Appropriations & Oversight Committee — 2016-10-13

Attendance

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 · Vice Chairman; Jennifer L. Lemmerman present · Ward 2 Alderman; Mary Beth McAteer-Margolis present · 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; Michael P. Zwirko present · Alderman at Large

Agenda

1. Call to Order (16:00)
2. Public Participation (16:53)
3. Orders (20:15)
4. ORDER-2017-25 : Amend Section 220-89 of the Melrose Traffic Code to adjust commercial permit parking fee (20:22)
5. ORDER-2017-27 : Bond in the amount of $400,000 for Design and Project Management Services for Modular Classrooms at the Winthrop and Hoover Schools and Renovations to the Horace Mann School (47:52)
6. ORDER-2017-26 : Authorization of a Bond in the amount of $540,500 through the MWRA's Sewer System I/I Local Financial Assistance Program. (2:04:00)
7. Adjournment (2:43:07)

Minutes

CITY OF MELROSE APPROPRIATIONS COMMITTEE CALENDAR● OCTOBER 13, 2016 Aldermanic Chamber Committee Meeting 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 Gail M. Infurna Vice Chairman Present Michael P. Zwirko Alderman at Large 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 Present 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: Mayor Robert J. Dolan, Planning Director Denise Gaffey, Assistant Planner Erin Zwirko; Superintendent Cyndy Taymore, Charlie Hay, Principal at Tappe Architects, City Auditor/CFO Patrick Dello Russo, Horace Mann School Principal Dr. Mary Beth Cobbs, Director of Public Works John Scenna; City Engineer Elena Proakis Ellis, John Potts, Weston & Sampson

ORDER-2017-25 Request Amend Section 220-89 of the Melrose Traffic Code to adjust commercial permit parking fee Recommend Passage Board of Aldermen

ORDER-2017-27 Bond Bond in the amount of $400,000 for Design and Project Management Services for Modular Classrooms at the Winthrop and Hoover Schools and Renovations to the Horace Mann School Recommend Passage Board of Aldermen City of Melrose Page 1 Updated 10/19/2016 11:45 AM Minutes Appropriations Committee October 13, 2016

ORDER-2017-26 Bond Authorization of a Bond in the amount of $540,500 through the MWRA's Sewer System I/I Local Financial Assistance Program. Recommend Passage Board of Aldermen City of Melrose Page 2 Updated 10/19/2016 11:45 AM

Transcript

▶ 16:24 Peter D. Mortimer: All Member of the Board of Aldermen are Member of this committee. I am the Chairman Peter Mortimer. We are joined by the Vice Chairman Alderman Galen Ferner, Alderman Michael Zwirko, Alderman John Tramontozzi, Alderman Monica Medeiros, Alderman Robert Voicel, Alderman Mary Beth McAteer-Margolis, Alderman Jennifer Lemmerman, Alderman Scott Forbes, and President Donald Elkhorn. Is there a motion to open the floor for public participation before I announce the MMTV? We have a motion for public participation made by Alderman Inferna and duly seconded by Alderman Forbes. All in favor, please say aye. Aye. Any opposed? Hearing none, we are open for public participation. If there are any Member of the public who would like to come forward and make comments or

▶ 17:22 Peter D. Mortimer: questions about any order on the appropriations agenda tonight before we begin then because it looks like there will be people please allow me to announce that this meeting is being recorded by MMTV it's available future viewing on the MMTV website and on the city of Melrose website as you begin to address public participation please state your name and address for the record welcome hi good evening everyone my name is Lauren Grimmick I live at 19 Morgan Street here in Melrose I'm here tonight as the executive director of the Melrose Chamber of Commerce I just wanted to offer the Chamber's support for the parking program that's been proposed that will be reviewed tonight the Chamber of Commerce has about 300 Member many of which are located in

▶ 18:11 Melrose and many of which are downtown business owners merchants retailers restaurants and our job is to help them grow and to foster economic growth here in Melrose and we believe that parking is directly tied to that economic growth as part of the parking working group that we've been a part of over the last I think three or four years along with Member of the community we feel that the plan that's laid out in front of you is a good stepping stone to addressing the challenges that downtown Melrose is facing and that our Member are facing and that our residents customers and clients that are coming into downtown are facing so we encourage you to support the plan and we look forward also to continuing to collaborate with

▶ 18:54 the city and to monitor this program to make sure that it is the best thing for melrose and to continue its success for downtown so thank you thank you so much for your input good evening good good evening little circuit street mine is just a comment of when documents are posted to the portal for the public to review before a meeting because I felt like I looked today and found documents that I didn't notice before and so I didn't have time to review so be great if they could get out there in enough time for the public to review and I would ask again these some of these documents are not accessible for anybody visually impaired so if we could really look at trying to make them accessible thank you thank you very much are there

▶ 19:52 Peter D. Mortimer: any other Member of the public wishing to be heard at this time seeing none motion to close public participation Alderman Forbes has made a motion to close public participation said motion duly seconded by Alderman Boyce L all in favor please say aye any opposed hearing none public participation is now closed and we will proceed to the orders of the evening the first order we have before us is order 2017-25 it is an order to amend section 220-89 of the melrose traffic code to adjust commercial permit parking fees is there a motion to suspend the rules so move mr chairman alderman boycelle has made a motion to suspend excuse me alderman forbes has made a motion to suspend the rules seconded by alderman boycelle all in favor of suspending the rules please say

▶ 20:47 aye aye any opposed hearing none the rules are under suspension ms gaffey would you join us please and oh you also have mrs werka with you as well and the mayor is going to sit in on this additionally thank you mr chairman Member of the board uh tonight's a very important night we are have addressed as an administration five targeted areas improvement in the city over this year next they include improving downtown parking for a growing and thriving business district a very aggressive influence infiltration program that will attack soar rates in the city which are really at the heart of of the challenges that we face in rates third is to address the school overcrowding issue while keeping the K to five six seven

▶ 21:47 eight high school nine to twelve model fourth that will bring before you in the next few months is some substantial improvements in substance abuse both alcohol and drugs as well as mental health in the community and last as we begin this Wednesday with President Kahn in former chief O'Brien as well as our current chiefs a review of the public safety facilities in the city with a recommendation for the public's consumption in the next year so tonight we are moving with with your help on three of these five issues the first being parking tonight we are proposing the next phase of our comprehensive plan to improve downtown parking in Melrose in 2012 the city completed a parking study of our downtown and adjacent parking lots the study concluded that

▶ 22:34 downtown Melrose has an ample supply of parking however that the management of available public parking needs to be adjusted so that people see parking near where they want to go and that's different than having enough parking since that time we have implemented several measures to improve the situation that include changing parking limits from two hours to three hours to encourage shoppers downtown and eliminate inconsistent signage that was found throughout the district, improved ways of finding available lots that the growing number of individuals who do not reside in Melrose in many cases live far away to visit our restaurants when they come to Melrose have a better understanding of where to park and most substantially which I think we have

▶ 23:20 already seen of substantial improvement in the Dill's Court is the purchase of one Kimball Court to create 25 new parking spaces. In addition I created a parking working group to think creatively about what measures could be taken, and that group's efforts has helped us to get where we are today. They included Allison Socha from RE-MAX, Joan Cassidy from the Melrose Redevelopment Authority, Joan Ford Mongeau, Chamber of Commerce past executive director, Chris Sinella, president of the chamber at the time and owner of Edward Jones Financial, Joe Turner of Turner Seafood, Kevin Deviney of Eastern Bank, Steve Trulli of Whittemore Hardware and representatives from DPW our Police Department my office

▶ 24:06 in the Office of Planning and Community Development our proposal tonight is the next major step in improving parking management by directing employees which at our peak time is over 400 employees to park in designated areas therefore leaving the spaces closest to businesses available for customers because the customers have got to come first we believe this proposal is beneficial for both businesses and customers however it is change substantial change new employee parking the new employee parking program would allow employees to park in certain designated locations for free sticker based permits to receive a permit the employee must present proof of employment new signage would be installed at these 170 spaces designated for employees on Berwick Street where

▶ 24:59 there'll be 50 spaces City Hall and back of City Hall 60 spaces Friends Court behind Papa Gino's 16 spaces Larrabee lot behind Giacomo's 34 spaces Livermore a lot behind near the Caruso block is a 10 spaces so these businesses Teachers and these employees will have places to park. It is a strategy that we utilized when we opened the Early Childhood Center. The Early Childhood Center has probably 15 spaces for 200 plus 3 and 4 year olds. We demanded and rented space from Mr. Sautel at the old lot which is now Whole Foods to have our teachers park there because our customers have to come first. it is not next door to the front door of their business but we want that front door space available to the senior citizen to the mother to the shopper

▶ 25:59 that needs to either be there for 15 minutes to pick up a hammer or there for two to three hours to enjoy a meal with their family so all employees can park in these areas at any time however we are discouraging the use of parking permits with yes will be a loss of revenue to the city but we feel strongly that the continued growth of our downtown and we're already seeing proposals for the old moynihan plaza as well as some other areas that might pop up in the next few years we need to address the employee sticker program so therefore we are proposing a 600 per year which is one dollar in 64 cents a day for a permit this sticker based permit will receive a person will be able to park in the closest areas but we are also proposing that these $600 stickers

▶ 26:56 Gail Infurna: be capped at 35 so our planning office has done a tremendous amount of work we have had several community forums that many of you have attended and we would like your approval to go forward and begin this begin implementation of this program thank you thank you very much your honor uh first in line we have alderman aferna thank you very much mr chairman um i just want to state that this came before the traffic commission a few weeks ago and the plan has already been accepted by the traffic commission so we're here to look at the fee structure of this and i fully support the 600 for the year that's 50 a month i think if you look around and do little surveys you'll find that fifty dollars a month

▶ 27:46 Gail Infurna: is not bad for parking um to go to work every day um in in some instances so i will be supporting that i wonder um mr mayor if you could talk about enforcement because this will only work if it's really enforced and when i um when the order came before us regarding um the added um parking spaces from judge killiam's law office there i had a very hard time with that and i was really relying on this kind of a plan working to make that difference so that we can really reap the benefits of that purchase so i am i i'm really concerned about enforcement and and making that work so if you could tell us about that sure yes uh enforcement is uh going to include two one we currently have one civilian we're adding a second civilian ticketer to go downtown obviously ticketing

▶ 28:40 Gail Infurna: or enforcement is going to be critical because if someone is you know paying a commodity to have a parking space and we're asking people to park there and it's not and they see the same car there every day this whole this whole thing breaks down so that that is going to be key and our police department has ensured us that that will happen great thank you and i i appreciate the support of the chamber of commerce and and the merchants downtown i think it is the way to go and we do have a very vibrant downtown and parking is a fun problem or a nice problem to have i guess so hopefully this will help bring the customers and keep the merchants here in melrose thank you thank you alderman inferna next we have president khan please yeah um i wanted to ask a

▶ 29:24 couple of questions about the financial impact but my take on this this is more of a planning measure it's certainly not a revenue raising measure is that correct yeah we've we think i mean patrick's not hearing it but in our discussions that does you know the city may lose between 20 and 30 000 in revenue in this uh obviously because we were selling a number of permits for a hundred and two fifty we were selling two we were selling about 94 permits a year for 250 right so what i wanted what i wanted to ask you is how much we were deriving from the current permit system i know aaron has that figure in 2015 which is the last calendar year that the commercial permit was sold because we put it on hold during 2016 as we were rolling out this

▶ 30:09 program there were 94 permits sold to businesses at 250 dollars a permit so that total is 23 500 For the upcoming year, for 2017, for the calendar year, if we were to max out the 35 permit cap at $600 a permit, it would be $21,000. So the gap is just a couple thousand. The loss comes from the number of tickets. People weren't buying these passes, so we were ticketing people consistently. Because if you make $10 an hour working at Store X, they weren't getting the permit. so we were tagging people ticketing should go down once people learn so there'll be some loss there that was substantial at the time but i'd rather have a easier cleaner plan that that if you work here you know where you're going to park and and you go there and it's a little bit of a walk but

▶ 31:03 Denise Gaffey: that's that's what you do you get it for nothing do we have any sense of how many people are interested in buying these 600 permits um we we know who all the permit holders are now we have that data and we've talked to the major permit holders they tend to be the bigger companies or the doctor's offices the or the entities that need a little more flexibility they may work you know as a vice president of a bank in a couple of different locations so they want to be able to you know arrive and find a parking space close to where they work just for the flexibility so we've talked to those like the eastern banks and the pediatrics and those entities and we know we know they're not interested in buying as many as they've currently they currently bought

▶ 31:45 i mean as a result of all these meetings and the chamber's involvement i mean do we think it's going to be 10 do we think it's going to be five we think it uh could be anywhere between 20 and 35 20 and 30. no okay so we could be dropping down to maybe 15 000 of revenue from 22 000. we could and it did did the chamber of commerce vote to support this proposal they did as far as i know yes and this is not general fund revenue this is money that goes into the parking maintenance account is that correct correct and what what's what's the cost of the rollout of this program in terms of new signage new new part-time employee whatnot um so i've spoken with uh representatives or employees with DPW and they are working on providing a cost

▶ 32:41 estimate for the signage I don't have that number right now so we're gonna do the signage in the in-house sign shop yeah they hope to do the majority of them in-house okay yeah and the other thing just so people who are watching at home understand during a time I think in the mid 90s when I was not on the Board The Alderman ceded control of many issues relative to parking by creating the traffic commission. So the only thing that we do, and our only role in this process is we get to approve or disapprove the fees. It seems like we always get stuck approving or disapproving the fees. But that's really the only role that we have left now based on the establishment of the Traffic Commission, for which I'm not responsible because I wasn't here.

