Appropriations & Oversight Committee — 2015-05-28

Attendance

Jaclyn L. Bird present · Vice Chairman; Robert A. Boisselle present · Ward 4 Alderman; Donald L. Conn Jr. present · President/Ex-officio Member; Scott M. Forbes present · Ward 7 Alderman; Gail Infurna present · Ward 5 Alderman; Jennifer L. Lemmerman present · Ward 2 Alderman; Mary Beth McAteer-Margolis absent · Alderman at Large; Monica C. Medeiros present · Alderman at Large; Peter D. Mortimer present · Chairman; John N. Tramontozzi present · Ward 1 Alderman; Francis X. Wright Jr. absent · Ward 3 Alderman

Agenda

1. Call to Order (9:38)
2. Public Participation (12:35)
3. Orders (29:30)
4. ORDER-2015-171 : Authorization of a Bond in the amount of $485,000.00 for the purpose of Citywide Drain Improvements (29:38)
5. ORDER-2015-154 : City of Melrose Operating Budget for Fiscal Year 2016 in the amount of $72,885,826.66 (Seventy Two Million, Eight Hundred Eighty Five Thousand, Eight Hundred Twenty Six Dollars and Sixty Six Cents) (54:45)
6. ORDER-2015-173 : Appropriation of 699,534.85 From Available Free Cash To Various Accounts As Set Forth Within (2:39:35)
7. ORDER-2015-166 : Reauthorization of Revolving Account #2657 Waste Collection & Recycling for FY16 (2:46:28)
8. Adjournment (2:46:58)

Minutes

CITY OF MELROSE APPROPRIATIONS COMMITTEE CALENDAR● MAY 28, 2015 Aldermanic Chamber Budget Hearing 7:30 PM The public should take notice that the Melrose Board of Aldermen may, on certain occasions, have a quorum in attendance due to standing committees of the Board of Aldermen consisting of both voting and non-voting members. Members attending this duly posted meeting are participating and deliberating only in conjunction with the business of the standing committee. Attendee Name Title Status Arrived Peter D. Mortimer Chairman Present Jaclyn L. Bird Vice Chairman Present Gail M. Infurna Ward 5 Alderman Present John N. Tramontozzi Ward 1 Alderman Present Monica C. Medeiros Alderman at Large Present Robert A. Boisselle Ward 4 Alderman Present Francis X. Wright Jr. Ward 3 Alderman Absent Mary Beth McAteer-Margolis Alderman at Large Absent Jennifer L. Lemmerman Ward 2 Alderman Present Scott M. Forbes Ward 7 Alderman Present Donald L. Conn Jr. President/Ex-officio Member Present In Attendance: City Treasurer Art Flavin; Director of Public Works John Scenna;

ORDER-2015-171 Bond Authorization of a Bond in the amount of $485,000.00 for the purpose of Citywide Drain Improvements Recommend Passage Board of Aldermen

ORDER-2015-154 Operating Budgets (City, School, Regional School) City of Melrose Operating Budget for Fiscal Year 2016 in the amount of $72,885,826.66 (Seventy Two Million, Eight Hundred Eighty Five Thousand, Eight Hundred Twenty Six Dollars and Sixty Six Cents) Without Recommendation Board of Aldermen

ORDER-2015-173 Appropriation Appropriation of 699,534.85 From Available Free Cash To Various Accounts As Set Forth Within Tabled Appropriations Committee City of Melrose Page 1 Updated 6/9/2016 3:07 PM Minutes Appropriations Committee May 28, 2015

ORDER-2015-166 Revolving Fund/Reauthorization Reauthorization of Revolving Account #2657 Waste Collection & Recycling for FY16 Recommend Passage Board of Aldermen City of Melrose Page 2 Updated 6/9/2016 3:07 PM

Transcript

▶ 9:33 Second. Second by Alderman Tramontozzi. All those in favor? Aye. Finance Committee is now concluded. Stay tuned for appropriations. Good evening ladies and gentlemen. It's Thursday, May 28th, 2015 at 7.30 in the evening. This is the Committee on Appropriations for the Melrose Board of Aldermen. I am the Chairman, Peter Mortimer. The Vice Chairman is Alderman Jacqueline Byrd. We're also joined this evening in this Committee of the Whole by Alderman Inferna, Alderman Tramontozzi, Alderman Medeiros, Alderman Boisselle, Alderman Lemmerman, Alderman Forbes, and President Kahn. Is there a motion to open the floor for public participation, please? Second. Is that you? Alderman Inferna has made a motion to open the floor for public participation, duly seconded by Alderman Byrd.

▶ 12:50 Peter D. Mortimer: This is the portion of our meeting where any member of the public present can come forward and make comments or ask some questions, not to be answered immediately, but maybe in the course of the evening. and ask some questions or make some comments and present them to the board of aldermen also before we begin I would just like to state for the record that this meeting is being recorded and recordings on DVD are available it's also available to see on the MMTV website or on the city website we are pending a motion but I see pending a motion that Alderman Medeiros might want a point of personal privilege trying to get my attention here no just just a just doing a little charades to remind you of course of being taped by yeah yeah

▶ 13:45 Peter D. Mortimer: yeah we were early days yeah that was that was right in the pipeline thanks anyway but thank you all right then motion to close public participation no No, no, no, we haven't. We have people who want to come forward. Come on. Sorry. Yeah, I don't think we- Yeah, we didn't vote for it. Point of order. All in favor of the motion by Alderman Inferno, duly seconded by Alderman Byrd to open public participation, please say aye. Aye. Any opposed? Hearing none, we are open for public participation. We are joined by Mr. Jerry Moroz. Would you write your address there? There's no paper. Right here. This is my paper. Can you just state it for the record? My name is Jerry Meroza, I live at 62 Mount Vernon Street.

▶ 14:31 62 Mount Vernon. Yes, thank you. I'm here to talk about a couple different issues tonight. The first one I want to raise is, I was here a couple years ago when we did a restructure of the water and sewer rates. I should say, when you did a restructure of the water and sewer rates, not me. At the time, I was asking for investment in the inflow and infiltration issue in Melrose. As you know, the MWRA costs that we pay are largely due to the sewer costs. And the more that we can reduce our sewer consumption, or rather, our metered sewer at the- Mr. Moroz, unless you intend to draw a nexus between some of the- Yeah, well, the general budget of the city is what I'm talking about here. Yeah, but that's not what we're on here for tonight.

▶ 15:25 a certain list of certain budgets that are on for this evening i saw that i thought i saw the city budget was on for tonight no okay it's kind of it's kind of a stretch we are having a public hearing on the water and sewer rates but i'm not talking within the water and sewer rate structure i'm talking to the city because what i believe is i believe that the city has an obligation and and good reason to fund the infrastructure of water and sewer more than we do to load all the burden of city infrastructure the water and sewer system is a public good and it's everybody in the community benefits from the water and sewer system whether they use a gallon of water or two million gallons of water and in my view you know we have in the in the thing tonight the bond

▶ 16:08 for the drains and granted we have an issue with some localized flooding in certain areas at big rainstorms and i and you know you look at the pictures there and you say sure we got to do something with that but to be putting that kind of money out and and two years ago when i was here asking for investment in ini instead of buying water meters what i what i was basically saying is that the sooner we do it the sooner we get ahead of the curve of the other towns the lower proportion of the mwra sewer system we pay and that benefits the whole city rate payers but the the to tie the other issue together here is that i believe the city has an obligation to fund in its general operating budget infrastructure of the water and sewer system and i would love to

▶ 16:54 see and i know it's not going to happen this year but i just wanted to come and make the statement again because apparently nobody remembered from two years ago to last year to this year i want to make the statement that it benefits our community to have a robust infrastructure and we do a lot with infrastructure but we're ignoring this huge infrastructure of ini we're only applying funds as the mwra releases them for low interest or no interest funds and when we do it that way we're we're getting better if you will at the same rate as every other community which means even if we get better we're going to pay the same high rates if we can accelerate our investment in ini reduction we can then get to a point where we pay a far less

▶ 17:37 percentage or we will we'll use a far less percentage relative to other communities and we will pay a far less burden of of money for our sewers rates and again i don't believe that it's fair that we put and i understand why you want to take everything out of the city budget to make more available for other things in the city budget and push it up to water and sewer but the truth is the person that uses very little water is in very little sewer has the benefit of the work we do for infrastructure but they're not paying it in the water and sewer rate and I think that the burden some of the burden ought to be on the city and so as you consider the drain bond tonight you know the question I'd like you to have

▶ 18:18 in the back of your mind is is okay for those three areas that we can make the flooding a little bit less that has been flooding for years and if we waited two or three more years yeah we might have a couple big rainstorms and they'll flood again and we'll have some issues with that but the the other side of that is the benefit of if we if we were actually use that money you're considering for drain bond tonight if we had that money to reduce ini we would be much better off and i do want to close this particular issue with one final comment is that you know everybody seemed to understand a couple years ago when i was bringing this issue up that finding a way to get people to stop pumping their basements into the sewer system would be huge and when i left the meetings you know back

▶ 19:03 in 2013 everybody's like oh yeah well that's a no-brainer we ought to do something about that and it's basically more public relations thing than anything else as a start i've seen nothing in two years about that and so we're hurting the city we're hurting the water and sewer rate payers by not doing a simple thing like that that doesn't take huge investment in ini that takes a little bit of marketing work and and i wish we'd do that anyway enough of that issue the next issue i want to talk about and and i just want to clarify so i'm not speaking out of place here but on your agenda tonight i saw the city budget on there and so it is on that agenda right it's it's a umbrella order okay so this but but this meeting it's it's only because each time we have to lay

▶ 19:48 Peter D. Mortimer: the order on the table and return it to the table so we can discuss the specific budgets that are before us this evening but there was a public meeting on the budget which we've already had there'll be a final meeting before the board of aldermen when the entire budget will be open for discussion but this is this isn't the type of night where you can say talk about the school committee or you could talk about the library which aren't on the budget there's one element that i don't even know where you've talked about it and if i could ask for a little just a little bit of leeway only take a couple minutes um the issue that i raised tonight is again it's a larger issue we appropriate we're planning to appropriate to the schools 25 plus million dollars as a city

▶ 20:35 appropriation directly to the schools obviously the city has other indirect costs and and the total amount of money spent by the schools ends up being more than 45 million dollars in a year um this this is kind of what i'm talking about i just said we're not schools aren't on for tonight i understand that what what i'm getting is to one place and i'll jump right to it um in the budget you you funded the last two years ten thousand dollars for something called innovation grants for the schools and you funded those outside of the school department budget and you know i didn't see exactly what part of the budget you were discussing that within and that's why i thought that with the whole budget on the table today i could bring this up and just very quickly the

▶ 21:15 issue is is that the super you trust the school committee and the superintendent to figure out out what money they need to apply to the schools whether you agree with that or not you're trusting them for that and you're giving them forty five million dollars basically to go to the schools now we get this little part of ten thousand dollars that you're holding separately now the question is who is best to know what that ten thousand dollars should be used for should you trust the school committee and superintendent as you do for the forty five million or do you say oh well you know they've got enough we'll try this separately because of something they're not doing that we want them to do now

▶ 21:55 I'm all for innovation but there are needs of the school department that aren't being met the $10,000 could conceivably meet those needs and mr. Moreau's I you kind of let anyone does what we speak apparently is that what it is okay kind of led me to believe that you're going to make a nexus you were going to make a connection like something on the budget this is tonight well this is in the larger budget and I apologize that I tell me what night you You discussed specifically the $10,000 grant. And is it going to, I don't see a hundred people sitting, waiting to speak. Could I just have a couple minutes to make my point and then I'll be done and sit down? We kind of have certain hearings and certain rules.

▶ 22:36 Monica C. Medeiros: I mean, if we make exceptions for one, we make for another, but why don't you hold that thought for a minute? I'll hold my thoughts for a minute. And Alderman Medeiros, on a point of personal privilege, raise her hand and she may have something that might be constructive. Alderman Medeiros, please. you mr chairman i appreciate the moment of personal privilege i just wanted to point out that the public hearing on the budget is set for this coming monday june 1st at 8 p.m correct and at 8 0 5 that same evening is scheduled the public hearing on water and sewer uh and and point out that uh the the school committee this well the area in which uh i think mr miraz is looking for is the human resources budget all right which is on hold yeah the human resources budget for the

▶ 23:25 Peter D. Mortimer: the school budget well is that 10 000 human resources is that where it is which which is on hold that's that's on hold i'm not sure when we're scheduled to review that again i think that's coming back up point of order what are we doing here um we are in the midst of public participation i've been trying to be lenient with mr morose uh to try to instruct him that we're talking about certain budgets here tonight um hoping that he's going to make a nexus with something tonight but well your comments are kind of astray you need to stay on a budget and well i'll tell you i i'll tell you i tried here i went on iqm2 i looked in there i see the city budget on there under tonight's meeting i feel like that's open for tonight's discussion if the city

▶ 24:11 Peter D. Mortimer: budgets on tonight's meeting on iqm2 i mean you know and the thing is is that that may be your feeling mr morose well why do you have that excuse me excuse me please don't speak when i'm speaking that may be your feeling mr morose but it's an incorrect fact it's not it's the entire budget is not up for discussion tonight okay so i could have been done completely with what i wanted to say by now but you know i'll try to make it back monday i have a conflict monday um i it's a It's a meeting that I can't control that I have to be at, but I'll try to be here Monday, and I'll speak to the public hearing if you really don't want two more minutes tonight. If you want to speak about something tonight that's on tonight's agenda, and I'll give you a copy of it, or you can see it right up there on the board, we'd be more than happy to listen.

