Public Works Committee — 2019-11-18
Attendance
Manisha Bewtra ; Robert A. Boisselle ; Scott M. Forbes ; Kate Lipper-Garabedian ; Shawn M. MacMaster ; Jeff McNaught ; Monica C. Medeiros ; Peter D. Mortimer ; John N. Tramontozzi ; Francis X. Wright Jr. ; Michael P. Zwirko
Agenda
Minutes
CITY OF MELROSE PUBLIC WORKS COMMITTEE CALENDAR● NOVEMBER 18, 2019 Council Chamber, First Floor, Melrose City Hall Committee Meeting 7:30 PM 562 Main Street, Melrose, MA 02176 The public should take notice that the Melrose City Council may, on certain occasions, have a quorum in attendance due to standing committees of the City Council consisting of both voting and non-voting members. Members attending this duly posted meeting are participating and deliberating only in conjunction with the business of the standing committee. Attendee Name Title Status Arrived John N. Tramontozzi Chair Present Robert A. Boisselle Vice Chair Present Peter D. Mortimer Voting Present Kate Lipper-Garabedian Voting Present Shawn M. MacMaster Voting Present Scott M. Forbes President/Ex Oficio Present Francis X. Wright Jr. Nonvoting Absent Monica C. Medeiros Nonvoting Present Michael P. Zwirko Nonvoting Present Manisha Bewtra Nonvoting Present Jeff McNaught Non Voting Present
ORDER-2020-30 Authorization Emergency Management Services - vehicle acquisition request Recommend Passage City Council City of Melrose Page 1 Updated 12/2/2019 1:03 PM
Transcript
▶ 0:02 John N. Tramontozzi: Good evening. As the hour is 7.30 p.m. on Monday, November 18, 2019, this is the Melrose City Council Public Works Committee. I am the chair of this committee, Councilor Tramontozzi. Also with us this evening is Councilor Boisselle, Vice Chair. Also voting members, Councilor Mortimer, Councilor Lipper-Garabedian, Councilor McMaster, President, Ex Officio Officers, Councilor Forbes. Also with us this evening, non-voting members, Councilor Medeiros, Councilors Workow, Councilor Bewtra, and welcome our newest Councilor, McNaught. As usual, this meeting, pursuant to the Massachusetts Open Meeting Law, is being recorded and available for review through MMTV and the City of Melrose website. At this time, I ask for a motion to open the floor for public comment.
▶ 1:05 John N. Tramontozzi: So moved, Mr. Chair. Second. Thank you. We have a motion to open the floor for public comment by Councillor Mortimer, seconded by Councillor Boisselle. All in favor? Aye. Any opposed? This is the opportunity for any member of the public to come forward to speak about. We have one order on the agenda of the public works agenda this evening. Anybody in the public wishes to come forward to speak on that order? Motion to close public comment. Second. Second. Seeing no members of the public coming forward to speak on this order, we have a motion to close public participation, a public comment by Councilor Lip and Garabedian, seconded by Councilor Boisselle. All in favor? Aye. Opposing none, public comment is now closed.
▶ 1:49 John N. Tramontozzi: We have one order on the agenda this evening and that's order 2020-30. It's Emergency Management Services Vehicle Acquisition Request. This was held in committee at the last hearing we had to obtain further documentation from the city. Councilor Mortimer. Seeing as how the necessary paperwork and the letters have come down from the administration, I make a motion to recommend this order for passage. Second. All right, right now we have a motion to recommend the order for passage by Council Mortimer, seconded by Councilor Boisselle. On discussion, any? Can we have a motion to suspend the rules so that we can hear from the city officials who are with us tonight? Second. We have a motion to suspend the rules by Councilor Lipper-Garabedian, seconded by Councilor Mortimer.
▶ 2:42 Kate Lipper-Garabedian: All in favor? Aye. At this time, if we can have the representatives of the city come forward for some questions. Councilor Lipper-Garabedian, you have the floor. Oh, certainly. Thank you both for being here again tonight. and director Alpert I believe that you shared with the City Council some photographs examples of other municipalities that provide their emergency management director with a vehicle and maybe you could speak a little bit to us about the survey that you did and the information that you provided in picture form but also any information about how other municipalities handle the kind of position that you hold and vehicle use The pictures I was able to obtain, there are some Facebook sites that people maintain different
▶ 3:38 websites depending upon if you're a golfer or whatever your hobbies are and there happens to be one there on emergency management vehicles and I just went on it and I picked some at random that were there and it doesn't mean that those are the only ones that are in the state those are just the ones that have been photographed and are placed on the site excuse me as I said at the previous meeting almost all the directors that I know that our hold the title of emergency management and emergency management only not those that a fire chiefs police chiefs or other the members of municipal government that have their vehicles under their other title. The ones that I know that are local directors throughout the state have vehicles assigned to them.
