Appropriations & Oversight Committee — 2019-11-25

Attendance

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

Agenda

1. Call to Order (40:40)
2. Public Comment (57:30)
3. Public Hearing - Classification of Property (41:40)
4. Orders (1:39:36)
5. ORDER-2020-41 : Police FY20 911 Support and Incentive Grant Award Melrose Police Department has been awarded $81,187.00 to assist the Police Dispatch (PSAP) in providing enhanced 911 services. (1:39:48)
6. ORDER-2020-39 : Request for Update on the Status of the Community Mitigation Funds Grant (1:41:26)
7. ORDER-2020-42 : Request to set a Public Hearing on Classification of Property for November 25, 2019 at 7:30 P.M. and subsequently determine the Classification of Property (2:49:56)
8. Adjournment (3:23:44)

Minutes

CITY OF MELROSE APPROPRIATIONS COMMITTEE CALENDAR● NOVEMBER 25, 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 Kate Lipper-Garabedian Chair Present Robert A. Boisselle Vice Chair Present Peter D. Mortimer Voting Absent John N. Tramontozzi Voting Present Francis X. Wright Jr. Voting Present Monica C. Medeiros Voting Absent Scott M. Forbes President/Ex Oficio Present Michael P. Zwirko Voting Present Manisha Bewtra Voting Present Shawn M. MacMaster Voting Present Jeff McNaught Voting Present

ORDER-2020-41 Grant Police FY20 911 Support and Incentive Grant Award Melrose Police Department has been awarded $81,187.00 to assist the Police Dispatch (PSAP) in providing enhanced 911 services. Recommend Passage City Council

ORDER-2020-39 Request Request for Update on the Status of the Community Mitigation Funds Grant Recommend Place on File City Council

ORDER-2020-42 Classification of Property Request to set a Public Hearing on Classification of Property for November 25, 2019 at 7:30 P.M. and subsequently determine the Classification of Property Recommend Passage City Council City of Melrose Page 1 Updated 12/11/2019 2:15 PM

Transcript

▶ 40:54 Kate Lipper-Garabedian: hour being 745 I call to order the Appropriations Committee of the Melrose City Council this is a committee of the whole I'm the chair LaFleur Garabedian and I'm joined tonight by vice chair city councillor Bob Boisselle and voting members councillors Tram and Tosi, Wright, Zwirko, Bewtra, McMaster, McNaught and President Forbes just for those watching at home we're just we're gonna come right back to legal and legislative but we do have a public hearing that was noticed that was supposed to start at 730 on one particular item so we'll just see if anyone is here to speak to that item then we'll recess appropriations and go back to legal and legislative this meeting is being recorded in accordance with the open meeting law so it can be watched on an MTV on TV and

▶ 41:41 Kate Lipper-Garabedian: also streaming and it will be available through the city of Melrose website moving forward at this time we do have a public hearing regarding the classification of property scheduled for 730 p.m. so can I have a motion to open the public hearing for public comment purposes second we have a motion made by counselors work Oh second my advice to your boys LL in favor all right any opposed okay so we will open the floor for anyone who is here to speak tonight on the classification of property item that is in it's on our agenda seeing no one step forward should we have a motion to close the public comment period of the public hearing yes well that's true I guess it's just the public hearing itself sometimes we do have someone step forward from the city to report to us

▶ 42:40 Francis X. Wright Jr.: first and then we have here from folks but no one is here today thank you so we have a motion duly seconded all in favor any opposed okay so we've now done our public hearing within the time frame that was required so we could motion to recess so moved second made by presidents Forbes and seconded by Vice Chair Boisselle all in favor aye any opposed okay so we are recessed thank you we open the legal and legislative committee we are just about to entertain we will entertain order one on our agenda which is order 2020-40 in order requesting the city of Melrose to adopt Massachusetts general law chapter 33 section 59 effective military service on salary seniority and leave allowances of public employees this order was sponsored by President Scott Forbes

▶ 57:44 Kate Lipper-Garabedian: Appropriations Committee which I think we opened but I think what we need to do right now is just open the floor for public comment because that needs to happen within 30 minutes at the time that the meeting was scheduled so that people who are here to speak to any item on the agenda for our appropriations meeting and there are three of them are welcome to come forward at this time to please state your name for the record and let us know your comments on any of these orders and one point of order before we open for public comment please read the three orders that are before the committee so members of the public are aware of what they could comment on certainly thank you sure so we have on our agenda tonight police fiscal year 29 1 1 support an incentive

▶ 58:27 Kate Lipper-Garabedian: grant that was awarded to our police department our second one is a request for an update on the status of the community mitigation funds grant and our last item is related to the public hearing that we just held on the classification of property so those are our three items and if anyone is here tonight to speak to any of them we would welcome you now motion open the floor for public comment madam chair second motion to open the floor made by councillors work Oh seconded by a vice chair Boisselle all in favor aye any opposed thank you so we're now open for comment let's take a page from someone at a prior meeting and do a couple handouts here so my name is finn mcsweeney i'm here to talk a little bit about 2020-39 which is the request for update on the community

▶ 59:38 mitigation funds i am a member of the pedestrian bicycle advisory committee here in the city I wasn't on the PBC I didn't live here when the grant was announced or applied for so I'm not speaking directly from experience but I did want to bring a couple of comments that PBC members had raised to me and then also just talk a little bit personally about this so the purpose of the grant for folks who are in the room was the Mass Gaming Commission gave what are the city of Melrose $100,000 I think it was 2017 2018 in relation to the encore casino which was being built and the purpose of that money was hey you guys are located on a corridor to the orange line we expect there to be more traffic to the

▶ 1:00:29 orange line you might be impacted by that traffic let's see if you can use this money to improve pedestrian and bicycle access down to Oak Grove the members of the ped bike committee began to outreach the city in 2017 just to ask for more information on what the city was thinking in terms of how they were going to apply for the grant what they wanted to use it for and they were told at that time that they were going to use it to prioritize ped bike access which was great there's a section of the Melrose forward plan section three point 2.5 where the recommendation is consider allocating funds in the city budget for traffic calming and traffic management pilot projects we talked about this a

▶ 1:01:18 lot in the city but the line is always that there just isn't money in the budget for it which is often true so everyone was very excited to learn that we would be receiving this money from the state in that it would explicitly be going to improve pedestrian and bicycle access to Oak Grove we did the the committee did ask Elena for information on the project throughout 2017 2018 she did provide some information on the work order I did want to raise that one of the deliverables in the work order was that the contractors Stantec who did this survey we're supposed to conduct a public workshop we don't believe that's happened and in the previous year year and a half we really have received very little information from the city on how they went about asking Stantec to do

▶ 1:02:27 that work we were not solicited for input we were not asked if we if we would like to help and we I wanted to express sort of the the disappointment that the city's really transit advisory committee wasn't approached or really communicated with at any point during the process in in the process of applying for a grant specifically for that committee's purpose the the city spent 27 I think 20 around $27,000 to these consultants that money's been spent folks in the city have probably not perceived there to have been any improvements that have been made thus far to the corridor which is true $27,000 of the money has been spent and the report which is attached to the IQ m2 is a really really hyper detailed like listing of the crosswalks in in the

▶ 1:03:39 corridor so I'll let folks decide how much value they think they got out of that $27,000 of the money but the the handout that I that I passed around tonight we don't have to if the city wants to improve transit access and the city wants to pursue traffic calming measures which the city should want to pursue because every single person in town wants to see better walking access and wants to see slower traffic you don't have to spend tens of thousands of dollars on consultants to do that what I passed around tonight was a very similar this is a picture of a street in Somerville where the the city recently they had been hearing from residents that traffic on this this street was being used as a cut-through right there's a 25 mile an hour speed limit in

▶ 1:04:41 Somerville just like there is here residents were observing people are flying down this road 35 40 miles an hour every single person sitting around this table knows of a street in their neighborhood in their district where residents are complaining about this exact same thing what the city of Somerville did was they said we hear you we can put six cones on the street here and 399 worth of paint and you know what we'll have it down for six months we'll have it down for 12 months and we'll see if it works and if it works and if If traffic is slowed down on the street and people like it, we'll make it permanent. If it doesn't, we'll send out a guy with a truck to pick up the cones and no harm, no foul.

▶ 1:05:25 A hundred thousand dollars could be used to do a lot of very simple experimentation on traffic calming in conjunction with experts, volunteer experts that we have in the city. The chair of the Pedestrian Bicycle Committee has a background in urban planning, in transportation planning. We would really, really like to see the city, when this subject comes up, not to have the first thought be, let's go commission this huge study. Let's kind of not really tell anyone about what it is or what we're doing. um and that's let's leave people wondering what's going to happen with the rest of the money when are we going to see it thousands of people commute to oak grove every single day the study area

▶ 1:06:25 included the lincoln school the city commissioned a a safety study in 2012 or 2013 i think care showers piloted it with walk boston that recommended uh walkability improvements in in the area of the Lincoln School, which is in this study area. Nothing was ever done with that study, as far as I'm aware. But it's unclear to us if after having received this money, the city then went back and reevaluated any of the information in the previous study, or was that sort of just a waste of time and now we're redoing it. We'd really like to encourage the decision makers in the city to be more transparent, to be more proactive on improving walking, biking, access, and traffic calming measures, which every single person in Melrose wants to see

▶ 1:07:27 these things. Other cities around us who have the same exact problems as we do are experimenting with these things very cheaply we can do this here for us it's really about having that conversation making people want to do these things as opposed to for some reason even though we talked so much about transparency and communication and accountability for some reason there just appears to be a reluctance from the city to be open and communicative about these things so we I'll conclude by thanking councillor McMaster for raising this the reason I originally brought it to the ped by committee's attention and this year was because councillor Lipper-Garabedian email newsletter she always sends out

▶ 1:08:22 the DPW schedule so this is something I hope a question gets asked tonight and I think it was her May or June email there was a line item in the DPW schedule that said something like West Wyoming Washington community mitigation funds and there was a block in there that said the DPW was doing something I don't know what that was what it was about but I started asking questions hoping someone would pick this up and find out what happened and I very much thank council McMaster for doing that and for raising this hopefully with the rest of the money that's left the city can proactively start to address some of the concerns that no doubt mr. McMaster's constituents have highlighted in the district and if we need to have more public discussion I'm sure that can be

▶ 1:09:13 facilitated very easily so thank you very much everyone for your time on any of our three orders? Seeing none. Motion to close public comment, Madam Chair. Second. Motion to close public comment made by Councilor Zerberko, seconded by Vice Chair Boisselle. All in favor? Aye. Any opposed? Okay, I will now entertain a motion for recess. So moved. Second. We have a motion for recess made by Councilor Zerberko, seconded by Councilor Wright. All in favor? Aye. Opposed? Okay, we are in recess and we'll return to legal and legislative. For the last time, right? Okay, we will once again return to the Legal and Legislative Committee, third time being a charm. I assume we'll get through the remainder of our orders.

