Legal & Legislative Committee — 2019-02-04

Attendance

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

Agenda

1. Call to Order (0:00)
2. Public Comment (0:55)
3. Orders (8:22)
4. ORDER-2019-32 : An Order to Review Potential Policies regarding Lime Bike and other cyber rental bicycles (8:32)
5. ORDER-2019-40 : Acceptance of Section 3A of Chapter 64G as amended by Section 6 of Chapter 337 of the Acts of 2018 (1:11:45)
6. ORDER-2019-39 : Accepting Clause 22H of Section 5 of Chapter 59 of the General Laws, as amended by Section 15 of Chapter 218 of the Acts of 2018 (1:26:53)
7. ORDER-2019-34 : Amending Melrose Revised Ordinances to add Chapter 222, Article IV: Shared Mobility Vehicles (1:34:48)
8. Adjournment (2:15:40)

Minutes

CITY OF MELROSE LEGAL & LEGISLATIVE COMMITTEE CALENDAR● FEBRUARY 4, 2019 Aldermanic Chamber, Melrose City Hall Committee Meeting 7:00 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 Francis X. Wright Jr. Chair Present Manisha Bewtra Vice Chair Present Monica C. Medeiros Voting Present Scott M. Forbes Voting Absent Michael P. Zwirko Voting Present Jennifer L. Lemmerman President/Ex Officio Member Present Peter D. Mortimer Nonvoting Present Robert A. Boisselle Nonvoting Present John N. Tramontozzi Nonvoting Present Kate Lipper-Garabedian Nonvoting Present Shawn M. MacMaster Nonvoting Present

ORDER-2019-32 Presentation An Order to Review Potential Policies regarding Lime Bike and other cyber rental bicycles Recommend Place on File Melrose Public Library Board of Trustees

ORDER-2019-40 Acceptance Acceptance of Section 3A of Chapter 64G as amended by Section 6 of Chapter 337 of the Acts of 2018 Recommend Place on File Board of Aldermen

ORDER-2019-39 Acceptance Accepting Clause 22H of Section 5 of Chapter 59 of the General Laws, as amended by Section 15 of Chapter 218 of the Acts of 2018 Recommend Passage Board of Aldermen City of Melrose Page 1 Updated 2/8/2019 11:56 AM Minutes Legal & Legislative Committee February 4, 2019

ORDER-2019-34 Amending Revised Ordinances Amending Melrose Revised Ordinances to add Chapter 222, Article IV: Shared Mobility Vehicles Hold City of Melrose Page 2 Updated 2/8/2019 11:56 AM

Transcript

▶ 0:01 Francis X. Wright Jr.: I'll be around the next meeting. Good evening. This is a meeting of the Legal and Legislative Committee of the Melrose Board of Aldermen on February 4th. This meeting is being recorded for the purposes of cablecast on Melrose Access Cable and can also be found accessible on the City of Melrose website. Roll call. We have with us tonight Alderman Vice Chair Boutra, Alderman Medeiros, Alderman Forbes, and Alderman Zwirko. Non-voting members, Alderman Mortimer, Alderman Boisselle, Alderman Tramontozzi, Alderman Lipper-Garabedian, Alderman McMaster, and President Ex oficio Member Lemmon. we have four items on our agenda tonight but before that do I see a motion for public comment so moved second we have a motion for public comment by Alderman Zwirko seconded by Alderman

▶ 1:18 Medeiros all in favor aye opposed and this is the time during our meeting if anyone would like to come forward and speak on any matter that is on our agenda this evening they may do so if you'd like to you can come to the table state your name sign in and speak our rules allow you to speak for up to ten minutes Dan Kretschmer 110 East Emerson Street speaking tonight as both the citizen and vice chair of the pedestrian bike committee of Melrose volunteer committee as most of you know and I'm going to speak in regard that to the ordinances that are proposed regarding the lime bite bite share program and this I guess applies to both of them since we only have one shot at this so I'll give the general comments I'd note that we'd sent

▶ 2:22 all the aldermen our comments on alderman Medeiros is ordinance so you all have that and I won't go into all the detail that we provided on that but only try to hit the high points here the first point I like to make is there is an agreement in place between the city and the line bike organization which has only been in place since October it's our position that we should let it run for at least a full year and evaluate the results before considering an ordinance data that's been provided to the city and I understand will be presented by the Planning Department tonight indicates that the bike share program is meeting a transportation need for some of our residents and employees so in our view an ordinance is premature at this point we believe that the

▶ 3:09 agreement does a pretty good job of covering most of the issues that are out there an ordinance may be reasonable in the future we don't oppose that the one proposed the more detailed one proposed by alderman Medeiros certainly has parts that could be included in an ordinance and I would like to say we'd like to thank alderman Medeiros for giving us a heads up on the ordinance and taking the time to join our meeting in December we had a long and I think good discussion about the ordinance and gave her a number of comments and concerns that we had about it we do note that the ordinance as it stands today is the same one we reviewed and none of those changes have been incorporated into it so we would like to see at least some of those changes occur before it's

▶ 4:01 considered we've had some general comments and some wording changes and edits that we believe would make an ordinance more effective and as I mentioned we feel it should follow largely along the lines of the city agreement and that the technology definitions and administrative requirements should be compatible with those of the state and or partner communities in the regional bike share we believe that by kind of going off on our own path in too many directions we're not going to be compatible with some of the legislation that's on Beacon Hill right now and some of the other practices of our neighboring communities because as you're aware the bike started coming in here long before we had an agreement from Maldon there were quite a

▶ 4:48 few around and I think it behooves us to be part of the regional consortium in those areas just a couple of other points it's clear that there is a demand for service the line bike data that you'll see indicate that over thirteen hundred and fifty individuals have used the service since July of 2018 making a total of over four thousand trips while these numbers are significant they don't indicate that the all the bikes deployed are being fully utilized the service is an unsubsidized private operation and supply will ultimately need to be adjusted to demand I think we've seen this already there were a lot more bikes there early in the deployment they're fewer now and there's already been a sort of a major switch from from pedal bikes to electronic assist bikes so you

▶ 5:43 You can see the private market adapting to the demands of the public with regard to the service. And as I said, after a longer period of time and a full summer season and fall season, the city and the vendor will both have a much better grasp of supply and demand. We'd also just like to make a few comments on the ordinance itself. We're just concerned that some of the provisions are not easily enforceable or are unenforceable and would constitute a low priority of use of scarce resources. We understand that improperly parked bikes can be a nuisance and even a hazard, but the hazards created by distracted drivers blowing through crosswalks, people going through stop signs and speeding down local streets, which as a traffic commission member I hear about

▶ 6:36 every meeting those need to be the priorities for enforcement in the city it's also important to remember that in a big picture it's important to remember that the city has an interest in promoting non-vehicle transportation this is consistent with concerns again which we also hear in the traffic commission about traffic hazards increasing rush hour congestion parking supply pedestrian safety and climate change commitments to reduce greenhouse grasses gases exploring ways to promote safe non-vehicle transportation alternatives is something the city should embrace and encourage and not stifle so I guess in summary we feel that some regulation some ordinance at some point may make sense we don't feel this is a time and we feel when that

▶ 7:30 Francis X. Wright Jr.: happens the ordinance as it is can be reworked to be more effective kind of walk the line between a fair regulation of the service and not stifling the technology innovation which is giving some of our people opportunities for transportation that they didn't have before thank you thank you sir anyone else interested in making a public comment this evening on any matter on our agenda motion to close public comment second motion to close public comment by alderman Zwirko seconded by alderman Medeiros all in favor aye aye opposed public comment is closed we have four items on our agenda this evening item one is order 2019-32 in order to review potential policies regarding line bike and other cyber rental bicycles sponsored by non-voting member peter

▶ 8:43 Michael P. Zwirko: mortimer motion to uh suspend the rules the motion to suspend the rules by alderman Zwirko second seconded by alderman medeiros all in favor of suspending the rules the rules are suspended thank you mr chairman i was wondering if this time given the order i see an attachment about a bike share presentation i was hoping that maybe we could bring forth members of the community and planning uh development uh department to speak to uh the attachment on this order as well um if um uh through the chair if alderman mortimer had anything as a non-voting member he'd like to introduce on this order himself thank you mr chair thank you all of this work alderman mortimer um thank you mr chairman uh yes before we proceed i brought

▶ 9:37 Peter D. Mortimer: I'm not a member of this committee, so I appreciate the latitude in letting me speak. And thank you Alderman Zwirko for that consideration as well. I brought forth this order and I didn't have any ordinance attached to it. I just wanted to get a presentation because what had happened was people began to approach me in the street and said what's the story? It was on the mayor's blog, and there were websites, but a lot of times people don't always go that route to garner information about events that are occurring in the city. So I brought forth this ordinance so that we might have a presentation from the city planner. I am a fan of the cyber bikes. I'm an avid bicyclist myself. Sometimes I wish they wouldn't make the streets as narrow as they do from DPW, that's supposed to be a traffic calming measure but if you're a bicyclist you sometimes you get really wedged in and you have to jump up on the curb which might be too high.

▶ 10:44 Peter D. Mortimer: But I noticed there were a lot of bicycles around and people were asking me and sometimes I did see with my own eyes and based on information that other people would supply to me that they were knocked over. see it as I rolled around and maybe it was just an auspicious coincidence but after I filed this order suddenly I noticed the bikes got a lot neater so I don't know whether that got back to the company that does this or not and that's one thing that you know I'm in favor of the bikes but they need to be kept orderly and I'm sure we're gonna hear a lot about how they are kept orderly but Like many programs that we have that are forward thinking in nature, the regulation begins to slip after a year or two.

