Legal & Legislative Committee — 2015-07-27

Legal & Legislative Committee Meeting

This meeting starts at 1:06:15 in a recording that covers several meetings.

Attendance

Jaclyn L. Bird present · Alderman at Large; Robert A. Boisselle present · Nonvoting Member; Donald L. Conn Jr. present · President/Ex-officio Member; Scott M. Forbes present · Ward 7 Alderman; Jennifer L. Lemmerman present · Nonvoting Member; Mary Beth McAteer-Margolis present · Nonvoting Member; Monica C. Medeiros present · Nonvoting Member; Peter D. Mortimer present · Ward 6 Alderman; John N. Tramontozzi present · Chairman; Francis X. Wright Jr. present · Vice Chairman

Agenda

Minutes

CITY OF MELROSE LEGAL & LEGISLATIVE COMMITTEE CALENDAR● JULY 27, 2015 Aldermanic Chamber Committee Meeting 8:00 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 John N. Tramontozzi Chairman Present Francis X. Wright Jr. Vice Chairman Present Peter D. Mortimer Ward 6 Alderman Present Scott M. Forbes Ward 7 Alderman Present Jaclyn L. Bird Alderman at Large Present Donald L. Conn Jr. President/Ex-officio Member Present Robert A. Boisselle Nonvoting Member Present Jennifer L. Lemmerman Nonvoting Member Present Mary Beth McAteer-Margolis Nonvoting Member Present Monica C. Medeiros Nonvoting Member Present In Attendance: Chief Assessor Chris Wilcock; Director of Public Works John Scenna, City Solicitor Robert Van Campen

ORDER-2016-7 Amending Revised Ordinances Amending Revised Ordinances of the City of Melrose, Chapter 6, Section 6-3.1 (Senior Citizen Property Tax Work-Off Abatement Program) Recommend as Amended Board of Aldermen

ORDER-2015-192 Amending Revised Ordinances Amending Melrose Revised Ordinances, Chapter 228-14 by adding paragraph C relative to Water Meters as set forth herein. Recommend Place on File Board of Aldermen

ORDER-2015-193 Amending Revised Ordinances Amending Melrose Revised Ordinances, Chapter 228-15 by adding paragraph A (3) relative to Unit Averaging as set forth herein. Hold Legal & Legislative Committee City of Melrose Page 1 Updated 8/25/2015 12:37 PM Minutes Legal & Legislative Committee July 27, 2015

ORDER-2015-194 Amending Revised Ordinances Amending Melrose Revised Ordinances, Chapter 228-15 by adding paragraph C relative to Water Proration as set forth herein Recommend Place on File Board of Aldermen

ORDER-2015-195 Amending Revised Ordinances Amending Melrose Revised Ordinances, Chapter 228-30 by adding paragraph F relative to Sewer Proration as set forth herein Recommend Place on File Board of Aldermen

ORDER-2015-104 Amending Revised Ordinances Amend Melrose Revised Ordinances, Chapter 177-12: Snow and ice removal as set forth herein. Hold Legal & Legislative Committee

ORDER-2015-182 Amending Rules of Order of the Board of Aldermen Be it ordered that the Rules of Order of the Melrose Board of Aldermen be amended to add Rule 32B and Rule 32C as set forth herein. Hold Legal & Legislative Committee City of Melrose Page 2 Updated 8/25/2015 12:37 PM

Transcript

▶ 1:06:32 On the motion, all in favor? Aye. Aye. The opposed, seeing none. We are open for public participation. If anybody in the audience wishes to come forward to talk about any matter on the agenda, you're welcome to come forward. We have a few orders on the agenda this evening. Good evening. Good evening. My name is Harold Hawks, Melrose Street, Melrose Towers. I was before the Board of Aldermen on June 1, Alderman meeting, Monica Majerus, Alderman at Lodge, introduced order 215193, I believe, which addresses the unfair water and sewer rates which have been levied by the city on the condominiums and large apartment complexes within the city. I spoke at the June 1 meeting about how unfair that was because I live at Melrose Towers.

▶ 1:07:35 we have 54 units in one building on one meter and we automatically get moved to the higher rate so individually each unit owner is paying the highest rate even though individually we use at the lowest rate and Monica Medeiros is order addresses that issue where there would be I'm not quite sure how it's worded but it would average what individual units would be and would reduce our raised to the lower rate. My condo fees in Merrill's Towers went up 8% last year, primarily due to the increased water and sewer rates. And I just want to speak in favor of the Order 193 that addresses this inequity. I just want to add one more thing. I got a call from the Merrill's Weekly News today that my letter to the editor

▶ 1:08:27 will be published in Friday's newspaper where I talk about this issue and i in the issue in the letter to the editor i recommend that all people that live in condominiums in the city and large complexes vote against the override initiative until the water and sewer issue is fixed because if we have a override which increases our real estate tax in addition to the higher water rates it's really unfair to us living in condominiums so thank you for your attention thank you sir you have to sign this piece of paper by the way yes Yes, please. Thank you. Thank you. Any other Member of the public who wish to come forward to speak on any matters on our agenda this evening? Motion to close public participation, Mr. Chairman.