▶ 1:39:55 Kate Lipper-Garabedian: 29 1 1 support an incentive grant award Melrose Police Department has been awarded eighty one thousand one hundred and eighty seven dollars to assist the police dispatch in providing enhanced 9-1-1 services to recommend a motion to recommend made by Vice Chair Boisselle seconded by counselor right I do see that the police chief is here if we'd like to hear from him we've been a motion to suspend the rules second the rules made by President Forbes and second by Vice Chair Boisselle. Thank you for being with us tonight. This is one of three 9-1-1 grants. I was here earlier this month on the EMD services grant. This is the support and the last one will be the EMD training grant. This is a non-mashing grant. There's a modest increase over last

▶ 1:40:49 Kate Lipper-Garabedian: year's numbers I can give you each item if you'd like or the 81 187 the pleasure of me any questions for the chief tonight we do have a motion duly seconded to recommend for passage all in favor opposed we'll make that recommendation of the full council thank you again for being here and I've been remiss to mention that um that was sorry not sorry not for you uh that um counselor mortimer sends his regrets he has a medical issue with a family member otherwise he would be here second order on our agenda excuse me is order 2020-39 request for update on the status of the community mitigation funds grant i see that we are we're still in our suspension rules i see the city engineers here if you'd like to join us hi thank you good evening good evening thank you for being here tonight and

▶ 1:41:56 Kate Lipper-Garabedian: And I know that we did receive a memorandum. Maybe, was it today? So I don't know if it's in the agenda yet publicly. Has it been posted online? OK, so it is available to the public online as well. So thank you for being here. Would you like me to start out by presenting? OK. Sure. And I apologize for the confusion on what was posted on Friday or Saturday versus what was posted today. It was just a miscommunication between Kristin and me in terms of what was supposed to go up onto the site. So unfortunately, the more introductory material that was supposed to be providing the bulk of the update was what we didn't post until later today. That was the two memos. You all got a hard copy, though, in your mailboxes.

▶ 1:42:44 And so what I'd like to do is just run through a little bit of the history, and if you don't mind, I know it's been a long night, but run through the content of the two memos just to give an update on where we are. So we did receive this grant back in 2017 or we received basically notification of this grant in 2017 or possibly even earlier and the requirement of the grant was we were allocated $100,000 in mitigation funds from the Mass Gaming Commission relation to the casino and I believe it the the initial allocation of that hundred thousand actually predates when I started in 2015 but I believe the number was selected based on it was actually because of route 99 because we have that tiny piece of route 99 that's how we qualified for the money but route

▶ 1:43:39 99 being a state road it really didn't make any sense for us to try to allocate that money in that neighborhood so but the Gaming Commission does require that the funding be tied to potential impacts or actual impacts of the casino itself. So we had to be a little creative in terms of how we identified where that money could be used and in reviewing the casino documents they were going to have shuttle service and I believe they do now have shuttle service from Malden Center to the casino on the Orange Line. So we thought our most direct connection to places where we could see an uptick in something could potentially be ridership from Oak Grove and people coming from the Melrose direction toward Oak Grove.

▶ 1:44:27 And the interest of the city at that time was to be focused on pedestrian and bike improvements just because we didn't really have roadway improvements. There wasn't a high need for paving in that area, but pedestrian and bike improvements and accessibility were identified as needs that we had been hearing about for quite some time. So that's how we got to the point of identifying what to do with the money, and so we signed the grant contract with the state just before Mayor Dolan had left, so that was sometime in early 2018, and signed the contract with Stantec at that same time asking them to do an analysis of this corridor. So at that time, we asked them to do this thorough analysis of pedestrian accommodations,

▶ 1:45:31 bus stops, crosswalks, ADA accessibility, bike accommodations, condition assessment of all the sidewalks in that neighborhood, identifying any deficiencies. And so they came back last spring with their initial, I wouldn't quite call it a report, it was an aggregation of all the work that they had done. I frankly I spared the council that detail because the appendices were about this thick of maps with notations of measurements and things so they did an extremely detailed analysis and presented to us in the spring the deficiencies and at that time we noted that they didn't have any recommendations in their report it was it was just a draft at that time and it was largely a list of deficiencies and their impression was that whatever money we

▶ 1:46:36 couldn't get from the community mitigation fund grants we would find elsewhere and we were going to do this laundry list of what I would think amounts to hundreds of thousands of dollars of repairs which was really not our intent we had communicated to them that we were spending the first 26,000 on the study and the remaining 74,000 was for the implementation of the highest priority recommendations and that that was where we intended to stop and then everything else would basically sit on the shelf until other funding opportunities had come up or until they worked you know some of the repairs has worked into our operating budgets due to staff turnover since the spring we have frankly done very little on this project I think there's there were some

▶ 1:47:24 comments in public participation and also some conversation correspondence that I've had with with councillor McMaster concerned that we were moving ahead and not involving folks but I think that is more an issue of just were so swamped engineering is so short-staffed Jackie Byrd was working on this and then she announced she was leaving and then John Shannon was working on it and then he announced he was leaving and so the the annual report that we submitted in November which was just this brief two-page letter to the state and then our review of stantec's document and our requests for some substantial edits to make that into a better final product which they're still working on is really all we've done other than identifying this priority

▶ 1:48:19 list so I just want to one apologize that we haven't acted more quickly on it but to express that there is absolutely going to be an opportunity for public comment for work with the ped bike committee for further work with the Ward 5 counselor we don't intend to leave anybody out of this process or not account for anybody's input with the ped bike committee I actually meet monthly with their chair he serves also as their infrastructure liaison and so we meet every month and talk about what projects we have going on and his committee has submitted substantial recommendations for us like with the north-south bike roots and other projects that we have absolutely incorporated into our projects so just want to be

▶ 1:49:12 sure that that's clear i don't want it to be misrepresented that we're you know coming up with priorities and not sharing them with anyone and then the other item that i do want to note is that since this priority first cut list was made with uh under mayor inferna's administration and Mayor Broder has not seen this yet other than a courtesy copy that I sent him on Friday. So we will certainly be looking for his input as well. So, all of that said, the memo on the second page, which is the annual report just runs through. We've spent 23,000 of the Stantec money for the study. And like I said, we've asked them to make improvements the report before we submit it as a final report we need to submit it to the gaming commission

▶ 1:50:04 and we'd like to submit it to the city council and to the mayor's office their charge at this point is they've included what they consider their priorities but that's where their report will end and then the city will take it from there we don't intend to have them design recommendations the types of things we're looking at don't really require a design engineer so the priorities in in their final report may not be the priorities that we ultimately end up selecting to implement. That's just their opinion as an outside consultant. And we're not going to have them change their recommendations. I think their recommendations are what they are as professional engineers, but then we can take those and identify community priorities

▶ 1:50:48 and work within those parameters. So the list that we've come up with is eight items. I don't think 74,000 will pay for all eight of these items. So I don't think we would get through all of them. But our recommendation is to do them in this order until we run out of money. But again, we do hope to have a public meeting and whatever other discussion with other groups is desired. So first, we'd like to paint all the missing crosswalk markings at all the cross streets within the entire corridor that means these are three major roads Pleasant Street Washington Street and West Wyoming there are side streets that come out to meet these roads where there are not painted crosswalks parallel with the main road so just at the side street

▶ 1:51:42 crossings some of them don't have painted crosswalks we'd like to make sure to get those in there and then the bus stop at Wyoming and cottage the riders when they come on and off the bus they go on and off at a grass strip and a and a curb so there's really no accessible way to get on and off the bus there so we'd like to at a minimum put some concrete sidewalk blocks in at the definitely at the front of the bus and then if if there's room to do it at the if there's a backdoor entry as well that's something we'd have to look at a little bit in a little bit more detail in terms of what the MBTA buses where exactly they pull up at that location and how to make that accessible we'd like to repaint Washington Street Washington Street is not wide enough to

▶ 1:52:36 have full bike lanes but we can have 11 foot travel lanes and three foot shoulders we've done 11 foot travel lanes now on Main Street through the entire north-south bike route corridor we've done it on Upham Street all the way from Main Street to Saugus it's become sort of our standard on bus routes to go with an 11 foot travel lane in each direction it calms traffic and it provides a wider shoulder for cyclists we would put sharrows in the road because technically a three-foot shoulder is not wide enough for a bike lane so we would put the shared lane markings within the road so in instances where somebody did need to ride within the travel lane that reminds drivers that they're permitted to be there similarly it would be nice to do

▶ 1:53:23 the same thing on Pleasant Street there's a lot more variation in widths on Pleasant Street and more areas where parking is allowed so it may just be striping 11-foot lanes and putting sharrows I don't believe there's room for bike lanes there either but the parking situation is a little different so we we do the same thing we just did on the north-south bike routes and looking at a lot of detail at at the whole corridor and exactly what we could do we want to ensure there's a consistent corridor of sidewalks and ADA ramps on at least one side of the road so that somebody could walk all the way from Wyoming to Oak Grove or from Washington Street to Oak Grove and have an accessible corridor the whole way similar to what we just did on Upham

