Appropriations & Oversight Committee — 2020-01-21
Attendance
Christopher Cinella ; Jack Eccles ; Mark Garipay ; Jen Grigoraitis ; Kate Lipper-Garabedian ; Shawn M. MacMaster ; Jeff McNaught ; Leila Migliorelli ; Robb Stewart ; Cory Thomas ; John N. Tramontozzi
Agenda
- Call to Order
- Public Comment
- Motions
- Orders
- ORDER-2020-47 : An Appropriation in the amount of $65,000 from Free cash (account 01-324001) to various accounts as set forth herein to cover the costs related to upcoming elections in February and March.
- ORDER-2020-48 : An Appropriation from Free Cash (account 01-324001) in the amount of $7,000 to Fire-Emergency Service Vehicle (012212-534700).
- Adjournment
Minutes
CITY OF MELROSE APPROPRIATIONS COMMITTEE CALENDAR● JANUARY 21, 2020 Council Chamber, First Floor, Melrose City Hall Committee Meeting 7:00 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 Christopher Cinella Vice Chair Present John N. Tramontozzi Voting Absent Shawn M. MacMaster Voting Present Jeff McNaught Voting Present Jack Eccles Voting Present Mark Garipay Voting Present Leila Migliorelli Voting Present Robb Stewart Voting Present Cory Thomas Voting Present Jen Grigoraitis President, ex oficio Present
ORDER-2020-47 Appropriation An Appropriation in the amount of $65,000 from Free cash (account 01- 324001) to various accounts as set forth herein to cover the costs related to upcoming elections in February and March. Recommend Passage City Council
ORDER-2020-48 Appropriation An Appropriation from Free Cash (account 01-324001) in the amount of $7,000 to Fire-Emergency Service Vehicle (012212-534700). Recommend Passage City Council City of Melrose Page 1 Updated 1/23/2020 9:56 AM
Transcript
▶ 0:02 Kate Lipper-Garabedian: Good evening. The hour being seven o'clock on Tuesday, January 21st, 2020. I call to order the Appropriations Committee of the Melrose City Council. This is a committee of the whole. I am the chair, Councillor Lipper-Garabedian, and I'm joined tonight by Vice Chair Councillor Cinella, as well as members Councillor Tramontozzi, Councillor McMaster, Councillor McNaught, Councillor Eccles, Councillor Garipay, Councillor Migliorelli, excuse me. Councillor Stewart, Councillor Thomas and President Grigoraitis. In accordance with the open meeting law our meeting is being recorded and is broadcast live on MMTV tonight. It's also streaming online and will be available through the City of Melrose website thereafter. At this time I would entertain a motion for
▶ 0:50 Kate Lipper-Garabedian: public comment. So moved. Second. We have a motion for public comment made by Councillor McMaster seconded by Councillor Eccles. All in favor? Aye. Any opposed excellent this is a portion of the meeting where any member of the public can come forward to speak on any of the orders on our agenda tonight we have two orders on our agenda tonight seeing no one here for public comment I make a motion to close it close public comment we have a motion to close public comment made by councillor Gara pay and seconded by councillor Thomas all in favor any opposed public comment is now closed so we'll move on to the orders Our first order tonight is order 2020-47, an appropriation of the amount of $65,000 from free cash, account 01-324-001, to various accounts as set forth herein, to cover the costs related to the upcoming elections in February and March.