▶ 33:35 Michael P. Zwirko: I'm not going to tell you how I would have voted, but I think you can probably guess. Thank you, President Kahn. Next, we have Alderman Zwirko. Thank you, Mr. Chairman, and thanks to those that are here tonight to explain this for us and for all the work that went in. I know this was over several years, and I read the parking plan, the study that came out, so I know that it's nice to finally arrive at this point. Just a few questions. So how will this program be reevaluated over time based on its success, its failures, any way to tinker with the existing program? Is that something going forward that your office, Denise, will be looking at on a go-forward basis, speaking in with the Chamber?

▶ 34:19 Denise Gaffey: I mean, this doesn't represent the end, but maybe the next step in this phase. So I'm just curious as to how that evaluation will occur. yeah we we um we absolutely intend to evaluate it on a regular basis and we we've established really close working relationships at this point with the um treasurer's office which is the entity right now that that you know sells parking permits and we'll we'll continue to do that and um we've you know we um we understand i mean we want to we will we'll use this first year to assess how successful you know the the 35 permits if that's you know not enough you know i'm sure you know know we'll get direct feedback from the from the business community about that

▶ 34:58 Michael P. Zwirko: and you know our intention is to use this first year to evaluate it very closely by talking to all the parties between the treasurer's office the police department the chamber business community thank you for that because you know as Alderman Khan mentioned you know there's a there's a term that's used in economics called diminishing returns and you know sometimes your fee can get so high that you actually don't get the return I mean I do feel you know it cost me about $25 a day to park in Boston this fee would be $50 a month I mean obviously that's a great deal and there's a benefit for having that permit so you know I do think that it's a it's a it's a fairly you know below market rate certainly for the parking so I you know I appreciate the work that's gone

▶ 35:36 Michael P. Zwirko: into it I was just curious um has there been any thought and again this could come out of the evaluation process but as to changing the level of a fee for a a ticket for illegal parking overdue parking in response to this new program was that at all considered during this process is it maybe it's not necessary I'm just sure just curious as to we haven't tackled that question at all as part of the parking working group no what it did allow us to do as you know there was a number of we had too many options for permits and people were buying certain permits and in taking advantage of them to commute because Oak grove was going to what six nine bucks nine dollars a day so they were buying a a half day

▶ 36:24 Michael P. Zwirko: overnight and parking over here it was they were working within the rules in a minute what that was questionable seeking out loopholes so that that's been eliminated also yep with this plan it and just one final um it's just an observation i've noticed and this this happens in other lots um you know maybe they certainly have the space but i've noticed that um especially in the lots behind shaw's we don't have spaces or a space that are designated for expectant mothers or mothers with infants and i would just hope that at some point maybe we could look into designating a space or two for that particularly close to cvs preferably or maybe shaw's those are some nice benefits that some communities and private businesses allow in addition to handicap

▶ 37:07 Monica C. Medeiros: spaces if that's something that we could look into i'd be supportive of that thank you that's all the questions i had mr chairman thank you alderman twerko alderman medeiros please thank you thank you i'm glad to see this proposal come through and see you know i know there's been many months of working on this with the uh parking working group and uh definitely to see some action from the 2012 parking report so so this is this is good um i think the you know certainly we're not downtown Boston but it's a $600 fee is it's not cheap but I think it's probably reasonable for the people who really need those spaces and I think it's a reasonable expectation now that those permits are only from 8 a.m. to 6 p.m. do

▶ 38:00 Denise Gaffey: you know I know sometimes the hardest time to park here is around 7 p.m. do you think that this will have an effect on the early evening parking sort of the dinner rush and was that brought up there in the parking yeah it definitely was and I think we and we've talked and reached out to all of the major restaurants in the city and explained to them that we expect their employees to buy into it and then you know it's an education process here but and we expect them to encourage their employees to park in the City Hall parking lot for example in the evenings that parking lot routinely is virtually empty in the in the evenings unless there's a meeting going on or Memorial Hall has a big function there are 170 spaces there so if you know if the food service

▶ 38:50 employees were to park in this location I think that would really take away a lot of the pressure and more of me probably starting earlier right and just at night we have our most employees and most people right so so one the new LED lights have in terms of safety in these parking lots have really made a major difference in terms of of the amount of light and secondly I know they do all things well but Turner's has already implemented it before this even began a program where all their employees have to park outside and if one of their employees is caught parking in a primary parking space they are disciplined in some way and and where we've worked hard with the with the restaurants because if

▶ 39:33 think about any particular restaurant you may have 10 people in the back of the house 10 people in the front of the house plus plus plus that's a lot of employees and I do think the wave of the future downtown is going to continue to be dining in restaurants now in terms of the the restricted parking are those spaces going to be designated specifically for employees or will will regular non-employees be able to to park in us this was the most controversial piece and ultimately the and we even argued about it sometimes we finally we finally and I came to the conclusion also as a as one member that we are going to make an employee and customer because the last thing we need during a particular time on a Saturday or having 15 to 20 open spaces that are sitting

▶ 40:28 Monica C. Medeiros: there so we feel that there is enough space to to house employees some are better than others and allow customers who probably wouldn't want to park there but in a case of the symphony and restaurant week whatever you know big moments that you can park anywhere yeah I'm glad to hear that and in particular it was you know especially first city halls a lot for when we have those instances and in Berwick Street because we do have you know few businesses including a pretty tasty breakfast spot that hopefully there will be spaces for customers to park as well and those are those are my major questions and I know I have one more that just slipped my mind but I'm glad to to hear this is Thank you very much Alderman Medeiros, and if the committee will allow me a little latitude, I'd like to interject.

▶ 41:29 Peter D. Mortimer: I've spoken with some of the restaurant owners, and besides having the employees who might be stopping work at 10, 11, 12 at night, they have a plan to walk the employees who may feel vulnerable to their cars behind City Hall, so their safety would not be put at risk. Alderman Lemmerman, please. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. you very much um i just wanted to we spoke a little bit about this but just to highlight it and reiterate it for anyone who might be watching this um plan is strictly for the downtown district right so other business districts in the city such as franklin square are not subject to these changes not this time so then their current parking formation remains the way that it is with the traffic commission did recently um study the the parking patterns and the signage in that

▶ 42:17 Robert A. Boisselle: area and did make some some changes which i believe have been successful but you're right there's no permit downtown for them perfect thank you very much that was it thank you mr chairman thank you alderman Lemmerman uh seeing no one further in queue is there a motion please oh alderman boyce a motion or further discussion question further discussion proceed please we're talking about security especially these restaurant people who are leaving 11 12 1 o'clock in the morning and so forth uh has there been a survey of what these places look like at this point a particular concern about the southwest portion of the city hall area where it's heavily trees and the light is sort of hidden behind the leaves and so forth and it gets very dark in that

▶ 43:01 Robert A. Boisselle: particular corner it's when you come into the driveway next to the memorial hall and you go all the way down at that end and i was just wondering has the other parking lots have been reviewed at midnight with the new lighting system uh at this point they all been sort of checked before we really get involved in this we we have we have checked them there's some areas we might need to improve on the thing the concern that i have to be honest is it's going to be a a little a slightly greater burden on our dpw during inclement weather to make sure that those spaces are cleared yeah right that's a commitment we have made um as it pertains to making this plan successful we can't move and pile snow in certain areas we're gonna have to haul but at the end of

▶ 43:50 the day we need parking downtown or people are simply gonna head towards route one um i don't think there's another community i mean wakefield uh has a a severe occupancy problem yet you can't find parking in downtown wakefield and half this not half the script but there's some considerable openings in wakefield um but we're gonna have to move we have to move snow and make it as safe as possible for people at the same time employee employers are going to have to take some responsibility also like the walking program and those programs okay we can't have it both ways it's just not going to work anymore now do you find we were talking about the impact of the mso and other activities that occur there uh when these activities occur on the on the weekend

▶ 44:38 and so forth this parking plan goes down the tubes at this point is that i don't think so because uh well you want to answer this but but the night time the dynamics of where people park is different is different at night it's very different in there there might be less parking here and down in back of City Hall but there might be more parking in the other areas that have been designated okay there's on those few nights the parking some of the options that people have are going to be a little farther away and probably not incredibly desirable to them but again the focus has to be on the customer okay all right thank you very much Fairness to the employee. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. Thank you, Alderman Boycelle.

▶ 45:20 Mary Beth McAteer-Margolis: Motion to recommend. Second. It's an order, but discussion will continue. Discussion will always continue after motion. There's been a motion to recommend this order for passage by Alderman Inferna, duly seconded by Alderman Boycelle. On discussion, we will continue with discussion. Alderman McAteer-Margolis, please. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. This is great work. I know you have all been really diligent doing your research on it and I'm happy to see that you've come up with a plan that looks like it might work I just I wondered a couple of things you mentioned that there were like 400 employees at peak hour is that peak hour like that's not really that that I'm not sure that yeah that's a that's a the

▶ 46:07 Mary Beth McAteer-Margolis: whole time because there's it's not one taking it staggered their ship is about time employees it looks like there's like less than 200 spaces 170 right right so I knew somebody was going to catch that like no it's they're not all there at the same time right okay so that in and that it sort of includes the nighttime workers as well yes yes so um I wondered just I remember like a few years ago somebody was offering valet parking in a private lot and um I wondered if it's um something that it was discussed with any of our restaurant owners in terms of like the customers and allowing you know them to provide valet parking for their customers and using lots like behind you know city hall or even further away if anyone were to come to us with a proposal we'd be

▶ 46:56 Peter D. Mortimer: more than happy to work with them okay okay great that's that's certainly fair thank you oh that's it okay thank you very much alderman any other alderman wishes we heard briefly second time alderman Medeiros thank you uh just a question on is that the the floating permit the six hundred dollar one will that be or any of these permits will will they be specific to a vehicle yes so they couldn't be shared correct there'll be a sticker with a license plate number written on it it thank you Thank You alderman Medeiros is there a motion please oh wait the motions were made and seconded excuse me for that all in favor please say aye any opposed hearing none now this motion this order will be recommended to the

▶ 47:42 Peter D. Mortimer: full board for passage thank you very much for your work on this thank you chairman like to make a motion to take order 2017-27 out of order and begin discussion on that. Alderman Boycella has made a motion to alter the order of business to take order 2017-27. Out of order and next. Who's seconded that, please? Alderman Medeiros has seconded that motion. All in favor, please say aye. Aye. Any opposed? Hearing none, we will take up that order, the number 2017-27. It is a bond in the amount of $400,000 for design and project management services for modular classrooms at the Winthrop and Hoover school and renovations to the Horace Mann school is there a motion to suspend the rules please so moved Alderman Forbes has made a motion to suspend the