▶ 1:54:10 Street with free cash earlier this year we'd like to add more crosswalks across Pleasant Street right now I believe between the start of Pleasant Street or maybe just a couple blocks down all the way to Stone Place there aren't any crosswalks so we've identified at least one location where we can put one which is one of the entrances to converse Lane but we'd have to look more carefully at site sight lines to be sure that we could put if we wanted to put two crosswalks that we saw as a high priority there are definitely a lot of people who cross Pleasant Street for a variety of reasons one of Stantec's recommendations was to relocate the crosswalk from across Washington Street from trenton to clinton road because sight lines are better so we'd want to do that too

▶ 1:54:58 we would close in the ramps at trenton and put new ramps at clinton um consider adding a crosswalk across washington street at pebble road and then consider whether to modify the island at pleasant and washington to have more sidewalks or more logical crosswalks that one was again one of stantec's recommendations i think there's a lot of challenges in trying to change anything from what it is right now at that intersection but um and again we're unlikely to get that far down the list if the list ends up staying in this approximate order and then I just noted at the end that there are a lot of sidewalk repairs on Stantec's list and they spoke to a lot of residents when they were out there people came out and asked what they were measuring and we

▶ 1:55:42 heard a lot of comments about cracks and trip hazards and the typical things we hear about cracked sidewalks so I'm recommending that we just take the highest needs ones and put them into our egov system as work orders for repairs and then they just get repaired when they when they come up on the list but recognizing that with our current funding levels for those repairs we tend to be a couple years behind in keeping up on that list so it would be nice if some more money could get allocated there if we wanted to do those more quickly thank you madam chair Thank You miss for being here this evening. As background for filing this order, I just wanted to provide some information for my colleagues and for the public. You may recall that John Shanna,

▶ 1:56:33 Shawn M. MacMaster: the former superintendent of public works, came before us on October 15th of 2018. That was 13 months ago. And at that time, he explained how the grant came about. He discussed the award that we received he notified us that a consultant had been hired to conduct a study that would identify needs and make recommendations at that time he informed us that the scope of work would assess ada accessible ramps crosswalk locations both existing and proposed bus stops and accident records and miss paracas alice affirmed that this evening he explained that the area of study would be the pleasant lower washington street corridor washington street to fellsway east and west wyoming from maine to cottage in that evening again this is october 15

▶ 1:57:28 Shawn M. MacMaster: 2018 i expressed that it would be important to ensure that the public has a voice in the process especially before any determinations were made and any money was spent mr shenna responded that he envisioned there being a neighborhood meeting and he and i had several exchanges about that in the following months until his departure since then i have also received a considerable amount of inquiries a considerable amount from residents both in ward 5 and beyond those who travel through ward 5 for work getting to oak grove about the status of the grant so the reason I filed the order is because it's now been 13 months since the council and the public were provided information I also made at least four prior requests for information

▶ 1:58:20 Shawn M. MacMaster: and copies of the consultants report between December 3rd 2018 and December 12 2019 all of which excuse me all of which uh went uh i'm sorry december 3rd 2018 and august 12 2019 all of which went unanswered now in fairness to you miss paracas ellis i have never made any such request of you correct correct and in fact i've never had a conversation with you about this grant or even an email exchange until this weekend when i attempted to prepare you for my questions and some of the concerns that that i have and where i included mayor broder on that correspondence just out of courtesy so he had a sense of uh the types of questions i was going to ask tonight so i say that because i don't want there to be any impression at all that you've been unhelpful

▶ 1:59:14 Shawn M. MacMaster: or uncooperative that is certainly not the case i know that it's not within your spirit my experience working with you you know has shown me that you're very collaborative and very responsive and that we have a good working relationship so i just think it's it's important because i don't want there to be any sense from anyone whether it's my colleagues or the public that you do not respond to my uh my requests um but you do have some familiarity with uh with the grant you're in a position to answer some questions about process and um some of the questions that we have about recommendations that are made and the work that we'll be looking to do uh prospectively So, some of these questions you touched upon, as I understand it, $26,904 was already spent.

▶ 2:00:04 Shawn M. MacMaster: That's 26% of the entire grant. And from reading a document that was provided to us this evening, it's not the one that been uploaded uh this weekend it's the uh stated november 6 2000 i'm sorry november 22nd 2019 there's also an attachment uh from november 6th to 2019 um it it doesn't appear as if the consultant's report is actually complete is that correct that's why it hasn't been provided to anyone and and like i said the um i didn't get a chance to really thoroughly read the draft that they provided they provided pieces of the report in the spring and then they provided the remainder of it in the fall earlier this fall and i finally had a chance to review it just a few weeks ago and the it was a draft but the quality even as a draft was not ready for for public consumption

▶ 2:01:07 Shawn M. MacMaster: um just needed some reorganization and some wordsmithing i would say okay so in terms of outstanding work and looking at the um the report dated november 22nd that we were provided um it looks like there are a few items that were not mentioned in the report accident records that would be reviewed concept sketches up to 10 graphics that would be prepared mbta ridership data to be analyzed one public workshop to be held in meetings with mbta officials the police and the fire department and other city departments um are is this from stantec's scope of work this is from the actual uh report that was provided and the scope of work that they had provided initially back in December 2017 from the pieces of the report that I felt were a

▶ 2:02:09 good enough quality to provide for tonight I asked them to prepare what they prepared which was an informational packet which was basically excerpts from the report put together into a format that provided enough information for some review tonight but anything that's missing from that report should be incorporated into their final version of the report or we had drafts of those sections and they just weren't so well enough to to provide for tonight understood so other than the one public workshop that wasn't held um the other items that i touched upon do we know if those have been completed or is that work that still needs to be undertaken i believe they've all been completed other than i wasn't aware of in their contract being um meeting with police and fire i don't

▶ 2:02:56 Shawn M. MacMaster: recall that so i i don't believe that they did that other than getting in touch with police to gather accident crash reports okay do we expect to receive any additional bills from the consultant other than what we've already uh paid we have paid 23 244.25 and we expect to receive a bill for the balance of their contract which brings us up to the 26904 when they've completed the report when we've accepted the final report do we expect that we would ask them to do any additional work no to date there haven't been any other additional costs incurred other than the consultants report no okay and i think you had said uh that the uh grant was actually uh sought under mayor doan's administration he signed the contract with the state the um one thing that we learned

▶ 2:03:49 recently is that um we applied for we we signed a contract for the full hundred thousand and then we applied for the use of this first 26 000 but then in talking more recently to the gaming commission contact mary thurlow she did indicate that when once we identify what we want to spend the implementation money on we do have to reapply for spending that portion of the money because the only approval we've gotten to date is the 26904 for the consultant so even though the money is already under contract for the city um through the contract with the gaming commission we don't have permission yet to spend the 74 000 on anything any one particular thing and do you recall when we received notification of the award what was or was that before your time and you referenced that

▶ 2:04:37 Shawn M. MacMaster: may have been before so the award that was in in february 2017 is when we signed the the 100 000 and when we signed with um stantec i believe was also february if not it was within a month on either side so that's when we received approval from the state to move forward but i know the the community mitigation fund documentation that assigned us that value of a hundred thousand was long before that there is a cover letter in a task order from stantec dated december 5 2017. i reviewed that late last evening and that the letter is signed by you mr shena and patrick delarusso in the signatory section of the letter there's a handwritten notation by mr delarusso that says awaiting board of alderman approval and again that was dated december 5 2017 just about

▶ 2:05:33 Shawn M. MacMaster: two years from today i don't think any of us thought of it at the time because we didn't realize that this process back in october of 2018 had begun well before then do you know why it took 10 months for the administration to request that the city council then board of aldermen accept the grant unfortunately i do know and it was that it slipped through the cracks and there was a recollection that we had done it and then realized months later that we had not but i'm not sure that stantac actually started any work prior to when the grant was accepted we certainly signed their contract um prior to that but um but i know there was a long lapse of the coming for the formality of having the board accept our receipt of the money um that was

▶ 2:06:25 Shawn M. MacMaster: long after it was supposed to be so they were they were retained sometime before that 10-month period before the the grant was accepted by the council the document that you said was signed by by patrick and and john the date that john signed it oh that was so december 5 2007 is when the letter was sent with that that attachment it was signed by uh mr shena in february i think was february 8th okay so the date of mr shannon's signature the date of the dpw director's signature is the date we always consider to be the start date for our contracts in dpw so there would have been conversations so about hiring and attention but the the scope of work would have been presented to us in the form of that document and then it would have been signed and at that

▶ 2:07:09 point there would be an official yeah i believe though that there was quite a bit of conversation um with under the dolan administration and i believe with counselors at that time as well about what we might be spending this money on but it just wasn't that formality of getting the board approval to accept the grant was was missed okay and before october 18th you know generally speaking the time of this is october 18th 2018. do you know generally the type of work that stantec had done leading up to that meeting had they been out in the field at that at that point if you know let me see trying to see if any of their documents have the dates of their field work and council mcmaster just followed we're looking for the answer we do have some people

▶ 2:08:24 in queue and so i think it's fine if miss paracas else if you don't if you don't have that with you um i think that would be helpful um you could perhaps forward that to um this foot and also So maybe a timeline of the work that was conducted before October of 2018. Yeah, my impression is that they presented their findings, these documents, which is all their measurements and all of their details. These were the appendices that I didn't subject you to. They presented those to us in spring 2019. so and my recollection is that this was kind of hot off the press when when they presented it to us so i'm not sure that they did anything prior to 2019 so um i could i could ask stantec but that might be um you know i'm not sure that they would know the exact dates i seem to have