▶ 24:56 Peter D. Mortimer: I'd love to see tonight's agenda if I could for a second. Mr. Chairman, I'd move to suspend the rules to allow Mr. Morales a moment or two to conclude his remarks, please. I agree with that. Very good. long as it's the will of the board uh we can do that we have a motion to suspend the rules to allow you to go off tonight's agenda that motion is made by president khan duly seconded by alderman Tramontozzi i'm glad somebody did make the motion quite frankly but otherwise i have to strict stick to procedure all in favor of the motion any opposed hearing none uh you you have been granted some leniency to uh thank you and and i do want to clarify travel the field one of the reasons why i'm bringing up this issue tonight is that on your meeting on iqm2 tonight there is a

▶ 25:43 letter just about this issue and i wouldn't know why it was posted there if this issue wasn't relevant for tonight so that's all done what i'd like to get at though is the point that i was trying to make is so if you have an extra ten thousand dollars you feel you can spare The superintendent has a thousand needs for it, and apparently you decide that you don't want to give it to her. And I understand that you might want to say you want innovation, and that you might want to have a little bit of money outside of what you give to the school's power structure to do something different with it, and that's great. The problem then you have, though, is that that $10,000 that you have, you basically

▶ 26:21 are giving it to the schools because on that committee you have three or four people of the schools, the mayor has control over those funds, and then you have this other group of people who, some of them were on the letter tonight that you, is on the IQM2 portal. And to be very frank, even though they might be using those funds for something that we think is progressive and good. The question is, why isn't the superintendent doing that with the $45 million rather than with just $10,000, number one? And number two, why don't we put it outside of the realm of a small group of people, a little clique of people connected with the mayor and connected with the power structure of the schools to really

▶ 27:08 do something innovative? And so then it's a slippery slope you've come to, though, because once you say $10,000 we're going to set aside well you know why don't we make it 20,000 give the school 10,000 less even more why don't make a 50,000 give the schools less than even more where does it stop and I just see the inconsistency here of saying we trust our superintendent we trust our school committee to do what we're doing and then oh well a little dig to them I'm gonna give it separately but then it's really not a dig to them because we're really giving it to them in a different way with with a group of other another cohort of people that are aligned with that and you know maybe the city ought

▶ 27:48 to have something other than I mean who structures it that way that if the grants have to be done is that devised by the mayor or is that devised by the alderman here I just want to raise the issue because I see that sitting out there a parallel issue that I just want to raise in the similar way is the Arts Council and the extra Messina money you know we have an Arts Council populated with people and I think there's even some overlap between the Arts Council in the Messina Fund, but why create two separate things? Why don't we give the money to one group of people who are tasked with figuring out how to best promote the arts in Melrose instead of having two competing things? And I think that to simplify it would be more pure, in a sense, because what I really fear

▶ 28:31 here in underlying a lot of this is basically there's a political undercurrent behind both the innovation money for the schools and the Messina money separately and you know we need to determine do we trust the people who we have on the Arts Council do we trust the superintendent in the school committee but if you're not going to trust them who really is best to determine what the other money should do and I'll stop there thank you thank you very much mr. Morales any Any other members of the public wishing to come forward to speak this evening? Motion to close public participation. Second. Seeing none, Alderman Boisselle has made a motion to close public participation. Said motion was duly seconded by Alderman Forbes.

▶ 29:19 Peter D. Mortimer: All in favor, please say aye. Aye. Any opposed? Hearing none, public participation is now closed. The first order we have before us is order 2015-171. authorization of a bond in the amount of $485,000 for the purpose of city-wide drain improvements. I would welcome a motion to suspend the rules, please. So moved. Second. Alderman Forbes has made a motion to suspend the rules, duly seconded by Alderman Inferna. All in favor, please say aye. Aye. Any opposed? Hearing none, we are under suspension. Gentlemen, city officials, would you please come forward? at this time we'll have one city official uh the director of public works mr john shenna coming to speak to us about this order mr shenna would you like to make an opening statement or

▶ 30:13 proceed directly to questions and comments so i i would thanks thank you alderman good evening everyone again the um the order before you is uh to fund drainage improvements city-wide the improvements include the repair and upgrade installation of piping structures catch basins and other pertinent components of the drainage system and obviously the restoration of existing roadway sidewalk and other surfing surface conditions that are necessitated by this work the upgrades are aimed at alleviating flooding conditions in accordance with storm water quality standards i've attached to the order a recommendation from our engineering division in public works and our city engineer the majority of the funding in this

▶ 31:04 order would be focused in three areas of work design and construction and two additional areas of additional studies that the engineering office would like to do so that we can better understand the area the concerns in these areas and move forward with repairs of some sort there as well the first area is Grove at linwood ave during heavy rainstorms the intersection of grove and linwood is left impassable i've attached a picture of that to the order as well photograph three and four now this does not occur during rain events average rain events the issues that we're trying to address here incur during heavy intense summer rains or the intense rain storms that you the 10-year the 15-year flood that we um that we experience and we seem to be experiencing more

▶ 32:07 and more of that of those last year in particular in the summer of 2014 it seemed like we went through a stretch of four or five weeks where every week we had at least one if not two um it's the end of may for instance and where you know we're experiencing weather conditions that we typically do in july and august right now so there's some impr some unpredictability and what the weather brings us and these storms seem to be surfacing more and more um the funding that's this funding request is about 10 percent of the request that this administration put forward years ago when we asked for nearly over five million dollars to address city flooding issues in ward to in other areas of the city but in my opinion these issues are just as important to the people

▶ 32:53 that live in these neighborhoods as those were at the time i think this is a good program that we should move forward with so the first area is grove at lynnwood the second is burrell street from harding to lincoln i also attached a photo there of what happens that's photograph one and two that i've attached and the last one is um we call it stowcroft road but it's actually an easement in the backyards of stowcroft between stowcroft and old brook circle very similar to converse lane where we have piping through people's backyards in this instance the piping does go through their backyards and through time the piping is settled it's caused reverse pitch and during heavy rains the area the low area of these backyards flood and the water stays there

▶ 33:43 sometimes for days until the system can gain enough capacity to release itself the department over the winter the engineering office and of the DPW solicited through an RFQ process the partnership of an engineering firm to help us with these with this work they selected meridian associates they've developed some conceptual plans that I also attached for your review and an estimate of not just these project these three project areas but also the studies as far as the studies are concerned is an area in Fairfield Ave now Fairfield Ave sits high above Lebanon Street it's one of those finger streets off of Park there's a drainage system there that comes through woods down to park street down to lebanon street from those finger streets off a park

▶ 34:39 the system is either blocked or has failed we need to study this to try to figure out what's happening and try to get the water to come to lebanon street in a manageable manner the last part of the studies is conan park conan park is a little league field but has a major drainage just like most of our little league and athletic facilities have we have a drainage system that crosses that it collects storm water from as far back as lindfeld lindfeld's parkway on washington street and brings it through through conant back out to wyoming and then eventually to pleasant street we need to study that watershed to see if there are ways to improve it we've had a great spring season there but last year last spring where we had more rain

▶ 35:31 the field holds water and we need to figure out why the field holds water and if there's something we can do to improve it whether it's before the field at the field so some more study has to happen there in summary that's the order that's before you i'll gladly answer questions uh city engineer was not able to make it this evening due to family commitment but um That is the funding that we are requesting. Thank you very much, Mr. Shenna. May we hear now from President Kahn, please? Yeah, Mr. President, a lot of us were here 10 or 12 years ago when we had very, very severe drainage problems in many areas. And at that time, the administration proposed and board approved a bonding of several million dollars to address the flooding

▶ 36:26 in the Heywood Avenue area the fells way area and other areas throughout the city and that program happily has been very successful mr. Shana how did you determine that how's the determination made that these sites are sites that need to be addressed was what kind of process did you go through well burrell street the burrell and stowcroft area are actually part of the same hazardous mitigation grant from about a dozen years ago except you know when you look at the ticking order of the impacts of the flooding and the costs associated with those impacts we just couldn't address it at the time we we did localized cleaning and tv inspection of these areas to kind of bring the problem along but now with everything with other problems resolved it's now at the top of

▶ 37:19 the list but they were part of a hazardous music mitigation grant from 12 years ago Grove at Lynwood is a is a is damaged something happened to that at the section last year there's an old culvert there called Grove Street sees a lot of heavy traffic there's unsuitable material in that intersection something has failed and we've TVed it and we've seen some offset joints this failure in that system so it's not something that has occurred for multiple years but it is something that has recently worsened and how how would the amounts the projected amounts of these various projects determined we developed the scope of conceptual scope and we have conceptual estimates that are associated with those and that's how the the numbers that you you see in the estimate

▶ 38:13 will create it have you had discussions with the owners of private properties that are going to be impacted by the work actually we did with alderman Lemmerman and her ward at stowcroft we we had a neighborhood meeting very preliminary last fall we did some follow-up work this spring and once the order is hopefully passed and we have the funding in place to go full design we're gonna we're going to expedite those and actually start to talk with individual owners one-on-one on this is where we're going to put the new pipe these are the impacts how could we restore it we do have an easement in this area so we have the right to access these um these backyards and we're going to time it in such a way that you know we hope to allow people to enjoy their summers in their

▶ 38:58 backyards and maybe this becomes a late summer project yeah it always makes me uncomfortable when we're working on private property is there any way that this project could be done in such a way to divert the pipes so that they no longer pass through people's backyards we looked at that we looked at bringing the pipe out to stowcroft it escalates the price of the project probably three times as much as what what's estimated but we did look at that and we don't think that um drainage pipes run on gravity obviously so we don't think we have the elevation in the ground to make that happen because we'd have to go further um further east before we come south on the system thank you mr chairman thank you president khan alderman forbes thank

▶ 39:47 Scott M. Forbes: you mr chairman um you uh used to live on linwood ave now right around the corner on mystic ave i know that both ends of this street uh flood and i'm glad that we see that we're going to address the area down a globe grove in linwood but i just was wondering i know it's not on this program estimate but if you could just uh discuss the area at the other end of linwood where sylvan street and lebanon street meet because that is an area that has flooded for decades there's always been drainage problems there i know it's a basin it's a natural basin i know that the fairfield project is going to be a step in the right direction because that is basically just a 12-inch pipe that comes down from the woods in an inclement weather just basically releases thousands of

▶ 40:37 gallons of water that will just release and stream into lebanon street that'll compound that existing problem um is that a is that area a a a concern for the city Lebanon and Sylvan? Yes. We continue to monitor that all the time during heavy rainstorms. We've cleaned the pipes. We've TV'd the pipes. We've made improvements within the cemetery. So that's the upstream portion of that drainage system. It's the furthest point away from where it outflows. From Lebanon and Sylvan, the drainage system goes through the cemetery and ends up in a brook behind pine banks at the pine banks property line with the cemetery correct where it becomes open but we have to get the water from point a to point b there are elevation challenges with that there

▶ 41:28 are hydraulic challenges with that and there are piping challenges with that we intend to to look at that intersection again when we study fairfield to see if deterioration has occurred in the cemetery if there's a block if there's an offset joint so we'll continue to improve that but i think you said it in your opening statement it's a bowl it's very low that intersection is very low and when you get those flash floods it's very difficult to get the water out but we we haven't abandoned that attempt at all so we're going to continue to still look at those studies and try to come up with solutions for that yeah yeah and we want to do the same with sewer because parallel with the drainage system is a sewer system and we'll do the same there now for fairfield like

▶ 42:14 Scott M. Forbes: i said i know it's an open pipe i know you know the area well and uh i was able to walk that area with some of the neighbors there and they expressed their concerns are we looking just to try to get that water to go underground are you looking to re i know that's what the study is all options all options are on the table whether we can get the water to go the other way or we can control the water in the manner it's coming down the hill now in a more efficient way all options are at the table and we weren't ready to present project yet so that's why we want to continue studying with this consultant firm over the summer okay and then my last question just because it is at both ends of Linwood I

▶ 42:53 Scott M. Forbes: know you expressed that uh at Grove Street it was just failed infrastructure again at that end that other end of Linwood could it just be it is it is it field infrastructure underneath is it cracked pipes or drainage in in the wyoming cemetery area is it possibly that the drainage within the cemetery i can't say it as confidently as in the street but in the street we clean those pipes consistently and in the summertime on a monthly basis and the infrastructure is is intact could there be a problem in the cemetery that's what hopefully our studies over the summer will confirm one way or the other the infrastructure in the cemetery is old okay all right thank you mr chairman thank you alderman forbes next can

