Appropriations & Oversight Committee — 2019-08-29

Appropriations and Oversight Committee Meeting

This meeting starts at 3:51 in a recording that covers several meetings.

Attendance

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

Agenda

Minutes

CITY OF MELROSE APPROPRIATIONS COMMITTEE CALENDAR● AUGUST 29, 2019 Aldermanic Chamber, Melrose City Hall Committee Meeting 7:30 PM 562 Main Street, Melrose, MA 02176 The public should take notice that the Melrose Board of Aldermen may, on certain occasions, have a quorum in attendance due to standing committees of the Board of Aldermen consisting of both voting and non-voting members. Members attending this duly posted meeting are participating and deliberating only in conjunction with the business of the standing committee. Attendee Name Title Status Arrived Kate Lipper-Garabedian Chair Present Robert A. Boisselle Vice Chair Present Peter D. Mortimer Voting Present John N. Tramontozzi Voting Present Francis X. Wright Jr. Voting Present Monica C. Medeiros Voting Present Scott M. Forbes Voting Present Michael P. Zwirko Voting Present Manisha Bewtra Voting Present Shawn M. MacMaster Voting Present Jennifer L. Lemmerman President/Ex Officio Member Present

ORDER-2020-8 Bond Authorizing a Bond in the amount of Three Hundred, Seventy Five Thousand Dollars ($375,000) under the Sewer Enterprise Account through the MWRA Sewer System I/I Local Financial Assistance Program Recommend Passage Board of Aldermen

ORDER-2020-9 Bond Authorizing a Bond under the Water Enterprise System through MWRA Local Water System Assistance Program bonds for FY2020 in the amount of One Million, Four Hundred Forty Thousand Dollars ($1,440,000) Recommend Passage Board of Aldermen

ORDER-2020-11 Authorization Authorization to Execute Solid Waste Facility Operating Agreement by and between the City of Melrose and Waste Management of Massachusetts Recommend Passage Board of Aldermen

ORDER-2020-22 Resolution A Resolution honoring John V. Scenna Recommend Place on File Board of Aldermen City of Melrose Page 1 Updated 9/4/2019 4:00 PM Minutes Appropriations Committee August 29, 2019

ORDER-2020-18 Appropriation An Appropriation from Contract Stabilization (84042-590000) in the amount of $61,138.14 to various accounts as set forth herein. This appropriation is to fund year one of the recently settled Local 272 Clerical Union Contract. Recommend Passage Board of Aldermen

ORDER-2020-17 Appropriation An Appropriation from Contract Stabilization (84042-590000) in the amount of $5,000 to City Solicitor, Salary and Wages. Recommend Passage Board of Aldermen City of Melrose Page 2 Updated 9/4/2019 4:00 PM

Transcript

▶ 3:57 Kate Lipper-Garabedian: Alderman McMaster, and President Lemmerman. In accordance with the open meeting law, this meeting is being recorded and broadcast live on MMTV, both on television and streaming, and will be available through the City's website for further viewing. At this time, I would entertain a motion for public comment. So moved, Madam Chair. Second. We have a motion for public comment made by Alderman Mortimer and seconded by Vice Chair Boisselle. All in favor? Aye. Any opposed? This is the portion of our meeting where any member of the public can come forward to speak on any item on our agenda tonight and we have six items. Motion to close public comment Madam Chair. Second. Motion to close public comment made by Alderman

▶ 4:37 Kate Lipper-Garabedian: Mortimer seconded by Vice Chair Boisselle seeing no one coming forward. All in favor? Aye. Any opposed? That carries. As I mentioned we have six orders tonight but i think i have a motion from vice chair Boisselle yes uh madam chair i'd like to move motions uh orders 20 2017 and 20 2018 forward because we have the individuals who will be discussing these particular topics here and uh it's going to be a long meeting so uh can we move it forward sure that's right second the uh motion to change the order of business great so we have a motion to move forward order number 2020-17 first followed by order number 2020-18 out of order because we haven't been oh sorry excuse me ma'am uh i was looking at the wrong numbers here

▶ 5:27 Kate Lipper-Garabedian: 20 2011 20 2017 and 20 2011. i see it okay so we have order number 20 2017 first the contract stabilization for city solicitor salary and wages followed by order 2020-11 the solid waste facility operating agreement i'll renew my second all in favor aye any opposed okay so we'll do those out of order out of courtesy to those folks who are here to speak on these orders so the first order on our agenda tonight then is order number 2020-17 an appropriation from contract stabilization 84042-59000 in the amount of $5,000 to city solicitor salary and wages. Motion to suspend the rules so we can hear from the city solicitor. Second. Motion to suspend the rules made by Alderman Forbes and second by Alderman Mortimer.

▶ 6:15 All in favor? Aye. Any opposed? Thank you so much for being here tonight, Mr. Van Kampen and Mr. Nevin. Good evening, Madam Chair, members of the Committee on Appropriations. The order before you is a request that will result in an increase in the stipend currently received by the Administrative Clerk to the Melrose Liquor Commission from $1,500 to $6,500. This order is before you tonight, Madam Chair, members of the committee. For the last probably year or so, we've been considering various options for performing the administrative functions of the Liquor Commission. Currently, they are performed by my assistant, Kelly Cargovan, in the legal department. And Chairman Nevitt, I'm going to defer to him for a statement he's going to make as well.

▶ 7:04 But what we've determined is essentially that the work of the commission over the last 10 or 15 years is increasingly becoming more complicated, more regulated, both at the state level and locally. and therefore the work of Ms. Cargovan is becoming more complicated, more regulated at her level. So what this does is it's intended to adjust that compensation through that stipend to reflect the amount of time she's actually now spending on this work in addition to provide what we'd consider to be a very reasonable market adjustment for the type of stipend she's receiving. and with that said i'll defer to chairman joe nevin for his comments thank you very much um so as our city solicitor presented we're formally requesting an increase to the stipend for the

▶ 7:56 position of clerk to melrose liquor licensing commission of five thousand dollars uh therefore raising it from fifteen hundred to sixty five hundred as stated uh over the past uh four years especially the requirements of this position time required to perform those duties uh of the position has increased significantly the commission just alone in our month in our meetings the commission is now meeting monthly as opposed to an uh and as needed basis uh to meet the needs of um applicants uh that are uh submitting a significant number of um one day licenses if you will um the original stipend of fifteen hundred dollars provided compensation for approximately 47 dollars 47 hours annually or 3.9 hours per month in our evaluation we concluded

▶ 8:47 that the increase that's being requested is the most cost efficient option that we reviewed in reviewing the weekly demands of the time of the position we were uh if we were just separately staffed the position with the new person we estimated that 25 of the year required 15 to 20 hours per week 50 percent required seven to eight hours per week and 25 percent requires about four hours a week so it's 436 to 520 hours approximately 14 000 to 16 6 in that range while there's some variation in these numbers we think that the professionalism the exemplary work ethic and the deep subject knowledge of the current clerk that the current clerk exhibits offers the city and the commission significant efficiencies our initial recommendation was for

▶ 9:39 a total stipend of seven thousand to ten thousand dollars which would be a fifty five hundred to eighty five hundred dollar increase after further discussion with the mayor the city solicitor and the chief financial officer we recommend a five thousand dollar increase and a total stipend of sixty five hundred dollars uh further on behalf of myself and fellow commissioners uh we'd like like to thank our current uh clerk kelly cogavan for many contributions to our work and publicly recognize her for exemplary efforts as a public face of our commission and the outstanding work that she does on behalf of the commission thank you any questions from alderman's work though thank you madam chair so if um first of all i would like to say thank you for being here this

▶ 10:26 Michael P. Zwirko: evening taking your time to speak on behalf of miss cogman she does do exemplary work not only for the legal department but also for the liquor commission so happy to support this order my only question is though if we're appropriating the funds from a contract stabilization for this year next year will we just boost the line item of the liquor commission spend to cover it for the fiscal years going forward is that how this will i believe that i believe the uh amount is reflected in the liquor commission's annual budget so it'll show up in the liquor commission's fy21 budget gotcha okay and i did see um patrick teller russo's head nodding in the back in agreement so we don't need to call them forward so that but i thought that was the only question i had thank

▶ 11:04 Kate Lipper-Garabedian: you madam chair motion to recommend for passage second the most recommend for passage made by alderman morburn seconded by vice chair Boisselle alderman forbes thank you i just have a quick question uh the stipend itself is that subject to massachusetts state income taxes or federal income taxes it's income it's income so it's going to be in gross wages and be taxable it's not just a non-taxable line item correct that's all i need to thank you taxable appreciate it thank you you any further discussion we have a motion duly second it all in favor all right any opposed okay so we'll recommend that to the full board for thank you the next item on our agenda is order number two zero two zero dash one

▶ 11:47 one authorization to execute solid waste facility operating agreement by and between the city of Melrose and waste management of Massachusetts and we're We're still under suspension of rules, so we welcome any members of the administration who want to speak on this order. Thank you again, Madam Chair. The order before you tonight represents the culmination of almost two years of negotiations with waste management spanning two mayoral administrations in connection with the current Route 99 solid waste transfer station facility. Negotiations with waste management actually began in the fall of 2017 during the administration of Robert Dolan. They transitioned to Mayor Inferna in February of 2018 and were ongoing or have been ongoing since that time.

▶ 13:05 So there's been a lot of due diligence, a lot of negotiation, a lot of discussion, a lot of exchanging of proposals with waste management during this entire time. Waste management approached the city in the fall of 2017 and asked if the city was interested in extending the relationship it had with the city to continue to use the Route 99 site as a solid waste transfer facility. At that time, and currently at this time, the city is committed to studying the long term use best use of the site whether as a solid waste transfer station as a mixed-use development as any other use the city is in the process of trying to determine what the best future long-term use for the site is but we did open the

▶ 13:59 door to negotiations with waste management notwithstanding that that was the the objective of the city the operating agreement that is being Being presented tonight, Madam Chair, will allow the city to realize substantial new revenue from the operation of the current transfer station. And will also set the city up to really begin the long multi-year process of studying, analyzing, and considering the best future long-term use for this site. Before I share the details of this operating agreement with the committee, I do want to give you a little bit of history on the site itself. For many of us, all we've ever known there is a transfer station on Route 99. So let me give you a little bit of history.

▶ 14:45 The current lease with Waste Management was for an original term of 15 years. And that lease was entered into in December of 1996 following a request for proposals that was issued by the city of Melrose. At the time, the lease was with a company called MJ Connolly and Sons. now the predecessor to Waste Management. At some point during their lease hold, MJ Connolly assigned the lease to another company, I believe called USA Waste, and USA Waste eventually assigned the lease or was purchased by Waste Management. So Waste Management is now the current lease holder. The lease agreement itself also provides for a ten year renewal at the sole option of the tenant. In 2011, I think, 2011, Waste Management exercised its right

▶ 15:40 to extend the lease for an additional ten years, taking it out to a 25 year term. The lease is currently set to expire on November 30th, 2021. At this point in time, the city realizes approximately $135,000 in lease payments from waste management's leasehold those are the only payments the city receives other than tax payments that are made so let's talk briefly about the operating agreement if the board recommends favorably the order that's before you and authorizes the operating agreement the current lease will be terminated by agreement of the parties title to all of the improvements including the buildings the weigh station, the scale on the site, which were all built and installed at the expense of the tenant, will transfer to the city of Melrose.

▶ 16:38 That's important if you realize that at the end of this relationship the city will have possession of transfer station assets that make that a much more valuable parcel in the future. The operating agreement establishes minimum financial payments from waste management to the city. Starting at $175,000 per year, that is through June 30th, 21. That is a minimum payment from waste management. Under the operating agreement, waste management is also obligated to pay a per ton host community fee to the city of Melrose. So if the tonnage at the site exceeds the $175,000 minimum threshold, the city would actually realize more revenue from the site. Starting on July 1st, 21, the minimum payment would increase to $200,000 per year.

▶ 17:34 That's the minimum again. The per tonnage fee would increase from $1.25 per ton to $1.50 per ton. That would last until June 30th, 23, and thereafter, the per tonnage and minimum payments will grow by 3.5%. I just want to pause here for a minute, Madam Chair. These numbers were negotiated with waste management. Waste management obviously came in lower than these numbers reflect, and the city of Melrose came in higher, slightly higher than these numbers reflect. So these numbers are reached via negotiation. In addition to the payments I just described, the city will also receive a one-time payment one million dollars from waste management that payment will be split into two components both will be received five hundred thousand dollars

▶ 18:29 apiece both will be received by the city of Melrose during the current fiscal year in entering into the agreement it's also important to note and I think mr. Shana can speak to this a little more eloquently than I can that the city is able to continue to use this property to support what I would refer to as city operations that currently allow us to realize a cost savings in the ballpark of 250 to 300 thousand dollars per year for things like snow storage brush and debris storage composting and disposal of those types of items so in addition to the direct financial benefit we receive from such an agreement we also would receive those sort of cost avoidance cost saving benefits that we currently realize under the lease agreement with waste management having

▶ 19:24 said all of that we're here to answer any questions that members may have and we would ask for your favorable recommendation on this order right aldermen's work oh thank you I didn't mr. Shannon you didn't have anything to add to that I didn't know it he said you could speak up more eloquently to the use of the operations I thought you were just gonna go I'm sorry no I can what I What I can say is, my entire professional career in public works, waste management's been a great partner with public works. They've leased parcels and we've used sections of those parcels for our own needs. That's our snow dump, which has provided huge return for the community. We don't have another area in Melrose to place snow.

▶ 20:14 have a recycling facility but it's limited but it's centrally located which makes it easy for our residents to access on Tremont Street but what the residents don't see is that daily in the fall we're hauling that material we haul it to a parcel behind waste management but you know we cross that waste management site we work together in regards to access they provide us with another section of their parcel that they lease to store our catch basin cleaning, so rather than clean for a few days and force the contractor to haul it out at a higher expense. They provide us areas where we can do stockpiling of material and clean the entire program, the same with street sweepings, we put our street sweepings there.

▶ 21:02 Sometimes we'll do a utility contract where the low bidder provides a more favorable bid if we provide them lay down where they can put excavate and store it there until the project's over. Waste management allows us to use that parcel of land for that as well. So they've been a great, a very good partner. We've had very few complaints regarding their operation. And from a public works perspective, continuing this relationship would be a huge thing. Not being able to access the parcel behind waste management and allow us to continue to do what we do on that parcel. It would ultimately lead to service cuts because I'm not quite sure where we put all our yard waste. I mean, we collect yard waste and we have bag limits, do we force it to the letter of the law?