▶ 4:37 Kate Lipper-Garabedian: And it's not something that I'm inventing. It's something that's been out there for as long as I can remember. Going back over 30 years ago, when I first got my vehicle assigned to me in Chelsea, had a vehicle of us since that time and one of the vehicles I have to look on my phone so just because our internet is a little spotty here but one of them looks like it's from Wakefield so maybe director Stinson can also speak to that I don't know if those are the degree that either one of you sort of knows how Wakefield handles the vehicle for the emergency management director he actually takes that vehicle home so that vehicles to him because they carry gear in that vehicle that is used during emergencies you know good examples if
▶ 5:23 they go to a fire and they're coordinating things with the fire chief there you have your gear on and you get all that soot and debris you don't want to be putting that in your own car so we've provided in Wakefield the emergency management director with a vehicle to carry the gear to respond to emergencies and to kind of work in all kinds of situations whether it be hurricane snowstorm fire god forbid an active shooting or something like that they're available and they can respond okay maybe my last question for now there's a couple of photos that you provided of interiors of some of these vehicles and I know you spoke to with us a little bit about that last time in in terms of all the different equipment that you have to carry on site to an emergency,
▶ 6:16 and the degree to which it would be useful for you to just have it all housed in a city issued vehicle. I see among them, I think it's like a dispatch system or particular radios, but the car that we're purchasing already have that kind of equipment in it. The picture that showed the two interior shots is the vehicle that I specced out and received just before my retirement. Okay. What you see in the front is a radio console. I know it's difficult on an iPhone to see it, but it's a radio console with radios of different frequencies that would allow me to talk with all city departments plus our regional partners, our mutual aid communities, the state emergency management, and the State Department of Environmental Protection,
▶ 7:12 just about anybody that would either be coming into the city of Melrose for an incident or if on a mutual aid, I was asked to go to another community. That console is replicated in the red vehicle that was not removed because it's a different interior configuration. so that one had to be custom-made for the Explorer, but the console is still in that red vehicle. And the other photograph shows the back of the vehicle, which has some of the supplies that are carried, my turnout equipment, some lighting equipment, and other equipment that we use at emergencies. Okay. I would move that we include in the public record the email from Mr. Alpert that we received today along with all the different attachments.
▶ 8:09 Peter D. Mortimer: Second the motion to amend. We have a motion by Councilor Lipper-Garabedian and seconded by Councilors Mortimer and Boiselle to add the additional documentation to the order. All in favor? Aye. That will be done. Okay, so I don't have any further questions right now. I'm interested just to hear if anybody else does and thank you for being here again. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Councilman Mortimer is up next. Thank you very much. I have made the main motion on this and there's been subsidiary motion since then which is appropriate to amend the order to include the record and to open the floor for public to suspend the rules to hear from the people and the reason I made the main motion to recommend
▶ 8:56 Peter D. Mortimer: this for passage is, as Mr. Stinson said, if there's an event and you need to throw things in the trunk, you don't have to throw it in your own car and cause cross contamination. If your family should use that car, you know if it's something that you then have to clean the trunk. If you put your turnout gear in the trunk and you can fix it, and I don't know what your personal vehicle is, But if it's an open van, a minivan or something, then you definitely don't want those contaminants floating around the passenger compartment. Further, I think it's a good idea for an emergency management response personnel to have a vehicle. The particulars of whether it stays here or whether it goes home with you will be up to
▶ 9:47 Peter D. Mortimer: your boss, the mayor, whether he wants you to take it home. My opinion is you should take it home, but as I said last time, never ever use it for anything except an on-call emergency response or to come back and forth directly. Back and forth to and from work. But I think overall it's a good idea for the emergency management response to have it. As again mentioned last time, please excuse the repetition. I think it just would have been a good symbol at the Brazil Street fiasco just to have that car there and we could not keep a, due to limited vehicular availability, we could not keep a police car or a fire truck there for the entire time, but it would have been good to have a city vehicle on site.
▶ 10:38 Peter D. Mortimer: And for many other reasons, God forbid, any future emergencies we may have, floods. We get every ten years or so, we get serious floods. If there's any gas leaks or anything, it's good to have it. So that's why I made the motion to recommend this order for passage, and I hope it does. Thank you very much. Very good. It will be my intent to remove this order from committee at our full board meeting, which will begin in about five, ten minutes. But are there any other members, voting members of the committee that wish to speak for the first time? President Forbes. Thank you. Then I'll get to Councilor Bewtra next. Thank you very much. Can you just tell us, when did you come on board with us? Was it February of this year?
