Appropriations & Oversight Committee — 2018-11-26

Appropriations and Oversight Committee Meeting

This meeting starts at 0:00 in a recording that covers several meetings.

Attendance

Manisha Bewtra present · Alderman at Large; Robert A. Boisselle present · Ward 4 Alderman; Scott M. Forbes absent · Vice Chair; Jennifer L. Lemmerman present · Chair; Kate Lipper-Garabedian present · Alderman at Large; Shawn M. MacMaster absent · Ward 5 Alderman; Monica C. Medeiros present · Alderman at Large; Peter D. Mortimer present · Ward 6 Alderman; John N. Tramontozzi present · Voting Member; Francis X. Wright Jr. present · Ward 3 Alderman; Michael P. Zwirko present · President/ Ex-officio Member

Agenda

Minutes

CITY OF MELROSE APPROPRIATIONS COMMITTEE CALENDAR● NOVEMBER 26, 2018 Aldermanic Chamber, Melrose City Hall Committee Meeting 7:30 PM 562 Main Street, Melrose, MA 02176 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 Jennifer L. Lemmerman Chair Present Scott M. Forbes Vice Chair Absent Peter D. Mortimer Ward 6 Alderman Present Robert A. Boisselle Ward 4 Alderman Present John N. Tramontozzi Voting Member Present Francis X. Wright Jr. Ward 3 Alderman Present Monica C. Medeiros Alderman at Large Present Michael P. Zwirko President/ Ex-officio Member Present Manisha Bewtra Alderman at Large Present Kate Lipper-Garabedian Alderman at Large Present Shawn M. MacMaster Ward 5 Alderman Absent

ORDER-2019-19 Classification of Property Request to set a Public Hearing on Classification of Property for November 26, 2018 at 7:30 P.M. and subsequently determine the Classification of Property Recommend Passage Board of Aldermen

ORDER-2019-23 Utility Petition Petition of National Grid and Verizon New England to install one Pole in the municipal parking lot behind 419-429 Main St. and to install one JO pole on Grove St. in accordance with Plan # 26150795 Hold

ORDER-2019-27 Appropriation An Appropriation from Free Cash (01-324001) in the amount of One Million, One Hundred Sixty Two Thousand, One Hundred Eighty Seven dollars ($1,162,187.00) to various accounts as set forth herein. Recommend Passage Appropriations Committee City of Melrose Page 1 Updated 12/10/2018 9:02 AM

Transcript

▶ 0:00 Jennifer L. Lemmerman: Good evening. Excuse me. The hour being 730 on November 26, 2018. I call to order the appropriations committee of the board of aldermen of the city of Melrose. This meeting is being recorded and broadcast live on MMTV. It can also be accessed on the city of Melrose website. I am the chair, Alderman Lemmerman, I am joined this evening by committee members Alderman Mortimer, Alderman Boisselle, Alderman Tramontozzi, Alderman Wright, Alderman Medeiros, President Zwirko, Alderman Bewtra, Alderman Lipper-Garabedian. Alderman McMaster did ask me to convey that he is out traveling out of state and regrets that he can't be here this evening. So moved. Second. A motion to open the floor for public comment made by Alderman Mortimer, seconded by Alderman Boisselle.

▶ 0:48 Jennifer L. Lemmerman: All in favor? Aye. Any opposed? We are now in the portion of our meeting where any member of the public may come forward to speak on any item on our agenda. Motion to close public comment, Madam Chair. Second. A motion to close public comment made by Alderman Mortimer, seconded by Alderman Boisselle. All in favor? Aye. Any opposed? Public comment is now closed. The first item on our agenda is a public hearing scheduled for 7.30 p.m. on classification of property regarding order number 2019-19. Request to set a public hearing on classification of property for November 26, 2018 at 7.30 p.m. and subsequently determine the classification of property. Motion to open the floor for the public hearing, Madam Chair.

▶ 10:13 shift it to the high end for taxes so in most cases single and single families and condos would shift the burden to more expensive single-family houses or apartment buildings or a higher priced residential property as far as the amount that we collect it would be the same amount of money thank you very much I'll make a motion that we do not accept the residential exemption second you have a motion by Alderman Mortimer to not accept the residential exemption seconded by Alderman Medeiros on discussion with President Swirko in the you or do you wish to speak until after wait until after we vote on this motion yeah we can proceed with the motion that's on the floor Thank You madam chair any further discussion Alderman Lipper-Garabedian is it appropriate to

▶ 11:07 Kate Lipper-Garabedian: ask a couple of questions about this before we go okay thank you so thank you for being here tonight and for this really helpful slide deck I'm just interested in hearing if you're aware of other communities that employ this exemption how common it is and what would it what is sort of the general justification for it I am aware I believe it's under 20 I want to say it's either 13 or 17 communities out of 351 communities like Cambridge Boston Malden Somerville they're also communities down south and don't quote me on this but capes and islands seasonal communities have adopted this but it's a small percentage of the 351 communities and and what would be the general justification for it what is the theory

▶ 12:03 Kate Lipper-Garabedian: behind it the theory is its owner-occupied so in those communities I think they have a low percentage of owner-occupied properties and they shift tax burden to those non owner-occupied right and I noticed in the slide that you have it that's available in the public record page packet page 17 you note that about 90% of our residential or part residential parcels are owner occupied so we're a very different type of community from those that have employed this exemption that's correct thank you i don't have any questions alderman wright along that line if we had a residential exemption it would be based on value we can't simply shift it to the non-residential property owners isn't that correct that's correct there's a

▶ 12:59 minimum threshold it is based on value one of the slides in here i believe it's a slide before slide 18 um does go through the valuations of the average and there's a break-even point also so you get to a point where there'd be no effect and i believe it's in the 500 to 530 range okay and for those people watching at home we can't simply just say non-residential properties will be taxed at a higher rate or residential properties a 90 will be taxed at a lower rate it has to be correct the the percentage would be voted on by this board there's an application process we would field about 7 000 applications so i might need an extra body in my office to do that but that is correct it would be based on an amount and it would be an application every year making

▶ 13:50 Manisha Bewtra: sure that they live at that property as their primary residence and it would have to be confirmed every year and people would have to provide you with evidence that you'd have to review and it would be require a lot of um staff hours that is correct right thank you thank you thank you any further discussion alderman Bewtra thank you um mr wilcox and i had a good conversation over the phone and by email over the last day and um a couple of other things that you know i was looking at this residential exemption as would it be a way to um maybe reduce the tax burden for those who might be um who may need it the most and i think it the way i understood our conversation was that while it might reduce the tax burden for properties of lower assessed value

▶ 14:44 Manisha Bewtra: it wouldn't necessarily benefit um lower income whether it's renters or owners in our community because um one shifting it only it only applies to owner occupied properties and um apartments for example landlords are likely to pass on that cost to renters and um so they may actually see a rent increase but also um it's based on the assessed value not an income so anyway i just wanted to point out that you know like we are looking at different ways to you know preserve income diversity in our community but i ultimately after reviewing um the formula in some great detail there's an excel formula online it's quite complicated but also through our conversation i came to the conclusion that this doesn't seem like the right fit for our community but is there

▶ 15:46 Robert A. Boisselle: anything else you would want to add to in that vein or just yeah just to reiterate um it's based on the value of the house not the income and assets of the applicant so that would be completely separate than the exemptions that we offer through our office for people that do need the financial assistance thank you thank you on your slide calendar year 2016 to 2017 single family sales activity the average sale price for 2016 was 573 000 2017 was 650 000 and if you go to to the slide, where is that slide? Fiscal year 28,000 tax rate for Melrose and surrounding communities, year 2018, you used the average single family value of 538,000. What happened to the 650,000 for 2017? Is this downgraded for 2018?