▶ 11:30 Peter D. Mortimer: So I just want to make sure that, you know, we're all very concerned about safety on our sidewalks. And we had more than enough conversation on that a few months ago in another area. But a lot of people were saying that people were having a little trouble walking around them. Sometimes we're on the sidewalk. But I would defer and I appreciate All of Mr. Kretschmer's comments are very appropriate, and I am a favor of doing what we can do to eliminate vehicular transportation in Melrose. It's getting worse, and that's something that people notice. So that's the reason I filed the order, and I defer to the expertise. And thank you for allowing me to speak. Thank you, Alderman Mortimer. will defer to Ms. Gaffey and the city officials who have put together a

▶ 12:21 Denise Gaffey: program for dockless bike share in Melrose great thank you very much my name is Denise Gaffey I'm the director of planning and community development and on my right is Emma Schnur she's the senior planner in the planning office and Emma has put together a slide presentation that kind of walks through the program so I'm gonna defer turn there over to her in just a moment I just wanted to thank you Alderman Mortimer for this opportunity to be here tonight to talk about the program I wanted to just emphasize the fact that it is a pilot program it was crafted as a pilot program through our participation with MAPC we're one of 12 communities in the region that's participating in this program and it became apparent to us after Malden had

▶ 13:06 Denise Gaffey: their pilot their own pilot program in the fall of 2017 and many of the many of bicycles were migrating into Melrose that it made sense to participate in this pilot program and give this give the residents an opportunity to try it out and see if it was going to have any traction so we're really excited about the ridership data that we have seen and which will will demonstrate in a few moments and what we've done we have a we actually do have a statement of work with which outlines all the policies and the regulatory framework for this pilot program with line bike so we will also walk through those those sort of that regulatory framework through these slides and then we're happy to answer any questions that you have there is a representative here tonight from line

▶ 13:55 bike in in the audience who was really nice to join us tonight so if you have questions that are geared directly to the company I'm sure he'd be happy to answer them as well so for now I will turn it over to Emma and she's gonna walk through the slides thank you as Denise mentioned my name is Emma Schner we are here to talk about dockless bike share in Melrose so just to back up a little bit this all started in 2017 because a number of communities in our region were actually being approached by dockless bike share systems looking to operate in their communities for example Malden launched their own pilot with Lyme back in October 2017 and around that time bikes began appearing in Melrose because obviously city lines don't really have fiscal borders so the

▶ 14:46 bikes were traveling all over and so in order to ensure a coordinated regional effort and to make sure that different communities weren't all using different vendors that wouldn't be compatible across community lines MAPC the Metropolitan Area Planning Council which is the regional planning authority for Greater Boston issued an RFP back in November 27 for one or more vendors to provide a regionalized system through a pilot program and these vendors were selected back in February 2018 so a year ago at the time another vendor was also selected along with lime spin but they soon sort of went under I think they moved solely to scooters and so we're just working with Lyme but that's actually been very advantageous because it's been a much more coordinated effort

▶ 15:37 just being able to work directly with them and they have been a very accessible partner so as Denise mentioned there's 12 communities that are currently operating in the system 15 communities sort of signed on in the beginning but a couple have had trouble getting off the ground Medford I think for example hasn't signed their agreement I'm not sure if Milton has either but there's still there's still quite a region-wide network and users take these bikes all over the communities that they're operating in okay um so the memorandum of understanding that was with MAPC and all the partner communities was signed back in 2018 the mayor signed it in May which already kick-started the one-year pilot and at that time bike started coming

▶ 16:34 into Melrose because lime was now sort of making sure that bikes were in the whole system over the next six months the city worked with lime and MAPC to craft specific policies for the city of Melrose and that's all contained in our statement of work that's the piece of regulation that controls pretty much everything in the system it's what we follow it's what line follows and the agreement has worked well so far so the SOW was officially signed in October 2018 and that's when we say the program sort of launched that's when we did a bunch of outreach and you probably also started hearing both good and bad things from your constituents at that time but the bikes you know have have have been around for quite a number of months now and so the this year of the pilot comes

▶ 17:30 to a close on May 3rd 2019 and now we're sort of all discussing contract extensions and how the next years can look so the statement of work as I mentioned it's specific for each individual community it sets our regulations the project plan is the real meat of the document and that has all the rules about bike parking by count so how many bikes are allowed where they should be rebalanced in the hotspot locations customer service winter operations etc it indemnifies the city from all liability and basically our SOW allows lime to launch a fleet of up to a hundred bikes at any one time right now there's between 20 and 30 bikes on the ground because as you've heard it's a supply and demand system and our sow gives the city flexibility to decrease

▶ 18:27 the bike count both based on ridership demand but also the vendor performance I'll just summarize some of the bike parking rules they are supposed to be parked on the sidewalk right next to the curb in the furniture zone so they're not allowed to block a sidewalk loading zone a parking spot fire hydrants curb ramps driveways anything they can't inhibit pedestrian movement on the street they if they've been parked in one location for more than seven days we can request that lime removes them if a bike is parked illegally then you can notify the vendor and they'll remove the bike within three hours if it's between 7 a.m. and 7 p.m. week and then 12 hours after receiving notice at all other times and if a bike is not safe to operate they'll move it from the public

▶ 19:26 way and lastly if there's a snow emergency or more than three inches of snow then the vendor will remove all the bikes from the road and not put them back until all the snow has been removed and in the last snow that worked out really well I think they cleared all the bikes maybe one or two might have drifted back into Melrose after they got them all off the road but we were really impressed with how they handled the snow. So just some ridership statistics for the manual bikes there have been 2,825 total rides and that's since May. Over 1,000 riders, 1,123 traveling over 2,000 miles and the median trip time is about 11 minutes. For the e-bikes there's been 657 rides. They came online a little bit

▶ 20:20 at the end of August and for a while there were very few e-bikes on the ground in Melrose so now we're seeing that number increase there's been 230 riders about 400 miles traveled total and those trips are a little bit shorter because they have the pedal assist so median time is more like seven minutes this shows the monthly number of rides for both manual bikes and e-bikes you could see that the number of rides was obviously much higher during the warm months so during May and June and July the you know you had 500 something rides a month and then the number has steadily decreased as it's gotten colder and but as you could see as the number of manual bike rides has gone down a bit the number of e-bike rides has increased quite a bit because there are more

▶ 21:12 e-bikes on the road now so this just shows some ridership statistics for rider frequency and as we would expect most trips are completed or most people basically ride once or twice but there are a fair number of people who ride more often than that so over the lifetime of the system for manual bikes you know 315 people take less than three trips but a hundred and six people take five took five to 15 trips which is pretty significant and 26 people took 15 to 30 trips and eight people are very very regular users taking 30 or more trips and you see the similar ratio for the e-bikes and that other column just shows over a month time period back in November what that ridership looked like and it was pretty pretty comparable to the lifetime this just this map just

▶ 22:18 shows some of the routes that are being taken and this shows for both manual bikes and e-bikes and not surprisingly the roads that are utilized the most are Main Street and Pleasant Street and Washington and Tremont and West Emerson and also Porter a lot Porter I think maybe there might be a very frequent around that street or that might be just a common a common route so we're actually going to be getting some data exported from Lyme that shows all these routes and we'll be able to do some work to analyze that and see how that lines up with some of the bike planning work that the pet and bike committee has done so that should be interesting to look into that data a bit more as I mentioned If a bike is parked illegally, if you see it parked on the sidewalk, if you're able-bodied and you can just move it to the side, that's what we would encourage.

▶ 23:17 But if for whatever reason you can't or there are a number of bikes, we definitely encourage you to either contact Lime or you could file a complaint through C-Click Fix. We've only gotten one complaint through that. I'm not sure if Lime has really gotten many complaints, but so far the system's been working pretty well, we think. definitely the number of complaints have died down since the first uh bit of news came out about it um and so far yeah we're just we're looking forward to see what happens in the spring once we have more bikes on the ground and you know we can really see how the system is working thank you if you have any questions thank you um thanks for all your work to flesh out um first the mou

▶ 24:09 Manisha Bewtra: and statement of work and the work that's gone out on the mayor's blog i mean the communications on the mayor's blog and city website but i also want to thank my colleagues alderman mortimer and alderman medeiros because i think having this presentation before us is additionally very helpful because i know folks have had lots of questions um i um was wondering what kinds of data does lime bike share with the city do you have like a lot of maybe this is a question for lime bike in terms of the data that is made available both in terms of rider statistics but also in terms of complaints and i guess as part of that question is also if complaints are going to be um always coming directly to the city or if if folks will be able to contact the vendor

▶ 25:08 Denise Gaffey: directly and if so do you have access to that information so the slide that you that emma had just shown you shows you how people how how users can contact line bike and i think that's the most efficient way of of of getting response to a complaint and when we have checked in with line bike about whether they've received complaints i think we've mostly heard that they have not i think you were able were you able to check the chief yeah yeah we could check that system to see and found the one complaint that was registered since the program started in terms of other data like the ridership data we basically have access to lime's dashboard they have a dashboard system that each municipality can log into and see all the ridership details for our specific municipality

▶ 25:57 and they've also given mapc more data that's kind of on the back end of that uh dashboard so we're working on getting that data now so we could you know play with it more um i don't think lime gets like demographic data or anything like that off of users though that would be interesting to um to see but did you do a year-end survey or was that happening excuse me sir could you come up to the table introduce yourself thank you Hesha Malawi I'm the Northeast general manager for lime thank you for having me so we for for the MAPC specifically we haven't done a survey yet that we have to come to an agreement to what that would look like and what questions we would want to cover more broadly across the rest of our markets we've done we've done some surveys and have a sense of the

▶ 27:03 demographic breakdown income breakdown types of uses for the bikes and scooters and so on so I admittedly haven't used one yet how how do people rent them and do you have an option for folks who might not have access to a credit card yes so the the way you would rent them is you have to download the Lime app onto your onto your phone and there is a QR code on the bicycle be it a pedal pedal cycle or an electric assist bike and so with the your your camera you will scan the QR code it unlocks the bike and then you can ride it from point to point and then you lock the bicycle after that and you get charged on your credit card for lower income communities we have a program called lime access and so you

▶ 27:58 can have a flip phone and with cash basically pay for for your rides the way would work is you would sign up online so you need to prove that you're under some sort of local state or federal aid program and we've partnered with with a pain near me provider so you could go to CVS or Walgreens or 7-eleven and basically refill your balance there and by doing so you can then use your phone to unlock the the bike each each bike has a number associated with the QR code so you text the number and say unlock and then it would unlock and same with you text the bike again the QR code and say lock and then it would lock after that for pedal bikes there is a 95% discount on on the standard pricing if you are a lime access participant for the electric

▶ 29:03 Manisha Bewtra: assist bikes it's 50% discount thank you um and do you operate in other parts of the country that have been using like line bikes for longer than here in Greater Boston I'd say Seattle must be our our longest operating market we have a significant number of bikes there and and and then there's a few other few other markets that have bikes as well some have evolved from pedal bikes to e-bikes some have just started with e-bikes and then others others of our markets have scooters only great um so are all the bikes and all systems sort of the same size do you ever have you have questions about you like having child carriers or children's bikes ever come up and is that something maybe planned for the future we have gotten questions about like child seats at this

▶ 30:02 Manisha Bewtra: point that's not in the immediate plan from a liability standpoint where we want to limit ridership to 16 and over and the bikes aren't designed to have a child or accuracy that makes sense I just was curious I have a little one at home who really wants to check it out but I I for one am excited about this program but I'm also excited about the the statement of work and all the sort of work that's gone into it and our continued exploration of how to make this really work for Melrose I think in the beginning people were seeing the bikes come into town sort of parked on the grass just like concerns that I heard here and there but even just during this pilot I've seen that seem to improve significantly and I'm a commuter on the orange line so having an option