▶ 1:09:10 John N. Tramontozzi: Seeing no other Member of the public wishing to come forward, we have a motion to close public participation by Alderman Mortimer, seconded by Alderman Forbes. On that motion, all in favor? Aye. Any opposed? Seeing none, public participation is closed. We have a motion for a recess. Chairman, motion to recess so we can return to the Appropriations Committee. We have a motion to recess by Alderman Forbes, seconded by Alderman Mortimer. On that motion, all in favor? Aye. Any opposed, seeing none. We are in recess, we will reconvene after the completion of the Appropriations Committee, thank you. The Committee on Appropriations, as is reconvened with the lady and gentleman who were before us, please return to the table.

▶ 1:43:55 John N. Tramontozzi: amending revised ordinances of the City of Marrows, Chapter 6, Section 6-3.1, a senior citizen property tax work off abatement program. What is the will of the committee? A motion to suspend the rules. All right, we'll have a motion to suspend the rules by Alderman Byrd. Second. Seconded by Alderman Forbes on the motion, all in favor? Aye. Any opposed, seeing none, we are suspended throughout the rest of the evening on all the orders on the agenda. Would you like to hear from any member of the administration? Yes. All right. I was hoping that any Member that wanted to speak on this would come forward please and just describe the order. good evening good evening this order is to amend the ordinance on the senior

▶ 1:44:50 citizen work off program what we're trying to do is eliminate the income eligibility increased participation and we already had an order to change the amount from 750 to a thousand so this is more of a housekeeping order but here to answer any questions that you have just some Member of the public know that This is real estate abatement program. That's correct, it's the senior work off program. President Kahn, I'm sorry, President Kahn? Yeah, Mr. Wilcock, do we have any estimates to the cost of the program? Yeah, with the changes to the rate, it's $14,000 using 14 participants in this past year in 2015. At 25, if that was the max, it would be 25,000. The funds come from the overlay account.

▶ 1:45:44 The Board of Assessors has evaluated the amount, and we think $25,000 is definitely in the budget for the upcoming years. So you believe the maximum cost would be $25,000, and it would be funded not through the general budget but through overlay? That's correct. This program is funded through the overlay account. The most we've had in the last, I'd say, three years is 17 individuals, so that would accommodate you know five eight more individuals in this program and does it come out of the fiscal year overlay that you're in or does it come from prior years overlay yeah it's it's the current fiscal year it's just like a real estate exemption it would come out of that current year okay that's all I

▶ 1:46:27 Robert A. Boisselle: had mr. chairman very good alderman boys I was next yes in the document there's a lot crossed off here but 6-3.1 section a on the eligibility individual has to be over 60 at this point and section B indicates the city departments will identify the needs but the Council of Aging will review each application and match up the appropriate individual with the jobs that are involved and so forth now when you go down to G section the director of City of Melrose of Council and Aging shall be responsible for determining eligibility for the program isn't that done in A and B or is that something different that was the language that was there we we decided to keep that line uh it might be redundant but um well i mean first of all they've got to be over 60. that's

▶ 1:47:33 Francis X. Wright Jr.: correct and then the council of aging is reviewing their quote applications and identifying the jobs uh so i'm assuming at that point they're eligible eligible to work so what is the point of this of the director of the coa to make a decision at that point it's just to match up the individual and like i said it could be redundant we could strike that if that's a recommendation okay that's my only question thank you thank you mr chairman very good thank you mr chairman um just a quick question um the the the senior citizens they'll be performing work it's a work off program that's correct so the work that they do would either be performed by an employee or a vendor or a contractor and if performed by an employee there's a potential it might be done in off hours over time uh yeah it

▶ 1:48:33 depends on each department but there is some flexibility with the work okay and but there is there's value to the work to the city that's correct a lot of stuff gets pushed off to you know depending in my personal department we we'd like to get we have our wish list the senior worker that comes in and works for us really gets that done and she fills in where we need it and it's it's invaluable so and I can only speak for my department sure okay but there is value to it to the city so it's not we're not giving away this isn't any type of a grant or any type of tax reduction for these individuals it's a work off program that's correct and in the language to identify specific needs and in section B is to kind of address

▶ 1:49:14 Monica C. Medeiros: that to make sure that if someone's going to work for the assessing department that they're going to fit the needs of the assessing department great thank you thank you mr chairman very good any further discussion all the minimum dealers thank you i'm not a member of this committee um i would just i don't think there's a motion on the table yet but i just saw something that i i would suggest someone make as a an amendment to the amendment in section e that we're inserting the words their specific qualifications to perform the work and i would just suggest uh changing there to ones o n e apostrophe s is that really should be singular rather than there as plural it's just a small grammatical thing you agree with that sir is that