▶ 11:32 Scott M. Forbes: February, yes sir. Okay. And then during that time, how many emergencies have you responded to during that time? Actually, I've only responded to one call. Okay, all right, I'm not in favor of the order for the simple reason that the automobile is 16 years old. In an era where cities and towns are more mindful in investing in environmentally friendly automobiles, the addition of a 2003 car to our fleet is certainly, I don't believe, in our city's best interests. other municipal other municipal vehicles for comparison say like a police car would be considered beyond its shelf life so taking this on right now I would have a concern with the insurance cost alone that we received today is worth more than the value of the car so any routine maintenance and not to mention the one-time cost to have the automobile repainted to reflect the name from Chelsea to Melrose would be an additional burden the city of the emergency manager position is a part-time position it accounts for
▶ 12:31 Scott M. Forbes: for 18 hours a week there are 168 weeks 168 hours in a work week which means that this vehicle will be sitting idle in a parking lot for 150 hours which is 89 percent of the time and finally i think this is it's not a good precedent for department heads that currently use their personal vehicles during business hours other deals or proposals for used automobiles at a discount rate would have to be considered if this appropriation moves forward so i don't believe that we would be using best practices when considering this purchase and because of that i'm i'm not in favor of moving this order ahead thank you very good thank you council butcher thank you um thank you i'm not a voting member of the committee but so i appreciate um the
▶ 13:13 Manisha Bewtra: opportunity to ask a couple more questions um is the would this vehicle be available is there like a time limit on if um if it became more evident because you mentioned you've only responded to one call if say we wanted to revisit this in six months would that vehicle still be available to us uh it would be so currently it's in chelsea oh it's here okay otherwise the dpw wouldn't have been able to inspect it so i did bring it over and it and it has been sitting here since that time when was that started about two months ago okay um so it's it's currently parked here um but not in use um and you mentioned equipment um that you're using your personal vehicle in the our previous meeting uh you mentioned that you have to kind of move equipment
▶ 14:16 Manisha Bewtra: back and forth does that include the type of radio equipment that you are i do not have that type of radio equipment in my personal vehicle okay so that would be one of the things that you one of the benefits of having a vehicle is the fact that you'd have access to that radio equipment correct and were you you what was the nature of the call that you have responded to it was a hazardous materials incident up in Franklin Street okay and can you expand on sort of what I believe I think I understood that maybe you were away during brazil street but what your role is that correct or i i wasn't notified of brazil street okay um i think my concerns uh in addition to um what uh president forbes has raised which i agree with are just sort of i i feel a certain level of murkiness on
▶ 15:10 Manisha Bewtra: on just sort of how um the emergency management position is is used in our community right now and given that it is a part-time position um and the vehicle is quite old i feel i'm not i don't currently feel comfortable when this comes before the full council to vote in favor of it because i i feel that there are just it seems that there are hidden costs even though i i do feel you've made a good case for why you know it could be useful to have it if i could just expound on that the vehicle was inspected by Public Works and it was given a thumbs up I believe the director said we should get another five or six years out of it that vehicle was assigned to me since the day it arrived in the city and that vehicle was maintained to the highest of highest of standards in addition
▶ 16:05 as the director stated the fact that it's not the same comparison as to a another department head outside of let's say fire and police nor a department head would use a city vehicle to go on inspections etc this is actually going to calls that do require communications it requires the use of as the director and i had previously said fire turnout gear that having gone through it years ago i will not carry it in my personal vehicle i have an explorer of my own and once you put that in there that smell never leaves the car and the job outline even though it's 18 hours a week in the office it's on call 24 hours a day and it also takes into account which I agreed to with the mayor that if there were meetings or incidents that took place
▶ 17:09 other than my scheduled time provided that I'm available I will definitely be there so even though again it's 18 hours compared to 35 or 40 the the responsibilities are still there and although we only had one incident we never know what's going to become tomorrow you know I'm sure there's a lot of people that have never had a fire or theft in their house but they have fire and theft insurance you know this is part of being in the emergency management business that you have to be ready and available when when the crisis happens and again having a vehicle with the necessary equipment and tools is part of the tools of the trade I appreciate all of that I think again it's just sort of something's not adding up to me I think between potentially