▶ 2:09:26 Shawn M. MacMaster: recalled and i could be wrong that there may have been a traffic study in the summer of 2018 which would have been a couple of months prior to Ms. Deschenes appearing before us and that they came back out in the fall for something, but I think it would be helpful to at least know the timeline. Madam Chair, if I could- I didn't do traffic counts, so if there was a traffic study that was unrelated to this contract. Madam Chair, if I could just ask one more question about the process and I'll defer to my colleagues and perhaps come back. Yes, absolutely. You could have a second turn. understanding miss paracas ellis that melrose has no shortage of residents who had no charge to the city could have helped to identify needs and make recommendations residents who are city

▶ 2:10:09 Shawn M. MacMaster: planners transportation planners engineers public safety officials and considering that we have a very knowledgeable organized and active ped bike committee is there a reason we didn't utilize local resources up front to conduct an initial needs assessment as a cost saving measure it's just it's concerning that a quarter of the grant has been spent on a consultant when we may have been able to you know identify some of those needs um short of spending the money i know the consultant serves a purpose and there may be things that they can provide that um you know volunteers might not be able to but i think we may have been able to identify some of this up front um rather than you know spend almost 27 000 um the the level of detail that the consultant

▶ 2:11:00 has provided and once you have the final report you'll see you can tell from from the informational packet to some degree but that's not something that we would ever expect a volunteer organization to do we worked very closely with the ped bike committee on the north south bike route where they did provide some design assistance um taking that information and then working with it to come up with the final routes was probably a 200 hour plus effort on behalf of the engineering division it's it's unrealistic to expect a volunteer group to to provide the level of detail that we would be getting from a consulting company at the time when we were looking at the hundred thousand and what we could use it for it I don't remember

▶ 2:11:51 any any opinions to the contrary to hiring a consultant to help us with this I think also with our staffing levels we just we need the assistance of consultants it's you know to to manage volunteer resources also requires staff time and and that can be a considerable effort I think this was money well spent they come came up with a lot of information a lot of details a lot of items from which to choose in terms of moving forward I think we can still do a lot with 74,000 in terms of implementation as well it really helps us that we have on-call contracts for things like paving and curb ramps and sidewalks and line striping and street signs and so we have all these contractors in place we don't

▶ 2:12:47 have to put any of this work out to bid so we could just take a consultants recommendations and then go to our on-call contractors and ask them to implement the things that we want and like I said there's still lots of opportunity for the ped bike committee and others to to weigh in on this process as I mentioned I meet just about monthly with Jonah their chair and he's always asking you know what we want input on and the next major thing that we've discussed is lower Main Street and the line striping down there and they're doing some analysis similar to what they did on the the northern part of the bike route so I think we've we've gotten some phenomenal work out of volunteers especially from that committee and we'll continue to do so but I don't think this

▶ 2:13:37 Manisha Bewtra: was an effort that would have been realistically performed by volunteers madam chair at this time i'll yield to whoever's in queue and perhaps come back uh depending on if my other questions counselor future thank you thank you um thank you councillor mcmaster for filing this order and um miss peric is ls for um your comments tonight i think it's i really appreciate your honesty and and just sort of acknowledging you know the city's been in a lot of upheaval over the last two years and and and just keeping very forthcoming that this unfortunately fell through the cracks and then furthermore I think you know you've mentioned the attachments I for one would love to see them I am curious if you know I I guess

▶ 2:14:26 Manisha Bewtra: I'm a little unclear on the state of you know this isn't the final report it doesn't I mean it says informational packet and what we received but whether it's actually a draft and if it just needs a watermark or something to indicate that it's a draft but if it's possible to potentially upload the attachments to maybe the engineering section of the website so not only we but also members of the public and the pet bike committee could potentially be able to look at those maps and kind of dig into the detail yeah I do I do hope to have a chance to get a full what I consider a high quality complete report so that I can review the whole thing make sure that it all makes sense and then provide that to others our expectation is not that since Stantec is

▶ 2:15:20 just giving their professional opinion of all the needs that's basically what they're hired to do is identify the list of needs I don't envision much more back and forth with them in terms of refining their report or making it say you know something different than what they're already drafting it to say so my my main goal with them right now is just to get something that's cohesive and well-written and that I can provide to everybody but I will absolutely provide that once it's in that shape I'm a little confused on the I guess the the aspect of the scope of work as it relates to the public forum is that what was Stantec's responsibility with that we we expected Stantec to just provide us with the information and then we were gonna have a public meeting to look at

▶ 2:16:11 all the things they recommended and get a feel for what the community's priorities are so the list that I put in my memo is what I identified working with John Shenna and Jackie Bird as in reading the report what we thought were the highest priorities. But the community process we envisioned taking place after that. Stantec was never in their contract. They didn't have anything about holding a public meeting or gathering information because their analysis was going to be strictly empirical. We weren't asking them to make judgements. We were asking them to tell us an engineering perspective what are all the deficiencies and what can we possibly do with them so that's why they made lots of recommendations on potential locations to add crosswalks and

▶ 2:17:00 Manisha Bewtra: locations to fix sidewalks and and that sort of thing um you mentioned that you meet with the chair of the pedestrian and bicycle advisory committee about monthly can you kind of expand on how you anticipate involving that committee uh going forward as we you know proceed with this work i would envision that they would i imagine they will want a copy of the final report from stantec so they can review all the recommendations i would imagine they'd want to weigh in on what their priorities are i know just from from talking to them all the time that they're very interested in bike corridors to Oak Grove down Washington Street and down Pleasant Street we've had those questions even before this really came

▶ 2:17:49 Manisha Bewtra: into being that's a question that's been asked since I started here and I know John Chenna's answer was routinely well we're we're hoping to do that with the community mitigation money so you know that'll be the that'll be when we hit that neighborhood with some sort of bike improvements got it um and well and I appreciate you addressing some of those bike improvements tonight because my impression of the initial priorities or recommendations from Stantec was that they were heavily focused on more the pedestrian side that was my impression at least isn't yes so their priorities like I said they didn't necessarily line up with the priorities in the memo and these are so they did recommend the

▶ 2:18:35 Manisha Bewtra: restriping especially on Washington Street I remember that being one of their recommendations but they just didn't rank it as a high priority whereas I think we absolutely expect that this project we want to see this project addressing both pedestrian needs and bicycle needs and it's there's not enough money to fully address both but I think it's important that both are represented I don't think that we should spend it all on one or the other make sense um yeah I think my I mean I just I'd love to see the work to date or if the final what's it do what's it timeline you anticipate for the final report I'm hoping to have it within the next two weeks okay so then make sense to wait for that just to see kind of where you know more in more detail what

▶ 2:19:25 Manisha Bewtra: these street sections look like and and what their recommendations are I think think you know my concern would be going forward just making sure that our um that we do have some a greater level of public process and engagement um with the neighborhood but also with the pedestrian bicycle advisory committee um just can i mean i'm sure you've heard all these things but in my own experiences of canvassing those areas and trying to cross streets personally but also talking with neighbors um uh you know dealing with uh high speed traffic and sometimes discontinuous sidewalks and and all of that it's a it's a challenging area not to mention uh you know central point for um people commuting to the t so um again i really appreciate your

▶ 2:20:19 Manisha Bewtra: honesty and kind of where we're at with this and um i think a lot of my concerns have been addressed i think with regards to i think some of my colleagues have you know alluded to and and members of the public the cost of um retaining the consultant versus using volunteers um i am uh i think you know i think once we see this final report i'm hoping it'll reflect the 27 000 worth of work which seems very reasonable for for the level of detail i think just what we received didn't match up to that um and certainly i applaud our um uh volunteers in the community for being able to for putting in so much time but i'm also really sympathetic to i think both on your end the need to have a predictable schedule which is easier when you're paying

▶ 2:21:11 Michael P. Zwirko: someone versus a volunteer but also um um the uh i i hear the pushback too in terms of just wanting to make sure that we're getting our money's worth um and yeah my main thing is just like i hope we'll involve those folks in uh more robustly going forward thank you any other counselors wishing to speak at the first time councilman master would you like to oh i'm sorry thank you madam chair thank you for being here this evening um i have just a couple of quick questions so I did pull up the the memorandum that's dated September 27th of 2018 and that talks about how in conjunction with the grant that we've applied for the first 26 904 so at the time we knew that these funds were going to be dedicated for it says here at least perform an analysis and I'm guess

▶ 2:22:12 Michael P. Zwirko: I'm just wondering is that this is kind of building off of what councillor Bewtra said is that standard operating procedure I mean it seems to me that we would want to kind of get feedback before we apply for funds for an analysis or at least perform an analysis in a public way that would be much cheaper so I just like did we do this in reverse fashion now we we wanted data gathering because to to go out to the public with no data and just say what are the items that you'd like to see we kind of already had gotten a lot of that feedback actually through the complete streets program we we had all sorts of forums where we were saying where do people think we don't have enough crosswalks and we don't have continuous sidewalks and we had gathered a lot of

▶ 2:22:56 that data I think we had a good feel for this is a neat area where people would like to see something so we were at the stage of data gathering which is what we paid the consultant to do and then typically the you know the public input comes when you have the list of deficiencies and you want to say okay what do you want to see fixed if we built our list of deficiencies just off of who commented on what they'd like to see fixed right from the outset then you really don't get a complete picture you really don't get a an objective look at what the needs are you just get the handful of more involved people in their opinions so I don't think this was done in reverse at all I think you want to come forward with data and with a list of recommendations and then you want to

▶ 2:23:46 Michael P. Zwirko: ask the the community what are your priorities from this because we have X amount of money left to spend and you know what do you want to see it spent on the have you ever seen an instance where the public has an anomaly or maybe something that wasn't picked up via the data gathering I mean is it is it basically you know here's a priorities and choose from this or is it something that you know hey maybe maybe we actually may have missed something in our data gathering process I don't think we missed anything in terms of you know accessibility and sidewalk repairs and crosswalk locations things like that I don't think we missed anything because they did an extremely thorough job somebody could absolutely come in and come up with something sort of off topic