▶ 1:50:09 John N. Tramontozzi: yeah we can make that change i'll make that as a motion as a member of the committee okay second so we have a motion to make that change uh by alderman mortimer seconded by alderman uh forbes on the motion all favor all right all right so um madam clerk do we have that we've done that all right so that's all that's been changed any further discussion all right seeing none do we have a motion to recommend mr chairman recommended by alderman forbes seconded by alderman mortimer on the motion all in favor aye people seeing none great that will be recommended to the full board and it's at its next meeting thank you thank you the next order up for business is order 2015-192 amending Melrose revised ordinances chapter 228-14 by adding paragraph c relative to water

▶ 1:51:04 Monica C. Medeiros: meters as set forth here in alderman Medeiros said you're a non-voting member of the book of the committee um you want to make a comment then i would like to um thank you very much mr chairman as as you pointed out i am a non-voting member of this committee um this is one of a few orders that i've submitted relative to water and sewer the purpose behind this order in particular is that I had received you know various one of the issues before us is that obviously there's some issue with people who are in multi-unit residential buildings where they're falling into because we're going by usage of the whole building or all the people on that shared meter they're going into the higher tiers and I understand that we as a city have allowed condominiums and

▶ 1:52:09 Monica C. Medeiros: others to individually meter the units when when it is feasible in terms of you know when they're able to I've heard from people who are in apartments or may have commercial or commercial slash residential units that they've been told that they can't individually meter the unit and the reason why is because the city didn't want to be going after the tenant for the bill and in these comment conversations I inevitably kept saying like I don't really understand why we can't just bill and why we wouldn't automatically bill the building owner and so I've submitted a change which would really kind of put that into into our ordinances to say that we can install meters in something that's non owner-occupied and that ultimately basically it says ultimately

▶ 1:53:19 Monica C. Medeiros: that the owner of the building would be liable for the usage charges I believe this is it seems to me to be a common-sense addition but you know I and and then there's been some discussion to where you know many buildings especially the larger ones it really doesn't make sense and they can't feasibly individually meter but in those that can and this might be something as simple as a two-family home this could be simple something as simple as a building that's a mixed-use property where we have one residential unit and one commercial unit being able to kind of separate out these charges I just want to point out that they you know this would cause more people to not be that highest tier but at the same time we would get increased revenue because we would get a fixed

▶ 1:54:18 Francis X. Wright Jr.: base charge from those additional meters that we would be installing so you said i think this is is a reasonable change so thank you is there any special will in the uh the committee any Member uh alderman wright just a motion to suspend the rules so that we may hear from um city officials mr shenna mr van campen we have a motion by alderman right second but we are in suspension so why don't we have come forward um you know may have been right you have the floor thank you good evening again gentlemen I just am curious if you have an opinion as to this proposed ordinance amendment as it relates to both legal and practical issues you might see in it. You're here, so I figured I'd bring you up.

▶ 1:55:29 Sure. Sure. I have offered an opinion at the request of the Director of Public Works, which was in connection with the proposal to allow for unit averaging. And really in summary form, my opinion letter speaks for itself. But at the end of the day, condominiums are considered by definition, high-volume users. There is a decision of the Appeals Court in Flatley, which is referenced in my letter, which speaks to the owner's request to create an averaging system. And the Appeals Court in that decision concluded that such an averaging system would frustrate the purpose of the tiered rate system which is employed, for example, here in Melrose in that in that case it was the city of Malden so I wrote the letter to

▶ 1:56:28 Francis X. Wright Jr.: the director of Public Works to make him aware of my concerns as to the legal validity of this type of an averaging system I mean yeah I understand your concern yeah no maybe it's me that's not my understanding of what the order is requesting it's appears to be a an order that would allow for the installation which order are we referring to there are four of them I'm sorry it's I was asked to specifically comment on 2015 193 to the director public works I'm not commenting on 192 I'm sorry about that I thought you were considering all four at the same time here that that motion hasn't been made so because it seems to me and that the this ordinance basically states that which may already be I mean

▶ 1:57:38 if I have a two-family house and I have one meter in it and I decide I want to a second meter in it because i want to have the two units on separate meters can i do that can i presently do that so you can you can currently put the second meter in place for your own use the city will still only have one meter and only read one meter and only send one bill after that meter what you do internally is up to the owner and as long as it's done according to plumbing code you're okay with it I mean if you have a three you have three apartments and you can figure out a way how to split the water going into each apartment you want to do it on your own for your own use so that you could take the one bill the city sends you you can do that but as it stands right now one

▶ 1:58:32 house has one meter has one account that account is assigned to the owner of that home whether it's single-family or multifamily that's that's how it's set up right now okay so if I may to the maker of the motion what you're asking all the men Medeiros is that they'd be recognized as separate billing unit billing city and city installed meters yeah units as in residential units not water units excuse me and do we know how many properties this would affect if we I know nobody's asked you to prepare this in advance. Yeah, we haven't prepared a public presentation in this regard. We've looked at this from a macro perspective. I know our CFO has already passed these orders on for their impact to our consultant, Pioneer Consulting, Doug Gardner.