▶ 30:57 that's just a one-way type of option or an occasional option is very exciting so thank you for working with the city of Melrose on this and thank you for all your work on putting together this presentation tonight those are all my questions for now thank you thank you thank you for this information just a couple of questions e-bikes as you sir mentioned electric assist a bike like can you explain what the practical differences between those two the manual on the e-bike that's that's a that's a good question so the pedal bikes are no normal manual bikes you have to you have the pedal and if you don't use the bike stops for electric assist the the only difference is that you get a little bit of a boost when you pedal it you'll notice it most when you first start the

▶ 31:49 bike or when you first pedal and when you're going uphill now the speed limit so beyond 15 miles an hour or 14.8 miles an hour the electric assist component ceases and so this isn't a motorized bicycle that is going 30 40 miles an hour beyond 50 miles an hour it's all you right and so for all intents and purposes unless you're an avid cyclist it's roughly the same speed as everyone else around you okay thank you so they're not any I don't know what the statistics show but they're not any more dangerous no no they're not they're not any more dangerous we've actually from a ridership standpoint we found in in the MAPC regions as well as our other markets like Seattle they're roughly twice as popular as just the standard bikes and the reason being it provides a

▶ 32:41 little bit of that assistance but also in the morning if you're commuting to work you don't necessarily want to get sweaty on your way to work right and so you know that's one of the reasons and the the model and the way that users use these bikes if I understand correctly is that a user would have to carry their own helmet right this does not provide a helmet or not have a helmet right is that true there's no access through this model through your participation in the program to a helmet so we don't physically put a helmet with with the bike it think of a way that would work but you know one person would get the helmet and then no one else after we have implemented a we had a very large campaign called respect the ride and that was really trying to promote the

▶ 33:34 Jennifer L. Lemmerman: the use of helmets for bikes and scooters and we donated 250,000 helmets as a result of that that campaign if anyone would like a helmet they can reach out the lime and we are happy to provide them great that's good to know thank you um and i'm not a biker and so i don't i'm not up to the rules um but obviously helmets are a smart thing to do but are they required do we know is there a law requiring riders to have yeah right yeah under 16. okay and your model is not for people under 16. right okay um and then finally my last question i i think this is for miss gaffey or even perhaps i know we have have mr. van cam in here I would assume but I just want to confirm in in this forum that our contract with lime bike protects the city from any liability

▶ 34:27 Robert A. Boisselle: should a person be injured while using a bike that was under a city contract is that true that is correct okay thank you very much thank you thank you any other questions all them in Boisel you give some impressive statistics on ridership and routes and so forth but some of these people I see zipping down Main Street on these online bikes have no helmets do you have any accident statistics that can go along with these graphs and so forth is there any records of accidents a number of accidents with these bikes and so forth as Denise and Emma mentioned we haven't received we've had received a handful of complaints through either c-click fix or our own our own system and of the ones I've seen there haven't been any complaints around injuries it's usually some violation of

▶ 35:24 Robert A. Boisselle: parking or you aren't able to end the ride and so your credit card is still getting charged it's that sort of complaint that we get but it's in the single low digits so what you're saying the reports that you get doesn't come from the police department or public health department and so forth we haven't gotten reports from the police departments or do you ask for them we haven't explicitly asked for them so you don't ask for any accidents to be reported by with your bikes and so forth we do ask for accidents to be reported okay we we haven't explicitly reached out to the police or to a hospital to ask if any accident has been caused by a lime bike and you know a lime bike is the same as any other bike if you write it responsibly the risks are exactly the same as any other

▶ 36:18 Robert A. Boisselle: manual bicycle or electric now on your app do you recommend that a potential client have a helmet when they're using these bikes yes so when you first done download the app you have to go through a set of of screens that show you how to operate the bicycle and you go through through a set of instructions some of them are how to park appropriately where to ride them and that you should wear a helmet that we highly recommend them we can't require it by law okay now you say through your helmets to call your company for a helmet is there a charge for the helmets that you're charging for these people so for folks who signed up as part of the petition the 250,000 there there wasn't a charge and for folks who are seeking to get a helmet at

▶ 37:12 Robert A. Boisselle: this point though okay good now you mentioned the e-bikes it's becoming very popular now that was the question concerning charging is there a charge electrical charge to keep these units operational there is a battery in the back of the bicycle and we monitor in fact even as a writer you can check the battery level so we monitor it on a regular basis anything below 30% we have a team of operations specialists that go out in the field and just replace the batteries so take them out and put a new one in so when you say you're monitoring them you're basically similar to the transponder to route their roots and so for it you're tracking in both the rider and the battery life at that point that is correct

▶ 38:01 Robert A. Boisselle: for every bicycle we have a view of the battery life yeah now your company is also involved with the e-scooters is this uh is this being considered down the line after the contract has ended to if If the e-bike is so popular, I've read in other areas that you have the e-bike, you move to e-scooters because there's a demand for it at that point. Is that being considered down the line after this year's contract? We're not considering it currently. Would the Lime Company offer forward to the city to use e-scooters in the city? So explicitly as part of the MAPC contract, e-scooters are out of scope. For e-scooters themselves, yes, it is even more popular than e-bikes, so another twice, the ridership

▶ 38:55 is even higher with scooters than it is for bikes. The first step is to legalize it at the state level, and I'm sure you've seen, or you may have seen a number of bills being discussed at the state level. Once it's allowed, once it's legal at the state level, we would most likely start with a pilot somewhere in Boston, Cambridge, Brookline, or Somerville. and what we've heard from surrounding communities is they wanna see the scooters be tested there first, the three, four month pilot, and if it's successful, we can expand to, or other communities are willing to try that out. Now, was the line bike, you mentioned Boston, Somerville, were you asked to, and Cambridge, were you asked to leave the cities, the bikes?

▶ 39:46 So we were never in those four cities, slash towns, because of the Blue Bike system there. So they have exclusivity when it comes to bikes, and so we worked on the outer perimeters. That's what it looks like on your map. You're sort of almost in the 128. So some bicycles will go into the Blue Bike zone, as we call it. But you were in Boston and in Somerville and Cambridge. no we were not we did not deploy in any of those four towns as what happened with Melrose bikes do migrate there and we have a team that within two or three hours will pull them back but we did not deploy specifically in any of those things okay you weren't deployed in those three cities okay I understand I understand that but even you brought up Somerville and Cambridge and Boston yes

▶ 40:42 and I just want to confirm that these are three major cities about Boston's a major city and they asked them to leave that's what I was trying to find out you might you might be thinking of the bird scooters that sort of touched down in Cambridge and Somerville over the summer and they hadn't gotten permission and then they sort of impounded them and got them to leave and Boston said no so yeah those and that was specific so the scooters were in these particular towns so and they were asked to leave another major player called bird deployed in I believe it was Cambridge and then were asked to leave we decided to wait and work with with the cities in question before deploying okay thank you Thank

▶ 41:25 Monica C. Medeiros: You mr. chair thank you all boys well the Madero's thank you thank you very much I was glad I especially to see representative from line bike here in In particular, I want to thank Ms. Gaffey and you as well, Emma, for your work on this, and I did get to see this presentation, or pretty close to it, at the Bike and Pedestrian Committee, so not my first time seeing it. I'm wondering if you could talk a little bit about the process to enter into this agreement, And was there any interaction with the Board of Aldermen or with the public before deciding to sign on to the MOU or the Statement of Work? So we were approached initially by MAPC as part of our usual, you know, we interact a lot with MAPC on a regular basis on many different programs.

▶ 42:23 Denise Gaffey: so we were approached they approached they approached many communities about interest in this pilot program in doing it on a regional basis and so you know that sounded like an intriguing idea it was actually started under the previous administration back when Rob Dolan was here so he he was interested in pursuing it so we attended a lot of meetings and participated in sort of the RFP process and and and then we were involved sort of on a regular basis in terms of helping to kind of shape the statement of work that came out of that I don't believe there were any formal meetings with the Board of Aldermen as part of that process I think it was yeah I think it was mostly done at the administrative

▶ 43:19 Denise Gaffey: level and I think I think one of the reasons for that is because it was we were viewing it as a pilot program and thought it made sense to kind of just pilot it first and before you know and see and really we had no I we had no idea what the interest would be either so so it's I think it sort of made sense just to do it that way so is the one complaint on see click fix me yeah yeah So can you explain a little bit how that process works and whether or not if somebody enters something on C-Click Fix if they should expect to hear from LimeBike or kind of how that works? So I know— Then I'll tell you my experience from the other side. Oh, great. Okay. I know when we were getting this—when we were putting the statement of work together,

▶ 44:12 Denise Gaffey: we contacted the Public Works Department because they kind of oversee that program and we put them in touch with line bike because we wanted that to be an automatic process we didn't want to burden the DPW workers at all with this program that was really very important to us and I think important to to line bike as well so we we worked with them to set up a process where those types of complaints would go directly to line bike and the the complaints we get some are through via email, via phone as well. We have customer service reps that interact with folks and there are a set of different actions that are taken based on is it an issue with the credit card? We'll reimburse you if you were charged

▶ 45:07 Monica C. Medeiros: and you couldn't figure out how to lock the bike. Was it, you know, you saw a bike that was falling over, We dispatched someone from our ops specialist team. Was there an issue with the bike? Same thing, we dispatch someone and bring it back into the warehouse and address those. So that would be how we take action. Okay. So generally, in terms of C-Click Fix, I really like that service because it allows us to show a picture of what's going on, which, as they say, is worth a thousand words, and gives you time and date. And it also, you know, really allows for a little bit of back and forth to let the user know that it's been, you know, received and kind of what's happened, where, you know, sometimes, you know, things might go into a one-way, you know, abyss and not come back.

▶ 46:00 Monica C. Medeiros: So I had reported, I had been driving home the night of one of the storms. It was, you know, supposed to be, you know, quite a lot. It wasn't quite as much, but it wasn't a great storm. And I saw a bike downtown. I know it's, you know, not supposed to be there at this point. I had driven past it and then said, you know, if I don't report this, who's going to report it? And I went back around and reported it. So that was Saturday night. It was after 7 o'clock, so it was certainly outside of the, you know, the time frame of a window. I eventually, that was Saturday night. The following Friday, I got an acknowledgment from Melrose DPW that they had received the complaint. But I, it's, you know, as far as I know, I think it's still open. I'm sure the, you know, the bike is off the street.