▶ 16:52 So the 2017 is a sales sampling of 209 homes. had a lot of single family million dollar sales this year yeah that would skew that number the other number is 6 300 single family houses across the city so that that's different inventory so you'll have your sale sampling each year and then you'll also have what makes up melrose the 580 makes up melrose that's a better representation of the number but these numbers are from our sales activity which we did have a lot of high-end sales this year good i just wanted to get that clarified out for everyone and so forth thank you thank you madam chair any further discussion we have a motion made and seconded to not grant a residential exception all in favor of the motion

▶ 17:37 Michael P. Zwirko: any opposed that portion passes and the balance of the order is before you um i have alderman's work our president's work oh first thank you madam chair um so you you stated and thank you for being here this evening and for the packet of information the deck and the newly fashioned slide I appreciate the one pager so you had stated earlier at the beginning of your introduction excuse me that the levy limit this year is now 59 million and change that correct that's correct and is that a levy limit which we got to because we are going to the the limit allowed meaning we are we are at the cap of the 2.5 through 59 million dollars that's correct this is a maximum allowed levy and I've noticed that on the I

▶ 18:33 Michael P. Zwirko: apologize I don't have page numbers here but the slide that shows the shift options the fiscal year 2019 tax shift options that we're getting closer and closer to 1.75 on the shift and I say that because this is now the third year in which I will be voting to classify the property and I think three years ago we were somewhere around one point five six five and it just seems that we're moving northward where eventually work it appears that eventually we're just going to get to one point seven five isn't that the case granted where growth and commercial and residential tax tax parcels lay the the shift is up to the board but the impact of the shift is going towards well and the reason I raised that is because if you look at this the potential shifts as you're

▶ 19:23 Michael P. Zwirko: climbing up towards one point seven five you're knocking down maybe in a best case scenario eight bucks from a residential annual tax bill whereas on the other side the needle moves in much greater increments and clearly that has to do with the amount of the percentage of the parcels commercial and the values of residential and as well as held correct point of order this and I apologize for interrupting my understanding by law you're not in a position to make recommendations or predictions the board is historically not often recommend any ships correct I'm saying your job is not to make a recommendation for us as to what our vote should be or predictions as to where we should go or will go I try not to do that if I I don't think I

▶ 20:15 Francis X. Wright Jr.: recommended but I I typically do not make any recommendations but I do not know the legal terms of it I can check with the city solicitor okay it's my understanding and my understanding from years past that when you or your predecessors have been here that the it's always been understood that it's not your job to make a recommendation in charge job to provide us with information and I just I'm trying to avoid us going down a road where you shouldn't go I guess in the absence of the city solicitor thank you I apologize for interrupting so what I was saying is when you move the shift either up or down from where it's highlighted on the on the slide that I indicated the needle moves in much greater frequency or much greater increment either up or down

▶ 21:13 Michael P. Zwirko: depending on where that shift moves and my question for you is is that because of the large discrepancy between residential and commercial property tax parcels within the city of Melrose the impact of the shift is lessened by a larger increase of residential value in a smaller increase of commercial or industrial value correct okay so then going back to the one-page slide it's indicative here and we'll just use commercial tax given the reference that I made it states that a 1.0 percent shift there would be a 40 percent decrease whereas if there was a 1.5 percent shift excuse me 1.75 percent shift there would be an increase of six hundred and forty dollars I mean that that's that's us that's a shift of about 45 percent in each each way I mean

▶ 22:02 Michael P. Zwirko: that's just a larger there's a larger movement than there is above shown above on the on the residential side so I raised that because a lot of times when we talk about increasing commercial or trying to increase commercial property parcels or how a burden could be lessened on the residents the impact of this ship is I think indicative in the answer alone it's very difficult given the makeup of the parcels in this community to to move those needles where we would like to for our residents so it's really more of an observation so I just wanted that clarification appreciate it that's all the questions I at this time thank you alderman mortimer um i would make a motion to not accept the open space discount i'm trying to dispose of the ones we're definitely not going to

▶ 22:52 Peter D. Mortimer: be discussing we've delved into uh from the president and uh from alderman boyce else comments some of where we will actually make the residential factor kind of the meat of the motion the meat of the order tonight so for now i would like to make a motion that we do not select the open space discount we don't have open space we don't qualify for it i would anticipate would have a quick vote on this we i have a a motion made by alderman mortimer that we do not select the open space discount it was seconded by alderman medeiros is there any discussion on this motion all in favor aye aye any opposed the balance of the orders before you i would make I make a motion that we not accept granting the small commercial exemption, since we have no qualifying businesses for that one.

▶ 23:38 We have a motion made by Alderman Mortimer to not grant a small commercial exemption. Second. Seconded by President Search. Any discussion? All in favor? Aye. Any opposed? And I will reveal the floor to allow motions on the actual number we're going to have for the differential to other aldermen at this time. Thank you, Madam Chair. Thank you. maderas thank you um thank you very much i wanted to ask you um we see the differences in obviously we don't know exactly what the tax rate will be until we make our decisions tonight but is sometimes i see the comparison of the tax rate between us and other communities is that a meaningful comparison the uh i i think it's a combination of the value of the homes and the

▶ 24:31 the tax rate if you have the same value homes then it is a comparison but some of these communities have a either a lower for instance on the extremes we were comparing ourselves to Winchester they might have twice the value we have for the single-family so I would say it's not a good representation there's surrounding communities that have a lot of commercial which would drop the value on the other side which would be Saugus so that wouldn't be a good comparison But there are, you know, through 351 different communities, possibly some communities we could compare ourselves with. So we would want to look at communities that have similar overall assessed value and those that may have a similar proportion of residential versus commercial,

▶ 25:19 and then we would probably get a good comparison. The Department of Local Services actually has a community comparison guide, and um depending on school budgets population total overall budgets you can kind of dial into comparable communities across the state i haven't prepared that for this meeting i tried to just pick the ones around us there are variances with the other communities yeah i think the more meaningful comparison is the average tax bill probably and the the hole that people are paying so I think I saw that that's just six thousand ninety six dollars I want to say on one of these slides here that's good six thousand in change and so we've seen I mean so I see on the tax shift options page the 2019 average single

▶ 26:15 Monica C. Medeiros: family is five hundred and eighty thousand two hundred sixty five dollars and that's the assessed value so what that is is it's the whole single family class so you take the total value divided by how many parcels and you arrive at that average so that's that seems like quite a lot is is that the highest we've ever had this is a record year for pretty much all of our values total value of the city residential single-family I mean we have a really booming market here I think based on the surrounding communities where we're a a little higher than them also do you see I mean the sales prices that we were looking at were 2017 are you seeing any trends going into 2018 with this job I try and put on the blinders my year really isn't complete until we go

▶ 27:04 Monica C. Medeiros: through all the appeals so I try not to look forward and try and stay in the 2017 market so there's some data out there I haven't really fully come through with it Okay. And just, you know, some comments. I just want to point out, I hear a lot of kind of fear-mongering, like, you know, if we don't pass an override, our property values are going to go down. And, you know, I looked back and I see when we were sitting here in 2015 in the November just after not passing an override, the same number that's on this piece of paper that we have here for the average single family value was $496,000. And, you know, now we're at 580,265, so, I mean, that's about a 31, you know, we're at record numbers, the highest ever, and we've seen about a 31% increase in value of our, according to those numbers of comparison.

▶ 28:06 so that was pretty significant and I think there's probably a lot of other factors that might affect property values like interest rates and employment and things like that and I did also just want to clarify because I had from the mayor's proposal for the override the assessed value do we do we have another public hearing that has to start at 8. The override is not the issue on our agenda this evening? No, but it is the assessed value here was listed at $538,000, but yet we have for a single family, but now it's $580,000. So I thought that perhaps the assessor might want to comment on that. It's not the item. Any materials regarding the override are not related to this order. Okay. So then the thing we had last week that said from

▶ 29:00 John N. Tramontozzi: the mayor's office it is said it was fifty thousand dollars less is not correct because your proposal that we have here tonight is correct right so the the numbers that we put together for the impact were based on last year's values that's the only certified numbers we had now we have the certified numbers for this year so all the impacts will change but it's just timing we we had to go with our last certified numbers we couldn't do prelims numbers well thank you I'll hold off for now thank you thank you Alderman Tramontozzi yeah thank you madam chair I just want to take a look at a couple of you know it's just a block of the shift so for example in a shift rate of 1.715 to 1.73 you see that the residential tax rate is the same at ten

▶ 29:57 John N. Tramontozzi: point seven nine but the but the shift in the that that causes shifts to the commercial basis from 1921 to 1938 and there's similar type of blocks like that Can you explain why, like, for example, the shift at 1.715 to 1.730, that it could be the residential rate remains the same, but the commercial rate differs? I know we talked about the value of properties, but is that also because there's more residential properties to spread out the rate? That's correct. I believe this is a second year in a row that a shift has been the same rate for three different shifts on the chart. I believe that was the case last year also. It's because the impact is so much by even a penny on the residential side.