▶ 1:59:34 And he's already pined, our consultant has said that if we were to look at something of this magnitude, first we're going to be kind of flipping our whole tear rate upside down. Because we're adding more meters, we're splitting usage, top tiers going to disappear. And first and second tier customers, which is the majority of where we have, could see up to double digit rate increases as a result of going this route. So it's against the years of infrastructure that we've built in terms of metering. Okay, and has this been either to yourselves or perhaps to you, Mr. Chairman? Has this been a matter of some lengthy discussion and maybe President Kahn? It's my understanding it has anyway at the water commission meetings that

▶ 2:00:36 Francis X. Wright Jr.: a member of this board has been part of for the last couple of years yeah we've discussed several options we've discussed the averaging option which is part of the next order that's before at lent as well proration which are the third and fourth orders before you was discussed in this chamber as well as at that committee for several months two years ago so all of these have been issues that we've discussed digested looked at many different ways and moved on okay and just so i'm clear because obviously only one of us attends those meetings and it hasn't been me and i don't have the opportunity during the day to attend them when you have those discussions there's a meeting of the minds or there's discussion and

▶ 2:01:28 Francis X. Wright Jr.: i assume or maybe you can tell me do you move forward with the majority cons the consensus or the majority as to how the city should proceed as to water and sewer rates we do and we look at it mainly from the impact on the rate you know what what's the policy and what what's the impact on the rate going to be and at the end of the day that committee can't really do anything other than bring it to this board for a vote and we've done that for three years now but what you bring to this board is is a majority majority view of the unit or the unanimous view of that right of that body okay great thank you that's all for now thank you thank you mr chairman um just to to clarify for my own purposes i'm just confused about something so for some reason i was under the

▶ 2:02:19 Jaclyn L. Bird: understanding that the reason they couldn't go in the non-owner occupied unit was because we then couldn't put a lien on that that's correct okay for the billing purposes right correct so is that the reason why we haven't done this particular thing or is this maybe through the chair different than what alderman Medeiros was looking at i i thought that that was originally the the issue with the reason we couldn't put the meters in let's say the rental unit and build a rental unit directly was because then we didn't have any means of going after that money if the person didn't pay yep that's correct and if we start saying that the rental the rental unit the bill should for the rental unit should go to the owner well uh we just we're just going about it a

▶ 2:03:08 different way i mean there's a master meter in the house the master meter gets read the bill for the master meter goes to the owner we don't have the capability to to send bills to people who rent because at the end of the month that person could be gone and if the bill is not paid we don't have an ability to lean that property so we looked at it from that perspective the perspective of splitting up the apartments into 20 20 bills one for each unit all in the name of the owner wasn't looked at nor does it have support because it would create a rate an impact on the rate that we didn't feel was favorable for all of noros um no i appreciate that i just wanted to clarify that for my own purposes here and i i respect the maker of the order trying to find a solution to

▶ 2:04:01 something that is um you know it's a complicated issue and i think you know we keep trying things year after year to try to make it as palatable as possible but um i think part of this was was something that we had discussed before but i think you're clarifying it for me thank you thank you Thank you, Mr. Chairman. Walderman, Boyzell. Going back to that question, the Oak Grove project. Now they've informed us that they've individually, each apartment complex, or each apartment is metered separately. Who gets the bill? So in the instance of Windsor Estate, There are master meters on those individual buildings. That's the meter that's read by Public Works. A bill is sent to the Condor Association Windsor Estate, who manages all those buildings, for the one building.

▶ 2:04:58 What they do from that point on is their call. And how they split that bill up, I don't know. But they do have individual meters in their apartments. They install it themselves. They manage it themselves. split their bill their one bill that the city sends it sends them by some manner amongst all of the people who they rent to but they don't get a breakdown of each individual we don't read those individual meters okay thank you thank you mr chairman any other Member of the committee thank you uh so mr shenny you said that we really don't know how many units this would affect no we don't so we really can't make an estimate on what this would do to the rate and we don't even know how many units we know we know where our

▶ 2:05:54 apartment buildings are and we know our larger consumers based on the fact that our apartment buildings because our consultant has a listing of all the accounts I mean the exact number I don't know at this point in time but the impact to the rate he felt comfortable with the pining and in writing that it would be a double digit increase to tier one and tier two that's addition to the to the yearly increases we deal with basically we're we're taking the consumption and we're moving it around right but somebody's going to take that hit if we're doing this we would be adding all of those base charges so say we took a building that had 20 units he takes that into consideration all the base fees