▶ 43:39 Monica C. Medeiros: we hear from alderman Medeiros please thank you uh thank you very much uh mr shenna i just uh the area at uh burrell and stowcroft does that where does that drain to does that drain into bennett's brook yes as well okay do you think that the the improvements that we made in the other part of ward 2 have caused this area to back up at all no these were always problems i mean they were identified at the same time um it doesn't this these areas don't connect into the the new pipes that come from there they connect into the fellsway into an existing pipe that was always there that makes its way down um to bellevue golf course and you start to see that open brook zigzag all the way across back and forth all the way out to route one that's where this water goes

▶ 44:34 Monica C. Medeiros: it doesn't go to l pond uh and um you know i just i want to say that you know there were so many people that the work that we did in in the other part of war ii was very successful there were many individuals and private property owners that really stepped up and allowed us to to put easements across their property and new easements and um you know these especially in this in you know throughout the whole city but especially in these areas where we have easements and we have culverts you know it really is our responsibility as to be as a good citizen being the city to take care of these and if they're you know if they're failing um to look into fixing them and i i do i can speak from experience that i believe the city did a very good job of returning the private

▶ 45:26 Monica C. Medeiros: property to you know as good a condition as as it could um obviously there's some bumps along the way but i i hope that the same commitment will be held here in these projects yeah that is our that is our commitment and uh through this first stage will it be very disruptive for the homeowners um nothing we do is really not disruptive but we try to accommodate vehicle passage and dust control but there will be i can't say that it's not disruptive everything we do is but we always have the citizens concerns and um you know in our best in our in our mind in our mindset very good well thank you very much thank you alderman medeiros next we have alderman Lehman please thank you mr chairman thank you mr shenna um i just wanted to echo some of what's been said

▶ 46:22 Jennifer L. Lemmerman: particularly around the the stowcroft and the burrell street area um you know this is something that has continued to pop up we've been hearing from residents and depending i can think of a few storms last year depending on the severity of the storm it goes from being an inconvenience to being a hazard and even causing some damage so i'm happy to see this moving forward in the plans and and also just want to say that throughout the process your you and your team have been very communicative with the residents down there so thank you for that between the neighborhood meeting but then also i know there's been a lot of one-on-one conversation with the residents and um you know i've seen conversations all the way down to um talking about the specific landscaping

▶ 47:06 Jennifer L. Lemmerman: in their backyard and how to kind of handle getting around those types of things when the work is to start so um just wanted to to mention that and say that i i appreciate all the communication i know the residents do as well and i'm looking forward to seeing this get started so thank you thanks we look forward to moving forward thank you thank you mr chairman thank you alderman 11 moment alderman forbes please yeah i just wanted to uh follow up on something that you said you said that during the summer time you're going to be doing a study in the cemetery in the drainage system could you just uh elaborate just real quick what type of uh video inspection video inspection video inspection and you know we'll see what the video identifies the video could

▶ 47:43 identify cleaning the video could identify repairs but we do intend to video inspect um drain and sewer in the cemetery during the summer outstanding thank you mr chairman thank you alderman forbes president khan please yeah i usually look for something to springboard myself into an area that i probably shouldn't be discussing um so i'm going to support this project and sadly we don't get to we don't get to set up the budget and we don't get to establish the priorities of spending much as i would like to and so it's not a situation where we can we can pick this project or defer the money into another area that's obviously something that the mayor administration have to do during the budget season so i think in general

▶ 48:43 In general, this is not a bad project, if someone can figure out a legal way where we could set budget priorities. I would certainly be more than happy to try to accommodate that, but that is all for now, Mr. Chairman. Thank you, President Codd. Alderman Boisselle, please. John, Grove Street in Linwood, a year ago or two years ago, you did a lot of work on Grove Street. part of the same problem that's going on or just something that well several years ago we did um the force main sewer force main right and we replaced all the sewer pipes on um grove street at the time the system was functional that's why i'm more of the mindset that something happened last summer that um deteriorated the conditions to the point where you see the the flooding to

▶ 49:38 Robert A. Boisselle: the level that we have recently but uh no that that was um i don't remember the exact year but i think it was six or seven eight years ago when we did the sewer force main from upham street and that was all sewer that we upgraded on grove street not drainage okay now this project's going to cost 485 000 according to what i see here uh is this an mwra grant or is this we're going out straight out the bonds this is a straight up bond the mwra doesn't offer um no bonding grants for storm water they do for water and so i've been off of this all right so the total cost then with the interest would be about 862 000 for this project i'll defer to the treasurer for that okay that's the tool good evening that's the total projected cost that's a very conservative

▶ 50:37 I had an estimate on the interest rate at 5%, these are all estimates. So that's the way the amortization schedule I gave you reads, that's the amount. Okay, so at this point is this an expected amount, it could be lower. I expect it to be lower, but like I said, we're conservative in those things. We don't want to not have, we're not authorizing interest payments with this order. authorizing the allocation, the loan amount of $485,000. Okay. Thank you very much. Thank you, John. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. Thank you, Alderman Boycelle. I have for the first time, before we hear from Alderman Medeiros for the second time, Alderman Byrd, please. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. Just a quick question, Mr. Shenna.

▶ 51:26 So the part about Conan Park that's just going to be studied in further depth over the summer, is that correct? That's correct. That's the time frame? I mean, we've taken some measures just internally on our day-to-day operations. Like we put some hay bales. We've, you know, to be honest, I think in the early spring we actually even created some sump areas where we've pumped to keep the field dry. But that's just to keep the kids playing. We need the purpose of the study is to understand is there a problem there? And if there is a problem there, what's the root of the problem? And how can we improve it? Okay. So people shouldn't be expecting solutions anytime soon as far as that. It's just, it's looking at it in depth and that, you know, we're looking to find out a little bit.

▶ 52:06 No, we want to work with the Little League, with the Park Commission. We want to work with the towers, the condos right next door to see their drainage system, you know, could there be an increased flow from there? Did they do something inadvertently? There's all kinds of things we want to look at. We want to look at some of the stormwater that comes off the fells, you know, and um and rule out mwra and um and that watershed because that's all coming towards conan park so that those are the type of things we want to do with the study okay excellent thank you mr chairman that's all for now thank you alderman byrd alderman medeiros please thank you um i just wanted to point out too that when we have these incidents of large flooding that's on street and

▶ 52:52 Monica C. Medeiros: that's not you know flowing through with the storm water is not flowing through the culverts the way that we want it to that goes into the ground and if we have pipes with leaks that's getting into our water and sewer pipes correct sometimes it could get in through infiltration that's that flooding would have to penetrate through the ground and get into the sewer pipe but yeah that could happen if but the majority of infiltration happens in the spring when groundwater is high these flash floods happen in the summer when groundwater is low possibly the fixing this could reduce some of the other issues and reduce our burden with the MWRA but this isn't the major I wouldn't think this just has a major impact on I and I these programs won't have a major impact on I

▶ 53:49 Peter D. Mortimer: and then I guess as as our speaker earlier this evening pointed out that you know obviously if water is going into people's basements we remind them that it doesn't belong in the storm drain right and or it doesn't belong in the storm drain yes yes so we have to make sure it's in the storm drain and not in the sewer correct Thank You Alderman Medeiros I'm seeing no further further Alderman wishing to be heard on this order. Is there a motion, please? So moved. Second. Is that a motion to recommend for passage? Motion to recommend, Mr. Chairman. We have a motion to recommend for passage from Alderman Forbes, duly seconded by Alderman Boycelle. Seeing no further discussion, all in favor of recommending this order for passage, please say aye.

▶ 54:35 Peter D. Mortimer: Aye. Any opposed, hearing none. This order will be recommended to the full board for passage. The next order we have before us is order 2015-154, it is the City of Melrose operating budget for fiscal year 2016 in the amount of $72,885,826.66. This order is currently laid on the table. Is there a motion to remove this order from the table, please? Second. Alderman Byrd has made a motion to remove this order from the table. Was that you all who seconded Alderman Boycelle? Alderman Forbes, duly seconded by Alderman Forbes. All in favor of removing this order from the table, please say aye. Aye. Any opposed, hearing none, this order is removed from the table. And under the auspices of this order, the first department that we have before us this evening is department number 145.

▶ 55:36 Peter D. Mortimer: the treasurer collector in the amount of three hundred and sixty three thousand dollars three hundred sixty three nine hundred and eighty five dollars three hundred eight three hundred sixty three thousand nine hundred eighty five dollars and seventeen cents good evening mr flavin good evening would you like to make an opening statement or go directly to comments and questions um i'd like to thank you for hearing this again i'd also like to take this opportunity to thank my staff who allows us to do the job that we do um marion ellis janet graff sharon lloyd marilyn rivenberg they allow us to do an awful lot of with with the resources that we you we do request on it on an evening like tonight and um i just wanted to show them some respect and

▶ 56:20 some gratitude um when you look at the budget and review it you'll see that it's one of those it's one that just doesn't move it's the same thing it's i said it last year and i'll say it again i'll probably say it next year it's a groundhog day budget and none of the numbers really move except for salaries and i'm requesting the same and i'd be willing to entertain any questions thank you very much mr flavin first in queue we have president khan please yeah mr flavin are all salaries of the employees of your budget listed in your treasury budget yes so there's nobody who's funded from any source other than the salary and wage line that we have there may be some through the indirects there's some for the water and sewers there's a piece of

▶ 57:08 me in the indirects and probably in one of my it's paid through the general fund and then recovered through indirect costs and other salaries that are in this budget do they reflect the actual amounts paid to the individuals or some of them let more than are set forth here as set forth here i mean there may be one small one maryland ribbenberg um does receive a 25 a week stipend to assist the parking clerk i'm not sure if that's reflected in that number or not but that's the only exception and how many tax title cases do we have going at the present time do you know um probably 19. we have one in foreclosure um we just put 19 more in the paper i expect a bunch of those to clean up and we'll be adding more in um you know the next month or so i mean we we

▶ 58:06 will be recording the deeds in the next month or so and when i received the copy of the budget you expended about 4 800 of the 12 000 budget you're going to expend the entire budget by the end of the area yeah that's a seasonal thing we had the same question last year and it's the same this is the time of year where we go out and spend the money so you see last year we went up to 10 000 you know and it's seasonal um there's different things that hit it or may not hit it but there's one property that we have that we have to pay insurance on that comes out of that type line item also yeah and just for people who might be watching who who don't know this This tax title litigation is usually referred to special counsel.

▶ 58:52 Peter D. Mortimer: This is not something that the city law department does, and so in many cases we're hiring an outside firm. That's true, although that number also includes all the recording fees, which are substantial now that the state a few years ago decided to recover. They went from $25 to $75, to $125 to record an instrument in there. And that's redemptions and takings and any type of thing like that. That's all, Mr. Chairman. Thank you, President Kahn. Motion to recommend the bottom line. Second. We have a motion to recommend the bottom line from Alderman Boisselle, duly seconded by Alderman Forbes. All in favor, please say aye. Aye. Any opposed, hearing none. Department number 145's budget will be recommended.

▶ 59:41 The next order, the next department before us is Department 711. It is the municipal debt in the amount of $3,594,909.00. Mr. Flavin, please. This is the debt that we have incurred and that we have to pay for on an annual basis. There should have been a schedule that comes down that itemizes the payments on which coupons and which coupons are due, which principal payments, and it's all broken out in there. Thank you, sir. President Kahn, please. So if I add up these three budgets that we have before us tonight relative to municipal indebtedness, the municipal debt, the municipal interest, and the projected debt, come up by my math which could be faulty with five five million five hundred and

▶ 1:00:36 eighty two thousand six hundred and eight dollars does that constitute our general funds debt in total you might be adding the exempt debt in there because that they flow to the bottom line if you look at the sheets you see exempt interest okay that's that's the two and a half debt exclusion for one of the schools a few years ago and that that occurs on the principal line item also okay so so about two million less than what the number you stated so the general fund debt would be three point five and I call it these are just terms I make up to make make it understandable to me so general fund debt is what we always talk about when we apply the five percent principal correct okay and you There's another ask, I'm sorry.