▶ 30:51 John N. Tramontozzi: So, I mean, I'm not suggesting we do this, but if we went with a shift of 1.715, for example, where the commercial rate would be 1921 we could go with we could go with that rather than one point seven three with a commercial rate would be 1938 but yet the residential rate would remain the same so we could give the commercial ratepayers a break if we go with for example if we went with one point seven one seven one five instead of one point seven three oh we would not affect the residential rate and the commercial rate would be less you see you see I'm getting at I do see based on what selection you choose yes the residential rate would stay the same for three different shifts I mean the impact would

▶ 31:42 Manisha Bewtra: be different right and there are pockets like that throughout the chat I believe whole chart has them at different different shifts correct what okay i'll leave it at that thank you thank you alderman or anyone else we can switch to speak for the first time you just check that alderman bucha thank you um going back to my efforts to pour over this um in the last 24 hours i've had it for longer than that but it's when i got an opportunity to look at it in detail a few of the observations that I wanted to point out for anyone looking at home lost my place apologize so on the slide where it's fiscal 18 tax rates for Melrose and surrounding communities the the tax rate itself is not noted but I just wanted to also point out kind of in reference to alderman Medeiros comment

▶ 32:49 Manisha Bewtra: regarding tax rates I I hear what you're saying but I also wanted to point out that average single-family value in Wakefield is lower but the single-family tax bill is higher and of these four communities where the tax rate is where you can calculate the tax rate we are among the lowest and the other thing I wanted to point out was that on the next slide average single-family tax bill for fiscal 9 to 18 I was looking at sort of the trend in terms of economic cycles and noticed that we're actually at a lower residential tax rate currently than we were in fiscal 9 which was in the throes of a recession and I think that kind of further reiterates the limits we're at in terms of our levy I'm getting confused with all the different prop two and a half terminology but I

▶ 33:57 Manisha Bewtra: believe that is correct and the other thing I wanted to point out is that we have all of the new growth that we've had at per our conversation earlier today over the last few years because I know residents are really interested in kind of learning about where we are attracting new growth is that that much of the new growth we've had has been related to zoning changes around along our commuter rail corridor as well as around outgrowth station thank you thank you Alderman Mortimer I believe you haven't get spoken on the balance of the order is that true no I thank you very much listening to the previous comments and in accordance with all the tram a toes these observation I'm inclined first I was inclined to make a motion to accept

▶ 34:56 Peter D. Mortimer: a differential rate of one point six nine five and that's the closest on this this chart where the increases on residential and on commercial would occur. It's 176 for residential, 176 additional dollars, and it would be 188 additional dollars for commercial properties. That's where the intersection of this Venn diagram comes the closest. But, as aptly pointed out by Alderman Tramontozzi, even if we lower that differential, the tax rate would stay at $10.81 and the rate would stay, the tax rate per thousand would be $10.81, and it would only increase the residential $71 for the same rate. And that would be a boon to our, excuse me, the last word I said was residential, I meant to say commercial.

▶ 36:01 Peter D. Mortimer: That would be a boon to our commercial community, and it would be no further burden on our residential community. One penny less, I'm sure one penny more for residential at 10.82 and it goes down to negative 17 for the commercial, but that would be less. So at this time, I will make a motion that we accept a differential rate regarding our residential slash commercial property of 1.68. I think that is the fairest between the commercial and the residential. We want to encourage commercial property and business in this community, but we want to put the least possible burden on our residents at the same time. So at this time, I'll make a motion that we accept a differential factor, a differential

▶ 36:56 Kate Lipper-Garabedian: of 1.68. A motion made by Alderman Mortimer to accept the shift of 1.68. Is there a second? Second. Seconded by Alderman Tramontozzi. On discussion, I have Alderman Lipper-Garabedian. Thank you. I just wanted to follow up on Alderman Bewtra commentary on slide 13, which provides a very brief comparison of our average single family tax bills to three other communities. I think Alderman Bewtra point about the actual tax rate is critically important for comparison sake. So if you look at what our rate is per $1,000 of assessed value, we are, in fact, much lower than many surrounding communities. I have a slide from fiscal 17 from a previous presentation that I assume it hasn't changed drastically to fiscal 18

▶ 38:00 Kate Lipper-Garabedian: that shows that our tax rate is lower than Saugus, Stoneham, Wakefield, Linfield, Reading, Danvers, Wilmington, Lexington, Salem, and so forth so I just I just wanted to include that in the record as well that just looking at the average single-family bill may not provide enough context it's really important to look at also the value of our homes thank you thank you thank you on the charter our levy limit fifty nine million three hundred ninety seven thousand seven hundred and ninety nine dollars that's that's the maximum if we go up to two and a half percent increase of our levy limit plus new growth that's correct and depending on whichever shift option we take here we all would end up at that number or that's the calculation due to rounding issues there's excess

▶ 39:07 Monica C. Medeiros: levy capacity and that's basically rounding a penny so it can be anywhere from a couple dollars all the way to twelve thousand dollars depending on rounding a penny for a tax rate okay so but give or take we're probably looking at maybe a difference of about 12,000 on the MAC side historically and on the proposed shift I do appreciate and I think we've done the right thing to not go to the maximum shift on our commercial property I think you know we we around the surrounding communities we do have the envy of many of those communities however I do think we could go a little bit higher because we've seen such a high increase in the value of the residential property over the commercial property I would like us to look closer to where the percentage

▶ 40:05 increases are similar and as far as I see that about that would be a shift about one point seven two and which would mean an average single-family home shift of hundreds increase of one hundred and sixty five dollars versus an increase of three hundred ninety two dollars on the commercial side so it's two point seven one percent increase on the residential and two point eight seven on the commercial thank you alderman Rita thank you with regards to mr. Wilcox with regards to the communities that alderman Letter Garabedian pointed out if you can recall them isn't it true that Melrose has a much smaller commercial tax base believe the community she referenced where Linfield Danvers August Linfield's the only one I'm not sure of but I would say the

▶ 41:07 Francis X. Wright Jr.: commercial CIP percentage is the lowest in Melrose okay and yet we have a residential tax rate that is also lower than those communities I would have to verify it with 2018 numbers I will add that to the agenda packet after this me okay but uh alderman Maya i should direct my question to ultimate libra garyvedian it was true that melrose had the lower of the tax rates isn't that's correct so uh it seems like we've done all right by by our residents and hope to continue to do that um it's interesting my notes show that when i look at this as i have for the last 13 years i try to look at somewhere where we can find a dollar match as alderman did or a percentage match as um alderman Medeiros did and to me those

▶ 42:00 Francis X. Wright Jr.: are always the two best ways to to look at this to try to be fair to both our commercial and our residential communities um also there's always other issues depending on the state of the economy and the state of the you know the the commercial um properties in melrose but those are the two the two rates that i look at and try to come in somewhere along that line i do note that the variance between the 1.62 and the 1.75 on the on the residential rate the increase is the difference between the high and the low potential increase is about 52 54 on the residential is that fair to say if i take 1.62 it's 199.88 and once 1.75 it's 153 45 or 40 dollars correct whereas the potential variance on the commercial goes from a minus 426 to a increase of 640 so we're talking about

▶ 43:11 Jennifer L. Lemmerman: almost a $1,300 difference so that's just indicative of the fact that we are an extremely residentially residential property based community as compared to put other surrounding communities is that fair to say thank you thank you thank you any further discussion we have a motion made and seconded to accept a shift of 1.68 all in favor aye any opposed motion passes will be recommended to not accept any of the discounts or exemptions and to adopt a shift of 1.68 that would be a recommended to the full board thank you very much the next item on our agenda is our second public hearing of the evening the National Grid petition. Order 2019-23 petition of National Grid and Verizon New England to install one pole in the municipal parking lot behind 419 to 429 Main Street and to install

▶ 44:16 one JO pole on Grove Street in accordance with plan number 26150795. I do have a representative here from National Grid. Good evening. Would you like to introduce yourself? Hello. My name is Brendan Powell I'm an electrical engineer with National Grid 170 Medford Street in Malden the petition before you guys tonight is to install a pole in the municipal parking lot to feed the customer at 419 429 Main Street I know Main Street is traditionally an underground area but due to the size of the new service of which this customer is requesting the underground network there cannot handle that new load the easiest way to or the the lowest cost way to serve this customers needs is to actually come overhead from Grove Street

▶ 45:09 Jennifer L. Lemmerman: and hit a pole in this parking lot and then from that pole we would hit the outside of this building do have any questions so we do have to call the public hearing open so if I could ask you to just step back for one moment and we can see if we have any members of the public wishing to speak and then we'll call you back for questions okay thank you thank you do we have a motion to open the public hearing so moved second the motion made by president Zwirko seconded by alderman poizel to open the public hearing portion of this order all in favor aye aye any opposed the public hearing is now open on the petition by national grid and verizon new england do we have any members of the public wishing to

▶ 45:49 Jennifer L. Lemmerman: speak on this move to close the public hearing you have a motion to close the public hearing made by president's burko seconded by alderman mortimer all in favor aye any opposed the public hearing portion of this order is now closed uh we could ask the gentleman to come forward again thank you and suspend the rules second we i believe we're under suspension still i don't think we need earlier yeah um so first in line uh we have president's work thank you madam chair thank you for being here this evening um i i note that the application is for a joint owned poll And you said that you're from National Grid. That's correct. So is there a representative from Verizon here this evening? None that I'm aware of, no.