▶ 2:24:35 Michael P. Zwirko: that they think is a higher priority than the things that we contracted with stantec to to do that could certainly result in some new ideas but i think there was buy-in again from the administration and i believe from the council at the time way back when the decision was made to use this money for these corridors um so oh especially with the advent of the the daycare as well i mean i know that was a huge component right for sure and then we've all heard at least most of us i shouldn't shouldn't speak for everyone about some of the congestion um wayfarer and likewise around um the wyoming hill bottleneck for lack of a better term um so thank you and you had also spoken about earlier this evening just and I think this is really important because it came up in another

▶ 2:25:30 Michael P. Zwirko: order this evening that you know we're now ever since about September we have not had a permanent DPW chief we have an interim right now we know that our engineering ranks are down and I think we also have some of our operations staff is also down I'm not sure can you talk about you you explain that there's resource issue um could you you know further illuminate us as to what the resource issue is i mean where are we in terms of ranks fully staffing where we've been plans that you know of and certainly understood what you can and can't discuss or what you may or may not know but i'm just i'm worried about you know this grant of only a hundred thousand dollars in the work that really this city has ahead of itself yeah so um i can't really speak to operations the operations group

▶ 2:26:21 and any short staff i'm not sure what their staffing is right at the moment but i do know that in terms of engineering start with engineering since i know for sure on that so we had one staff member cut a year and a half ago in the spring due to budget cuts coming into fiscal 19 and we've never refilled that position and so we're now we have a job ad out for deputy city engineer position which would basically be filling that void that void was a project engineer so a little bit lower level but we really need to fill it with someone who can be a second in command who i can hand off whole projects to so we have a handful of applicants we're starting interviews next week so hopefully that will be filled relatively soon i also know that there

▶ 2:27:19 Michael P. Zwirko: were there was an ad out recently for the the combined recycling coordinator and assistant at the administration and I'm not sure what the statuses of that in terms of applicants they've gotten but I know that that is surely a vacancy I think those are the two biggest holes that I'm aware of and Rick Stinson's been doing a fabulous job as our interim director so he's continued to move us along i know it can be difficult during transition so i just i there's a lot of things um in departments where the kind of like the kitchen sink everything kind of falls there right and you know dpw is absolutely it so when there's you know a period where there's a position that's either temporary or not filled

▶ 2:28:12 Michael P. Zwirko: it can cause stress down the whole operational chain so i just wanted to bring that up i mean i think that the spirit of all this is great i remember when you know we were able to receive this grant i want to say this you know it was even floated back in 2014 and then finally ultimately you know funds were available so being able to use these funds for areas where there is a concern especially with that certainly being a high corridor for for flow various types of flow so you know it's it's not we just we want to see movement and I think that's really the concern at least primarily tonight and I'm glad to hear that it's the feeling is mutual my last question is you said that and it states this in the September 27th 2018 memo that I referenced but we're gonna have

▶ 2:29:05 Michael P. Zwirko: to apply for the additional balance right do they I know that these grants are somewhat new but in terms of their authority if we say if we go to them with you know six of these eight annotating why exactly we've gone through the process and why six of these eight have been selected do they have any discretionary authority at that point or do they what was what happens then with our application process so in my discussions with mary thurlow um it sounds like because it follows on from the work that we've already done that they've already approved that it should be fairly smooth sailing to get it approved um if we came in with something completely different i could see that they might question it and and could deny it but

▶ 2:29:55 i've i had heard mixed things about whether this grant was exclusively for planning purposes or could be used for implementation because i think these are called planning grants and so i have asked her that question several times and keep getting the answer that yes it's fine to spend it to apply to spend it on what we've what we've been talking about so you know unless some some other authority at the gaming commission steps in and says no that's not the intention of these funds um every indication i've had is that it shouldn't be a problem the guide post is helpful there that was just um to the extent this comes back to the public and maybe they raised something that wasn't previously caught or it's outside of that

▶ 2:30:40 Shawn M. MacMaster: that scope i would just want to know about that going in but appreciate that this whole process is very new to me so um not not necessarily the grant process but how this has worked so So the information you provided tonight has been helpful. Thank you. Thank you, Madam Chair. Thank you, Madam Chair. Ms. Paracas-Ellis, the task order that was dated December 2017, that was signed in February of 2018, it indicates that the report would take 10 weeks to complete. What was our expectation of a report? And I think Consulate Bewtra referenced this. sounds like there might be either different definitions of a report it seems like there were multiple iterations of a report that may have been submitted over time what did we as a city

▶ 2:31:31 think we would be getting within 10 weeks based on what is in that task order um i think what we expected to get is exactly what we will be getting in a couple of weeks the 10-week time frame is probably reflective of the $26,000 price tag and the total level of effort that that is equivalent to for a consulting company that would assume that they immediately were doing the work that they were under contract to do I believe I had mentioned to you in some correspondence earlier today that the we had Stantec doing probably four other projects at the same time and the reality is that we we prioritized some of those projects higher we needed immediate turnaround on some of those other items and so they they worked on

▶ 2:32:25 those first and there was a long delay before they started this work of this project but in terms of what a report what we would expect to see would be a front end that that describes for anybody reading it whether it be engineers or city council or the layperson describes the process they went through why they were looking at this area what they found what they recommend and then all that backup data in appendices showing the data that they gathered so that is essentially what we're getting from them it's it's just that we've gotten it piecemeal and once it was all put together into what was supposed to be a cohesive report it just didn't it just didn't flow in the way that it needed to the information is all there like I said it's more a matter of

▶ 2:33:18 Shawn M. MacMaster: organization and wordsmithing that that was the only thing lacking in the report so I mean we did get something within that that 10-week period you mentioned earlier you said we had something that came back in the spring and you described it as an aggregation of all of the work that was done and that's spring 2019 though I think that's off by a year from your ten week dates right the contract was in 2018 contract was signed in 2018 but ten weeks from that would take us to the second week in April and on April 7th this would be of 2018 which would be within ten weeks I had emailed mr. Shannon and Jackie lavender bird to inquire about the report and he had mentioned at that time on he responded

▶ 2:34:05 Shawn M. MacMaster: april 12th um that they had an internal meeting scheduled that week so it seems like that that that initial iteration of a report or aggregation of all the work that was done i think that meeting was in april 2019 though i'm sorry april 2019 correct so yeah so there was a year in between or a year in 10 weeks but within that 10-week period some was something provided within that no okay no the first work product that we saw were these documents that i received at that meeting in spring 2019 and again that's because we we had all sorts of other work going on with them and we said do this other work first they were designing the roundabout and we were trying to stick to the um the time frame for the complete streets uh grants they were um they were analyzing

▶ 2:35:03 Shawn M. MacMaster: the north south bike route some point in that time they were analyzing upham street for us they've been doing traffic counts they did some sign analysis for us on particular speed limit signs and things we've we've just we had them under contract for a lot of different items transportation related and a lot of them had more concrete deadlines all of the uh the the recommendations and they were you know really broken down into i guess three geographic areas within ward five and part of Ward 3, Pleasant and Lower Washington Street being one geographic area, Upper Washington Street to the Fellsway being another, and West Wyoming from Main to Cottage being the third, all extremely worthwhile. Is there, understanding that this, I don't want to call it seed money, but I'd like to

▶ 2:35:53 Shawn M. MacMaster: see it, if it results in something more than piecemeal projects, albeit important, something that perhaps is a larger effort to sustain the types of changes in the area. And I'm wondering if you foresee this being part of a larger strategic plan that we would build off of and seek other funding sources or look to free cash to really build upon these so that we really have a robust effort on that corridor to address as many of the needs if not all that we can so is there a larger plan in mind and if so what would what is that so I think the reality of these types of projects is that they do end up lending themselves to free cash because they're they're not in conjunction with paving needs so they don't end up being roped into our

▶ 2:36:50 chapter 90 spending the roadway bond that we approved in fiscal 19 has been we've identified which projects that needs to be used for so there won't be certainly leftover money from that so it's very similar to Upham Street and what we did recently we had that on the complete streets list we were looking at it for a potential tip federal project and that didn't end up being a great candidate for a tip project according to MassDOT so we ended up allocating a good chunk of free cash to do pavement repairs and then again similar to this to have a continuous corridor of ADA compliant sidewalks and ramps so that now somebody can go down Upham Street all the way from Main Street to the Saugus line in wheelchair and have a ramp at every intersection and a

▶ 2:37:45 crosswalk at every intersection so those are perfect free cash projects especially again where we have the the contractors under contract as on an on-call basis it's easy to what if money becomes available to do that sort of work there's not really design involved with it unless it's an odd case but we're able to handle that in-house with just close inspection during construction I don't envision that this wouldn't be funded through the complete streets program because we have the program kind of laid out for the next few years of what we're applying for so without it being good for tip or chapter 90 or complete streets I think operating funds and and free cash are the places to look there's always the the road bond that we approved in you all approved

▶ 2:38:40 Shawn M. MacMaster: in fiscal 19 um takes us through fiscal 20 and then we'll probably have to come back for more money again you know for fiscal 21 and forward for additional paving so we could always try to roll it into that type of project as well i just have two final questions i know you've had a long day and we still have mr wilcock here to um hear from on another matter um can you just describe what the next steps are i know you said you're hoping to have the final report within two weeks what are the next steps where do you see some sort of public discourse within those steps so we could post the final report when we have it to the website um we can and we'll send it to the council we'll send it to the pet bike committee um and and really we'd be looking

▶ 2:39:28 Shawn M. MacMaster: to you for your recommendations on how best to have a public forum we're happy to do a presentation here um or some someplace closer to the neighborhood um right uh and my apologies if you answered this does the money need to be spent within a certain period of time not that i'm aware of no i when i spoke to mary most recently i indicated that we would be applying over the winter for spring construction and she said that was fine okay um so just to end on um a positive note we you know we talked a lot tonight about um much of what hasn't been done in this grant over the last couple of years but i did want to recognize you and your team in the engineering department and mr stinson and everyone in tpw for all that you do and all that you have

▶ 2:40:14 Shawn M. MacMaster: done especially most recently on ashmont the street looks beautiful the work is right on schedule actually it looks like it's at least almost complete in terms of what we were looking to get done before christmas i think we're ahead of schedule uh the neighborhood um residents are extremely uh pleased um in that you know i know that's been a very uh lengthy and comprehensive uh project so um you know thank you for all your work on that and i know that is really just one example of all that you do and i know my colleagues would agree over the course of the year to respond to our requests and citizen concerns so i just want to uh you know i want to thank you for that and i appreciate your uh you being here tonight again like i said it's been

▶ 2:41:01 Manisha Bewtra: a long day for you and um look forward to you know working with you uh moving ahead on the work that's left to be done so thank you okay thank you uh counselor butra thank you um i had a couple more questions that i'd forgotten to ask um so one thing that kind of caught my attention and and maybe is part of the reason for some confusion around any public process that's happened to date is probably in a couple other sections, but under deficiencies, problem areas, section 2.4, and then if you look at the Washington Street piece, for example, there's mention of talking with residents and presumably as part of the field observations that Stantec was making, and I kudos to them for speaking to folks and not just taking measurements.