▶ 1:01:30 This is a rerun that we've all seen many times before, but sadly for you, but not for me, we're going to see it again. Doesn't include the debt exclusion for the middle school, this figure. It does. The interest on that debt. Well, on the line item, on the interest one, you see exempt interest, you see municipal interest. Exempt interest is the middle school. Okay. what about the principal repayment on that debt exclusion that's on the that's on the next page and how much is that this year 1164 909 for the exempt okay and how much in total do we still owe on the middle school borrowing if you know I don't have that in front of me I can give you that later there's so many issues I can't possibly next time I'll bring it and you know this also doesn't

▶ 1:02:24 include enterprise fund borrowings this does include the Mount Hood the five million dollars we did on field improvement because technically we have to put it through the general fund and then recover it that's about three hundred thousand okay so the Mount Hood borrowing to do the fields projects is fully reflected in here yes as is this a small micro amount associated with that cemetery bond okay and then all of our enterprise fund water sewer borrowing are not part of this they're all in their own budget okay and what's the ballpark of of water sewer indebtedness that we have out there i didn't prepare for that tonight but that's in the budget for the water and sewer they should that i is oh i actually do have it you're looking for what this year

▶ 1:03:18 this year's payment is yes please let's see water is five hundred seventy seven five eighty one ten no I'm sorry that's sewer and my water didn't go to the second page now there's something wrong with my spreadsheet here it doesn't add up but I can give you this if you want for the record I don't have it okay you provided us with the copy of the sheet that goes to do our relative the short-term borrowing is that correct relative to all the wrongs statement of indebtedness yes yes and that will be prepared in july or august for this year and we'll see it in september okay that's all i have for now mr chairman thank you president khan next we can hear from alderman Medeiros please thank you uh actually i was just going to ask mr flavin if he could speak to and

▶ 1:04:31 maybe we need the city auditor i'm not sure just how this budget for municipal debt fits into that statement of indebtedness that we have in the budget order um all i can say is it's in there that's a state report that's the format that they require this is more granular this breaks it out by general fund versus water enterprise versus sewer enterprise this is much more granular than that they have different terms inside the debt limit outside the debt limit they're really not apples and oranges but this information is in that report okay thank you thank you alderman Medeiros seeing no further alderman alderman bird please thank you mr chairman just have a question um for you to clarify for me so the municipal debt page budget 711 here

▶ 1:05:28 Jaclyn L. Bird: which comes out to about sorry 3.5 million yeah 3.5 million dollars is that the piece that you're talking about when you talk about the 5% principal no or what what else is included in that when you when we talk about well I mean the amount going towards when we looked at in our general operating budget which figures are we factoring in at that point you can't you do it off of these reports because you can attempt to do it that's showing the principal and the next page shows the interest combined principal and interest but the tax exempt principal and interest is included in these figures you have to remove those and then you have to remove the Mount Hood budget piece which I do do indicate on the sheet i gave you and that gets you down to the five percent number okay

▶ 1:06:23 Peter D. Mortimer: thank you thank you mr chairman thank you very much alderman bird motion to recommend bottom line we have a motion to recommend the bottom line from alderman boy cell second duly seconded by alderman inferno all in favor please say aye aye any opposed hearing none this order will be recommended this department will be recommended for the full board to the full board for passage thank you the next department we have before us is department 751 it is municipal debt interest in the amount of one million seven hundred and three thousand seven hundred eighty seven dollars and thirty four cents mr flavin would that's i mean we've been talking about that in a combined sense here that's the interest associated with the principle with handback

▶ 1:07:12 Peter D. Mortimer: Correct, as you just explained. Is there a motion, please? A motion to recommend. We have a motion to recommend this department by Alderman Tramontozzi, duly seconded by Alderman Boycelle. All in favor, please say aye. Aye. Any opposed? Hearing none, Department 751 will be recommended to the full board for passage. Next department we have is Department 752. projected debt in the amount of $283,912.33. President Kahn, please. Yeah, I have a question for either you or Mr. Del Russo. So I understand that it's good municipal finance and accounting practice for us to have an operating general fund percentage of borrowing of 5% or less. And every time we talk about this, I always wonder in my mind,

▶ 1:08:18 is there some kind of standard or similar standard practice, rule of thumb, relative to overall borrowing of the municipality as a percentage of the municipal debt, which just for ballpark numbers, Because our budget, if it's $72 million, should we not be borrowing more than 75%, 80%? Is there any guideline that anybody gives you on that? Standard and Poor indicates in their ratings, their good ratings of us, their excellent ratings of us, that we have a good debt ratio to budget and that it's a good number. If we were 20%, they wouldn't like it. you went down to one or two or three percent you're probably not doing enough they look at it you're not putting enough money back into your infrastructure over the long term and spreading the costs some of these are

▶ 1:09:14 projects you can't save up for and put money away and they have to be done so they they like our numbers across the board I don't think there's the best practices I don't think there's a number you can put out there I'm sure it's different in every community and we're talking about Massachusetts where the two and a half kind of drives that number where you can't say oh we need a new road let's go up for a couple of years and just build the road and get it out of the way we have this is how we have to manage our infrastructure reinvestment and i'm not seeking to suggest and i understand that the city has steadily improved its bond rating but it just it's something that i always wonder about is how much borrowing is too much borrowing and i guess what you're telling me is

▶ 1:10:03 when the bonding rating agencies start to have a problem with your limit then it's too much you'd see it when you went out to bond they did make a comment and in this case they make a positive comment on it if they didn't like it they would they would indicate like an audit they would give you some indication that you've got to watch it this is getting a little thank you mr chairman thank you president khan alderman voicel please you have your projected depth and temporary interest now we just approved a city-wide drain improvement project that we're going to go out for a bond and we're going to have interest there is that included in this particular we won't incur any expense in that until that place 17. 17. right we won't borrow that much

▶ 1:10:51 we'll stop the work like you said it's a late summer project we'll stop the work later we'll We'll get the money in November, and it'll be due a year later. We always short term interest the first year because of spending requirements and those types of things we short term borrow. But that would go into this particular category? For the first year, yes. Okay. And you see the breakdown there is you see some things come and do with projected interest payments. Those are projects from two or three years ago that we temporarily borrowed to take advantage of rates and to fit our scale to make sure that we don't hit a budget too hard and they're coming do okay good thank you thank you mr. Jerry thank you

▶ 1:11:31 Peter D. Mortimer: alderman boy cell sir motion please motion to recommend the bottom line second we have a motion to recommend the bottom line on budget seven five two made by alderman boys L duly seconded by alderman Forbes all in favor please say aye aye any opposed hearing none this budget will be recommended to the full board for passage the next budget we have before us is department number nine one six it is Medicare City portion in the amount of six hundred and thirty thousand dollars that's the mandatory zero point one four five percent that we have to pay on all wages per the IRS that's our share of everybody's Medicare two point nine percent that numbers that numbers I think a good number I'm you're probably gonna see me here in a couple of weeks because this year

▶ 1:12:22 because of the extraordinary overtime expenses due to the storms a contract settlement we paid a little bit more wages or more wages than we anticipated so we we're probably gonna ask for a transfer of a few dollars to make this year go okay but I think we should be okay with the 630 for next year president car please mr. Flavin this is City School everybody mm-hmm so everybody everything that goes through our payroll so at least half of this are probably close to half of this would be school side wages I would suspect thank you Thank You president Khan alderman Medeiros please thank you yes and this is for every hour that we pay someone we have to pay this for every dollar every dollar and if we have new employees we this will go up yes I mean we have some

▶ 1:13:18 Monica C. Medeiros: Some employees, as they retire, if you were, I think it was 1995 or 1998, if you were hired before then, you weren't subject to this. As they retire and their replacements come on, their dollars are now subject to this. We're getting close to where we're running out of those people, the retirees. We have, like Mr. Shenna mentioned earlier tonight, we had an unexpected retirement in public works. so if if somebody retires and kind of cashes out their vacation sick time we're paying and yeah if they were hired by the city after that 1998 date and um i know i have another question which i seem to have slipped my mind so i'm sure we'll hear it again someday thanks thank you very much alderman Medeiros seeing no further

▶ 1:14:14 Peter D. Mortimer: We have a motion to recommend the bottom line. Second. We have a motion to recommend the bottom line, made by Alderman Forbes, duly seconded by Alderman Boycelle. All in favor, please say aye. Aye. Any opposed, hearing none, Department number 916 will be recommended to the full board for passage. Thank you. Thank you, sir. The next department we have before us is Department 401. the Public Works Administrative and Engineering in the amount of $675,515.39. Our Director of Public Works, Mr. Shenner, is coming back to the table. Good evening once again, Mr. Shenner. Good evening once again. This is the first of several budgets from Public Works that are before you this evening. This is the home budget of all our administrators and

▶ 1:15:14 engineers in the Department of Public Works the majority of our administrators continue to operate from our Tremont Street facility we continue to promote online services we have a recycling blog we have a DPW Twitter page we have renown's model of information on the website we're trying to expand upon that with metal stickles meta metal sticker sales online we like to do electronic notices as much as possible with our road construction and obviously we continue to continue to run our department with an online work order system that generates the direction of where we go and what we've done and where what else is left to be done our engineers and our administrators continue to strive to operate as efficiently as possible that's efficiency is a is a big thing that I stress

▶ 1:16:20 throughout the department no matter what division it could be we try to provide our service with the highest level of customer service whether it's sanitation or highway or engineering or a project and we we try to keep our administrators and our engineers as focused and working in as transparent a manner as possible DPW is truly a team approach there's no single member of this department that is larger than the department as a whole and we continue to focus cross-training our cross-training our employees and sharing our resources amongst all the divisions and if I could just take this opportunity for personal note I want to also thank each of the 65 members of this department for an exceptional job that they did this past fiscal year it

▶ 1:17:15 was obviously a historic winter but that historic winter created very challenging conditions in the spring the department responded very well it created people remember the hundred plus inches of snow that came in four and four weeks what they seem to forget is the record cold that preceded that the rain of heavy rain events and Christmas up to even up to Christmas Eve when we had staff on call they've done an exceptional job I'm very proud of the department I have and I'm very proud of their performance this past fiscal year and our engineering Our steering office, outside of capital projects, also manages utilities. This year they issued 205 permits to various utility companies to open streets and conduct their own repairs to their own infrastructure.

▶ 1:18:06 National Grid also upgraded 1.6 miles of gas main throughout the city. We started a double pole program ourselves where we bring in all the entities that are on these poles. horizon national grid we bring them into meetings we were they removed 106 double poles there are still over 150 still out there but we're making progress and at least there's a program in place that's attempting to to manage this problem we we the engineers oversaw private developments at Alta stone place on Washington Street and that's just not one building there are several going on there uh development on grove grove at main street 130 tremont 150 green and 160 green street and 92 franklin street and obviously i we had a very aggressive capital improvement program in fy

▶ 1:19:05 15 and some of it is for spilling over into fy 16 a majority of our fiscal year was spent focused on the highlands and gas and water improvements there but we also So we also performed capital improvements on Linwood Ave, on Lincoln Street, on Cottage, Grove, Lebanon, Stowcroft-Albert, a portion of which we final paved this afternoon. And we're getting ready in FY16 to go back to Gould Street and finish that job that we started last year and also go to Baxter and Cutter and start work there as well. That's a brief summary of the administration and engineering budget, and I'm more than willing to answer any questions. President Kahn, please. Yeah, so Mr. Senator, your overall staffing for your entire operation is 65 people, is that what you said?

▶ 1:20:08 Right, but they're not all in this one budget. all the budget, and that also includes water and sewer. And actually, seriously, just so people understand when we go through this colloquy about how people's salaries are funded and where they're paid from, from where I sit, I think it's important to be able to determine what the actual cost of an operation is. And where we have salaries that are funded in a variety of budgets, I think it's part of our responsibility to determine what the salary structure is, and how much it actually costs to run each department in the city. So again, at the risk of plowing over ground that we've gone through before, I think it is important for us to quiz each department head to determine how much of the salary is in each respective budget.

▶ 1:21:03 how much comes from someone else, and how much we are paying to operate Public Works Administrative or any other department. Now, Mr. Shannon, I know in this budget not all of the people's salaries are fully funded in the budget, is that correct? That's correct. And for example, the director position I don't believe is fully funded in this budget. That's correct. And what percentage of the director compensation is in this budget? sixty percent sixty percent and where else is the director's compensation budgeted the balance is the balance is split evenly in water and sewer so it's 60 operating 20 water 20 sewer correct and what about the assistant director position 50 is in this budget and the balance is split in water

▶ 1:21:55 and sewer how about the city engineer 50 25 25. so it's 50 operating 25 water 25 sewer correct and how about the other engineering position the deputy and the project engineer so the deputy and the project have a different split because some of their some of their funding comes from bonds uh the deputy position i believe 50 of this salary comes from project bonds 25 is in the admin budget 15 is in water and 10 is in sewer i have a breakdown for this entire department if you want me to forward that yeah that would be good because i you know what i like in terms of public documentation i i wouldn't want to ask a member of the general public to search through four or five budgets to determine what a you know what what someone's compensation would be i can forward

▶ 1:23:00 this to the clerk and she can attach it to you i would appreciate that and um is the recycling coordinator fully funded in this budget eighty percent of it eighty percent yes and where's the balance water ten and water ten and sewer okay and how about the operating manager position the operations manager is 50 25 25 we have a portion of the cemetery directors salary in this budget is that correct the entire cemetery directors administrators budget the entire cemetery administrators salaries in this budget so that's the full salary for the cemetery is reflected in your salary staff engineer is that all here is that split as well that's split as well and what's the split on that 50-20 that's actually what that's 48 26 26 and

▶ 1:24:04 we also have a portion of the superintendent of Mount Hood's salary in there and as you know what percentage that is I believe it's half I'll confirm that when I forward the information now I noticed in this budget that you have a relatively well I'll characterize this relatively large maybe it's not twenty 8,500 clothing allowance, I would assume that that must be funding all collective bargaining agreement clothing allowances, is that correct? That's correct. Okay, so that would be all clothing allowances that are granted to all union members who are under the jurisdiction of your department. That's correct, and as a footnote to that comment or that question, I do want to make note that the current union,

▶ 1:24:57 is their contract is expiring so they're in negotiations if this fund this funding funds their existing agreement if the agreement were to change we would seek supplemental funds there do they expire with the end of the fiscal year their contract expires july 1st that's all for now mr chairman thank you president khan next in line we have alderman byrd please thank you mr chairman um Mr. Shenna can you just talk about the salary and wage line item increase this year and the part-time salary and wage line and the part-time looks like it stayed the same correct part-time and overtime a level fund that the increase in salaries covers everyone's raise everyone step increase everyone's cost of living that are listed in the budget it also covers

▶ 1:25:52 some more engineering time than last year because there aren't as many projects in fiscal 16 the first half of fiscal 16 will have a tremendous amount of projects but they fall off so we have to cover some more of that time and that's where the increase went to and then the professional services line item 28,500 can you talk about that that's that's a line that we use for outside engineering services surveying testing soil testing say a professional service line that our engineers used to bring in professional outside help for various non project funded items and school outreach we use that to actually we decrease that line this year we when we first went into facilities and we start first started being active in the schools we use that for material that we

▶ 1:26:52 passed out or used to go in and do presentations about what DPW did or you know run programs or run events or run and and we've scaled back on that because we've kind of we've grown into that culture now we've cut that we've cut that that line this year okay looks like by a thousand dollars is that right yes and I'm sorry if you already answer this I know president asked about the clothing what about the professional development at the bottom that is for both Union and non-union employees covers licensure licenses education that's required to maintain a professional license we have employees that carry a mandated license for the department and that's how we do it That's how we do our education.