▶ 46:59 Monica C. Medeiros: i never heard anything back from lime bike so i you know i'm not sure how that process is actually you know working that's that's my experience so far um what i did and you know this is somewhat in relation to uh my ordinance but i'm gonna maybe pass i have a few of these photos i can pass around these were sent to me by constituents the days after this this uh the mayor had announced that the statement of work was um put in place and and it was you know i assume that that was most probably lime bike distributing the bicycles but you can see there's a number places where the bicycles were actually across the sidewalk not on the side handle but actually you know across the sidewalk and one of them particular is

▶ 48:11 Monica C. Medeiros: right by Norwoodville Hospital you know which which which troubles me because we do spend a lot of time and effort to to keep our sidewalks clear and to make sure that we're you know we're spending a lot of money to make sure that we're repairing our sidewalk so this seemed like it was starting off on you know maybe not the not the best foot and I know in the agreement that you have in place you know putting bicycles leaning against a hydrant like there are in some in one of those photos and blocking the sidewalk are not allowed that's that's correct right so was it do you know who put out the bicycles is it is it line bike it would have been the operations team at line that put out bikes they get

▶ 49:08 you know they're trained the guidance on where and how to deploy I can I can see that some of the deployments here are certainly less than ideal hopefully you've seen improvement in in the way the teams is deployed and as they learn where the hotspots are how to not block you know the sidewalks every differs from city city hopefully you've seen some improvement if there are any issues and complaints that's what the secret speaks and and the system that we have in place is supposed to do within two or three hours we are supposed to address this and if it's not you know I think there you can impound the bike essentially right so it is our team that deploys the other comment I'll make is that bikes falling over can that's not necessarily in our control and so if

▶ 50:10 Monica C. Medeiros: there's a complete within two or three hours we want to address that what what we see is people getting used to a new mode of transportation getting used to a new offer and just the same way you're gonna see some illegal parking with vehicles you see some illegal parking with with bikes but it gets better over time you know and I have seen you know definitely improvement and I think honestly a lot of that are you know I think the users I think this is something that a lot of people want to use I think it's a good use for our city I think, you know, overall, this is definitely a benefit for our community, for sure. And I think, you know, a lot of the users themselves are the ones who are very responsible.

▶ 50:53 Monica C. Medeiros: I think we have, you know, great citizens here who care about that. But, you know, this obviously did concern me that it seemed that that was the company putting these out in ways that were, you know, really hazardous and impeding. you know the next order of course we will talk a little bit about licensing but I just since we have you here and you're operating in many different communities could you talk a little bit about whether in some communities you do you do you sometimes put need to put the bicycles in the specific location rather than it you know it varies there are some areas where there's a designated parking spot for bicycles or scooters and if that exists in a city we actually prefer that because it makes it a lot easier for

▶ 51:52 everyone but most cities don't have that level of infrastructure yet some are working closely with with some to create that and improve the lanes but for the most part it's we deploy with the street furniture is and you know we meet the terms of the statement of work and we we also make sure that it's that if it's in front of that it's not impeding pedestrians from being able to walk on the sidewalk and and that's that's good to hear actually my proposed ordinance creates these designated station areas so hopefully we'll talk about that again shortly are you the cities that you operate in do you have a license in specific communities that you know I know that there are some cities where there is a permit there's a permit

▶ 52:57 Absolutely, but a license, off the top of my head, not that I know of, certainly not by individual vehicle. A permit to operate in the city and an agreement to either a cap or something that is demand-based. So if you see more than two or three trips per vehicle per day, you are allowed to increase the number of vehicles. If you see fewer than two, then you reduce, and two is just a number and in general could you speak a little bit about how long you're seeing bicycles like unattended do they are they really rotated all the time or do you find there's a certain number of days that they stay it it depends we we aim for so it's been it's been difficult in the winter because just the ridership unfortunately hasn't been there be it in

▶ 54:00 Melrose or any of the other municipalities are like our city our incentives and the city's incentive is is very much aligned because if vehicles aren't moving it's just not sustainable from a financial standpoint so if if we don't see at least one trip per vehicle per day and said that's a metric we use tbd you know try to reduce the number of bikes so that we can see we want every single bike to be used at least once per day in the winter it's been lower than that and it's hard to avoid some bikes will be will be used more often than others thank you thank you thank you alderman thank you mr chairman i'd also like to thank alderman mortimer for bringing this order before us this evening and for the the attendance of city officials as well as the representative

▶ 54:58 Michael P. Zwirko: from line bike for being here i just have a couple of questions kind of comments because i'm going to save the bulk of those for the the next order but i wanted to build off something that alderman butcher had raised and i think i might have misheard you so i just wanted to confirm is you have a program for low-income individuals or is that program in low-income communities meaning can is anybody able to take advantage of that program or is it contingent on the community okay I didn't know if it had to do with where the contractor the understanding was in the community but it's for any user okay and then about complaints so if I and by the way I'm a user of line bike I've actually taken a line bike here to City Hall for meetings at night so I use it quite frequently so

▶ 55:53 Michael P. Zwirko: enjoy the product so if I made a complaint to lime would that complaint in some way shape or form be forwarded to the city I just want to make sure that there's a two-way street here because I could ultimately complain I have it up here the slide for customer service so I just want to make sure that the city's aware of the complaints that you're receiving so that there's a full kind of free flow of information that comes in I'll have to check into that I don't know if we forward every complaint to you guys essentially or we on a regular basis we will share the statistics and say we've had five complaints over the last three months here's what they were but I don't know that we forward the specific complaints back to the city because that just

▶ 56:37 Michael P. Zwirko: creates extra yeah I think the the natural the natural reaction would be to contact the city with a complaint so I understand why you know maybe the health department or the police department or community the planning department would be fielding these but I'm just I just want to make sure that if they come to the company they're coming back to the city because I think it behooves us to understand what some of the pitfalls or experiences are by folks and customers that are contacting you I don't think it needs to be you know kind of per complaint basis but certainly some amount of information so we can react to it if need be okay yeah we've made inquiries too I think that's a great point and we do want to know what kind of complaints right hearing it's a we

▶ 57:23 Michael P. Zwirko: don't know where these people when we don't hear the complaints but to know that they're getting well we know they're being addressed but just to know the nature of them yeah and like I said I would assume that most complaints would come to the city but in the event that they don't they start with you it's nice for us to get that information back so the program can enhance itself and if it needs to so I'm appreciative that at least in the aggregate it does it does flow back the the other question I had was also raised so how do you enforce the 16 year old rule I mean a 14 year old could have a smartphone and certainly could unlock a line bike without a helmet and use the bike right I mean that's that's seems to be something that would be very difficult

▶ 58:03 Michael P. Zwirko: to police it would be so so there are a few ways one would be so you you upload your a form of ID and through the app can recognize the date of birth that she said so it's going to be that the fact that you have a credit card linked to your smartphone that's how we would pay unless you're you're using the lime access program is it going to stop every single instance no and the I think this question is actually for Miss Gaffey so I think one of the things for a lot of folks in Melrose was that the feeling was that one day all of a sudden we woke up and there was bikes not the trickle of bikes that we saw in the fall of 2017 or in early 2018 when malden initiated their own pilot program but the concerted effort of

▶ 59:10 Michael P. Zwirko: the bikes being strategically placed just seemed to on like november 1st or 2nd boom they they hit and it says that the memorandum of understanding was you know signed in may and the first blog post that i think came from the mayor was on november 1st and then there was another post that came from your department's website on August, excuse me, October 30th or October 31st. And I'm just wondering why the lag in information to be, to come out from not only the signing of the agreement, but also to when bikes showed up. And the reason I say that is because I feel that if information was passed on a little bit better, this might have not, we might not have had to have seen the the uptick in kind of surprise about this program and I just didn't

▶ 59:58 Denise Gaffey: know if there was a reason the six-month period as to why there was not that much information that was spread or maybe I maybe I'm missing something from the date that the memorandum was no I mean it took a long it did take some time to work out the details of our particular statement of work yeah I will agree to that I mean there each statement of work is is luminous is tailored to our own particular needs and so um so we had that just took it took some time it didn't happen overnight and and also just to get the mayor who's a new administration and um this you know all the things that she was juggling so it just um we didn't want it we didn't want to rush it out because we wanted it to be well thought through and um so it did take a fair amount of time and you know i definitely i

▶ 1:00:47 Denise Gaffey: see your point I think this information is really very very helpful and I think you know we did try to you know with the blog post get the information as the program was getting you know launched I think that the nice thing about doing this presentation now is because we actually have real data and I think that does give us you know it does give I know a deeper element to the whole you know to the to the presentation but I certainly see your point that I'm for many people it may have been you know something they were not anticipating and thank you for that because I think that the I'm not sure the exact launch date but I know that the blog post came out on November 1st sure so um the blog post

▶ 1:01:33 came out as soon as our statement of work was signed so the MOU was signed over the summer that kind of like launched the regional project and some communities had their sow signed right away and they were launched and lime was bringing bikes into those communities and rebalancing them lime wasn't doing any of that in melrose until that happened until we signed the sow that outreach went out and that's when they started bringing the bikes in to melrose so that's why at that date in like november all of a sudden there were a lot of bikes because that was around the time that we signed that contract regulation thanks thanks for that clarification I'll add to the folks that may be watching at home or anything else that comes out of this there is actually a link on the

▶ 1:02:16 Denise Gaffey: your department's website about the bike share program and a version not this actual presentation but a December presentation which is very similar so it's it's it's great material so we had the website created from the very beginning yeah we didn't have all that information as part of the blog post we had a link that people could go right to the website to read all the rules and and understand the program a little bit better see the visuals about parking and and whatnot but the presentation was done back in December as part of our participation in a bike ped bike ped committee yeah yeah it's very comprehensive website so I encourage folks to check it out but those are for this particular order those are all the questions I had I appreciate your time

▶ 1:02:58 Kate Lipper-Garabedian: Thank You mr. chairman any other questions thank you thank you mr. chair and alderman Mortimer and Madeira springing this to us and for the three of you being here tonight the MOU and the statement of work are those publicly available they're public documents we we don't we didn't post them okay website or anything I'd be interested in just taking a look at them especially maybe the statement of work because I assume it sort of outlines all of the range the particular arrangement you got the snapshot you know the readers digest version right so that would be great and sort of building off of alderman Bewtra and aldermen's work goes point about enforcement which was on slide 10 I think you all have confirmed that really

▶ 1:03:48 Kate Lipper-Garabedian: enforcement currently and perhaps I guess under the statement of work is incumbent on the user to sort of you know someone walking by to report an issue the city is not proactively doing that although perhaps you know folks who are out on the streets during the day are noticing things and letting you all know is that fair to say okay I do think that you know in any any phase of work that goes beyond the pilot if we were to do licensing or permitting it would be good to require vendors to provide you know if it's not already explicit in the statement of work which I haven't seen to explicitly say you do need to roll up complaints that you are receiving on a monthly basis or whatever you think is