▶ 1:47 Kate Lipper-Garabedian: Motion to suspend the rules, Madam Chair, so that we may hear from the City Clerk. Second. second we have a motion to suspend the rules made by councillor McMaster and seconded by councillor Garipay to suspend the rules all in favor any opposed excellent thank you so much for being with us tonight miss Camosa and I don't know if you wanted to share a little bit about this order and then we can see if there any questions sure so when we budget when we do the annual budget we budget specifically for elections that we know we're going to have so in this past fiscal year we knew we would have a November election and actually this coming March presidential primary but at the time the budget was set we did not know whether we'd have a preliminary mayoral election and we
▶ 2:28 Kate Lipper-Garabedian: didn't know about the February election that's coming up in a couple weeks so this is to cover the cost of those two elections thank you any questions okay so we haven't any what is will the committee motion to recommend for passage we have a motion to recommend this order for passage made by councillor mcmaster and seconded by councillor Garipay all in favor all right any opposed okay we'll make that recommendation to the full board tonight thank you so much thank you the next order on our agenda is order 2020-48 in appropriation from free cash account zero one dash three two four zero zero one in the amount of seven thousand dollars to fire emergency service vehicle 012212-534700 and we are still under suspension of the rule so I see
▶ 3:21 the fire chief here and thank you so much for joining us and maybe you can just explain what this appropriation would be for. Good evening everybody pleasure to come before the council for the first time in this council I wish you well in your term. My name is Ed Kalina I'm the fire chief for those that don't know I come before the council looking for an appropriation of seven thousand dollars to purchase a vehicle it's an SUV vehicle it's going to be used for the fire prevention officer it's a four-wheel-drive vehicle excuse me it's used it has a full complete police package so the durability of it is good lights siren has a rear operations cabin in the vehicle recently as new tires though I has high mileage it has
▶ 4:21 200,000 miles on the vehicle the cost of the vehicle is $7,000 I have a picture vehicle if you'd like if i could pass it out so you can kind of get it sure as you can see from the the uh the picture the vehicle is in good condition it was previous it's pretty it's owned by catal the wayne bone service they're they're getting updated vehicles uh we've been in possession of this vehicle though we haven't used it we did a test drive on it since october they've been kind enough to put it on hold until we can either appropriate the funds for this project or north um this vehicle is larger than the current vehicle being used by fire prevention which is a 2015 ford focus the electric vehicle it's a very tiny vehicle it cannot accommodate the
▶ 5:46 fire captain's fire gear and his tools used in fire investigations which is part of his his duty so a vehicle like this um will greatly help the fleet and then captain uh gibson who's in fire prevention now um i'd be happy to answer any questions that you may have uh counselor sanella um i guess what are you going to do with the vehicle they're using now so the The Ford Focus, we'll still keep it, and we'll use it if anybody's going to training, things like that, or if when there's a fire and another captain comes in as a backup to cover the other types of calls that the city has, it'll be a vehicle for that person to go into. It has light, siren, has radio, all radio equipped. And what kind of mileage is the current vehicle being used for fire prevention, with this having 200,000 miles on it?
▶ 6:56 Correct, the common fire prevention vehicle has about 30,000 miles on it. A pretty light use. Yes, it was out of service for a year just when fire prevention was closed, so it just laid dormant. It's also used when my car goes in the shop. Then I'll use it, or the command car, if that goes into the shop for preventive maintenance, we could put the shift captain in on that particular time. I do have to say the electric car is a great car, however, it's limited on its mileage. It can only go so far on a charge. It's not reliable. Like, we can't even send it to the academy because it's too far to go unless you plug it in to get a return trip back. It's only good for about 65 miles on a full charge.