▶ 1:27:46 Monica C. Medeiros: That's how we run our seminars. We recently ran, this past fiscal year, I think we ran a driver safety course. So we use that for training and to promote employee growth, both union and non-union. That's all for now, Mr. Chairman. Thank you. Thank you, Alderman Byrd. Alderman Medeiros, please. Thank you. Yes, Mr. Shen, I would very much look forward to seeing the breakdown of the salaries. Are there any salaries that are here? do any of these positions are they partly funded by any kind of grants no have we lost grants that previously used to pay for any of these positions no there are no positions in our department that are grant related and so the only other places we're seeing these kinds of salaries are either in this budget in

▶ 1:28:34 Peter D. Mortimer: other pieces of this budget or in water and sewer yeah I saw our DPW salaries are in these budgets before you this evening water and sewer a very small piece in project bonds and a very small piece in the recycle revolving account that's where our salaries come from and you'll show us a breakdown including those bonds and thank you Thank You alderman Medeiros any other alderman wishing to be heard motion to move the bottom line we have a motion to move the bottom line department 401 duly seconded by alderman inferno all in favor please say aye aye the next order we have before us is department 402 it is public works facilities in the amount of three million seven hundred and eleven thousand two hundred ninety eight

▶ 1:29:29 dollars and 71 cents this budget before you is funds our facilities facility our Our facility division is obviously our highest growing division of the group. It's the non-traditional DPW work that we've grown into, we've led the department into. It funds all maintenance of all municipal buildings. It funds the cleaning of municipal buildings with the exception of the fire stations. And it funds the maintenance and cleaning of all school buildings. also funds utilities throughout the utilities in buildings throughout the city and utilities of streetlights and parks that's all included in this budget as well the a lot of what we deal with in facilities is anticipated for everything that we do that's anticipated we deal with something that's an

▶ 1:30:41 emergency emergencies are big and small the list of the list of repairs from this past fiscal year is enormous and it varies we've we continuously move furniture in schools we continuously upgrade and repair faucets and fixtures there's over 1.5 million square feet of building space in this city that needs to be maintained municipal buildings are aging school buildings are aging newer buildings require maintenance as well just because the technology is new doesn't mean that that technology doesn't need to be maintained and operated we consistently repair roofs doors door handles as school needs change school space change school space need changes and we have to consistently go in over the summer to adapt that space sometimes it's as simple as a vision panel

▶ 1:31:38 in a classroom sometimes it's the first grade class that turns into a kindergarten class that requires furniture to be bolted down and all these other educational requirements for that room that we have to follow this is how we fund it all this is also how we fund the maintenance of our municipal buildings this is how we fund the cleaning all the custodians and the two tradesmen that are in the facility group um this year we create we underwent some major repairs we replaced uh two 50 000 gallon water tanks at the middle school we performed a major overhaul of the hvac system at the lincoln school not in the sense that we we changed equipment but more we maintained equipment we removed the glycol that runs the system supposed to be tested

▶ 1:32:32 occasionally and we found it to be in very poor condition so we removed it all in hopes that that air conditioning runs much better because the summer program is there this this coming summer so we were pretty proactive in that sense in that school to try to keep issues at a minimum a couple of years back I know we dealt with with air conditioning issues at that school so we did that as well weather has a huge impact on this on the facility world roof load although that expense is covered in the snow budget it's still something that custodians have to watch for on a daily basis that stretch in January presented all kinds of problems in regards to frozen pipes and where the buildings get drafts I

▶ 1:33:16 mean it was a very difficult winter for facilities but it brought a lot of issues to light that this current group that's managing facilities that weren't aware of they've done a tremendous job under ann waite in in addressing these issues i feel that our buildings are significantly cleaner than they were three years ago and now it's time to focus on running them efficiently and continuing to running them on a safe manner both on the school side and the municipal side this the facilities also benefit from crossover work in the winter um this when the green team shuts down which this year happens happened a little before christmas we use them a lot in facilities we also try to use them when the occasions happen

▶ 1:34:08 in the summer if it's a rainy couple of days or or things like that we had um we had a unique situation at the high school we had some vacancies with the custodians and over the winter we supplemented with operations people there we painted at the roosevelt we replaced sailing tiles throughout the district where they were damaged we painted several bathrooms at the high school with operations employees we and again several storage areas were cleaned with them and this they also assist the end of the year there's a lot of timely moves whether it's a teacher moving schools or a teacher moving locations things that have to be done quickly within that one week when the kids are out and the teachers are still there and we use that crossover

▶ 1:34:57 work in that area and fy16 we're looking forward to reconfiguring the winthrop classrooms to gain some space there we're going to be painting the cafeteria at the high school in addition to supporting the high school rehabilitation project that's happening happening there we've been doing our work in all of the gyms to prepare them for the heavy use another thing that this division does that a lot of people may not think of is we supported over 11 500 hours of school rentals that's when the school rents their facilities to outside groups it adds up quick but it's the same group of custodians that open that building prepare for those events clean after those events and it's this budget that carries the utilities associated with opening for those events too so

▶ 1:35:49 that adds up i mean not only are we maintaining parks and fields for use but now we're maintaining um indoor space for use as well so that's a brief overall on the overall summary on the budget uh the utilities in this budget are level funded uh we believe that we are going to re meet our mark in fy 15 and we're going to attempt to do it again in 16. i think we'll start we're starting to see the benefits of the esco program in that regard where energy reduction is countering rate increases so we'll see how that plays out in fy 16. i have to thank martha grover and all of her staff and resources for helping us and managing that but we're starting to see some dividends and and we look forward to seeing how that plays out in 16 and that's why we've level

▶ 1:36:39 funded this well we also have cut we there's a significant cut in the school cleaning contract that is the result of a procurement process that we went through last summer we have a new three-year contract with a new vendor and it saves a significant amount of money in the cleaning of the middle school and the high school so we took that extra resources and we we reapplied it back into the budget and there is one new employee in this budget it's a new facility trades person to uh to assist like i mentioned before we only have two and we can only go in two directions at once and we're finding out quickly that um we need we we need some more help in this division so that would fund that is going to fund a a new employee but the overall budget for this division

▶ 1:37:30 is um is just is up just below one percent so we were able to make these changes as we evolved this division all within the same bottom line president khan oh excuse me um alderman boycelle is first in line followed by alderman inferno and then president khan alderman boycelle please geez john you're busy this year um in the middle school you said the water tanks were replaced or removed why is that oh they had passed their expiration i think i was here in the fall and we did a supplemental appropriation i believe from free cash for that um in general it has seven year life we had used them for nine and we needed to replace them they would fail the good news is we were able to switch them and keep the school in operation while we did it because there was a

▶ 1:38:26 Robert A. Boisselle: there's a duplicate nature of those tanks very good in the 11 11 000 hours of rental now there's the outside groups are paying to rent the establishments correct is your group receiving the money we get reimbursed for our overtime expenses from whom from the school department on the school department and so you're getting a percentage of the quote gate you might say oh we get we get we get reimbursed for 100 of whatever overtime we we expend out on a monthly basis to support that so you're they collect they collect the revenue they contract with who they want to contract we don't get involved in that piece of it we get a calendar saying please support these events and we go in and we support them if it's a rental we get reimbursed if it's

▶ 1:39:18 Robert A. Boisselle: school related we don't okay now when you say reimburse are you billing the school department yes you are and the money comes back so it's money in money out and we do that through the auditor's office okay uh going to the uh budget itself on school electric and school heating i mean you've You've been spending about 700,000 to 300,000, three or 400,000 per year. Now, we've been pushing solar units upon the middle school and high school now for a couple years and they're pretty well stacked up. Are we getting any benefit from the I don't know the specifics of the number. Obviously, there's a lot of numbers of all the utilities, but we are seeing a benefit. I could provide you with some follow up information.

▶ 1:40:07 Could you do that, please? She knows the specifics. She watches it on a monthly basis and we were saving money as a result of those panels on the high school the last time that I spoke. So I can definitely get that and, and provide that as follow up as well. Very good. And the next page we have, I guess the library PART. What is, do you know what that means? Which line is that? Section 51 of salaries, the library, P-A-R-T, probably the fifth. We have some part-time employees that work. Oh, these are part-time? These are part-time. The library's obviously open more than eight hours a day. We have a full-time custodian that does the day shift, but there are night shifts, and sometimes there are weekend shifts that we cover, and those are non-full-time employees.

▶ 1:40:56 Robert A. Boisselle: Okay. If you go down two more, you have a cell maintenance of 159 or looking for 159. What is that? Those are the, those are, that's for three positions in the facility group that maintain. They're not custodians. They're the, it's the group's foreman, HVAC tradesmen, plumber, and another tradesman. So these are three staff members? Staff members. Union staff members. All right. and you also have a scoop another school part-timer so that covers some summer program we have a summer program and we have an afternoon program where we hire part-time students from the high school to come in and that's what that now you have the overtime school building is that part of the rental process or is that just through their open late so some reason this is the bill this is the

▶ 1:41:55 Robert A. Boisselle: overtime were you to utilize to cover issues buildings unlocked Collins maintenance issues leaks anything that we have to respond to if we have to keep the building open later for cleaning purposes if we have to come in on the weekend this is our overtime this does this is okay so event any school operations do you bill the school department or just building for the over uh for the rentals we don't build for school related events nothing at all just for the uh rental aspects of it right right all right thank you john thank you mr chairman thank you alderman boycelle next in queue we have alderman inferno please thank you very much mr chairman i truly am exhausted just listening to your list of what you have accomplished this year um going back to

▶ 1:42:44 Gail Infurna: the lincoln school i know i was working with denise gaffey last year and you guys were involved will that will the work that you did in that air conditioning system decrease the noise that some of the abutters were getting during the summer program that they had there two years ago yeah I clearly remember the issue from two years ago and we could not shut the system down at night right so not only was it operating inefficiently but we couldn't shut it off because it wasn't cool it wouldn't come on or we could we believe we've worked that all out from work we did in conjunction with the work that the escrow program did that system should be operating much more efficiently this year i'm glad to hear that and i i'm sure the butters are too i'll be

▶ 1:43:26 in touch with them too to check up on it and we have to benefit an overlaying benefit of this whole operation with buildings is the fact that the escrow gave us control from outside we don't have to be in the building or we don't have to wait for the neighbor who lives next door from the lincoln to say the air conditioning is running we have the ability to see it and we can see it she does a tremendous job at looking at the computer software and trying to figure out what's happening and why it's happening and what we can do to control it and now we're trying to take that knowledge and bring it down into the workforce into our foreman into our custodians so that we can do that great thank you very much for your work on that that's all thank you all

▶ 1:44:09 Alderman Inferna, up next in line we have President Kahn, please. Thank you. This is a relatively new budget. This started a couple of years ago when we consolidated the school custodian and maintenance force into the city side of the budget. And I'm not asking you to answer this tonight, but has there been any analysis done to determine whether we actually are saving money as a result of the consolidation? when we voted to do this we were advised that this was going to result in a significant cost savings and do we have any kind of a study or a breakout which documents whether we we're saving money currently relative to our prior operation we haven't formally put something together but given the volume of work that the department now produces i can tell you pretty

▶ 1:45:09 confidently with the auditor behind me nodding his head that the it is it is a cost savings we we can we can utilize our workforce but a lot of um a lot more flexibility to do things both in the schools and outside the schools as a result of the reorg three years ago we could have never built a career monument three years ago we could never go in and um over christmas three years ago we couldn't just three years ago we wouldn't we didn't have the resources or the flexibility within the department to do special projects like the korean monument like the world war one monument that's the word i missed thank you sir we didn't have the ability to go in over christmas break and repaint bathrooms at the high school that flexibility has a cost savings to it and