▶ 46:31 Michael P. Zwirko: We will be installing the pole if they wish to attach to it. That's dependent on whether or not that customer even uses Verizon for their service. Rita. So I was looking at this plan. We received a memo earlier today, later today, earlier today, in the late evening. in the late evening but my questioning for you at this time is you had stated that the service that is sought by the petitioner due to its size it's unable to be serviced underground but then in the next comment you stated that the lowest cost option was to just put it up through a pole so it either can fit or it can't or there's a cost issue with the petitioner so I'm curious can the cables and all of the infrastructure that's needed for the petitioner be

▶ 47:26 completed underground they can engineering wise and physically they can we can install that but that will be at a much larger cost to that customer the existing transformer bank is located right down here in this corner about hundred and thirty 140 feet away from this customer so in order to feed the existing building through the same ducts that are already there those ducts would need to be replaced or the cables need to be severely upgraded much larger than they currently exist as the transformer vault itself that currently feeds that customer Papa Gino's and a group of other underground customers right on street there is only has a capacity of 300 kva and right now its summer peak is around 110

▶ 48:22 so the peak time july 100 degrees out everyone's running air conditioning so it's slightly overloaded as is this per customer is requesting 140 kva so it's nearly half of the capacity of the existing transformer vault so we could serve them underground if we were to install a new transformer vault in the street in front of the building these are obviously very large they're precast concrete like 12 feet by 16 feet 18 feet they're huge concrete boxes and that would be a very disruptive to the traffic on Main Street obviously take a couple of weeks to put this thing in ducks would need to get rerouted there'd be a ton of other utilities that we need to dig around it would probably have to be done with a vac truck rather than a backhoe which

▶ 49:14 would take much longer is much more expensive so going overhead through the parking lot seemed to be the least invasive and the least impactful and certainly the least expensive option to serve this building I would love to actually go underground from the pole on on Grove Street through the parking lot to a pad mount transformer right behind the building and then go straight to the building from there but there's a that culvert there's a culvert that runs through that parking lot right behind those buildings across the street and keeps going I can't dig under it it's 12 feet down and it's less than 10 inches from the surface of the parking lot I can't have primary cable like 14,000 volt electric cables 10 inches from the surface of roadway it might be fine we

▶ 50:05 put it in but give it five six years a plow could hit it we require minimum 36 inches down from grade concrete in case duct so this is certainly a tricky building or tricky plot to serve for the you know based off the loads that they submitted to us so I get leading up to that and I do appreciate that background that's helpful there the when did you meet with the city to discuss this project I met with I met with someone from the department there I think several months ago I don't remember his name I know that the the owners contractor had been I informed him that he was going to be talking to the city about this as well I asked because about six weeks ago we placed this on our agenda for this evening and we received a memo this evening about three

▶ 51:07 potential other ways that this this unit could be serviced and I'm just curious if you've had the time or your supervisors or whoever would be you know the project manager has had time to look at these because I'm feeling that this is coming before us a little half-baked so going from the streets not an option it's way too expensive but it is an option it's just way too expensive it is an option but we're talking you're gonna bankrupt this guy started 150 200 thousand dollars to install a transformer vault in the street the second option there is a grass there's like a mulch pathway between 419 429 and 433 and 437 the bank owns that it could be possible to secure an easement from them to place a transformer in that parcel of land but they could simply say

▶ 52:06 Michael P. Zwirko: know we can't for he they own it you know so that's that's something that the property owner the developer could reach out to them about but I don't like to bet on things like that the city of Melrose doesn't have very much downtown space and we covet that downtown space very much and it's a something that brings people to this community Friday Saturday evenings it brings people here for their lifetime and you're asking to put a pole to draw a line off an existing pole off the opposite side of a very highly traveled street that also has MBTA traffic across a public parking lot to use an existing light pole you'll fashion a light to the new pole I understand that and then draw those lines across the street in the parking lot in order to service this petitioner

▶ 52:59 Michael P. Zwirko: you know we get a lot of complaints as it is that polls are cumbersome and ugly and that obviously due to extreme weather events they can cause power outages so you know my concern is is there's options here that could probably be best explored over the course of another month and this doesn't need to be handled tonight I'm concerned that we're left with either a poll or no service and i just don't feel that we're we're there yet so um is there any immediacy immediacy to the petitioner's need for this 1600 amps uh as of right now i don't think they've completed construction in the building so i'm actually unsure of that um i don't know what a gentleman is you're supposed to so um no and i appreciate you coming here and you've been very forthright

▶ 53:54 Michael P. Zwirko: and this is good background for us to have um just i'm concerned with looking at the the memo and the discussions because we've known about this for about six weeks now so just a little bit i guess i have more questions at this time not for yourself but for our department of public works if that's possible madam chair bring up our director of dpw mr shenna the memo is there thank you mr shenna good evening so i i apologize for taking all this time but and i i understand that the culvert there and there could be some construction issues and obviously uh as you rate it's already 110 at capacity but um to put up a new poll for this i'm just wondering with other construction projects that we have you know in the future

▶ 54:44 i mean is this is this going to be the new way that we're going to be able to service power here do you feel that there's a way that we could maybe reroute or use i mean is this the plan we have to go on can can you speak to any options that we may have or what what what we can do i appreciate your comments and and um and i share them in many ways that this memo came to you this late today at my request this morning our city engineer reached out to national grid and you know just for the record this isn't a national grid request this is being requested by national grid for a business owner in the community that's making the downtown business larger it needs more power understood naturally and um national has been great to work with they had discussions well

▶ 55:31 into the afternoon about other options um you know due mainly to my reluctance of putting a pole in the middle of the parking lot and coming above ground into service one building they laid out several options we've included them in the memo but if you know usually we make a recommendation and this memo doesn't make that recommendation yet yeah mainly because we we feel that these options could be vetted out a little further or perhaps there's another option out there that we just haven't really thought about yet that we'd like to take a little more time to work with national grid work with the customer look at what his true needs are and maybe there's a way to come underground to a certain point and then reduce the amount of overhead exposure we

▶ 56:23 Michael P. Zwirko: don't know those answers yet yeah and thank you for that because that that's kind of where i'm at and in my experience these polls go up and they don't come down you know and i i feel a for you know to rush to judgment now and allow a little bit more time to explore other avenues if there are any um i'm just i get very hesitant because you know we end up adding things to these polls over time new telecom towers that go on you know caps on these poles and then before you know it you've got a pole that looks like a christmas tree so um i i guess uh and and i want others to to speak to this too but but i would be heavily in favor of at least putting this on the table until the december the 17th but i'll i'll relax my questioning at this time thank you

▶ 57:09 Monica C. Medeiros: you madam chair thank you alderman medeiros thank you um i it was wonder i wanted to make sure that you have a copy of this memo and there is a copy there on the table thank you it was emailed to him yeah i got it today that's correct yeah okay um i'm just curious when was this petition filed with the city I wrote the drawing in August 8th and I'm not exactly sure we have a clerk in our office that submits these so I don't handle it personally but I'm assuming sometime after that point I think president's work oh you know has summed up a lot of our concerns we you know polls go up don't come down this is this is a highly trafficked area this is right in our middle of our downtown community i you know i wish we had maybe communicated our concerns a little bit sooner than tonight

▶ 58:20 Monica C. Medeiros: or today but i do think it's worth taking another look at so right now as far as if we proceeded with the recommendations in this memo and honestly i haven't got to read all of of the details of because we just got it today um ourselves but with putting a conduit underground you think would cause one to two hundred thousand dollars that's the kind of money putting a a transformer vault in the street in front of the building could cost upwards of a hundred thousand dollars or more um they're very large very expensive and it's not just installing a concrete box it's reconnecting the other ducts around that area to go to that transformer vault it's reconducting primary cables secondary cables and then

▶ 59:14 Monica C. Medeiros: replacing sidewalks patching streets so I mean it's the physical equipment is probably upwards of $60,000 and then it's the labor and all the other you know patchwork afterwards that drives the cost up so ultimately this is you know this is a building that's downtown this is an area of downtown that you know is our business district you know it's going to include once this project has completed ten residential units we've been trying to increase our housing stock in areas and you know make the most use of it I think this is an area that you know we should be looking at and um and as i i would definitely support you know holding this petition but i think it might be something that you know dpw we might want to

▶ 1:00:06 Monica C. Medeiros: talk with planning and community development to see you know is this an area where and i don't know how the timing for any of this goes because sort of just thinking off the top of my head here but some of the things like mass works grants and um or some of the housing and community development money you know might be appropriate in this spot to allow us to have as a community you know the infrastructure that we need to support the development that we want is it does seem like quite a lot to put on one property owner right the I will say that these ducks downtown in Melrose and in many other places like downtown Malden downtown Everett Lynn they're a hundred years old and they're designed originally to handle the capacity of lights and then as these

▶ 1:00:56 buildings get rehabbed you know from two stories to three stories commercial spaces get restaurants laundromats these loads increase significantly I mean just to speak just in this area there's another building it's actually right over there right next to the CVS I'm dealing with that developer right now he's probably gonna get a pad mount transformer on the back of his property he has the space for it and there's an overhead pole line in that shaw's parking lot but that is the best way i'm going to feed his new service which is quite large just like this i know that turner's restaurant has historically had low voltage problems those will improve as we get these new buildings off the existing underground network

