your administration engineering, contractual right, your 85 k short as of May, uh, for your engineering supplies, your 27 k short, if I continue going your 80 k short on facilities, maintenance supplies and material, your 200 k over on the Public Works highway, however, you're 26 k short on supplies and material for public highway, you're 230 short on the supplies and material for snow removal. And, and the reason why I ask, I mean the, those are the major ones. There's other minor ones as well and it adds up. Right? And so, you know, I, I don't want to question the details of your budgeting activities cause I know you know the numbers backwards and forwards better than I'm sure any of us. But when I hear that you're looking for a couple new resources, is there a way to shift and tighten up some of that operational capacity right. To then fund those?

▶ 1:15:30 Speaker 9: Right. So, uh, excluding the snow, snow is a different animal altogether.

▶ 1:15:35 Robb Stewart: It's not snow, I'm sorry, Jim, uh, I didn't need to interrupt, but it was supplies and material as opposed to the, the actual operational aspects of this, the, the contractual.

▶ 1:15:46 Speaker 9: Right, right. Um, again, I, I I, I, I wanna exclude snow from that cuz that's gonna be specific. There are specific guidelines for what we can spend monies on, on snow and ice. So it has to, we have to look at that a little bit differently and, but I do agree that, you know, if there are shortfalls, why aren't we spending that money? But, um, you know, there are two strategies that we could employ. We could maybe, uh right. Shift some of those monies. And right before we started and the positions that we did, I believe that the previous director, the interim director, Rick Stinson did a little bit of some right. Shifting there. And unfortunately, I know the day that I started the city shutdown because of covid and some of the spending that, uh, we've done in our operating has kind of shifted, but it's really kind of skewed our ramp up process in adjusting some of these line items, uh, maybe from year to year. One of the things when we do shift those things that I fear is we'll see, let's just say the school maintenance items or the school equipment items that we're proposing of 57% increase on those things. I fear that people see that, but they maybe not necessarily see the minus that goes alongside of that. And I, and I get that. So what I wanna look at is I wanna look at the bottom line in those particular roll up codes, that group of accounts, and I look at that bottom line number and what I think we do when we look at those numbers over the last three years, and that's the tenure that, uh, Elena and I have been, we have done a very good job in managing those bottom line numbers and then minimizing that surplus so that we are, uh, basically empowering our division managers to make the purchases that they need. We do not want to discourage them to leave the monies on the table if they need something, we're gonna try to get it done for them. And I think that we've done a good job trying to see those right shifts that were done back three years ago and then spending accordingly. Is it line item to line item? No, I'll admit that. You know, you, you, you clearly like put that point that out and you're right about that. We just, I don't think that we've gotten to a point that we're, we want to confidently right. Shift that stuff based on the crutches that we've had over the last couple

▶ 1:18:09 Speaker 4: Years. Yeah. Okay. All right.

▶ 1:18:10 Speaker 7: Um, do you wanna make a couple other points? Um, sometimes when a line item when it shows, like I, I'm not sure if you said administration and engineering professional services might have been one of the ones you mentioned. Yeah, so sometimes when it shows original budget and then revised budget, that revised budget might have a free cash item or a capital project that's paid out of that line, dumped in as the revised budget. So you'll see the original budget was 40,000. The budget we're proposing for fiscal 24 is still 40,000. But it looks like we have a big, um, available budget there because we have a revised budget of 108,000. But that's something that got put in. That's a capital project that just hits that line item. So that's not real. That's dedicated money to something. And sometimes those are multi-year projects, so it might show as sort of unexpended funds, if you were to look, if you were to dig down into the details, it would probably show as encumbered in a purchase order for a dedicated purpose but is not yet spent. So that, that skews things a little bit in some of these lines. Yep. Um,

▶ 1:19:16 Robb Stewart: But it's still 10,971 short, right?

