Rule 53 Reports

Transcript (~4 min @ 48:16)

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▶ 48:14 Speaker 2: president Sinella yes that is seven six yes five no all right and we don't

▶ 48:20 Christopher Cinella: expires anything to report under rule 53 council Williams I don't actually know

▶ 48:30 Speaker 2: how rule 53 works their emails to kind of yeah yeah update on that so I would

▶ 48:37 Ryan Williams: like to make an update in a rule 53 as and I've communicated this to the council before but i'm going to say it for the benefit of the public as you know i am the council liaison for the water and sewer rate setting committees these meetings are not posted online and the minutes can be requested but they aren't readily available on the internet and so i thought i would provide a little bit of information based on what i've heard in the meetings so far for the benefit of the public these meetings are midway through the process there will be two more meetings in the process the purpose of these meetings is to set water and sewer rates for the entire city for fiscal years in the future in this case fiscal year 23. there's going to be orders sent before the council and the rates are made final recommended by the committee so we'll all have a chance to engage with people and have lots of public input all of the meetings are accessible to the public but they're generally held at times like 3 p.m that are kind of tough for people to to do there is going to be one meeting at 7 p.m although it hasn't been scheduled yet the next meeting is going to be april the 14th at 3 p.m and it will be a fully remote meeting on the city's website at the remote meeting section um the the the short and long of it is that the rates for water and sewer in melrose will be going up and it's a question of how much they will be going up there's a discussion happening in the committee right now about how the city can best balance the funds it has in the enterprise account to balance some of the spike in costs that we've incurred after the pandemic shifted water usage patterns dramatically both in the incoming phase and the outgoing phase right now they're talking about potentially as much as five percent which would add about twenty dollars a quarter on the bill of the average melrose resident and that number could go up and down based on where the committee lands with its finances um so the uh city probably will not be able to report to the council until closer to the final meeting and you should anticipate hearing more about this sometime in late april or early

▶ 50:33 Speaker 2: may thank you there anything else anybody else want to report thank you

▶ 50:38 Mark Garipay: president Sinella I've been on the capital improvement committee and I just wanted to give you a quick update on that we've had we finished all the meetings we had two meetings four hours long with 96 projects and all the department heads came in front of us and pleaded the case for each project we then went in and ranked them based on a couple different categories we have finished that process miss Gaffey has it and they're putting it all together and we'll be presenting it to to the administration and I'm sure there'll be some things forthcoming with with free cash or whatever to handle some of these projects but it was quite amazing that they're 90 or 96 projects of technology infrastructure equipment needs in the city was it was a it was a very long process but it was a very interesting one so that's it thank you anybody else

▶ 51:44 Speaker 2: well I'll entertain a motion to adjourn at this time mr. president I'll make a