▶ 1:01:40 so in the future if we can get some of these larger customers to get their own i guess backyard transformers that will reduce the impact on Main Street itself you know we won't be won't be digging up Main Street which is something I think we should really avoid and we weren't recommending that they go with that transformer in the front on the ground we really weren't recommending anything but I do believe that the comments made so far by president's work on how about you to hold this so we could continue to study it a little off this is very different than in a new pole on a street or a replacement pole or a usual national grid requests this really has um downtown national grid network at interest and we have to figure out how to how

▶ 1:02:31 best to serve this not only this building but set that block up for the future and i don't know if running the poll is necessarily the best option right now but there are some infrastructure challenges and we do have the main el palm brook that goes right behind this this building right you know alongside puppagino we have to be very cautious on how we navigate around both sides the front and the back so i think stepping back for another month and allowing the project team to continue to evaluate is the most prudent thing to do right now thank you thank you further discussion alderman Letter garabedian thank you um thanks for being here and i appreciate my colleagues comments just a couple questions maybe just to confirm in

▶ 1:03:20 Kate Lipper-Garabedian: August this board passed a resolution suggesting we were going to hold on any new gas construction projects that were not any new permits this is not this that is not what we are discussing tonight just this is electric only gas is a separate entity that I don't deal with okay have any access to and then I just would share my colleagues concern about the poll this is as we've discussed a very highly foot trafficked area lots of families use Grove Street to cut over to downtown to access the YMCA for example on Saturday mornings to go to swim lessons it's right next to a senior housing community and many of those residents walk through this parking lot to access downtown so I really appreciate the attention paid to both the optics of our downtown and

▶ 1:04:11 Robert A. Boisselle: also then the safety of the people who are who are accessing this area that's all thank you Alderman Boycelle John the the way this is labeled the building is 419 to 429 Main Street is that going to take six street addresses I mean it looks like a 90 by 90 building I think that's the current address for it that's 419, 29, wow. I've been referring to it all along. Okay. I'm not certain what's going to happen in the future, but that is what we've been referring to as part of the project. The pole itself, is that going to be in the public land or on the private lot? The way it's proposed right now, it would go on the parking lot. In the public lot. In lieu of a street light. So a street light would come out right now.

▶ 1:05:03 Robert A. Boisselle: we have just those aluminum street parking lot lights that would come out a utility pole would go in they would mount the street light onto the utility pole and then there would be wires that would run from grove street across grove street into the parking lot and then from that pole to the building okay i understand that aspects of it but it seems to be so it's extracting the light pole that's there now and just dropping the pole in now that's correct all right the way this is situated here i mean this is really close to the existing culvert uh is there going to be any extra drilling to enlarge that pole uh no okay no is there going to be any protection for that pole this is sitting in the parking lot at this point uh we'll probably put some

▶ 1:05:53 Robert A. Boisselle: some bollards around it but I would be um yeah we'll probably put a couple bollards around it I was in an existing the existing light structure that's there is is mounted to a concrete yeah concrete tube foundation no it has no balls around it right now yeah my only concern is is that when Papa Gino's trucks come in they're backing in right they hit that pole is you're gonna take out the entire building in one in one swoop but you have some protection of that pole you'll be protecting the power going to that building and not causing a blackout in that particular area and so forth so just a recommendation John to ultimately that's what we if we recommend to put in a pole yeah then we have to protect it yeah and just the streetlights sit on a concrete

▶ 1:06:53 John N. Tramontozzi: foundation that are a little high so the foundation itself protects the right in some instances if we're talking a power pole you're just talking a wooden pole wooden pole we're talking about right southern yellow pine yeah it's going directly into the ground and you don't have that concrete protecting it and so forth that's it thank you thank you gentlemen thank you thank you I also have concerns about the pole and the overhead wires but so is it my understanding this this project needs a new transformer yes is it any possibility that this transformer can be encased above ground attached to the building or behind the building really we really don't want to put transformers in basements anymore I don't want to do indoor vaults they're very difficult to

▶ 1:07:48 John N. Tramontozzi: access they're very difficult to replace you have high voltage going directly into the building and you have a device that's essentially full of oil so we don't do we don't do vaults in the in the basements of buildings anymore we don't do none of that stuff anymore roofs of buildings not on roofs too difficult the ground it has to be on the ground it could be above ground which is what the second option lays out well that's what i mean they just don't have the room on their property okay that's that's what I meant to be in case that a concrete encasement above ground you know and next to the building as close to the building as possible that still requires us to get the primary cable from Grove

▶ 1:08:28 Monica C. Medeiros: Street to that transformer I can't go underground because there's not enough clearance above the culvert I can't go overhead because overheads ugly I think maybe give them a little bit more time it's gonna use your magic John and see if we can get something else thank you yeah just one further thought to you know suggest to speak with the city solicitor's office possibly to it they don't know if there's a possibility of the city possibly granting in easement you know for I would imagine that would be for a value but that might be some possible option of above-ground space I don't know again just talking out loud and thinking out loud but I do think if we were to we may want to move this forward to the full board just to get it out of committee with the intention of

▶ 1:09:26 Michael P. Zwirko: laying it on the table on me moving forward without recommendation that's up to what possibly the president's work or make that motion but just a thought logistically because I'm not sure when we'll have another maybe thank you thank you madam chair and I thank you all the men of yours for the suggestion I guess my thinking was as if we held it to the 17th we could have an appropriations meeting that evening before the full board and then we could take care of it then you know that way we don't have to put it on the table take it off the table put it on the table you know so that that was my thinking and I guess now that I have the floor and and John is here do you think that the 17th would

▶ 1:10:07 Michael P. Zwirko: allow you and the engineers enough time to kind of parse this through a little bit so we could dispose of this on the 17th you think of just it's just over three weeks three weeks yeah we would like to give you as much time as you need so yeah with that and appreciate your being here this evening as well and you know sorry for the peppering of questions but it's just it's a your petition came in a parcel of property that's near and dear to many of us here as well as the folks watching at home so it's just the circumstance that you're involved with right so with that I just asked that this retaining committee I move that this be retaining committee until December 17th of 2018 second we have a motion by presidents work oh to hold this order in committee seconded by

▶ 1:10:58 Jennifer L. Lemmerman: Alderman Medeiros all in favor aye any opposed this order will be held in committee until our next meeting on the 17th just just on on discussion it's just a picky point but it's you can bring this order out whenever you want there's the chair of this committee it's not necessarily the 17th and should who some miraculous discovery this does get figured out sooner we could have a meeting and bring it forward as not to inconvenience the owner and move progress downtown as fast as possible thank you but my vote stands the final order on our agenda this evening is order 2019-27 and appropriation from free cash 0 1-3 2 4 0 0 1 in the amount of 1 million 162 thousand 187 dollars to various accounts as set forth herein we do have several department heads here

▶ 1:11:59 Michael P. Zwirko: this evening for anyone who may have questions and the order is before you president's workup Thank You madam chair at this time I would just ask if I could call about chief excuse me chief Lyle of the Melrose Police Department greetings how are you good thanks for being here this evening so police vehicles what do you got we're asking for three during my budget process in the early part of the year I asked for five I have selected the three worst vehicles that need to be replaced yep DPW could probably speak to it as well as their budget pays for all the maintenance on these vehicles I remember when we were talking back in chief that you had expressed go for a ride from it's uh yeah no i did not um i do remember the

▶ 1:12:56 Michael P. Zwirko: five vehicles that you wished and and i think actually we got to a point where we're putting good money after bad and we certainly have yeah and um how is this impacting just our general you know day-to-day operations because i think one vehicle they have to jump they have to jump start it with a power pack just to get it to run and then at the end of the shift they jump at the next shift um that's pretty sad uh the detective vehicle it's been in and out of the shop on multiple occasions and i believe the city is disputing a bill with the dealer for the emissions on it and that light just keeps coming back on and when you started off uh just a moment ago you said that these are the three leases that you need well these are i requested five like i

▶ 1:13:40 Michael P. Zwirko: said during our budget process and there's two more that are not far behind these and at some point we're just going to park them yeah understood so thank you for that and i know that you had mentioned this in may so um the other um i see mr shenna getting warming up in the on-deck circle so um i'll actually relax my questions i didn't know if others had uh questions for uh chief lyle so i'll stand down at this time madam chair any further discussion alderman Letter garabedian just for the um public how many vehicles does the police department have in total you'd have to break it down and process so we have eight line cars you should have nine there's one that we haven't been able to replace because we haven't had the funding for it

▶ 1:14:26 there's one patrol supervisor's vehicle there's six admin vehicles of the six admin three are detectives there's one for the chief one for the patrol commander and one for the prosecutor and then we have two motorcycles as well and a trailer and so which vehicles are we replacing the detective vehicle the call sign is 1242 it's a 2007 chevy tahoe with 104 000 miles on it Next is Carity 4, it's a 2013 Ford Interceptor SUV. It has 99.5 for mileage. And the last one is Carity 5, it's also a 2013 Ford Interceptor SUV. It has 120,000 miles on it. That's the one we keep jump starting. Thank you. Any further discussion, questions? maderas when we uh get rid of the old cars do we like turn them in for a cost