▶ 1:19:25 Speaker 6: Yes. Yeah. Okay. Um,

▶ 1:19:27 Speaker 7: and then the other thing that I wanted to point out is a, a good example of this is in the highway budget, if you look at our

▶ 1:19:38 Speaker 7: drain or drainage items, so we have public works, nty, storm drain, public works, drain maintenance, MS four drain program. So those are all, they look like they're significantly underspent, but we have major projects that we need to use those for. And typically we will wait until the spring and then execute those projects because we need to leave the money as a reserve in case we have a major failure and we need to use those funds for something that we're not planning. Mm-hmm. So we would leave some of those funds, um, in place. And then right now we have a project going on where, as I mentioned, how we camera inspected all the drains, uh, and all the sewers underneath the roads that we're gonna be paving. We identified a number of drain repairs that were critical cutter street alone required. Um, just we, once we got out there and started digging, we needed 12,000 more dollars in just stock to replace the drain. Once we had a drain that we weren't able to inspect the whole thing until we started digging. We couldn't tell what the condition was. We ended up having to replace an extra 150 feet, um, which was substantial. So a lot of times we don't get into those projects on purpose until the spring because we don't wanna spend down all the money in the fall and then be in a bad position if something comes up.

▶ 1:21:00 Robb Stewart: Okay. The other question re regarding, uh, the, the facilities and the two traditional physicians, you, you had mentioned that you, you sometimes leverage tradespeople and that you have to pay them overtime to do the work. Is that, did I hear that right? Yes. And so I would assume that tradespeople are at a different and potentially higher salary level. So there is a fairly significant cost differential because of that overtime that you're gonna be paying out of pocket anyways. Have you done the math to show that you can just hire these people and, and not have to go to the tradespeople and Yes. Provide the overtime?

▶ 1:21:50 Speaker 7: So we have actually, we completed what I would consider three capital projects this year using our in-house trade staff, um, the city hall lower level ceiling, the locker rooms at the police station, and the teacher's room at the Hoover. Um, in all three of those cases, we priced out after we had completed the work, um, to illustrate to the other departments how much of a hit these capital projects take just on our facilities budget, we actually priced out the entire project and then we compared it to what we anticipated we would've spent had we put the workout to bid and hired a contractor to do them. And we actually spent significantly less money paying our own staff overtime than we would've to have a contractor perform the same work. Um, but our, our approach moving forward is that we're no longer going to undertake projects like this out of our operating budget. Um, we are gonna consider these capital projects, we're gonna have a threshold whereby these become capital projects and we can't, we just can't keep supporting them through operating funds. So, let's see, let's say, um, actually a perfect example is the IT department is putting in new projectors at, I believe it's the Lincoln this summer, and they need a lot of support from our tradesmen to put up the, um, the smart boards and the, to hang the projectors and stuff. So we decided to, you know, they have a capital budget for this project, so we gave them a budget estimate of what it would cost for our tradespeople to do the work, um, knowing that it's gonna require overtime because it's, it, it's just beyond what we have the capacity to do when we're doing all of our other painting projects and maintenance and everything in the schools. And then they're, they're going to absorb, absorb that in the capital budget for that project. Um, so that's, that's the direction we're headed now. But we, we have seen significant cost savings even at those overtime rates for our laborers because if we're paying somebody, um, you know, $45 an hour and their overtime rate ends up being $70 an hour, it's still cheaper than the, the prevailing wage rates to hire a carpenter.

▶ 1:24:11 Robb Stewart: And I appreciate all that. That's, that's great information. I was actually talking about the other side where you're spending overtime for overqualified people to do potentially custodial work and it seems that that is wasted revenue. I would assume

▶ 1:24:25 Speaker 7: It would be fantastic if we had more resources to, to pull from for those shifts, but sometimes the only people available to take those shifts are highly paid employees. And I will also say some of our custodians are, bless you, are also highly paid employees because they've been here for so long. Mm-hmm. And the way the union contract is structured, they have seniority, so they also get more of those shifts. Okay. So that's just kind of built into the contract.

▶ 1:24:53 Speaker 4: Got it. Okay. Great. Um,

▶ 1:24:59 Robb Stewart: you answered a lot of the other questions, so, um, I will thank you. Uh, I appreciate your, your input. Thank you, Madam Chair.

▶ 1:25:06 Speaker 1: Any other questions? Council Williams.

▶ 1:25:11 Ryan Williams: Thank you. Um, so I wanted to ask a few questions about specific projects and specific, um,

▶ 1:25:18 Speaker 5: operations. Um, and I've made like a little laundry list. I'm just gonna go right through 'em, uh, the trees.