▶ 1:04:31 Kate Lipper-Garabedian: appropriate so that we can keep track of that and then I think the only other question on this order is just to get a sense from you about so the number of employees or contractors you have hired in this area to support the pilot and what you know are they folks from our local communities so we the size of the team has has changed over time we have two so we have a couple operations managers and then at peak we had 25 operations specialists that were across the MAPC region I will have to check whether we had anyone from hard locally from Melrose we are now down to eight to ten people and we will plan on scaling back up in the spring and the responsibility of these individuals is to deploy bicycles to rebalance on a regular basis bikes move away from the

▶ 1:05:30 Kate Lipper-Garabedian: hotspots so bringing them back and while that happens that's that's our our enforcement mechanism is as as these ops specialists are in the cities if they see any bicycle that's fallen over you know making sure that it's upright that if it's not parked appropriately that they're all gathered together and so that happens multiple times throughout the day after the morning rush at noon after the evening rush thank you sorry one last question for the planning group so on slide 11 and 12 you have ridership statistics for manual bikes I'm assuming those any bikes and e-bikes or the the manual bikes are the lime manual bikes not just locally owned okay all right thank you very much thank you thank you

▶ 1:06:17 Peter D. Mortimer: Alderman Alderman Mortimer thank you very much mr. chairman I brought this order forward and it was referred to the Committee on Legal and Legislative and I'm not a member of this committee but I would respectfully request or suggest to the members of this committee that this particular order be given a recommendation to place on file for the full board I think we've gotten the information I think we've seen what we need to see with this the next order in queue which I'm not sure if we'll get to before we have to recess for the full board at 815 is a little more nuts and bolts and seems like it'll be more involved but I would recommend to the committee or request respectfully request from the committee on legal and legislative matters that the first order

▶ 1:07:10 Monica C. Medeiros: the order I submitted be given a recommendation to place on file to the to the full board and as the rest of the night goes with alderman Medeiros order that that's that will probably be something for later minutes in the evening thank you very much thank you I have one question then I would like to move to to recommend this be placed on file and move to recess until our full board meeting gets so my first question or my last question I guess should be is I is the city of Melrose receiving any compensation under the statement of work from line bike no no thank you I'd like to move that we place this on file recommend we place it in file motion to place this item on file by Alderman Medeiros do I have a second second second by Alderman Bewtra all in favor aye

▶ 1:08:08 Francis X. Wright Jr.: no it's placed on file right now we are at 810 the full board meeting of the Board of Aldermen was scheduled to start at 745 we have to recess by 815 I'm thinking rather than start a new item on the legislative legislative agenda will open the full board now then we would just quickly open that and then come back to legal and legislative I have two other city officials here I'd like to respect their times but they've been here since 830 this morning motion for recess second motion to recess by Alderman Dzerko seconded by Alderman all in favor good evening the hour being 8 12 on February 4th 2019 I call to order this meeting of the Melrose Board of Aldermen this meeting is being recorded and broadcast live on MMTV as well as on the MMTV website and it can

▶ 1:11:42 Francis X. Wright Jr.: recess return session for the legal and legislative committee of the melrose board of aldermen when we recessed we had placed on file the first item on our agenda mr chairman i moved it to take items excuse me take orders two zero one nine dash four zero and order two zero one nine dash three nine out of order this evening and place order two zero one nine dash three four at the base of those alderman zyrko has moved to take orders three and four which are orders two zero one nine dash forty and two to zero one nine dash three nine out of order we have two city officials who have been here um all day they're here for these items i don't believe these items will take much time before we return to the line bikes so

▶ 1:13:31 Francis X. Wright Jr.: The motion of Alderman Zwirko is before you. Second. Seconded by Alderman Medeiros. All in favor? Aye. The items will be taken out of order. Order 2019-40, acceptance of Section 3A of Chapter 64G as amended by Section 6 of Chapter 337 of the Acts of 2018. We have a motion to, well, we have suspended the rules already. We have a request that the city solicitor come to the microphone. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. So, if I may, I am the sponsor of this order. I sponsored this order soon after it was passed by the state legislature. I believe you can update us on what we can do, must do, or actually at this point perhaps no longer need to do. Sure. Thank you, Mr. Chairman and members of the committee.

▶ 1:14:42 So the purpose of the order, as you and I discussed prior to submission, was to impose an excise tax on short-term rentals, Airbnbs and similar uses that appear to be growing over time here in the community and elsewhere. In order to do that, a municipality would have to adopt the provisions of Section 3A of Chapter 64G. Since the time of submission of this order, the Department of Revenue, Division of Local Services, and we conversed with Alderman Medeiros on this, has issued an FAQ, Frequently Asked Questions, where we had previously adopted that provision of Mass General Law as relates to motels and hotels the same provision remains in effect and would continue to apply now to short term rentals so there is no need for the board to hold another acceptance vote

▶ 1:15:37 of that section of the statute and that's as a result of the FAQ issued by the division of local services subsequent to the filing of that order correct I appreciate your correct your informing the board of that in the public correct and just so the members in the public understand once this excise tax is in place it would require operators of the short-term rentals to register with the Department of Revenue in registering with the Department of Revenue they would then be obligated to make direct they would pay the DOR directly per transaction that these tax receipts wouldn't be collected locally they would be paid out from the operator to the Department of Revenue and the Department of Revenue would then on a quarterly

▶ 1:16:20 Michael P. Zwirko: basis disperse the excise portion back to the city of melrose by the operator you mean uh companies like home away airbnb correct correct or any other entity operating these types of short-term rentals but it wouldn't be on the individual property owner per se correct thank you do you have any questions for the city solicitor thank you mr chairman um you may not know the answer to this and apologies in advance but i think i remember that boston had put something forth i want to say towards the end of december on this and that almost immediately uh the operator airbnb filed suit against that and i'm just curious um do you can you speak to any like legal standing of this i know that the state obviously um promulgated these efforts so uh where does

▶ 1:17:14 Michael P. Zwirko: this whole Airbnb home away operator rental market stand if you get my understanding is there was some kind of an action filed against the city of Boston I don't know the status of that as far as I'm understanding your question correctly is it whether or not this tax is authorized the quit and thank you for for the update the question isn't whether the the tax is authorized I guess and I have no problem going forward I think this is really you forward-thinking proposal for both the state and this board but I I guess I'm just wondering what the if we know where the lead any settlement in terms of the legal component of this will ultimately be I mean is Airbnb has there been a threat by Airbnb or home away or similarly situated companies to

▶ 1:18:02 challenge what Massachusetts has put forth do we feel that this is settled law that this is going to operate I mean my view would be I don't represent the Commonwealth of course but my view would be that we wish you did well my view would be that that is a valid exercise of the legislature's taxing authority yeah and that our ability to accept that statute locally it just emanates from the legislators legislators taxing authority one of the things I would point out and I think this is the point you're trying to drive home is the the city of Melrose should consider an alderman Rita and I discussed this possibly imposing some kind of regulatory requirement whether it be a local registration requirement here in Melrose whether that be through an

▶ 1:18:47 Francis X. Wright Jr.: ordinance a traditional ordinance or through a zoning ordinance that's something that you probably should consider I suspect in Boston that might be part of the issue but a registration requirement probably would help a track who's operating in the city and if someone is operating unlawfully in the city would give us a bit more teeth to locally enforce it right thank you for that I because the time that this order was filed and the FAQ I would like to move that the the DOR or the DLS rather FAQ be attached to this order if I may in further response to all the Missouri Co I and the city solicitors comments I have had conversations with Paul Johnson the inspectional services director as relates to implementing some type of registration licensing ordinance which

▶ 1:19:48 Francis X. Wright Jr.: were allowed to under the new statute and I don't want to speak directly for him but our conversations were along the lines of he thought it was important because he does not know where these operations are taking place across the city and there are issues of health and safety that he could see becoming an issue and life safety potentially you can imagine there may be circumstances where if somebody's renting out a room or even some type of in-law or what you know you need to have certain parameters Matt as relates to the building code you know two means of egress that type of thing so I he's extremely busy yeah he asked me if I could be patient and work with him on that so of course I agreed and I intend to be working with him and the city solicitor and trying to

▶ 1:20:45 Francis X. Wright Jr.: put something together so that we can at least create some type of registration perhaps permitting system so that the this the city officials who need to know which would be our inspectional services our public safety officials know where people may be operating short-term rental units thank you any other questions thank you thank you chairman Wright and I know you were trying to get this out there and make sure that we're taking advantage of all opportunities seeing that this FAQ has come out would you recommend that we move forward with the recommendation for leave to withdraw withdraw the order since we've already accepted the statute in 2009 as I'm sitting at the chair I guess I'll allow someone else to make the motion either

▶ 1:21:44 Monica C. Medeiros: withdraw our table so file about that table place on file I'm sorry okay so I will move to recommend that this ought to be placed on file we have motion by Alderman Medeiros to place this matter on file seconded by Alderman Lemmerman I'm sorry and on discussion just also mentioned that I had had an opportunity to speak to attend the division thank you the Mass Municipal Association annual meeting workshop with the division of local services I believe Alderman Butcher was there as well and I do believe that they said that they expected that DOR should be able to provide us with a list of those who have registered and who they are you know collecting taxes from from the individuals but we'll see as that moves forward so just informational

▶ 1:22:48 Jennifer L. Lemmerman: thank you thank you thank you and I don't have any further questions I just wanted to echo Alderman Medeiros point and say thank you to the maker of the order and the chair of our committee Alderman Wright I know that this was an issue that kind of wound its way through the state legislature for a while as soon as it was resolved our the maker of the order was bringing it forward to us and continuing to think about opportunities to bring revenue into the city which we all know right now is a critical thing for us to be doing so just wanted to point that out and say thank you Thank You president Lemerman Alderman Bewtra thank you um thank you for putting this order forward and I just had a couple questions regarding the excise tax itself do we have I think

▶ 1:23:36 as I read it understood it in the FAQ the funds go to the general fund do we have any option to designate those funds go to a specific place or do they have to go tax by statute would go to the benefit of the general fund if the city were to adopt additionally under this statute what's referred to as the impact fee that impact fee on a prorated basis I believe 35% of it would have to go into a restricted fund for the benefit of affordable housing production and development in the community and the remaining 65% would revert to the general fund now the the impact fee as I understand the statute applies or could apply it assuming acceptance to what are called professional operators which means essentially that you're you're a you're running multiple short-term