▶ 1:45:56 And we can quantify that if we had to, and we can. But I know it's there, because we're producing at an extremely high production rate right now. And with these employees now on board, and with the employees who used to be in the sanitation division, who were throwing trash, who are now doing different things. are you keeping all the people working at all times is there any issue relative to keeping the department keeping everybody in this department working all the time there's no issue at all there's always there's always something to do and going back to the more mundane question it was a line that I usually start with in terms of this budget who's on who's funded on budget who's funded off budget and if so what percentage and where does it come

▶ 1:46:55 all of the employees in this budget are union employees and they're all fully funded in facilities this is the facility group and it's all funded within this budget there is no one that i that i can think of off the top of my head that is funded separately the group is managed by our assistant director and she's in the administration budget but these are all union employees and they're all facility people and they're all in this budget only and one other question that didn't occur to me until this evening but um do we have separate lines for salaries that aren't listed on the salary and wages no because i've been can you just clarify this for me so i understand um the line that's called uh 51-1-0-4-1 cell custodial what does

▶ 1:47:55 that mean for our school school custodians from an auditing perspective patrick can speak to this too we have to break out our school expenses separately from the overall budget for doe reporting and so we had to create certain lines for certain functions of the facility group so that we could pass that on am i right in that yeah just like the guy i brought that up last year with the board excuse me just for members of uh the public watching at home this is patrick delarusso the chief financial officer uh and the chief auditor of the city of melrose thank you mr delarusso please go ahead yeah due to my advancing age if we did discuss this last year i don't remember discussing it so um if we did i apologize no respectfully no it's

▶ 1:48:44 just a matter of reporting we're trying to do with the purposes of the department of ed as well as quite frankly the outside auditors now it's it's incumbent upon us to identify in as much detail as possible what cost in this budget applies to the school department so we can essentially receive credit for the cost and the expenses that we're incurring on behalf of the school that's what it comes down to and by breaking it out in this fashion it allows us to do comparative analysis and it also provides a nice historical record of where we've been year after year after year so that's that's really solves two particular issues that we have to address on my side of the table so is this line in the line below it those are school compilations of

▶ 1:49:33 salary and wage items yes salary custodians is those are custodians in the schools salary maintenance which is the line below it are the maintenance people in the facility group they spend the majority of their time in the schools they all we also use them in municipal buildings as well okay so in the general summary of the salary and wage report that we have here we have We have a salary and wage line that I would assume relates to non-school function employees. Correct. And then we have these two lines that break out. School and non-school. Only school. Only school. Okay. Okay, thank you for clarifying that. Thanks. That's all. Thank you, President Kahn. Next we have Alderman Medeiros, please.

▶ 1:50:22 Monica C. Medeiros: Thank you very much. I'm actually wondering if perhaps Mr. DelaRusso for our future meeting, perhaps you could provide us with the breakdown of which lines are maybe in a memo are associated with the schools in this budget by the most part that would be that would be great mr. Shana in regards to electricity you know we're about to embark on the municipal aggregation project I know that a lot of the when we had had miss Grover and talking about that project at least on the get-go the city really isn't eligible to participate because so much of our energy is in in contracts already and we're not under the so what I'm wondering is like for electricity how do you know how long the contracts that we

▶ 1:51:32 have negotiated last for I don't know the specifics of it but what I can tell you is that we were negotiated last year well ahead of the curve we were I mean through the insight that Martha provides us with we were able to jump ahead so you know the problem that everybody's dealing with this year we avoided that I believe that we have one year left on one year left on our electricity and maybe two or three on gas I can provide the specifics of that but we buy in bulk we buy with the consumption of all the buildings now together before there was the school contract and the city cut but we do that all together and I believe and again she can provide the specifics to this but our deals are very good and

▶ 1:52:18 Monica C. Medeiros: and it was due to the progressive thinking that you know the team that will that see that looks at utilities you know Patrick and I play mayor's office mainly through Martha's lead that we were able to get the contracts that we have yes I recall that these were locked in in contracts going back some years so I probably before the idea of municipal aggregation was really on the horizon I think some of these new contracts were negotiated but just an eye that you know perhaps there may be some advantage as we move forward with the program and and you know at which time the city may be eligible to participate I know you mentioned that streetlights are included in this budget they're not street light you energy consumption of street lights is in this

▶ 1:53:11 Monica C. Medeiros: budget energy consumption of street lights and light maintenance is not which line item is that in is that under electric car it's zero one four oh two five one two street lights STR lights now the mayor had mentioned in his his speech here when he presented the budget that we're looking at possibly changing up the streetlights correct this year is that reflected in this it's level funded the line item right now it it is it's a level funded line we it was much too early to to recommend a cut we still don't have a project that we that we can go out build let alone know when we're going to build it and let alone know the impacts of what that's going to do to our rate I think at this point next year

▶ 1:54:08 Monica C. Medeiros: we'll have a discussion as to do we propose a cut or do we use that money elsewhere but right now it's just much too early but there is a project that's ongoing we CDM with another local vendor Siemens and CDM are working together studying it and surveying our lights we plan to have a report back from them in July to see what we can do in terms of upgrading and making them more energy efficient and hopefully we'll have a real project by by the fall so for now I know we did vote on some initial funding toward that end maybe a month or so back and so for now we're just keeping that as is until we level funded yes and just last but not least kind of on the salaries kick if you will not from this

▶ 1:54:57 Monica C. Medeiros: one particular but when you do put together that breakdown of salaries from the last budget there if you could also add a comparison of you know how they've changed from this year we're currently in to the proposed FY 16 if those percentages have changed about where the funding is coming from or going to if you could include that in there okay thank you Thank You alderman Medeiros next we have alderman bird please Thank You mr. chairman and thank you for the overview mr. Shana is it been three years since we consolidated I'm sorry folded in this the school maintenance we've just completed the third year okay so I would I would like to see a cost analysis as well as far as the cost savings I think there's no question that the the scope of the services has

▶ 1:55:49 Jaclyn L. Bird: increased I think that the delivery of services is you know incredibly high quality and i think what you talked about as far as the ability to adapt and have that flexibility is great what's less obvious to me is the cost savings piece um you know because we just don't have a side-by-side comparison we don't have a sort of an idea of at least i don't of the number of employees that were you know separately in these budgets within the school department or you know before we folded the parks underneath that sort of thing that are now all here do you have anyone that is on staff that is dedicated to that kind of planning and then analysis looking back or do you not have that within your department

▶ 1:56:32 Jaclyn L. Bird: right we don't have that right now but I mean that's something that I can hope I can work with the auditor it's the will of the board we could try to put something together on paper or a spreadsheet of some sort to get us to that point yeah I think that would be helpful I mean I don't think there's any question that the delivery of service is very high and and at least not to me there's no question and and that our ability to respond to a lot of different demands throughout the city is has definitely grown it's just that pieces is okay less apparent so if you could get that to us that would be I know that's probably a lot of work but I think it would be helpful to see so we can you know be referring to that in the future thank you Thank You mr. chairman

▶ 1:57:14 Peter D. Mortimer: Thank You alderman bird seeing no further alderman wishing to be heard Motion to recommend. Second. We have a motion to recommend this department from Alderman Inferna, duly seconded by Alderman Boycelle. All in favor, please say aye. Aye. Any opposed? Hearing none, Department 402, Public Works Facilities, will be recommended to the full board for passage. The next department before us is Department 422, 422, Public Works Highway in the amount of $560,583.61. 61 cents please this is uh this is where we do the majority of our highway maintenance it funds the employees that perform that work the union employees that perform that work we conduct our sidewalk repairs our catch basin cleaning from this line we do

▶ 1:58:11 we do sign work we do street line markings crosswalk painting street sweeping all from this budget the budget pays for contractors that supplement us and for materials that we use in house to perform that work in particular i just want to bring out the fact that line 014-222-527-101 npde mpdes drain maintenance that is a stormwater quality program that is about to change i've mentioned this before um to the board the federal government the epa is about to issue something called ms4 it's a new it's a new program in which that's going to require us to treat our storm water operation differently than we do today it's an awareness program unfunded mandate that is going to come our way we don't know the specifics of it but what we

▶ 1:59:14 knows that we're going to have to start to prepare our department for it and that's why i've increased that line and as part of that we're also going to do outreach outreach not only to prepare for the program but outreach on some pumps and outreach on keeping catch basins clean and outreach on the impacts to um you know dumping things in the catch basin and other talks that's on the on the street and how that when that enters this so that's why we increased that line and that's something that's a discussion that i think could mature in fy16 exactly how do we deal with this new program that the federal government is sending down to communities like ourselves thank you any alderman wishing to be heard president khan please

▶ 2:00:01 Peter D. Mortimer: and you have you have four four employees who are listed in this budget in your salary line which all appear to be fully funded in this budget is that correct yes that's correct and are there any other individuals who work in this department who are funded from any other source no no that's not to say that during peak seasons we bring from one division to another but these are these are the employees that work in this division that's almost here to move the bottom line second alderman voycell has made a motion to move the bottom line duly seconded by alderman lemmerman all in favor of moving the bottom line for department 422 please say aye aye this department will be recommended to the full board for passage the next department we have before us is department 423 423

▶ 2:00:56 public works snow in the amount of five hundred and twenty five thousand dollars I don't know much to say about this but this budget but you know one hundred and eight point six inches of snow is an enormous amount of snow obviously it's a record-breaking season the intensity at which it fell was more impactful than the quantity this this budget is very difficult to compare to other budgets because of that and we had a lot of stall removal we had a lot of hired equipment during that snow removal we had a non-stop operation is very difficult as we've done in past years to compare this past fiscal year's performance and the costs of that to others because of exactly the type of winter we had but through the auditor we we are recommending an increase of this

▶ 2:01:52 budget to 525 so that we can keep it in that realistic pattern that we've been striving for Thank You mr. Shana president con please yeah this is one of my favorite budgets and the reason that I like this is because we did the right thing and the city did the right thing we were sitting here in 2004 2005 and we We had $150,000 budgeted for snow. And when you have a budget that doesn't accurately reflect what you know you're going to spend, that's wrong. It's bad fiscal policy, and it's poor budget practice. And over the years, what everybody's done working together is we've tried to come to a realistic number. And what happened is, if you average this out over 10 or 15 years, I think the number comes out to somewhere between $515 and $530,000 a year if you throw out this year.

▶ 2:02:55 Which I think we have to throw out because I'm hoping that we're not going to see another 110 inches of snow, at least while I'm an alderman. And I think this represents a success story. We did a good job with this budget, and thank God we had 500 plus thousand dollars in this budget this year, or we'd be looking in other places to find more money to cover our shortfall. So, I'm going to vote to recommend this budget line. Alderman Kahn, President Kahn, excuse me, makes a motion to recommend this budget. Seconded by Alderman Inferno, on discussion, Alderman Byrd, please, followed by Alderman Medeiros. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. This very quick question, Mr. Shenna, the two line items, youth snow, I take it that's for the high school students that are shoveling.