▶ 22:05 No, I mean, our recycling facility's open throughout the week. It's open on Saturdays for people to bring yard waste in the fall. We take that material and we go right up there because we have that land. If we didn't have that land, we'd be forced to take the material from Tremont Street and look to take it out of the city at a cost. so waste management we have the keys to the Apostle they have the keys to our parcel we work very good together and my opinion it's a very good relationship to continue and manage it just so members of the committee also know Jim Nacella from waste management he's the liaison we've worked with for I've worked with my entire time here in Melrose he probably has a much more expensive title

▶ 22:47 Michael P. Zwirko: than I just gave him but he's here as well and can answer any questions that that members may have that that members of the administration can't answer so just want to thank you still to sell it for being here as well so and thank you for that explanation and further description the all the benefits of using from city operations we still have until this contract expires correct so this there's 26 months or so to go left on this contract right it expires in November of 2021 right so I I guess my question is is why now I mean if there's still I mean I know negotiations have been going on for about two years but but why why now do we need to do this 26 months is still a very long time where the city can determine what it is they want to

▶ 23:36 use with this um this land and operations wise I don't I don't see why I I think the the dilemma is that there's two issues waste management at some point from what we understand has to make a decision about its future without that site and mr. nacella's here he could speak to this but my understanding is in order to cite a transfer station in the Commonwealth of Massachusetts today it's a multi-year you know three-year process and my understanding is that waste management management is already late in the game if they were going to have to cite the route 99 facility at another location so that that was I think the reason why waste management came to the city of Melrose almost two years ago they were

▶ 24:22 looking at four years out on the lease and we've got to talk start talking to Melrose about what we can do at that site from our perspective as a city as an administration we have been methodically considering what will happen when the transfer station shuts down and under the lease what happens is waste management is obligated to restore the property to the pre-lease condition to tear the building down remove the scale take everything away so it would probably be almost impossible to call it a transfer station again or to get it to be permitted as a transfer station so in addition to that mr shenna has to consider if we if there is a redevelopment option at that site whatever it is whenever it is

▶ 25:10 Michael P. Zwirko: where does the city handle snow storage where does the city handle composting all of these items that we currently do almost for free are relatively expensive so the city's sort of struggling with what happens in the long term to those functions and then you know the bigger piece is and this is really the community discussion that has to happen what actually is that site going to look like 5 10 15 20 years from now and that's where I'm kind of going with the why now I mean if if contract negotiations began in the fall of 2017 under the Dolan administration and we have you know documents in our master plan that talk about community involvement in this site why wasn't the community involved in the fall of 2017 or any point any along the way so this

▶ 25:58 Michael P. Zwirko: site specifically and and I'll get to this other point in a moment but it says in the master plan there's the section on economic development it draws recommendations and these are on page 75 and 76 of the master plan it says promote economic economic development and increase the tax base by encouraging business and development and redevelopment strategy 3.2 says identify optimal land uses for the route 99 area and adjust zoning to encourage preferred redevelopment action off of that strategy is to continue to plan for the expiration of the waste management lease on the route 99 purse parcel conduct a public process to develop a future vision for this area including working property owners about redevelopment options and constraints so the master

▶ 26:40 Michael P. Zwirko: plan came out well before the negotiations started and this is really a roadmap and it says and I'll just repeat it continue to plan for the expiration of the waste management lease so I'm just wondering why when we started negotiations with waste management in a parallel form we didn't say all right let's let's take the the instructions that the community spoke to to community recommended and bought in on with the plan and said let's find out what we can do at this site because at the time in 2017 you had four years so I'm just wondering why the negotiations occurred but the in parallel that didn't with the community yeah I can't speak to why that provision of the master plan wasn't implemented or followed to the letter the only thing I can represent is

▶ 27:26 that we have you know been entertaining this proposal from waste management within the context of also wanting to engage the community and look at long-term redevelopment uses for that site, but unfortunately, that master plan framework hasn't been adopted to the T up to this point in time, and I think one of the things we're considering at this point is to give waste management a relatively reasonable extension of their use of the property would then give the community a sufficient amount of time to really take a long, hard look at what the community wants to see there, to implement whatever zoning regulations have to be implemented, to look at whatever changes have to be made in the area, to consult with

▶ 28:16 Michael P. Zwirko: other components, state government, for example, because you're right off of Route 1 there. Depending on the type of development you're going to have, I'm sure Mass Highway is going to want to have some input in that. I'm sure there are environmental considerations for that entire swath of land, but I hear you. It's a complicated process. Well, I mean, I don't think 10 years is reasonable. That's a long extension, especially considering we've been planning for the expiration of this site. The other thing I wanted to state is I have an email here that was sent to the Board of Alderman in June of 2014 that talks about when we were going to enhance our recycling program and one of the key points this is an email from the office

▶ 29:01 Michael P. Zwirko: of Mayor Dolan it says that we're seeking to extend the JRM trash and recycling contract out seven years to stabilize costs and provide consistent quality service this coincides with the expiration of the lease with waste management at route 99 which will allow for incredible options in the future in terms of the transfer station owned by the city of Melrose at that time so again we even enhanced our contracts and our services to time with the same expiration date so we had advanced knowledge of this and I feel with 26 months to go there's still time to negotiate and discuss what not only the administration but the community wants to do with this parcel and I'll be quite frank this parcels worth a lot of money it's it's a very very valuable piece of

▶ 29:43 Michael P. Zwirko: land considering the enhancements that we made even since the master plan with the addition of the medical and soon-to-be adult use recreational marijuana facility I also know that the abutting property which is owned by aggregate industries they recently and this is again taken from the master plan which is a very good roadmap signed an agreement with the town of Saugus in February of 2017 to fill the quarry and reclaim the land to make it suitable for mixed-use development the town of Saugus will work with aggregate industries on a plan for reuse of this site and given its proximity to the Melrose border the city of Melrose should act should actively engage in this planning effort ten years is a really really long time but I believe the quarry closure process

▶ 30:23 Michael P. Zwirko: was like a 15-year process I I'm sure it was especially when I mean it's it takes a while to take these parcels that have been industrial for decades and make them suitable for redevelopment absolutely and at times you deal with as as we've seen with redevelopment efforts in the greater boston area brownsfield reclamation remediation it's it's a process for sure and and we don't have as melrose knows very small portions of our land is actually either developed or even zoned for industrial so this is a it's it's so rare that it's so valuable um and to extend this lease when we knew that it was going to expire we've known this for a very very long time we have pointed to this in many meetings commissions discussions our master plan I certainly think this this

▶ 31:17 Michael P. Zwirko: bears much more engagement specifically from the public I think we have much more work to do on this I don't think that we need to do this now two years we still have two winners we could go through before we you know have to deal with any city operations I think that I just we've known about this for a very long time and this this is coming to us now to extend I just think is a little bit of too much of a rush especially when we have all this documentation of an anticipation of being able to use this and leverage this for even more capital without a million dollars over ten years really doesn't amount to much in my opinion I'll defer at this time but those are all the questions I had at this moment Thank You madam chair Alderman Bewtra thank you I think many of

▶ 32:08 Manisha Bewtra: my questions were addressed but I kind of wanted to get a better sense of just how waste management and the DPW operations that happen on those couple of parcels how they interact with sort of the neighborhood in terms of the conservation land at Mount Hood circulation and traffic and are there any particular kind of resident concerns for nearby neighbors which I realize is from an access point is maybe not direct but maybe a budding kind of from their backyards or that kind of thing we've never had an issue there we call snow up there middle of the night waste management lets us in we haul up there on the weekend when waste management's closed like I said we have access to their site they have access to our site we're very good neighbors with each

▶ 32:57 other and we've worked extremely close over the years to the point where we we We have used, and if this agreement goes through, they've agreed to allow us to continue to use pieces of the parcels that they've leased for our own use. So when they're leasing parcels of property from Melrose, and then yet they're allowing a DPW to put snow on it. Which creates runoff and creates issues, but we've worked together because he realizes that we had a need and we want to maintain that partnership. um you know i i could tell i could tell you that much we've had very few problems with that site that's helpful um and also can you speak to the topography of the site well it's like it's boarded on on one side by mount hood by parkland

▶ 33:49 and i believe you know as allman's work was said correctly aggregate is to This is one side of us, the other side is another commercial entity, DNR contracting. I believe the front piece of it is also a cemetery. Rita along the frontage, there's a cemetery. I can tell you that the topography is not, this isn't a flat piece of land. Rita. A lot of ledge, there's a lot of ledge outcrops. And as far as I know, everything I've been told, it's always been used as a dump site. and not a regulated dump site decades ago right now waste management is heavily regulated in what they do they hold the permit for the site the transfer station permits with waste management if they go the permit goes so if we were to you know make our own create our own transfer station or

▶ 34:45 partner with someone else we would have to start over like like us as a list of VanCampen said the end of the agreement requires them to return the piece of land the way they found it that means scale the scale is gone the weight station is gone the the offices are gone the actual garage where they put their trash all of it would go away which will require somebody else to come in and stop know if that's what they're gonna do they're gonna continue as a transfer station and you know there's no telling what you're gonna find when you start digging up there because if the stories hold true from the old time public works employees and people in town that they used to just dump up there that was that was the

▶ 35:30 dump we've never excavated because we've never had the need to to see what's there but you know that would have to be I'd strongly recommend that if we're going to study to do something other than what we're doing up there we have to look at some more of the topography look at some more of the soil conditions the Tennessee gas line crosses that property and that creates its own set of restrictions in fact they just cleared the vegetation around it was part of a several municipal project that they did up and down the North Shore so those are some of the obstacles that you're up against and in terms of topography but we've worked very well with them I don't foresee it changing if we were to continue this that's helpful and I guess my final question at this point is is

▶ 36:25 Manisha Bewtra: regarding aggregate industries and to what extent the city of Melrose has been in communication with Saugus on on what what they're planning there because I think again sort of aggregate industries next to waste management was sort of compatible but thinking about how if they're going towards more of a mixed development to what extent are we part of those conversations I know that Denise Gaffey our director of planning and community development I know she's been at some of those quarry closure committee meetings in the past so she has kept somewhat of a she's served as somewhat of a liaison to that process they're still my understanding is several years away from you know aggregate is a fully functioning processing plant still there's still

▶ 37:18 several years before that quarry is filled capped closed whatever they call it and capable of being redeveloped so again in the grand scheme of what we're talking about tonight we're talking about essentially an eight-year extension of our relationship with waste and I want to correct maybe what is a misunderstanding here this is not a lease extension where we are taking ownership of the buildings and the assets on our land and then in exchange we're entering into an operating agreement with waste management to allow them to operate a solid waste facility inside our building using our scale on our land but one of the nice things about this agreement is we have the best of all worlds it's It's our land, they're our buildings, but waste management's responsible for every cost, every expense,

▶ 38:13 John N. Tramontozzi: every utility, every damage, every improvement, every renovation. That's what this is. This is not a lease, just so folks understand. We're terminating the lease, assuming this passes. Thank you. Those are my questions for now, thank you. Alderman Tramontozzi. Thank you, Madam Chair. You may call it an operating agreement, but it really looks like a lease. And the reason I say that is because we do, I understand, we terminate the original lease. We become the owner of the buildings, the improvements on the property. So we're owners of it. also our responsibility and any um liability that may be incurred you're requiring um waste management to carry insurance for that uh that's fine and dandy but i think liability is still an

▶ 39:16 John N. Tramontozzi: issue that the city has to be faced with but anyways putting that aside you you mentioned in your opening that this also gives us the opportunity to look at what the best future long-term use of the property would be but you're how can you do that if you're giving them a set term that they can run this facility for so are you suggesting that you could terminate this operating agreement two years from now three years from now if you found a better use for the property yeah there's language in the operating agreement that actually gives the city that option but what just so folks understand the result of that is that the one million dollar one-time payment is returned on a prorated basis to waste management so if we if we were to terminate this

▶ 40:05 John N. Tramontozzi: in five years we would owe waste management the five hundred thousand dollars right that's exactly what that's the point i'm making correct sounds nice you say oh we get a million dollars uh in for this fiscal uh year to spend we spend it we terminate the operating agreement now we're going to find some money to repay them but i think at that point alderman you're looking at a cost benefit analysis to determine whether or not terminating the operating agreement at that future date if the return that we would realize in doing that would outweigh that prorated payment back to waste management yeah that means we're still then then we then we make that decision away the fact is that we're still stuck with the uh continuation of the operating agreement

▶ 40:47 John N. Tramontozzi: if we don't find the resources to pay pay that back um that's that's one fault i see in the in this operating agreement um and um you know that that troubles me um and for the same reasons that alderman has worked or mentioned about what the master plan i mean i recall the many years that i've been sitting here in the as an alderman in this board uh talking about the potential use for that property in the future once that lease is terminated i don't recall ever talking about that we're going to be faced with a situation we're going to extend our continued operations there for that matter i think we we felt strongly that there may be some other alternative uses and that we should be exploring that we did take the steps i understand it hasn't

▶ 41:39 John N. Tramontozzi: come through but but i think in in the past years we've been looking forward to the opportunity to change the use of that premises and so I'm not in that inclined to to agree with it for the for the reasons that I think the dilemma we have as a as an administration maybe as a city is that this is a I mean this is mountainous this is if anyone's ever been on this site this is this is a mountain of I mean it's it's it's quite a swath of land i know alderman Mortimer probably hiked it in the past but i mean it's a it's a pretty difficult tract of land if you were going to develop it it's really almost suited for the current um uses that are put to it but we really haven't really explored those options haven't i mean have we correct okay correct correct and hopefully and hopefully uh

▶ 42:42 you know in the waning weeks of the inferno administration and the new administration will tackle it a bit more aggressively than it has been tackled over the last several years but this opportunity arose and the only thing i could say in response to some of your remarks alderman is that if if we just allow the lease to run out and have community engagement about new zoning and new new traffic studies and all these things with no developer with nothing else the city of Melrose will be left in November of 21 with a piece of land that no longer has an operating transfer station on it that's generating no revenue that's just the you know that's just the balancing that we asked the board to consider which is the balancing we considered and I also

▶ 43:33 would just reference to the fact that during our negotiations waste management originally proposed a deal that would have resulted in a 35-year operating agreement and nothing in terms of a one-time payment so mayor inferno when she took it from mayor dolan was pretty adamant about the term being as short as possible and in exchange for the 10-year term waste management was willing to make that substantial one-time payment to the city and you know the prorating piece on it if we early terminate it that that's you know something if mr de la rusa wants to address but if i may through again with the chair i think and that's a great great point um all of them in termitose there are covenants and agreements that waste management was would

▶ 44:20 enter into assuming they had this property for this length of time for the use of this property if in fact it's shot cutted in the midstream and now they have costs they've associated with making their commitments based on this being you know another eight years of course they're going to incur some costs so i think the objective would be that um recognize that there's a cost if we you know if it doesn't work out to them too i understand it's a business decision uh for them that's where that i think originated from it's both sides but i think that the current administrations look look at this whole issue and not wanting to be a longer term just reflects the history and not the past discussions that we have had in the prior

▶ 45:08 John N. Tramontozzi: administration as well keeping that if anything a shorter term mr. Shannon one of the things you mentioned is the cooperation that exists between the city and in waste management I appreciate that it there's not a lot of language in this agreement relative to that cooperation other than one small paragraph and basically just says that um the um the waste management still has the um the authority and the power to do what they want on it on the property within reason and that uh you maximizing the city's use of the property surrounding the swf to allow for alternative uses but but you don't it doesn't specifically say that we're authorized to use a section of the the property for snow dumping and things like that.

▶ 45:57 John N. Tramontozzi: That has to be a verbal, an understanding between the parties. That's not addressed really in the contract. No, no, it's not, but I can tell you that we absolutely are going to continue to operate like that. And we discussed possibly doing a memorandum of understanding between public works and waste management to allow our operation and their operation to continue. A lot of what the agreement does talk about is waste management looking at options to enhance the site. Rita. And anything that they do would be with the city's involvement. And in those discussions, they wouldn't limit what we could do on the site as well with them. So, well, I mean, they want to advance the options that they have available.

▶ 46:44 John N. Tramontozzi: And using the facility which may then reduce, or maybe not eliminate, but certainly reduce the city's options. They've never said that they would reduce what we do there. They always said that whatever their future is, it would include what we do today. And with this agreement in place, it's to the city's benefit to allow them to increase their tonnage. They have existing permit and Mr. Sella's here and he can speak to it. They're permitted to process a lot more trash than they do today. And they can't process to their permit levels because they don't have, the site's constrained. There's mountain, there's a ledge outcrop to the left as you go in. Trucks have to go all the way up to the second level to turn around to come back down.

▶ 47:35 A truck can only come down, the truck has to wait. The truck at the bottom has to wait for the truck to come down before it comes up. There are all kinds of restrictions, and because of those restrictions the site presents waste management, they're limited in what they can process in terms of tonnage, although they're permitted to do more. So if the city in the future move forward, can work with waste management to make some accommodations to allow them to process more. We'd see more money in the future because the minimum payments are set on basically what they're doing today. If anything more they do, that the payment, because there's the per ton fee, we could see even more money. I mean, these are based on what they're doing today.