▶ 2:06:38 So, and do we have any idea of, you know, we have had in the past, we have some units where the individual home are, lives in one unit, and do we have any idea of if there are existing, say, two-family homes where we have individual, more than one meter on the building? can't speak to every account but it's not something that we that we allow moving forward and if it's if it's something we find we have to we have to deal with it because that's not a situation that we we typically approve in public works one water service one meter one bill it's a single family two family three family that's that's that's um that's our our main objective thank you any other any further discussion what's the will of the committee regarding this order

▶ 2:07:34 John N. Tramontozzi: well one one one option i guess would be uh placed on file we can refer it back to the water and sewer commission for further review for next year's rates we can just uh place it on file I'll move the motion to place it on the file. President Klein? I'll defer to the committee member. Motion to place it on the file. Moves to place it on the file. Second. There's a second by Alderman Byrd on the motion. Any further discussion? Seeing none, all in favor? Aye. Any opposed? The order is filed. Moving on to Order 2015-193, amending Melrose Revised Ordinances, Chapter 22A, by adding paragraph a subsection three relative to the unit averaging as set forth herein this is the order that um correct i jumped the gun i apologize so that's so we've already

▶ 2:09:05 have we have we had an opinion relative to this right um opinion is no no go yeah well i i issued an opinion to the director of public works on june 3rd yeah i i don't know where that opinion went I presume it's part of your packet it's not I remember seeing it that earlier occasion okay so happy to make it part of the record of this meeting this evening and the the conclusion essentially is that to take a unit averaging system and implement it would effectively frustrate the purpose of the tiered rate system that Melrose currently employs by providing preferential treatment to higher volume users at the expense of lower volume users you would distort the rate this we looked at extensively right there in the last two years of rate setting discussions

▶ 2:09:59 that within the committee this is actually the paul this is actually the opinion that led us to the policy of individually meeting metering condos we felt we that this averaging of condo associations per unit was a way to more adequately pass on pass on the costs but um when this when this opinion came from our solicitor we decided to put a policy in place of allowing condos to individually meter themselves and then we would individually read and individually send bills to each condo owner as a melrose taxpayer thank you as the maker of the order thank you uh and i'm glad that uh i get to talk about this because unfortunately this this order is not really unit averaging unfortunately when i had

▶ 2:10:52 Monica C. Medeiros: sent four orders to the city clerk back in may i had to find some way to differentiate them and i used that word and that's not really what this is and really the purpose and intent of my order here is to to determine usage by averaging the amount of usage per meter by the number of individuals of human beings that are on that meter and in in that way you know because we've been talking about this in terms of who are the big high-end users and talking about consumption and you know i look at users as individuals as homeowners as individuals rather than as one complex being the user and i think this actually goes so far as to really embrace the idea of a prorated system and of averaging I know this if we were to do this we would

▶ 2:12:02 Monica C. Medeiros: have to look at the the tearing rates my intent when I filed these orders back in the end of May was that hopefully they would come up during our discussions of our water and sewer they had appropriations for water and sewer setting the rates and setting our budgets and such and the idea here is to average the usage and determine consumption by looking at the number of people and their usage per meter we have these situations we do have large we've had lots of discussions or have had people come in from the public and speak of public participation here in your water and sewer committee meetings they said they've taken action to institute conservation measures they've installed low flow shower heads

▶ 2:12:53 Monica C. Medeiros: they've done the things like put aerators on their faucets and yet when you look at the average amount that is used for consumption the individual unit owners are using less than you know considerably less than what's being used in single family homes on average and this here is to a proposal that I think would treat all kinds of ownership of homes differently at the same I should say not differently where if you have many people in a single-family home and you're all using the faucet it's it's really very likely that you're automatically going to go into that second tier if you have a family of say five people and this would take into account that you would have the family of five people that you're not necessarily using more water per person than say

▶ 2:13:50 Monica C. Medeiros: a home with one person in it they might the person with five people in it might be actually more efficient so this is a way of looking at it that i think cuts across and treats single family homes two family three family homes and your apartment and condos alike i know it's not necessarily a perfect system but i think that you know we just started this system back in 2013 just two years ago you know we've already known when we got into this system that there were some things that might need changing and obviously we just changed the second meter program that you know this might be something that we that you know needs taking a look at and i hope that you know whether or not this be exactly the right way to go that this might be referred back to the water and sewer

▶ 2:14:38 Monica C. Medeiros: rate committee and that would keep an open mind and look at how we can address the problem because we went from a system that we had in place for decades with a flat rate system that we're told that is inconsistent with the law that was written in 94 or so we had in place here in the city and we switched it just two years ago when we did that we now do treat the way i look at it as individual users that live in these big buildings differently than we treat people who live in a single family home so i'd like to see us come to a situation that treats people more equitably across thank you thank you mr chairman um i believe i understand what alderman Medeiros is trying to accomplish share and i think it's laudable that that we're trying to provide some relief in situations and