▶ 1:24:42 rentals in the same community at multiple more than one property so if you had someone who was operating on three three-family homes and they were operating in Airbnb out of all three three-family homes they technically would be considered a professional operator subject to the not only excise tax but also to the community impact fee got it so folks who would be say renting out their house for the summer would not be through Airbnb or something like that would not be subject to the impact fee if they were only renting out one house got it they were renting out two houses then under the statute and the FAQ they would be subject to the impact fee great thank you for clarifying that there's all my questions for now any further questions thank you just a quick follow

▶ 1:25:34 Kate Lipper-Garabedian: up on that do we need to do anything proactively to be able to participate in the community impact fee or are we all or is that also covered by our participation under this so as I'm reading this and as I'm reading the the FAQ with respect to the impact fee it appears that a separate acceptance vote is required to do that the question however is whether or not there are a sufficient number of properties in Melrose being used in such a way that would justify the impact fee we don't I don't have that data this evening and I don't know if we have that data compiled it as of this point in time right okay so presumably we might get that from dor or through our own registry and it might behoove us to consider adding that because if you did have so we have a

▶ 1:26:23 Francis X. Wright Jr.: housing shortage and in some ways in this area so to the degree that if it's possible that we have anyone who would qualify for that we might want to have that in place to be able to take correct I think that's a very worthwhile effort okay thank you so much any other questions any other comments no we have a motion to place this item on file all in favor no where the item is placed on file item 4 on our agenda is order 2019-39 accepting clause 22 H of section 5 of chapter 59 of the general laws as amended by section 15 of chapter 218 of the X 2018 we have before us today in addition to the city solicitor the The assessor, Chief Assessor, Mr. Wilcock, Chris Wilcock, this is another item that was

▶ 1:27:23 Francis X. Wright Jr.: sponsored by me, and it relates to providing a real estate tax exemption to the parents or guardians of families of servicemen and women who are killed in the performance of their duty trying to scroll down to it here but I believe that's a summary of what it is we're under suspension of the rules if mr. Wilcox and mr. van camping can comment on it I'd appreciate it mr. Jim and just before mr. Wilcox speaks I just want to state for the board that this order has the full support of the mayor we obviously think that we should as much as we can recognize families whose loved ones make the ultimate sacrifice and mr. Wilcox will explain in a bit more detail what this actually does but the mayor just did want me to

▶ 1:28:22 Francis X. Wright Jr.: express this evening that she's in full support of this order so this exemption is for surviving parents or guardians of a service member that's killed in action the requirements are that they have to live in the Commonwealth for five consecutive years they have to be the owner of the home but the assessing department is in favor of this as a great exemption so we have your full support and I'm here to answer any questions about it if I may that's generally how I would term it to is killed in action but I believe it's killed during active duty suffered for an injury or illness documented by the Department of Veterans Affairs or missing in action with the presumption of finding death as a result of active duty correct when we take in the

▶ 1:29:18 paperwork we actually have the veterans the VA actually define this for us and there there is a couple of different qualifications in here but ultimately they make the determination and we just take that as part of the application every time that someone applies for this thank you we have a motion on this order motion to recommend motion to recommend by Alderman Lemmerman second second by Alderman Medeiros discussion Alderman Lemmerman thank you just mr. Wilcox just one quick question so we do have certain exemptions or supports in place right now for service members who are injured right in the in the correct we have two classifications one's a minimum of a 10% disability and the other one is

▶ 1:30:12 Jennifer L. Lemmerman: a hundred percent so from 10 to 99 is one exemption and then 100% is another exemption correct thank you um you know i see this as a as a order in the same spirit um you know not only in the city um showing our our gratitude for the sacrifices that members of the armed forces have made um you know but also a recognition of how that can impact one's life um going forward and there's very real impacts for the families when someone's lost as well so if we're doing it for someone who had performed duties and was had is living with those impacts going forward i think it makes absolute perfect sense and is the right thing to do for us to do it for families of those who don't come home so again thank you to the maker of the order for this um and to the

▶ 1:31:00 Michael P. Zwirko: mayor's office for her support and um you know fully support this thank you thank you alderman Lemmerman any other questions or comments alderman Zwirko thank you mr chairman thank you for bringing this order forward i just had a question on the applicability so is is it going forward or is it retroactive i mean can it apply to let's say a vietnam vet who he or she gave their life and their parents are still here with us and as it just takes effect from the date of the passage of this how does it apply so as far as the tax year it would be from present going forward as far as the qualifications the department of revenue is still actually writing all the guidelines for this i believe this passed in august so all of the literature from dls is um is not updated with this

▶ 1:31:45 yet so uh i don't mean to be vague but this is what i have um you don't have any guidance i don't have the specific guidance right now but i would assume it's mirrored with killed in action which would be a benefit that would be eligible for um the wife or or husband of the person killed in action so this is kind of for the parents the same thing so i would assume it would be this the same guidelines thank you and just to add to that alderman Zwirko uh the statute um indicates that the the time of death could be whenever um at the end of the day so if uh parents of a son who died in vietnam want to take advantage of this full exemption on their real estate tax i'm reading the statute to allow that to happen and it would apply to tax years beginning on or

▶ 1:32:36 Monica C. Medeiros: after January 1st 2019 so great Thank You mr. chairman those are all the questions I had thank you thank you and just clarify so that would be the exemption that we're offering are there any and that the city of Melrose would be covering in full are there any reimbursements for the state for this kind of benefit or is it just specific to Melrose the the current statute we have for the wife's or the the spouses of anyone killed in action are reimbursable by the state we fill out a form every year so assume that this would also qualify there but gateway which is the state's website has not been updated with this yet so I would assume it would mirror the the other killed in action clause and if and maybe you can speak to the killed in action or

▶ 1:33:32 Monica C. Medeiros: you know if somebody was missing in action and then was found would would the the parents need to regard me and need to repay that money or is there an assumption that we you know I'm not sure what the law says to that and if you could just I think the I mean that's obviously a complex rare situation I don't think anyone in the city of Melrose would seek to recover those payments particularly if there was a presumptive finding of death for that MIA individual I don't think the DOR has any guidance on that so I would I think it's safe to say there's probably no mechanism to recover nor right nor i think would we frankly want to be no expectation that that they should be concerned about if they take this correct and

▶ 1:34:30 Francis X. Wright Jr.: then be worried that correct the best thing in the world could happen that their child is found but correct yeah okay thank you thank you any other questions or comments seeing none we have before us a motion for x to recommend acceptance of this statute all in favor aye aye it will be a recommendation of acceptance of this statute thank you gentlemen thank you returning to the regular order of business item two on our agenda is order number 2019-34 amending melrose revised ordinances to add chapter 222 article 4 shared mobility vehicles sponsored by alderman Medeiros thank you chairman wright and being that we're still under the suspension of rules i'm just going to move forward so we talked a little bit about this during the

▶ 1:35:41 Monica C. Medeiros: presentation of course but you know I had seen over the you know past year and a half or so sporadically we'd see lime bikes and you know I think possibly some other bikes here and there in the city and felt that this was something that we should be thinking about regulating and licensing and as we came upon you the beginning of november and i really started to get inundated with you know some of these these pictures of the bicycles you know coming in and blocking the sidewalks and that it really seemed to me that you know this is a use that is providing a service to our community it's a use that is probably only going to grow i would see that there are other communities like we heard about some of the scooters coming into boston and cambridge without an agreement in place

▶ 1:36:44 Monica C. Medeiros: and you know i just looked at it and i said you know how can we let one company in but not another company you know what's to stop many companies from coming in and it seems like it's a use that affects the use of our public roadways our public sidewalks and it's something that should be licensed we license taxi cabs we license you know livery service drivers like that for uber and lyft and that this should be something that that we should license as well so So that's where I looked to, and I looked kind of all across the country, both here in Massachusetts and as well as at ordinances from all across the country, places as far away as California, Santa Monica, Salt Lake City, Memphis, Tennessee, Savannah, Georgia,

▶ 1:37:50 Monica C. Medeiros: and you know some places as close as you know Salem and Arlington and here in Mass and so I tried you know my best to take some pieces of these different ordinances and place together something that I think would work for Melrose and you know my goal here is it's not really to it's certainly not to prohibit this use in the city it's just to provide some accountability in particular for when the bikes are not in use and you can see that I've used the term shared mobility vehicles this is a term that's used in many other parts of the country and it encompasses pretty much all wheeled vehicles and not automobiles specifically I want to you know point out that the very first line the very first definition is referring to other than automobile. So, you know, this should not

▶ 1:38:52 Monica C. Medeiros: in any way, shape, or form affect anything like Zipcar or any services like that. This is not meant to address that and should not address that. I've categorized these in particular into shared mobility vehicles, both motorized and non-motorized. And And in particular, out of the category of motorized, excluded electronic or e-assist technology. Because you'll see towards the end that I've moved to ban motorized shared utility vehicles. And I don't think that an e-bike really fits that category. We heard the definition. and from the representative from LimeBike earlier tonight, that that's just, it's not really a motorized use. But we do already have, and I just want to kind of make clear and point out in terms of motorized,

▶ 1:39:58 Monica C. Medeiros: we do already have Section 202-31F. We have a section in our ordinances about scooters, and it specifically bans scooters from being used on sidewalks so that's kind of already in in place in the city and I personally don't think that we are sort of ready to have a mass onslaught of you know motorized scooters especially when we already have ordinances that are pretty strict prohibiting them I think they're not and this idea of a sharing service would be something where it's unmanned there's no representative here this is people kind of come and go and and sell it provide a self-service access to the vehicles I so I personally don't think that adding motorized scooters right now is where we should be

▶ 1:41:01 Monica C. Medeiros: I think it would probably especially without somebody manning the station and And I think we just have a lot of scooters on the sidewalks and not necessarily in the road. I think there's some dangers with scooters. And so I did sort of seek to prohibit that kind of use in this ordinance, but yet leave it open to other, you know, and there's obviously with a motorized vehicle of any kind, there's also, you know, different emissions that come from this. So, you know, this is to encourage the use of non-motorized shared mobility vehicles, but yet provide some licensing. I took the definition of a sharing service. It's pretty, it's almost identical to that from Savannah, Georgia, for instance. And the main points here are this provides licensing.