▶ 48:18 Yeah, but not just on this City of Melrose disposable waste, but then opening it up for other communities. Rita. I understand, right. Or for waste management accounts in other communities to come to Melrose for that transportation. Rita now, they're just limited, and Mr. Selleck can speak more eloquently to that, but they're permitted to do a lot more than what they're currently processing. And because of this, if you were to stop the lease, go to the operator's agreement, the city has the ability in the future to gain more at a time when funding's needed. We have our own set of problems right here, right next door, public safety. a discussion that's going to be had in the future about the library so a change in in this revenue

▶ 49:06 Scott M. Forbes: stream over the next 10 years while we further develop what we can do there is something that we considered positive yeah i don't think it but frankly i don't think it's going to generate as much as you know you would hope because of the limitations as you say on the use of the site anyway so but anyways i appreciate that i'll defer to others as well thank you for the time alderman force thank you um you know it seems like a lot of our questions are based upon the anticipated use of this this this property i guess the first question i would have is why denise gaffey wasn't a part of these discussions because i feel like that her feedback would have been uh you know a valued uh resource for us to make that kind of determination and i'm not sure she was she wasn't

▶ 49:47 Scott M. Forbes: a part of you know your uh group that was coming to present before us this evening um but anyway that's neither neither is that a question or if you can comment she's been part of the discussions and i know denise has actually been in meetings with waste management with their representatives in the past i also know she had a conversation with olivin Zwirko yesterday i believe she provided him with some information on her sort of view on this and at the same time i understand she had a personal commitment tonight she couldn't be here so that's the only reason she's not here this evening okay well i guess my question just revolves around i think this may be the the question everyone wants to wants to ask is why act now instead of wait a couple of months when

▶ 50:33 Scott M. Forbes: a new administration can come in evaluate the situation make a well-informed decision and not have to deal with the ramifications like alderman Tramontozzi said where if they want to back out of something now we're on the hook for you know a block of money that we received and now have to to give back um what i'm going to do ultimately i'm going to have mr nacella from waste management just explain to you the the thought process he has about why waiting any longer since we've been negotiating for two years may not make the most sense understood for at least for his side and we can we can speak to the city side yep right thank you um yeah so so um the the issue that we have and the reason why why we uh approached the city uh a few years ago uh has to do with

▶ 51:15 just the timetable it takes to to you know to a site a facility of this nature somewhere else it's an operation that we're going to continue to to have you know whether it be melrose or in a surrounding community in order to do that when you go through the state regulatory process it's it's about a two to three year process between permitting and then if you have to construct versus taking another facility over um that's the period of time that that you're faced with um the state right now is you know in a dilemma uh not that that necessarily um is melrose is concerned but it's in a dilemma in terms of how to deal with and handle solid waste um you know there's very very limited capacity for disposal and so you know we need

▶ 52:05 to be able to transfer material in near future likely further um and so uh in order to to have a facility to be able to do that you know we need that timetable that time to to be able to to do that so it's changed it's you know it's went through two administrations you know i understand that's just something that you know has happened here uh our intention was really to have this um agreed upon or not agreed upon uh about a year ago so it's it's kind of strung out a little bit too long for our liking and you know in order for us to just operate we need to either kind of make a decision to to continue here with this relationship which we you know hope adds a lot of value to the city uh or to you know um look for another you know facility and and you know

▶ 52:58 this is a I don't know how many of you have been on the site maybe all of you but you know when Bob talked about the nature of the site itself it's a really really choppy site it is difficult to operate on but you know the devil you know right so we've figured out how to do that there's probably some opportunities to make some subtle improvements but nothing that would impinge or impact on the city's operations as they are today we fully expect that everything the city gets to do will continue to get to do that and then some of those improvements may help down the road as you start to look at you know the long-term future the other thing you know I understand you know you want to look for the you know the best and use for a um you know for that property um i might

▶ 53:56 be biased and think that that's probably the only use you're going to have on that piece of property when you look at trying to develop something like that the site costs are going to be astronomical because of the way the the structure of that you know that that land is um but the fact that matters is that if we do close it down and then we do restore the property um i don't think you the the site would not pass the regulatory hurdles that are in place today to have a solid waste transfer station so you know you may buy time and then you know move that facility out i don't think you'd be able to replace that facility under the current guidelines um and then if you don't have a development plan or a developer you know you have a facility that

▶ 54:45 produces you know no revenue which is probably not in the best interest you know of the city or the rate payers um you know as well and then i think the last point is when you go into development particularly uh development um you know let's say you were thinking about some type of mixed residential or industrial type use um you're talking about a probably a 10-year plan right by the time you study you get public input you get somebody that is thinks there is something else that could could happen with that i would tell you that i think you're you're really the plan and why the mayor and the administration rejected our our longer term offer for 10 years is really quite in sync with what's going on with aggregate and what would need to happen develop

▶ 55:41 Scott M. Forbes: to develop a parcel like this into something different which you know we feel maybe never will happen but but you'll have the opportunity to do that have your studies happen and still be able to enjoy the you know the flexibility the operations and the revenues that the site generates okay and i i can understand and appreciate that these negotiations have been a long you know complex process but for me considering that the framework is now in place you know would waiting two months three months for a new administration to come in and make that evaluation and if they think that it's the best decision that they can immediately go into negotiations i mean i i wouldn't think that another two to three months would be a deal breaker in any

▶ 56:23 of this what it really is it is it is we we are at a critical stage right now we've passed that point um and you know look we've we've had um many many many months months of years of negotiations um and i think you know the city has done a a a pretty good job the administration of uh of bringing this to a point where it's kind of a deal that makes hopefully sense for the city uh certainly uh we are at our break point in terms of financial um um so so to say that we could enter into negotiations i think we're you know pretty complete uh when it comes to to that we've you know we started at a place and the city has moved us a long way to you know to you know increase the financial benefits to the city to the point where it doesn't really make economic

▶ 57:22 Peter D. Mortimer: sense for us to go you know any further so between that and the timeline that that we have to go out and develop another piece of property uh time is absolutely critical and you know to think that you would have a change of administration and that in a matter of one month a new administration would come in and look at something that's been negotiated for two years and make a decision we wouldn't be able to rely on that okay thank you for your time thank you alderman mortimer thank you very much chairman Letter garabedian thank you gentlemen for being here tonight i see that when we examine any issue we should look at who what where when why and how And there's been focus now on the when. But I think it's more important that we look at the what, which is the contract, the why, the how, the where is pretty obvious.

▶ 58:25 Peter D. Mortimer: And people have asked, why now? But it could also be asked, why not now? I think the what of those questions, who, what, where, when, why, and how is the most important. What? Is this a good deal? Is this a good deal? Yes, this is a good deal. It's a good deal now, it'll be a good deal in two months. But, as we just heard, if we're listening carefully, this deal might not be here in two months. Many of us have worked on a lot of deals and you're close and it looks good. Turns out it's going to be a win-win and then people hesitate, drag their feet a little bit. And as you just heard, one of the party walks and the deal's gone. This is a deal we should take, and it doesn't matter when, it doesn't matter whether it's now or in a few months.

▶ 59:14 Peter D. Mortimer: Question is, what? Is this a good deal? And yes, it is a good deal. City Solicitor VanCampen's right. I've hiked that area many times. I've rode my mountain bike through there. You see the upside down orange and white striped candy canes that are vents for the Tennessee Valley gas pipe that comes up and supplies us all with gas from Tennessee. It comes all the way that supplies our homes, and if you were looking for a spot to have a waste management facility, you couldn't, if you designed it yourself, you couldn't ask for a better spot. You got a golf course on one side, and once in a great while it can be a little annoying to the golfers coming off the 13th tee. But mostly not, mostly it's not a problem, it's pretty quiet.

▶ 1:00:05 Peter D. Mortimer: You have a car dealership on the other side, no big deal. You have a cemetery on the other side. You have aggregate preparing the asphalt on the other side. It's a perfect location for a waste management facility. And conversely, if you look at it for the site for residential development, you almost couldn't think of a worse site. It's pitched, it's rocky, it's ledge. There's a couple of brooks, vernal pools, you'd run into all kinds of conservation commission problems. But because it's already established, it's grandfathered in. This is a good deal. It's a win-win, and it doesn't matter when, and we don't want waste management to walk. We definitely don't, I'm sorry to tip my hand, and it doesn't matter, this contract was probably negotiated.

▶ 1:00:59 Peter D. Mortimer: There's been ongoing negotiations by Mr. De La Russo and Mr. Van Kampen, very experienced negotiators. And I'm sure that they've done a great job making sure that we've gotten all that we can get for Melrose. And that would be a terrible thought for housing, terrible. And I don't know why we have to have more housing all the time in Melrose housing. Yeah, there's a housing shortage apparently in the northeast of the United States, Why does Melrose have to solve that? We have to take care of what's good for Melrose, and this deal is good for Melrose. One of the things you can do, and I've done it, is it's a two ton minimum, but you can go down there with a van or a pickup truck. You roll onto the scale, they weigh it, you take your dumped material, and they check it to make sure it's clean.

▶ 1:01:49 Peter D. Mortimer: And then you give them, last time I hauled anything down there in my van, it was $150, what's the fee now? That sounds about right, yeah. Yeah, it's $150 for 2,000 pounds for a ton. And a lot of the contractors, friends of ours in Melrose that we all know, go down there, it's very convenient. And yet, it's not right there in downtown Melrose. We've got a dump site, and there it is. Changing the use would be terrible. This is a perfect spot. It's a good deal. So I say, let's grab it while it's there. been worked on. There's no need to wait any further. This isn't something like we're hiring somebody and we don't want to lock the new mayor into a contract of any type. This is something that's a deal that's going to go on for a long time. It's a good deal. It's

▶ 1:02:44 Peter D. Mortimer: a win-win. People talk about a master plan. There are master plans that come and go. The master plan gets annotated and changed every year, what really counts is they can have master plans and talk in different areas and this meeting and that meeting and master plan. What matters is what the aldermen want to do. That's what we're elected for. If this is a good deal, we should jump at it. Not worry about what the master plan in 2010 said, not worry about what the master plan said in 2015. We have a good deal in front of us right here. And the reason that they're going to walk if we don't grab this, and I know that weakens our bargaining position. I'm sorry gentlemen, I know you've worked very hard on this to make sure, but it seems like you've worked out a good deal.

▶ 1:03:37 Peter D. Mortimer: And I don't like those deals where take it now or we're going to walk. But waste management started making those noises a year ago. We got to do a deal here, let's get down to brass tacks or we might be walking. This isn't like they came in at this minute. This isn't a used car salesman saying, buy this car today because it's not going to be a lot tomorrow. No, this is an ongoing deal. And frankly, if I were waste management and I knew I wasn't getting the cooperation, I'd start looking around too because it's expensive to set up. But right now, the way this is set up, it's a good deal for everyone. It doesn't matter when, what matters is the why, how, and mostly what matters in this is the what.

▶ 1:04:22 Jennifer L. Lemmerman: Who, what, where, when, why, and how, the what, and is the deal a good deal? The what is the deal, and is the deal a good deal? Yes it is. Thank you. President Lemmerman? Thank you, Madam Chair. Thank you all for being here this evening and for providing this information. I would say I very much agree that we should follow the the plan to have a public process around land and opportunities for the city but that hasn't happened yet and so ideally would have happened it has not we now have this this offer in front of us that we need to evaluate if we started I know we heard Mr. Gnisella give his assessment of how long he thinks a process would take to evaluate this land from the city side if we started this tomorrow we went

▶ 1:05:18 Jennifer L. Lemmerman: through a public process got public input did the assessment you know whatever feasibility studies needed to be done how long would that process take if you could think back to you know other other times that we've done this in the city that's really a question for the city planner I have I have no idea okay i mean i imagine it takes a year to do a real thorough process but i i would only be guessing at that point and that's the the public input piece correct okay and then if you're going to do it right i mean having one meeting with the public and then saying you check that off that's not doing it right a good year i'd say yep okay and then that would obviously kick off another series of assessments and and studies that would need to happen um as you mentioned um city solicitor

▶ 1:06:08 Jennifer L. Lemmerman: this amounts to an eight year difference from what we're currently working with to the proposal on the table um and we we currently do not have an alternate plan i think there are in my opinion more pressing priorities within the city particularly related to our infrastructure and and our properties that need to be addressed first such as our police and fire buildings mr shenna mentioned the library you know those things before likely we would even be able to do that process here pushing it out even further i think it's important as as alderman mortimer has just mentioned that this is not what we're talking about is not extending a known subpar option this is not a consolation prize this is something that continues a productive successful relationship

▶ 1:07:06 Jennifer L. Lemmerman: that has been mutually beneficial for waste management and for the city and what we just very explicitly heard is that this offer is going to go away so we need to decide if you know we could go through that entire process and and decide that this this was the best use um you know it's not that we're you know filling time it's it's this is one of the options that will be discussed um through through a public process through an assessment um and and continuing this not only brings in revenue for the city it allows us to do that process in the meantime is there anything in this that would stop us from being able to start this process that has not gotten started no I mean quite frankly we had hoped to start

▶ 1:07:53 that study process in 2017 but as everyone knows a lot has happened in this community over the last couple of years so that this hasn't been top of the of the radar so to speak and when we were negotiating with with waste management we always looked at given the fact that we had this sort of the pause that had to occur when we when we transition between mayors we we always looked at it and said if we're going to ever have the opportunity to redevelop the site for whatever use is the best it would still it would still not be any earlier than 2027 or 28 anyway in terms of the actual development shovel in the ground so to extend waste management for eight years to and generate this kind of new revenue in a city that's you know desperately going to need it going forward

▶ 1:08:45 for other purposes it did seem like a good deal and i will just say that to a certain extent the city from a negotiating standpoint we waited mr nacella out with all due respect because four years ago he put nothing on the table by way of a one-time payment and then we waited and got a little closer to his deadlines and all of a sudden with all due respect mr nacella we now had a million dollar one-time payment offered to the city of belrose so it was give and take here but at the same time you know alderman water said it this is mortimer said it this is this is the best deal we could negotiate under the circumstances while giving the city the ability over the next eight to ten years to truly consider what redevelopment options exist for route 99 for

▶ 1:09:35 Jennifer L. Lemmerman: that whole swath of land all the way up to mount hood thank you um i would also mr jenner you you mentioned you know the possibility of of an mou of some kind um we did hear very clearly tonight that there's no intention to to stop allowing the city to use it in the way that we have um i do think that that you know if an mou was something that could be possible that would be probably a smart thing to do um i but you know i think that's just that's just an aside that we heard tonight that i would strongly recommend if we were to move forward with this um i do want to just mention i just want to say in the context of this order but i think in lots of things that we discuss i think we need to move past the mentality that city business should

▶ 1:10:26 Jennifer L. Lemmerman: come to a stop because we have an election coming up i think we need to continue to do our work and that we have we have business in front of us that is going is time sensitive and is going to go away and so i i think that's something that is detrimental um to us to be making decisions based off of that so i just want to mention that um i'll just you know i think i've said what i need to say i think this is a good deal we're looking at potentially having an empty piece of land in a couple of years because we didn't take a deal in front of us that could is certainly the best deal now and could end up long-term being the best deal but allows us to continue to do that assessment in the meantime so that we can determine where this should go beyond the length

▶ 1:11:17 of this extension and perhaps even earlier if something comes along we do have the option to take advantage of that thank you if i'm in plain information to the chair um from from my perspective it was three factors that we i looked at personally one was the entity itself and if they have proven themselves over the years but there was credibility to what services services they provide in the community, second was revenue stability, which we absolutely have to have in this community. We have learned in the past that we can't count on anyone else but ourselves, I don't want to forget that. Because we have one good year of state aid doesn't mean you're going to have another year. We've seen years and years where they just haven't come forward, whether it's for education, special ed, whatever the case may be.

▶ 1:12:06 It may be, it's sporadic, which is just what we don't want, this avoids that. And the third thing is, there is no possible way in two years that we are going to turn around and say, okay, we're all going to do this capital work now, whether it be for police or fire. We just took off the table $400,000, where did that come from? Well, you're going to lose at least $165,000, $170,000, what you're getting right now today, between this money and the real estate taxes. You're also going to pick up a new cost between $200,000 and $300,000 a year to do the work you're getting done now. It's not costing the city any dollars out of pocket. So now you have to have that cost taken care of, which no one in this room, including myself, would know how to do that.

▶ 1:12:48 Rita now, it hasn't been determined, how do we recover that? How do we produce that service that we're getting now from the value that we're getting from the agreement? And secondly, we are losing the regular, the dollar itself. So if you want to say the dollar's secondary, it sort of is in a way. But the important thing is, what do you put in its place and where do you put it, and who's going to run it? And we don't have that answer this evening, other than the fact that we know that what's in front of us will give us revenue stability. It will buy us time, and I appreciate Alderman Zwirko position, and anyone else on the master plan, and Alderman Vitra, etc. However, when a business comes before you, which we don't control, their business operation, and

▶ 1:13:29 they come to the city at a point we didn't anticipate, we just can't walk away or ignore it and say we don't have to listen to you because we have two more years. That's not how it works in the real world. Now his own situation as a business impacts us whether we want to accept it or not, because it does. So we're going to work with this organization before us, whether it's ABC company, whoever it is. We're going to decide to take a different route, but we can't have it both ways. And we can't have the same services delivered for nothing, because they're going to cost us something. And this is the same time as everyone's mindful that we're looking at police and fire, Public safety, the library, all these situations need help, Memorial Hall.