▶ 2:15:42 Francis X. Wright Jr.: correct me if i'm wrong if you've got 10 units and one unit has one person in it and the other ones have five each that that person in one unit that one person in the one unit will get less of a bill than the other other nine units with five residents each in um but my question would be for the city solicitor and and for the uh for mr shenner is uh one do we build that way or do we just build is there just one bill for the for for the building oh and two uh can we legally do this and is this something you'd need time to look at well i'll let mr shenner answer the billing question then i can talk theoretically about the um the legal question i can speak to how we build today all of our entire system is based strictly on consumption it's consumption that that that

▶ 2:16:34 goes through a meter on a service if it's a condo association right now and this changed last year this was not the case but if it's a condo association those five individual units that you made reference to in your example can all put individual meters on their units we will set up five accounts in each of their names and build that all five of those owners individually individually the association itself would would get the difference between the master meter and this and the summation of all those individual meters if it's an apartment building it's a different story it's an apartment building it's one meter one account one bill and then it's up to the owner it's it's up to the owner of the apartment building to figure out how best to

▶ 2:17:26 Francis X. Wright Jr.: divide his consumption okay and that would be a business decision and that's a business decision exactly okay last year at this time con condos and associations were all considered that option of allowing individual meters in the condos didn't exist but that option exists today for for the association to come together and individually meet of their entire unit and then we would set up accounts and there are people that have done that okay and so that's kind of for some relief for the for the the unit which may only have one or two occupants but may be presently absorbing a bigger share of the overall water bill because they use less water they have less occupants whatever and it was so that argument you made is exactly what we heard so so my question for you

▶ 2:18:17 Francis X. Wright Jr.: mr van kempen would be one um legally can we do this where there's only one you can't individually individually meter the condo units in a condominium building and can we do it for an apartment building where we have one owner but multiple tenants renting you know those units so now and I don't necessarily expect you to have an answer of course of course and I'm happy to look at the question you know in a little more detail but theoretically if you're if the intent is to impose an averaging system whether it's per unit or per occupant in my view and again I will look at this if the if the alderman would like I'm happy to look at it even further but in my view this evening it would have the effect whether intended

▶ 2:19:18 Francis X. Wright Jr.: or unintended of distorting the water rate system because the individual, the single widower living in an apartment on the first floor below a family of five is actually not paying effectively less of a water bill because if we're averaging based on the five upstairs versus the one downstairs, then the way I understand it, the one downstairs would be paying a subsidy to provide effectively a lower water rate for the folks upstairs, because they're a higher volume user. Okay, and that's my understanding from Alderman Medeiros, which is, I believe you're trying to find a happy medium between the tiered system and the individuals who may find themselves using less water, having less occupants, but still absorbing an average bill

▶ 2:20:13 Francis X. Wright Jr.: the number of units in the building yes you know and for individuals who have large families in one house yeah so i mean i i again i think that's that's a um creative way of looking at this because it doesn't doesn't impact the tiered system and the other users in the system but um my question goes to legality so i guess i would appreciate if you could expand your research on this to look at this i think for purposes of tonight's discussion i still maintain as i did on june 3rd that it would be a distortion of the rate structure but i can look at it i can consult with the department of revenue we can certainly um we can do that right thank you what's that yes thank you thank you um if you're going to inquire um anyways counselor um

▶ 2:21:08 Mary Beth McAteer-Margolis: my question would be basing it on the city census that's reported how do we determine the legality and accuracy of the census it's like a little thing that you get in the mail and people don't fill it out or they fill it out or they don't fill it out correctly and you know I mean I would just know if it's would be I think it would be difficult to build the baseline from which you're going to begin right so given the data itself might be flawed just to back the whole thing up that would be my basis of kind of basing it on the census I don't know how that would be done so that would be my question to any further discussion yeah just to say to you that i mean i i definitely recognize that this is something that you know if we did move forward in this direction would need some

▶ 2:21:56 Monica C. Medeiros: edits on some things that i have thought about since then as we might want to consider for purpose for this purpose to make a certain since a child a half a person uh in order to and it's comes off complicating it further but in terms of trying to really make it more equal and and really recognizing that um you know because certainly an infant uses less water than you know i would argue my kids use more water than i possibly they do um but and then i i would expect that if we went in this direction that we would have to adjust the the tier rates because our tier rates right now are based on consumption for a household and this is making consumption on an individual level so i do recognize that thank you president yeah um

▶ 2:22:51 maybe i'm missing something but respectfully alderman Medeiros i don't understand this order it appears to apply to every dwelling from single all the way up and And so if I have two children living at home with me, it appears to me my bill would be different if I have two children not living at home. I don't understand that. And I'm not trying to be argumentative. I just truly don't understand this order. So hopefully if it's going to be discussed further, it could be dumbed down to a point that I can understand it because I really don't understand what we're doing here. Alderman Wright. No, and I would agree that I think that the language, I think Alderman Medeiros has said this, and Alderman Conner, I agree.