▶ 2:03:37 Monica C. Medeiros: that right correct and the weather underneath that what is that twenty three hundred dollars those are our various weather forecasts that we receive specialized for those we work with meteorologics and another company that provide our department with Melrose specific weather information for our information yeah we get that we get it online we get the radars we get in addition to four five and seven and whatever else we want to watch we do get specific forecasts I think it's worth a lot more than 2300 Thank You alderman Byrd alderman Medeiros please thank you the I mean pretty much this is almost level funded the big the big area is PW equipment lease I think that's the very last line item or see an increase can you just talk about what that is so we

▶ 2:04:36 Monica C. Medeiros: purchased snow equipment through a lease that we needed and this this line will fund a few year two and three of that lease and that's new equipment new equipment yeah and I mean you know I've said it before the Public Works Department did it you know phenomenal job we really appreciate everybody throughout this crazy storm and I hope it is something that we never see well either president Kahn or I am still alderman or even alive or even alive yeah I'll take that I just I want to put so the total actual cost we we budgeted five hundred thousand the total actual FY 15 cost is listed here as two million four hundred sixty nine thousand two hundred and twelve dollars and it's actually slightly less than that it's 2.38 final number it's right right

▶ 2:05:31 Monica C. Medeiros: around 2.38 we're in the process of finalizing and liquidating purchase orders that we didn't use and I think the numbers are on 2.38 and you know when I look at this it's actually it's kind of interesting you know our our salary for overtime because this largely the the work that we're doing is overtime work it was budgeted at 75,000 and I'm gonna say it only came in at 260 about 261 as in which which isn't so bad we see that really the bulk of the cost we picked up in hired equipment and so I imagine that's contractors and people that we just contract out to remove snow for us so includes removal of snow on all the roofs and anything that was snow related with those roofs that's really where we picked up yeah there was a tremendous amount of expense it was over

▶ 2:06:27 Monica C. Medeiros: nearly two hundred thousand dollars of expense on roofs in addition to our regular snow operations that you're accustomed to so we but we had to deal with it I mean it was a safety concern absolutely and much more damage could have been done to the buildings if that wasn't taken care of much more costly in terms of managing this you know when we first privatized the trash there was discussion that we would do some of the green team to do snow removal is that happening absolutely and is that happening during the day is that included in the overtime amount or no that's just for nighttime weekend the fact that we would have never survived and performed the way we did if we had to worry about trash the fact that we didn't have to worry about not only

▶ 2:07:19 Monica C. Medeiros: trash but recycling allowed the department to focus essentially 24-7 on snow and that allowed us and gave us the opportunities as managers to truly plan shifts and you know we didn't have that variable of losing 8 to 12 people every day to go let's go get the trash off so that was huge this year absolutely and that's where the first forecast probably come in to be able to plan so the the snow removal that's during the day during the normal shifts those members of the the green team you know we're not taking that out of the snow budget okay thank you Thank You alderman Medeiros no further all the old Alderman Forbes please Thank You mr. chairman mr. de la Rosa I know you touched base last time

▶ 2:08:06 we were here in regards to the 2.38 million dollar debt and the option of deferring some of that debt for a period of time and the payback could you just explain uh one more time how we were going to handle that deferred uh deferment of debt and how we were going to handle paying that back um if i made through the chair please what we from beginning with the approximately a 2.4 million dollar expenditure the budget provided over 500 000 was some small encumbrance about 59 000 that we applied to it the free cash that we have asked the board to apply to it is 402 thousand seven seventy two eighty five and in my conversations with uh the dpw superintendent mr schenner we're hoping to get three hundred thousand dollars from

▶ 2:09:18 fema having said that that leaves us with a almost a 1.2 million dollar deficit the commonwealth through the department of revenue has a provision that would allow us to if we can't address that to spread that over up to three years we would have to go to this board you would have to approve that and then from that point you would have the option of doing such a spread again if I have my way hopefully I will I will address this within one year and clean it up within the fiscal year 16 funding parameter so I don't have to carry it over three year period that would be the in my opinion the right thing to do and that's my goal so I'm going to try to use resources in the fall to address part of it and obviously if I have to I

▶ 2:10:24 will address the other portion with any available revenue that I feel is worthy of that expenditure because the more I talked with the outside auditors today about as a matter of fact it's funny you bring that up and one of the concerns that I have always had and I just ingrained in me is that we because we don't have any certainty on next year's expenditure next year could be a duplicate or it could be just the opposite and you're always throwing a dice and one of the things that I'm always concerned about is adding a deficit on a deficit so if we have a deficit next year and we're carrying in this deficit over three years you've got a double whack so it's a real concern and that's very that's a huge drain on your resources and your ability to

▶ 2:11:18 respond to needs so that's probably the reason that if it's at all possible I I would like to address this within the FY16 right up front and clean it out so we don't carry it into further fiscal years. Would that be dependent upon how much free cash is available to us come fall? Is that going to be one of the— That's one option. I'm looking at other funding sources. I actually I'm hoping that we will have additional free cash at a good level due to a number of permits and things like that that we've seen this year thank God materialized so that may be something that helps the city as a whole address this significant deficit but that is my goal is that I don't come to you asking for your support of that legislation unless I absolutely have to

▶ 2:12:15 Peter D. Mortimer: So I won't be unless I have to, nothing personal, but that's my goal. Very good. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. Thank you, Alderman Forbes. Seeing no further, Alderman wishing to be heard on this. Motion to move the bottom line. Second. We have a motion to move the bottom line from Alderman Boycelle, duly seconded by Alderman Forbes. All in favor, please say aye. Aye. Any opposed, hearing none. Department 423, Public Works Snow, will be recommended for passage to the full board. The next department we have before us is Department 433-433, Public Works Sanitation in the amount of $1,203,326.44. This, sorry. Please proceed, Mr. Shana. This budget reflects all the expenses that we are currently incurring to run a sanitation operation.

▶ 2:13:13 recycling and curbside collection research trash and recycling curbside collection and to also run office drop-off facility at the at Tremont Street at our operations facility what I can tell you this year is that I'm I'm very happy with how the program the new program is running we are a lot of communities are seeing an increase in trash as the economy has improved people throwing more away we are seeing a level funded tonnage we're seeing level funded tonnage in FY 15 as compared to FY 14 which is around 7,500 ton of trash that we're we're throwing away far less than the 10,000 ton that we used to years ago where we're seeing the most benefit of our program is our recycling I mean our recycling is we're projecting we're projecting that our recycling tonnage

▶ 2:14:18 will increase to 2,300 ton of material we were at 1735 last year so that's a very impressive increase I think the ease of the single stream has helped us in that regard I think the ability of putting out your recycling on a weekly basis encourages people to recycle more as well I'd be in there obviously any new program has its problems but these problems that we've we've overcome these problems these operational issues with the transition and I think we have a very good product on the street that rivals our communities and we've and we've benefited the end-line consumer and we're seeing the benefit on our budget because we've actually proposed a cut in trash disposal now that's partly because of these trends in

▶ 2:15:11 consumption we're seeing but it's also because year two of the JRM contract also has them disposing of our trash for us and when they go to negotiate their contracts they're negotiating on behalf of multiple communities and all of their trash so we're seeing a reduction in our trash ton tonnage disposal cost as a result of the new contract we've been able to maintain that tonnage level whereas other communities are going up and we're recycling more and we're throwing away more yard waste and I mean that's running a successful operation now I think Jesse Smith our recycling coordinator has done a tremendous job of putting this program together um and we our facility last year our drop-off facility saw

▶ 2:16:04 18 000 18 162 vehicle trips so that's over 18 000 vehicles entered our facility to use it and drop off recycling materials and that's a benefit and um i don't know how many communities how many directors can say that they have a facility that generates that much that much interest that's the budget and i'll gladly answer any questions thank you mr shanna president khan please mr shanna the overtime line is that primarily to keep the city yard open on weekends the majority of that goes the majority of that overtime does go to the um the facility where it also goes to um to assist some events if we're going to clean up after the parade we're going to pick up trash after a park event but the majority is for the facility and just just to be clear this

▶ 2:17:07 budget reflects everything that the city is expending in terms of collection and disposal of trash and of the recycling program that's correct and that there's nothing else that you can think of that's out there just spending just the indirects associated with the employees okay so these are all the direct expenditures these are the direct expenditures okay and um i think that's all i have for now thank you president khan alderman Medeiros please thank you um the uh bay state recycling the i think the bay state textiles the program at the schools of those white bins where people can drop off their textiles do we have any idea how many tons or how much has been disposed of through those boxes i don't i know the program's been

▶ 2:18:10 Monica C. Medeiros: successful because we've been able to maintain it and if it wasn't if the program wasn't going to be successful they weren't going to keep the boxes i could provide you with a brief summary me I can work with Jesse I don't know the specifics to how much they've collected but I can do that the school still getting some money back I know in the initial phase they were getting some funds back to go to the PTO's I believe the funds do not come to DPW so they go she works in partnerships with the school on that and I can provide you the specifics of what happens there yeah I I'd love to know about you know how much we've you know how much they've they've taken because I do believe that they do keep track of that and whether or not

▶ 2:18:54 Monica C. Medeiros: some of that's coming back to the schools and of course you know that gives us an idea of what we're keeping outside of our our trash tipping fee and you know what's being diverted from the normal normal procedures and things that we might have to pay for so I know that was part of the goal to get some stuff out of the waste my other question is when people drop off the recycling at Tremont Street are we making money on those materials right now do we still do we sell we that's the only paper that we still sell we sell it to JRM but we control our own destiny in that regard which is why you know it's it's comforting to see people still come and you know last year we had about 16,000 has this year, 18,000, you know, we hope that trend continues because the paper that we

▶ 2:19:47 Monica C. Medeiros: generate from there, we do sell, and we deposit that into our recycling revolving account. That's how we run our events. How about the consumables, like cans and plastic and things like that? We dispose of those at zero cost. At zero cost. So, you know, if people who live in the city who might be in a facility, like an apartment or a condo or something that want to recycle and don't necessarily, if they're a Melrose resident they don't necessarily have the facilities available they can bring them down to absolutely i mean that's available to them regardless but they actually also might be helping the city make a little bit of money while doing it anything we will accept any recycling material thank you

▶ 2:20:28 Peter D. Mortimer: thank you so that's that's a nice point you made alderman Medeiros if anybody takes their own paper to the city yard the uh citizens loyal and patriotic to melrose they're making money for Melrose if you take your own paper down to the city got something to keep in mind great point thank you thank you any other all to move the bottom line we have a motion to move the bottom line from alderman Boycelle seconded by alderman Lemmerman all in favor please say aye aye any opposed hearing none department 433 will be recommended to the full board for passage the next department we have before us is department four seven five public works parks and forests in the amount of six hundred and fifty four thousand one

▶ 2:21:13 hundred and fifty eight dollars and forty cents mr. Shana please this this this budget funds our park and park and forestry group it it contains the salaries of all in union employees that work in the parks and forestry division of our department highlighting some of the major contributions of this group to the community last year we started the year by renovating the harvest man playground that reopening was August 25th last year was an $83,000 project the city contributed 20,000 of that and the balance came from fundraising efforts at the school we work very closely this division works very closely with Joan Bell our park and open space director and she does a fabulous job at finding work for this group she's a wonderful asset to to us

▶ 2:22:12 and and having the foresight of finding playground equipment and working with groups and working with partnerships such as the Horace man the Lincoln School the Roosevelt and improving our playgrounds Joan also manages all the permitting of these facilities for the Park Commission we moved on from the Horace Mann and in the fall we started the common backyard through the common backyard grant we we we started in the fall recently completed improvements to the common playground we did that out of this division the the majority of that funding came from outside of Melrose the Massachusetts Office of Energy and Environmental Affairs committed two hundred thousand of it and the fifty thousand dollar match came through development funding we we worked with

▶ 2:23:06 the El Pond committee at adding an agility ramp to the dog park which is probably still our most popular park in Melrose we work with the veterans group in improving the knoll last year we last Memorial Day we did the World War one monument this year we did the Korean memorial we did some smaller projects throughout the school at the Roosevelt School I think we added a school garden there with them we try to help support the all the community gardens I know the Hoover School has a pretty vibrant garden and we help try to help the harvest man as well and there's the the fields get a tremendous amount of use and with that use comes a tremendous amount of maintenance so just last year alone the Park Commission through Joan Bell's office issued twenty nine hundred

▶ 2:23:59 and seventy three permits for Melrose fields that's approximately twenty five thousand twenty five thousand hours of use on these fields our parks athletic fields our playgrounds are vibrant they're very well maintained by this group and they're highly used and this is the budget that we use to support this this is also the budget we use to support our forestry group last year we removed 74 trees from the tree canopy due to illness or a repair the good news is that we've planted 155 to replace those 74 we've also done a tremendous amount of trims and stump grindings so that life cycle of the tree canopy seems to be headed in the right direction as well in fy16 one of the main projects which we're about

▶ 2:24:53 to start anytime is the renovation of the lions court we're also going to be very aggressive in our turf maintenance of the athletic fields to keep up with this high use and we're going to continue with a very aggressive maintenance programs in the infields baseball infields Thank you, Mr. Shana. Alderman Boycelle, please. Out of those 155 trees that were planted last year, has anyone did an inventory of how many are alive? We're in the process of doing that, to be honest with you. If you go towards Southern Main Street, you'll see six of them from Grove Street to East Wyoming and further down. There's a few on Howard Street. There's a few on Upland Street as well. mean we're noticing them it was a very rigorous winter and we're hoping some of them bounce back

▶ 2:25:50 Robert A. Boisselle: but if not we'll have to replace those also i noticed some of the trees have low branches that are been snapped off and you have almost like a a pointed uh area almost at eye level i'm sort of nervous about someone sort of brushing against it and getting one of these branches in their eyes are on your face and so forth we'll inspect those uh forestry foreman will go out inspect those and he'll prune them especially along main street especially the new ones that have come in because the the branches and the new ones that are just about five feet and usually you want to be about six feet minimum to you don't have this problem of these branches that stick out thank you thank you mr chairman thank you alderman boyce

▶ 2:26:33 sell seeing no further Alderman Forbes please I got it just a quick question we do work on fields especially like school fields do we separate these or just is it all grouped together so those fields are all in this budget okay so that doesn't really appeal school grounds municipal building grounds parking lots anything that's grounds related comes from this budget okay so we do work in uh hoover school playground this budget all right thank you mr chairman thank you alderman forbes alderman inferno please just a quick one in um mr shenna's presentation he mentioned um the renovation of lions park i just wanted to clarify it that it's l-y-o-n-s the lions tennis court i mean my first thought i as i quickly listened to you i just thought the

▶ 2:27:23 Peter D. Mortimer: l-i-o-n-s and oh no it's the l-y-o-n-s it's the tennis courts the tennis courts didn't want you get any calls about a dog park and a lion's park motion to move the bottom line it must be the late hour that i just like yeah alderman boycella's made a motion to move the bottom line duly seconded by alderman lemmerman all in favor please say aye any opposed hearing none department 475 will be recommended to the full board for passage the next department we have before us is department 485 public works automotive in the amount of 479 216 dollars and 39 cents mr shanna please this is the budget that funds the mechanic fleet the mechanic staff we have and that staff of mechanics maintains all of the dpw which includes every division that we've spoken about

▶ 2:28:22 this evening including water and sewer they maintain the police fleet and they maintain the fire fleet with the exception of their engines ladder trucks and ambulance this fiscal this budget also has our fuel line item our gas and diesel for the entire city and this year we saw this year was the first year fiscal year that we saw the true impact of our new fueling facility um and that's why i am proposing a cut to that line um of about five percent thank you director shanna motion to move the bottom line we have a motion to move the bottom line from alderman boisselle duly seconded by alderman forbes on discussion we have alderman Medeiros please i just have to ask about uh tires looks like we have an 18 increase in tires and

▶ 2:29:23 Peter D. Mortimer: anything in particular about that it's a timing thing there's going to be a lot of cars a lot of vehicles next year that are going to need it and i know we spoke with my mechanic and my operations manager and we're proposing the increase to make that a little more realistic to what we think we're going to spend next year okay all right sounds good thank you thank you alderman medeiros a motion to move the bottom line has been made and duly seconded all in favor please say aye aye Aye. Aye. Any opposed? Hearing none, Department 485 will be recommended for passage to the full board. The next department we have before us is Department 491, the cemetery, in the amount of $212,951.48. Mr. Shannon, please.