▶ 18:05 Manisha Bewtra: parking it here overnight and if there were an emergency that wouldn't mean you'd have to come to City Hall I think I think you've brought up a lot of really important um needs that i hope that we continue to explore through perhaps a shared vehicle um i think you know the mayor's uh mayor inferna uh previous mayor uh her letter stated also that you're not a considered a first responder so i'm just concerned about sort of lack of clarity in terms of the public understanding um you know that you're not a police officer and that you're here to kind of facilitate communication between departments and different agencies so that that's kind of where I'm landing on this but I also I mean I appreciate your time that you've put into this
▶ 19:09 Manisha Bewtra: whole much larger group is first responders including in that is Public Works Board of Health emergency management they they're all in that classification now so it's not just police and fire anymore you know they you have kind of the first responders you see all the time and then you have the silent first responders which are just as critical so just if you've never seeing that i can get you a copy of that order yeah no i i think that all makes a lot of sense i think the reason it's just not quite adding up it's just it feels like we've come up with the solution without having um a better more comprehensive understanding of our of our um needs in terms of first response you know emergency response um i think this position was
▶ 20:00 sort of created as a separate position quite recently whereas it used to be tacked on to other people's you know if i just may add to that my predecessor the late ed kelly who was the part time director prior to his retirement he this was all that he did on his part-time job he was on the fire department but he was the emergency management director on his off days and then when he retired from the fire department he did this the full 18 hours and back then he was assigned a vehicle actually he had an unmarked vehicle a separate vehicle from the absolutely okay all right well thank you you're welcome okay thank you uh councilman thank you yes i too am not a voting member of this committee i know we spoke about this last week and i'm glad to see the letter from
▶ 20:52 Monica C. Medeiros: former mayor inferna i do still i have to ask i know you just said that you know you would not take the turnout gear into your personal vehicle again and i have to ask was this something that was discussed when you came on board about whether or not the position had a car no so i i should have asked but knowing that director kelly had one uh i didn't see any reason why i wouldn't have one of course director kelly hasn't been here for you know several years now um and it's been you know as as alderman Bewtra had mentioned it's been tied in with the fire chief and then with the health director's position um it's some of the murkiness pre you know predates this situation for me as well because um this position was brought on with us
▶ 21:51 Monica C. Medeiros: you know seemingly a small stipend that we were just moving with later along the way i thought that i thought that was the encompassing of all the salary was later brought on and had to appropriate some additional funds and now there's a car which has kind of come up um you know without originally having the mayor's approval and now you know we have a new mayor and i really think that before i would take a final vote on this i would like to see his thoughts sorry we might have to recess this committee to uh formally open the uh full board meeting because we're i'll finish up very very quickly um so i would really like to see his thoughts on this but i share a lot of the concerns that that president ford has in terms of the age of the vehicle
▶ 22:41 and uh and so on that it's not well based on the age of the vehicle if something serious happen we would just dispose of it thank you we'll get it done all right point of order yes i think it's a half hour after the full border so i think we have till 8 15. so we're going to take a vote we're not going to recess thank you oh yeah so we don't need to we can i apologize you want to continue i'm finished any further discussion uh yes just a point of information we have a public hearing that is supposed to start at 8 p.m oh that's all right let's take a quick vote if we can um we have we do have a motion on the floor for uh to send this to uh someone's in queue to speak is there anybody in the queue yes all right we'll take a recess a motion to recess second the
▶ 36:31 and I wanted to seek some clarifying questions so you can take the comments out please thank you mr. chairman so I just wanted to clarify so you said that the the city has had the car for two months and the car has been assigned to you know you said earlier the car has been assigned to you okay so the who owns the car currently Chelsea Chelsea but it's in our yard right just gave it to us so we could inspect it and it's been with us until a determination was made okay all right thanks if it's determined no it will go back to them thank you any further discussion seeing none we do have a motion to recommend recommend has been seconded on the motion all in favor aye any opposed opposed show of hands who how many recommend two how many opposed one two
▶ 37:52 three four so so it doesn't pass so this is a in effect would be a motion not to recommend and that will be sent to the full board for final what passage our final vote all right any nothing further on the agenda motion to adjourn by um council mortimer seconded by councillor Boisselle all in favor aye aye any posting then we are adjourned uh stay tuned for the full board all right city council is now back in session i apologize for the technical difficulties but i think we're well on our way all right um let's move forward to uh communications from her honor the mayor and other city officials order 2 0 2 0 dash 41 police fiscal year 29 9 1 1 support and incentive grant award marvel's police department has been awarded 81 187 dollars to assist the police dispatch