▶ 2:41:55 Manisha Bewtra: But I think with regards to the final reports, just a little bit more detail on their methodology. And so those conversations are kind of put into context as not being necessary. I mean, my understanding is that they're not necessarily part of a formal traffic count or specific outreach, but presumably just people who happenstance encounters that were while they were in the area. is that correct exactly okay um and then um the other thing that caught my attention um if you could address under recommended improvements um you know just what the policy of the city is currently uh on page 21 of the document which is our packet page 27 um uh the second paragraph from the bottom of the page um it reads shallow tree roots below

▶ 2:42:52 Manisha Bewtra: the surface are likely contributing to the deterioration of sidewalks resulting in numerous incidents of pedestrians tripping on cracked and broken sidewalk services we recommend placing asphalt sidewalk panels at these locations where tree roots cannot be cut back and reconstruction of the remaining sidewalk panels intimate concrete to meet 88 compliance um for me that kind of brought up a couple of questions one on sort of our policy of using asphalt versus concrete um i think from whether it's durability or as well as just aesthetic quality of concrete but then also you know i think this is a challenge throughout the city of you know tree roots and sidewalks are always we want the trees and we also want the sidewalks um

▶ 2:43:43 so just curious if you could address that uh from an engineering standpoint and city policy standpoint yeah so that i did catch that recommendation and that is inconsistent with what we would do on a major roadway like this um we would be it is a valid way to deal with tree roots to put in an asphalt sidewalk in just that one section you maybe remove two blocks that are all cracked and you just put in asphalt because you can make it gently rise up and back down and that is something that is done and there's nothing wrong with doing that other than the aesthetics of the patchwork that you end up with and on a on a major corridor like this I can't envision that that would be our solution it would be more likely that we would just go back a few more blocks and just

▶ 2:44:31 try to ramp up with the concrete sidewalk to make it over those tree roots if it was a healthy tree that we didn't want to remove trees absolutely lift sidewalks in a lot of cases but our policy has always been we don't remove healthy trees unless there's you know some some immediate hazard we also similarly we get questions all the time of you know tree roots are growing into my sewer can you come take the tree down and as a policy we do not take down healthy trees that's a problem with the sewer not a problem with the tree so um well no thank you i that i appreciate the answer and it was kind of what i was hoping to hear and with regards to um concrete use of concrete versus asphalt i've certainly seen asphalt that's also been broken

▶ 2:45:17 up by tree roots um it's just much easier to fix and and i can't say that that wouldn't be a good solution on a side road um as a you know a temporary fix even if it's a number of years temporary fix until we're back doing a major sidewalk project on a street um you know it is it is a valid way to address that sort of problem and in the right location i don't think it's a bad thing but we're not going to do that on a quarter like this thank you thank you that's for my question one other quick note that I just didn't mention somebody had mentioned the Lincoln School and that is mentioned in the report but the recommendations that Stantec made about circulation and pull-off areas and everything was really beyond the scope of what we asked them to do and I am

▶ 2:46:09 Kate Lipper-Garabedian: very certain that the gaming Commission would find helping to improve school drop off to be well outside the scope of anything related to the casino so I would say I thought we would leave their recommendation in there since it is within the corridor but it's something we certainly can't with these funds thank you I just have a couple quick things actually building on that last comment one thing I'm it'll be really helpful as my colleague said to see the final report I'm hopeful that it will be a document that will be useful not only only for identifying with a community input ways in which to spend the remainder of the grant money that we've been awarded but also perhaps for future endeavors including with respect to the Lincoln and I think the public comment

▶ 2:46:57 Kate Lipper-Garabedian: that we heard today was also about a previous study that had been done around the Lincoln School so now we have a little bit more up you know newer data as well so to the degree that this report did cost a sizable amount of money hopefully we can get use out of it beyond even just the dispensation of the money that's associated with this particular opportunity one other place where it's possible we would have other sources of funding could be as large commercial parcels of land get redeveloped along this corridor and I understand that that's likely to happen with Marty's furniture property so we might also consider when we're prioritizing how to use this funding where we might actually be able to leverage the negotiations with any

▶ 2:47:39 Kate Lipper-Garabedian: development there to address some of this artery including because I think it's fairly close to where Pleasant and Washington meet that and I believe that's one of the items on this list of identified priorities yeah I think though that island there was was revamped when Stone Place was built by that developer based on comments by the city at that time so I'm not sure if we would come to different conclusions this time but certainly we that's one really nice thing about have any having any of these things in a report we do the same thing with our complete streets prioritization plan if we see somebody proposing a development in a neighborhood where we have a prioritized recommendation we absolutely expect the developer to help contribute to that

▶ 2:48:26 Kate Lipper-Garabedian: effort so and I think in that vein sort of just a spirit of innovation and experimentation strikes me as a good option and a lens to think about this work in and this is an exact excellent example that you've just raised a sort of we had an idea for that island we executed it we're still seeing some issues maybe there are ways that iteratively we improve the process and there are certainly some low-cost ones that we've heard about tonight I know that there is I've seen these 3d looking crosswalks that Malden put it I mean there are all kinds I see you cringe so maybe I that's not a great example but it'll be great to sort of engage the community and hear from people and also educate us and at the same time so I look forward to that next step in the

▶ 2:49:13 Kate Lipper-Garabedian: process okay and I cringe only because I I think as a driver if I saw that I would slam on the brakes and probably get rear-ended so I joked that we should let other communities be the guinea pig for that idea and okay see how the crash history ends up and then decide I guess good news bad news is Malden is one of those communities so right there right next door we can check in with them pretty easily so that's all for me and I'm what does the will of the committee but I'm sure at this time I would make a motion to recommend that this order be placed on file second have a motion made to place this order on file made by by Councillor McMaster and seconded by Councillor Zwirko. All in favor?

▶ 2:49:56 Kate Lipper-Garabedian: All right. Any opposed? We will make a recommendation to the full committee for that. Thank you very much for being with us tonight. We'll turn now to the last agenda item that we have, which is order number 2020-42, request to set a public hearing on classification of property for November 25th, 2019 at 7.30 p.m. and subsequently determine the classification of property. And we do have the city assessor with us tonight we're under suspension of rules thank you for being with us we learned a lot in this chamber so so the classification hearing it's pretty much a routine every year there's four items that we're looking at I hope everyone had a time I had time to both look at the attached presentation but the online presentation

▶ 2:50:47 because there are some benefits for for the presentation using power bi what we did this year was we tried to make an interactive presentation just so you could see surrounding communities and change some of the the data as displayed in the report so the required actions for tonight one would be granting a small commercial exemption selection of an open space discount granting of a residential exemption and then the selection of a minimum residential factor also known as shifting the tax rate if you go to the second tab these are actually the numbers of the budget this year we had the override so this slide right here will show exactly what portion of the levy is attributed to the two and a half percent the new growth

▶ 2:51:37 and the override and this is how the breakdown actually goes down for this year's numbers The total levy is $66,629,218 and that includes the $5.18 million for the override. So if you look at this second tab, it will actually put a percentage as far as all those different factors. The other important tab is the third tab and what this is is just a reader's digest of all of these tabs. Last year's numbers. This year, the average assessed value for single families has risen to $634,884 from $580 last year. That represents a 9% and some change increase. On the second line below that, you'll see the tax bill. What it was last year was $6,200. This year, depending on the shift, that's the range.

▶ 2:52:32 So that goes from a 1.00 to a 1.75, which is the max allowed by law. In the second block below it, that's the average commercial bill. And as you can see, the assessment went from 730 to 801, roughly a 7% increase. And the tax bill could actually go from 9,100, which is a reduction from the $13,000 previous year, all the way to 15,995. so this one slide right here basically dictates going from a factor of one all the way to 1.75 so just what the impact is for single families and commercial properties the last slide that i have and there's a lot of good information and i'm more than happy to go over any of it but the last slide actually has all of our shifts so what i chose to do is not only include the

▶ 2:53:30 Michael P. Zwirko: shifts for this year but also to give you a um a history lesson all the way back to 2003 to see where the board has voted as far as shifts and then i displayed everything from 1.5 all the way to 1.75 with the estimated tax rate and the increase based on single family or commercial valuations the only recommendation that i have is that you pick one of the shifts from 1.00 to 1.75 and i can take any questions at this point council circle thank you very much madam chair thank you for being here thank you for burning the midnight oil with us this evening i do want to start off not only with praise but i i really want to drill down as to why i am going to be so effusive in that praise very often we're asked for non-static data very often

▶ 2:54:33 Michael P. Zwirko: um we either get a powerpoint or a spreadsheet that's put in a pdf form that we have to kind of look like look at and analyze and what's before us this evening and that also is available to the public on the city assessor's website is a very um active and um i'm forgetting the word i'm trying to think of here but interactive type of a format where you can take all of this data that you have graciously compiled across the Commonwealth you can go all the way into the Berkshires and look up tax rates you can manipulate that data to really kind of ask your own question and find your answer where we are asked routinely by members of the public to you know further analyze data that's provided to us not get something that's static and here you've done that this is