▶ 1:14:09 And now we're going to take money right off the table that would go towards providing some type of service for capital because we reduced our ability to support what we're getting today. So that plays both ways. So from my perspective, I support the agreement because for the time being it covers what I believe is ferocity right now from my point of view. for stability as we're going forward and i think it works best at this point and i know it's eight years it's not the ten and we did um work to bring that down i believe the original year was like 35 years he was looking for so we negotiate down to eight so it was it wasn't something that wasn't done in a painful way i'm sure he'd like a longer term he could speak for himself but we didn't want

▶ 1:14:57 to go that far but thank you alderman medeiros thank you uh thank you attorney ben campen could you talk a little bit about the history of ownership of this parcel of land this has always been owned by the city of melrose and and what's happened so i don't know the year but i think decades ago it was the city dump i'm not sure what years that would have encompassed then at some point it became a permitted transfer station and then in 96 as i said mj conley took the permit for a transfer station there and then ran forward to waste management their successor today but it's always been um this type of use for as long far back as as as i know is that like the 1960s is that 1920 like do we do a chain of title or anything i'll go back to the 1960s but so i i

▶ 1:15:57 Monica C. Medeiros: don't want to i don't want to have all the more across debate but he probably is more of an expert than i am i moved here in 69 and it was a dump then yeah and uh as far as you're aware in the time from it being the city dump to the time where mj connelly came along was there any cleanup of the land well that's what we don't that's the unknown in all of this you know we go through the process of doing feasibility studies and and you know land valuation assessments and we don't know if there are contaminants on that site do we know if the city of Melrose conducted any cleanup I don't have that information I'm not sure but it's probably likely that there may have been contaminants yeah and it's probably likely as mr nacella said that any any redevelopment that

▶ 1:16:51 the site work itself whether there is contamination or not on that site would be extraordinarily costly and um before land would say transfer to if we say we wanted to move this to residential use there would have to be significant environmental cleanup of the property. Correct. Not just waste management returning it to the state that they found it in, but deeper soil cleaning. Correct. There would be a tremendous amount of earth moving that would have to happen to do it. We actually had an entity approach us, probably four years ago, and he was interested in essentially processing all of the rock that comprises this multi-acre site all the way to the top, and to process the rock in such a way to bring the entire topography to the street level

▶ 1:17:59 Monica C. Medeiros: with route 99. um but even that for him became way too cost prohibitive um we've talked about the the butters can you talk about the access into the parcel and you know how much access there is to the main road yeah john do you want to talk to that yeah we share the main gate off route 99. we so the access up our recycling composting area in the back we entered through the front gate at route 99 so basically the the remainder of this parcel is it was it safe to say it's sort of landlocked there's no other so you know again if and this isn't currently is residential use allowed currently under this is only this is owned industrial so that so we would if we wanted to explore something like multi multi-use residential or some

▶ 1:19:07 Monica C. Medeiros: other kind views that did include residential let's just say we would have to make zoning changes through the Board of Aldermen Planning Board public process I don't even know if you have because of the way the lot is configured from route 99 it like funnels in from route 99 i don't even know if you had sufficient frontage to do anything on this process minimal frontage under any zoning under any zoning and certainly we would have an emergency access issue correct can you talk about the part of this agreement includes includes if increased tonnage is processed through through waste management the city would receive more money for instance what kind of waste are we talking about are we talking about trash are we talking about compost are we talking about like

▶ 1:20:10 Monica C. Medeiros: what kinds of you know from from our perspective right we're always trying to reduce waste and we're seeing like in the city we've actually been able to reduce some of our trash tonnage but we're increasing other things like a recycling tonnage is this specific only to trash tonnage or what kind of tonnage is included in the site itself is is permitted to handle you know what's classified as municipal solid waste under the state guidelines so would be trash construction materials bulky wastes that type of thing we can transfer recyclables but we don't it's it's not necessarily the best you know use up there so the host payment is based on the you know the inbound tonnage that comes you know and it'll be

▶ 1:21:05 Monica C. Medeiros: solid waste and construction materials primarily and so we're kind of anticipating that that's going to go up and be increased but yet all of our collective you know not just in Melrose but in you know collectively in Massachusetts I think our desire is to try to reduce our our waste tonnage so I mean obviously we have minimum a minimum payment in this but I you know how likely do you think it is that that tonnage is actually going to increase its its process they given the the dilemma that the the state is in right now and looking at the 10-year solid waste master plan there'll there'll be a need for additional volumes to come through some facilities and that's really because of you know multiple closures of solid waste facilities

▶ 1:21:53 around the state so while we don't think the general public is going to generate more waste we just think there's less you know less facilities around to be able to handle that and it'll require us to transfer you know longer distances so you know the the minimum payment is there the likelihood that you know would increase I would say is it was it's there you know requires like what mr. Shana said probably some view of the operation to try to make it just you know a little bit more efficient to do that and do you have other facilities nearby or in what proximity to to this one other waste facilities we handle a number of solid waste facilities so we have similar transfer stations in Lemonster and Marlboro Massachusetts and Raina Massachusetts so they're they're

▶ 1:22:52 generally cited you know in geographic areas to take a zone and then we have solid waste you know landfill you know agreements as well to help serve those how difficult is it to find another spot that that would allow this kind of use the the issue with with citing a facility generally is it's going to be more the size the acreage of a facility to be able to just meet all the setback requirements so you know there's been a few facilities transfer station facilities you know cited in the last few years i'd say it's a little bit more difficult to cite like a landfill operation so that that becomes a little bit more problematic because you need a lot of acreage you need a lot of open space and that's that's generally a you know a situation

▶ 1:23:49 Monica C. Medeiros: that's more difficult to cite than a transfer station itself right and um and attorney van camp and um we've talked about at the end of the existing agreement that waste management is required to return the land as it was is there anything stopping us from asking them not to take down certain buildings and um scales and things like that i mean we could certainly I can only ask, but I imagine in the lucrative solid waste market, I can't imagine any corporation would agree to allow us to hold on to this valuable and give it to a competitor. And just for example, how much does something like a scale? I have no idea. I mean, we're getting this one time payments basically kind of for the, like it's for the buildings and the improvements that are on the land um no the the payment is to

▶ 1:24:53 just continue the the relationship we've already invested in the scale and so it's it's nothing that the city has actually ever purchased or supplied so we we supplied all of that you know initially and i think just to your point alderman medeiros when uh mayor inferno came into office and these discussions were ongoing the the goal was always for us internally to annualize the deal at 300 000 net per year that's not including the tax payments that waste management will make so if you look at the minimum host community payment the annual host community payment and you annualize a million dollars over 10 years we pretty much hit the 300 000 and most years going forward after the first two uh we'll exceed it and we hope to have more tonnage generated at

▶ 1:25:41 Monica C. Medeiros: the site so we can you know we can pull that out of the water uh i have to agree i would very much hope to see something in writing that would protect our uh rights if it if you will endure a memorandum of understanding or something to really uh codify our relationship and you know we're making we're being asked here as aldermen to make decisions today based on the understanding that we are you know receiving a savings by being able to use this parcel of land and i would say very much that probably will factor into the decisions of many of us here today so i would like to see that memorialized in in writing you know i share the frustrations that have been expounded on here today i mean this obviously is not necessarily something that we didn't expect

▶ 1:26:38 Monica C. Medeiros: was going to come up right there was we know the lease was set to expire 2021 and obviously we have waste management who came to the city you know two years ago or pretty close to it it sounds like to request this process you know begin from their perspective and you know it's it was communicated to the city but it's frustrating because as you know alderman mortimer pointed out it's ultimately it's up to us here in the board of aldermen to make these decisions and you know that this kind of information really wasn't communicated to us more than say you know two weeks ago or so when the order came up before us so never mind to the public and it certainly has been the discussions in this board of aldermen over the course of several years including you

▶ 1:27:32 Monica C. Medeiros: know being mentioned in the master plan that this is the you know this is the single i i think it's the single biggest parcel of land that we own that's and it's you know it's been mentioned and referred to many times as one that was possibly available to us to possibly look to develop for residential use or mixed-use development that's been discussed i mean we mentioned the public safety buildings have been mentioned many times it's been you know referred to here and there is the possibility of you know a place where we could maybe move public work so that we could use the tremont street location for some kind of public safety building there's been lots of things mentioned over the years but obviously we haven't had that public

▶ 1:28:23 Monica C. Medeiros: process and the communication that does need to happen and it's frustrating because it probably should have happened you know at least two years ago if not even before but that being said you know I think we're here and we find ourselves in a situation where you know we can say we should have and I think if obviously I think the you know the next administration has to begin this process immediately to look at this use and it may very well be that this is the the best use for this piece of property I you know as discussed here tonight to do anything with this property it has very limited access it you know to the road it there certainly would be environmental concerns to make it some other kind of type of use there is a benefit here that there are not

▶ 1:29:22 Monica C. Medeiros: neighbors that are disrupted but at the same so you know right now we have to look at the situation we have in at hand and I think it goes to the bird in the hand is worth two in the bush and you know I have frustration by the lack of communication to to us and to the public but at the same time I think this is probably something that we should move forward with and and hope that the next administration begins reviewing this in a more thorough basis thank you alderman wright thank you madam chair some of the points i had were touched on already so i'll try to get through this quickly um just to confirm there is a determination for convenience clause is that correct mr van keppen okay and um do you or mr delarusso who will be responsible for auditing

▶ 1:30:19 the tonnage that passes through so john and jim have had that discussion i don't know if john or jim wants to address how we would reconcile the tonnage and so the the way the facility operates everything comes over the scale is recorded and so what will happen is electronic record of that scale report each month will go to public works along with the host community payment and so you'll you know you'll be able to see that we also duly have to report those same figures to the state as part of a the condition of the operating permit okay so similar to like prevailing wage or something very much so yeah great thank you three guys to the prorated but the potential for prorated return of all the part of the 1 million dollars I assume they would the intention is to

▶ 1:31:16 Francis X. Wright Jr.: have a plan in place so that we aren't going to be a position where Marin Ferner is intending to take the first half of that money and spend it on a public safety vehicle or whatever and then have to then come up with several hundred thousand dollars should the next mayor decide that he wants to pull out of this agreement I mean I thought processes is it are we looking at potentially putting it into some type of stabilization fund or I don't know revolving fund would be appropriate so that you could draw it down and maybe draw it out if you if there's the need exists to spend more than what we basically know we've earned my the way I'm looking at it is we're getting a million dollars over ten years we earn it as time passes we no longer would

▶ 1:32:05 Francis X. Wright Jr.: have to pay back so we could spend it down accordingly and it would be earning into with the understanding that if we needed it for a public safety down payment on a public safety construction project or something like that we could have that as long as there's a plan in place that if we as we study the site yeah yeah we have to realize that we there's a buyout provision that we have to meet so I just want to make sure and it sounds like that's all been thought through yeah and again through the chair what would happen ideally because this money as part of this agreement is general fund money it requires appropriation from the board of aldermen for a million dollars as it comes in alderman Rita what will happen is we'll apply

▶ 1:32:48 the two payments half a million half a million we'll then turn over into free cash for the following fall fall of 20 and then through the board you could you could appropriate that money to suits and claims fund as what we already have set up as a way to mitigate any negative consequences that may result if this is terminated or portion thereof you may do half a million if you decide that that's reasonable but you do have the fund already set up so that's exactly correct great thank you thank you okay um i have to be honest with you i'm somewhat conflicted about how we got here tonight and some previous speakers have talked about that um i think it would have better served this board in the city if we at least had a sense of this was coming

▶ 1:33:32 Francis X. Wright Jr.: and we could have expected that you might be here at some point that said and having a position similar to mr van kempen's i understand that in order to get to the point where we're at tonight and get to a working agreement for this board as a body to consider you need to get the principles at the table and the mayor is the chief executive and the mayor is the person who has to be at the table and the person the mayor appoints and you just can't bring the 11 members of this board to the table to get to the point we're at tonight so while i would have liked to have known something was going on in the background i also understand the potential of what that means so so well i might have done it differently i respect i understand it's reasonable

▶ 1:34:27 Francis X. Wright Jr.: how you got here. Just on the bottom line, you know, to echo what the President said, from my perspective, and I guess all of them and Mortimer to some extent, as I go through the agreement, I see there are things that I would want, and I think we all come to the table for when we try to negotiate a contract and have a wish and we know what we want but I also recognize that when you at the end of the day you have to figure out whether there's a good deal before you that both parties can live with and I think that we can't get too caught up on how we got here and because I am a little bit conflicted about that we are where we are in the process and i think we have to look forward and not backwards and ultimately we need

▶ 1:35:32 Francis X. Wright Jr.: time to study the site um the options for it um and what the opportunities and market might be like uh as relate to not only it but the adjoining lots and whether deals can be made to conjoin lots and that type of thing all that takes time um i've had the privilege of being involved in some major projects in a municipality nearby and my experience tells me that these things take many years to come to fruition so I see that you know while the timing for this may not appear good at first glance ultimately my sense is that it's a good deal for the city. So, thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Alderman Master. Thank you, Madam Chair. Good evening. Thank you for being here. Mr. De La Rosa, you indicated that

▶ 1:36:33 Shawn M. MacMaster: the one million dollars would go into the general fund, correct? Correct. If the board passes this or the if the committee votes favorably and this goes before the board and it's passed, when would the anticipated time be that we would receive that payment? It is broken out in here. The two payments it'll be it's um actually on 5.3 so that it talks about the um one million dollars where 500 000 is going to be remitted within 45 days of execution of the agreement and the remaining 50 500 000 will be remitted on before march 1st of 2020. so this is a hard date in there for both is there any plan right now or conversations within the administration to earmark that money for anything in particular within that time period that you just discussed

▶ 1:37:22 at least the first five hundred thousand dollars um ideally i really can't because that would require action from the department of revenue to say the fund that kind of money is even available and it would require like a free cash certification which is not advantageous. Secondly is that I think the way we laid it out is we will have assurance that before the end of this fiscal year. That's before we will have a million dollars and the contract was adhered to. And then again, we close it out at the end of the year because it's unbudgeted revenue. been allocated to anything specific it will flow to free cash and at that point you'll get the free cash certification which will have that amount in there and then at that point we go to the board

▶ 1:38:16 Shawn M. MacMaster: and indicate that x percent should go to suits and claims stabilization fund to insulate the city in the event of a negative consequence of the agreement however there may be an opportunity to put x percent for capital if we feel that you know when we're confident they're not confident But I mean, you'll have that opportunity to discuss that here, because every single dime has got to be appropriated by this board. And that will ultimately be up to the next mayor. So that was what I was going to say essentially is that it's not as easy as the money just being deposited and a decision being made unilaterally by this administration that there's a process by which the next administration would identify what that money might be used for and then bring the matter before the board.

▶ 1:39:02 My other question relates to the payment in lieu of taxes. It looks like it's $7,000 as part of the agreement under section 5.4. What is the current payment in lieu of taxes right now? Yeah, so we've had discussions in the last couple of days about that particular provision. And I'm now working with Waste Management's Tax Council. We're trying to get a consistent determination of a particular section of the taxation statute. I think at the end of the day what's going to happen is that payment in lieu of taxes is going to, that provision's going to come out of this agreement before the mayor signs it. And waste management will be taxed at full value for their use of that site. Currently it's about $34,000, I think, in total that they pay the city mowers in taxes.

▶ 1:39:53 They're taxed currently because they're under a lease agreement with us, conducting a commercial enterprise. under the operating agreement, although it was 28,000 in this agreement ultimately, McMaster. What's ultimately going to happen, I think, is that that provision's going to come out, and we will essentially apply the same formula that we currently apply to them from a taxation standpoint. And then, Mr. Van Campen, you talked a little bit about the assets over which we would take ownership. I'm not sure if this would be more appropriate for Mr. Shanna or Mr. Masella to talk a little bit about what are those assets. Yes, so on the property there's a constructed, the solid waste facility, which is constructed

▶ 1:40:35 concrete floor, concrete barriers, metal building. There's construction, if you will, scale house, office trailer, and there is a waste scale and system, the adjoining systems that the scale runs on. Those are the three primary pieces of equipment that are there. So when Mr. Van Campen said that we would essentially take control over those ownership, what does that mean for us as a city? Title would vest in the city of Melrose. So ten years from the date of execution of the operating agreement, the city would own in absolute fee those assets. So waste management couldn't raise the structures when the agreement ends and walk away leaving us with nothing. We would actually have a valuable asset on the ground even at the end of this agreement.

▶ 1:41:34 And do we have any sense what the value of the assets are? I don't know specifically what the waste station and the building would be valued at. Hard to say because if you look at replacement value, it's a lot maybe different than standing value but um you know uh taxing them at thirty four thousand dollars annually so it's so those are currently taxed yes it's correct so you could probably tax back the tax rate out of that number and come up with the valuation that we are assigning to it and i just want to reinforce that although although we will own it the agreement requires them to maintain and repair it and if we want to upgrade they would do that at their cost and then at the end of the agreement

▶ 1:42:18 Shawn M. MacMaster: it would just all be turned back to us so from a resource perspective there's nothing that is being asked of of the city in terms of operating costs that aren't currently in our our this year's operating budget the only thing i'll represent all the mcmaster is that the lease is terminated we're obligated to return the security deposit to waste management that was made several you know who knows how long ago and we still have that money in a segregated account for this purpose. The parking of $14,000, I believe. Like Alderman Wright, I'm somewhat conflicted too because it does seem to be a matter of urgency in some sense, but I also have concerns just understanding that it's been a two-year process and we have before us an eight-page agreement.