▶ 48:37 rules duly seconded by Alderman Inferno all in favor please say aye any opposed hearing none we are under suspension for this order and the presentation it looks like we'll begin by mrs. work Oh who's adjusting the screen and the mayor the superintendent of schools and it looks like our chief financial officer and city auditor mr. de la Rousseau is coming forward a city planner is Gaffey is here great thank you everybody you're all set please proceed thank you after a lengthy and inclusive process we present to you a proposal to move forward on a plan to address student population increases in the city of Melrose and the need for immediate need for more classroom space in our schools population increases are extremely hard to predict predict and track the city in

▶ 50:06 cooperation with the schools has made many modifications to the current school structures including building new classrooms renovations etc we have now reached a point due to a dramatic increase in the school age population in the last two years it is time to act we began this process well over a year ago with a good demographic study a presentation of several options by our superintendent was done publicly we had a well incredibly well attended and meaningful and vocal community meeting to discuss the issues a review by our permanent school building committee has found that the presentation that we're making before before you today is endorsed unanimously by that committee and we may have made a presentation in the school committee has done a full

▶ 50:52 review and the school committee too has a unanimous recommendation for the plan that we bring before you tonight what was clear was that the community has a true commitment to our current expanded neighborhood school model that includes the k through five elementary schools as well as grades six through eight at our middle school and nine to twelve at melrose high school the proposal approved by the school building committee and the melrose School Committee endorsed by myself includes the use of module school additions as well as a renovation to the Horace Mann Elementary School that provides a long-term solution the challenges that we face tonight we're asking you to provide funding to our architectural team to proceed further

▶ 51:41 with these designs and plans the team that presents these recommendations to tonight is the exact same team that built the melrose veterans memorial middle school that renovated melrose high school in the hoover elementary school as well that has led all of our school projects over the last 15 years they are second to none in terms of the knowledge of this community in the high standards that we keep they are keenly aware of cost and quality and have an outstanding working relationship with our superintendent our principals and all of our senior school staff the plan that has been recommended recommended is i believe the best plan for students first and educators it protects the clear desires of myself

▶ 52:28 and others that fifth graders should remain in our elementary schools that eighth graders should remain in our middle school and that our high school again should be nine through twelve I would also argue that the plan provides additional school improvements, such as greater ADA compliance, open space improvements, and advancing educational equity in our schools that currently doesn't exist. I ask for all of you to support this measure after your consideration this evening as we advance our solution to this great challenge that this city faces. Thank you. Thank you very much. man Dolan so president Khan please oh they're further presentation that we would like to make first so then you could focus your questions more

▶ 53:22 specifically with the board's indulgence very good please proceed with the presentation good evening my name is Charlie hey I'm a principal at tap a architects in Boston thank you for giving me the opportunity to speak to you this evening I think you may have already seen these slides but we were going to take the opportunity to go through the kind of we did a limited feasibility study level exploration of this issue as you're all are aware this summer and into the fall and the written the findings you would that we present you this evening came out of that study the we looked at all five elementary schools early on the decision obviously was that your two newest schools the Lincoln and the Roosevelt word we're not kind of and we're not applicable for

▶ 54:19 additions both because they're large because they have adequate spaces for students and because they don't really have any site available for additional capacity and a lot of this study was about kind of the carrying capacity of the various sites I mean that's what it comes down to ultimately so the three schools that we ended up focusing the attention on relative to possible ways of increasing elementary school level capacity were the Hoover and the Winthrop in the Horace Mann this is an aerial picture of the Hoover School which is the first school that we looked at and the dis in and obviously the decision here was we have a nice thing advanced screen button forgive me technical glitch I didn't know what I was doing it may not be working but

▶ 55:23 Suffice it to say that the area that makes sense in terms of the Hoover School is at the rear where the community garden is now. It's a flat area. It would easily accommodate modular construction. The decision early on was to consider modular construction for a number of reasons, but probably most pressing to the city is time to get it complete. and and with modular construction you can actually get classrooms done by next fall and that was seen as a huge benefit so we looked at the the rear of the Hoover where the community gardens are and the possibility of adding three classrooms at the rear while still maintaining the the pickup drop-off circle and still maintaining the track and play area so with this plan you're

▶ 56:24 able to add three classrooms to the school without impacting negatively on the site or the school itself those would be fully accessible classrooms they would have bathrooms they logically would be built for the small for the youngest students and the only real issue here is that we would be there you see the three classrooms we would be relocating the gardens but we have a location to do that along the fence line of the law the fence law excuse me right but it's below the classroom below the classrooms along the fence line there's an area that's essentially equivalent in square footage that we can relocate those gardens. And they would be fully accessible gardens and actually they'd probably be a better layout

▶ 57:21 from accessibility point of view. So that would give us three new classrooms at the Hoover. The next location we looked at was the Winthrop. There you see the front of the Winthrop with the formal front entrance and the green space and the front parking. Here you see the rear with the large play area, the existing tarmac and play structures. And in this case, the decision was made to consider two additional classrooms at this location and the only real place to consider putting them is in the existing green space because it's the only place that we have a flat area that's actually relatively level with the first floor so that we can have a fully accessible connection between the new construction and the existing construction.

▶ 58:17 However, there is some displacement of green space. So the proposal here, and you can see it below the white building, there's a kind of a green triangular space. The proposal is to actually take some of that pavement that's out there uh... and create a new field area for the students so while doing this project we not only are able to add two classrooms to the winthrop but we are able to uh... dramatically improve the outdoor area for students uh... the two classrooms would probably make up a four uh... for kindergarten for now anyway a four kindergarten uh... area at the front of the building and we have color coded these these these plans and i know you've looked at them and they propose a

▶ 59:08 configuration but of course this is a change in configuration because your bubble will travel up through the classroom so what may be you know in any one of these plans what may be a four kindergarten plan one year may be a four first grade plan another year uh... so it's not static which means that School administrators will have to adapt that to that reality And so that's that plan that shows the two kindergarten classrooms. This of course at this juncture is a very conceptual You know a thousand foot look at the this this issue But it gives us a good sense of what the possibilities are for the sites This would allow us to bring in in this case. It's for modular units to create two classrooms. These are 14 foot wide

▶ 59:53 Units are proposed. They could be 12 but it allows us to have classrooms that have cubbies that have storage that have bathrooms and have a direct connection to the existing school the final site we looked at was a Horace Mann and in this case after a great deal of discussion it was really quite evident that this site does not have the carrying capacity to accommodate an addition it is it has got all kinds of limitations around the play areas that heavy use for recreation in the city all your existing parking it would have to be obviously as anybody can see the only possible place to put an addition would be in the parking lot so you're talking about a significant displacement of parking the only place that would make sense would be off of

▶ 1:00:48 the rear that is the rear we also have significant accessibility issues at this school as you can see students and visitors and staff and parents all have to go upstairs to get into the building which is also the case on the front at the existing entrances so we we just we as a committee in a group decided that probably the best approach here was not to increase capacity however the the opportunity after looking at this kind of raised its head which was if we reconfigured the interior we could have an improved entrance we could have a permanent designated library space in a permanent designated art and music space and part of the purpose of this study also was to try to achieve reasonable equity amongst your five elementary schools and in terms of what programs

▶ 1:01:45 were physically offered within the facilities and this really gets us to a place where we have some equity around that and this is showing a larger scale plan of the area that we would be renovating that green box would become an art music area the blue triangle would become a library area and the gray box would become administration we'd have a new entrance the entrance right now is difficult from a security point of view and from a bit from from a visitor point of view this would be a much better sequence it would allow the students to enter from the other side of the building so it was seen as a good way to actually maybe I came in advance it further a good way to achieve equity among all our facilities I think we're close enough that I'm not gonna worry

▶ 1:02:39 too much about it but anyway we've come so essentially we have a three a three building program here two of them include um modular additions and one of them includes a more traditional interior renovation and reconfiguration thank you very much sir yes please do that the only uh there are two issues that we face one is this we have to do something there is not a single room available in the Norris public schools next year not a room in fact at the Winthrop school we turn some classrooms in that there are suitable classrooms but are not ideal to say the least the second issue is the idea of moving the eighth grade to the high school Displacing central administration, as well as the construction that would be made to have to do that.

▶ 1:03:40 Rivals the cost as well as the educational shake up that this proposal does. and it it clearly was not clearly a desired outcome that we received as Member of the building committee as Member of the school community that the community did not want any part of so as we move forward I just want to be clear of that Thank You mayor Dolan we're ready to proceed with some colloquy from the horseshoe our first in line we have aldermen's work oh please thank you mr. chairman appreciate the study and I did attend a couple of those public sessions over the summer so they're very well informed and appreciate you doing that I know that a lot of this spoken to many residents and you know this is it's kind of an interesting situation because it's a

▶ 1:04:38 Michael P. Zwirko: good problem to have right you know we've got a lot of new families that are moving to the city a lot of kids that are joining the ranks of the public school so um you know we're buttressed by this great problem um so obviously we have to address it and um you know i got to take a page out of your book mr mayor you you often say when uh we're working and tinkering with the city this is like the fenway park plan and that's one of the things i like the most about this is that it's taking what we have that's existing and actually improving in small ways for the better i i really appreciate the use and the improvement of the green space at winthrop i think that where the modulars have been placed are completely

▶ 1:05:15 Michael P. Zwirko: appropriate and you know won't create a you know a huge need for over construction and impeding on the neighborhoods as well i think it's completely practical and pragmatic so you know it's well thought out so i'm greatly appreciative of the plan that's been laid out here and i know that there was a lot of work and that work was also rushed due to the need to get these modulars up been running for the fall of 2017 so you know all that being said you know thank you and I also know that we have a member of the board that serves on the school building committee and I know that the work was equally shared and certainly a burden at times so so thank you for that it doesn't go unnoticed I really I don't really have much to say here you know I approve of the plan as

▶ 1:06:00 Michael P. Zwirko: as proposed and I know that this is just the first start this evening the four hundred thousand dollar authorization there will be you know more to come but you know like I said I think the schools in Melrose and all we can ask is that they're improving they certainly are we heard about that last month when scores were released that's certainly no slouch to our administration that's here and I also just wanted to mention that it's nice to see that we have both current and former Member of the school committee that are joining us this evening this certainly is a community effort so I'm supportive of the proposal I appreciate the hard work and I look forward to the comments by my fellow Member thank you mr chairman thank you alderman suarco president khan please uh yeah thank you

▶ 1:06:41 Denise Gaffey: was there any any kind of financial analysis done relative to the various proposals uh that were kicked around yeah yes yeah and this information was presented to the school committee back in the spring when we were when the the school department was actively looking at various options so as the mayor mentioned we did look into this concept of an eighth grade Academy at the high school and and did and did get some numbers to try to figure out approximately what that would look like for cost actually we ran the costs of that reclaiming BB right we ran the costs of you know we explored asking build a building but that's a six-year project so we i had put forward um nine proposals eight and eight a and b came to nine proposals and we and we try to run rough estimates of each of those

▶ 1:07:40 proposals is is there a document that was prepared relative to that analysis could you please get that to us sure yeah but as as the mayor said when it came down to um the two most viable choices either the reconfiguration of the whole grade span k through 12 to move the eighth grade to the high school and the fifth to the middle school in this it was almost as expensive to reclaim my office space and the high school moved the eighth grade over as it is maybe to do um you know the modules at some of these buildings so you did a cost analysis of reconfiguring very rough analysis without bringing in anybody to do estimations and what what was the ballpark that we thought would so the ballpark for the um eighth grade academy concept at the high school

▶ 1:08:35 Denise Gaffey: was roughly 1.5 million dollars to do that construction to build out those classroom spaces but that doesn't take into account the displacement of the administrative staff i mean that was It was basically taking the whole administrative wing and moving them out of the building. So we did actually look at some properties at the time, there's not a lot on the market. But the properties that we're looking at, for example, the car funeral home, was- Yeah, it was 1.6 million, we're talking about another million and a half build out. There was no, it was almost like I was house hunting. We were going to three or four places a week, and they weren't big enough, it had to be retroed out, it weren't handicap accessible.