▶ 2:55:28 Michael P. Zwirko: for Melrose maybe not you know in the private sector and other other mediums this is a change and it's a lot of work and it's deeply appreciated that we can in real time while you're speaking and while counselors can even do it while I'm speaking look at various what the effect of the shift is and there's other data points that they can move to so it's a long-winded way of saying this is great I hope that the pen the public benefits from this it's good for all of us here in this chamber and I just wanted to say thank you for aggregating all this data and putting it in this type of a format versus something that's static so thank you I will also add that we are greatly served by Chris here because he is the are you the president now you're a current president of the

▶ 2:56:17 Michael P. Zwirko: mass association of assessing officers that's great so we you know able to leverage the benefits that he brings to us in that role so that all being said I want to take care of some low-hanging fruit here first if we scroll over to the first slide I'll just note that you stated the four essentially dispositive actions that are required by the City Council three of those four we usually get rid of really quickly because what we're really supposed to do is select the minimum residential factor so the first three items we always don't take any action on or at least we we move forward without taking action because we don't we've never granted a residential exemption here nor the same with a small

▶ 2:57:14 Michael P. Zwirko: commercial exemption and open space well it doesn't apply here in Melrose so because of that the business before this evening is really the selection of residential factors so before I get to my questions I would like to move that we I will move that we will not be taking any action on the first three items and that puts us with only what with the business that we have to take care of this evening which is the selection of a minimum residential factor second we have a motion made by counselors worko and seconded by president forbes to take action on the first three of the four items that are on slide number one this is granting of the small commercial exemption selection of an open space discount and granting of a residential exemption

▶ 2:58:05 Kate Lipper-Garabedian: on discussion maybe just from my own edification for anyone watching at home as i recall from a year ago when you had this presentation for us you explained that the reason we don't do any of these um or partake in any of these three options is because we just don't have property that qualifies to two of the options the small commercial exemption and the open space require certain parcels to meet those qualifications the assessing office is not aware of any small commercial properties that would qualify for the exemption Melrose does does not have any land classified as open space so those two are off the off the table the residential exemption still is is something to discuss or or that there's we are a city and Malden has and

▶ 2:58:58 Kate Lipper-Garabedian: different that's right so can you remind us a little bit about how we do we talk about this last year with the Cape Cod is a place that does this but I can talk about the communities that's historically have this our large municipalities Boston Cambridge Somerville Malden some of the other communities are actually vacation kind of communities with not a high percentage of owner-occupied units so those are the dynamics I won't sway either way but that's the that's what the 13 communities are comprised of thank you that's helpful reminding me so maybe my colleagues as well or folks at home so we have a motion duly second in any other discussion on the motion all in favor to recommend that we not accept the motion is to not accept all in favor

▶ 2:59:53 Michael P. Zwirko: Aye. Any opposed? Okay. So that will be recommended to the full City Council. Thank you, Madam Chair. Of course. Other discussion? Yeah. So, again, just to really just to get out there, so this we are going to the levy limit here of 2.5%, and that is additional. Now, again, this doesn't factor in growth, as we know, but that figure here is on slide 2, and that's 1.438 million. Is that correct? On slide two, we actually have, so when you're talking about the levy, it's going to be everything on there. So it's going to include the override. The 2.5% increase does not apply to the override on the first year. Next year it will be part of the levy. But the new growth is a variable every year. This year it's roughly at $600,598.

▶ 3:00:43 Michael P. Zwirko: So the levy is comprised of all of those numbers, that $66 million. Yes. Thanks for clarifying. Yes. Correct. we will see I want to talk now about this shift so this is kind of where we do a little bit of a dance every year and it's important you know we hear a lot and we heard a lot certainly in 2019 earlier this year about how the difficulty that Morales is faced with is that we're you know 95% residential so if I could ask my colleagues just to follow along in my questioning if you to go to the last slide and on the right hand in blue green and i guess pink or magenta you'll see that the shift that's defaulted for us although we can because this is a dynamic presentation we can move those figures along but we'll take what's been defaulted to us at 1.50

▶ 3:01:42 Michael P. Zwirko: i i would ask that you follow in green the single family increase so if we chose a shift of 1.50 the single-family increase property tax would be seven hundred and eighty seven dollars is that correct and if we went all the way up to the limit of the shift which is one point seven five that's again that's shifting the burden we would see if this the increase of property taxes go below to six ninety eight so if we were to choose a one point seven five residential property taxes would increase 698 so what that means is it's actually about a hundred and nine dollars less than if we chose 1.50 that's on the single family property now when you flip it you look at commercial and this is where it gets into the fact that the swings are so much higher because

▶ 3:02:35 Michael P. Zwirko: we only have five percent commercial property on the 1.5 end there's going to be an actual decrease commercial property will decrease 26 from last year but if you go all the way up to 1.75 it increases two hundred two two thousand two hundred and fifty eight dollars that is a i mean that is a curve that's almost exponential so um you can see how just incremental movements in the in the shift really sway much larger on the commercial side than they do on the residential so when i look at this i try to think to myself well geez you know property owners single family homeowners in the community um you know they don't have the benefit of making money off of their property they live in their home their tax rate isn't something that they're you know able to

▶ 3:03:33 Michael P. Zwirko: obviously they can get the benefit of the valuations going up etc but you know a Starbucks or a CVS or Shaw's or even a boutique firm I mean yeah they're paying taxes but at the same time they're a profit center too so that they are in commerce but we also want to think about creating a business environment where when folks are looking to come to Melrose to open a business that they're not in a prohibitive environment and if I you know opened up the newspaper and january and i read that commercial property taxes increased two hundred two thousand two hundred and fifty eight dollars i would say to myself wow that seems like a very large jump so here's where we have to do a little bit of a dance and look at what shift we we feel is not only an affordable

▶ 3:04:18 Michael P. Zwirko: burden on our property owners uh residential wise but also something that is still creating an environment that's favorable for um our small but yet important uh commercial uh tax base so i just want to go over those swings because every time i see this chart every year i am just amazed at the the the difference between the very incremental rises in gains on the residential side and the huge swings on the commercial given the makeup of our parcels here in melrose so those are the only questions that i had at this time but um i just wanted to hear from my other colleagues and i wanted to point that out and once again seriously i this format is very helpful other counselors wishing to speak president forbes thank you so we talk about the

▶ 3:05:10 Scott M. Forbes: shift at 1.68 um is that something that you collectively after you crunch the data look at and say this is this is what your recommendation is i know we have the capability to ask you questions and to you know go up and down the the chart and i appreciate uh council's work for kind of you know doing the overview on that and taking the lead because I feel like that a lot of us were in the same area in terms of questions and data gathering so you just explain how you got to your you know analysis of one point six eight or why you feel like that that's really in the in the realm of where you think we need to be as a municipality one point six eight is just a historical figure from last year the Board of Assessors does not have an

▶ 3:05:55 Scott M. Forbes: official uh recommendation anywhere from one to 1.75 but we have no that's up up to the board to make that decision i mean it depends on you know how how you want the factor to work and that's completely up to you and i i would never want to recommend anything i know you're supposed to be unbiased i i get that um when you look at the data and like we saw the range here you you look and see that it's pretty much like ninety dollars on the residential side when i've always looked at this i was like where's the middle you know it's around 35 to 45 dollars um on the residential side and then obviously likewise if you look you know where the where the middle would be you're talking about 736 dollars as far as the increase is concerned when you look at you know the colored

▶ 3:06:45 Scott M. Forbes: slides that we have but as you go down where 1.68 is where it would be a 723 increase And you move over to where the $736 increases, it's $13 on the residential side, yet it's about a $350 shift on the commercial side. Again, a smaller sample size of what Council's work I was talking about. I think we need to kind of be mindful into that, making that determination if we're going to stay in that factor. Obviously, we want to make sure, because we are upper 90s in the percentile for residential, We have to be wary and mindful of commercial properties here as well and try to find the right balance. From a data perspective, I think this is probably the best presentation we've ever seen by far. So I know in subsequent years, the council will be benefited by the information that's

▶ 3:07:38 John N. Tramontozzi: presented. I wish this was here six years ago. I feel like that those meetings could have been more streamlined in terms of time and process. So again, I appreciate all the work you do. I know you put forth Yeoman's work in the assessor's office, so I'll yield for right now. Thank you. Council Chairman Josie. All right. So if you want something more of a balance, you can go with 1.60 or 1.59. 1.59 would be $755, 1.60 is $755 for the residential, but 1.59 is $791, so it's pretty close to commercial 1.60 adds almost a hundred dollars additional to the commercial but yet keeps the residents residential rate the same so if if you're looking for more of a balance of the shift between the commercial and the residential i would suggest a 1.59 shift any other comments right now

▶ 3:08:42 Manisha Bewtra: okay uh counselor petra thank you um all right so another continuing the dance um looking at so i mean i think my inclination would be maybe hold steady at 1.68 um which would be an increase across the board or um the other thing you know that came to mind was if the rate on the commercial side was about um 18.82 last year then if that would bring us to the 1.65 is another way of thinking about it yes it would mean a greater increase um for the total tax bill but that additional increase if i'm understanding correctly would be more based on the increased assessed value versus um you know so the the property owner would still kind of receive the benefit so that was just a proposal and then i think i mean i want to reiterate the comments from my

▶ 3:09:43 Manisha Bewtra: colleagues regarding the interactivity of this um on the city assessor website if folks at home wanted to peruse these maps i found those to be particularly useful to kind of better understand where Melrose is in relation to other communities across the state that are more heavily residential like us, but also how we relate with regards to other communities in our region. And I don't think we have a perfect answer in terms of what we should do, but certainly, you know, encourage folks at home to play around with the maps you can kind of zoom in and zoom out uh sort the tables by the shift or the rate um to just kind of get a better sense of how we might arrive at that number so those are um