▶ 1:43:13 Shawn M. MacMaster: I think just for my understanding as I contemplate how to vote on this matter, can you talk a little bit about why that why that's a two-year process to have eight pages in front of us and I understand a lot of work goes into putting together a document like this but from a work product perspective can you just talk about what those two years have looked like what type of communication we've had with waste management has there been a lapse in communication which resulted in the delay anything to just really help me and I think this is an offset of what alderman forbes had asked is or the concern that he had which is the the timing of it um again understanding started two years ago but we are i understand city business has to go on but i

▶ 1:43:58 am sensitive to the fact that um 68 days from now we know who the next mayor will be um and i'm concerned about tying his or her hands uh without them having an input uh in this so Can you just talk about the process a little bit? Sure, so we took a very methodical approach to negotiating with waste management. And as in any negotiation, parties walk away from the table and say, that's not good enough. And a month goes by, or a month and a half goes by, and a party comes back and says, we really want to get a deal done. You know, it's the process of negotiation. So were there lapses where I would email Mr. Nacella and six weeks would go by? Probably, I think there were, because as an administration,

▶ 1:44:52 we weren't simply willing to say yes until we got the best deal. So that process, that methodical process, did take almost two years. And that's why we're here tonight, because now we're at a point where we're almost crossing over a line where waste management's going to have to say, We need to look somewhere else if we can't get this done. But for two years we were very methodically looking at this and we simply, under both Mayor Dolan and Mayor Inferna's direction, we weren't just going to say yes to any deal just to continue the relationship. We wanted to make sure that financially it made the most sense for the city, that we had something to show for it when it was over, and that we had an ability to get out in the less than ten year term.

▶ 1:45:33 Shawn M. MacMaster: If something really lucrative arose for that space. I hope that answers your question it does I think that if this doesn't pass there's still a skeleton that exists I don't think it necessarily means that we go back to the drawing board or we start from a blank slate and I understand what waste management has represented to us but it also sounds like from Alderman Medeiros this question is that there's not a lot of options and I just can't can't help but think if it may be mutually advantageous to both the new administration and also waste management, which seems like they were talked down quite a bit from where they started to enter into a new negotiation based off of the skeleton that is in front

▶ 1:46:21 Kate Lipper-Garabedian: of us. So I'm torn on this, but I think you've answered all of my questions. Thank you, Madam Chair. Before we circle back for people for a second time, I just wanted to, for my own clarification, Mr. Van Kampen, you mentioned that currently our lease payment is $135,000 a year. Is that correct? That's an approximate number. $137,626. Okay. And on top of that, we also, you mentioned, get... About $34,000 in real estate taxes. Okay. Okay, and it sounds like section 5.4, the additional payment, which currently is drafted to be a $28,000 payment in lieu of taxes, may be renegotiated based on advice from tax attorneys to just return you, turn us to status quo of property taxes. Sure. This was raised by our chief assessor, and under 59, I think it's section 2B, which is

▶ 1:47:24 the tax statute essentially even though waste is operating under an operating agreement there's the law still requires that the city of Melrose tax them at full value so the $34,000 tax payment currently received is going to likely continue and that provision itself would just be stricken from the agreement okay Are there any other terms of the operating agreement draft that we have here tonight that you can anticipate are going to need to be adjusted or edited like the one that we just discussed now? No, no, I think the tax component is the only component that was a bit of a moving target over the last couple of days. But other than that, the agreement as drafted should remain unchanged. Okay. There may be some typos and other things addressed, but it should remain unchanged.

▶ 1:48:19 Robert A. Boisselle: possibly you could consider an inclusion of a reference to an addendum that's a memorandum of understanding related to the use of the property correct we'll probably do that in some form of a side letter agreement with waste okay mr nacella and mr shenna can execute it okay those are all my clarifying questions vice chair boyza i'm sorry if i missed you before thank you for coming gentlemen this site as a transfer station within 128 state in Massachusetts is regulated by the state of Massachusetts, the EP, is that correct? Correct. You have yearly inspections, I believe. And John, has there been any problems with the inspections in the past that you are aware of? No, the last few years, the only real issue that we've been called upon was the issue

▶ 1:49:15 Robert A. Boisselle: we created with runoff from snow melt. Snow melt was coming down, so we had to put some erosion barriers and controls, and Jim got the call, so it wasn't even their operation, it was something we had done on their parcels that got called on. All right, and the piece of property that we're talking about here is surrounded by a golf course, which is always nice to be near, but we have an asphalt plant, we have an aggregate plant, and we have a major gas line coming through the profit is it coming through the property or just edging through the property that's quite a bit of is it worth that much money with all that aspects around it that's that's not my expertise but there's some I feel there's some substantial challenges to

▶ 1:50:20 Robert A. Boisselle: that site graphically with the gas line and with the fact that it's been used as a dump unregulated and now regulated but I'd be more concerned about those decades where it was an unregulated dump and what's under that ground to begin with this form from the past history that we talked it was a dump going back 20 30 years ago and it is true within the 128 belt it takes three to five years to even locate a transfer station and you're lucky if you can get a transfer station within the 128 belt within 495 it's probably two to four two to five and beyond that beyond 495 it's less than that so this site is becoming very very important to waste management and in their aspects this city has used that site in the past for situations especially doing emergency situations I

▶ 1:51:26 Robert A. Boisselle: remember probably a number of years back when one of the hurricanes came through New England and we had a lot of trees that came down and we had to put those trees just to open up the roadways we have to put them there we had people solving them up but not enough to clear all the area but they were moved to the Mount Hood area into the site that you're referring to so we're DPW and the city is getting a lot of side benefits for this which would cost us a lot of money in the long run and i would at this time like to make a motion to motion for passage of this order at this time second second the motion to recommend recommend it's a recommendation to the full board second the motion to recommend for passage

▶ 1:52:25 Michael P. Zwirko: madam chair okay we have a motion to recommend for passage uh approving this operating agreement made by vice chair Boisselle and seconded by alderman mortimer um we have others in queue are you just are you done with your comments thank you man thank you alderman's work go thank you madam chair um realizing it's my second time i won't speak too long um i do um first i want to state that you know i do think that government is functioning here in the city and i think that we the board are functioning as well just a couple weeks ago we passed a major ordinance to enhance vacant properties as well as reduced plastic straws and i look forward to the one of them passed and i look forward to the other passing we are doing work here and we're actively

▶ 1:53:09 Michael P. Zwirko: doing work and i think we should continue to do that in light of any election that is on the forefront if we pass something or don't pass it that's still business occurring and you know the master plan that we went through was a very involved process it cost us over a hundred thousand dollars it took two years and involved private consultants it involved several meetings with the public this the first master plan or excuse me the master plan prior to that there's the fingerprint of that plan is all over our community the smart growth district solar panels on our middle school the middle school itself that was actually in the previous master plan enhancements to traffic redeveloping the downtown so these aren't things that we just do and

▶ 1:53:53 Michael P. Zwirko: we put on a shelf and we say oh that's great people's careers are built around making master plans consultants do these these what we did in 2017 is a significant forward-thinking view as to what we the community want to do and we specifically drew out this parcel of property and I think my frustration along with many of the others in this room is over the process that occurred so we've known that there was negotiations going on in 2017 we also had the master plan at the time I still can't get away from the fact that we should have at least had discussions outside of this chamber with the public about what we're going to do maybe we find out that we're exactly where we are tonight maybe that's the case but we don't know that because the the due diligence that has been

▶ 1:54:34 Michael P. Zwirko: done on this has been one-dimensional and I say that because we're talking about well we you know no one's going to want to come in because there's probably going to be remediation or you know the frontage isn't wide enough for that we still don't know I mean land is at a primary premium here in greater 128 and whether or not it's residential whether it becomes an amusement park i mean who knows but we don't know because we haven't gone through the process to discuss what a as a community we want this to be or b who would be willing to even enter into a property i mean down in everett they just had a huge remediation property that went through major reclamation i understand it was to the tune of two billion dollars and that's not what we're talking about

▶ 1:55:12 Michael P. Zwirko: here but my point is developers are always interested in property especially in 128 they're willing to take on contingencies knowing 10 20 30 years out that there could be something there and this is just something that we haven't even haven't even opened the door to even considering and i really think that we're running roughshod over the public as to what their intentions were with this parcel knowing that it was going to expire at the time i appreciate that we have a good relationship with waste management and that they've always honored um with dpw i agree with many of the folks around this horseshoe that we should have a memorandum of understanding codifying that relationship this isn't personal it's just business and we have to make a business

▶ 1:55:52 Michael P. Zwirko: decision and i think when i think about the business decision that we're going to make for our community and being eight ten years out i think we need to look harder at this and it stinks to be here with a gun to the head needing to make a decision on this now because i find it very hard to believe that there's no business contingency for waste management on this i mean they made 15.1 billion dollars last year they're a national company they have over 314 transfer stations across North America and they've known about this for a long time if we ultimately ended up through due diligence through vetting every possible avenue that this is where we were going to end up and the community knew that

▶ 1:56:32 Michael P. Zwirko: then I understand that but this isn't something that we woke up and we're just kind of hit on the head with and it just it bothers me because there are a few moments in this chamber where we have the ability to affect the makeup and the the vision of this community for the next 10 years and this is one of them so i i just i'm i just wish that we had more time to talk about this outside of this chamber instead of having to deal with this now when this this came before us on august 15th at 4 p.m um i don't have any questions it looks like we're going to move forward on this this evening it's i it's it just really it's it puts us in an unfortunate in a bad position here as a board and me personally because I was looking forward to the expiration of

▶ 1:57:18 Francis X. Wright Jr.: this lease and being able to do something good with this parcel that's all I had madam chair thank you support alderman Boisselle motion I want to make clear that my being conflicted is strictly three guys to a block of communication as i said we are where we are and we have to look forward and not wring our hands over what might have been or should have been we have to look forward we have to move continue to move the city forward the deal seems fair i've gone through it and we have an obligation a fiscal obligation to the city not to put us in a position where what was it um um mr delarusso you know both dollars and and um in kind contributions would be four hundred thousand dollars yeah between what we would lose for actual high dollars being 137 plus 34 000 and then we

▶ 1:58:27 Francis X. Wright Jr.: Then we would pick up a brand new cost of between $250,000 and $300,000 to do the work they're doing now that we don't pay for. That we would have to begin to pay for, let alone any setup and installation cost to provide that operation. So it is a revenue loss of at least $400,000 overall. And would the money we're generating from such things as medical marijuana, Would that in any way supplement our present budget to make up for that loss? No, in my opinion, I don't see that right now. So we don't have a way of making up this money. I just don't see why we would walk away from this because they didn't follow the master plan, which I agree should have been a consideration. But it wasn't doesn't mean we can't continue to look at the site. There is a termination for convenience clause

▶ 1:59:27 Francis X. Wright Jr.: considering this site For future development is going to take time We have to make a determination how much this city wants to invest in Studying that site or what type of deal we want to make with a developer a potential developer master developer to consider that That's going to take time so So we can make this deal, we can move forward, we can up the payment to the city in the meantime. And the new mayor can start that process pursuant to the master plan. And if we get to a point before this contract expires, it makes sense for the city to go in a different direction, and we can do that. Thank you. Alderman Mortimer. Thank you very much, Chairman Libby Garabedian. The master plan organizations that we have with the advisors are just that, they're advisory.

▶ 2:00:26 Peter D. Mortimer: They advise us what we need to do, or what they think we need to do, or what they recommend and suggest what we do as aldermen. But ultimately, on a contract like this, the buck stops here, and we have to decide. The contract is not that long, you could read it in one sitting, Unlike many contracts that your own attorney, John Tramatozzi's attorney, your own attorney, this is not really that involved and complicated a contract, it's readable. And we knew this was coming. This wasn't foisted on us at the 11th hour. I've been aware that it's been in the works for the last couple of years. It's been on the back burner, but I knew it was coming. I knew it's always been something that could happen.

▶ 2:01:21 Peter D. Mortimer: And it's not, this isn't an airtight analogy, but Mr. Della Russo and Mr. Van Campen are kind of like our real estate agents. And we're the sellers or the buyers of a house. And they come to us and say, the buyer wants to do this, the seller wants to do that, the buyer wants to do this. Now they've come and said, this is the deal. This is as far as the seller or the buyer, pick whichever side of the deal you want, is willing to go. And the, we'll call it the seller, the seller could walk. The seller could walk, or there's somebody else, and this is a representative democracy. We're elected by the people because we're competent people, Because we have experience, we have experience in government, we have people here who are attorneys,

▶ 2:02:18 Peter D. Mortimer: city solicitors, people who are city planners, people who have been on the school committee before, people who, you know, I'm not going to give all our resumes and praise us all to the zenith. But we got elected because we're smart people and we know what we're doing. We're not going to trot out every time a contract comes, we're not going to trot it out and have a town meeting. We don't have town meeting government here in Melrose, where out in Sherbourne or something, 150 people come out and they all gather in a barn, and they all yell at each other and talk about things. We have representative democracy here, and that's what we do. That we all knew that this contract was possible. It's been a hot issue, although it's been on the back burner.

▶ 2:03:06 Peter D. Mortimer: It's always something that's been on any alderman who's paying attention, it's been on our radar. And we knew this could happen. It's not only contracted, it's, and the bottom line is, regardless of how we got here and yeah, it would have been nice to know that this was going to happen six weeks ago, but sometimes it just doesn't play out that way. And there's no malevolence, there's no misfeasance, There's certainly no malfeasance that this happened, but not even misfeasance or non-feasance. This is just the way sometimes things come down. We got it in time, we had time to read it, and the bottom line is, it's a good deal. This property really is not suitable for any other use. I've been playing up there for 50 years, and it's rough property.

▶ 2:03:56 Peter D. Mortimer: And what drains out, we have three drainage ways that water leaves the city of Melrose. One is to the Malden River, the Calvert Oak Grove, and the other one is to the Saugus River out at Deadman's Curve. This one drains into the Chelsea Creek. It ends up going through that, being on the conservation committee for five years before I was an alderman. You learn things, but this one ends up in that marsh that you see down in the reverse cinema. That's where that drains out to. The three areas that, but I digress, and I'll stop digressing because I do have ADD. Excuse the boot. And- Thank you, Alderman Mortimer. No, I'm not done. I just said I'll stop digressing. Oh, I apologize. I didn't say I'd stop talking.

▶ 2:04:37 Peter D. Mortimer: I still have six more minutes, but I won't use them all, I promise. But the bottom line is, this is a good deal. This is a good deal for the city of Melrose. We're not going to get better. It's extremely doubtful that we'd get a better deal than this. And it's also a possibility that waste management could walk. And then we'd be in a world of trouble. And I don't want to be in a world of trouble. We could use that money for so many different things. Thank you very much. Thank you, Alderman Bewtra. Thank you. I wanted to clarify a couple things for the record with regards to the master plan. what this conversation we're having tonight I think I concur with my colleagues frustrated with maybe lack of communication but we are fully within

▶ 2:05:30 Manisha Bewtra: what is recommended within the master plan because planning for the expiration of this lease was a medium term priority the plan was adopted I believe in June 2017 and so in the four to seven year time range we are still within that time frame which is not to say again a plan is ultimately an advisory document it's not really it's supposed to set the framework to alderman Mortimer point the other point I wanted to clarify is that while that document did cost probably around a hundred thousand dollars to produce the city of Melrose only spent about if I recall correctly about $45,000 of our funds on it most of it was grant funded and it was funded through mostly through staff time at the Metropolitan Area Planning Council so again in summary I think the major

▶ 2:06:35 Manisha Bewtra: points here have been stated over and over again but the site is really challenging it will take us a while to do a planning process properly and and I would have loved to have known about this a little earlier than tonight given that the negotiations have been ongoing but I also think that the proposal before us makes sense for where we are at the moment thank you thank you seeing no additional comments we have a motion to recommend for passage made by vice Chair Boisselle and seconded by Alderman Mortimer. All in favor? Aye. Any opposed? Opposed. I think that was seven yes, four no. Should we, do you need a hands? Sure. So all those Madam Chair, can we have a roll call? Sure. If you would like that, that's fine. Do you

▶ 2:07:30 want to call the roll? Sure. Alderman Boisselle. Yes. Alderman Mortimer. Yes. Alderman Tramontozzi no alderman wright yes alderman Medeiros yes alderman forbes no alderman's worko no alderman buter yes alderman mcmaster no alderman president lemmerman yes chair Letter garabedian yes seven four six seven seven yes seven yes four no okay so that will be recommended to the full board for passage thank you thank you very much maybe if i don't mind speaking out of turn to the degree that anything changes between now and our next full board meeting which is i think just around the corner so it may not you're welcome to sort of submit that for the record including the provision that you discussed likely changes between now and tuesday i would certainly

▶ 2:08:25 Kate Lipper-Garabedian: transmit to the board thank you thank you thank you thank you thank you all right the next item on origin day we're going back to our regular orders so um number one order number two zero two zero dash eight authorizing a bond in the amount of three hundred seventy five thousand dollars under the sewer enterprise account through the mwra sewer system ini local financial assistance program alderman's work out i throw this out just in in the expediency uh both these these orders seem somewhat similar order 2 0 2 0 dash 8 and 2 0 2 0 dash 9 we're even citing the same presentation I'm wondering for at least discussion purposes if it makes sense to combine the two orders combine the two orders a

▶ 2:09:15 Kate Lipper-Garabedian: motion to join Alderman Mortimer any discussion on that motion all in favor any opposed okay so we'll combine our order the first order that I've just just read which relates to the sewer enterprise account with order number two zero two zero dash nine authorizing a bond under the water enterprise system through MWRA local water system assistance program bonds for fiscal year 2020 in the amount of one million four hundred forty thousand dollars we do have a presentation and so we'd be happy to hear from you good evening I'm John I'm the Director of Public Works, and this evening it's my pleasure to request authorization for the last time to borrow funds that will continue to invest in our infrastructure.