▶ 1:25:22 Ryan Williams: I'm like Councilor Gepe. I, I wish we had a line item for trees, but I do want to commend the department for doing a really good job on trees this year. Way better than we've seen in the past. And if you look on my street, the woman who lives across the street from me has a new tree. I have a new tree and our tree is like, started off like two feet taller just because the trees coming in are bigger. The, the tree circumference is bigger, which means the tree is healthier when it lands. And the follow up has been excellent. We've had, I actually saw water truck come by in water the tree, which I didn't expect to see. We've been watering the tree like every couple of days. And this tree I'm saying has grown. It was like two feet taller than me when we started and now it's like five feet taller than me. I mean, it's growing really fast and it just gave me a lot of hope for the tree program, um, that it's gonna work out. And, but so this wasn't always the case. Right? And we have this backlog of trees that were planted a few years ago that maybe aren't getting that extra tlc. Right. They don't have the watering truck coming around because we don't have that in that planting contract, but on public property. Um, I was curious as to whether we have, so Hoover has like six new trees and the, the gator bags are always empty. Is that something that we can have? Is that something school staff does? It's something public works can do. Do we have a water truck?

▶ 1:26:40 Speaker 7: It's, it is something that we do water. Um, you know, we water the hanging baskets and stuff. Yes. And we used to water, we used to go around and water and uh, do the gator bags ourselves. The new contract we did add in a maintenance option so that we can have the contractor do it. Um, but the gator bags are also designed, they're supposed to be empty. They're supposed to empty over the course of a week or so. And, um, they're supposed to remain empty until, I can't remember if it was a week or two weeks later. I think it's about a week. Um, we did have, when I first started here, we did have a lot of people asking about the gator bags and I had looked up all the information was surprised to see cuz I thought, you know Yeah, you keep water in them all the time. Right, right. Um, so an empty gator bag's not necessarily a bad thing, but if there are gator bags that aren't getting filled because they're not part of the present contract, but they're still on the old, the old new trees. Yeah. We can look at sending our parks folks around.

▶ 1:27:38 Ryan Williams: Yeah. Maybe like a year back maybe. I don't know how long they stay on there before they get pulled off. All I've seen is

▶ 1:27:43 Speaker 7: You'll leave them on about two years.

▶ 1:27:44 Ryan Williams: Okay. All I really notice is the Hoover trees and they look like they're in pretty good shape, but I want 'em to stay in good shape cuz it's like, you know, we got tons of new trees. That was great. Um, so traffic calming pilot. Yes. You've been hearing about this for a long time, right? When do you think, like, give me a month.

▶ 1:28:03 Ryan Williams: So do You think we are gonna actually see rubber in the street?

▶ 1:28:08 Speaker 7: The, um, the Neighbor Airways group did present to us the,

▶ 1:28:15 Speaker 7: um, the online tool, the prioritization tool. Okay. And we had some tweaks that we wanted. Okay. And so they're, they're massaging it a little and then they're going send it to us again and Vonny and I are gonna test it out and then if we have any final comments, they'll make those changes and then we'll roll that out. Can

▶ 1:28:30 Speaker 5: We, can we preview it? Can some of us get a chance to just take a look and see what's under the hood?

▶ 1:28:35 Speaker 7: Uh, neighbor Waves has told us that they're out of money. They've, so now they're working for free. Okay. So I don't think they're gonna want more comments. I think if, you know, once, once Bonnie and I go through it one more time after they make our initial changes, I think that's gonna be the finished product. Because contractually that's what they own is one round of comments from us. Um, but certainly with the traffic calming, um, free cash request, we did say that, you know, any further needs for the traffic calming toolkit or the pilot program would be part of that funding request. So if we need to have a small amendment with them once we roll it out, if there are comments we can certainly ask them to

▶ 1:29:15 Ryan Williams: Request. Yeah, I remember, I remember talking to them and they, you know, I, I really asked them about the community outreach and I know that they were intending to do a couple, at least one round of community outreach as part of They are planning on Still doing this. Yeah. Okay.

▶ 1:29:29 Speaker 7: Okay. Um, and then the piloting, they've been doing their field work online in Woodland. And so the, the plan is still to pilot those this summer. Um, we did have a little hiccup with, we wanted, they wanted us to collect before and after, um, speed and volume data and Sergeant Gok was having some trouble with the equipment for that the police department has. So he was trying to troubleshoot that and get it back up and running. We had hoped to gather the data before school got out, but now we're, we're so close. So, um, and they were hoping to get the pilot materials in over the summer. Mm-hmm. We still will collect the before data, even if it's summer data just out of it. But, but that's where we are now. We're very close.