▶ 2:23:52 Francis X. Wright Jr.: I think that the language needs to be cleared up, tightened up, whoever you want to put it, to express what I understand to be the intent of the order And perhaps when we hear back from Mr. Van Campen, we can, it will have a better understanding of what we can do and what changes may be appropriate, if any, and then we can move forward on this. And based on that, I would move that we keep it in committee. All right. Alderman Wright moves to retain this order in committee, seconded by Alderman Byrd. Any further discussion? Seeing none on that motion, all in favor? Aye. Any opposed, seeing none. All right, that is retained in committee. Let's see, moving on to the next order. Order 2015-194, amending Melrose revised ordinances chapter 228-15 by adding

▶ 2:24:52 Scott M. Forbes: paragraph C relative to water proration as set forth herein. Is this another one that we should keep in committee? What is the will of the committee? Mr. Chairman, I was just wondering if you had an opinion. I know you mentioned prorating. I just didn't know if you had any type of comment related to this order. I know you said you were just here to talk about averaging, but if there is any input that you could give the committee, it would be beneficial for us since you are here this evening. Yes. I haven't given much consideration of proration. I know Mr. Shenna has given extensive consideration, so I would defer to him and his opinion. for mr shenner if you happen to have an opinion on the matter operation is a process that was in

▶ 2:25:51 place um several years ago and i believe two two fiscal years ago when we switched to the tiered rate system we collectively the committee and then this board supported a move away from prorating water bills the tiered system complicated the ability of us to do that consistently um and it's it was just something we decided to go away from because our consultant said it was inflating our rates and in fact um we cfo proposed these orders to for the consultant to give us a brief quick summary and he feels that it it's in that eight to ten to twelve percent range increase will be the impact of if we went back to prorating bills and again that's not something we can do this fiscal year this will be a

▶ 2:26:45 discussion for next year's fiscal year rates because this year set and we're all already we're already billing okay and this was something that was determined in the water and sewer committee and discussion and presenting before the board okay thank you mr. McAteer my goals mr. Shannon my recollection when we started talking about this a couple of years ago was that once we got the new meters in it could be read electronically remotely we won't it won't be an issue anymore we could go we could we collectively could make a decision to switch to monthly billing right and this issue will go away because we could read in June and bill in June the issue right now is we read monthly but we're reading three months worth of consumption because we

▶ 2:27:34 issue a quarterly bill obviously if we switch to a monthly billing system which our infrastructure will have the capability to do within the next year year and a half that's a decision that we have to make and you know there's operational financial impacts to send in 12 sets of bills out as opposed to four but this issue is totally totally goes away with with monthly billing and where we have how many how much of the city is currently well we did some work in Ward two one and two now we're in Ward I believe four five and four five and seven I know four yeah four five and seven so we're making our way around the city so probably within a year yes it's correct thank you any further discussion

▶ 2:28:29 John N. Tramontozzi: So I take that that also applies to order 2015-195 when it talks to the sewer proration. 194 is water and 195 sewer. So if we do that with 194 we should also do with 195. We'll discuss that in a second. What's the will of the committee on order 2015-194? I would make a motion that we place it on file with the suggestion that the issue is appropriate to be revisited um either by the water and sewer committee or this board in the next year that uh it could be brought back before us second very good we have a motion by alderman wright to place on file seconded by alderman forth on the motion all favor that's filed order 2015-195 the mending mirrors revised ordinance chapter 228 that's clearly by adding paragraph f relative to sewer proration i set forth hearing

▶ 2:29:30 John N. Tramontozzi: alderman wright you want to make that same motion for this i do we also have a motion to place on file with the understanding sending it back to the water and sewer commission seconded by alderman forbes any further discussion seeing none on that motion all in favor aye any opposed that will be placed on file as well um order number 2015-104 um amending barrow's revised ordinances chapter 177-12 snow and ice removal as set forth here in alderman wright this is your rob yeah mr chairman i'm going to move to keep this matter in committee i've checked the long range forecast and no snow was expected alderman wright wants uh wishes to keep this matter based on that well kidding aside it's almost 10 o'clock and we've been here since a little after seven and um i i think we can

▶ 2:30:24 John N. Tramontozzi: address this at a later date very good thank you um alderman wright and this that motion was seconded by alderman bird any further discussion scene now don't don't leave yet guys there's one more uh just in case you might be needed on that motion all in favor aye aye no opposed that is held in committee uh the final order is order 2015-182b it ordered that the rules of order of the mayorals board of alderman be amended to add rule 32b and rule 32c i set forth herein i guess you may not be needed mr shenna the uh what's the will of the desire of the committee on that order any monica alderman Medeiros is the maker of that order yes uh if i may again i'm not a member of this committee um i submitted this uh back in may the goal of this order is just