▶ 1:09:15 wasn't there to meet their needs, and at the same time, we were dealing with a public that didn't want the fifth graders going to the, the eighth graders going to the high school and the fifth graders going to the middle school. Right, but on a purely financial analysis, it would have been about a million five to do the change within the school to accommodate it. But then you needed to find a home for a central administration. Which is about two mil. Correct. And what did they tell us, or what do we think it would have cost to retrofit the BB to use that? John did that. Yeah, I think the number was $1.75 million to do the capital cost that would be needed in that building. Plus the loss of rental.

▶ 1:10:01 Right. And then operational costs, because then we would have to put in administration there, custodial there. um support staff there as well so there's what's the term of our lease that we have there now mayor we're in the middle of renegotiating that lease right now okay now um and and i understand tap a has a long history of doing projects in the city but i'm sure the public would like to know what kind of a process was undertaken to select them could you get into that please explain for us what happened you bet i mean to be selected anytime i do um a capital project like this um and they i do a designer selection process i mean we have to procure an architect we have to procure architects and project managers for vertical construction through a designer

▶ 1:10:49 Denise Gaffey: selection process so i put together an rfp a request for proposals advertise that on the central register and in the newspaper and here at city hall at least for two two weeks two to three weeks two weeks at a minimum and then collect proposals and so that occurred back in early July I put the issue the RFP I kind of let it got a fair amount of interest in the proposals we ended up having two firms submit so and tap a architects was the most qualified firm and then the firm we chose now you know this is the question that nobody wants me to ask but what do anticipate the cost of this project to be and I understand you know it's not something I'm gonna hold you to but are we looking at three million five million

▶ 1:11:43 ten million okay so so I always tell people I'm not gonna hold you the cost I was telling you I won't hold you the cost unless you're wrong right here are are the pros we feel that we have uh the experience to to give a fair estimate okay if i were to today right and i come to this board of alderman the project we feel and this is with a good contingency fair contingency 4.4 million and that's today right we feel that that is the that where we are we're at today we we feel that is a good figure right the issue that is different on this project than any other project that none of us can control is the modular market there is a run on modulars from east coast to west coast and there are so many

▶ 1:12:38 communities arlington has had a very difficult challenging modular maybe mainly because they didn't get enough right but it it I mean I'll let Charlie speak to it it it is not a market where you go to the house of modulars and you have experienced people that know modules they they the modular as an example some of the condominiums that have been built apartments in the city have been modulus the ones on Green Street they work in several different markets and we're used to usually dealing with people that focus on schools or focus on fire stations that is the variable uh president khan that that that does i want to say it keeps me up at night that it makes me concerned a bit about this project that and be able to get it

▶ 1:13:23 done on time as a result of this backlog and i'll let you speak to that i don't have to i think the mayor has articulated the issue very adeptly i don't know that i have too much data i would only say that that it is completely true that we know the conventional construction marketplace we we We have backlog of data. We know where the bids come in. There are many, many capable contractors out there doing the kind of work. You can know what the scale is. You can know who the players are, and it's a consistent marketplace. With this modular marketplace, there are a limited number of potential bidders. It depends on how busy they are or are not, and they may or may not submit when you send out an RFP.

▶ 1:14:07 As a result of that, it's very difficult to know precisely what kind of a number we're going to get. And that is, I think as the mayor has very aptly put it, the issue where we're probably less comfortable with the numbers than we would be with a conventional construction project. And we're slower in this process. We were originally going to give the big number tonight and maybe go forward with it. And the reason why we're going forward with not just, but a sizable portion for is to let tap a really mind down what we're doing here for we can we can truly get the best price and certainly be able to share with the board when we go forward a cost that is that is reasonable that we will never have to

▶ 1:14:53 Denise Gaffey: come back for seconds that we can we can manage the project I mean Denise correct me if I'm wrong but I think your intention was to come back for a full appropriation with that's right with the number in hand with actual numbers we We would, the funding that we're asking for tonight would take us through to bidding the project. So design, the full design, putting it out on the street, getting the bids, and then we would come back and request the full fund. Yeah, no, I understand where we are in the process, but with all due respect to my colleagues, once we vote the bond, we're not going to not do the project. We're kind of, we're going down the road, so, and this is an important, it's an important step.

▶ 1:15:30 If I were to go before today, it'd be 4.4, that's where we're at right now. We came around the table to agree to that number at this time. If it comes in a little bit more, it's not because anyone did anything wrong, it's because the market, with supply and demand, if more people want modules and less people building them, the price is going to go up. The question is then, do we not pay that or do we revert back to another option? Do we have music and art in all the classrooms? I think, again, these are are not considered temporary solutions i want to make this clear the public because i always hear this yeah people want to know what the useful life is this this is a real this is a actual building that is attached to the school it's a real building it's not half a building it's not

▶ 1:16:14 kind of a building it's a true structure and i don't know if you want to speak to you the uh the modular companies would say this is a 20-year building so conventional construction they'd probably say a 50-year building, but this would be a 20-year building. And I presume you folks have worked on additions using modular in the past. And do you have like a spec of what you want that's overly simplified in things? I think that you would find they're very simple, and it's a flat roof, and it's going to have simple siding, and then the interior will seem just like any conventional classroom. It'll have drywall walls. It'll have acoustic ceiling tiles. It will have good, high-quality lighting. It will have good flooring.

▶ 1:16:57 It will have conventional casework and cubbies, so it will feel good windows. It's going to feel to a student like a conventional, nice, new classroom with plenty of light, big windows. So it will be a very nice learning environment. The exterior will probably be, you know, less exotic. I mean, less handsome than a new brick building. And we feel that this population bump is not a one or two year scenario here. This is something that we're going to be dealing with for some time. Yes, yes. And I also want to make it clear, President Conn, that after we go through this process and get the designs, our goal is again to have neighborhood meetings in each of the neighborhoods affected to allow not just parents,

▶ 1:17:48 Denise Gaffey: but abutters to take a look at these facilities and go through that same process again, we have final we have final well in you know again probably not a fair question but what what percentage of this project if you can give it a percentage do you think the renovation of the harvest main school would be so it's about maybe a little over a third so it is essentially two different projects if you want to look at it that way there's modular construction which is procured differently than the than this building construction so we would treat it like two separate projects and um i think the way the estimate was shaking out and it's about a third or slightly more than a third of the cost for the horse man okay and and to mr delarusso uh my standard bond question

▶ 1:18:40 i'm just going to abbreviate it can you give me the terms of the bond the annual cost when we'll start paying and everything else that i usually ask you and if you forget anything i'll ask it That sounds like a deal. Typical note would be 20 years and I believe you may have this in your packet. Mm-hm. Probably about $35,000 a year, I think, on average for the $400,000 note. We're using 5% interest, which we're all hoping in this room that's less than that at the time. But we've been conservative and that's worked for us. We went back and we have a 30 year model for debt. I think it's really important that we refresh ourselves as to where we're at. We have a 30 year model with debt for the general fund.

▶ 1:19:31 And what's interesting is that two-thirds of our debt service is paid off within ten years. So if you look at the scope here from 2018 to In 2028, you'll see that two-thirds of the city's debt service is paid off. And it's on a slope that we all want, so that this means two things. It means you're doing the right thing. You have not exceeded, you haven't even exceeded 4% of the year, let alone five. For the duration of the note, which is wonderful, 5% of your budget, general fund was our limitation. We haven't even touched 4% yet. And having said that, this tells you that you have capacity for future projects. You're not limiting yourself, is what I'm trying to say, in the future. You're not limiting the future administration.

▶ 1:20:19 And I think, again, the same policy of when we present to this board, we ensure that, as Darlene Kahn's point, that we never exceed 5% for the next, that we wouldn't be here tonight and that we maintain that same portfolio of being very conservative on our estimation of cost. For the actual note, so that this is not in any way the cost minimized if we don't do that. We've never done that here. And we also have, which at the board's this pleasure I can provide before the next meeting is both page one which shows that each and every year we're under 4% of debt service. associated debt service by year and I also like page two unlike the state assessments which is page two on the recap I mean the chair sheet but also

▶ 1:21:13 Denise Gaffey: shows capacity by year in the event that the board wanted to do more acquisitions for capital in the future it gives you a nice ballpark as to where you stand and what type of capital you're able to absorb in future years so dollar wise It's a nice plus percentage, it meets all those guidelines, sir. And Ms. Gaffey, tell us what your timeline is in terms of how this project would unfold. So it's an ambitious project. We really were hoping to get a vote soon so that we can move forward with the design and get the projects to bid by you know the end of the year or early January the modulus would be fabricated in a factory and then they would be delivered by truck to the site so we would be we would be able to do some site work at the two on one

▶ 1:22:13 Denise Gaffey: elementary schools in the spring just cordon the space off and do that and they would be ready to accept the modulus next summer in terms of the Horace man we it's this getting the time frame that we have the amount of time that we have available is is a challenge I mean we hope to be able to accomplish the project in the summer months next year we have enough time to do the design work and the procurement and get a contractor in place but whether we can get all of that construction done in a 10-week period is a little bit of a challenge okay so you're looking for the board to act on this within the within the next couple of weeks and then you want to get uh get bids out get moving on the complete the

▶ 1:22:58 design so we can put the um construction documents together and by january february time right yeah does that sound right to you january or right i think you want to have them i think you need to have those modular proposals back in january i'm not sure you'd have the bids in hand for the Horace Mann but then however that's a lot easier yeah and I spoke to miss Gaffey about this really today if I can get whatever financial analysis you had relative to the various options I was appreciated that's probably more than enough thank you very much president Kahn Alderman limelight please thank you mr. chair thank you all very much for being with us tonight to explain all of this I as was mentioned in the presentations was a very long process

▶ 1:23:44 Jennifer L. Lemmerman: that I it's been going I think since I've been a member of the school building committee so very excited as I'm sure you all are as well to have it at this point in front of the board and I think that you know I can say obviously that I support it as a member of that committee and and having gone through that process in this committee obviously that committee has obviously supported it we had the public input a lot of public input that this was sort of the route that people preferred and the financial analysis and even just anecdotally speaking to other towns that have modular classrooms I've heard you know people fight over who gets to be in the modulars because they're beautiful and they're climate controlled and they're they're nice so you know I do

▶ 1:24:31 Jennifer L. Lemmerman: think this is a great option for us one of the things I wanted to touch on a little bit and President Kahn alluded to it as well that you know bubble maybe isn't necessarily the right term for this we are projecting growth for many years ahead I think my yet to arrive child is going to be in like first grade by the time this Peaks out to you know sort of display quite how long we're looking at this so one of the conversations that really happened a lot during this committee and I wanted to you know ask you to elaborate a little bit on this was how to make sure that we weren't planning for too much and that we were being conservative in that regard but allowing the flexibility that we may need in the future for the amount that we can possibly project and wanted

▶ 1:25:18 to have you just a little bit of that so we struggled with this because we recognize the financial burden on the city by taking on another bonding project even though you have capacity so as we worked our way through the process for which you were present we came to the conclusion that we would rather be conservative and build a little bit less than over build and part of what Miss Gaffey and I were you know talked about is if you get an estimate from MSBA it's always under because they don't want you to over bid if you get an estimate from NASDAQ it's always a little over because they don't want you to under under build the demographic studies so we are trying to take a balanced approach so when the

▶ 1:26:09 issues began to evolve on the placement as mr. Hay has point pointed out we realized it was an opportunity to step back and be a little bit more conservative in our how many modules we built out so we chose five instead of six the worst case scenario on the projections that many of you saw last spring when we did the whole presentation is and again I don't call it a bubble like I call it a wave or a trend is there's a year I think it's 20 21 21 22 where we need 88 classrooms so we creep up to 88 and then we begin to fall again but we don't fall at least within the 10 years of the study below 84 so worst case scenario and I'm checking with Denise because she has my numbers right there worst case scenario is there may be a couple of years where

▶ 1:27:06 we have to do either out on the cot or we have to put another module in but by then hopefully the city's bonding has increased again the ability to bond has increased and we have some flexibility if not two years is not a bad struggle in the lifetime of a school what we're having a struggle with now if we had to do this for 10 years or 15 years we have not just a capacity problem an equity problem so the Horace man where I hope your child will go you know they do art in the auditorium on the stage and when the art is winding down the lunch ladies come in and they start pulling down tables or if it's a rainy day for Jim we've got a problem you know who goes where and things like that so that so