▶ 1:30:10 Ryan Williams: Cool. Very cool. I can't wait to see it. Um, I noticed in the shift to another totally different topic, trash and recycling, recycling costs way up in the 24 budget. What does that mean in terms of the contract for next year?

▶ 1:30:24 Speaker 9: Yeah, I think that remains to be seen. So, um, you know what, what our intent now for the next contract is to separate it out. We have a one shop, one stop shop in the current contract. Mm-hmm. And I think that the city will be more in a, in a better position if we separate those out. We have a wild card up on Route 99 at the transfer station, and I think that that's probably the route that we're gonna go in terms of recycling, processing. The way that contracts now are now are structured, it will set a baseline threshold for, uh, the recycling, uh, fee. Mm-hmm. It will, uh, be based on the current commodity pricing and it will allow a community to, uh, share in the rebate. So when the, uh, recycling product is, let's call it good. Mm-hmm. Uh, when they have, uh, uncontaminated recyclable materials and the product that they're receiving is good when they make money off it, they share that, uh, with the municipality. So that's an opportunity for us to try to work to maximize our share of, of that recycling processing. So, uh, still too early in the game to tell you exactly how it's gonna shift, but I, I see that we're gonna probably be positioning ourselves to share in, uh, the, the good parts of the recycling processing. The unfortunate thing is now that those costs are baked into, uh, new hauling contracts and it's something that we'll have to deal with.

▶ 1:31:59 Ryan Williams: Um, have you ever considered, and I don't really know what the benefit of the downside to this is, uh, are there, are there opportunities to reduce the weight of trash that we produce through compost pilot programs? I, I compost now. I just started doing this last year. We probably put 50 pounds of compost out, you know, a week.

▶ 1:32:20 Speaker 9: I, I, I can say this definitively. Yeah. Uh, the D P W is, uh, very lucky to have our environmental outreach coordinator. Elena and I were chatting about it today that in our tenure we, we feel most confident not to say that the other people did a bad job, but we love the direction that our current, uh, coordinator is taking things. She talked to me today about a two to five year plan to implement a composting program at the schools. Mm-hmm. And I found that tremendously impressive. And one thing that we will try to foster and build on, uh, but she is, uh, very passionate about trying to reduce the, the weight in the, in the trash and to explore programs that are available to us. So, uh, uh, it's a priority of ours and I think that we're lucky that we have somebody in the place that considers it a priority for them. And we're gonna give that person free reign to really evolve that and, and to try to, uh, maximize what goes out of the waste stream and out of our trash tonnage.

▶ 1:33:26 Ryan Williams: Yeah. That's great. I appreciate hearing that. Um, okay. I wanted to make a comment in line with President Greg, president Greg's comment, um, anytime you can find a consultant that will take the weight of the proposal writing off you for IRA projects, I think it's just a, it's a value add, right? I, so I personally, I would encourage and support any request for a consultant to do proposal writing right now with B I L and IRA and all these programs coming down. Um, um, I, I'm having a call with somebody that's, that's managing some transportation funding at the MPO tomorrow that I hope to share with you both and with, with, um, Denise some good news about that. But I understand that like Vny is writing all these proposals. Is that right? So, you know, it's, it's a lot for the city engineer to also be taking all this on. So if you guys, if you can find a grant writer that will help you coordinate this, I think it would be well worth the money. Um, sidewalk budget is small sidewalk repair budget, super small.

▶ 1:34:28 Speaker 7: It's typically supplemented with a free cash. Free cash. Yeah. Wait a minute. It's not this year. I feel you have some leftover from last year, but Oh, that's good. That's good. It's gonna Get eaten up

▶ 1:34:37 Ryan Williams: Quick. Yeah. Yeah. I feel the same way about sidewalks. That counselor Gar feels about trees, ongoing costs needs to be a bigger, you know, line of the budget and they go well together. Um, I wanna remind you that the middle school has, the middle school has an accessibility need a serious accessibility need around the poles. Right. We need a sidewalk to go from the street to the entrance to the building. Right.

▶ 1:35:00 Speaker 7: It's happening this summer. Perfect.