▶ 1:15:43 Michael P. Zwirko: we pass them down to dpw these three vehicles i i would think that the mechanics of the city i would say the same thing that there's no place for these but to trade them in and scrap value as far as far as i understand thank you thank you thank you further discussion anyone wishing to speak for the first time president's workup thank you again madam chair sorry about that I was just going down the roster so we have an order here before us to appropriate from free cash 1.1 little over that 1.1 million dollars the bulk of it nearly 75 percent of it is to funding the structural gap that we have in the school department that we talk about out frequently back in May on May 21st when the school members of the school

▶ 1:16:37 Michael P. Zwirko: committee and Cindy Taymor the school superintendent came before us they stated and we approved at that time this 800 some odd thousand dollars for that amount we have another hundred and sixty three thousand five hundred dollars for the outlay of the police vehicles that you just spoke of then we have some outlay for IT tech and I'd ask at this time mr. Ellis could please just come before us to speak of that how are you all right how are you all right oh what do you got so we got appropriation of $80,000 for a server this server would replace we have our current server setup is about eight years old it will be 2019 will be eight years it also draws upon a storage area network device that kind of

▶ 1:17:35 contains all the storage for everything that's also slowing down so this server would house in distribute files would also house is basically would be the platform for an upgraded munis server our current munis application can no longer be upgraded beyond what it is right now because it has a because of the hardware limitations I'm sorry to just interrupt so when there's new versions of munis that come out we're unable to actually upgrade as it's being improved right okay we also have we'd like to move towards the addition of a employee self-service server which would allow employees to check their accruals different HR aspects on a mobile app it would alleviate a lot of visits to the HR office a lot of time is spent in that

▶ 1:18:32 office just you know keeping up with with people people coming in and asking questions so that would alleviate that we also need a an additional server for Eunice this is not the way I designed it this is just the way it goes but to store documents related to our purchasing process our process currently is very paper-based we we distribute paper for everything even if I I keep all my records electronic and put them in a folder but then I have to print them out to get them to process through sign them send them along to someone else they do another chunk of it they send them up with a package a giant piece of piece of paper package someone else who processes the paper it's a it's a it's a long process so we want to try to get that process more digital and to

▶ 1:19:28 have it so that people can reference those invoices and whatnot online instead of digging through a cabinet in the closet which is actually where they keep them to try to find an invoice when there's a question about it it takes a lot of time additionally we had the idea to put if we're gonna buy a server we wanted to get our biggest bang for the buck so we want to we need to upgrade our current server exchange email client which is at 2010 so it'll be nine years old next year the problem with letting software like that in munis or any other software go long a long time is that it can only be secured to a certain point they can only offer so many patches to secure an application to just a certain

▶ 1:20:19 Michael P. Zwirko: extent and then it becomes more vulnerable than newer editions so I was looking at the security aspect of everything's in the operating systems that they run on or out of date too so so would you say that this appropriation that you're seeking is is really twofold it's an infrastructure upgrade in terms of capacity but then at the same time it's also for security purposes security absolutely functionality absolutely okay so uh one of the the primary uses of free cash really is for these one-time expenditures that cities and towns are faced with capital expenditures as you know we've heard tonight with new uh cruisers and obviously servers and etc so um this is a good use of the capital i appreciate you uh suggesting it and coming before us at this time and i just have one final question

▶ 1:21:07 Peter D. Mortimer: um it's for public works i just see that they're a line on here as well so you may have other questions from other members of the board but at this time if i could just speak to mr shenner briefly point point of personal privilege um last year i made the rec suggestion and it's just that consideration but please just if you could yield the floor for one second sure if nobody has any further questions for the chief i'd like to dismiss these department heads um if we're done i think we all talked to the chief and then we could all take our turn talking to mr ellis and then we could dismiss them they work a long day so on a point of personal privilege excuse excuse me for just a moment if nobody had anything further for the chief i saw he was up here i think we

▶ 1:21:52 Monica C. Medeiros: could dismiss him at this time are there any further questions for the chief no i think and And maybe we could take some department head by department head so they can. Thank you, Chief Lyle. Thank you, Mr. Ellis. Thank you very much. I will take, well, in the spirit of that, let's see if anyone has any further questions for Mr. Ellis. Thank you, Madam Chair. Alderman. Thank you. Yes, I was wondering if we go to this upgraded version of MUNIS for purchasing records, If there would be an option to allow sort of public viewing of, I know sometimes there's programs like Open Chatbook or something like that. Would there be a potential, you know, option for the public to see it? There's no functionality in it right now that would, say, have a web page that would display kind of numbers that you could crunch yourself or look at.

▶ 1:22:57 Monica C. Medeiros: we have looked at a couple different softwares visual budget and there's another one that we're looking at that does do that and would attach to our website to give kind of a transparent view of what our financial operations are but at least this would you said you could access these things online you mean internally staff could pull up an invoice that they had right right and so therefore too even if there was a public records request through the city clerk's office it would probably be a lot easier to find and answer that question than the current paper process oh yeah thank you thank you thank you alderman boyce in this upgrade of the infrastructure of the servers and so forth would this eliminate the log jam that the fire department has with its paper

▶ 1:23:49 reporting systems and so forth uh no as far as it relates to maybe their processing of invoices and purchasing and maybe any hr related functions possibly uh their their backup and reporting is is basically due to just a past reluctance to move in a digital direction um i know uh chief kalina is really really pushing towards that we've been working together closely on getting a software working with them so we're beginning that process now he'll have great reporting going forward with that application okay good with this infrastructure upgrade are you pushing more towards electronic signatures you know that's that's a that's a tough one because you mentioned that you had to create the paper and send it off to be signed and send the package back the

▶ 1:24:51 way it's going on in industry now it's more of electronic absolutely and everything sent automatically in one package digital to the nurse group and so forth you're right the the workflow of how processes are in the city in terms of changing those into a digital workflow in place and then signing off at each location right now the way that we do it for checks is we have little USB or just things connected to the printer that will print the person's signature onto the paper internally we generally don't require signatures but you're right if we're going to something that does the I'll have to look into that I'm not sure okay yeah it makes sense we wouldn't make it take care of that very easily and so forth so yeah just consider that please thank you

▶ 1:25:49 Kate Lipper-Garabedian: thank you thank you yes thank you for being here tonight I was looking back at my notes from our meeting that we have with you in June around the budget and seeing some of the things that you were concerned about with respect to our IT infrastructure so maybe just at a top line when the city is able to verify what money we have remaining from the previous fiscal year for example this year how does that work does did the mayor's office or who reaches it does someone reach out to you to say we'd like to dedicate some of this money we're trying to figure out where to dedicate this money do you have any recommendations or so you know I'm just interested in I know that you mentioned that servers were a huge part of the work that you've been focusing on I also

▶ 1:26:39 work noted noted that you shared with us that you have a 30 year old phone system for software that's servicing police fire in City Hall I'm wondering sir how do you prioritize some of these it's it's difficult I think I think the the push for a well this server also has the capacity to handle a phone server so if we get a phone server and we have looked at some that are basically virtual they plug into a server a virtual server it would fit in this server the it's it's difficult because you know munis basically runs the whole city if we don't have munis we don't payroll we don't have invoicing we can't purchase things we can't do HR functions so assessing so it's a critical piece of software we need to make sure that is running that probably put this the

▶ 1:27:39 highest on the priority left list list the phone system is in trouble so we and it's not just here we have phone systems at the Lincoln and the Roosevelt schools that are also the roosevelt one is not hasn't been made in 15 years the company doesn't support it any longer uh there's no parts made for it anymore so uh that can be a struggle um can i ask what a phone system costs it can range it can range quite a bit uh it depends on what you were looking to do with it there are systems out there that can um are voice over ip that can say take a voicemail transfer it to text send it in an email you know ones that are have conference bridging that are only um you know the main unit is only seven or eight thousand dollars but then every phone is

▶ 1:28:29 about 150 uh and then you have to consider that a lot of the wiring that we have for phones won't work with a voice over ip i mean we'd have to move towards the right force of our ip phone system um there are no phone systems really being made now that are analog any longer so we'd have to pay for some wiring in different locations around the city so that can add costs whatever we do would service would service not only our building here but also memorial hall fire department police mount hood uh city yard um council on aging milano um everybody okay but not this not those schools not those schools they're on a separate uh kind of a separate thing they have a cisco uh system right now a cisco system would be overly expensive for those buildings because they have phones in

▶ 1:29:29 Kate Lipper-Garabedian: every classroom so can I ask I'm just one more question about the phone system I hadn't heard before about some of the schools being so antiquated is that a security concern I mean what is what what is the danger of having a really old phone system is the idea that the system can go down and then you can't yeah basically we just I just solved the problem over at the Lincoln recently and the system was put in with the school it's a via DFINITY which is essentially a lucent I mean they've gone bankrupt they're out of business so new parts for those phones aren't really being created the support for that system is is slowly well quickly being gone as people retire who worked on those type of systems it's