▶ 2:10:31 We have, and I'll keep my comments very brief because we have a very competent engineering group with us tonight that will present the technical aspects of these projects, but we have always the last decade and a half invested in our infrastructure through the support and the cooperation of the sport of alderman and former administration on the mandolin current administration the mayor inferno we've we've solved problems that decades ago people thought could never be solved you cannot ignore your infrastructure infrastructure has to be aggressively repaired maintained and upgraded to meet current needs the projects before you tonight I'm focused on water and sewer but it's very important to realize

▶ 2:11:23 what goes into the decision-making process of what creates capital projects and Melrose today we have like I said we have competent engineering group that looks at really four different things we have a water capital improvement program a sewer capital improvement program we have a road a road program that which looks at road conditions existing road conditions updates those every three years we've now supplemented complete streets which is a different way of approaching different aspects of road construction we've now incorporated that into our road program and then we've worked very closely with the gas company and looking at where their needs are and trying to match all four of those needs together to create a project when you do that you

▶ 2:12:10 end up with a master schedule like this which you really can't read but about three-quarters of this list is complete as we go into next week this is the capital improvement program which we see throughout the community over the course of the year and you will going into the fall as well the projects tonight really focus on water and sewer we are requesting funding from the MW IRA programs the MW IRA water program is a zero percent interest program and the one point four four million dollar authorization to borrow request will upgrade water main on First Street which would be a continuation of a block we did in front of the Winthrop school from Ashcroft to Waverly the gas company The company's currently upgrading the gas main on that segment of street right now.

▶ 2:13:10 It will look to upgrade water main in front of the Harvest Man School on Damon Ave and a section of Glendale. Those are recommended fire flow and distribution improvements in front of the school. The gas main in front of the Harvest Man was replaced this summer. it will look to replace the gas sorry the water on Echo Street we're working with the gas company to get them to replace their their system in that area of Ward 7 and we also hopefully will be applying for complete streets a complete street grant which will add sidewalks in that in that neighborhood, this way kids can more safely approach the Hoover School and walk to the Hoover School. And then the last piece of it is recommended improvements in the top part of Brown Street in Wyoming Heights.

▶ 2:14:08 That's way up Mount Vernon. At the top there, there are some circulation and distribution issues there. On the sewer side, we're requesting $375,000 authorization to borrow. That will allow us to access grants from the MWRA that will net $1.5 million in project funds. That will allow us to go back into areas we've worked in for sewer. It will allow us to move forward into new areas investigating sewer issues and cleaning and lining and investigation. And when this part of the project is done, we would have completed 60% of the system, of our sewer system with our I&I program. In addition to those two bullets, I've also expressed interest in having this team look at a maintenance program that we could put in place within

▶ 2:15:16 Public Works that will allow us to accelerate the other 40% of this community that we haven't investigated with the I&I program so that we will have put eyes on the entire system and then we know how to properly maintain that entire system moving forward. We applied for an asset grant with DEP as an aside to this capital project, and hopefully with that asset grant and these funds, we can look at creating a maintenance program to address the rest of the system. John Potts from Western and Sampson has been a project engineer working on our sewer system for several years. Christine Carol's been with Melrose for about four years, she's from Tater and Howard. She's our lead project engineer, both certified engineers, both excellent at what they do.

▶ 2:16:10 And then we have our own city engineer, Alanna Poe-Casellas, who's really elevated our capital programs in the last few years to new levels. The rest of the presentation is for them to make, and we look for hopeful passage. These projects will be worked on over the winter. gonna the designs have to be further matured we'll bid it in the winter when bidding season is really most advantageous to communities because all the contractors are home looking for work and we'll start work either an early spring or at some point next spring and summer so you know as John said I'm with Kate and Howard we've been working with the city I think it's gone by a little bit faster but I think it was actually 2013 so we're going on six

▶ 2:17:08 years now that I've been working with the city of Melrose helping with their water system we created we developed basically a water system capital improvement plan that we finalized in 2017 it was kind of ongoing before then as we were collecting data on the water mains in the system and that's kind of been your roadmap for the last few years of what what water infrastructure improvements that you have done when we have looked at the prioritized recommendations in the report with also looking at what your needs are with roads and sewer that kind of allows it to be a movable document to kind of address the areas that come up we a tan Howard have our capital efficiency plan approach where basically we're not just looking at one thing we're looking at

▶ 2:17:57 basically these three different we call them it's a three circles approach so we look at the hydraulics of the system which that means that we're looking at the size of your water mains and are they big enough to be conveying water from one end of the city to the other and providing adequate water supply water pressure and water flows for fire protection and for just your normal everyday usage so we looked at the pipes in the system we've done unit direction flushing every year and we've collected that data to camera up with where there restrictions in the pipe sizes in your system and we track which pipes those are we also look at the critical components in your system which would be your critical users your schools your hospitals where if you have a

▶ 2:18:44 disruption in service because of a water main failure it is a large impact on the community the public being public safety and everything like that and then we also look at asset management so we've looked at pretty much data on every single stick of pipe in your system where we've looked at the installation year we've looked at the soil conditions to figure out which pipes are in your most vulnerable of having a potential failure in the future and so we take the pipes identified in each one of those circles and we look at them layered on top of each other and areas that hit all three so it's a hydraulic improvement it's a critical user and it's a poor pipe we're kind of your first level of

▶ 2:19:27 of priority for water mains in the list to address first. And then if it falls into two of the circles, those would be the next priority, and then the final level would be the ones that just fall within one circle. And over the last few years, we have started to design and then construct and aid in the bidding process and the construction oversight for numerous projects off of that list. So again, so this kind of just summarizes what I had said. So the highest priority recommendations that were on our original list with the completion the the Damon Street work and some other minor little things that we are planning to do in this current package that we're working on will address all of those

▶ 2:20:07 first level of improvements that we identified in the 2017 report so then we kind of done some in the other phases in the other levels just as road work or it makes sense to group projects together in neighboring streets so that once a contractor is mobilized in one area if you can do two streets as opposed to packing up and having another contractor the next year so again this is just a summary of these are the what we have worked on between last fall well I guess last last year we designed them and then the contract came on board at the beginning of last fall we started the project I think we did Ashmont I'm heard in Florence in the fall it's Carly I think Ash my you also did some sewer work at the same time and then we finished up the other streets this past

▶ 2:20:54 spring to kind of complete that that last year's construction project as we prepare to get ready for the next construction season I mean it's gonna talk a little bit more about what the city is also done okay thanks so this next slide just shows in addition to all the capital programs that we've been doing using the MWRA capital funds we've also been trying to attack these smaller projects so Sherman Road we go Park Hunts Terrace and Grove Place are all streets that we've replaced the water mains on in-house on three of the four based on the size that we upsize to we were able to put a hydrant at the end of the street where there formerly was no hydrant on the fourth it didn't make sense based on there were only two homes and it was a very short stretch but

▶ 2:21:41 we're I just wanted to emphasize that in addition to all the work we're doing with the NMWRA funding we're also doing work when we can using operating funds using retained earnings when we have opportunities even beyond what we're funding with the MWRA and this slide just shows some of the huge improvements that we've seen so you probably know right now we're in the midst of our biennial water main flushing program and so we've just now flushed the streets that Justine just mentioned that we just constructed last in the fall and in the spring so these are the brand new results and you can see the flows you can see the flows here from the 2017 flushing and some of these streets were only flowing 300 400 gallons per minute and now we're seeing about a thousand

▶ 2:22:45 gallons per minute or more on every one of those same streets and this is using the same hydrant we we follow Tiden Howard has developed our flushing plan and we follow the same sequences every other year and this is flowing the exact same hydrant with the exact same valves closed and everything and so we see a huge improvement there which impacts both the residents using that water and the the fire flows and this just shows what we've been doing the slide is not in the presentation you had took a little bit more work to get it together other so but this just shows everything we've been doing since 2000 it shows the streets in red are the ones we've done most recently since 2016 and in the five-year period before that is in blue and then the ten years before that are

▶ 2:23:32 in purple so we've been slowly working our way through the whole water system doing replacements and I had figured at one point if we have approximately 90 miles of pipe and we have let's say a hundred year lifespan on these pipes we need to be replacing a mile a year to keep pace with with the deterioration and that would assume that we had been replacing a mile a year before now or before the last two decades which perhaps we hadn't been so there's a little bit of a catch-up game but at least we should be doing at least a mile of a year a mile a year and this program that we're proposing tonight accommodates about that amount just over so this just runs through each of the streets that we're proposing to work in the length there is this one minor item Justine

▶ 2:24:23 alluded to it that's doing some testing on the pipe on Wyoming because we have some break history that doesn't make a lot of sense based on the age of the pipe so we just want to cut out a section of it and do some testing that was one of our high priority recommendations and Damon and Glendale were one of the high priority recommendations and then all the others were recommendations within this plan just lower than that first level but once we do these last two projects of level one we will be done with the high priority and then we'll be into the next level then we have a component of construction oversight which would be assistance from Tate and Howard and then police details and then we have 65,000 shown here as staff time we currently

▶ 2:25:08 staff in the engineering division we have one staff member who the majority of his time is paid through the INI grant loan program and this will be proposing to have a position staff within the engineering division both existing and potentially new staff funded partially using these grant funds so John mentioned it's a 10-year payback so it's a it's a zero percent loan so it's 144 thousand dollars a year straight payments throughout the 10-year period beginning in 2021 fiscal 2021 and right now we do have one point six to eight million available through the MWI program but we've just selected this one point four four million as the program that makes sense to do right now with that I'm gonna turn it over to John to discuss are there any questions on the

▶ 2:26:03 water piece before we move on or should we just move on why don't we let's i don't see any well can i we said we were going to combine them okay so i think we should just keep going and then we'll have people ask questions during their 10 minutes thank you for your time tonight i'm just going to speak briefly before i give it back to elena on the sewer infiltration and info program or ii quick definition of we've been before you guys before we talked about it just quickly infiltration is basically groundwater and clean water that's getting into the pipes through cracks in it holes in the in the pipes holes and manholes and inflow is basically rainfall that gets directly into the pipes through a catch basin that might be connected directly

▶ 2:26:51 a house's roof leader or sump pump which as everyone knows it is illegal to have some pumps connected to your sewer system but it does happen but what it doesn't say is all this flow goes to the mwra and there's no separation between wastewater and clean water so the city gets built basically for the combined flow which we've i know we've seen this chart before but what it shows is and this goes through i just want to say it goes to 2016. it doesn't have more updated data mwra hasn't seemed to have updated their data in a little while so this shows in red is what wastewater yellow is infiltration and blue is inflow so between now it's been 50 to 60 percent of all the city's flow is combined of inflow and infiltration which is what we've been

▶ 2:27:41 aggressively attacking over the last few years and the investment i've personally been working with the city probably about 15 years now i think i go back to about 2003 and in that time we've accessed about 7.2 million dollars from the MWA's different phases currently we're into phase 11 money now which at which point now I will pass back to Elena so similar to the to the water program we are requesting one point excuse me we're requesting 1.5 million which is 75% grant 25% loan but We have 1.619 million available to us right at the moment in that grant loan program. The MWRA has also recently allocated a portion of funding to every community that is loan only, and that's for communities who've spent

▶ 2:28:36 all their grant loan money and wanna spend a little more. And so there's another 1.35 million in the next phase, in phase 13, but that, we're not choosing to access that right now because it is fully loan funded and we want to keep going on the grant loan program. And we do anticipate that phase 14 will be right back to the grant loan program. And based on how the MWA is working right now, they do expect us to be able to skip that phase 13. It's not like we have to use that money. That's just there in case we need it. So just a note for the future. So the loan repayment is, it's 375,000 over 10 years. So 37,500 each year, again a flat payment for the 10 years. So our INI reduction plan is mainly focused on taking this flow metering data that we did in 2016 and tackling the worst areas and then working our way through them.

▶ 2:29:36 So Weston Sampson developed a five-phase approach to working through the whole city with these investigations followed by rehabilitation. And the purpose of this is to target the areas with the worst infiltration and inflow first. And so I just want to stress that this is different than preventative maintenance, than sewer cleaning and root control treatments and cleaning out grease and all the other things that the city does as part of our maintenance program, which John mentioned we did apply for this asset management grant to be able to up our game a little bit on the maintenance program. This is specifically targeting this major cost issue of infiltration and inflow that, like John said, we're paying the MWRA for this flow.

▶ 2:30:24 So this shows all the phases. There is a little note at the bottom that phases 20 and 21 have an A and B that are not broken out separately on here. But this basically shows in purple are the areas where we've already done our rehabilitation. There's a little bit more work to be done in those areas, but we've done the vast majority of that work. this pinkish area in the middle is where we've just finished all of our investigations and so this new money will pay for the first phase of rehabilitation in that area the phase two area and then it will pay for the investigations in the blue areas so in the phase three areas so when we're done with that John mentioned we will be done investigating 60% of our system and

▶ 2:31:09 we'll be done with rehab or not done but at least a good ways along with rehab of 40% of the system so just running through quickly the phases phase one is the area that we're almost complete in we've done manual rehabilitation pipelining open cuts your replacement and we're doing a little bit of additional flow metering to fight try to find some last problems phase two we just finished our investigations this spring this contract will allow us to do some manhole rehabilitation and some sewer lining in phase two and then in phase three it will allow us to just do the investigation piece so we'll get a camera through all those lines we'll clean them and we'll TV them and so then we'll have data really good data on 60% of our system and then just mentions

▶ 2:32:06 here about the asset management grant this you've seen before but this was some of the results of our phase one just to show how effective this is the red is the worst areas on this map the orange or second worst and the yellow were in good shape and then after the lining program these are the results so if something is colored on this map and then is not shown at all on this map we haven't touched it it still potentially requires some attention or their private property issues that we can't address with our capital program but all of these pipes that the ones on here that are yellow that used to be red on here or orange that's all flow reduction that we've seen in nighttime flows that's all

▶ 2:32:50 infiltration a little bit of inflow but mainly infiltration so we've had huge benefits we did a little cost-benefit analysis that we've presented before but we're showing that because it's 75% grant funded we're paying back into two four years the money we've spent is we've had a complete return on it in the in the impact it will have on the rate it takes a little time because the mwi assesses our rate on a three-year average cycle so it'll take some time before we really realize those savings but it's it's coming and it'll be very helpful for stabilizing our sewer rates and this just runs through in a lot of detail exactly what we're doing in each of the phases and when we're proposing to do it I'm not going to go through this now you have it in your

▶ 2:33:43 presentation so if you're interested in that level of detail and then we just have two graphs showing the existing debt and the proposed debt so you can see on the water side we do see a little jump from fiscal 20 to 21 this is the hundred forty four thousand plus a payment on the the reason the green comes up the existing debt is payments on the recent bonds that we've done both through the MWRA and the restoration bond the general obligation bond that we got last year for restoring the roads where we did water main work so there was a little jump there and then we would have another little jump to fiscal 21 but then in 22 we come back down even with where we were and then we start dropping back down obviously as other debt gets added on that would

▶ 2:34:33 likely level out but other than that little spike in the first year it's not adding anything really to the current fiscal 20 financial situation and then on the sewer again there's the little jump for fiscal 21 but it's actually in fiscal 19 we were actually higher than where we'll be even with that that new loan money so we're in uh in good shape on the sewer side in terms of rate impacts so that is all great thanks chair Boisselle in one of the gis maps you mentioned that you had 90 miles i think it was 2010 to 2019 you made a phrase that there's 90 miles of pipe under the streets and how much of those have been taken care of so i didn't actually do the calculation with the um in the gis that's

▶ 2:35:33 actually a really easy number to come up with from this data right but um you know just looking at it anecdotally i would say maybe if that covers about a quarter of the system so about 25 to 30 percent that's been lined or fixed replaced this place the vast majority of this is dig and replace yeah so it's kind of um in the um about 30 percent of the pipes in the system are ductile iron pipe which is the material that we started seeing most heavily probably in the 80s so since at least the 80s 30 but just knowing from what the past history of um what you guys had been doing in the 80s and 90s the majority of that work was done probably late 90s into the 2000s um for the rehab work so okay i noticed the most in your presentations the old pipes are six inches

▶ 2:36:26 and you're moving them to eight inches is that the standard i mean it's probably not standard for across the board for like the hospitals and others but the standard for regular homes with streets on are going to eight inches yes the the state has guidelines for for designing and constructing water distribution system and that basically states that if you have a pipe that is going to have a fire hydrant on it to provide fire protection the minimum size is eight inches now because of i noticed in some of the pressure you're talking about 350 and some of the numbers were almost triple that is that the eight inch uh or was it was contamination in the pipes themselves that was reducing the flow yeah the combination so i don't if you that the picture

▶ 2:37:11 that that we had shown that was the pipe that came out of the ground um oh right there yeah that's pretty that's actually not bad some of the pipes that we've seen come out of here um some of the pipes in some of the neighborhoods would be like a garden hose right going through that six inch pipe so now you're going from basically a two inch pipe to an eight inch pipe and it's just making it and not only that that stuff is on there if there's any large you know something changes in the use there's a surge of flow going through because the fire hydrant was opened or somebody just you know leaves there has a leak or there's a water main break that gets stirred up based on those older pipes because they don't have a lining on them and it gets and that's why in some

▶ 2:37:52 neighborhoods you have more dirty water complaints which through the flushing program and the main replacement has decreased over time but you just have to continually to kind of replace that and that's the reason for the flushing that's going on now until October 15th or at that point and you're trying to clean the pipes out at that point by rushing the water through and out and if I could just follow follow up on Justine's comment we Tater and Howard created a a model on the computer and And sometimes that six-inch pipe, general rule, at least for the last couple of decades, has been six becomes eight. But sometimes six could become 12-inch. And the model on the computer runs a hydraulic analysis of the entire system.