▶ 1:35:01 Ryan Williams: Love it. Yeah. Great. Um,

▶ 1:35:08 Ryan Williams: I, $50,000 for the traffic calming, it's gone like that. Right? I mean, you know, you've got intersection improvements on there that's like half of one intersection and I understand that we have budget constraints. I wish that we had more cash to put into that. Um, but I would encourage the use of passive non-technology devices as much as possible. I just think that you can get a lot more bang for your buck with 10 speed humps than you can with three radar signs. That's just my, you know, that's, that's like a little bit of a feedback there. I'm really excited for the traffic calming program and, and I feel like if we can earmark those funds into that kind of work, that kind of a, a program and get away a little bit from these, you know, flashing lights and you know, slow down signs that we're gonna see a lot of benefit in that. So, um, appreciate that. Um, I noticed that drainage had spent 48 K in FY 22 $0 budgeted for FY 23 or, uh, FY 23 or FY 24. That's in the Munis report that we got. Um, which Line is that? So that's line, there

▶ 1:36:09 Speaker 7: Are some lines that we just don't use. They're not, um, because they were for, they were created for specific projects in the past,

▶ 1:36:18 Ryan Williams: I'm gonna have to look through this for two seconds, but I believe it was down in, it's not in highway, it's not in snow removal.

▶ 1:36:27 Speaker 9: Our drainage would be In Yeah, drainage is in highway.

▶ 1:36:30 Ryan Williams: Oh it is in highway. Okay. Or maybe I skipped over it.

▶ 1:36:32 Speaker 9: Maybe, uh, halfway down. Uh, the,

▶ 1:36:35 Ryan Williams: It's at the bottom. It's, yeah, it's at the bottom. Oh 1 4 2 23 all the way at the bottom of 4 22. Um, public works highway.

▶ 1:36:43 Speaker 7: Yeah, that's a capital. That's a capital That's capital. So that was at some point, um, in 22 I guess that related to a specific project. Okay. That was just for that year.

▶ 1:36:55 Ryan Williams: Okay. Um, oh yeah, I have a, I have a resident in Ward seven who has a drainage need cuz they live on an easement and they're on the other side of the Hoover school, which is the only property I've ever been at that you have to go uphill on the way in and the way out. And so there's a lot of runoff there. And I, speaking with uh, the city engineer at one point, she mentioned to me how important it was that we have funds in drainage specifically. Yes.

▶ 1:37:18 Speaker 7: We, we have a real need. There are a lot of needs in drainage. Yeah. And we, um, I know traditionally before I started, uh, drain bonds were a thing. Yeah. You know, John Chen used to occasionally for bigger projects get drain bonds and we have not had a drain bond um, in the last, the ones that I was spending when I started a city engineer were left over from other projects. Mm-hmm. So we have not had a new drain bond in the last eight years. And we definitely need to, we have projects we've identified in our CIP p again, there's a real difference between the list and the CIP p of what we need money for and then the funds that are available to fund those analysts.

▶ 1:37:59 Ryan Williams: Right, right. One thing that, uh, that came out of that discussion, um, as an idea to throw out there to everybody was uh, uh, surcharge on large impervious landowners. Right. Big parking lots, things like this hunt's photo, if you got a big parking lot, you pay a little bit per square foot and that goes into the drainage budget cuz they're the ones that are producing all of the drainage problems.

▶ 1:38:22 Speaker 7: Yeah. That's actually other communities. Some communities not many do assess a storm storm water fee. It is typically assessed based on a percent impervious of your lot or a or impervious volume on your lot. Um, and at, at the time when I first started, I had discussed this with the folks who were here at the time, mayor Dolan, um, and others. And there was really no appetite for, for creating a stormwater, basically you'd create a stormwater utility. Right. It would be a separate enterprise fund and then you would assess fees. Mm-hmm. Um, Redding does it, the, the perception here was that we tend to be perceived to have high water and sewer rates. Um, I think we have appropriate water and sewer rates, but that's, that's sort of a perception of a lot of Melrose and that there would be zero appetite for another enterprise funded fee-based utility. Um, if someone, you know, thinks that the tides have changed on that and that it's something that we should revisit, we certainly could. But it's a big, um, it's a big undertaking and, you know, we'd have to convince folks that, that it's worthwhile. And on that same note, I think now would also be a difficult time knowing that right now our trash fees that are on the water and sewer bills cover our trash hauling and disposal services. Mm-hmm. And that's gonna be a conversation for next year when the, when there's a sharp increase in those services, do we expect the fees to still cover those services? And if we do putting a stormwater fee on top of that, on the same bill would be a tough sell. Sure.