▶ 7:53 Councilor Garipay? You had mentioned, Chief, that this car has been in our possession for how long? Since October. Since October. Has our maintenance crew down at DPW, have they done an inspection on it? And what was their assessment of it? They have not. The mechanic that we use through Catawba Ambulance that maintains our ambulances maintains this vehicle, and he thought it'd be a good fit for us did they do he hasn't done an inspection on it or will something will an inspection be done before we take before we purchase it from from from the mechanic or our own gpw um i guess i could do that certainly okay that's it president Grigoraitis um thank you for being here tonight chief can you what's your estimate for the lifespan of
▶ 8:46 this vehicle should the city take possession of it based on especially with the high mileage sure so if I go back in 2010 we took a vehicle from Qatar the way bones as well similar to this high mileage over a hundred thousand and we still have that vehicle may have seen it behind the fire station it's a big excursion big red excursion but it's a gas guzzler and now recently it's been having trouble staying charged we have to constantly charge it it's unreliable i'd like to get rid of that vehicle um but that vehicle we over the course of 10 years we've only put 30 35 000 miles on that vehicle our roads are small we don't put a lot of mileage on our vehicles so properly maintain this vehicle here
▶ 9:35 which it appears to have been i don't see why we couldn't use it for a year or two or more it's a band-aid approach to what I'm looking for but it'll meet our needs at this time. Councilor Thomas? Chief, thank you for being here. Is there enough storage for the addition of this car to the fleet? That's a great question. So this vehicle if approved will go to fire prevention and that is a take-home vehicle because that fire prevention uh captain is on call for code enforcement but more importantly he's our fire investigator he's trained and he'll be called out for any any fire within the city to investigate a cause in origin and again the the high mileage on this it's not a concern no thank you anyone else for the first time counselor Garipay uh as a just curious uh
▶ 10:40 Kate Lipper-Garabedian: for knowledge as a take-home vehicle it has a city sales and all that on the doors it doesn't right now well thank you so we do have a handout that you provided us but which is not part of the record before the meeting I would entertain a motion to add this to the record so the public can see it okay you have a motion me by councillor McNaught second by councillor Eccles all in favor so we can add this to the record so I maybe just would I so when I saw this request it was very there wasn't a lot of information in the packet I had assumed it was maybe for some maintenance since it's such a low dollar amount obviously we may recall toward the end of last year we entertained a request from the emergency management director to
▶ 11:28 Kate Lipper-Garabedian: purchase a low-cost vehicle which we ultimately declined and and one of the things that we talked about was whether or not this would be a take-home vehicle or not so can you speak a little bit about that you mentioned that for a while this department within your department was closed so I'm glad to hear that we have it staffed again and but where would this car be housed you know on off hours is it in Melrose or somewhere else and speak a little bit about that yeah the car will be in possession of the fire prevention officer which is Captain Gibson so he lives just north in Wakefield and that's where it'd be housed at nighttime nighttime on weekends it's a take-home vehicle as he's subject to recall at any time great and you were say you
▶ 12:25 Kate Lipper-Garabedian: mentioned that we will hold on to the electronic vehicle it's something that we had been interested in last year was continuing to sort of strive to modern our fleet so that we're taking into account sort of gas efficiency and using renewable energy when possible. You mentioned that this is sort of a band-aid approach. So what would your dream option be if it's a year from now or two years from now if we can hold on to this car for a little bit? Yeah, I've looked at Chevy Tahoes. They can accommodate the equipment needed for fire prevention they have to that position needs to carry shovels evidence collection cans things like that his own ppe which is personal protective equipment the gear that shouldn't be
▶ 13:14 Shawn M. MacMaster: stored in the back seat of the vehicle though it would be in this in the vehicle but it would be properly stored in the rear any other questions from the council's counselor mcmaster thank you Madam Chair. Good evening, Chief. Council Lippa Garabedian referenced the emergency management director who appeared before us probably about a month or so ago with a request for a used vehicle, and that vehicle was not going to be a take-home vehicle, and that vehicle was going to be essentially used on an as-needed basis. Can you talk a little bit about the use of this vehicle? How often will it be used? Is this something that will be used daily, and if so, for what purpose? If you could give us a sense in terms of fire prevention, what does that mean?