▶ 1:28:00 that's one issue the mayor referenced you know that at the Horace me and the Hoover and the Winthrop we took classrooms and converted them to libraries they don't have beautiful libraries like Winthrop Lincoln and our Roosevelt we have multi-purpose rooms there's no getting around that it's a given at the Winthrop we had to add we've added a classroom a grade a grade classroom for two years at the Winthrop we added a fourth last year fifth this year they are totally out of space we took the old computer room thankfully we're now mobile again thank you and we converted that to a third grade classroom I've been through that room three times and every time I go through that room I'm saying it's a little close for the type of instruction we prefer to

▶ 1:28:50 do nowadays at the Hoover two years ago mr. Schenner and I made a decision to take a former kindergarten room and cut it in half to build out space so half of the room maybe the size of that suite over there is art music and the other half is special ed space now at the Winthrop we took a book room we converted it to sped space at the Horace me and we took another classroom we cut it in half for sped space you have to remember when a lot of these buildings were built the programs that were now required to offer did not exist so you you had a classroom and you had kids sitting in rows six by six however many it may be and it was a very different educational model now with special education intervention ESL student centered model we are very crowded and

▶ 1:30:00 Jennifer L. Lemmerman: so it was both a capacity issue and an equity issue while we can't reproduce the Lincoln and the Roosevelt we certainly want to make sure that our students at the other three elementaries have the best possible facilities we can offer them given the constraints of the buildings so that's where we're at thank you you mentioned Horace Mann so I do have a couple of questions and comment about that of being in my my ward and it is a school that has not experienced equity for a while now as you know you know that room that you mentioned lunch in there art in there library comes in there music is done in there we vote in there I mean it's everything happens in that room so it's great to see some see

▶ 1:30:55 these renovations that will make up for some of that space I wanted to ask and I see we have the principal there if she wouldn't mind if I could call on her a little bit but the change there and what is existing to the new plan it does also sort of takes the reception area and the principal's office and the nurses area and puts it all together and in a more accessible place than it is right now it's sort of set back a little bit right now but then we do lose in the corner there a fairly large kindergarten classroom that I know is a well-loved room right now and then it moves it over to another space can you talk a little bit about just the the impact on the school from your perspective on making

▶ 1:31:40 that that change in that whole sort of quarter so that front quarter there'd be there are three big impact spaces that I see one in moving the library into that first kindergarten classroom into that permanent structure it kind of puts it in a central focal point we use our library for we wish to use our library number of things not just as a depository but it's also a site where community volunteers come in they read with children and we would like to utilize that space so that we could have it as more of an instructional space the second big impact and was a particular importance to me is to address some of the ad a regulations for that building and making that building accessible to families to children into the community so as the engineers put forth you can

▶ 1:32:30 can see clearly that with the exception of our all-purpose room there are stairs at all our entrances although a wheelchair can come in to the all-purpose room we do have a ramp to help support that coming into the school that itself cannot be to code because it would extend into the middle of my cafeteria where we have lunch art music physical education assemblies and voting so I see the second big impact would be a more open equitable space for the community to access the building the third large impact has to do with security so if you have been up to the Hoover School in that beautiful front entrance where you have all glass you have increased camera security you have visibility for people coming in we do have camera at our back door which is

▶ 1:33:19 our front door off our parking lot if you've been out to Horace me in and we also have a second security door but as of right now in order to get eyes on someone very well they are well into the building and that is of a huge concern as it is for the community I would imagine and finally moving the kindergarten classroom into what is now a shared music instrument lesson in library space years ago and I'm not going to quote the year because I don't know exactly it was not in my tenure nor the one before me that space actually was a kindergarten classroom it's only equipped with the smart board it's fully equipped with storage um in the square footage albeit less than the present kindergarten

▶ 1:34:02 space is uh sufficient if you look at i'm sure that it's in your packet they did a lot of work on square footage it is it is equal if not bigger than some of the other classrooms in the building so there's a personal loss i think for the teacher that has to be recognized as someone who was in a classroom for many years you fall in love with your classroom but it is she who makes that space wonderful so wherever we put her I'm confident that that impact will be will be well thank you very much for coming and speaking to us about that great I think those are all of my questions the Horace man one in particular you know that was sort of a later a later change in plans after really looking at everything and so wanted to make sure that we had a chance to kind of hear a

▶ 1:34:47 little bit about that so thank you very much thank you mr. chairman Thank You Alderman Lemmerman. Next we have Alderman Boisselle please. Thank you for coming. The report looks very impressive. Lots of information which I'm going to pass back to you now. The term modular, modular construction, modular units. What's the difference between this concept? Between modular units versus modular construction? Yes. Well there are two. I mean what we're talking about in what we what we're proposing are custom-built purpose-built units that are built for this project in a factory and brought via truck to the site placed on a foundation that's constructed in the field and then connected to the buildings the systems are connected to the building you can get trailers that

▶ 1:35:49 are pre-manufactured that roll up that you would more likely see you know as a construction trailer or something like that so basically so and the roofs are all built in the warehouse then trucked out they are so they they say the the modular company would tell you that it's about 90% complete when it arrives so it's like a big Lego set putting together and and and they knit them together and they are built they're built to be able to travel over roads so they're legal which means their width there's a limitation to the width which is why they are knit together which is why even a single classroom doesn't come as a single classroom it comes on multiple trucks and is put together as a single classroom okay I heard that I heard the time period for the lifespan

▶ 1:36:41 Robert A. Boisselle: of these units are 10 15 or 20 years but as you get towards according to the industry as the years progress after 15 years you're requiring a very high level maintenance and serviceability does this put a burden upon the DPW at this point to maintain these buildings because they're all self-contained I believe with air conditioning and heating units it's it's additional square footage to clean maintain but the way it's going to be connected into the building into the existing systems to the existing security system into the system fire alarm system some may have separate services so I mean it's additional square footage that the budget will probably increase slightly to adapt but it's the same custodian same facility staff there's no additional staff that's

▶ 1:37:33 Robert A. Boisselle: going to be required to take you know to take care of these additional spaces I I mean, it's just more square footage and- Very good. Now, you mentioned hooked up to the building. That would mean the infrastructure, the power, you're gonna have toilets in there, so the underground, and you're gonna have a concrete slab, and all connected to the building, almost like a permanent building for the next 15 to 20 years. Does this go before the planning board for a plan review of any sort? I mean, does the planning board get involved with this now? There's no trigger for that, no. I mean, it's all gonna fit within the zoning envelope. No, you're adding a, you're adding a new addition, I mean, a lot of the, well, my constituents are adding new parts to their homes and so forth, and they have to go before the planning board to get permission.

▶ 1:38:16 Robert A. Boisselle: Do, does the city have to go before the planning board with these plans for these new units? I don't believe it. Okay. It's required. It's required. Is there going to, I mean, we're talking a lifespan of probably about 20 years, we'll say maximum 20 years. Most of our schools are going on 50 and 60 years of age now. is it going is there some sort of phase-out plan that's going to be involved here after 20 years are we going to replace them or tear them down or are we thinking of what are we going to do with these after 20 years well I think it's gonna be more than 20 years right I would say this there's no phase out plan at this time but I think this community and I don't know if any of us will be here at that time when it's done has to start having preliminary

▶ 1:39:14 conversations about a new bigger Winthrop school in which the city at some point would have three major elementary facilities Roosevelt Lincoln and the Winthrop in two smaller 12 room class 12 room classroom schools at the Hoover and at the Horace me that is down the road but ultimately that if you want a permanent long-term kind of solution after the 20 years that's where it has to come from okay now we mentioned because I would just say this that the width of school is coming towards the end of its of its life it's not there today but it's it's gonna get there as the middle school was right and as all our schools as we are I think you know we're gonna have to I don't want to get into this because I think we have enough on our plate right now but that's the

▶ 1:40:23 Robert A. Boisselle: road that the city's gonna have to go all right final aspects of this we talked about the financial aspects the design service is going to cost us about four hundred thousand dollars from what I see here in the bottom line is really six hundred seventeen thousand with the two hundred seventeen thousand dollars of worth of interest so now if we move that into the projected cost of four point one million for all the modules even taking fifty percent the total cost of these modules will be just about six million dollars close to it plus or minus depending on what we get for interest and that's will be probably the true cost of the project and one last thing I noticed the Hoover and the Horace man all had community gardens the Winthrop has a community garden and it

▶ 1:41:19 Scott M. Forbes: wasn't identified it doesn't seem to be in the area of construction at this point so I just make it aware that the Winthrop does have a community garden You're absolutely aware of that and I think this project does not impact. That's correct. I just wanted to make that clear All right. Thank you very much. Very good. Very good job Thank You alderman boys. L next in queue. We have alderman Forbes, please Thank You mr. Chairman and thank you all for being here tonight As far as the modules are concerned I Prior life as a as a lending officer I think I've built or have been involved in construction loan process about two thousand two dozen modular homes two of them actually here in Melrose in each

▶ 1:42:05 Scott M. Forbes: one of those cases the modular homes are better quality than a stick-built home because depending upon where they're being shipped from they don't know the code so they have to over build on the codes that's been my experience on them she you're shaking your head so I think that you you understand what I'm talking about well I think the quality is very good if nothing else because they're being built indoors in a warm area with high level of quality contracts correct I am in favor of this project the couple of questions I do have to ask is the modulars themselves like in the Hoover for example we're putting three of them there are we doing three individual modules or are we getting one building

▶ 1:42:43 that's going to be spliced into three classrooms that's actually three classrooms ends up being six trucks okay arriving right because they get bolted together yeah they get spliced together and then obviously it's a conventional foundation the floors will be wood but they'll have to probably have a rat you know some sort of a slab a slab underneath them but but they get you know driven onto the site and dropped essentially and at the Hoover Inn and the Winthrop there is going to be some type of I assume brick-and-mortar construction because you're going to connect them to the structure in the form of a hallway or a breezeway right so that's of the me that'll still be the responsibility of the modular contractor but it's quite possible they'll do that

▶ 1:43:23 Scott M. Forbes: as a conventional connector or something actually the one at the the one at the Hoover really does just butt right up against it but you still have you know you have flashing you have flashing in the roof there's there's various pieces to that that will be can you know completely conventional that will be done and that's the whole enabling piece that happens once these things arrive on site yeah I think it's important that it maintains the the configuration and the integrity of that building in that neighborhood and also just one last point I mean my my daughter goes to school up in New Hampshire she had a module classroom for three years we had our we had all the parent-teacher conferences in those in those buildings that was actually detached from the main

▶ 1:44:05 Scott M. Forbes: building which was a concern but you know it it was one of the classrooms that most everybody wanted to go to so I'm not I I don't have concerns about the project I think it's a I think it's a it's going to end up being a good investment for the community as a whole and I know it does give us a little bit of time so we can see where the continuing enrollment numbers move forward but it does give us a window of opportunity to re-examine that down the road I thank you for all your hard work here tonight and I appreciate it thank you mr. chairman Thank You alderman Forbes next we have alderman Medeiros please thank you thank you well I have a dr. Cobbs here I just wanted to say congratulations on becoming a level one school and I know that you've been

▶ 1:44:53 Monica C. Medeiros: particular have expressed some of the concerns concerns about some of the problems that this particular project would address to me over the years especially about security so I'm I'm happy to see that involved I'm wondering probably to miss Gaffey especially because this project the horse man piece in particular really increases accessibility and are there any grant opportunities for us to pursue not I mean not really like this would not be a school building assistance program type of project for one thing we would have to wait we'd have to get it on a list and wait many years to do it but they wouldn't do a small component of a building like this it would have to be a major a major project so that you know so we don't really have that opportunity

▶ 1:45:49 Monica C. Medeiros: to tap into I'm not aware of any other grant opportunities for for handicap accessibility I'm if you're if you know of any I just like that I'd be happy to look into we can look into that I don't off the top of my head and then I just wanted to talk a little bit about the expectations of population growth I know back at one of the meetings over the summer mr. McLaughlin who's the co-chair of the school building committee had mentioned that this is a problem where we were going to need six to eight classrooms over the next ten years is that really still the case is that accurate so if you look closely at mr. Hayes drawings there's internal recapturing of space that's factored into that so that's how we came to to get some of the extra numbers by