▶ 1:30:23 become really difficult to find people who can work on those systems or know what they're doing with them and they're very complex they're all you know monochrome command line stuff so it's difficult to keep those going okay yeah thank you thank you any further questions for mr ellis this evening and generator yes i have that listed but that one you mentioned that's still a huge problem you were looking i mean that's hundreds of thousands of dollars but that's that's pretty critical in terms of emergency management that's pretty critical yes thank you for bringing that up again thank you sure okay i think real quick oh alderman thanks for the reminder um regarding a conversation this summer um so i

▶ 1:31:15 looked back on my notes and i remember you mentioning um the need for a backup generator at city hall did you just address that yeah i apologize i was like rereading my notes uh can you remind me one more time even though you literally just said so basically we our systems the internet the switching the main switching for all of the schools and the city the school phones except for those two buildings i mentioned all run through city hall and if we lose power right now we can power probably our phone system but again somebody would have to come in go into a a dark server room feel their way around for some cords throw them out the window drag it one out from the basement oh in the snow hook up a cord run it into the power strip and by

▶ 1:32:11 the time you know somebody comes out if there's a big storm you know it's not going to be easy for i mean i live right pretty close but even in that last storm we had in march like it took me like an hour to shovel out my driveway so i could get out and come come here um it's going to be some time it's not going to be like an immediate switch over where you know everybody's twiddling their thumbs i mean if seriously like if a problem happened in melrose like it has like in california where they have wildfires i mean i don't we're not going to have wildfires here anytime soon but um um no i think he's not no no go ahead oh yeah okay it's like uh we we because we don't have any backup power in any of the facilities that could house people anywhere in this city we're

▶ 1:32:57 done we couldn't refrigerate food we couldn't have lights we couldn't hand out food we could there's nothing we couldn't even keep our systems running so that the communication for the police in there in their cruisers that's run out of here could access anything so we're in terms of emergencies we're in a really bad place thank you for your patience with the redundancy of my question sorry thank you any further questions for mr ellis all right i think we are through with questions for this evening thank you for the information thank you have a great night i believe next in line we have questions for mr shenna regarding the dpw item good evening again good evening good evening sir so could you just give a quick overview of the um

▶ 1:34:00 ninety three thousand six hundred and eighty seven dollars that are you're seeking from free cash sure thank you so recently recently well let me backtrack as as many of you in the board know for several years public works together with Martha Grover office of planning and community development we've worked very aggressively with energy management and buildings that's the ability to control heating ventilation fresh air air conditioning not only do you get the benefit of comfort but you also get the benefit of rate savings so we've recently publicly procured improvements to the control system at the Lincoln School we did this with the intent of capitalizing on some 2018 green community grants the funding order this evening will supplement those grants and give us the

▶ 1:35:02 opportunity to um to fund and to sign this contract and complete this work so um martha grove is with me this evening she's going to come up and speak a little bit about the grant the green community grant expending these funds in a timely manner will allow us to um reapply next year for additional funds i think funds that have proved extremely successful and given us energy improvements in our buildings and then ann waite is with us as well because she's going to describe a little bit the what this project's going to allow us to do at the lincoln schools. Good evening, Ms. Grover. Hi there. Martha Grover, Energy Efficiency Manager. And I'm just here as the procurer of some of the funds for this project. As

▶ 1:36:01 you know, we're a green community since 2010, which makes the city eligible for grants every year or two. We've received since then almost nine hundred thousand dollars in just green community funds for a whole host of energy efficiency projects. And this is one of them, and our goal is to finish out this project and be eligible for the next round of funding for another $250,000, which of course we could spend five times. So we're in the process of prioritizing projects for that application. But that's the goal is to put us in place to be able to apply for the next round. Thank you. In terms of what the project does, if Ann can join me a second. We don't go building to building to control HVAC anymore, heating and ventilation.

▶ 1:37:12 We have the ability to do it through computers, and through technology, and through energy management systems. There's an efficiency gained in terms of cost savings. But there's also an efficiency gained in terms of how we can provide cooler air in the summer, warmer air in the winter at a lower cost. At the Lincoln School right now, we're bringing 100% outside air in. So that means in the summertime, we're bringing really warm air in and cooling it, cooling all of it, in order to provide air conditioning. In the winter time, we're bringing really cold air in, heating it to provide heat. We don't have the ability to control that. You don't necessarily have to bring 100% outside air. And Mark Thompson, who's also here tonight, he manages that on a day-to-day basis

▶ 1:38:18 and runs all the controls to her computer screening. We don't have that ability, whereas in these other schools we do. We also don't have controls of our thermostats at the Lincoln School. That building, although we look at it as the new Lincoln School, is still 19 years old, and technology changes has probably changed four times over in that regard and so and brought two screenshots that we just want to quickly show you to give you a little bit of the benefit of when we talk about these controls a lot but this is what it actually is so the Lincoln School has seven rooftop units that run the HVAC in the school and when we go to look at it to see if a room's rooms hot or rooms cold or whatever, this is all we get when we look at a rooftop unit.

▶ 1:39:07 It doesn't give us any set points, it doesn't show us any supply temps or space temps, this is what we get. So often when I look it up, someone will call and say it's very warm in our room. I'll look, I'm like, well it looks like the fans are running, I can see the little things moving. Mark will go over to the school and he'll go on the roof and it won't even be running. It's giving a false information, because we've set it to go on, and it's showing it's on, but it's really not on. So what it needs is, it needs control in there so we can control it. So what happens now is during the winter, Mark goes on the roof, he disconnects the electronics, he sets the temperature to 72, and that's the temperature we have in the school, 72 is what we get for that air going in.

▶ 1:39:51 And then if we need to change that, he goes back on the roof and resets it. What happens, if we show the next screen, thank you. This is what we have currently at the high school in air handler two, all this information. So when we can look at it, we can see everything from water return temp. So if we look at the water return temp and we know it's low, or supply air is low, we can make adjustments right from our desk, from home, on the weekend. We actually got an alert on Thanksgiving at the middle school that the temp was down to 55 in a certain part of the building. We can react to that right from home without sending. In the past, Kevin Cronin would go out, he'd check the schools, we'd spend overtime money.

▶ 1:40:35 Michael P. Zwirko: He'd have to call, make an adjustment, we'd have to do that. We can do it all on the screen, looking at this information here. Yeah, that's an important note, and I didn't mention that earlier, but this not only allows us to control the systems better, it also provides us with alarms emails text alerts of issues and right now we don't have that at the lincoln school thank you president's work i believe you saw the floor thank you um so uh ms grover you had stated earlier that this is to supplement excuse me supplement the grant this funding is to supplement the grant monies that we've received for um to effectuate the contract who's the contract with contract would be with burnell burnell okay and this is just uh these

▶ 1:41:21 Michael P. Zwirko: are for improved enhancements to lincoln school only oh okay and um i'm well you know what i reserved that question it's it's not appropriate it's not in line with this um the the the savings over time i mean what is it we're putting money out front we received a grant but what is the roi what's the capture over over the life is this is this funds that ultimately we could receive through efficiencies right it's hard to put a number to the exact savings your project like this in fact National Grid incentivizes this project but they just give you a set amount per point that you're adding to the system because they the engineering and everything it's just hard to control there are so many depends on what you set your temperatures at and season that

▶ 1:42:18 you have building up occupancy hours and there's just a lot of moving parts but by doing this we certainly will be operationally it's basically it's turning your air conditioner on and then going to work all day right and it just it's just cooling this air that maybe no one's even in that room but we're still cooling the air right now because I mean I don't want to give up the impression that we do something just because there's an ROI in our investment yeah clearly there's there's gains that are made outside of just this this program itself and the enhancements so I understand that there has to be savings but it's more of what they call prescriptive in the situation it's not formulaic yeah yeah and just for the record this is a school that we operate

▶ 1:43:15 we keep open 12 months a year there'll be summer school there this year there'll be summer programming there'll be summer camps um every vacation week right and various aspects of the school so the ability to and and people are always looking for air conditioning in the summer the bill the ability to better control that to do that to create a cost savings do that to create a better climate for whoever's in the building whether they're students or campers i think it's it's it's all it's all it's all plus in my opinion in terms of savings i mean if you look at our budget historically rates are always going up when we we do a pretty decent job in terms of negotiating long-term deals and renegotiating them early to try to keep the rate as stable as we can

▶ 1:44:00 get it but rates always go up so there are some line items in our budget in our public works utility budgets in the facilities grouping that we've been able to increase with you know minimally or not even at all and i think that's a direct impact of um in fact street lights have decreased and that's a direct impact of these energy initiatives these energy initiative driven projects thank you those are all the questions i had at this time thank you alderman mortimer any work with heat pumps anywhere coming up with heat pumps will you take cool cool air make it cold and you get the kick back on the heat from the other end I know that might be more of a question for mark but is there any look at that any could you come forward I'm sorry just so that