▶ 2:38:41 And sometimes taking what could be a six-inch pipe on First Street and turning it into a 12-inch pipe on First Street has all kinds of sideline benefits. So that's why with flushing, the water main project on Warwick and Perkins that we just completed, it improved the fire flow on Warwick and Perkins, but it also helped a lot of those neighboring side streets because that main line branches out onto several side streets. The hydraulic model that they created that we used to make these decisions really helps that as well, And I think that's what also helps increase the fire flow capacity out of these hydrants from these projects. Now, when you're going down the street, you're also changing the sewer lines at the same time from six to eight inches?

▶ 2:39:30 Or is that different? Not always. Not always. No, so most of the time on the sewer system, the capacity issues that exist aren't because the pipes are undersized for the flow, for the residential the actual sanitary wastewater flow when we have capacity issues it tends to be because of I and I like an area with high inflow and a big rainstorm you'll actually get so much clean water into the pipes that that it presents a capacity problem so by fixing the I and I issues you're also freeing up a whole lot of capacity in those pipes so a six inch pipe in a small residential neighborhood especially on the you know if it's a dead end or anything that's that's the right size that's an adequate size for that

▶ 2:40:16 neighborhood when we're putting in new pipes we tend to go with 8-inch just because you know if you're putting a new it's a nominal cost difference but with an I and I that you're doing and you're sending cameras through the pipelines and so forth are you finding that it's too it's easier to line the pipes or complete reconstruction most most can be lined John yeah I mean it's it's obviously it's a much more it's cheaper to line the pipe and it gives you a good quality in the lab and it'll last excuse me for a good number of years so I mean to get it's it's a lot less invasive till to line the pipe then to open cut I mean but there are situations where lining isn't going to do it if you have

▶ 2:41:00 Robert A. Boisselle: a hole in a pipe or a collapsed section of the pipe you obviously can't line it that's gonna require a dig repair. Well, that's an example I wanna look at. You did Main Street about a week ago or two weeks ago, and about three days after you finished, you had a crew of about 15 in trucks everywhere. Was that a break in the line itself that you people found? Yes, Main Street was an unexpected repair. There was a blockage in that line, we went to clear it, and the hose on the truck actually got stuck in the cavity of the pipe. So at first we were trying to excavate it, then we found all kinds of utilities in the way. There was an NSTAR 345 kilowatt duct bank that ran along parallel with it. National Grid had another duct bank right over the sewer.

▶ 2:41:57 The sewer was down 12 feet. The more these utility conflicts became known to us the more cost effective lining the pipe became. And that's why we decided to line it. And of course you kept records and updated your GIS systems, right? I turned it all over to engineering. Thank you very much for coming. Thank you, Madam Chair. Alderman Mortimer. Thank you very much, Chairman Lipper-Garabedian. what is the lineup made from that you line these water pipes with the water pipes are the sewer pipes water pipes do you have a line you can do a cleaning and lining project with water main where you would basically send a machine in to scrape all that off and then you come back in and you can either do cement or

▶ 2:42:41 a cured in place liner the Melrose the way that we have been been doing because it's an older system because a lot of it is six inch which is undersized we're predominantly all replacement not doing a cleaning and lining program the lining is strictly a sewer so those those are water pipes in the pictures there that is in them so you clean those out because one of the things that we replace those replace those right you don't just flush those up to that the flushing plan the flushing will get out anything that's sitting in the pipe but some of that is just so it's basically like a layer of cement that's rusted on there and even flushing all the water through that is never going to get that off you'd have to go in with the machine and basically cut a pit in the amount of

▶ 2:43:26 pits that you would have to do in a city because anytime you have a hydrant anytime you have a branch and anytime you have a side street you're digging a pit to do it to cut open the pipe and clean and line it the sewer you can go in through manholes you already have those openings to clean in line so the cleaning lining in a water main it becomes a balance of is it economical to do that and have to have all those cuts and still pave them and still compact them or do you just it's usually more cost effective to just replace the whole thing and be able to put in a bigger size main all right because one of the things that melrose is well known for is that the water quality here is exemplary we get regular water reports as alderman and the water here is

▶ 2:44:13 Peter D. Mortimer: fantastic it's pretty good in the whole coven system as of course you're well aware but i just want to make sure if anything does get used to line the pipes that again if it doesn't happen to melrose it seems to be a moot point but i just want to make sure that there's nothing toxic or nothing untoward that would diminish the water quality yes no and again um the what you would use to line water mains is likely different than what you would use to line sewer mains just because it is a potable water anything that goes into a water main um it has to be uh it's nsf approved which is the um i don't know i don't know the the acronyms but it's like the um and i think it's nfs so it's not the food and safety so it has to meet those a specific standard in order

▶ 2:44:59 to put it in but again it's not been something that at this time with the with the improvements that we have in place um that we've looked into um some of the exceptions would be that the testing that we're planning to do on wyoming if once we get to look inside that main if that seems like it's because that's a bigger main that's a 16 inch line it's basically your main corridor of water moving from the mwra meters across so if when we get to see sections of that pipe it looks like it has some of that on it and the pipe integrity when we do the testing if that's still in a good shape pipe the cleaning lining could be an option that came up in the future right now we We don't see any need to do anything with that street, but those would be maybe you may consider lining versus replacement because they're already larger in the system.

▶ 2:45:48 Peter D. Mortimer: Because one of the things in Melrose is you really don't even need to buy bottled water in Melrose. The water is just as clean as bottled water, which is kind of a shame that we have to use that for showers and for toilets, the water that's so excellent. There should be a way that eventually maybe you engineers could design to use roof water for the toilets and for the showers or something like that. Well you can't, I mean New England is not as predominant to do that, but out in desert areas they have systems where you have two lines in the street. One would be like a reclaimed water that would be used for that, but here it's just the usage and the availability of water isn't practical at this time.

▶ 2:46:29 They do that in Caribbean islands too. People have a swimming pool in their basement that they use the water for. Yeah, and what the DBW has been doing for the, we came in, the unidirectional flushing plan has been in place, you've been doing it every two years since 2002. We recently did an update to it because of all the improvements that you've made to the system, the plan needed to be adjusted to match that. But you have this data that other communities that we have worked with don't have. I mean, we have done unidirectional flushing plans, I don't even know, I think we're working on like eight right now. They don't get done every two years. The manpower that you guys commit to do that program is invaluable to the water quality that you have.

▶ 2:47:11 Peter D. Mortimer: And even code in New Hampshire, but in the house supply pipes is different. They can use plastic in New Hampshire and in Massachusetts you can't. So you can get the cleanest water in the world, but then if you're running it through your own plastic supply pipes, that may not be best for your digestive system and your whole system. And I'm glad to hear that in Melrose, at least, no line is going to water supply pipes. It's all replacement. Rita now, you may have done some lining in the past, I don't remember if you have. But we would consider it on a case by case basis if it was. And what would that line, what is the material that is that liner? The typical what you're using is a cement, because the pipe that goes into the ground right now,

▶ 2:47:57 Peter D. Mortimer: ductile iron pipe has a lining interior on it so because metal pipe if it hits water is going to rot that's what has happened to that historical pipe um so the ductile iron pipe that's the national standard has a cement lining in it that's tested you know it meets all standards it's that similar material you would then just reline a pipe that doesn't have a lining with So it's limestone cement, but mostly based in limestone? I'm not 100% sure. All right. That's usually what you get, right, John? Yeah. Usually cement concrete is based in limestone. And then another question I had is, in the 1980s we had about 58 miles of roads in Melrose. Then last time I checked in about 2005 or 2006 with another survey,

▶ 2:48:47 Peter D. Mortimer: Somebody said we had 84, somebody from the engineering said we had 84 miles of roads. And now we have 90 miles of roads in Melrose? Have we increased with things like Norway Road and Regan Drive and Patriot Way? Have we increased six more miles of roads in Melrose? I've always quoted 90 plus. Okay. For at least the last ten plus years. Yeah, last time I checked. We have added developments, but they're very small. Some of it may relate to better data. Yeah. Because ever since we've had the GIS system, you have a system in which you can just do one simple click of the mouse and it will tell you the total length of everything in that category. Rita. So some of the fact that if 20 years ago someone was saying we had 60 miles of roads and

▶ 2:49:41 Peter D. Mortimer: saying we have 90 it might just be that we didn't have as good information as we have now right but the but the water mains are going to be longer than the public ways because we have water mains on all of our private ways that the city maintains so also in easements there are a few easements that have water yeah so that so it's not surprising that the water main number is a little bit higher than the road number so some of that increase can be attributed possibly as you mentioned to the method of measurement but it's possible that even in the last 30 years we've had a 30 increase places like angela circle where roads are always getting built in where there used to be stands of woods or forest and that we may have increased the um the amount of roads and the

▶ 2:50:26 Peter D. Mortimer: incursion upon green space uh by up to 33 percent uh chipping away at the green space in melrose which it seems to be a big attribute to Melrose and I hope we're going to start limiting the amount of chip erosion and chipping away at these these green spaces as much as possible and while I have the floor I will make a motion for passage of the joined orders at this time second okay the motion for passage made by Alderman Mortimer and seconded by Vice Chair Boisselle did are you done on the memorandum yes yes i am that's it i made the motion thank you okay ottoman forbes thank you and i will be brief um in the memorandum in terms of water it says that there's one million six hundred twenty eight thousand five hundred dollars that's presently available

▶ 2:51:18 Scott M. Forbes: is that in addition to the 1.4 4 million dollar request or is that the net amount inclusive of the one point inclusive so we have 188 5 as available funds that we haven't tapped into yet and i'm assuming the same's for sewer so that's 119 000. so together we have a little bit over three hundred thousand dollars that we haven't tapped into is there any plans to maximize that through this fiscal year or no so no because these would um these two orders would carry us through this fiscal year in terms of work to be executed okay um but at the same time that money stays with melrose it doesn't it doesn't go back into the into the pool for everybody else mwra keeps carrying that over so it would be available to us whenever we decide that we want it okay so

▶ 2:52:03 Scott M. Forbes: we don't have the there's no risk of losing those funds they will carry over in in terms of playing chess with other projects absolutely you have flexibility in that absolutely and it's a little buffer if a project comes in over budget and we wanted to come back and you know ask for a little bit more money we traditionally haven't had to do that but sure you know it's nice having a little buffer yeah i think i always say the same thing when we talk about projects like this so i just just wanted to make sure that we're able to spend to the to what we have that's available and obviously the more aggressive that we are uh with other communities our percentage of that pie for our mwira assessment goes down so if and when there is an opportunity to do that i i honestly

▶ 2:52:41 Monica C. Medeiros: feel like our infrastructure is one of the most high priority things that we can invest in our city so if we can stay ahead of our community partners we see a direct benefit in terms of costs when our water bills come out on a quarterly basis so thank you for your time thank you thank you very much I just want to say I'm very pleased with the work that's been done so far could you talk again just reiterate those numbers that we're seeing a return on investment of the funds within 2.3 to 3.4 years is that saw so that's that would be the payback if we were paying the MWRA based on just the previous year's sewer usage amount of flow that we sent to the MWRA but they do calculate so the way we calculated this we looked at how much

▶ 2:53:38 estimated I&I removal we had and then we looked at how much we spent on the on the project that resulted in that removal inclusive of design construction bidding all of that and it cost us about 1.55 million for that first phase for the the investigations and rehabilitation we estimated that we removed between 200 and 300 000 gallons per day on an annualized average basis these numbers are very hard to come up with because every year is different it depends on groundwater conditions it depends on rain conditions so you know that that's why i'm giving such a big range you don't want to say you know we're removing 238 000 gallons per year you just can't do that so um so this is a very realistic range based on the data that we

▶ 2:54:30 have pre and post construction and then dividing that by the amount we spent um and looking at how the MWRI assesses our costs because half of our costs the way they assess them half of the sewer fee is related to population and so that's not going to change and then the other half is related to flow and then there's a little extra piece for max month flow so I factored all that in and came up with the payback being nine to thirteen years but then when you consider that we don't have to pay back three-quarters of that money it brings that payback timeframe down to that 2.3 to 3.4 years but again if given the way the MWRI actually assesses us it's going to be on this rolling basis where you know this year

▶ 2:55:18 we get the benefit of last year's construction but then we also have the previous two years factored in so it won't be until we're a few years out that we really can realize those savings and also just to stress infiltration and flow I always like to refer to them as infiltration and flow reduction programs because you never eliminate I&I it always comes back not in the same places you remove it here it puts more pressure in the groundwater system to push it in over here you're constantly chasing it and in you know really really tight system you probably have 25% I&I we have 50 to 60 percent so we are not a tight system but our ultimate goal is never zero it's it's not possible or practical

▶ 2:56:03 Monica C. Medeiros: thank you that's that's helpful to to set the standards of you know what we're really looking at looking at getting ideally more to something like 25% than to zero which is a big difference I think this I support this order I think this will help get us closer to where we want to be I would like to see us be more aggressive if we can I also wanted to ask I don't want to belabor this too much because it's getting late but we when we decide the areas that we're going to go in and work on are we talking to you know National Grid and what kind of power do we have I know there's a lot of leaks in their their system some of them are sort of allowable and how much cooperation are we getting from them and is there a way to push that National Grid's been an

▶ 2:56:53 excellent partner and if anything over recent years that partnership has increased even higher they're required to um upgrade a percentage of their system every year i don't remember what the exact number is but they're required to do that and they have their own ideas of where they like to go but then when um when you know we try to marry the programs our programs with them we always have compromise and it's created it's created a lot of benefit to melrose and you know they may be they may want to replace gas in a street where we're not doing anything um and but yet we're doing we're doing a project on neighboring street and so they may come and replace that gas and because we're already there they save paving costs and then

▶ 2:57:38 they're repaving the entire street of the street that we're not working on so at the end of the day we're getting two streets paved it's worked really well um and with water work especially open cut excavation water work we encroach a lot upon the gas company so we kind of force them to have to work just with the encroachment laws so it's worked out really well it's a good partnership we already have plans for next year plans that we may be tweaking well i mean the group will be tweaking in in the fall um as we approach next year and and leak history is great we our engineering staff tracks all their leaks we have a permit of every excavation And, you know, Rick Antone will tell you every leak they've had on every street, and that always comes into play in the decisions.