▶ 1:46:48 reconfiguring how we use space so again in you know Mary Ellen's building she us we're taking a classroom that was was a library and building her a real library at we've already taken two classrooms at both the Winthrop and the not the one that excuse me the Lincoln and the Roosevelt as you know we've taken their computer classrooms in their music classrooms converted those to gen ed classrooms so we've captured some rooms there one of those things that we're talking about at Hoover and we'll have to see how it plays out is the room that we actually build out two years ago we could reconvert to a regular classroom you know if we needed to so we're looking at the flexibility this gives us within each structure as well you know mr. Hayes said earlier the

▶ 1:47:44 Monica C. Medeiros: principals are going to have to be adaptable and they're going to have to be adaptable we're doing the best we can with the resources the city can give us and it's not a perfect situation it's not an ideal solution but it does increase capacity so it's a lot more manageable than it is quite frankly today so and I know you mentioned that at the peak we would need we're projected to need 88 classrooms but not go below below 84 how many do we have today as of today we are 82 and we're anticipating that really coming into the end next school year starting next fall so currently have a problem currently we have I'm doing for many years you had a 12 strand grade you had 12 fives 12 fours then you begin to creep up to a 13 now you're at a 15 we have a 15

▶ 1:48:46 Monica C. Medeiros: classroom one a 15 classroom K if you have 15 next year you can see how this progresses over time so in terms of some of the the cost and lifespan questions I know you mentioned the 20-year life span. I would like to know in today's dollars and obviously, you know, what it would cost to remove these modulars and maybe if we could get that for our next meeting just so we can have some concept of what kind of burden we might be placing on the future generations. I feel like in order to ‑‑ So you're asking in 20 years what it would cost to take them away what would it cost today to remove these classrooms if they were done in today's dollars so if if today was the day that they useful life is is done and and we're ready to get rid of them what is what does it

▶ 1:49:47 Monica C. Medeiros: cost and you know at least we'll have some kind of ballpark about what that will be we can't really you know guess what the cost of money and anything will be really in 20 years as much as we can try and predict but at least we can have some concept of what it is today. Likewise to Mr. Del Russo, the numbers that you just showed to us that was just for the design bond. Could you possibly speak to what we might be looking for looking at if we were to say bond 4.4 million for the full project assuming we move forward? Yes what I did do and it's That's a great question. I also, with myself and the treasurer collective, put together a chart assuming we're using four million as a round number here.

▶ 1:50:49 And again, the same dimensions, the- I'd just like to make the point again. Yep. The numbers that were used, the reason why we're before you tonight is to find out real, Actual numbers, the numbers that we're using today are the numbers that we have done to the best of our ability without actually going through these costs, understanding the escalation of costs right now. In the construction business, as well as the fluctuating market of modules. Thank you, and in the same portfolio, again, this is on the left, it's 2012 to 2042. have a 30-year model that we use with our certifying bank Peter Frazier and it does the same basic thing in essence and only one year does it even touch four percent that's 2019 all of the years it's it's under four percent that's a

▶ 1:51:43 great question thank you because as we embark on this you know our plan is going to be to move forward so yeah sorry back to lifespan is there any kind warranty on these I don't believe that there is sort of a lifetime warranty and I think that the modular companies give the 20-year or better number as a guidance but to be honest with you I think that they will last longer than that I just don't think that anyone wants to say that because they they don't want anybody to hold them to it but there is I don't I don't believe you could ever get a warranty that was that long we might see something like a year usually get a year you usually get a year or on some materials a three-year warranty or maybe a five-year warranty on a product but you don't get a 20-year

▶ 1:52:33 Monica C. Medeiros: warranty typically and with the construction of these modular units would they would this meet our green building code it will happen it's not right I know I appreciate that and my only other question is at the Winthrop the green space does that take away parking spaces for staff there's no parking on that side the building no parking there so this is just making a playground which is now impervious as you know the winter playground is nothing but asphalt and this is actually an improvement and hopefully improvement with drainage too so thank you very much I I do I think this I think this solves you know some of our problems is no no we have a problem is no real easy solution is no solution without cost unfortunately you know certainly from

▶ 1:53:38 Gail Infurna: talking to the public I don't think the will is there to to move grade levels up and move you know eighth graders to the high school or fifth graders to the to the middle school and you know this does allow us to keep the the neighborhood school system intact and I think that once we get through the initial construction it will be a positive thing for thank you Thank You Alderman Medeiros Alderman Inferno please thank you very much mr. chairman I'm gonna have to start writing smaller because I think Alderman Medeiros looked at my paper thank you for all your work that you're doing on this I think it is the the best of the best plans that we could possibly go for I did have a concern with the ADA handicapped things thank you dr. Cobb

▶ 1:54:35 Gail Infurna: for addressing that and responding to the ADA concerns of the community so but that's a great opportunity that we have here. I can't imagine, Denise, that there aren't any grants out there that we may be able to pull aside. I don't know if we could really look into that just to see if there's anything ADA is, they're changing things all the time and doing different things. So I'd appreciate if you could really look into that. And Ms. Taymor, I think you mentioned at one point the year 2022 about ADA. know what 88 classrooms would be Oh 88 I'm sorry I heard a DA and I was just like what are we waiting to eat the year 2020 2022 so thank you at that I was just like goodness also with this these modules that you have here and the plan

▶ 1:55:31 Gail Infurna: that you have here and we're talking about the growth that we have here in Melrose if in you know 15 more years or anything is there any room on any of these lots or these school sites to put another modular if you needed it yes yeah all of them so that you know if this really needed to go on or something like that and we still weren't ready to build new or whatever you could there is room to put another one on and my last question is I heard that these modular homes a flat roof as we concern ourselves with flat roofs in any building and modular just kind of strikes me that they're 20 years as opposed to a 50 year building John do you have any concerns about snow if we should have those really bad winters is there any more of a chance for the snow

▶ 1:56:28 Mary Beth McAteer-Margolis: to collapse on that they really build them they build just like on any other right okay great thank you very much thank you again thank you alderman inferno alderman MacMaster my goal is please thank you mr. chairman actually Alderman Medeiros was looking at my paper but that's okay we're all here to share and find out the same information design the design phase that we're in now is the four the four hundred thousand is including the modulars and the horseman and tap a Charlie is ting is going to be doing all of that right and all of the consultants to we have not in the limited feasibility study that we did under during the couple of months that we have this summer we we didn't do all the soil exploration and it has material exploration and all

▶ 1:57:26 Mary Beth McAteer-Margolis: subsurface surveys things of that nature geotechnical surveys so consultants like that would also be built into our built into this you know and it also includes project management on the owners project management going forward or just for this particular way it's going forward going forward okay and so mr. de la russa sometimes I know when we do those preliminary bonds we and then we go further with the project we end up kind of like rolling the original bond in is that a plan that you would be looking to do or no yeah I believe that we're gonna wait until we actually ascertain that the full cost mm-hmm so we'll do a temporary nature okay and then it's when we do finalize the figures at that point

▶ 1:58:09 Mary Beth McAteer-Margolis: you'd probably roll them together you know do it all at once and the temporary bonds usually are a little higher interest rate is that why you've got the five percent or no that we were shown actually it and mr. trip flavors you are to show on but we believe would be a bonded cost the temporary bonds are usually lower than that so okay but we're just trying to demonstrate that even at that level it fits into the program and going forward as Alderman just to clarify Alderman Medeiros this question the additional 4.4 million is still going to bring us under the four percent total capacity it'd be into five percent it would be under five percent i'm just using four for illustration purposes you know i only touched

▶ 1:58:55 Mary Beth McAteer-Margolis: it once and that was 2019 at 4.02 percent so at some point the other year was under four could you get that um projection to us that you were showing us with how it was falling off and absolutely where we would be headed going forward because i think absolutely probably most of us feel if we're we're going this far unless it's you know totally prohibitive and we have to go in a different direction this is this is where we're going to be going to be headed in in that regard one thing that I haven't heard the superintendent speak to in terms of adding classrooms and capacity is class size is this going to help us in any way with reaching certain goals that the school committee may have set for class size depends on your

▶ 1:59:41 enrollment doesn't it always I mean you know yep so you know if we have 15 classrooms in the enrollments at maybe 310 then maybe you run about 2021 if the enrollments at 330 you're running 2425 it all depends on the enrollment please remember that the school committee has policies that are designed to balance class sizes at that entry point for children and that's why we have inter-school choice and not neighborhood schools because we that's how we manage it you know it may vary as the kids get older and they come and go and things like that but at the K level that's where we're really trying to control class size and influence the future and you don't see the committee undertaking any reviews of those policies regarding not in the future if

▶ 2:00:34 Mary Beth McAteer-Margolis: you wanted to go to 2020 per classroom then you better start building another building tomorrow morning because that's what you're asking we had 21 plus or minus when I was on the school committee but that was some and of course when I was at the horseman I think I was the six by six desks with probably 35 kids in my class I am very happy I'm not happy to see the kindergarten class go but I am happy to see that it's going to be a library and that's I'm reading that right correct yeah if we're just flipping the two spaces yeah no it's all it is yeah and I think it's I think it's great that it's it's a beautiful room and I think it'll be nice that the whole student population can visit it on a

▶ 2:01:15 Mary Beth McAteer-Margolis: regular basis and not just really be in it for some of them for one part you know for one for one year so I am happy to see that and I'm very pleased with with the ADA compliance and I think that's long long overdue this part so I'm very happy to see that you were diligent enough to to build this you know to build this into the project one of the questions I had and I think you touched on it briefly mr. Shana was the systems so maybe you were Charlie could speak to this the systems they'll have some self-contained but then otherwise they'll be tied into the main building so what will probably happen is for instance heating and cooling will just be rooftop units so those are they're gonna be their own brand new systems right there's something like plumbing

▶ 2:02:06 it'll be brand new sinks and toilets but we got to get water to them and we got to you know so we're gonna have waste lines and probably going back to the building in water hot and cold water going back to the buildings unless we find and John did mention this that it makes more sense to bring a separate service in and we just don't know that we haven't done that exploration same goes with electrical it probably will all tie back to the primary power that comes into the existing schools however it's conceivable that that will end up with secondary power coming from somewhere else for some reason those are the kind of explorations that were not undertaken in the first phase of this study so but are you confident that if need be the systems that are in place

▶ 2:02:55 Peter D. Mortimer: have enough capacity to handle you don't really know that's what word that's what I'm saying is we until we until we explore that we don't know that fully so that will be good but obviously they're going to be code compliant and adequate for the spaces and if the buildings don't have adequate service will bring in separate service okay so I think that covered most of my questions that weren't answered previously and I'm happy to to thank you for your hard work on this and to support this thank you very much Alderman McAteer-Margolis having come to the end of our dialectical analysis is there a motion please we have a motion for passage by Alderman Lemmerman duly seconded by alderman Forbes all in favor please say aye aye any opposed hearing

▶ 2:03:45 Peter D. Mortimer: none this will be recommended for passage of the full board everyone thank you very much thank you one at all president Kahn has moved for a recess second by alderman Forbes all in favor All those in favor, please say aye. Aye. Approved, we are in recess. Motion carries. Back in two minutes. Ladies and gentlemen, if we could please resume the Appropriations Committee. Get back to our last order of business for the night. It is the order 2017-26. authorization of a bond in the amount of 540,000 through the MWRA's Sewer System I&I Local Financial Assistance Program. Is there a motion to suspend the rules, please? So moved. Second. Alderman Forbes has made a motion to suspend the rules for this order, duly seconded by Alderman Boycelle.