▶ 1:44:57 the mic picks up in the Learning Commons project there was I think 10 10 heat pumps installed during that but nothing as far as the we couldn't adapt those to the what we have at the Lincoln School just the climates not adaptable yet we have it there's a chilled water system it circulates through the building and we have outdoor air units that use this chilled water but it's they run amok they it's like putting a stone on your gas pedal your car it's just cool cool cool right and then that robs from other areas that need it classrooms the classroom may be hot here but the cafeteria is freezing because there's zero control over it it's it's really amazing that that heat pump technology is kind of it's great cutting edge yeah it's great um but in this case it would take a heat pump of

▶ 1:46:01 it would be immense because it's outdoor air it's five degree air coming in and you would have to heat that up to 70 degrees at least before you blow it on the students you know it's all about what it takes to condition the outdoor air at 90 minus five if the school's open on a day like that right yeah heat pumps work best at around yeah 50 degrees right that's you know right make 50 degrees 70 make yes you know they're great at taking a slug of air and recirculating and heating up a little bit of the time right but these units have to take that outdoor air that freezing pool there and just do it one shot one pass right yeah but um but the ones that the learning commons have been pretty efficient yeah they're great good cost savings

▶ 1:46:46 Peter D. Mortimer: oh yeah yeah Martha yeah yeah yeah and it's definitely something we would look into in the future I think for some of our older schools with the steam boiler systems right I think it's an option a future option but you have to consider what what's there and what it would take to you know install some of these systems and the cost yeah well of course I'm always looking for a return on investment and you know any nickel we can save in Melrose is you know due to a lot of the good work you've done already with the solar roofs and roofs and things like that so that's the heat pump is kind of something's coming I'm glad the ones at the Learning Commons are working thank you that's all I have madam chair thank you Alderman Medeiros thank you I know the the Roosevelt

▶ 1:47:34 Monica C. Medeiros: school was sort of renovated around the same time is this is the system at that school the same as as this or different no yeah at the Roosevelt each each classroom brings in outdoor air at that point at the classroom unit if you drive by you'll see the little grills under each window at the Lincoln it's these units on the roof that are running crazy that they deliver the through ductwork to each class the entire building and so is this what's proposed here is is that going to eliminate that or reduce that the outside air coming in or will it still the system will essentially function the same it puts controls on the system it allows us to run it more efficiently at the at the room level and and I know especially at the time I think that some of these things

▶ 1:48:33 Monica C. Medeiros: were put in place and I think it's you know still the concern that you know we like to have outside air and that it's there was a concern I think at that time that a lot of buildings the older buildings you know air quality concerns that sometimes it was just recycling old sick air but I know as we you know look at potential risks unfortunately like is there any way if there were you know god forbid and you can knock on the table again presence or go is there any thing to if something were in the air that we wouldn't want to get into the school some kind of chemical or something or just even ash or you know smoke out in California for those wildfires is there a way to sort of either filter the air coming in or to sort of shut off the intake or something

▶ 1:49:27 I don't know if we have those kinds of or would this new system allow that yeah there's air filters on it now but they're just standard filters you know disposable filters they catch a lot of pollen and stuff but as far as shutting them down you'd have to say you know if you were alerted to something you can shut them off remotely and that's something you could do from home you can we can see it on the we can do that now if you go back to that first on this you see it says fan on and off right but that's not true status that's why when Ann said oh she turned it on and you go out there and it's off well there's no feedback there's no there's nothing that actually says oh it really is on that's

▶ 1:50:11 Monica C. Medeiros: how poor the control system is but in the new one you could at least say okay somebody it's proof of that it's wrong so you could shut a damper all the way off it's freezing cold the winds blowing it's coming in you can just shut the damper down the weekend no one's in the building yeah I think that I think it certainly makes sense and you know certainly especially in the summertime if you have some built some rooms being occupied and others not it definitely you know no matter what time of year but especially in the summertime we may have more vacant rooms it probably definitely make a lot of sense so thank you thank you thank you I'll remember so that second screen is that was being shown on

▶ 1:50:57 Robert A. Boisselle: the screen here that's at the middle and high school middle school and high schools that's the high school that's the high so it's at the high school not at the middle school right are you projecting to move this type of screen into the other schools middle school and the elementary schools in the future if if grants come forward so other schools have controls maybe not as elaborate as they have controls no the top of the line here we're talking about would you consider incorporating that into the elementary and the middle schools down the line if grant money was available so they have the they have the controls I could show you a picture of the Roosevelt it would have a lot of the same things of course some of the schools do have that especially the ones

▶ 1:51:45 Robert A. Boisselle: that have air conditioning so the Roosevelt would be one definitely the middle school in the other schools any plans for them that don't have this type of so the the heating is pretty well and you can look at the if you looked at the Hoover you can find out a lot of information the Hoover even though there's not air conditioning on the heating end of things but that's does Hoover send you a signal when the temperature is 10 degrees outside doesn't and the boiler doesn't start up, we'll get an email alert saying. So there is communications doing the deep freezes similar to what we had this past Thanksgiving and so forth. This functionality is a result of the ESCO project that we did in 2014-15.

▶ 1:52:27 So we installed an overlay, this integrated energy management system of over 12 buildings, including City Hall and a number of schools. Police station. Police station. So we have this kind of insight into a lot of those buildings. It's dependent on the equipment that exists in the building. The high school obviously is the last upgraded and the most complicated system, right? But yeah, this exists. It's just that the Lincoln underlying system is 20 years old and it can't, it's not communicating, it's not sending the right signal and information. But the technology is starting to come into the system or into the school systems to protect the public buildings and so forth. It's there and we rely on it 24-7.

▶ 1:53:13 Kate Lipper-Garabedian: That's where we've gotten so much of our efficiency and energy savings is from the ability to centrally manage all of those buildings from her phone. Very good. Thank you very much. Thank you, Madam Chair. Thank you. Alderman Herbert Garabedian. Yes, and I actually just, I have a question maybe just for our directors and going back to the police vehicles comment so I don't know if there's I think we might be done with the other so I think everyone else maybe you can head on unless there was anything else you wanted to share but I really appreciate the information are there further questions for the folks at the table right now okay good okay so I just wanted to circle back on the the police vehicles because I recall at our budget hearings one of the things that

▶ 1:54:03 Kate Lipper-Garabedian: you were planning to do over the fall and into the winter even perhaps was do an inventory of all the city vehicles to sort of scaffold them in terms of what were most critical and sort of create a list and so certainly I recall chief while coming to us and talking about some of the the issues that he had with his vehicles we also heard from the fire department that they have some very antiquated vehicles their spare ladders from 1996 their engine number fours from 1999 their ladder and engine number two are from 2007 engine number three is from 2010 and I believe that you maybe even spoke to some of the DPW vehicles being in need of I'm blanking on the word replacement thank you so just could

▶ 1:54:57 you give us a quick update on sort of the work that you've done to track all of the different concerns with our city vehicles and you and your sense of where we're going next yeah it's a it's a fair point and it is something that I mentioned previously and it's something that we're working on internally this order comes before you just you know really because the police department at this point in time needs those vehicles well I've been working with the the department heads will be meeting with each department head over the next few months to outline their fleet, their existing conditions, the type of replacement repair costs that each vehicle has been experiencing, and to come up with some type of plan which will hopefully be ready by February,

▶ 1:55:49 Kate Lipper-Garabedian: which outlines the entire city from a fleet perspective and their needs. And then at some point in time, the administration can make a decision on, oh, we have so much to invest. Where do we want to invest it? What are fire's needs? What are public works needs? What are anybody's needs? Inspectional services, recreation, I mean, there are vehicles throughout the city. The council on aging vans. So yeah, we're in the process of doing that. We should have a document in draft form by February. And so, at this juncture, from your view of looking at the city more comprehensively than any one department might be looking at it, it's your opinion that the three police vehicles are of the most critical nature to address through this particular appropriation?

▶ 1:56:37 Jennifer L. Lemmerman: At this point in time. Okay. Thank you. Thank you. Are there any further questions or comments from the committee? Motion to recommend for passage. We have a motion to recommend for passage made by President Search, seconded by Alderman Mortimer, on discussion. Thank you. Madam Chairman, I'm not sure whether you have or if you would please ask for the balance in certified free cash before and after this order passes, assuming it passes. Absolutely. I do not have that, but we'd be happy to ask for it to be attached to the order before our final vote. Thank you. Sure. Any further discussion? We have a motion made and seconded to recommend for passage. All in favor? Aye. Aye. Any opposed? This order will be recommended for passage in our next full Board meeting.

▶ 1:57:25 Jennifer L. Lemmerman: Motion to adjourn, Madam Chair. Second. We have a motion to adjourn, made by Alderman Mortimer, seconded by Alderman Boisselle. All in favor? Aye. Any opposed? We are now adjourned. Thank you.

Appropriations & Oversight Committee — 2018-11-26

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