▶ 1:40:04 Ryan Williams: Sure. Um, do you have a specific time the Lebanon tip's been here since I've been here. Do you have a specific timeline for 25% to be submitted to mpo?

▶ 1:40:12 Speaker 7: So the 25% design requires $800,000. And we, we did apply for community mitigation fund for some portion of that. We're using some of those wrap funds through a Chapter 90 offshoot, um, for some portion of that. So, and we're using a little bit of road bond money for the 25% design, but we don't, I think we're over 500,000 short on that 800,000. So until we fund the rest of the 25%, we don't move to the next step. Okay. But we're doing everything we can to keep ourselves in the queue. We don't want to be kicked back Yeah. Out of the queue and have to start over or we'll never see that project. We're,

▶ 1:40:50 Speaker 9: We're right in that window to hear about the community mitigation grant application that we submitted.

▶ 1:40:55 Ryan Williams: What'd you apply? How much did you apply for?

▶ 1:40:57 Speaker 9: Uh, there were thresholds on there. I can't think of it right now, but there were thresholds for design and then there was increased thresholds for construction, which would be for the next round. I can't think of the threshold right now. Okay. Okay.

▶ 1:41:08 Ryan Williams: Um, did we get the Elk Park Mass Trails grant?

▶ 1:41:13 Speaker 7: To my knowledge, either we didn't get it or we haven't heard VNI was the one who clicked submit. So she's the one who was, would've been notified. And I need to ask her because I haven't heard anything. Yeah. So

▶ 1:41:25 Ryan Williams: They were scoring applications like a month ago, but I don't know if that means, So she,

▶ 1:41:29 Speaker 7: they were just got notified that we didn't get it and just forgot to tell me so far or Okay. Okay. Or we haven't heard yet. I'm hoping we haven't heard yet. Cause I think it's a really good application. Yeah. And we were wait listed the last time. We weren't, we weren't rejected. Okay. So we scored at least well enough to make the wait list.

▶ 1:41:43 Ryan Williams: All right. All right. That's it for me. Thanks.

▶ 1:41:50 Leila Migliorelli: Any other questions? Um, so just so we know, procedurally what has to happen next is that we have, we have multiple lines for D P W. Um, I'd like to entertain a motion to conjoin, um, lines 4 0 1 4 0 2 4 22 4 23. 4 33 4 75. 4 85 and 4 91 for the purposes of moving to the bottom line.

▶ 1:42:15 Speaker 2: Motion To conjoin second

▶ 1:42:17 Speaker 1: Motion. Uh, councilor Eccles motions to conjoin those lines seconded by Councilor Ella. Anyone on discussion? Um,

▶ 1:42:33 Jen Grigoraitis: Adam, chair? Yes. Motion to move the bottom line on the conjoined. Um, thank you D P w budget lines. Those

▶ 1:42:39 Speaker 1: Orders are now conjoined. Yes. Thank you.

▶ 1:42:41 Speaker 4: Point of order? Yes. I think we had to vote on, vote

▶ 1:42:43 Leila Migliorelli: On that. All in favor? All in favor of conjoining those orders. Aye. Aye. Any opposed? Okay. That motion carries.

▶ 1:42:53 Speaker 1: Now your motion to move bottom

▶ 1:42:55 Jen Grigoraitis: Line. Move the bottom line on the conjoined orders. Second.

▶ 1:42:59 Leila Migliorelli: Okay. Motion to move the bottom line on the conjoined orders made by president. Seconded by Counselor Stewart. Um, anyone on discussion?

▶ 1:43:09 Speaker 1: The none Mr. Clerk, will you please call the

▶ 1:43:11 Speaker 2: Role Vice Chair Jamine? Yes. Uh, counselor Nell? Yes. Counselor Les? Yes. Council Garrette? Yes. Councilor Stewart? Yes. Williams? Yes. President Gore? Yes. And Chair Mcli? Yes. That's eight. Yes. Unanimous.

▶ 1:43:27 Leila Migliorelli: That motion carries. At this time we'll also vote on the recycling revolving account. 26 57 con motion. And then on discussion,