▶ 2:05:10 All in favor, please say aye. Aye. Any opposed, hearing none, we are under suspension. Your Honor, Mayor Dolan. Thank you. Thank you, sir. As if we haven't had enough fun, a little eye and eye to finish it up tonight. Yeah. I want to thank you for all the hard work tonight. It's a really big night for the city. So this evening we're presenting a bold initiative that I announced and have spoken to you about in my inaugural address. Tonight we seek authorization to support a $2 million inflow and infiltration project. Tonight, we begin the first year of an aggressive five year program that is the next phase in the city's 15 year long commitment to infrastructure improvement. By infrastructure, I mean parks and recreation, water flow, flooding mitigation,

▶ 2:05:58 drainage, water quality, and fire safety and prevention. All of which have dramatically turned some of the failings of our community into great strengths. We have done it in a pragmatic manner, focusing first on quality of life, public safety, and then fiscal responsibility. And at the same time, we have addressed, in a less aggressive manner, inflow and infiltration over the last 15 years, using fully, each year, the MWRA's inflow and infiltration program to its maximum capacity. we had to prioritize in speaking to the financial responsibility piece of the challenges this city faced so we live in a new community in 2016 one in which people are not being brought out of their homes and boats raw sewage is no

▶ 2:06:58 longer found on playgrounds we have the ability to properly put out a fire in every neighborhood in the city that wasn't always the case and children are no longer eating lunch in school buildings that hours before were flooded with contaminated water that's a victory for this community as a whole we have done this while properly managing our debt and clearly allowing taxpayers to see return on their substantial investment in terms of water and sewer either directly or indirectly in their neighborhoods on their sports fields and and their home values. This commitment to inflow and infiltration will directly attack the rising costs of SOAR. Under the ground where you walk and drive every day

▶ 2:07:50 is a SOAR infrastructure, which in many areas, like all of our infrastructure, is cracked and is leaking. So this is how we're going to fix it. Over the course of the spring of 2016, the DPW engineering office and their consultants evaluated the entire city of Melrose you'll learn about that tonight with meters to not to allow us to analytically identify where inflow and infiltration is the highest tonight you'll see the results of that study where we'll prioritize as a result of that that review by our Department of Engineering we have taken the results of that evaluation and we have prioritized the most aggressive and efficient manner in which to fund and move forward with inflow and infiltration improvements

▶ 2:08:36 that will promote the highest rate of return in the most immediate time frame if you fund this order the work will start immediately three which each phase Melrose's overall total sewer flow and daily peak flow will be reduced and that will benefit ratepayers so I now turn this over to our very capable city engineer and our director of public works who have spent a tremendous amount of time formulating this aggressive and beneficial plan for the citizens of melrose thank you thank you thank you mr shanna thank you i'm going to keep my comments brief as the project team sets up their presentation just to reiterate what the mayor clearly articulated the dpw has consistently done I and I improvements since 2003 on and in a few minutes the project team will

▶ 2:09:32 summarize some of the projects that have that have taken place and some of the investment that we together the board and this administration have made what's different this time is in the approach of how we're identifying the project that's the difference this time around in the past we've targeted areas that have coincided with other projects we were working with we're working on improving the force main and diverting flow from the Melrose towers so we worked in the Upham Street pump station sewer shed to reduce flows from I&I there we work in I we were working in Ward 2 to handle flooding issues there we invested in I&I there this time we're targeting areas where I&I is the highest and I feel confident that the analysis that the city engineer and her project

▶ 2:10:24 team have taken will lead us there so that we are investing in areas where we will get the highest return in reduced flows so with us tonight our city engineer will be joining us and John Potts from Western and Sampson they've prepared a brief presentation again to review and to kind of refocus a little on what I and I is how the problem is evident in Melrose this approach that we've taking we've taken and why we're looking to request authorization for this bond and how it's all going to tie in moving forward next year and in the years to come Thank You mr. Shana advanced just good evening mrs. Paracas good evening yes my name is John Potts I'm project manager with Weston and Sampson engineers thank you for your time tonight welcome sir

▶ 2:11:29 we're going to talk about what we want to propose is the sewer rehabilitation program for Melrose like John said over the next five years so basically the first thing we want to look at what this presentation is going to entail is basically the who's the wise the what's and the where's of what infiltration is how it impacts the city system and what we want to do to start removing it from the system so as simply for those who don't know what infiltration and inflow is infiltration is basically clear water that's getting into your pipes through the ground through defects through cracks in the pipe holes in the pipe leaks in the manholes and inflow is basically clear water that gets in through storm water through a roof leader through someone's sump pump

▶ 2:12:17 that's pumping in through their basement into the sewer system and it's all this clear water that's taking up capacity in your pipes that should be being taken with the wastewater and what this shows the picture at the bottom is basically a leak at a joint with water just pouring in taking up filling the pipe with this clear water and when they measure infiltration and flow or II the typical way to measure it is they'll measure it as the the entry rate or it's in gallons minute how many gallons a minute are coming in and when they analyze it they'll call it between the ranges between a quarter of a gallon per minute up to five gallons a minute and even higher just to put it in a general perspective in one month a one gallon per minute leak will fill

▶ 2:13:05 almost 300 000 20 ounce water bottles in one month in one month a five gallon leak will fill over 12 average size swimming pools in that month and this is what ongoing infiltration in iowa is in the the system right now we looked at the MWAs estimates going back from 2001 through 2015 and what this graph shows is the blue at the bottom of the graph is Melrose's wastewater the red that's adds to on top of the blue is the infiltration that's estimated in the system for the last 15 years and the green on top of that is inflow that is in the system so basically the city pays at the top point of all these bar graphs another way to look at it is the blue on a straight graph the blue is your wastewater the red line is the

▶ 2:14:02 infiltration and inflow in the system combined and then the yellow line is what the total flow is in the system and that's what MWRA is basically charging the city is based on that yellow line. We compared Melrose's to the other 42 communities in the NWRA and when you look at the flow in million gallons a day in infiltration Melrose's is the number 17th ranked city or town and infiltration their 15th and inflow and when you look at the combined II therefore they fall 18th out of the 42 communities for infiltration and inflow another way to look at it is what's called GPDI M which is the gallons per day per inch mile and what that does is it looks takes the system and it's basically the size of the community and it takes the size of your pipes and your linear

▶ 2:14:59 footage of pipes and then you divide the gallons per day by that and you get your your GPDIM. And when we looked at Melrose from 2011 to 2015, overall Melrose falls in the top five for the last five years as a defender with I-I. In infiltration, like in 2014, they were the number one ranked infiltration source based on the size of the system. So there's numerous advantages to doing an I-I removal program. Obviously, you'll increase your pipe capacities the pump stations will improve there will be fewer surcharging fewer flooding opportunities and you'll ultimately start to reduce your operation and maintenance costs and lower the wastewater treatment and transportation costs to mwra so historically over the years

▶ 2:15:54 melrose has been ongoing has been proactive and working on things back in 2003 i believe when we started this the Lebanon Street job we worked on in 2006 the Upham Street pump station tributary was worked on and they've done Alpon drainage improvements in the ward two Fellsway pump station tributary so the city has been proactive over the years and just because the rankings that I showed in the previous slides it's not an indication of how the system is being operated it's just basically a testament on the age of the system as the system gets continuously older the more problems come up and so again in 2003 the Lebanon Street in 2005 there was an II project another one in 2007 and 9 and then this past year we focused up near the pump the Upham Street pump station

▶ 2:16:40 so since about 2003 we've the city has spent over seven and a half million dollars through the MWRA program and other funding sources on the system what this shows is Laurel Street up in what's called sub area 22 the city has all been divided into various sub areas for our analysis and this is cracks and holes in the pipe basically where infiltration can come in and these were pre rehabilitation photos this in 2014 2015 where we looked at this area afterwards what we installed was a basically a manhole the manhole liner that lent the entire length of the pipe and helps to seal up the cracks secure the joints so now you have one continuous liner from the manhole to manholes to eliminate the sources of

▶ 2:17:29 infiltration coming in and then another problem that you have in the sewers is heavy roots and these are all pictures taken from melrose sewers up in the 21 22 area up near the upland street pump station and those get removed as well but either cut out or chemically treated so at this point i'd like to turn over to elena and she'll finish the presentation okay thank you john So I'm going to go over what we've just been doing with the 2016 flow monitoring program. I've mentioned it at a couple of previous meetings, so hopefully it won't be too repetitive from what we've discussed before, but we now have a lot more data than we had the first time that I presented this information. So we conducted flow metering over a 10-week period, and we installed 29 flow meters.

▶ 2:18:20 It was supposed to be 30, but one of the locations we weren't able to put the meter in. And they gather data every 15 minutes for the whole 10-week period. And the purpose is to gather data on not just I&I, but you get the flows going, the entire flow going through the pipe, so wastewater plus infiltration plus inflow. For each subarea, the meters gathered the data of the gallons per day, and then we calculated from the GIS mapping the total length of sewers, the total inch miles of sewers to do that other calculation that John mentioned, and then the peak infiltration and the peak inflow for each of the individual subareas. results based on infiltration so DEP has a threshold that they consider anything

▶ 2:19:17 above this threshold to be cost-effectively able to be removed and that's 4,000 gallons per day per inch diameter mile so the city as a whole was over the 4,000 it was roughly 6600 GPD IM the maximum infiltration we saw in any of the sub areas was 16,000 which is really excessive I mean it's four times what DEP calls excessive so that's higher that's amongst the highest I've ever seen doing I&I analysis and then the minimum was 600 which is what more in line with what you really ideally want to see so over 70% of the city's metered sub areas ended up in that excessive category and this slide shows all the sub areas it's a little hard to see but it shows all the sub areas ranked in order for those who might have seen the data we present did this draft

▶ 2:20:16 presentation at the Water and Sewer Committee meeting and we did refine the data further since that meeting so I know Mary Beth and Scott at a minimum both had that information so the sub area rankings have changed a little bit from that table based on further data analysis and scrubbing the data a little bit and determining which data was really usable and you know with with electronic equipment there's sometimes some data that's not usable so that's where we are this shows the sub areas that were over that were included in that the 4,000 gallons per day is where the line was drawn on the table and the pink areas are all the areas that fell above the line in the infiltration table and then moving on to inflow so just to reiterate infiltration is when the

▶ 2:21:07 groundwater comes up and seeps into the pipes through cracks and leaks and separated joints whereas inflow is rainfall induced so it's either water that gets in right when it's raining or it's water that gets in through sump pumps or roof leaders or connections between the drainage system and the sewer system that shouldn't be there which sometimes does happen so the peak inflow was 18 million gallons per day and that's system-wide the max peak inflow in one of the sub areas was for mgd and the minimum was 0.33 so dep has a different metric than for inflow than they do for infiltration for the infiltration we had the 4 000 gallons per day per idm for inflow it's whatever comprises 80 of the storm flow that's making it into the sewer

▶ 2:22:05 during a storm that's considered excessive so this line is drawn at that 80 threshold so you see about half of the city falls above it and about half falls below so using the top areas in both of the tables infiltration and inflow Weston Sampson made a collective ranking where we looked at what are the worst areas for both because ideally if we're going to go into an area and spend a lot of money doing further investigations to find where the problems are we want to tackle both infiltration and info at the same time so we wanted to hit the areas where we get the best bang for our buck for both infiltration and inflow so these are the five top ranked areas that we're going to be targeting first and I made a

▶ 2:22:53 graph of this is the flow metering data for just a one month period for those top five areas and I did this just to illustrate what this this real in-depth data gives us so the light blue spikes are rainfall events and so every day you see flow in each sub area you see flow go up and down that's people you're using the shower in the morning and then going to sleep at night and the flow drops down if none of this was infiltration or inflow those peaks would go down practically to nothing every night so these areas that are considered high infiltration and inflow you see that none of them come down to zero overnight in fact the orange one that's at the top comes down to 400,000 gallons per day roughly at night and that's just from one sub area so that's a lot of

▶ 2:23:44 water getting in and then on the inflow end so that's the infiltration end on the inflow end can we go back one when you see a spike and you see the flow shoot up what you see in all five of these areas mostly in the top area that's inflow so that's a huge increase the minute it rains the flow starts coming in and so sometimes that could be just one source or it could be just a handful of sources or it could be some pumps in 500 people's basements so some work needs to be done to figure out what the sources are and then on the next slide these were just the five lowest areas and I just plotted them for comparison purposes and you can see that the wastewater and the scale is different so here we're at less than 50,000 gallons per day all of them are

▶ 2:24:39 going down roughly to 25,000 gallons or less at nighttime and that's typical I mean people do still use water at night but it's a lot less and it it should look like this in a well-run non-leaky system so what we're proposing to do is to use DEP's sewer system evaluation study approach called SSCS it's actually required by DEP they're now for a new regulation new state regulation they're requiring systems to submit what they're doing using their approach every year starting in 2017 so we'll be ready for that when it comes and we'll be doing particular investigations ideally in the spring when the groundwater is the highest and rains the highest to find where the actual sources are within these