▶ 14:07 Well, fire prevention duties, currently the captain is working a five-day schedule, so he's there seven to three every day. running around the city code enforcement smoke detector inspections if the engine apparatus the companies go out and they find a say for a medical aid and they see a violation or what they appear to be a violation they could call for his expertise to excuse me to reach out to management so to make corrections the other thing about this vehicle this is a four-wheel drive vehicle the electric car is not the fire prevention office they wear many hats as an investigator or fire investigator code enforcement also safety officer at the fire scenes it's very important to have a safety
▶ 15:09 officer on scene in a relatively short period of time and having a vehicle that's four-wheel drive especially in this time of year will allow him to uh respond into the city uh rapidly so chief is it fair to say that the two biggest differences between the request of which i believe you're familiar when the emergency management director came before us and the request tonight is one this will be a take-home vehicle as you said and two that it will be used daily yes at least that's the expectation is that weekdays and on call morning noon and night captain gibson's been in the position now we opened it in late october early november and he's been called out at least a half dozen times that uh half hours along with times that he's been re-diverted from doing his
▶ 16:04 Jeff McNaught: fire prevention duties to a to a fire scene the fire scenes take precedence over anything else thank you chief counselor eccles the chief actually just answered the question i was going to ask thank you great uh councillor mcnaught thank you for being here chief um i was just wondering because i didn't i also recognized there wasn't a lot of information on the vehicle where is it coming from catalo ambulance service okay it was it was a supervisor's car um in the ambulance company and do we have um insurance costs approximate on what it would cost per year i do not i only ask these questions because they came up during um at the end of last year with the car that we were going to get from chelsea for a dollar and i think some of the
▶ 16:52 Jeff McNaught: same concerns might have been present on age and wear and tear of the vehicle with this one being at 200 000 miles um i know that's more of a comment than a question but i guess my next question is i know you said in 2010 we got a vehicle that had 200 000 miles on it it had at the time about 110. okay and do we still have that we do and that's one i'd like to get rid of oh that's it might be a push you know okay i'm sorry counselor eccles apologies thanks so right now the excursion is is one of your extra vehicles that's being um can you talk about what that's been used because theoretically the ev would then be your extra vehicle so can you talk about the use of of the extra vehicle you have on hand now so when we got the ford focus back in 2015
▶ 17:46 being a new car we put fire prevention into that but it became evident rather quickly that gear was stored he couldn't get his shovels in there so fire prevention went into the excursion and it was used for that and the captain white was the officer at that time and but that that vehicle has just become old it's it has a grounding out issue we can't track it down so we're constantly jump-starting it we have a a power pack that we have to carry in it all the time you could be called out you have to then pop the hood hook up the things that's not a good situation for an emergency response vehicle so um has the director been taking home the excursion or the or the focus for the past few years the inspector has been taken since November let's say the Ford Focus thank
▶ 18:46 Robb Stewart: you counselor Stewart Thank You chief is it fair than to say that this is you're looking to replace the 2010 purchase vehicle with this vehicle that's correct okay so this is a replacement not an addition correct okay and the other question that I had is if you look at the option of getting something new did you like get a rough estimate what that would cost in comparison to the seven thousand dollars I did last year we priced out a vehicle a Tahoe with the full light package siren in a command module on the back and it was fifty $3,000 thank you counselors sorry Thomas Thank You madam chairman chief you said this is kind of a band-aid fix the 2013 SUV what do you think your estimate would be how long would this last no those fire if we purchased it again the
▶ 19:55 Kate Lipper-Garabedian: way we use vehicles we don't put high mileage on them we take rather good care of our vehicles this vehicle could last you know two plus years if I could secure funding at a later date for a replacement of this I would this vehicle could still be used in the fleet as a utility just a utility vehicle thank you maybe just a quick follow-up question so do you have a sense of why the city We decided to purchase the electric vehicle in 2015, I think you said. So that's just a number of years ago, but hindsight being 2020, it doesn't have four wheel drive. It can't fit the equipment for which the vehicle was intended to be used. Any sense of that? I wasn't chief at the time. I don't know how we came about that vehicle for us.
▶ 20:56 Kate Lipper-Garabedian: Okay, I don't think anyone at this horseshoe was around. None of us at this horseshoe were there then either, so we'll all just have to speculate. And it sounds like this was in a change in the job description or benefits to the job, because you just mentioned that the captain right now is using a vehicle and taking it home with him. Correct, since the inception of fire prevention, which was 1996, it's been a job that has a take home vehicle. Okay, and is that common with most municipalities? Um, it is for this municipality because of the roles that we put on our fire prevention office. But I think some other municipalities, a fire prevention officer might just be that. But our fire prevention officer wears multiple hats.
▶ 21:41 Kate Lipper-Garabedian: Okay. That's helpful. So I just would observe, you know, that this is a little different from the vehicle we considered last year insofar as the take home component of it exists already. as the previous request would have been a change sort of in the not only in purchasing it but in the relationship of the vehicle to the city employee correct so any other questions right now motion to recommend for passage we have a motion to recommend for passage made by councillor mcmaster seconded by councillor mcnaught any further discussion all in favor aye any opposed so we'll make that recommendation to the full council tonight thank you very much thank you everybody have a good night thank you you too and that concludes our business