▶ 3:10:38 Kate Lipper-Garabedian: i don't have a specific proposal but i think my i guess just to make one for the sake of argument i would suggest 1.65 other comments maybe while we're just all kind of ruminating and thinking this through um i agree it's a really helpful presentation a couple slides of note were the one the two preceding this last one where you provided for us not only a reminder of sort of what our shift was in the in the previous fiscal year fiscal 19 but how we compared to a number of other municipalities around us and it my quick look it appears that a lot of communities tap out they they go to the cip shift of 1.75 the max we could do essentially you know putting the the increase the least amount it can possibly be on residential and the most it can possibly be on

▶ 3:11:37 Kate Lipper-Garabedian: commercial but these are communities that have a lot more commercial properties um and also large you know um you know strip malls and um you know you know we don't have that and we certainly want to ensure that we maintain a climate that is um available for access by small business owners you know other commercial property owners so i'm cognizant of that and i think counselors worker was speaking to that some but just to confirm that's sort of what i'm seeing when i look at these slides yeah and just to make a note on the single family stats one of the items is cip percentage um the slide is actually set to five miles from um from the center of melrose and the only community that's like us as far as a cip is actually winchester which has one rate everyone

▶ 3:12:29 Scott M. Forbes: else is at least double as far as cip so when you talk about the swings of the shift it's because we're only about 4.8 percent you're pushing all of that shift to that one little small group and that's where you see the swings and and that's where we are every year so when you have 12 15 20 percent it's it's a little easier but um each step on the shift is is a lot when you have only four percent president forbes thank you um also helps that winchester's assessed value is over a million dollars too so unfortunately melrose doesn't have that luxury uh so when i look at the when i look at the chart and maybe i didn't explain this as as as well as i should have the first time around but um 78 787 increases up at the top at 1.5 uh 698 is at 1.75 which is down

▶ 3:13:25 Scott M. Forbes: below it's 80 i believe it's 89 uh when you cut that in half in the middle the aggregate of that would be at 1.63 which would be an increase of 742 which is right in the middle and then if you look over in the commercial side you can see the the swing is about 2300 from 1.5 to 1.75 at 1.63 it puts you right in the middle so that would be in the in the in the spirit of being balanced it would put you right in that wheelhouse from a residential side in a commercial side whether we go a few ticks up or below i don't think that that would cause much of a much of a shift but i would be i'm i'm looking at that 1.63 and trying to do a balanced approach especially during a year where we did have an override and there was an increase across the board and you know the higher the

▶ 3:14:17 Michael P. Zwirko: increase we go as we go down the shift on the residential side you're going to see it in your commercial base as well i'm looking at 1.63 and thinks that and think that it's a more measured approach i'd be more than happy to hear from my colleagues about their feedback um and i yield back thank you is that a hand i'm sorry okay counselor i was waiting thank you madam chair sure of course so the the i'll just make one last comment on these slides so the the the last one that i thought was very interesting was just the valuations oh excuse me the um i think it's six of eleven um yeah six of eleven this brings me back to my economist days uh value of property class from 1985 to 2019 there's a lot of data there but i i point folks to about the late 2008 time frame

▶ 3:15:11 Michael P. Zwirko: and then to present especially for personal property that that growth is it's just shocking that valuation so it's just really speaking not only to melrose but also you know the greater boston areas just boom in terms of personal property which is when you see graph that way it's nearly it's it's over doubled i mean it's that is a quite quite a spike um so homeowners certainly have benefited from that and then when we talk about the shifts you know and i agree with uh my colleagues um all three of them about where they're trying to land on this and this is kind of you know i'm like a frog i don't know which lily pad i'm going to land on and um you know but i often come back to you know if this for the folks that are looking at this on the city website it

▶ 3:15:57 Michael P. Zwirko: defaults from 1.5 to 175 i mean you can go even further and we could you know if we wanted to we could reduce taxes greatly on commercial properties here in melrose right and vice versa but i think it's important to remember that you know for residential homeowners they are the ones that are not only getting the benefit of all of the services they're also the ones that are paying for a bulk of those services and a cafe or a pizza shop or you know is as favorable as we can make these tax rates we're still never going to get the type of industry that we would really want that's going to bring in huge you know commercial uh benefit to to our roles so i i think that thinking about one-to-one um you know trying to get the increase in line on a dollar-to-dollar

▶ 3:16:46 Michael P. Zwirko: basis isn't exactly where we want to be i think we want to be thinking more about in terms of the use of the services the cost of those services because for the most part commercials commercial properties i mean they're not putting children in school right they're not all that so i think that their burden could be a little bit higher and they have the benefit of making a profit off of their property we talk about this when we discuss water and sewer right you know starbucks i mean they might have a high water bill but they're literally just passing the costs on to you every time you go in there and get a frap or what have you so you know we don't have that benefit um so i i actually do like looking a little bit further i'm more comfortable with the 1.63 that seems about right

▶ 3:17:25 Michael P. Zwirko: to me i don't think it's as prohibitive it's about 100 bucks a month for a commercial property tax owner um you know that that's not a huge lift and i will also my last comment is when i look at the map or the table rather of the cip shift over the years last year i made this comment and looking at the data now i realized how wrong i was but i thought we were generally trending up towards 1.75 and all of a sudden we were never going to be able to move and when you go back to like 2004 this is like an ekg so it actually goes up and down depending on where the numbers fall so it it pleases me so to speak that we're not on a static or a level where we're constantly approaching one or the other um so even though we have seen other towns are generally at 1.75 as

▶ 3:18:13 Kate Lipper-Garabedian: the chair chairwoman noted those towns differ a little bit i'm i think i'm getting more and more comfortable with that 1.63 uh shift so thank you thank you i guess i'll just make one final comment um because i think it's great that we have three i appreciate very much all three of my colleagues for putting stakes in the sand and it is sand so we can move those stakes pretty easily right now but it helps us to sort of frame the conversation and there's always something comforting about finding the right balance which might be the middle stake that you know we're talking about right now the one thing I would just flag is the difference between 1.63 and 1.59 for you know the average the the increase is is small for the average the average increase for the

▶ 3:19:02 Kate Lipper-Garabedian: the single family, right? So we're talking a difference of 736, I'm sorry, $742 to $755, so a difference of $13 on average versus the difference for the commercial property is much more significant, a matter of hundreds between what we've heard from 1.63 and 1.59. And it's true we have Starbucks and we have Shaw's and we have Whole Foods, things like lila rose and buckaloos and hourglass and these are people who you know their their margins are tight and so it's quite likely that their rents could go up some so it's just to be mindful of that but that is the nature of the economy in our in our region but I'll just throw that out there and I'm happy to support whatever the will of the committee is here seeing it says no

▶ 3:20:01 Robert A. Boisselle: further discussion I would make a motion to recommend a tax shift of 1.63 okay we have a motion made by President Forbes and seconded by Councillor Bewtra to set the tax shift at 1.63 on discussion Vice Chair Boisselle so last year at 1.63 Well, last year the commercial was paying $1,881, so this year they're going to be paying $1,859, while the homeowner was paying $1,081, is now paying $1,105, according to these stats. So I'm not going to vote for that at that level. I mean, for 1859 on the commercial, I believe, I mean, last year they had an 1881, 1.65 is 1882, or 1.66, 1893. I mean when you're looking on the green side it's a dollar more per year or per from last year at this point comparison to only a few cents on the commercial

▶ 3:21:31 Michael P. Zwirko: side so I'm gonna go with the residents as low as I can and I'm not going to vote for this particular number okay any other discussion counselors work oh thank you um so i i'm i'm comfortable with 1.63 i think that um i mean i think again we could we could shift one way or the other i think the comments raised by alderman counselor boizel are well taken and i understand where he's coming from there i i do think that um you know we offer our our commercial proprietors an affluent market we offer them you know the resources that this community provides is you know safe for their business to operate in it's if i were a small business owner understanding that budgets are tight i would certainly want to open up shop in melrose

▶ 3:22:29 Michael P. Zwirko: it's a different type of commercial economy but it's certainly one that's um that's welcoming and and has an appetite for uh supporting its local businesses so um i i think the difference you know we're talking about in terms of you know per annum of six dollars on the residential side that's certainly uh for a smaller benefit uh to commercial i'm comfortable with 163. Any further discussion? Yeah, just the- Yes, Councilor Tramontozzi. I just note that on the average single family, the residential rate, no matter where we go, it's going to increase. I don't see anywhere here that it goes down from last year. So try to lessen the burden for the residential as much as possible, but would keep a relative balance with the commercial 1.6 3 would be reasonable and

▶ 3:23:34 Kate Lipper-Garabedian: I think we can go with that I would be able to more discussion so all in favor of the recommendation to the City Council to set the shift at 1.6 3 and he posed pose okay Julie noted we'll make that recommendation to the full City Council and thank you again for this presentation and for being with us into the late evening so we really appreciate it have a good Thanksgiving yes before we adjourn obviously want to wish everybody a happy Thanksgiving but there is an initiative called socks for soldiers that is happening this week as you consider shopping for Black Friday socks for soldiers is a local initiative that provides warmth and comfort for homeless veterans and their families socks are among the most requested items at homeless shelters across the country

▶ 3:24:25 Scott M. Forbes: When everybody thinks about how to clothe somebody in need, usually people think of both of your items like coats and blankets. So please consider taking some time during your holiday shopping and consider buying a pair of socks or even other clothing items that will keep veterans and their loved ones warm as winter gets colder. So items are needed for all genders and all age groups and be collected at various drop-off points around Melrose, one of them being right here at the Veterans Service Office at City Hall. fades away barbershop on West Wyoming lieutenant Norman Prince post on Main Street and obviously my house at 41 mystic gowns so I appreciate everybody being kind and doing the right thing for all veterans in need so thank you thank

▶ 3:25:04 Kate Lipper-Garabedian: you so moved second motion to adjourn made by Councillor Zwirko and seconded by Vice Chair Boisselle all in favor aye opposed thank you and have a great Thanksgiving

Original documents

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