▶ 2:25:32 sub areas so we'll only be looking in the five areas that we've selected and we'll be doing these different methodologies of trying to find where the where the water is coming in and then following that we'll analyze more data from those those investigations and then we'll be designing the actual rehab and then bidding and awarding and overseeing the actual rehab construction component so they're depending on what we find there are a lot of different approaches to fixing systems we've put a range of $25 to $100 per foot and this is all assuming trenchless technologies so excavation and replacement would be more on the order of $200 a foot but that involves tearing up streets and a lot of disturbance and there's really not a reason to do that because the

▶ 2:26:28 majority of infiltration and inflow issues can be fixed with a trenchless methodology so that's things like pipelining you can either go in and line a whole system and that's more like $100 a foot you can spot repair individual problems as you find them and that's more on the $25 a foot range so the approximation for the entire city to fix all the INI is 10 to 40 million depending on which approach is used but that's citywide and we're really just going to focus our program right now on those five areas so what we have available from MWRI now is 2.162 million it's divided into two phases which just means that we we can ask the authority for the first phase money right up front and then once they've distributed half of that they'll give us the next phase

▶ 2:27:19 money um but that's more just sort of uh background details of what we'll be doing working with the mwra but what we have available to Member right now is the full 2.162 million um and their program right now is 75 grant and 25 loan which is a terrific deal and you'll hear me say this over and over again but it's our money the mwra doesn't get funded in any manner other than the rate payers and the the member communities funding the authority and so when they have these loan and grant programs it's our money coming back to us and if we don't use it other communities are essentially using our money so i feel like it's it makes good sense to use everything we have available through this program and especially when we only have to pay back 25 of it at a zero

▶ 2:28:08 percent interest rate so the 10-year payback um we're proposing to fund this uh with a level payment each year so it's fifty four thousand fifty dollars that we would owe um as the loan repayment each year effective starting in fiscal year eighteen um the current sewer debt is 572 000 and the debt proposed for next year is six hundred and five thousand and the reason why that's not adding the full 54 000 is that roughly 20 000 of debt is falling off the debt schedule in the sewer fund between this year and next year so we take advantage of that a little bit as well um i'm sorry could you just repeat that again sure so the current sewer debt this is only in the sewer enterprise fund is 572 000 the proposed debt for next year is 605 000 and the reason why

▶ 2:29:04 it's not just 572 plus 54 000 of new debt is that some of our old borrowing is falling off the debt repayment schedule and that's a 20 000 or so differential and then actually in 2020 there's a hundred and seventeen thousand dollar debt payment that's gonna drop off the sewer um the sewer fund so that may be the next logical time to to have another big increase the 54 000 isn't much but to have another 117 000 becoming available to maintain the same sewer rate from a debt perspective we should probably take advantage of that so i performed a quick break-even analysis using the mwra's assessment methodology they gave us a detailed spreadsheet as to how they come up with our assessment and it's based on a combination of average daily

▶ 2:29:57 flows and then peak month flows and then loads but our loads are pretty much just standard wastewater so that doesn't impact ours so much and I came up with if we remove 75,000 gallons per day then we gain our assessment goes down by roughly 54,000 so with just 75,000 gallons per day removed we break even and once we take that 75,000 gallons out it stays out so that so one time removal 75 000 makes the entire loan repayment break even for perspective the 2014 project removed 132 000 gallons per day and that wasn't even in our highest worst offending area so i'm hoping that by targeting the worst offending areas we can even hopefully beat that number by a little bit and actually be saving money over the long run and sub area 7 which we've said is the worst

▶ 2:30:56 is estimated to have 370 000 gallons per day of infiltration so even if we can get half of that which is considered a reasonable target we'd be doing pretty well so this table just shows the the five top sub areas how many feet of pipe there is in each sub area and then the cost per foot using that range of the 25 to 100 per foot and the cost column shows the cost per project and then the cumulative cost is if we were to do one sub area time and go through the whole program so we're looking at 2.1 million cumulatively to use the less expensive but less thorough repair approach which may be appropriate in some areas but not others and then 8.6 million if we were to really hit all these areas and in line the whole system so that so the 2.162 that we're asking

▶ 2:31:54 for tonight is really the beginning of the program, not intended to be the entire program. And why act now? Nearly 60% of our flow that we pay MWRA for is not wastewater, it's I&I. We've been between about 55 and 59% consistently for the last several years. And MWRA doesn't care whether it's extraneous flow or wastewater flow, either way, they have to pump it, they have to treat it at Deer Island. they need to spend money to to handle it so they need to charge us for it our wastewater system is only getting older and so the problems will only get worse and if our neighboring communities are moving at the same rate that we are then we're not going to be able to take advantage of the savings so we need to be more aggressive than the other

▶ 2:32:47 mwi communities and while i and i can never completely be removed we can certainly help help control it and counter rate increases in the future. President Kahn, please. Yeah, I'm glad we're attacking this issue and trying to find the source of the problem. This is by far and large the biggest single problem with water and sewer. This is why we have problems with water and sewer rates. We're a built out community with an old system. This is the easiest vote we could ever make. We've all had hours and hours and hours of discussions about this issue. We need to get the I&I out of our system. We need to support this. We can kick this around for three hours, but I'm in favor of this order. I hope to be around long enough and live long enough to see some impact on our water rates as a result of these I&I programs.

▶ 2:33:52 Peter D. Mortimer: And I understand it sometimes seems counterintuitive to the public that we're trying to spend money to save money. But we have to do this, and I move to recommend this order, and I'm going to support it. President Kahn has made a motion to recommend this order for passage. Said motion was duly seconded by Alderman Inferna. On further discussion, we have first in queue Alderman Lemmerman, followed by Alderman Zwirko, and I see Alderman Medeiros. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. Thank you very much for this presentation. Just one question on the financing, and I'm sorry if I missed this or misunderstood this. Is it a requirement to get the grant that we fund the balance through the loan? Yes. It is?

▶ 2:34:38 Michael P. Zwirko: Yeah, you have to take the full amount, and then you get the 75, 25 percent. So in order to get that 75 percent of the cost of the project, we have to borrow the other 25 percent, right? It's a percentage of whatever you borrow. Absolutely. Yeah, so we could borrow any amount up to that $2.162 million in a week. Insidious nature of the MWRA at work. Thank you very much. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. Thank you, Alderman Levin. Alderman Suarco, please. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. I want to build off the question and comment that was just raised. So, that 25%, that's interest free. I don't know any other way to explain it other than there's no cost in addition to the payment itself. So it's a pretty good deal, doesn't generally happen quite often.

▶ 2:35:28 Michael P. Zwirko: And I also, correct me if I'm wrong, you are representative for the advisory board? Yes. You are? Okay, I thought so. I noticed also that, and it ties into this program too, but there's currently some grants that they've advertised, and I think it has to do with lead piping. So if you could just kind of keep your eye on the offerings from the MWRA, it might not applicable to us i mean i follow what they wait what they publish so i wanted to bring it up tonight but you know just keep your eye on things like that in the event that we can benefit from them because as you said this is our money and a lot of times they offer some great deals not only in the form of grants but also interest-free loans so um you know we're directly benefiting from that

▶ 2:36:09 Michael P. Zwirko: also i just wanted to make a comment um what you stated earlier we did see this before in the spring um and at the time i know we had just started the program so it's kind of nice even in a short period of time to see that we're you know attacking this immediately so it's it's it's greatly appreciated and um you know i think this this board always appreciates some nice graphs so um it's really all that i had i i don't really have too much to say but it's nice to see that um we're taking our the biggest pain points first so thank you very much mr chairman thank you waldemar oh sorry just one other please we did receive correspondence uh today forwarded from the clerk i would like to see that that correspondence be attached to this order

▶ 2:36:45 Monica C. Medeiros: upon passage thank you very good thank you sir alderman Medeiros thank you yes I have to say I'm pleased to see that we're going to do this I think it's obviously obvious that it's needed you don't want to be in the lots of lists we like to be at the top of but it's not not the list with the MWRA in terms of influence infiltration so whatever we can do to improve that it's obvious it's hard to see exactly what's underneath the ground and you know I I understand that Melrose is actually one of the oldest sewer systems public sewer systems in in the state so we do have quite a lot of aging pipes and those beautiful trees that spread those roots in there this what we're voting on today we've talked about spending we've talked about spending 2.1 million dollars what

▶ 2:37:49 Scott M. Forbes: we're voting on today is to bond not 2.1 million dollars but to bond five hundred and forty thousand five hundred dollars so that would be our share of the that cost with the zero right that's the 25% I just want to make that clear because I think it could pass and just to say can't wait so thank you Thank You alderman Medeiros alderman Forbes please Thank You mr. chairman I know we're talking about bonding the five hundred and forty thousand but is there a reason why we wouldn't take this out of the out of the reserve accounts miss Delarue so if you could maybe come and answer that question for us so I think it last count i think we have about nine hundred thousand dollars between water and sewer built up in

▶ 2:38:37 these reserve accounts and at a fifty four thousand dollar payment per year if we were still contributing towards those accounts on an annual basis like we're projected to i just want to get your input as to why we wouldn't go that route instead of going to bond sure that's a great Good question, this is a SOAR obligation on the SOAR side. And we have 493,763.93 in the reserve for retained earnings for SOAR. We're still in the middle of our program, our five year program. So first we haven't hit our 10% of reserves. Anything we take from here to apply to the programs is going to have to be made up for next year's rate. So to make up for the money we took from the reserve, now we have to restore it.

▶ 2:39:31 And really the most important thing at the end of the day is that because of the nature of the payback, where the 54,000 is two-fold. First, there's no interest, and second, the payback is so quick that it's really advantageous absorb it over the 10 years within the fund and as was mentioned earlier we have an opportunity and I think it's in 2020 with debt actually rolls off so it's almost going to be like a negated effect so for all those reasons it's advantageous to take this approach okay and we're in year four I believe is that percent out of the five-year commitment are we heading into year four I believe yeah exactly didn't year four and you know fortunately we're hopefully we can reach our goal again as a result of the past year's operation our target and

▶ 2:40:24 Scott M. Forbes: then we have one more year after that and then that obligation wouldn't be needed to be raised any longer at least not at that amount as a reserve on the rate so we'll minimize that to the extent possible so that's a win too that's a win too sure well I guess there'll be time to consider that since We're looking at a $10 to $40 million project down the road. Absolutely. I agree with President Kahn. I mean, this is something that has to be done. We can build from the ground up as much as we want, but if we don't take care of what's underneath the ground, then that really doesn't serve much of a purpose. So this is definitely a decision, I think, that everyone will agree on and that we'll be able to move forward.

▶ 2:41:05 So thank you, Mr. Chairman. Thank you very much. Alderman Boyce, help, please. You identified in your study five areas are targeted to be first. Do you identify sub-area seven and sub-area three? Where is that in? Sure. Melrose. Matthew. So, sub-area seven is over in this area, which is, I believe, Washington Street. Yeah, Washington Street as it heads towards the Fellsway in Stoneham. just over the stonem line and heading down towards the malden line ending here and then sub area three is yeah it's right in here just trying to see the street names i have a whole breakdown of all the sub areas by every street street names aren't all on the map so i see glen road but charles street cypress park

▶ 2:42:13 Peter D. Mortimer: Dyer, Avenue, Glen Road, Lindfels Parkway, North Cedar, Oakland, Otis, Pilgrim, Pine, Poplar, that area. Okay. This is some area three. Is it possible that we could have a copy of the sub-stations? We could forward that. Yes. That would be great. Sure. Or did you want to put that online with the rest of the information? We'll forward it to the clerk. Just put it on the package. Thank you, Alderman Boyce. Seeing no further discussion, President Connors made a motion to recommend this order for passage to the full board. Said motion was duly seconded by Alderman Inferna. All in favor, please say aye. Aye. Any opposed, hearing none, this order will be recommended to the full board for passage at our next full board meeting.

▶ 2:43:05 Peter D. Mortimer: Thank you. Thank you very much for your presentation. Motion to adjourn. Thank you. Second. Mr. Forbes has made a motion to adjourn, duly seconded by Alderman Inferno. All in favor, please say aye. Aye. Any opposed, hearing none, we are adjourned. Thank you, one and all. Very good.

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