▶ 2:30:13 So this budget reflects the salaries of the employees that DPW has in the cemetery to run the day to day operations of the cemetery. and the material that they need to do that this is the maintenance crew and it does not include the salary of the administrator that's in a previous budget we already discussed there are three people that are there on a day-to-day basis obviously we supplement during peaks demands I think they do a tremendous job this past weekend Memorial Day is kind of the highlight for that this group of our department and cemetery grounds looked exceptional for for all of the ceremonies and all the families that that go there the cemetery is running according to my cues they are running at approximately the

▶ 2:31:05 same level of services and burials as in the past that's and the breakdown is about 35 percent cremation 65 percent casket burials and that is a according him that's right at the industry norm DPW has been very involved in the cemetery operations this year two-thirds of the commission is new and we've been working and focusing on updating rules and regulations and assisting them in that in terms of that that's a rules of what's allowed in the cemetery what can you do in it what can you plant around stones what's allowed what's not allowed we've been working and assisting the commissioners in that regard we've also been spending a lot of time with the commissioners in preparing a new capital

▶ 2:31:53 improvement plan for the cemetery road rehabilitation continuing rehabbing the wall the infrastructure in stormwater infrastructure in the cemetery we've been looking at all aspects and we're also started to begin to look at areas where we can further expand the cemetery and prolong its its life we've also been working with the new Commission at updating technology and the goal of the upgraded technology is to hopefully get some services online and at the end of the day improve customer service that's the budget and answer any questions thank you director Shana president Kahn please yeah how much of the actual operation of the cemetery is being funded off budget by things like perpetual care and trust funds and discretionary payments by the i'll defer to the auditor for

▶ 2:32:48 that and i don't know whether you can answer that mr tell russo without mr hughes uh again through the chair principally through the um sale of lots and graves and the interest earned of perpetual care uh pays probably about 90 of the budget so nine percent beyond this budgeted amount i i would use that budget amount i assume approximately 90 i can get you the actual number but off the top of my head um that would not be unreasonable yeah again you know people might think this isn't our business or this isn't within our purview but i i'd like to know how much it actually is costing to run absolutely the cemetery and for people at home if anybody is watching at home there are discretionary funds that the Cemetery Commission has

▶ 2:33:41 that they can apply absolute various expenses so if we just look at the budget we have no way of knowing without you supplementing this information as to how much it actually costs to run the cemetery so maybe no one else is interested maybe no one else is watching at home but I'm interested I would like to know how much it actually costs and typically do the chairs it's always been my lifetime achievement award if I could ever enterprise the cemetery operation but they do and will not let you do that whatever reason the Department of Revenue will not let you do that because I think that would address mr. Kahn's issue right up front we don't we don't want to be setting any more rates thank Thank you, President Kahn.

▶ 2:34:30 Gail Infurna: Alderman Inferno, please. Thank you. Just a quick question. Thank you, John, for all your work that you are doing with the commissioners. I know you're working hard to move things forward going on down there. There was a lot of work that needed to be done. I have noticed when I'm down there that there are a lot of stones, be it fresh ones, the newer ones as opposed to the older part, that seem to be crooked and what not. there money in the budget to kind of help that and is there someone that does a little survey as they you know go around there and look at some of the ones that are starting to kind of lean that's um the the staff is the staff that's funded in this budget is the staff that does though that performs

▶ 2:35:14 those repairs we the administrator down there Mike Hughes typically will survey area provide us a listing of of stones that are crooked anything that's tipped over we address immediately I've absolutely seen the same thing in my eyes gravitate to those type of things and that's those are the type of things that we're trying to improve and I have to give credit with their two new commissioners and the entire commission itself is really trying to become progressive and bring the cemetery not only forward but forward in a in a much stronger direction right I appreciate that thank you thank you alderman inferno alderman Medeiros please if I am not sure if I saw all them in Forbes if so I'll defer to no you would cue Alderman Forbes yes sorry I missed you

▶ 2:36:12 Scott M. Forbes: sir go ahead all right since it's your ward the she's yielding the floor all thank you mr. chairman I know earlier you mentioned that there was going to be a potential engineering study with the drainage system in the cemetery I was just looking here just wondering if that was a budgeted item under professional services I see about ten thousand three hundred and sixty six dollars that was marked towards that and that looks like a level funded item from last year so was just wondering if that was something that oh wait a minute I'm sorry I'm looking at the wrong like the wrong one well to answer your question in the cemetery budget is there money is there money that's allocated towards that study or is that going to be money that you'll be asking for later on oh that's

▶ 2:36:59 Monica C. Medeiros: funny that's in that's gonna be in our sewer budget and that's money that's in our highway budget and on the drain maintenance okay it's not reflective here this is just cemetery operations unfortunately the pipes that run through the cemetery are our obligation to maintain and improve outside of their operation. Okay, all right, very well, thank you very much. Thank you Alderman Forbes, Alderman Medeiros, please. Thank you, and forgive me if I missed it, if we talked about it during parks. But I did just want to point out that I do believe that we have, if my memory serves right, that we've actually saved some money that I don't think it may not even show up in this budget anymore, in professional services with which many mowing and maintenance and things that have

▶ 2:37:44 comic cemetery cleanup um that have come in-house and i thought maybe you'd like to mention that no that's true we do that that's part of part of the reorg was to eliminate the need of outside landscapers to go in and supplement now in peak seasons we try to supplement um whether it's with the tree crew or last week we had the highway crew in there we had a sweeping our own sweeper in there and we do that continuously over the course of the year though we try to use our water division to go in and and and and turn on and maintain the irrigation system in there as well so there's a lot of things that we we do overall that is a very good point thank you Thank You alderman Medeiros motion to recommend the bottom line second we have a motion to recommend the

▶ 2:38:32 Peter D. Mortimer: the bottom line from Alderman Boycelle, duly seconded by Alderman Medeiros. All in favor, please say aye. Aye. Any opposed, hearing none. The bottom line for the cemetery department, Department 491, will be recommended to the full board for passage. Chair stands ready to accept a motion to lay Order 20154 on the table. Actually, I'm sorry, this has to go to the full board for the public hearing on June 1st? Correct, yes, thank you very much. At this time, we need to recommend this order to the full board without recommendation so we can have our public hearing on June 1st. So moved. We have a motion by Alderman Medeiros to recommend this order to the full board without recommendation. Send this order to the full board without recommendation, duly seconded by Alderman Boycelle.

▶ 2:39:35 Peter D. Mortimer: All in favor, please say aye. Aye. Any opposed? Hearing none, this order will be recommended to the full board, excuse me. This order will be sent to the full board without recommendation for the purpose of conducting the public hearing on June 1st. The next order we have before us is order number 2015-173. It is an appropriation of $699,534.85 from available free cash to various accounts as set forth herein. Before we hear from Mr. De La Russo regarding this appropriation of an order for free cash, I would like to inform the board that one section of this order account 0 1 1 7 5 2 dash 5 2 9 0 0 0 it's the Planning Department professional services in the amount of thirty one thousand five hundred motion to place this on hold

▶ 2:40:40 Peter D. Mortimer: well they're just this one part let me just let me just finish the explanation please what we could do is we could make an a order of that pot if anyone wants to query Miss Gaffey no it's very difficult to do a orders all right you just want to hold one part of it all right so we're gonna lay one part of it on the table the president informed me earlier tonight and yeah he's absolutely correct this there's really no such thing as a motion to place on hold it's It's just to lay that portion on the table. So if that's your motion, Alderman Boycelle, to lay from this order account number 011752529000 to lay that portion of the order on the table. Is there a second, please? Second. Second by Alderman Lemmerman.

▶ 2:41:30 Peter D. Mortimer: All in favor, please say aye. I have a point of order, Mr. President. Please, I'm Mr. Chairman, you're Mr. President. It's getting late. I do not believe, unless you divide an order, that you can take a portion of the order and put it on the table. I tend to agree with you. So I do not believe that that is a proper vote, and I would respectfully request that the — that's not a proper motion, and I would respectfully request that the chair so rule. I concur with your point of order. It's 100% correct. We just did here, since we are a working committee here, we're gonna take a little bit of leniency and our clerk of committees has pointed out that making an A order is a difficult endeavor. Is that a huge problem?

▶ 2:42:29 Peter D. Mortimer: It's a huge problem. All right. I'm not suggesting that we make an A order. I don't see any need to make any order, I'm just suggesting that we can't take a portion of the order and put it on the table when the chair has agreed with me. Is it possible to discuss the merits of the order, Mr. Chairman? We can discuss the merits of the order. If we may actually move ahead and recommend this for passage without the presence of Ms. Gaffey here tonight, if we're satisfied with the explanation of our city auditor. Respectfully, I don't really see any need for us to take any final vote on this order this evening. But I did want to address the merits of the portion of the order that relates to the Public Works Department.

▶ 2:43:11 All right. Well, the order is before us. It has been read. So we will proceed and see where we go, and we're out of the suspension, so if you'd like to hear from Mr. I would not if I could continue. Okay, please do. The portion of this order that relates to the Public Works Department is to apply $402,000 to the snow deficit. It seems pretty clear to me that that's what this is about. I support that. I would assume everybody else here supports it. In the interest of time, respectfully, I always love to hear from Mr. Schenner or Mr. DellaRusso, but I really feel no need to hear from them relative to this order. and I think that when this order moves along that we should pass it as it relates to those two portions of the owner when we finally have everybody

▶ 2:44:01 Peter D. Mortimer: come before us who has to come before us relative to the various and sundry parts of said order very good that sounds good so right now the order is still before us your comments are very wise as usual and duly noted and the order is before us ready for discussion and any subsequent motions which may occur alderman medeiros please uh thank you i have to say there is uh ten thousand dollars here to be allocated towards playground repair i would be under the assumption that falls under public works although i know mr shen has been been uh exercising his voice but i don't know what that's for and i would like to know before i vote on it well that that that's certainly uh your duty and uh mr shannon i'm sure we'll be happy to

▶ 2:44:49 explain so historically in the past we've evaluated our playground equipment at this time of the year and um this funding from free cash is going to be is that the request is to allocate this funding for several playground equipment repairs throughout the throughout the city um i think there is a swing set at Conan Park that needs some upgrade a handicap swing there's some there's a platform at volunteer park that's rotting away there's a few roof structures at Lebanon Park there are a few benches at Foss Park that need replacement so this funding is for upgrades to playground equipment throughout all playgrounds as identified by Joan Bell in her yearly maintenance maintenance inspection thank you I wasn't sure whether that was for one

▶ 2:45:42 Peter D. Mortimer: Parker no citywide thank you Thank You alderman Medeiros any other alderman wishing to be heard seeing none there was their motion please motion to lay this order on the table and point that out that we have a meeting scheduled for Monday night at 715 very good second alderman Medeiros has made a motion to I'll lay this order on the table, duly seconded by Alderman Boyce-Sell. All in favor, please say aye. Aye. Aye. This order is laid upon the table. The next order we have before us is order 2015-166, is the reauthorization of a revolving account number 2657, waste collection and recycling for fiscal year 16. The order is before you. Motion to recommend. We have a motion to recommend this order for passage to the full board by Alderman Boycelle.

▶ 2:46:49 Peter D. Mortimer: Is there a second? Second. The motion is seconded by President Kahn. On discussion? Seeing none, all in favor please say aye. Aye. Any opposed? Hearing none, this order will be recommended to the full board for passage. Motion to adjourn. Second. Second. We have a motion to adjourn from Alderman Medeiros, duly seconded by Alderman Forbes. All in favor, please say aye. Aye. Any opposed? Hearing none, we are adjourned. Thank you, one and all.

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• This meeting on the city portal