▶ 2:31:19 Monica C. Medeiros: kind of to give us a little bit more consistency in how we're receiving communications and how they're shared you know with both with the committee and with the public i do think i want to compliment i don't want in any way to make it seem like our clerk of committees our city clerk is not you know passing on information they absolutely are i just felt that it maybe that part needed to be added into sort of codified if you will but really dealing with communications that we receive from different Member of the administration or Member of the public that are specifically addressed to all of us i sometimes i had been told that we need to vote in order to add them to the order and add them to iqm2 and other times you know we do have some city

▶ 2:32:13 Monica C. Medeiros: officials who or appointees Member of the administration who just automatically we have this great little system nifty iqm2 meeting portal and some of them just upload the information directly there and it wasn't really consistent so this basically says that any communications that are addressed to all of us be they from the public or from from Member of the administration would be added to the order and added to iqm2 and that that you know these are these are items that i think affect um and possibly influence all of us in our decision making process and i think it's nice to have them available as soon as possible in the portal for for us to look at to make sure that we're seeing consistently and that the public can see them as well and just amending the rule 32c

▶ 2:33:10 Monica C. Medeiros: is talking about when when we have a member here on the board who requests information say from the city solicitor or something of that nature that that that request itself is something that should be shared the the answer to that should be shared with the committee as a whole and with the public and added to the iqm m2 so that's that's my intent i'm not a lawyer so hopefully it's understandable any for any discussion by committee Member all right did i see a hand i'm sorry no i was just gonna say i mean i'd make a motion to recommend all but only to the extent that it not only to the extent but to the extent that it reflects that which my experience is is already being done you know I believe

▶ 2:34:07 Francis X. Wright Jr.: the clerk of committees and the city clerk get me at least the documentation that they receive in a prompt way I know oftentimes that they have a meeting they received documentation either from third parties or from the administration and they're in the midst of preparing for that evening's meeting yet they my experience is that they've been quick to make sure that the Member of this board receive copies as well so again I it seems to only reflect my experience with the clerk of committees and the city clerk but if it's the will of this board to codify it in this way then I'll make that motion for purposes of discussion thank you I would say that my experience has been very similar to alderman rights

▶ 2:35:06 Mary Beth McAteer-Margolis: I just I find this a little redundant if you will this is pretty much how I think we have been doing business since we have had the portal I believe on occasion if there's been a glitch with you know uploading or something like that that this isn't going to address those types of issues I've also had very you know good experience with department heads when they're coming to us and have more information generally they get it to the clerk and get it online and and also often get us a hard copy for the meeting that night so in my mind it's this is already happening and I'm not really certain why the maker of the motion feels it's necessary to really put it in such a format when I think that's kind of to be said that's how we do business based on open meeting law

▶ 2:36:01 Monica C. Medeiros: and everything else that we have to adhere to so very good I think you're here the maker of the motion is about ready to respond to your question so go right ahead thank you I know I've just I've been told at different times from either clerk committees or I wish it was a night where we had our city clerk here that we in order to have this information uploaded to IQ m2 that it needs to be voted on at at our meetings voted to be added I've made motions and taken some of these votes I think we've done some of that in the past few months months and I think everybody kind of looks sideways because we didn't necessarily think that a vote needed to be taken but if in order to get information into the portal we need to have somebody be responsible for doing

▶ 2:36:53 Francis X. Wright Jr.: so so I think we should be adding those things to the portal as a matter of course not by having to take a vote to it and then therefore in order to get it to the portal we need to assign somebody the duty to to do so and that's why this came up I don't have a definitive answer to this but and the city clerk isn't here to answer for herself but my thought is that perhaps what she's trying to say or is saying and is being misunderstood is that in order to add anything to the order itself it may have to be voted on because it's an amendment but to submit a document that goes along with it it seems to me that that is the possibility we do that as a matter of course we do that as a matter of course

▶ 2:37:45 Francis X. Wright Jr.: that's my experience I don't I mean I don't want to speak for the city clerk but I'm I guess it's not my experience but it may be because there may be different things different ways to add things to the IQ m2 system and whether it's an amendment to the order or whether it's it's a document relative to it may make a difference but in the city clerk's mind anyway no I don't know enough about the technology of the IQ to whatever it's called to know but any further discussion by committee Member we have a desire or will by the committee Member to act on this order for the alderman motion to keep the order in committee so that we have a chance to talk to the city clerk further i think that would be that would seem reasonable i guess is there a second to that motion second

▶ 2:38:51 John N. Tramontozzi: by alderman wright very good we have a motion uh by alderman burr to retain it in committee seconded by alderman wright on that motion any further discussion seeing none all in favor all right all right that would be helping committee i think that concludes our business for this evening motion to adjourn ah motion by alderman mortimer seconded by second alderman byrd on the motion all favor all right posting then we are adjourned thank you good evening good night hi jim how are you i'm doing well how are you

Legal & Legislative Committee — 2015-07-27

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