▶ 1:41:57 Monica C. Medeiros: a lot of the process from the licensing is the same as our processes in other parts of our city of Melrose ordinances and I'm going with a this would limit the not the number of shared sharing services but the number of actual vehicles on the street so I had in my research I had found that in some areas you know there just be a glut of vehicles on the street and sort of creating mostly in researching this I found you know two problems which are the same ones that I think many of us might hear as as aldermen that in some cases you could get a glut of vehicles bicycles you know on the street and sort of you know making a mess seeming on it seemingly unattended where they shouldn't be and kind of this other aspect of the bicycles being where they

▶ 1:42:58 Monica C. Medeiros: shouldn't be blocking sidewalks and creating some kind of impediment so you know in this ordinance I have limited the number of vehicles that a sharing service that we can license in total in the city so perhaps we could have more than one sharing service operate but no more than 60 non motorized shared mobility vehicles and you know I think that number could be something that we might want to adjust I'll come back to that in a minute but I sought to limit the number of vehicles and as well and I think probably one of the most important things here is to have the city create designated station areas in our more urban districts so for instance you know right now the bicycles can be pretty much anywhere downtown I think that we could working with the Planning

▶ 1:43:57 Monica C. Medeiros: Department and have them to designate areas you know I think it would be very reasonable that we could find a place you know somewhere in the middle of downtown maybe near Mexico Lindo another maybe downtown near closer to Papagino's one closer to City Hall where you know people know who use this app they log in and they can find a vehicle a bicycle that's nearby and I think they could walk you know in the in the busy areas downtown I think they could easily walk one block and pick up a bicycle and without any hindrance and you know so the idea of 60 is a number that you know I kind of looked at this and said okay we've got you know seven wards and if each ward got you know five bicycles and

▶ 1:44:52 Monica C. Medeiros: maybe you want 15 downtown and you know maybe we'd have a little more in some of these hot spots like the train stations or the areas near the towers Plaza by Whole Foods you know in some of these other areas you'd have maybe the common you know you'd have areas designated where people where bicycles would be now that would allow the user to still go out take the bike and leave the bike at their house and should they not pick the bike back up again the user wouldn't be expected to go you know bring the bat the bicycle back to the designated station area but if the user finishes with the bicycle and leaves it there unattended and nobody else uses it for 72 hours then it would expect that the

▶ 1:45:47 Monica C. Medeiros: the company the sharing service would then come back and have to move that bike to one of the designated station areas you know what they're calling rebalancing so I thought 72 hours was a reasonable amount of time so that if people were say using the bicycle to get to and from work and you know if they didn't use it you know beyond a three-day weekend that they probably weren't going to continue using it and it should be moved back to a station area you know to do this in order to find an area and a place I think it was Benjamin Franklin said you know a place for everything and everything in its place and I see you know Boston has the blue bikes and those are docked bikes this technology is great that you don't need to have a dock in order for it to

▶ 1:46:42 Monica C. Medeiros: work with line bike but we may consider a docked biking service in the future but I in being in downtown Boston and seeing how they've managed to have all the bicycles you know lots of them corralled in one location some of them in very visible locations and some of them a little bit tucked away but they're all very neat there's an obvious place where they belong where you know users can pick them up and take them they're not just all over the the street and i think that this is something that you know we should hope to do here um in Melrose so the the ordinance itself is licensing and it's meant to be an ordinance so it's hopefully something that would have some staying power I try to keep it as much as possible just to kind of cover the the basic the things

▶ 1:47:43 Monica C. Medeiros: we really want to make sure we cover like for instance in the snow that the bikes or the snow emergency or a weather emergency that the bikes are off the street now the particulars of how they get there we can and the ordinance allows for additional regulations to be promulgated and this is very much similar to say that scooter ordinance which I mentioned earlier where the ordinance itself allows the police to promulgate additional regulations to enforce it's similar to the dog park ordinances that we have that allow the Park Commission to you know dig in and create more specific regulations but the ordinance itself you know I just said okay get the get the bikes off the street in the snow it's here to that they must hold the city harmless have

▶ 1:48:41 Monica C. Medeiros: designated station areas it talks about some certain areas again that are very much specifically prohibited for parking, including blocking a sidewalk, a crosswalk, or a roadway, and that it should never block a fire hydrant, handicap parking space, a ramp, nor a bus or a taxi stand. And this allows for the police or our parking enforcement officers to assess fines directly to the company. And so this is a little different. This is a different kind of use um you know they the company the shared sharing service is the one who is the owner of these vehicles and ultimately the ones that are responsible and i think if we found that you know in their in their duties you know if a police officer finds that you know this

▶ 1:49:33 Monica C. Medeiros: bike is you know flat out across the the walkway downtown that police officer can write a ticket to the company and that the company would agree to that in the beginning it calls for a licensing fee of $300 annually it's just not you know a tremendous amount of money but I think that is something that the fee would be something that you know there is with any license there's some cost of administration and I think that that's a reasonable cost I didn't make that higher because I don't think we want to you know fee I don't think we want to discourage this use but I think we do want to encourage responsibility so the licensing fee itself is not that high I don't think is that prohibitive but if

▶ 1:50:30 Monica C. Medeiros: If the company is in violations and not taking care of their property with the bicycles or other shared vehicles, that we should have some accountability, and then they would be fined, or the vehicle's impounded, and there would be costs associated with that, which would be punitive, I think. so again it's not to stop them from operating it's really to encourage them to take responsibility and to provide some kind of accountability we as the board of aldermen were i think we were really lucky today to have line bike here but throughout this process of this um the memorandum of understanding the state would work you know i i don't think the board of aldermen was involved in that process at all i think we all have a lot to offer and

▶ 1:51:35 Monica C. Medeiros: i don't think the public was really involved in that process and by creating a license that would mean that any potential sharing service operator would have to come before the board of aldermen we'd be able to ask them all the questions and decide whether or not to grant a license And if we found that they weren't being responsive, if they weren't answering complaints, if they did leave the, you know, if they were continually leaving the vehicles blocking the sidewalk, for instance, we have a mechanism to bring them back in and have a conversation about this. We, in my experience of, you know, more than a decade on this board, we've only done that with licensees, I think maybe twice. But it's important to have that authority, I think, and I think that's the authority of this board.

▶ 1:52:32 Monica C. Medeiros: So I really, I want to thank all of you for listening to that. And in particular, I want to thank the Bicycle and Pedestrian Committee. I've reached out to them and almost immediately they allowed me to come in and and speak to them You know that was back actually in in November. And of course, that's when I had submitted I think they saw you in in December early December, but the way our Our process works this is actually the first time that this has been you know before all of us to to discuss and discuss any potential amendments or actions so thank you for for sharing all that and I hopefully I covered the basics and I hope that we have passage so thank you thank you for bringing this before us it's thinking

▶ 1:53:32 Jennifer L. Lemmerman: proactively about this issue it's obviously a very well researched and thought-out order I will say that at the beginning of this pilot program I was certainly one of the people who was going down Main Street every day I ride from one end of the city to the other both to and from on the way to the tee and just seeing these bikes everywhere and wondering kind of where they came from and you know pointing out areas of concern I will say that since that time I have seen and not just because right now is winter I recognize that that also means fewer bikes, but even in the fall and when the weather was still good saw vast improvements In the number of bicycles that were in the city became seemingly more appropriate

▶ 1:54:21 Jennifer L. Lemmerman: You know, you weren't seeing these massive groups of them Taking up the entire sidewalk. I do feel that the users in the city have sort of made it over the learning curve in terms of how they should be positioned I used to you know would walk my daughter with my with her stroller and would have to kind of go up on grass to get around them I have not had to do that in a very long time I think that as the program has gone on these issues have corrected themselves you know whether by lime bike learning our community better or by our community learning line bike better issues have have at least in my experience resolved themselves in a lot of ways i i would ask through the chair to alderman medeiros

▶ 1:55:08 Monica C. Medeiros: if an assessment has been done of how much this would cost to implement and to maintain in terms of the licensing the administrative cost of the staffing that that would require and the enforcement thank you thank you alderman president lemmerman no this is the initial part of this and again I found this to be similar for instance we you know we license our alcohol licenses and I think the cost for those licenses annually or something like three hundred and fifty dollars so I took an extrapolation that that would be a similar kind of a similar kind of you know it cost for administration of the license you know I think it would be similar to you know some of our other licenses for say you know one one

▶ 1:56:23 Monica C. Medeiros: taxicab license I think is a hundred dollar fee so you know I think we're somewhere in between there in terms of what we're what we're providing I don't anticipate that this would be something that the you know if everything is moving along swimmingly I don't think that the police would be writing tickets and you know there's certainly but if they did there would be a fine associated with that ticket so there would be some you know recouping of the cost of that enforcement thank you very much I think it seems to me that a lot of the issues that are identified in this order really valid issues that we're seeing are things that it's actually in the interest of the business to correct anyway so you know moving them back within a certain period of

▶ 1:57:24 Jennifer L. Lemmerman: time not having too many in the city what to do when there's snow those are things that it's in the interest of line bike to to correct those issues and it seems to me that they have been the liability issues also covered we learned earlier through our contract I do think the staging area is an interesting idea because we have seen it these are kind of bunched up in some places that you know maybe there's not as much room but the line bike representative mentioned that that is something that's helpful to them too and that they like to work with cities to identify those places and I actually think it could be interesting you know we have miss Gaffey here just put in a plug that that would be

▶ 1:58:05 Jennifer L. Lemmerman: something I would encourage the city to maybe talk to them about if we can identify not that they have to be exclusively there but there's some places that would be helpful to both the public and and line bike if we had some and I can think of a few where there's where they're set up by the by the company that that sort of served that purpose so I think given all that for me it's in that fact that this is a pilot and we're seeing these issues being worked out and the potential cost I'm certainly not against you know putting our resources our capacity behind things that are you know needed in order to make a service run well and to make things safe but I think that there a lot of this is redundant with what the the company is already putting in place and

▶ 1:58:50 Jennifer L. Lemmerman: what the city has requested of them I think if I appreciate Alderman Lipper Garabedian's request that we see the documents I think when we see those the work the work agreements they'll probably be similar to a lot of these issues so I think it's it's premature to put in order on in an ordinance a lot of these issues while it's in the pilot stage I would definitely ask miss Gaffey to keep us informed as the discussions are going forward of whether it's another pilot that gets extended whether it's a more permanent agreement before those things are implemented in the city to keep us informed of that so that we can have discussions about whether some of these requirements are needed to be put on the books i think that would be important but i think for right now it's it's premature to

▶ 1:59:40 Michael P. Zwirko: create law around this at the pilot stage thank you thank you alderman the other alderman elements workout uh thank you mr chairman um so i i'll echo some of the concerns raised by president lemmerman um and i also wanted to say thank you to alderman medeiros for bringing this forward and also initially bringing this before the bike ped committee to get some feedback so certainly you know forward-thinking is always appreciated but I do think that right now we were absent data and with absent data I think that any any regulatory effort is maybe have the right intentions but it might ultimately lead for a failure with enforcement as well as hindering the business and I know that this is one of those innovation economy sectors and