▶ 2:58:28 Monica C. Medeiros: Thank you. And I guess I have just one last question. I get a lot of—we touched upon this a couple of weeks ago, but I get a lot of people sort of talking about the quality and the issue of the sewer pipe in Brazil Street. Can you talk on this, the sub-area map, about where does Brazil Street fall on that? Yes, that's my fault. i should have mentioned it at the beginning i was supposed to but brazil street's currently under contract for additional re inspection work we have a executed contract with western and samson we hope to have them back in there in september to do a full video assessment cleaning of of that pipe and then they will make a recommendation on how to proceed with a permanent repair

▶ 2:59:16 of the system the repair is not funded their design work and their investigatory work is funded within the budget the sewer operating budget whatever they recommend this group will probably come back before you for funding that if it's an open-cut repair you may look at that entire corridor of water sewer and gas not certain but there are other funds available I spoke with with the auditor about this at length we anticipate retained earnings being replenished once fiscal 19 is closed and certified and in the books and that free cash becomes available in the fall there's also ini mitigation fees a lot of which were generated with development in ward 5 that could be applicable towards a construction project on brazil street we just don't know what the

▶ 3:00:12 construction project is going to be yet um atlanta can speak to when will i the ini program could be in that sub area but brazil street itself like i like i spoke to six weeks ago whenever it was last time we were here um we we carved that and made it its own um design project for western sampson i guess i i hope september um i think that's reasonable you'll see the camera crews back in there cleaning televising inspecting looking at laterals and and then they'll take that information from the field bring it back into the office and make a recommendation on how best to permanently repair that infrastructure that's good but that did not show up in the i and i um no as a poor flow area no so it was it's um section 9a is phase four it's right here

▶ 3:01:10 um and so that would mean that it wasn't identified for the capital program for ini purposes which is what's driving our capital program which i think is the the appropriate thing to be driving the capital program um preventative maintenance is a different issue where you know if we're looking for areas that have the worst roots and the worst grease those aren't necessarily the same pipes that are the worst that are the ones we should be lining or the ones we should be digging and replacing those are pipes that we should be looking at root control treatment we should be looking at perhaps more frequent cleaning better tracking of how frequently we are cleaning them so that's where this preventative maintenance

▶ 3:01:53 Monica C. Medeiros: an asset management piece comes in to address and prevent those issues occurring here or elsewhere in the future so that's you know kind of a separate piece from the I&I capital program an equally important piece but just something that would be looked at through a little bit of a different lens and funded through a different source because the MWRA is funding I&I capital work so when we do the ini work and say we go in we investigate a pipe and we're putting a camera down to see if there's there's inflow or infiltration sometimes those cameras must see roots and grease and stuff like that all the time so are we cleaning those pipes so and we must have to clean them before we line them i would imagine also there's all every everything has

▶ 3:02:44 has to be cleaned first before they do anything as far as a repair and it's like we identify roots and the line will send in a root control treatment and take out all the roots before they do any of that as well so those kinds of issues are being addressed through this program even though that's not the purpose of the being identified and then they're being addressed where we're appropriate but it also gives us that information if we wanted to address them in another way so you have a pipe that's where you've TV'd it you've seen a ton of roots but when you do the nighttime flow isolation you hardly see any flow in that pipe so it's not necessarily going to be targeted for lining and you don't see cracks and you don't see you know other issues that would drive it

▶ 3:03:25 towards lining but now we have that information that there are roots in that pipe and this is again where that preventative maintenance asset management piece comes in where if we have a system that allows us to better track that information with the GIS we can then say well these are the pipes that we saw roots but we didn't line because they didn't you know warrant lining but we know there's a root problem now so those should be targeted for root control treatment or those should be targeted for more frequent cleaning just from the city forces and that's the kind of thing that we want to move into on our own preventative maintenance side so this gives us the The INI program gives us a ton of data, but we don't currently have the systems in place

▶ 3:04:10 to be able to really use that data for decision making the way we'd like to. Thank you. Can I just add one thing? When we look at segment of pipe, when we get the TV tape, when we bring it in, we'll look at everything to find out if there's leaks in it, if there's cracks in it, if there's roots in it. And we'll go through and do a whole cost-effective analysis, but once we do the cost-effective recommend is we also do a value effective analysis too to make sure that it may not be necessarily cost effective but the value that the city would get out of it if we do repair this line also comes into the benefit as to whether or not what we do for uh recommended rehabilitation thank you thank you alderman mcmaster thank you madam chair thank you for your presentation uh just a

▶ 3:04:52 Shawn M. MacMaster: couple quick questions mr shenny you talked about the circulation and distribution issues on brown street and uh wyoming heights and i see it looks like the estimated cost for that project is about two hundred and twenty thousand or is two hundred and twenty thousand dollars um what specifically is scheduled to happen uh on both of those streets that's a replacement it's a full replacement pipe will be replaced and um presumably i'm going to make the assumption it's going to be connected to mount vernon and is there a chance we're going to loop it through probably we're not that far along not that far along the design we just added that one in the pipe will be replaced and and um the pipe will be branched off of um a most high most likely mount vernon that we had replaced

▶ 3:05:36 mount vernon about five six years ago but it'll be branched off an area that has some adequate flow to bring it down brown street and up wyoming heights that neighborhood was just recently added it into the water program as we were putting together this program based on the street condition on Wyoming Heights we identified that that is one of the worst streets in terms of roadway condition and once we looked into it further and I was actually speaking with one of the residents and I said you know we really want to look at we want to address any water issues first and it's an area where we suspect you might have some pressure issues and they confirmed yes we have very low water pressure in our neighborhood our neighbors all complain about it

▶ 3:06:21 and so then it it rose it up to the top because we can't pave it until we address the water issue so that's being actually added to tate and howard's contract via amendment we've already signed the contract for the other streets is there a chance that sewer and gas work might be done at that time before repave happens the sewer work we tend when we do sewer work we tend to try to do trenchless work so but we do inspect separately from our i i program we inspect the sewers and drains on all the streets before we pave them because we don't want to pave over an issue so if we identified anything there we that had to be open cut repaired we would do that before we paved okay and mr shen you said the bidding would be in the winter so the work on brown and west excuse

▶ 3:07:04 me in wyoming heights would likely be sometime in the spring spring summer yeah and for the west wyoming uh water main testing where exactly will that occur in west wyoming just you know pick a location yeah we haven't um looked we're gonna drive the street kind of try to figure out the the least obstructive way to do that the purpose of that testing is to literally dig a trench they'll take out a piece of pipe about this big and replace it but that piece of pipe they'll take out they'll bring it and send it off to the laboratories to get tested and they do strength tents and tensile tuts they look at the integrity of that pipe to see um how susceptible it could be to leakage or tuberculation issues in the future so we just literally just need a sample

▶ 3:07:51 of the pipe at a location that the engineers select yeah i mean it's the there has there had been historically back um i think some of the the distribution system personnel had identified that there may have been some breaks before it was just unclear if the brakes were caused by the actual pipe conditions or if it could have been something because there was a contractor doing work in the street and it could have disturbed the the pipe so we want to kind of go to one of those areas where we think there could be an issue um and maybe look there we're going to look at the soil conditions to see if there's high groundwater anywhere that could be causing anything on the outside to figure out the best spot to kind of just take a representative sample so we can kind of get an

▶ 3:08:32 Shawn M. MacMaster: idea of what the pipe looks like so you have a general sense in west wyoming considering that i mean it runs as you know from main street to the stoneman line so so i mean is there a chance you may have multiple samples from multiple areas of the the street or do you have a right right now i think your idea is just to kind of let's look at one um and then if that sends any red flags maybe at a later time go go somewhere else um again we're going to try to do it you know it's it's probably a couple hours to dig a trench and take the stuff to cut the piece out put a repair on it and then um you know refill everything and then they'll come back and pave it you know after a certain amount of time but right now the idea is let's just get a piece that we can look at

▶ 3:09:11 Shawn M. MacMaster: um and see sometimes depending on when the pipe went in the ground pipe can be really thick so then it's in really good shape it could be really thin um depending on the class of the pipe that they wouldn't so we're just trying to get an idea of what that is um and the pipe went in pretty much at the same time so these you know if we discover it's this class of pipe then it's likely that class the whole way and then determine if a further recommendation would be needed okay great thank you and then just as a follow-up to alderman Medeiros i appreciate that mr shanna had proactively reached out to me to brief me on the brazil street situation and what the plan is both in the long term and the potential long term the the short

▶ 3:09:54 Shawn M. MacMaster: term and the potential uh long term uh plan and i've communicated that to the residents they appreciate uh you reaching out to me um i i did have one question though for miss persakis ellis um related to that the pipe as you know on main street is from 1906 is it unusual that a pipe of that age wouldn't have the inflow and infiltration problems um that some of the other pipes in the rest of the city that have been prioritized would have on main street or any of any of the pipes that have been identified elsewhere in the city brazil relatively yeah so if that so you're saying the pipe on brazil street is 1906 vintage so we have a lot of pipes in our system that are that vintage and whether they're really susceptible to infiltration and flow a lot of it has to do

▶ 3:10:42 with the groundwater table in that neighborhood and the depth of the installation so one thing about a pipe that's on a dead end like brazil street is it's going to tend to be more shallow because with the system flowing by gravity the further downstream you get in the system the deeper those pipes get so the more likely they are to be submerged in groundwater at least for the spring season when water might be dumping in all the you know loose joints or places where their cracks or anything else so it's not simply a factor of age and material it's it's a factor of depth of installation and gravel conditions that makes sense i guess i just would have thought that it might be i guess i didn't expect to see it in phase four considering that you also

▶ 3:11:32 Shawn M. MacMaster: have all of the runoff from the fels so when you're driving up the street on the right hand side i mean you know it's hilly and cliffy and there's a lot of water that that comes down onto the street so i would have assumed that that would have an impact in terms of uh that would be almost more of like an inflow type impact so like a rain water induced when it's actively raining or it's just been raining and that water's flowing down but if there aren't weak points in the system like manhole covers with holes or you know if that water's coming into people's basements and they're pumping it to the sewer with sump pumps those are the types of things where that type of runoff might create an issue but if we didn't see that area 9a is a fairly small area when you look at

▶ 3:12:18 you know there's not a ton of roads in that area and so we would have had a meter right at the downstream end of that area as it comes out to whatever the downstream main is from that little tributary area so we have very detailed data if you look you know some of the areas are very large like look at area 15 that picks up this entire neighborhood and we had one meter at the downstream end of that but nine is a pretty small neighborhood so if we and and everything is prorated based on the total length and size of the pipes too it's not like a bigger area we're going to say it has more infiltration it's all divided by the diameter and size so if it ended up in phase four it really didn't show up as a high infiltration and flow area

▶ 3:13:06 Kate Lipper-Garabedian: which is a good thing for other reasons it might mean that the pipe even though it has grease and root problems maybe it doesn't have other more major problems maybe lining does become an option which is you know less costly and can be done more quickly so um thank you okay thank you madam chair i just have one question about the water plan so of the four um projects that have been identified three are really close to schools which makes sense in light of the presentation you've given but i'm wondering given school commutes and the use of those roads by families to get the kids to school and they're heavily trafficked what's the plan for how long this type of work takes and when it will be scheduled to

▶ 3:13:53 occur um so echo street and damon ave will not happen during school uh the school year it'll probably happen in the summer time if it is during the school year it won't be during drop off and pickup times especially on echo street where it's the main road into school right as far as first street it's for it's you know i think we can work first street and work around drop off times but um i've already articulated that the damon project and the echo project should not be done during school okay and there's also school vacation weeks that you could look at as well yeah it probably won't give us enough time to complete that okay you never know okay thank you all right we have a motion to recommend both of these orders for passage made and duly seconded all in favor

▶ 3:14:41 Jennifer L. Lemmerman: any opposed we'll make those recommendations to the full board thank you so much for being here so late tonight thank you thank you our next order on our agenda is order number two zero two zero dash two two a resolution honoring john shena this is sponsored by the president yes president Lemmerman thank you um if we could ask mr shena to please stay with us uh this evening thank you sir um this this is a resolution as everyone here knows which we often would take up in the full board uh for immediate consideration but knowing that mr shena would be here with us this evening we chose to send it to committee um so that we could um publicly thank him for his service to the city for for a number of years as he is on his way out of Melrose so I guess

▶ 3:15:37 Jennifer L. Lemmerman: I would ask madam chair if you wouldn't mind if we could since we aren't a suspension of rules still if I could join you up there and invite mr. Schatz as well to read this into the record if I have in the full board sure thank you thank you all for the opportunity to read this this evening as As I think everyone here knows, this is Mr. Shenna's last meeting with us, given that he has been, he has accepted a position in Winfield. They're very lucky to have him over there after, I think, if we include your co-op days, 24 years with Melrose. I know, we even saw in the presentation this evening, how much work Ward 2 has benefited from Mr. Shenna. know that everyone on this board has also worked closely with him and

▶ 3:16:49 Jennifer L. Lemmerman: benefited from his commitment to the city in each of the areas of the city so I am going to go ahead and read this into the record and then I will give you an opportunity to say something if you'd like to you don't have to this is a resolution honoring John V Shenna Department of Public Works superintendent for his many years of service whereas John V Shenna began his career in 1995 as a co-op student from Merrimack College working in the engineering division of the Public Works Department in 1997 he graduated cum laude with a BS in civil engineering whereas filling his first professional position with the city as a staff engineer it was not long before he transitioned and began managing various department projects and special

▶ 3:17:33 Jennifer L. Lemmerman: operations for then superintendent Joseph McKay whereas in 2000 John was promoted to deputy city engineer and quickly became an integral member of the of mayor's management team, in 2003 he was promoted again to director of operations and deputy city engineer. Whereas in this role, he was responsible for all operations of the department, it's eight divisions and 40 employees. He has managed the department's operations through several of the most historic snow and flood events recorded, and through several transitions required by financial budget cuts. Whereas additionally, together with the superintendent Robert Becerra, John actively assisted in the development, design, construction, and management of over $25 million in

▶ 3:18:17 Jennifer L. Lemmerman: infrastructure improvements to the Melrose water, sewer, drain, roadway, park, and open space improvements. By making public works accessible, visible, and present in the community, John has been a stable fixture in the department and in its growth. Whereas in 2011, John was promoted to assistant superintendent, and in 2012 was promoted again to director of public works. He had led all functions of the reorganized department, including existing operations, municipal and school facilities, engineering, and administration. For the past 24 years, John's dedication to the city of Moros has been unwavering. Be it resolved that we, the members of the Board of Aldermen, hereby honor John Chenna's dedication and unyielding commitment to our city, his unerring stewardship will be missed.

▶ 3:18:59 It further resolves that on this 29th day of August in the year 2019, a copy of this resolution be spread upon the records of the Board of Aldermen. Thank you, and thank you to everyone. Mixed emotions, tomorrow's going to be a tough day when I walk away for the last time. I have to say that I've come to work and I learned very quickly that to succeed in the public sector, you have to put the community first. We always try to make those decisions, we try to instill that in the department. That's really how I survived as long as I did. I always tried to come and put Melrose first, try to make our decisions based on what was best for the community. And the presentation tonight showed a slide that I'm quite proud of and that I'm going to keep a copy of.

▶ 3:20:12 And as you go from Wakefield into Melrose and then from Malden into Melrose, We can't help but look at what collectively we've done over the last few decades, and I'll never forget it. It's been great. Thank you to everyone, and thank you for this. Thank you. Thanks, Sandra. It's really this, I'm sure. I'll call it later, if you don't follow what I did. Ta-da. Ta-da. Huggabuggles, huggabuggles, huggabuggles. Yeah. Make a motion to place the order on file. second motion me to place the order on file by president Lemmerman seconded by alderman Mortimer all in favor aye opposed we shall do that that brings us to the last order on our agenda tonight order number 2020 dash 18 and appropriation from contract stabilization eight four zero four two

▶ 3:21:44 Kate Lipper-Garabedian: dash five nine zero zero zero zero in the amount of sixty one thousand one $138.14 to various accounts as set forth herein. This appropriation is to fund year one of the recently settled local 272 clerical union contract. Motion to recommend for passage, Madam Chair. Second. We have a motion to recommend for passage made by Alderman Mortimer and seconded by Vice Chair Boycelle. Would anyone like to hear? We do have, we're still under suspension of rules, so we could hear from city officials who are here to answer any questions. any questions on this it we do have attached to the order a memorandum of understanding that summarizes a collective bargaining agreement terms uh to explain uh the requested appropriation

▶ 3:22:34 alderman uh medeiros thank you um since the suspension rules i i'd perhaps uh attorney van camp would like to give us a quick summary of short um just get here just yep sure briefly uh this is um to fund recently um completed memorandum of agreement with the ache union which is the city hall clerical association um it comprises of a two and a half percent cost of living adjustment each year um we are creating two new steps for this bargaining unit um at the high end meaning at the highest end of the salary schedule and some additional language changes that have been agreed upon this is the last collective bargaining agreement that the Inferno administration has has to negotiate so this is wrapping that

▶ 3:23:27 particular item up and how many people are in this unit I want to say they're 20, 28 members, I believe. Thank you. Any other questions? And just, Madam Chair, so the committee knows, if this is approved this evening, the contract stabilization fund will have a remaining balance of about $710,000. Thank you. I was supposed to say that. All right. All in favor? Aye. Any opposed? We will make the recommendation to the full board. Thank you. Motion to adjourn, Madam Chair. Motion to adjourn made by Alderman Warmer, seconded by Vice Chair Boisselle. All in favor? Aye. Opposed? Thank you, we are adjourned. Go get some sleep.

Appropriations & Oversight Committee — 2019-08-29

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