▶ 2:00:33 Michael P. Zwirko: they need to be very dynamic and they use a lot of data to be more agile and how they're providing the services to their customers so I think you know it doesn't behoove them because they at the end of the day they do want to make a profit to have 15 bikes in an area that aren't being used they're gonna be very reactionary when they're looking at the data and they're gonna find out where they need to put them and I also want to stress the importance of the difference between a dockless system and a docked system those docking systems the blue bikes that have been referenced in Boston I do work in downtown Boston that is a completely different business model and there are benefits to both models

▶ 2:01:11 Michael P. Zwirko: but I think that the reason the dockless system is here in Melrose is because the dockless system works here and a docking system won't I'm not in this industry but I think that there's a reason why there's a particular market for those to varying types of business models I will also add that the docks themselves you know the number one thing I hear about I'm sure we all do has to do with cars whether it's parking traffic or speeding that takes up probably 70% of all the comments that I hear from the residents and if we're going to temper an alternative mode of transportation that hopes to alleviate those concerns I'm very hesitant to do so especially with the absence of data as I mentioned

▶ 2:01:53 Michael P. Zwirko: earlier i think any way we can decrease traffic decrease speeding increase safety you know i'm all for especially in a community that's as dense as melrose is my concern is is that this is a heavy hand coming into like i said an innovative product that we just really don't know what the market will ultimately bear and i'm very hesitant to push the hand on the scale here when we don't have that information you know we've heard earlier in the presentation in the order that alderman Mortimer filed that we've received very little to no complaints and I think there's a difference between formal complaints and social media complaints or even complaints that we get through email and we need to kind of temper what we're hearing and what we're seeing because I

▶ 2:02:42 Michael P. Zwirko: think there just may be a lot of conjecture as to what actually the program is for and I know earlier when I asked miss Gaffey from the Planning department about the the lag time in the signing of the MOU as well as the the begin of this program she said there was a lot of work that was involved there's a lot of back and forth between negotiations and and what the city ultimately thought that they could bear and what was gonna work so you know we need to allow not only our department heads but our employees to have the liberty and independence of knowing what is gonna work well for the community and furthermore I think they're kind of waiting for the data I think the MAPC though this is a regional effort it's something that's brought in not just

▶ 2:03:27 Michael P. Zwirko: Melrose but other surrounding towns and I think that they want to be smart as to how not only us but others are going to react to this I think that there is a knee-jerk reaction when these bikes are either knocked over or placed right in front of a crosswalk but to all president Lemmerman points I think that over time the reaction has has improved and and I'm actually looking forward to how it will be this spring but I think you know overall I take what the comments that were written by the bike ped committee these are experts in this field this is something that this committee is made up of not only transit oriented individuals but you know civic and civil engineers so I think that their comments that you know we might be moving a little too fast here without

▶ 2:04:17 Michael P. Zwirko: the proper data is right I think we need to understand the different business models that are at play here and what would work I do like the idea of a licensing fee I think that that's something that that will allow for oversight and it's also a cudgel that we could use if we need to as Alderman Medeiros raised but I think that we need to for lack of a better term slow our role and see what comes of this i just i don't i don't want to be reactionary when maybe we don't need to be and i'm just very hesitant of creating a burden of enforcement on us as well as regulation and just a big government coming into an innovation economy and and spoiling it because i do like the product i'm a user of the product i think there's a benefit to the product in this

▶ 2:05:04 Kate Lipper-Garabedian: community and i think we can improve the product so thank you mr chairman thank you all the men Any further comments? Alderman Lipper-Garabedian. Sure. I'm not a member of this committee, but I just did want to briefly speak to this order and thank Alderman Medeiros for presenting this draft. I thought it had a lot of good points. I do appreciate the points of President Lemmerman and Alderman Zwirko. I would encourage us to use this as a starting point as we get more data from the city departments because i think there is a careful balance between being reactionary but also being proactive and having some expectations in place and if after we get more data and have a chance to learn from other communities

▶ 2:05:53 Kate Lipper-Garabedian: we determine that it's incumbent on our body to set some expectations and a framework I'd rather do that before a lot of problems start popping up so for example on the concept that you've raised tonight with respect to motorized vehicles we don't currently have those in our city but we popping up in others nearby and creating a bit of havoc so just last week the City Council of Boston had on its agenda Marty mayor Walsh's proposed ordinance on the very similar to your proposed ordinance so I don't think it's untimely for you to be suggesting that we consider this and certainly that's a worth us all taking a look at and maybe seeing how colleagues and other nearby metropolitan communities are addressing this I think we didn't hear enough about banning

▶ 2:06:41 Kate Lipper-Garabedian: motorized vehicles from our city department or others to for me to have a strong feeling about that I did do some research on a pilot that was done in Portland Oregon for 120 days they're doing a second year of pilots they found that 34% of residents who used a scooter did so in lieu of taking a car which is pretty compelling to me given what we're hearing about traffic and what we're all experiencing day to day I think also bikes and probably scooters as well have a positive impact on climate issues that we're also trying to affect here and certainly providing transportation options for folks around Melrose something I'm certainly in favor of particularly as we work with them bike that community the recent report that you all did on possible bike lanes was

▶ 2:07:34 Kate Lipper-Garabedian: quite helpful and that's something that hopefully as we implement our complete streets grant for a north to south bike lane we can sort of use that for some of the bikes as well as perhaps someday motorized vehicles and alderman Medeiros you mentioned the possibility of docks that's also something I don't know that we have enough information about yet to think about whether that works for our context but I do recall in the north-south bike report that the bike the pedestrian and bike committee put forward they do have a really lovely rendering of a docking station in front of Mexico Lindo that's quite visibly appealing and I can see how having a combination could be good for us and so far as in some of these dense locations as you've noted that might be a really

▶ 2:08:21 Kate Lipper-Garabedian: nice option for people and including me as we're having some some mixed-use development happening right now with a number of new residential departments or condominiums going in and our couple of blocks right here downtown so I think I would I would just appreciate that you've brought this forward I do think that these are issues that not only our city should be thinking about but clearly other cities are as well and I would just echo my colleagues sentiments that it would be really great for the city department to keep us updated on this pilot as we enter the spring and also any future pilots, including if there was some exploration of scooters. I think that would be really incumbent on sort of vetting that with the public

▶ 2:09:08 Robert A. Boisselle: and thinking that through because that's a technology that's quite different from bikes which many people already use their personal bikes for that. So thank you for your time. I know I'm not a member of this committee But I think this is a really interesting and important topic for us to continue to talk about. Thank you, Alderman. Any other comments or questions? Alain Boisel. Question on Section 22232, Paragraph G. The mayor, with approval of the Traffic Commission, may promulgate additional regulations governing operations of the non-motorized shared mobility vehicles within the city of Melrose. could you flush that out a little bit what is the responsibility of the traffic commission is this going to be moved to the traffic commission once it's

▶ 2:10:00 Monica C. Medeiros: approved so thank you through the chair so my thoughts on there this are that again that this ordinance would cover sort of the basics but you know you see if you see on the city website the details that that we have up for the agreement and the rules of operation for bicycles and pedestrians they are you know more detailed and in some cases they are more restrictive than you know I would say much more restrictive and in some ways than what I've outlined here in the ordinance and the idea is that you know for instance that miss you know Ms. Gaffey has in place that if I'll take the snow as an example, right? So my ordinance just says if the proposed ordinance says that if there's a snow or weather emergency that the bicycle should be removed from the street,

▶ 2:11:03 Monica C. Medeiros: they have in place right now through the memorandum of understanding and in the rules that if there's a forecast that we're going to get three inches of snow or more that the company needs to remove the bicycles i say so long as they're off the street that's good um i i would be rules like that that i would expect that could be the additional rules and regulations promulgated by the traffic commission and things that could be more flexible and change over time there's some communities that have completely prohibited use over the winter for instance which may be the traffic Commission might say it's this is just too messy during January and February that we don't want these on the street at that time and maybe they they would

▶ 2:11:56 Monica C. Medeiros: um do so but i i had hoped to see some um some flexibility that you know the traffic commission meets quarterly um in some public forum not just the mayor making regulations without any impact or any input from the public but some public forum and i think you know as far as traffic goes and use of the roadways i think the traffic commission is the best place for those kinds of things to happen but that's that's what i that's the kind of thing that i would expect that the traffic commission might make you know rules and regulations about um that might be more restrictive than what is in the ordinance um okay thank you thank you mr chair Thank you, Alderman. Any other comments or questions? We have a motion before us.

▶ 2:12:59 Monica C. Medeiros: Thank you, Mr. Chairman. I just move to add the correspondence that we've received with respect to this order and attach them to said order. Alderman Zwirko moves to add the comments that we have received to the order itself. Second. Seconded by Alderman Medeiros. All in favor? Aye. Alderman Medeiros. you know I'd like to see this go forward of course I do think that in the idea was to have some you know have something in place for the busy time of our season now obviously we have a memorandum and statement of work that for a pilot program set to end in May it's I think it's kind of a an odd you know I think it's kind of a tough time to start and end a program I had chosen you know the expiration date to be the last day of February or the idea of the first day of

▶ 2:14:03 Monica C. Medeiros: March to be you know the implementation of this program largely because largely because of the weather here you know it by the time April 1st rolls around you know people you know the snow sometimes is there in March but by April 1st usually people might want to be out and about and using these bicycles I think you know changing course and in May is kind of a tough time to to do this we certainly could look at this ordinance and have it taking place you know to begin a year from now or to begin in May I didn't want something to be a calendar year because often the Board of Aldermen doesn't meet in the month of December and you know in the very beginning of January so if we had something starting

▶ 2:14:52 on january 1st i thought that you know just would lead to trouble um i'd you know i think i think i get the feeling from those who've spoken that they'd like to to maybe get some more information on this and i'm not sure you know the best way to do that is to hold this in committee and wait um or if it's something to bring back up after the um i'm gonna actually move to to hold this in committee second move to hold this in committee seconded by alderman Zwirko all in favor aye aye this matter will be held in committee a motion to adjourn so moved a motion adjourned by alderman Zwirko all in favor aye aye they're adjourned actually i do but i don't think it i didn't know if i was supposed to have it or if it just got stuck

Original documents

• Minutes (CivicClerk PDF)
• Agenda (IQM2 PDF)
• Bulletin (IQM2 PDF)
• Minutes packet (IQM2 PDF)
• Agenda packet (CivicClerk PDF)
• Agenda packet (IQM2 PDF)
• Other (CivicClerk PDF)
• This meeting on the city portal